CMC Markets plc

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our financial year 25 results presentation. My name is Peter Cruddas, and joining me today is David Feinberg, Lawrence Booth, and Matt Lewis. In terms of the agenda today, I will provide an exciting update on the future state of CMC. David will then cover the financials. Lawrence will provide a strategic update and Matt will speak on our D2C business before handing back to me to wrap up. So let's get started. Over the last 10 years or so, we have built a high performing business around two core verticals, direct to consumer and platform technology as a service or B2B. We have created a world-class multi-asset trading and investing journey for retail clients, delivering seamless 24-5 access across global markets. We have also scaled a powerful institutional-grade platform delivering execution, liquidity and trading infrastructure to fintechs, neobanks and established financial institutions. Together, this two vertical model has allowed us to diversify our revenue, broaden our global client base and enhance operational leverage. It has laid the foundation for sustainable long-term growth and it is the CMC that you see today. However, it is not the CMC you will see tomorrow. The financial world is changing and it is changing quickly. We are seeing profound shifts in how people access markets, how they invest, and what they expect from a trading platform. At the same time, new technologies are emerging that promise to reshape the future of finance entirely. What we built at CMC, our successful two vertical model, gives us a strong foundation. But standing still is not an option. That means rethinking how we operate, how we innovate and how we deliver value to our clients. This is our opportunity to shape what the next generation of financial services looks like. And that is why today we are introducing our third vertical. That third vertical is our DeFi and Web3 capabilities, the detail of which you can see on slide three. This isn't a pivot, it's a progression, a natural evolution of everything we already do. We have built a strong foundation through our two core verticals, but we recognize the financial world is changing, and so are we. This third vertical builds on everything we have already achieved. It's underpinned by the same robust infrastructure, disciplined investment, and client-first thinking. and it ensures we remain relevant and competitive as the markets continue to evolve. It is the future of CMC and financial markets more generally, and I would now like to spend a bit of time looking at what it means in practice for our business. Web3 is not a distant idea. It's already reshaping the financial world. And for CMC, it's a natural extension of what we already do. At its core, Web3 is about building financial infrastructure that is faster, more accessible, and more scalable. It takes everything we have built in traditional finance and enhances it through blockchain technologies. The real opportunity lies in the convergence of traditional finance and decentralized finance or TradFi and DeFi. This convergence blends the trust and reliability of established systems with the efficiency and flexibility of decentralized technology. as these lines between asset classes and ecosystems continue to merge cmc is positioned right at the center we are building the infrastructure to serve clients across both spaces the shift to web 3 isn't optional it's inevitable and at cmc we are getting ready to be at the heart of it The shift to DeFi and Web3 isn't about changing what we do. As I've already said, this is a natural evolution of CMC's core capabilities, only more efficient, more accessible, and more scalable. Our move into this space builds directly on our strengths delivering 24-7 trading, seamless access to global markets, and real-time execution. Through Web3, we're enabling instant on and off ramps for digital currencies, integrated payments, and automated settlement through smart contracts. Tokenization opens new forms of liquidity and fractional ownership. Self-custody gives clients full, secure control over their assets. It's a continuation of our technology journey. In short, we're not reinventing CMC. We're taking what we already do best and preparing it for the next generation of trading and investing. And we believe this evolution will deliver meaningful value for our clients and for our shareholders. So with the introduction of our third vertical, CMC is now positioned at the center of a major industry shift, one that brings together traditional and decentralized execution, clearing, and finance. We already have several initiatives live. For example, in 2025, we launched weekend crypto trading, adding 104 trading days a year, a step towards our vision of 24-7 global market access. Our acquisition of StrikeX is another key milestone, bringing us native blockchain talent and proven capabilities in tokenization, wallet infrastructure and digital asset execution. And Lawrence will share more on that shortly. We've also expanded our payments infrastructure. Clients can now deposit and withdraw in digital currencies, improving access to Web3 markets and enabling real-time settlement. Looking ahead, we're developing tokenized private equity products, fractional fund access, and a multi-asset wallet to seamlessly unify Tradfee and DeFi. Just as we pioneered online trading in the 1990s, we're now leading the next chapter in financial innovation. I'll be back shortly to close things off, but for now, I'd like to hand over to David for the financial update.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to begin by turning to slide eight, which looks at our group financial metrics and performance. Net operating income was a robust £340 million for the full year, which represents an increase of 2%. This was driven by continued growth across our PTAS and B2B segment, as well as a strong performance from our Invest Australia business and Treasury Management and Capital Markets division. We've maintained a disciplined approach to cost control, with operating expenses down 2% on the prior year. That operational discipline, combined with top-line performance, has delivered a 12% increase in EBITDA. Our profit before tax was £84.5 million, with a profit before tax margin of around 25%, reflecting our net operating income performance and strategic cost management, as well as the impact of lower one-off charges. The board is proposing a dividend per share for the full year of 11.4 pence, up 37% from 8.3 pence per share last year. This remains consistent with our dividend policy to return 50% of post-tax profits to shareholders. Turning now to look at the income statement in a bit more detail. Our robust net operating income performance was driven by a combination of factors. A record year in Australia's stockbroking drove a 31% increase in investing net revenue, with our Treasury Management Division performing strongly to deliver 18% increase in interest, treasury and other income. Trading net revenue was impacted by more subdued market conditions through 2025, though we have seen these conditions reverse somewhat as we enter into the new financial year. Operating costs, excluding variable REM, were £230 million, down 3% as we maintain a sharp focus on costs and disciplined approach to investment. Variable REM was up on last year, which is in line with the improved level of profitability. The result of the above is a profit before tax of £84.5 million and an improving PBT margin of 25%. both of which I spoke to on an earlier slide. Looking now at our cost base in a bit more detail. Our focus on cost discipline remains a key strength with total operating expenses down 2% year on year to 250 million pounds. This reduction was supported by tight control across fixed REM, premise costs and marketing. Net staff costs, which remain our largest cost item, fell by 4% with a 7% decline in fixed REM. IT costs rose 17% as we invested in automation, platform resilience, and infrastructure to support scalability and innovation across all verticals. FY 2025 includes a one-off charge of 4.3 million pounds relating to a customer remediation in Australia. This was part of an industry-wide regulatory review and is expected to be fully utilised in FY2026. As a group, we remain focused on delivering further efficiencies while continuing to invest in capabilities to support our long-term growth and I would now like to cover this on the next slide. In FY 2025, our operating expenses total 250 million pounds. Over the next two years, we expect total operating expenses to remain broadly stable or rise moderately as we reinvest in strategic growth initiatives. This reinvestment is tightly aligned with our strategic priorities, including the development of the third vertical, Web 3.0 and DeFi. At the same time, we are actively driving operational efficiencies across the business. That includes improving engagement and retention in our core hubs, expanding delivery capacity in lower cost strategic locations, and streamlining legacy systems. These efforts will help us deliver scalable growth without disproportionately increasing our cost base. This balanced approach ensures we're investing in the future while continue to strengthen profitability. Our capital allocation strategy continues to strike the right balance between investing for the long-term growth and delivering consistent shareholder returns. We remain committed to paying dividends in line with the 50% of after-tax profits while also considering share buybacks when appropriate. At the same time, we are deploying surplus capital in focused and disciplined way to support the evolution of our three vertical model, including selective M&A, which strengthens our platform or opens up new markets, such as the recent investment in StrikeX to take us to a controlling stake. Alongside this, we continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with robust regulatory capital and liquidity to support resilience and flexibility. That is all from me now, and I'd like to hand over to Lawrence, who's going to cover our strategic and operational progress.

