OFX Group Limited

Thank you, Mel, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. As Mel mentioned, I'm joined by Selina Vernon, our Chief Financial Officer, and Matt Gregorowski, who leads our Investor Relations Program with Sedalia & Co. Selina and I will take you through the pages, and then there'll be time for Q&A. The presentation will cover three things, our fiscal year 25 results and the performance drivers, our financials in more detail, our strategy and our outlook, and then we'll do Q&A. Let's move to slide four in the pack. The business demonstrated resilience in what was a very unusual macroeconomic environment. The weak business confidence we saw in the first half continued through the second half with political instability and the prospect of tariffs later in the period adding to uncertainty. This meant that our results were below our expectations that we set out of the half year with net operating income of 214.9 million down 5.5% versus prior corresponding period and underlying EBITDA of 57.7 million down 10.7% versus PCP with an underlying EBITDA margin of 27%. The team worked very hard to drive the business leaders within our control while continuing to invest in creating a bold new company that supports our clients in many more areas than FX management. Our margins and cash flows remain very healthy, and we maintain very disciplined cost control, overall cash management and risk management. We finished fiscal year 25 with net cash held at 77.2 million, up 2.5 million from our first half, and that included repaying a further 24 million of outstanding debt through the year, as well as completing an extensive share buyback program, which Selena will cover later. Moving to slide five, we've always set up and run our effects in a sustainable way, which means keeping very disciplined on key financial and operating metrics, especially when external signals are very mixed and volatile, while at the same time continuing to invest in building a competitive advantage over time. Business confidence was subdued, but our small to medium businesses are feeling even more pressure. with SME business confidence declining more significantly in our major markets, as you can see from the data points on the left. Small and medium businesses saw the interest rate outlook change, cost of goods rise, and whilst inflation moderated, it was persistent, and later in the year was even forecast to rise. Then, as I mentioned, political instability and the threat of tariffs drove further uncertainty later in the second half, particularly for our target clients, small and medium businesses who buy or sell cross-border. The chart on the left shows our monthly revenue versus the monthly average over the year. And we do see some variation ordinarily, given mostly by the number of days in a month or if we see particular events. However, given we have very high recurring revenue, it was unusual for us to see such variation. And in fiscal year 25, this weak business confidence affected the average transaction values or ATDs we typically see unusually across the world. And given that backdrop, we worked very hard at optimizing our business fundamentals. The metrics on the right-hand side of this page demonstrate the way we run the company sustainably. We drive operating leaders that create value over time, cash generation, thoughtful expense management, and risk management designed to support growth whilst keeping the company safe. We worked very hard on execution led by an experienced and very competent team, and this execution is what has delivered superior EPS accretion from the acquisition of Firma, a fast and very meaningful integration of Patron, and a healthy environment for our employees to do their best work. We also continue to invest in our strategic transformations through the OFX 2.0 strategy, which extends and improves our value proposition and total addressable market, or TAM. We are acutely aware that a stronger value proposition will grow our client base and the average revenue generated from each client, which in turn will drive faster growth overall. The board and management team have very high conviction in the path we're taking, underpinned by market examples, detailed internal research, and now also strong external research, which I'll talk to you later. Our team of approximately 700 OSXs are engaged, working hard, hitting vigorously and creating value around the world. Turning to slide six, as I mentioned, our corporate segments saw a 4% decline in revenue versus PCP, driven by a 22.8% decline in ATVs. Pleasingly, whilst we did see some decline in active clients in this segment, transactions were up 24%, confirming clients are very engaged with us during uncertain times. Looking across the regions, growth in Australia and the U.S., was more than offset by softness in the UK and in Canada. It was very encouraging to see our enterprise segment continue to grow up 17% versus BCP and more and more contribution coming from new partners as well as from long-standing clients. Our consumer segment was down just 1% as some high-value use cases such as wealth management returned in the second half. ATVs were up 7.3%, however, transactions were down 6.4%. Moving to slide seven, our strategy is very clear on which clients we target with the right value proposition, and then how we generate the highest value available from these clients. On the left-hand side, you can see a breakdown of our corporate active clients. The chart shows that the reduction in active clients has been in our smaller clients that generate less than 4,000 in revenue per annum. More importantly, the cohort of more valuable corporate clients, which we consider to be clients generating more than 4,000 in revenue per annum, is growing as we provide the right value proposition and create the right conditions for them to operate their businesses with us. The organic growth rate of these clients is mid single digits when you adjust for the clients that left with some of the firmer traders leaving. Naturally, we want it to grow faster And we also want to grow active clients overall. But this is the right place for us to be focused first. And as we migrate these clients to the new client platform, the opportunity to grow value from these clients increases, as well as the opportunity to grow the number of clients who deliver significant revenue to the group. The chart on the right shows that at a portfolio level, we are growing the average revenue per client overall, primarily as a result of growing the most valuable clients first. This will be a key reporting metric going forward as it will demonstrate the incremental value we are generating from NCP. Equally, the total active client base is expected to grow in time as the NCP also gives us access to clients for FX that we were not able to access previously. So the growth in average revenue per client or ARPC is especially encouraging when most of the cost is fixed. So most of it goes straight to underlying Over the last five years, we've worked very hard on our platform transformation. And the last year has seen huge progress as we began rolling out new products, features and services, as you can see on slide nine. Historically, our effort and investment was in building the foundations, things like risk management, onboarding and payments. But in FY25, with much of that complete, we were able to focus on the client experiences through the new client platform or NCP. We have never delivered more features, more services, and at such speed as we did in fiscal year 25, with over 2,000 deployments in the fourth quarter alone, up from 87 in the fourth quarter 24. To deliver great product, we need to be at least as fast as this. And so it's incredibly encouraging to improve that much and to see an increased velocity of deployments in just one year. This page shows you that some of the products and services already delivered that are gaining traction with clients and driving up the ARPC. They also allow us to scale faster. One achievement we're especially proud of is that we're the first non-bank issuer of corporate cards in Canada with Visa. And this is notable because it improves the returns available and is evidence of the strength of OSX. We do not need to rely on a bank-sponsored license. It signals our balance sheet strengths, our mature risk management programs, and the confidence Visa has in our operational rigor. It also bodes well for our global rollout for the UK and Europe, expected to launch by the end of the first quarter of this year. We have implemented new pricing plans, both in Australia and Canada, and we will deploy these in the UK, Europe, and the US later in the year. In Canada, we launched a cashback value proposition for our clients And we're looking at a strong value propositions like this across the UK, Europe, and the US. Having the right value proposition for the market combined with the operating and financial discipline gives us confidence to grow with returns in each of our markets. Moving to slide 10 has been very encouraging to see the response of new clients to the new value proposition. And although we're moving existing clients across very carefully, we're seeing positive early signs from them as well. On the left, you can see that new clients are already adopting new products at the rate of around one in four, with many clients already adopting more than two products. In fiscal year 25, we saw non-FX revenue from new clients up at around 27% of new revenue being generated. And note that this was lower than we saw in the first half, but this was only due to a vendor switch that we did in the second half to improve the client experience and to provide a more scalable global solution to the one patron had used just for Australian clients while they were in startup mode. We expect that revenue to return in fiscal year 26, along with further non-FX revenue growth. On the right-hand side, you can see that as of 31 March, we had more than 20% of our Australian corporate active clients on the new client platform, and it has continued to grow since then, as I'll touch on in a moment. The take-up of new products, as well as the revenue from this cohort, continues to build. And as planned, the migration accelerated in April and May. We're past the midway stage now of migrating Australian corporate portfolio. We expect it to be largely complete by the end of this quarter. We did slow it down due to the vendor switch, as we didn't want to migrate them onto a suboptimal platform. And as we've migrated more existing Australian clients onto the platform, we continue to get very positive feedback. Now let me hand over to Selina, who will walk through the financial highlights in more detail.