Thank you, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I'd now like to build on some of the points Peter touched on and take a closer look at some of the key strategic initiatives and forward-looking plans we have underway across the business in relation to our third vertical. One of the most exciting developments within our third vertical is tokenization. Access to traditional equity markets remains slow, costly, and in many cases, heavily restricted. Tokenization offers a way to remove those barriers, giving investors digital representations of real-world shares that can be traded more freely, efficiently, and globally. Importantly, it also enables fractional ownership, which opens up high value assets like Tesla or Apple to a broader market. For investors, this means more flexibility. For CMC, it means broader participation and deeper liquidity. And this aligns directly with our Web3 vision, which is 24-7 borderless access to the world's most iconic companies. We're not waiting for this shift to happen. We're actively pursuing it and it will play a key role in shaping the future of how our clients trade, invest and build wealth. The CMC multi-asset wallet will be a key piece of infrastructure that will unlock the future of trading. The wallet is being built as a unified experience, one place where clients can hold and trade both traditional and tokenized assets. It's a true convergence of TradFi and DeFi, delivering seamless access to multiple asset classes through a single interface. As financial markets evolve, clients expect to move easily between equities, crypto, tokenized funds, and more. And our wallet is designed to meet that demand. Importantly, this is not a DeFi solution built on unregulated foundations. It's underpinned by CMC's existing regulatory infrastructure and institutional-grade security and tech, giving clients the confidence they need to engage. The multi-asset wallet is our gateway to tokenization and a major step in building a next generation investment platform. And we look forward to sharing more on our progress into the future. Turning now to slide 16, which looks at our investment in StrikeX. Our majority stake in StrikeX is a key strategic milestone as we build out our third vertical focused on DeFi and Web3. This acquisition gives us scalable access to digital asset infrastructure and embeds native crypto capability directly within the group. StrikeX brings deep blockchain expertise and accelerates our innovation roadmap with a wallet and tokenization stack that enhances flexibility to support future blockchain formats. This infrastructure strengthens our ability to deliver a seamless multi-asset experience across both traditional and tokenized products. Beyond the technical capability, StrikeX also helps us position for the future. As tokenized assets continue to gain traction globally, we are ensuring CMC is not just ready to participate, but it is positioned to lead in this space. In short, this move significantly enhances our long-term relevance and positions us to capture meaningful share in what is a multi-trillion dollar digital asset opportunity. And this slide really captures what we're building at CMC, a unified multi-asset platform that bridges traditional finance and Web3. We're not choosing one over the other, we're bringing them together. Our ambition is to be the go-to partner for clients navigating both ecosystems, whether they're investing in traditional assets or engaging with tokenized markets or DeFi. By combining the trust and infrastructure of Tradfire with the innovation and flexibility of Web3, CMC is positioned to power the next era of investing and it is something we are actively building today. I'd now like to spend a few minutes looking at our PTAS or B2B business. Our B2B segment continues to perform well. Over the past year, we've secured several strategic partnerships with major names in both fintech and banking, a clear sign that CMC is becoming the partner of choice for scalable white-labelled infrastructure. From a pipeline perspective, we're excited by the trend. We have strong near-term visibility and our longer-term pipeline is healthy, spanning multiple regions and verticals. Overall, we feel confident about the outlook and continue to believe this vertical will be a key driver of the future growth of the group. Our B2B strategy through our CMC Connect brand continues to build momentum. This is underpinned by a proven track record of delivering high-quality, white-labelled solutions to major global institutions. Over the last 12 months, we have secured several strategic mandates with prominent names in banking and fintech. These include partnerships with Revolut and ASB Bank that have significantly enhanced our credibility and brand visibility across the industry. This growing reputation is now translating into meaningful commercial traction with increased inbound interest from prospective partners. What we're seeing is the flywheel effect of credibility leading to scale. And as we deliver for these institutions, the strength of our platform and technology becomes more widely recognized. And the more we build, the more attractive we become as a partner. As I mentioned on the previous slide, our pipeline is healthy and well-developed, with strategic opportunities in new regions across multiple asset classes. CMC Connect is a foundational part of our three vertical model, and we remain confident in its role as a long-term growth driver, helping us deliver sustained multi-year value for the business and our shareholders. And with that, I'd now like to hand over to Matt, who is going to cover our DTC business in more detail.