Thank you, Skanda. Moving to slide 12, we are a healthy business with strong cash generation, as Skanda has already outlined. Fee and trading income, or revenue, was down 3.4%, to $221.9 million. On a constant currency basis, it was down slightly less, at 1%. Regionally, APAC was down 1.1%, North America down 1.2%, and EMEA down 7.9%. The second half was a very tough environment, and the threat of tariffs fourth quarter exacerbated the uncertainty for many of our corporate clients. February was particularly soft, down 12% on fiscal year 24, but revenue picked up in March, and this momentum has continued through April. Overall, the second half 25, student trading income of $107.4 million was down 6.6% on the prior year, and $7.1 million on the first half 25. Given the macro backdrop, it was pleasing to see enterprise revenue growth of 17% and consumer stable at negative 1%. Their operating income of 204.9 million was down 5.5%, which was below our expectations. If you exclude the 3.7 million escrow that was included in the first half 24 NOI, it was down 3.9%. NOI margins were slightly softer at 56 basis points, down three basis points. One basis point is due to escrow, included in the fiscal year 24 results, and the remaining two basis points pricing on higher consumer ATVs, along with lower interest rate on client balances. We actively managed our operating expenses, which were 157.2 million, down 3.5% on fiscal year 24, which I'll talk to in the next slide. Depreciation and amortization increased by 29.4%, reflecting our platform investment in NCP and prior intangible investments. This resulted in an underlying earnings before tax of $31.7 million, down 23.8% versus fiscal year 24, and a statutory net profit after tax of $24.9 million, down 20.6% on fiscal year 24. Tax rate is low at 11.2% due to an ongoing R&D tax benefit, as most of our engineers are based in Australia. The R&D tax benefit to the year was $2.1 million, and as we reported at the half year, we also had $2.3 million of benefits from the prior years, If we exclude or pry year adjustment, the underlying tax rate is 22.4%. As we stated, the half year, we expect the future tax rate to be between 21% to 24%, but this will be dependent on R&D spend and future rebates. We have a strong balance sheet, and our net cash held balance is $77.2 million, up $2.5 million on the first half of 2025, with a very strong second-half cash conversion rate. The second half 25 net cash flows from operating activities were 56.5 million, up from 16 million in the first half of 25. And we saw a full year underlying EBITDA converting at more than 90% to net cash flow from operations. Moving to slide 13, with fee and trading income lower than our expectations, we have actively managed our operating expenses. Employment expenses, our largest expense category, was 108.4 million, down 3.7% versus fiscal year 24. This is due to both our productivity programs delivering, headcount holding flat, and our bonus NSDI provisions reflecting fiscal year 25 performance. Employment expenses were 51 million in the second half 25, which was down from 57.4 million in the first half 25, reflecting the lower provision for bonuses. We do expect this to increase next year as we meet our targets and invest in accelerated growth, which Scanda will take you through. It was pleasing to see technology cost down 7.2% despite running two platforms as we worked through the migration. This is a result of the firmer synergies rolling through and the continuous focus on productivity and spend. Notwithstanding this careful expense management and having two technology platforms, we have had one of our best years for execution, especially on our new client platform, which I'll talk to you through later. As markets were uncertain and prospect demand subdued, we closely monitored the promotional spend. For the $17.4 million spent, we generated $34.4 million in new client revenue, which is a good return. Bad and doubtful debts were $2.1 million for the year, down 42.7%, which is an excellent result in a market where small businesses are facing cost pressures, softening demand in an environment where fraud and losses continue to increase across the industry. We continually review and invest in our cyber defense program, as well as we manage our client market exposure to keep our losses within our acceptable tolerance. We continue to invest in fraud prevention, both software and people, to keep fraud losses low. Other costs are up 14% as we did increase our travel up 0.7 million this year to ensure we build our great global culture. And we invested in higher professional fees as we enhanced our product offering. Moving to slide 14, our intangible investment in fiscal year 25 was 18.9 million, which is in line with our guidance of 19 million. This has been at a consistent percentage of revenue, but in higher value areas as Gander outlined on slide 9 that will drive strong returns. as we continue to invest in building a new competitive value proposition and an infrastructure that is scalable and secure. Our investments in fiscal year 25 have been heavily focused