Thank you, Lawrence, and good morning, everyone. As you've heard, FY25 has been a strong year for CMC, underpinned by the continued success of our retail or direct-to-consumer strategy, and reflects the growing importance of retail traders. Globally, retail participation in markets continues to grow, driven by the ongoing democratisation of trading and investing. Pleasingly, we are growing customers across all age demographics, a trend that positions the business for sustainable long-term growth. To capitalize on this momentum, we've expanded our global footprint with the recent opening of our Bermuda office. This new location will serve as our international business hub outside of our core markets, enabling us to onboard investors and traders across more than 150 countries, with a particular focus on emerging markets that have historically been underserviced. In parallel, we have continued to enhance our platform and proposition, releasing our multi-asset offering, streamlining client onboarding through best-in-class technology, updating the user interface for a more intuitive experience, rolling out powerful decision support tools, such as TipRanks, and partnering with popular retail charting and execution platform TradingView. For context, TradingView continues to gain popularity with the retail trading community with over 60 million users globally. Across the business, we are seeing growing demand for new products and greater trading flexibility. This year, we introduced OTC options and enabled 24-7 trading access for crypto. Momentum is now building towards a broader shift to multi-asset 24 seven trading, and we are well positioned to lead in this space. I will now walk through a deeper dive of our invest broking business. As a core pillar of the Australian invest business, international trading delivered exponential growth in FY25. Importantly, current client activity suggests we're only beginning to unlock its full potential. To illustrate this growth momentum, international trading now accounts for 37% of our investing net revenue, delivering double digit year on year growth. The number of clients trading international shares has increased 61%, with this cohort now exceeding 50,000. A particularly pleasing stat is that one in five new accounts now places their first trade in international shares, demonstrating a growing appetite that we are well positioned to capitalize on. Moving on to crypto trading, another asset class that delivered exponential growth in FY25 and presents significant future upside. Our clients can trade crypto alongside domestic and international shares on a single integrated platform with real-time local currency funding. This ease of use differentiates our offering from competitors and has enabled us to capitalize on crypto's growing momentum as digital assets gain broader acceptance in mainstream portfolios. Year on year, we've seen triple digit growth across turnover, holdings, and the number of active investors who traded crypto throughout the year. Importantly, this growth is supported by evolving market fundamentals with crypto gaining traction, not only as a store of value, but also as a tradable asset class and as a payment facilitator. To put this opportunity in context, In Australia, over 6 million investors have traded crypto, with more than 14 billion in assets held across local exchanges. Globally, that figure climbs to 650 million investors, holding over 2.7 trillion in digital assets. These numbers continue to grow as the wider trading and investment community continues to adopt. The financial utility of crypto is equally compelling. In 2024, funds transfers in stablecoins surpassed the combined volumes processed by both Visa and MasterCard. Meanwhile, the broader tokenization market is projected to reach $16 trillion by 2030. These trends present real opportunities for CMC from enabling more efficient accounts funding to providing a future ready platform for trading tokenized assets. We believe we're only scratching the surface of what's possible. Moving on to new developments across the invest business, we recently launched Cash Isis on our InvestUK platform. Despite only recently launching, we've already seen strong cash inflows, with AUM now exceeding 170 million sterling. On the Invest Australia platform, we've delivered several key enhancements, including an updated web and mobile interface, as well as new features such as app themes, multi-factor authentication, Salesforce chat, and tip ranks, all designed to elevate the client experience. Looking ahead, we are set to introduce new features, including fractional shares, regular investing, and US options. To wrap up, FY25 has been a year of strong delivery, underpinned by product innovation and platform enhancements that reinforce our competitive advantage. I'll now hand you back to Peter for the final wrap-up.

I would like to begin by speaking briefly about the team that's driving this business forward. We have one of the most experienced and capable leadership teams in the industry. I've spent over three decades building CMC, and I know what it takes to succeed in this space. That's why I've surrounded myself with professionals who are not only experts in their fields, but who share the same ambition and determination for this business to win. Several of our recent hires bring experience from top tier global institutions, such as Morgan Stanley, reinforcing our bench strength in trading, investment banking and capital markets. This is a team of leaders who have run global desks, scaled high performance operations and delivered results at the very highest level. And they have joined CMC because they believe in our vision and because we are building something bold. The group operates a leadership model that empowers regional autonomy while maintaining tight group alignment. I am as committed to this business as I have ever been and I have no plans to ever retire and nor do I ever intend to sell any of my shares. What I do intend to do is lead this business to the next level. And I've always believed success starts with people. And with this new and expanded team, we have the horsepower and the hunger to deliver the next phase of CMC's growth. So finally, to close on slide 29, at CMC, we're still not standing still. Our business is now built on three powerful verticals, direct to consumer, platform technology as a service, or B2B, and now DeFi and Web3. Together, they give us a unique and highly scalable model, blending the best of TradFi and the innovation of DeFi. In D2C, we continue to set the standard, offering 24-7 access across all major asset classes with a market-leading platform and world-class user experience. Our PTAS business via our CMC Connect brand is powering some of the biggest fintechs and neobanks globally with strong pipelines and scalable infrastructure. that are delivering real growth. And now with our third vertical digital assets and tokenization, we are stepping into the next generation of trading and investing. Through StrikeX, our wallet technology and tokenized assets, we're making real progress and unlocking exciting new markets. This strategy is underpinned by world-class technology, strong execution, and a leadership team that knows how to deliver. Our goal is clear to become the go-to platform for multi-asset trading across Web3 and TradFi. And we're just getting started. Thank you very much.