on our new client platform. As you can see from the chart, this was mostly in product and client experience, totaling 13.4 million, or 69% of the overall spend. The execution and velocity of delivery from 150 FTEs in our tech and product is the best we've ever seen, and it gives us conviction to go faster. Delivery includes NCP of Life for new corporate clients in Australia and Canada, and the UK is coming soon. We've built a client migration engine, and migrations are well underway for Australian corporate clients and planned for Canadian clients. We have implemented Visa as our new card provider for both physical and virtual cards. We are also the first non-bank issuer in Canada. We continue to work on our accounting integrations with a two-way sync with Xero in place and QuickBooks coming soon. Artificial intelligence for invoice and receipt recognition, which streamlines processes for clients and reduces the need for categorizing expenses. A simplified interface for FX-migrated clients and a new advisor portal for accountants. And lastly, a new digital forwards product that will be released on the platform in the coming quarter. Internally, we've done our first transaction, which was exciting to see. This is a digital product that no one else on a global payments platform had. and it's absolutely critical to providing the fully integrated solution for clients that we strive for. In addition, we continue to invest in risk, data, and security, as we always look to improve our defenses. The reduction in bad deaths I mentioned earlier reflects this investment, along with our risk culture. We have also attained ISO 27001, which is a globally recognized standard for managing information security and cybersecurity. We've obtained this certification for all our subsidiaries, which provides all our clients and partners additional reassurance around our cyber defenses, as it provides a framework for managing and mitigating cyber threats. Our payments engine is connected to the NCP for four of our major currencies, and we continue to expand the services as we go live for each region. This will mean faster and cheaper payments for our clients. Speed and accuracy of payment processing is critical for our clients, and we continue to invest in this area to generate lower banking costs and increase speed. Turning to slide 15, we have a strong, stable balance sheet and continue to be very strong at generating cash. Our net cash held position is $77.2 million. This is cash held for unused and collateral, which is held as deposits with financial institutions. This is down $10.8 million from March of 24, but up $2.5 million on the first half of 25 as we generated stronger second half cash conversion as expected. The chart on the left shows we continue to have a strong cash conversion rate with our underlying EBITDA of $57.7 million, converting to $72.5 million of net cash flows from operating activities. First half net operating cash was $16 million. and since then we've seen a strong second half cash generation of 56.5 million. As we explained at the first half, our other receivables were 7 million higher than normal at 30 September due to a public holiday in Canada, and we had several forwards that were due to mature in second half of 25. These two items combined with tax refunds generated a stronger second half cash figure, along with strong cash collection from our teams globally from clients. Our collateral and bank guarantees from 19.8 million to 26.2 million and is down 2.6 million from the first half of 25 to 28.8 million. As we manage the additional collateral, we are required to hold the wallets on the NCP. We have continued our debt repayments with 24 million repaid for the year. The current loan balance is 20 million. We are in a net asset position and are on track to repay the debt facility by the end of fiscal year 26, subject to our capital management program considerations. Now, we have paused the debt repayment in the first half of 26 as we seek to preserve cash through these volatile markets. During periods of high volatility, our natural netting in the book, driven by the globally diverse revenues we generate, is a great advantage for us. We have met all margin calls with our 11 counterparties. We run daily client margin call reviews and have reviewed all the top clients to understand the impact of volatility and tariffs. Our standing client margin core position is less than 200,000 with minimal risk, a very healthy position given the size of a forward book. We've completed our share buyback and in fiscal year 25 bought 9.2 million shares for a total of 13.7 million, with 3.3 million deployed in the first half and the remaining 10.4 million deployed in the second half. We actively manage our capital and in fiscal year 26 has shifted to a faster organic growth strategy, which we're or has additional investment, which Skanda will outline in the next section. While we are not renewing the share buyback at this time, we continue to review the opportunity through fiscal year 26. I will now hand back to Skanda to take us through the strategy and outlook.