Now begin the webinar question and answer session. If you are participating in verbal questions, please use the raise hand feature in the Zoom webinar at the bottom of your screen to ask a question. If you have dialed in by phone, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. We'll take our first question from James Allen from Panama Liberum.

Hi morning guys. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, please go ahead.

Perfect. Two questions if I can. Firstly, what has happened to CMC Connect and where does that now sit across the three pillars? Presumably that's within platform tech as a service. And then secondly, will the reporting segments be rejigged to reflect the three new pillars going forward with three statements of prior year comps or is it expected to remain as trading and investing? Thanks.

James Lawrence here. Connect is very much the infrastructure that drives CMC as a group. So yeah, that's now presented as the platform trading as a service, but it very much forms the architecture of the group, both internally and externally. So it hasn't gone anywhere. It's just evolved, actually. Yeah, so in terms of the revenue splits, we already split out training revenue and investing revenue. And then within that, you'll see the split of thing to see and then the platform of service. So it's already there to continue. I mean, just to sort of talk about, we think that, quite frankly, we'll have no choice but to report our businesses separately going forward because we think that... tokenization could well and truly swamp the world's financial markets. So we'll be part of that. We'll be involved with that. And we will have to break it out. We want to break it out. And we see it as a different way for our clients to trade. It's much more scale. And I think, you know, when you think about traditional financial markets, You can think about physical shares, you can think about CFDs, you can think about spread betting, but I think all of that's going to change. I think tokenization will completely redefine financial products. Clients will have their own clearing systems through their own personal wallets, and they will just trade products. much more sort of easily losing using blockchain but um you know i think all these financial products will merge into sort of tokens and uh and it'll it'll look completely different in the next two or three years so we'll have a choice um did you want to add something about it yeah so just expanding on that connect question because uh we focused on it quite heavily last year but um so what we have done within cmc is literally unpick the entire stack into um api modules so what connect does is it connects those through front-end guis and it's enabled us to add product features uh and asset classes to our stack to deliver through that mechanism so what you're going to see in the in the coming months is the delivery of the multi-asset platform which includes options equities fixed income native crypto and the bridge to defy all in one place that is connect as a brand that's what it does

um and that's how our policy is in the outside world by that connect brand thanks very much thank you james our next question is from vivette raja from shore capital please go ahead good morning chaps thank you for taking my um my questions um

I just wanted to ask first about, well, just explore that previous question and answer. So in terms of reporting divisions, how you report your revenues, obviously, you've got the sort of prevailing trading net revenue, investing net revenue, and then other. And then I can see within trading, you've broken that into the D2C and the platform as a service. And then you've got the sort of third vertical, the Define Web 3.0. How should we start modeling this business on sort of that basis with a sort of Define Web 3.0 capability new line? Or are you going to contain this within trading and investing revenues? That's the first question, please. The next question, I want to ask you about the Australia provision. If you could just... provide a little bit more detail about that, how you've arrived at that number. And then finally, within your costs, so I think you sort of suggested that costs will remain broadly flat or rise a little bit over the next couple of years. Just within the sort of costs you've reported, I wonder if you could just help us think about what is non-core in there? What is legacy infrastructure costs? how much project spend you still got running through that line, which could drop off and what sort of, how much you need to invest in the business to launch these new capabilities?

Yeah, sure. So regarding the reporting division, so we've already got the split in terms of the DTC and BTS. But from our side, when you're talking about crypto, et cetera, that revenue already starts in those lines anyway. But at this point, as the business evolves, should requirements be, should we need to change the report? But at the moment, it would flow within them. Because obviously, in terms of the revenue drivers, we've got that offering across both our retail division as well as our partners division. Before I hand over to Matt on the Oz division. So on the cost side, in terms of that project spend, that's already within our costs anyway. Most of the heavy lifting has been done, as we've said before. The point now is that the investment we're making today, there's real rigour around path to profitability. So it's a case of whatever investment is required, how does it service the multiple channels of the business? So when we're talking about different initiatives, it doesn't come at a big price tag because we've already done the investment. You know, the business itself continues to evolve, continues to see its new opportunities. But in essence, it's about benefiting the whole group. So, you know, our view on cost is that You know, they may rise moderately, but ultimately we'll seek out areas to save. And with that money that we've saved, we'll then reinvest. Matt, do you want to cover the EOS?

Hi, Vivek. It's Matt. Just in terms of the Oz provision, just to be clear, it's a sector-wide piece in Australia. It relates to a technical interpretation of the product intervention piece that was encountered several years ago. And it's simply a remediation of the impacted clients' trading costs.

Sorry, just to add to that question around Web3, I think it's important to note that it's actually more of an infrastructure upgrade rather than a separate revenue run. So what Web3 does is provides a infrastructure, which is future-proof, to collect revenues across the current asset classes and products that we currently collect in. It's an alternative world to the world that we currently know. We think things transition that way. So it's more of an infrastructure upgrade. So I don't think we would talk to those earnings separately. I think also there's hidden value in the business that we don't really sort of talk about. But we've got around 400 partnerships, including API and connectivity and white labelling. This is in our Connect business, our B2B and BTAS business. At some stage, those clients will need more technology. They'll need Web3. And that would be quite efficient for us to offer them Web3 capabilities. So we've already got within the ecosystem of CMC, the client base, a huge amount of opportunity. without even thinking about the expansion of D2C and tokenization. I mean, we're talking to a potential partner at the moment. And part of the pitch is the fact that we have this capability and we'll have more capability in terms of, you know, payments of products and all of the infrastructure that goes around Web3. And that will just... spread throughout our partnership ecosystem so there's a huge amount of opportunity and the cost factors like david said it's not it's no more heavy lifting per se it's about capitalizing on an incredible platform and infrastructure the third vertical but we've already got two verticals that we have been banging on about for years and years and telling people If you look at this business in 2016, when we IPO, and look at it now, the transformation is phenomenal. And there's no stopping us. And we've absorbed those costs. We know technology. We were the first to market, I think, with an internet trading platform, and that's expanded. And we've got all of these different businesses around the world. If you look in Australia with a number two retail stockbroker in Australia. You know, if you really want to dig down and look at the technology and look at some of our partners that choose us on merit as well. There's an awful lot of value in this business. It's just not recognized by analysts and investors because they think we're still a spread-bet CFD business. But hopefully, after today, that view will change.

Thank you for your question, Vivette. If anybody else would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your screen. And if you are dialed in by phone, please press star nine followed by star six to unmute yourself. Our next question is from Justin Bates from Canaccord. Please go ahead and ask your question.

Thanks very much.

Justin, please go ahead and ask your question.

Sorry, thank you for that. Just a quick question from me, please. Could I ask you how many new clients were signed during the year and what the number of active clients were within the D2C retail offering, please? Thanks.

In the D2C offering or...

Yeah, the leverage business, yeah, DTC leverage business.

Yeah, so in terms of the active clients on the trading side, just over 52,000 clients, and then the active clients on the invest side, 238,000. And that doesn't include some of our very high-profile clients. P-TAS business. That's considered as one partner, but I can tell you that those numbers are very substantial.

Okay, thank you. So just to clarify, that 52,000 new clients, was that just the leveraged clients or does that include stockbroking clients as well, investment clients?

Say trading, that's the leverage arm. So that's active total clients, just over 52,000. And then when we say invest, that's obviously Australia, UK, etc. So that's the active best clients of 238,000. Now that's active, that's not total clients.

Yeah, got it. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Justin. Our next question is from Stephen Payne. If you'd like to ask your question, please, Stephen.

Thank you. Good morning. Stephen Payne from Peel Hunt. Yeah, a couple of questions. Firstly, I see the reference to the change in the hedging policy within the core business that was implemented in January. If we could just get a bit more colour around what's changed there and the sort of reasoning behind that and how that's driven an improvement.

Just that one question.

And secondly, sorry, just yeah, second one would just be around on the retail side, in terms of just a bit more color understanding what you're going to do on the marketing front in terms of driving more for the retail side of the business.