Thank you, Selina, for that excellent description of our financial results and what drove them. Now let me address the strategy for OFX, including our outlook. Moving to slide 17, Many investors will be familiar with this page as we've shared it previously. It lays out how our strategy has evolved as OFX 2.0, highlighting the outcomes we're targeting, which are scaling in our major markets, focusing on ideal client profiles or ICPs who generate the revenues akin to the more valuable corporate clients that I referred to earlier with an ARPC of more than 4,000, more products to help businesses manage their operations internationally on a modern and scalable client platform, which will mean we grow revenue faster and generate better margins over time. Given the potential value we felt we could unlock, we commissioned a global strategy leader with depth in payments and software to assess the market opportunity through an independent study. We felt that with this, we could also address the questions of whether we should continue to invest in this opportunity how we should invest and how fast we should invest to generate the best return. That study was concluded in late March and we discussed it as a board as we finalized our approach fiscal year 26 and beyond. It not only validated the strategy we had in place and what we had already seen from our competitors who had put a version of it into place, but it is very clearly and unequivocally supports the accelerated NCP investment we are making. You've heard us talk about a bigger global FX TAM, and you've also heard us say that there is very little industry data to draw from. What the study has given us is a much clearer view of the opportunity that is available. Through 2.0, this opportunity is doubled. But I'll touch more on that shortly. Moving to slide 18, we were not surprised by what the study told us in terms of how Our 2.0 strategy solves more client problems. Firstly, as this page shows, it addresses the reality for our target ICP, which is that payments and international payments are important, but that they are one of many pain points that exist for these businesses. In simple terms, even just in payments, clients need to get paid, they need to manage flows and liquidity, and then they need to make payments or pay out. We will largely focus at the end of that value chain, i.e. payout. But even in that section, we really only handle some of the payouts, largely the bank transfers. In fact, businesses want to pay out in many ways, including via card, for example, which we were planning to do but did not yet provide. Further, when they pay out, they have to reconcile to their accounts payable system. We didn't provide that either. Further, we only focused on international payments, not domestic payments, meaning that whatever system they use, we only covered part of their needs. Just in the payout section, we've added those capabilities. Integration with accounts payable and domestic payments, and new clients are taking that up, as I've mentioned. And next, we've always offered risk management for our clients, unlike many of our competitors. but we didn't offer them the convenience of multi-currency accounts to store various currencies or create budgets and spend controls, which allow CFOs or AP functions the ability to control who can pay out and how much, and of course, to whom. With the new client platform, we can do all that, and again, it's resonating. Finally, we had to set up for a subset of our corporate segment the ability to receive payments in various currencies. For example, I've talked about this for sellers on various e-commerce platforms we support as critical. But our new platform does this at scale and provides them with individual accounts, making it much easier to connect across this chain and much easier for their clients to do business with them. Why does this matter? Moving to slide 19, as I've mentioned, the study allowed us much more accurately to understand what the total addressable market or TAM was for these new products and services. On the left-hand side, you can see that the TAM and the 2.0 world is around $384 billion of revenue, and that includes the revenue of $66 billion for our target SMEs in our core markets. On a like-for-like basis, what the right-hand side shows is that by adding the products and services that tackle the other payments, i.e. getting paid and managing flows and liquidity, our TAM for target ICPs increases by 94% from US $34 billion in the 1.0 world to US $66 billion in the 2.0 world. And this is a dramatic increase in what we're competing for. Moving to slide 20, in addition to the huge TAM and the expansion in TAM, we were very encouraged to see external validation of what growth fintechs could expect by market. The study estimated market shares and growth rates for our major markets for our target ICPs. The analysis suggests fintechs will grow at between 10% and 15% CAGR between fiscal year 23 and fiscal year 28 in those markets of fairly low market penetration. And competitively, it was also somewhat surprising but encouraging to see that whilst fintechs are taking share of a lot of the new SMEs, products and services, the majority of SMEs are still with banks with the size of that share of banks anywhere from 77% to 87% in our major markets. So there remains a wonderful opportunity and we are largely competing with each other to take it from banks. These facts alone, the increase in TAN and the fact that we are competing with other fintechs to take share from banks gave us conviction to accelerate our efforts to roll out the NCP globally. But the next question is, how do we unlock that opportunity for RFX? We were very keen to understand why target ICPs were not already switching. And moving to slide 21, that it was important in further building our conviction to accelerate because it confirmed that our target clients are very much ready to switch to FinTechs so long as we can provide an integrated solution. That was a very key finding. Previously, we'd always provided a superior product in FX and superior service throughout digital plus human platform, but the reluctance switch was because target clients are looking for solutions across a range of problems or pain points not just fx to unlock this appetite switch we have the integrated product set a very contemporary and secure platform in ncp and the fx and risk management is actually a differentiator in the sector sector especially versus banks but also versus many fintechs who focus on payments or spot fx only further We have the team, a well-established global footprint, a strong balance sheet and cash generation to act boldly to take this opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, we've set up and run OFX for the median term and have very disciplined financial controls and knowledge to consider when investing. So considering how much to invest and how quickly was a very carefully considered exercise. Moving to slide 22, here are the main reasons we've chosen to accelerate our investment. Firstly, as we've shared, the ARPC of a client who is more deeply engaged with more products is higher. To have more clients with a higher ARPC will drive top-line growth faster and underlying EBITDA margin expansion. For example, we already see that with our new clients, the growth in non-FX revenue is faster than FX. it's at a higher NOI margin. We've previously shared that in looking at public competitors, on our current corporate clients, the ARPC is 4,200, and that includes only 1% non-FX revenue, as you can see on the left-hand side. So growth in non-FX revenue at stronger NOI margins grows NOI and underlying EBITDA margins. We expect to achieve 10% or more in non-FX revenue by fiscal year 2018. Illustratively, if we got to the levels of ARPC generated by our competitors, longer term, we can generate 40% more revenue from the same clients. So the sooner we're able to provide the expanded product offering, the better. However, to capture this upside, we need to invest a further 29 million in fiscal year 26, with 24 million of that in OPEX and five in CAPEX. This includes investment in the accelerated platform rollout, our go-to-market, strategy and our commercial resources to drive faster growth. This investment is expected to increase marginally in fiscal year 27 before normalising in fiscal year 28. Unlike others, we can self-fund this growth, which is absolutely critical. We've already shared that we have seen very unusual and challenging economic conditions for our clients, and this has affected their confidence and thus activity. But by unlocking new products and services, we're not relying on favorable economic circumstances. We're taking share from banks. And we're not relying on new debt or equity to make that happen. If we were, then our return equation would carry a very different risk weighting. From a capital management perspective, we have, as Selena has mentioned, balanced debt repayment, a share buyback program, and intangible investment to optimize returns. This investment in this environment is, we believe, the best allocation of our capital. And finally, on a straight ROIC basis, we looked at the returns this investment profile would deliver. In other words, doing it in an accelerated fashion would generate and compare that to doing it more slowly. Doing it quickly provided the strongest return because the extra revenue combined with the reduced client churn delivers the fastest and best ROIC. And this makes a lot of sense when we go back and reflect on the study that showed the share is with banks, but we are competing to dislodge it with fintechs. It's also consistent with what we see in active clients. If we lose clients, but we can grow ARPC, but we will struggle to grow overall. So a stronger value proposition delivered quickly protects the existing revenue better. And further, a longer execution timeframe always creates other risks. both technical and operational. If we're too slow, we'll waste this opportunity and risk competitors catching up on our product capability. Going faster is what gets us to more than 15% NOI growth by fiscal year 28, and this is underpinned by more NOI from both FX and non-FX, lower churn, more active clients, and higher ARPC. And ultimately, the kind of longer-term returns that will be very attractive for our shareholders. Moving to slide 23, The execution in fiscal year 24 and 25, whether it be in the integration of Firmware or Patron, or the rollout of a new client platform, has given us confidence in the accelerated global rollout, and this slide lays out the timeline for delivery. We expect to have all countries live for new corporate clients by the end of this fiscal year. This is, as ever, subject to regulatory approval and vendor support, but we are confident in this, given our experience thus far. It is very encouraging that as recently as last week, we received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland for our European expansion. We also expect to complete the migration of our corporate clients for each of our major regions by the end of fiscal year 26, and again, subject to regulatory and vendor support, with the smaller countries being completed early in fiscal year 27. All of this will be complemented by ongoing product enhancements that our client experience will continue to improve as we execute this migration. Over the course of fiscal year 26, we're also considering the best approach for our consumer segment, and we'll update you further on what we intend to do in fiscal year 27 and when sometime in fiscal year 26. Moving now to our outlook on slide 25. In early fiscal year 26, we've seen the conditions that drove weak business confidence being mixed interest rate outlook, falling consumer demand, cost pressures persist in most of our major markets. The tariff commentary and actions have added to that. And against that backdrop, we cannot provide an outlook for fiscal year 26 with any certainty. We will continue to monitor global markets, and if we are able, we will provide an updated outlook for fiscal year 26 in the medium term. However, it's important to note that we continue to target growth in NOI, and we will work exceptionally hard to deliver that. This year has started well. with April up on PCP despite one less trading day. In fact, as we showed on slide five, we produced 21.2 million of fee and trading income despite one less trading day. We will maintain our disciplined approach to capital management, including considering future buyback activity with the current program now complete. The investments we're making means we are not targeting operating leverage in fiscal year 26 or fiscal year 27. And as we touched on earlier, We have always believed in targeting operating leverage, but we took this decision to not target it in the short term based on the deep understanding we have of how valuable the opportunity is and of the strategy team and platform we have to unlock it and the consequent ROIC and shareholder value we can create by investing this way. We expect that it will make us a much more valuable company and deliver the top line growth and underlying EBITDA margin we've been targeting. So before I hand back to Mel, I want to reiterate that both the management and board are very confident in the strategy. The execution remains good, and we are determined to combine these into a great outcome for investors. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Mel to handle Q&A.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Cameron Halkett with Wilsons. Please go ahead.