Sure, so apart from the 200 million we've raised in cash rises or what you mean the leverage business. So in terms of the hedging change, it's not a fundamental change. I think when we've spoken to the market and investors and everyone before, we talk about the sheer amount of data that we have as a business and that we continuously mine that. For us, data is only good if you actually utilize it. So we were constantly refining, evaluating, identifying areas of efficiencies. So that work is forever ongoing. So when we talk about changes, it's not fundamental changes. It's just as a business becoming more efficient, extracting value where possible. But that's volume that we inherit today. Our mission is always to improve the amount of volumes that we handle as a business. And that obviously goes into the investment in the technology, that goes into our product offering, our partnership capability. So we will continue to expand the channels of which we can absorb business. We'll continue to invest in the business to make sure we can handle it and provide that scale. So yeah, on the hedging side, it's continuous refinement, not fundamental change. On the retail side, So as a business, obviously, we've been focusing a lot on technology and partnerships and stuff like that. You know, in terms of the retail side, Lawrence alludes to it, it's just continuously growing. The demands are everywhere. So for us, it's making sure that we've got the platform, we've got a geographical bridge, partnered with the best in breed firms out there. And the plan is to grow that retail division because They want to consolidate their wealth with a provider. So that's why you see more products on the wealth side. Max is a double-digit broker on the invest side. And on the trading side, it's called our multi-asset platform. So again, it's driving up the increase in the base, increase in the volumes that we deal with.

Thank you, Stephen. Our next question is from Ben Bathurst. If you'd like to unmute yourself and ask your question, please, Ben.

Good morning. Hopefully you can hear me OK. Excellent. I've got questions in three areas, if I may. Starting on the shift towards 24-7 trading, I just wondered which markets you expect to be able to move into that for soonest? And what challenges does that present from a risk management perspective? I wondered, could that mean hedging becomes more expensive or maybe becomes less of a feature of the business model for that type of trading? And then secondly, on M&A, there were some press reports linking you with acquisitions recently. To that end, what should we consider the M&A firepower within the business to be presently, assuming you were to fund deals from existing capital and liquidity resources? And would you consider introducing debt into the balance sheet to fund acquisitions? And then thirdly, just on the ASB partnership in New Zealand, I wondered if you'd give an update on how that integration is progressing and the timing possibly for the first revenues to be realized there. I also wondered if you'd started to incur any incremental cost with that partnership in FY25. Thank you.

Before we do, do you want to update on ASB in New Zealand and if you want to expand on 24-7? In fact, locals can carry on with the 24-7 bit because they've been operating the 24-7 business on cryptos for about a year now, yeah?

We have. Ben, I'll cover two of those then. In terms of the ASB piece, really good progress from both ourself and the bank. We're likely to see the first revenue earned in May or June next calendar year. In terms of progress, we've been making good progress in terms of the connectivity to the NZX exchange, becoming a member of that, and just general connectivity to the cash accounts of the bank. In terms of any costs from a project piece or a build piece, our intent is that we'd be able to capitalise those costs as part of the project. Again, given that we've done a number of these partnerships with other banks, very much BAU for us in the go forward, but we'll continue to up the market when we have further progress of the connectivity. On the 24-7 piece, as Peter said, We've been operating our physical coin offering 24-7 for the past year. And we've obviously parlayed that into our derivative business as well. But it's certainly only the beginning of that. Now, intention and appetite is to effectively be able to offer all of our asset classes 24-7. We've got the capability from a tech perspective. We've got the capability from a dealing and hedge perspective. And also from the service perspective, given that we've got our global outreach for our offices to staff the servicing of that. We're looking at the major asset classes, so your big cap indexes, your G10 currencies, and also we have an eye on your key equities, your MAG7s, et cetera. So I'd expect to see more of that in the coming months, that we're multi-asset across that 24-7 trading spectrum.