Hi Skanda, hi Selina. Can I just start, I suppose, around the OPEX prize being a bit more than expected. I appreciate your comments Skanda on the results of the study and moving faster, but I suppose what's changed in the reinvestment profile here to get the same targeted, you know, growth percentage uplift that was targeted originally? I suppose, you know, targeting 15% growth, you'd set out targets for that previously and now today you've kind of reiterated them, but further down the line and it's come with a lot more spend. So I suppose what's changed just beyond moving faster?

Yeah, thanks, Cam. The way I would characterize it is we were moving forward to generating those returns based on the profiles that we outlaid, but fundamentally we were also assuming a faster in a Y growth and operating leverage along the way. Now what we're saying is because it's very hard to predict the, let's call it the core FX piece, we're unable to commit to that, but we do believe that that OPEX spend effectively brought forward OPEX spend. The incremental bid is really around the study and the work we were seeing with clients was really helping us understand investing in what we would call go-to-market programs, so that's commercial resources, software to help us capture prospects and move them through the funnel more quickly. And that we know now that that is actually faster returning for us over the medium term. And I guess it's the understanding of how those leaders are operating that give us more confidence to do that. But I don't know if there's anything else you want to add.

Yeah, so as Scanner mentioned, the things that we are investing in in that growth plan is obviously there's more people, whether it's product tech or sales, increasing the promo spend to really capture those non-FX products and go faster there. implementing some tech to really identify and pull through our target ICPs through the conversion funnel to make sure we onboard them at scale and a little bit of cost of running the two platforms. So it's everything that we said before, but just going faster.

Yeah, okay. And then I suppose, as you've mentioned, that you're going to target growth and NOI for the coming year. Appreciate the state of the world and where it is, but I suppose some of the pieces that make up NOI, Selina, like, you know, are we to assume, you know, interest income will go backwards again year on year, but NCP will make a much higher contribution than the 1.6, I think it was this year. Just understanding some of those would be helpful, please.

Yep, so interest income was down in the second half versus the first because of rate cuts. So yes, if rates go down, the interest income will go down. The only thing offsetting that is the growth in client wallet balances and cash balances. That has not outgrown the interest rate cuts that we saw in the second half. But as we start to expand and push the wallets throughout all of the different regions, that is an absolute possibility that the interest income could grow faster because of the wallet balances. Obviously, the non-FX revenue of $1.6 million is good. With everything we're doing, rolling out the platform, just gone live in Canada, and they're seeing really good progress. We're going to go live in the UK. That number should grow, and it's growing off a very small base, and we're excited to see our customers take that up. New customers, but also migrated customers. We are expecting growth in non-FX revenue. We're expecting growth in the average revenue per client, particularly in corporate. We are expecting to win new corporates. We just can't predict at the moment with the current FX volatility, the day-to-day, particularly the back book, how that might trade.

Yep. And just lastly, help us understand, I suppose, behaviour across February, March and April. I mean, I would have thought the tariff threats, given some of the stuff we saw out of some global retailers and things, that corporate clients might have been front-running tariffs, lifting ATVs temporarily for IFX, so there's demand for higher margin forwards. It kind of obviously appears that didn't occur, but then April has bounced back. So it'd be good to understand, I suppose, the corporate customer psyche at the moment and what you're seeing there.

maybe i'll take that one can you know what we saw in february was all the clients were you know very pessimistic um and partially because what they told us was it was exceptionally unclear exactly when tariffs would be implemented exactly what the level of tariffs were and don't forget smes particularly are right as an example. So they continued to trade. And as we shared, actually corporate transactions were up over 20%, but the value of the transactions were smaller. So they were really kind of being very careful about larger purchases, particularly. As you say, what sort of played out over then March and April was that that activity kind of picked up. And in April, we really did see all over the world and in both corporate and consumer segments, a huge kind of sense of, okay, now we feel great again because we're a bit clearer on the way this is going to play out. And that's why those April revenues were so strong because what our clients were telling us anyway was they were feeling more confident to make their plans as small businesses.

Yeah, okay. I'll hop back in the queue. Thank you for that.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Please limit yourself to three questions per person. Your next question comes from Lafitani Soderu with MST. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. I wanted to follow up on from the last set of questions but also try to unpack some of the revenue guidance by what's implied by your FY28 numbers. Now, I understand that you've got very clear cost guidance and it's a bit uncertain the timing of revenue, but can we just be clear on some of this? Are you anticipating from the level of investment the revenue to follow? So, for example, where you've got in one of the presentation slides that other income to go from 1% to 10% plus in corporate by FY28, that kind of implies at least $15 million more revenue over that period, over the next few years. If you look at your guidance for FY28, 30% EBITDA margins, given what we understand around the cost, that also implies double that number in terms of more than enough to offset your cost growth that we're seeing. Can you just talk to us about how firm that FY28 guidance is and just give us a little bit more colour, confidence around, yes, is it just you're uncertain about the timing exactly of when that revenue will come through, but you are confident in that additional revenue still coming through? Thank you. That's my first question. Thanks.

Yeah. So, obviously, the 28 guidance, we've got models. We've done it a few different ways. We've triangulated on it. We also very, very... It was a great exercise. The consulting company that we had to come in and have a look at the opportunity, which gave us even more conviction that the future is bright, right? They looked at the opportunity, reinforced the strategy that we've got, reinforced the direction we're going, reinforced there's a great opportunity in the non-FX revenue in the regions that we have. So that is why we... feel great about that long-term guidance. Obviously, in current market conditions, it's very hard to provide guidance on the revenue line. Obviously, to take the long-term guidance, we are expecting growth, right? We want to grow revenue. We want to grow. And you can see that, obviously, we'll be growing non-FX revenue. We'll be growing corporate revenue. We've always said consumers like low single-digit, and enterprise had a great year last year. But if you look at slide five and you can see that volatility, especially when the trade tariffs came in, that's just a bit we can't predict, right? So all things being equal, we should be striving for growth and that will build over time up to that 15%. But what we're just struggling with, especially as we live to the January, February, March timeframe, is it's very hard to predict in the current market, given the tariffs and how much that can change, particularly where our books are around the world. Now, it's wonderful that we have a globally diversified revenue stream. It absolutely helps be able to predict our revenue better, but we just can't predict when those tariff changes are coming through. So all things being equal, we are expecting growth in NOI and it builds up to that 15%. We've given you a few of those building blocks. We've given you some of the new metrics that we're looking at. A very healthy growth in the average revenue per client. We want to see that increase over time.

Just to be clear, this is a follow-up. This isn't my second question. But just to be clear, so, you know, is this, are you considering these step changes as growth capex? Like this is to grow the business, it's going to bring additional revenue? Because it seems like the way the share price is reacting, that you guys aren't confident in that additional revenue coming through, even though there's implied guidance. Like for you guys to get the 30% EBITDA margins, in FY28 with that extra cost, it kind of implies EBITDA of around $77 million broadly, right? Give and take, depending where the cost base goes. And you guys have got that on the table. And I understand the timing may be an issue, but I'm just not getting a hearing from you confidence that this is growth capex, that you're confident that this is going to grow your revenue over the next few years. You're just not sure on the timing. So is it a timing issue or is it a confidence issue? So can you just clarify that?

Yeah, maybe I can jump in there just to build on Salina's point. So if you track back this time last year, we did provide guidance and we were quite specific, you know, short-term, medium-term, long-term. Unfortunately, and we were very transparent around the assumptions that underpin that. And unfortunately, those assumptions were wrong and they continue to, you know, gyrate. Even if you take inflation, for example, it tracked down in the first half and it tracked back up in our major markets same with interest rate outlooks um that does have an effect on let's call it a core fx components um the confidence in the non-fx growth is very high and the reason for that to selena's point is either study but be what we're actually already saying from clients so here in australia for example i i was contacted by a client who was part of one of our inactive clients, had gone to one of our competitors that you would know very well, has come back, has already issued multiple cards and, you know, pointed out the things that the competitor doesn't have. We've seen prospects, you know, I think our largest prospect who had been targeted by us on an FX basis for over three years now has over 211 cards. We're also seeing, for example, conversion rates in Canada already at double where we were, and that's conversion rate of prospects through to clients who are ready to deal double. And so we have very, very high conviction in what we're seeing on that non-FX side. It's just, to Selina's point last time, If we went out and said, here's what that profile is going to look like half by half or quarter by quarter or even year by year at this point, it would be such a low confidence interval in the core FX bid. And that's still obviously going to be the largest bid in the short term. It just wouldn't make sense. Let me also reiterate that if we feel like the market conditions so to speak, we would love to put more clear guidance back out into the market. That's our starting position here, which is where we were last year. We're just dealing with what we're actually seeing at the FX level.

Okay, can I move on to the second question? And this is, I understand not having the confidence to put the revenue guidance in the market, but since your last update, given all the volatility that's been around, it's pretty staggering that you haven't provided a market update within six months, really, since your last result, given all this volatility. Almost every other company, every other fintech, every financial has given an update through this tariff uncertainty. Are you able to commit to giving us monthly revenue similar to what you've got on slide five so that we can just work it out, we can just see it from month to month rather than waiting another six months to see, how it may be tracking until you reach a point where you can give us greater clarity and at least do quarterly updates. It's just pretty staggering we can't get anything for six months. Is that something you guys will consider?

No, I mean, Laf, we obviously want to make sure that within the guidelines of guidance that we operate under, under the ASX existing rules, know we provide any guidance or updates that are material and we meet as a continuous disclosure committee to do that but you know in fact many of our investors ask us to move away from providing quarterly updates so we don't intend to do that unless as I said there is an opportunity for us to then have and we will revert to that standing.

So as I don't know, you won't give monthly updates given there's no revenue guidance. Given we can see that it started off really well in April, you're not going to tell us how May or June's going possibly for another six months. So are we waiting another six months until the next update?

No, Lap, remember the AGM's in August.

Okay, all right. And just my final question. So one of the things, comments you said around the board, board being very confident in the strategy that you have. You've got net cash over 50 million. Typically when a board's very confident in their strategy and your share price is on its knees, they aren't shying away from a buyback, particularly with a really strong balance sheet. There's no need to be paying off the little balance of debt you've got left. Why isn't the board, if it's got confidence, backing its own confidence and strategy with a buyback?

Yeah, so we do need the cash to do the organic growth strategy. The buyback, also the other thing to note last, in this volatile market, cash is king, okay? And cash is absolutely critical. There was another competitor on the London markets that got on the wrong side of that and had huge troubles on margin call, everything else. So at the moment, cash is king, especially in these volatile markets, which is one of the reasons why we said that we thought continuing the buyback in the first half. So one, it's volatility and they preserve the cash. Two, it's we want to invest in organic growth, which is great. If we could do both, we will. And we'll consider that as we go. But also, we've got that debt to pay back, which you know, does come current next financial year. So we are considering all options, but really at the moment, the reason for the no buyback is really for those volatile markets, conserve the cash, make sure we've got lots of cash. If the markets go volatile again, we want to be able to post that collateral, keep trading. Others weren't able to do that in the last few months.