Yeah, sure, sure. Look, I think that the 24-7 question is something that more and more investors and traders are asking of us now. That's a direct crossover effect from the trading of crypto assets. It's completely normalized volatility and digital access. But there's a real obvious read through to all other asset types. Now, we already offer 24-5 across U.S. stocks. It's an easy segue to continue that into 24-7. We've got 20 years of data that we've stored. So we have every which way you can cut the analysis to price that risk over the weekend. And there are more than enough proxies for us to do that effectively. So the obvious continuum is major indices, then commodities, FX, and MAG7 plus probably the global top 20 stock. But all of the assets and names you'd expect to see trading in the most popular segment today would be offered in a 20.7 environment. And I think the segue for that has been the onset of digital assets. And just actually talking to that in a little bit, context. You know, retail now accounts for 20% of US equity flows on a daily basis. Zero data expiry options are the most actively traded options product globally, and more than 50% of that is retail. The market cap growth in that retail cohort, when you consider the digital providers such as Coinbase and Binance, etc., is more than $500 billion today, and 10 years ago it was just 45. There's an 11x return on market cap growth in that space versus only two times with the traditional investment banks. So retail is dictating the direction of travel here. We're very, very well positioned from an infrastructure, tech, and a REX perspective. We are just very much misunderstood in terms of the valuation gap between that cohort and ourselves. And it will become more obvious as we provide that bridge between TradFi and DeFi that that gap is wrong. Completely wrong. Yeah, look, we are buried here with opportunity and this opportunity is based on what we are doing in terms of what the market is telling us it wants. I mean, I think we have a fantastic advantage around our b2b business our connect brand because you know we're involved with a lot of financial institutions and their client base are driving you know opportunities and we see those opportunities and we have to respond to those opportunities i think if you stop and think about uh and don't think of cryptos as bitcoin we think of cryptos as the clearing system, the payment system. Cryptos are just a product that is built on blockchain and the different ways of buying and selling different financial products. But if you go back five, six, seven years when Bitcoin first came into the financial sector, you know, clients couldn't really trade Bitcoin with their traditional brokers and bankers and firms like CMC Markets, they were forced to go to firms like Kraken. And, you know, clients, retail clients would trade cryptocurrencies over the weekend. they didn't have any concept of the markets opening up. They just wanted to buy some cryptocurrencies. And so they would go through these portals and these hubs like Kraken. And so that mindset now is moving into the traditional financial markets. And unless you respond to that, and if you see the growth of crypto, retail trading. I think it's going to completely dominate financial markets. And what's going to happen is that not only are they going to be able to trade 24-7, and it's not easy offering 24-7 today because, you know, liquidity and so on, but But we're doing a decent job of it. We'll keep improving that. You have to be involved in that. But what you're going to see over the coming years, and you heard it here first or second or third, because maybe you're hearing it elsewhere as well, is that retail is booming. It's absolutely booming. And the reason it's booming is because You know, retails got used to trading outside hours. They can trade different products now. But the Kickstarter for all of that, I think, was crypto, you know, technology and Robinhood. But the exponential growth of retail. And I think what you're going to see is, you know, big opportunities. Retail will have their own clearing systems in the future. And that's what we're looking at. So they'll have their own wallets. So we're not involved in any mergers and acquisitions with any company that you may have read about in the newspaper recently. We are always interested in mergers and acquisitions if it matches our business model. For example, we would not be interested in acquiring a traditional CFD spread business now because that's not where our future lies. We think tokenization Web3 is our future. And would we take on any debt? We've got a very healthy balance sheet. We don't need to borrow money to do what we want to do, which is to keep building our Web3, our third vertical. But if somebody could help us with that, then yeah, I'd take on debt. What you're actually seeing, if you actually look around, you're seeing Major crypto businesses acquiring people from our sector. There's been quite a lot of publicity around people in our traditional financial services sector being acquired by the big crypto players. And these crypto players are going to have to come in to traditional finance because we're going to be offering traditional finance through tokens. And they can't just be one-trick ponies offering Bitcoin and Ethereum and stuff like that. They are being forced into our space. So I think it's going to get very exciting over the next two or three years. And we're not interested in acquiring companies that are sort of the old traditional way. They can help us move the business forward. Very exciting times. Honestly, I'm loving it. It's just like the internet back in 1994 before companies like Google existed and Facebook existed. It's interesting times. I mean, this opportunity is bigger, right? That's why I'm not retiring and that's why I'm not selling my shares. Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. This concludes the question and answer session. I'll now hand over to the management team for closing remarks.

Yeah, well, thank you everybody for tuning in in your interest and we look forward to updating your very exciting projects that are happening here over the coming months and years. And thank you, everybody.