So you've prepaid a stack of debt over $50 million in the last three years. What metrics, like most financials give us metrics that we can use to work out what's a healthy buffer, whereas you guys are $50 million in cash. I mean, how much buffer do you need? So why can't you give us some metrics that we can use to go, all right, that's enough. They're out there. at the buffer of what we consider a reasonable amount. I mean, markets are volatile all the time, and you're in the business of this. So can you give us some guidelines, perhaps, of, you know, where we see there's huge... Yeah, and we have talked about that before.

We're not afraid to talk about that. And a number of years ago, we were definitely talking about what, and the question we get is, you know, what is the working capital you need to run the business? These days, the working capital to run the business is around 20 to 25 million just because the wallet balances are a little bit more tricky than what they used to be in the past, but we're getting better and better by the day on how we manage that cash. But remember, you want to be able to post collateral. Times go volatile. Years ago, before our time, I think it was in the first Brexit vote, the company had to post collateral to keep trading. So you have a baseline of working capital that you need. then you want to keep, in high volatile times, some cash there to post collateral if you need it. So my guide for the business is working capital is around 20 to 25 million. And that's what we kind of managed to.

I mean, you're well within that. I mean, if it's 25 million, you've got heaps of headroom. So I just don't understand what I'm missing. Why you guys, why the board is so confident, very confident in their strategy, and yet they're stepping away from a buyback when your stock's down to an EV, the day multiple, you know, two and a half times, three times. It doesn't make sense. So if you've just given me what the parameters are, this huge headroom, what are we missing?

Well, I think, Lab, just remember that what we've said is we're not doing a buyback now. Doesn't mean we won't recommence the buyback sometime in 26. What Selena also said is right now, you've got a particularly unusual set of market conditions which mean that having cash available, either for collateral or growth investment, is really, really valuable. And that's what we've determined to do at this time. It doesn't mean we'll never do another buyback. We'll look at that just in the same way when we feel more confident on a revenue outlook. We look at providing a clearer outlook again. But right now, that's the reality. And when we talk to there's banking arrangements and so on you know it's very clear to us that and our banks are very clear with us too in a very supportive way that they like the way we're managing cash and that's really really critical to our business model i mean the banks are one thing but your shareholders are another i mean do you think your shareholders are happy with the way that you're managing cash Well, in the last 12 months, the feedback that we've got is the balance of buyback, intangible investment and repaying debt is a reasonable balance. And obviously, we have to go back to shareholders now, which is what we're doing, to say, looking forward in these circumstances, we don't plan to do a buyback right now, but if circumstances change, it'll get reconsidered. And obviously, as Selina talked about, It's not like the company is shy to do a buyback. We've followed through on that. It's just right now it isn't the best thing.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron Halkett with Wilson's. Please go ahead.

Two very quick follow-ups. Around the non-FX revenue and FY28 of around 10%. Just confirming, that's the subscription fees, that's physical card revenues. That's not the entirety of the NCP contribution, given you have FX revenue from that as well, correct?

Yes, that's correct. So you'll have your FX revenue from the NCP, and then, as you mentioned, the non-FX is the more things like... subscriptions, cards, interchange, fund-by-card type things.

Yep, thank you. And just the piece around consumer. Can you give us a bit of an idea of what I suppose you're referring to here? Like I said, selling the book, is that reinvesting back in it? What's some of the opportunities that FX is evaluating?

I mean, what we... looking at right now, and we've done some high-level work in the past on as well, is we've got a valuable by value consumer business. And in fact, in the external study, we even looked at what's the split in TAM between high value and low value on the consumer side. So we're building up some knowledge. And effectively, what we're saying in this is we are going to do some more detailed work and discuss with the board how do we want to take consumer forward. And that could be a range of different outcomes. We need to do that analysis properly before we kind of come back to you and update the market. But our starting position is the high-value consumer segment, if you like, is valuable. It generates good cash. It's distinctive relative to others. Obviously, NCP at a... product level really closes the gap to the folks who are more focused on consumer that we have today. So most of those competitors that are consumer facing would have multi-currency wallets, cards attached and they're growing their customer numbers in consumer so that is obviously one of the considerations.

So just confirming there could be the opposite end of the spectrum of exiting consumer or selling the book. Is that a possibility?

Of course it's a possibility, but it's not one that we would regard as probable at this point.

Okay. Very clear. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr Malcolm for closing remarks.

Thank you, Mel, and thanks, everyone, for joining. I'll just sum it up by kind of covering three reasons why we, including the board, are more confident now than we were even six months ago. First of all, the external data that we now have confirms a 94% increase in TAM, but the switching propensity of SMEs and our target clients is very high. 77% are still with banks. and that the revenue potential, especially as we benchmark competitors, is very high. That's the first reason, the data. The second is the client reaction. And I can't emphasize enough because I have been on a lot of these onboarding calls. I listened to the calls, so does Selina, so does the leadership team. Things like the conversion rates going up, prospects taking 211 cards. We are very confident in the client reaction. And then third of all, the execution of the teams in the last two years on platform and product has gotten better and better. So if we felt that investing came with a huge execution risk, we just wouldn't have the courage, if you like, to do it. So those are the reasons why we are going down this path and