Home / Transcripts / HUB24 Limited (HUB) · August 19, 2025

HUB24 Limited (HUB) Earnings Call Transcript

August 19, 2025

ASX AU Financials Capital Markets earnings 71 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator operator
#1

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HUB24 Limited FY '25 Results briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Alcock, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Andrew Alcock executive
#2

Good morning, everyone, and welcome today to our results presentation. Very pleased to present a very positive result and talk to you about our outlook and our strategy. And of course, leave plenty of time for questions as well. With me today is Kitrina Shanahan, as always, our Chief Financial Officer. And let's begin with some high notes for the business for FY '25. Once again, and we're very pleased to say that we are Australia's leading platform as rated by investment trends in their platform competitive benchmark report for the third year running. We also have the highest NPS score in satisfaction voted by advisers and have on managed accounts capability. And for this year, talking about how those awards and how our business has delivered strong advisory advocacy. For FY '25, we actually hit an entity record with $19.8 billion worth of net inflows. We've been #1 for net inflows or platforms for 6 consecutive quarters. [indiscernible] platform market share gains over the last 2 years on an organic basis. And we continue to have the highest propensity for superannuation members who switch their support, we are the benefactor of that choice with the highest number of inflows from those who choose to switch arising from the delivery of good advice to consumers in the marketplace where people take control of their future and want to invest in the products that suit their needs. I want to pause quickly, we've led with this slide deliberately about where we stand in the market. It has been a great year. And I wanted to recognize and thank both our customers and our team for helping us to deliver in that way. Surely, our customers inspire us to do better and to empower better [indiscernible], and it drives our team really to find a better way. So thank you for your support from customers. Thank you very much for our team who've helped us deliver in this way. and are continuing to look forward to delivering and unlocking value in the future more and more to customers and shareholders. Here's a quick look at some of our overall platform recognition for the year. And many of you will have seen this before, so I won't labor the point, but we have been recognized in multiple surveys across the industry for customer service and product leadership. On the right-hand side, in the top corner, in the last week, adviser ratings have rated us the best platform overall for satisfaction, is super fund satisfaction, adviser experience, client experience onboarding overall functionality invest in national options, which is some accolades we received last week, I believe. So great to see that happening and recognizing the efforts we're taking in the business to create right solutions for our customers. We turn on some of our results highlights and moving straight into the financial results on a great year, $136.4 billion of FUA up 30% on last year with Platforms were up 34% to $112.7 billion. And we have some questions later about the $118 billion, I'm sure, as it the books. We had a fast start to the year. We look forward to unpacking that as best we can during our question session and our portfolio have been reporting service were also up 16%. On a revenue basis, the numbers are equally healthy with the total group revenue over $400 million at $406.6 million, which is up 24%, Platform up 28%; and Tech Solutions, pleasingly, up 9% to $77.1 million. So all our operating segments up with healthy percentages in terms of revenue, of course, translating into underlying EBITDA gains as well for the total group being at $162.4 which is 38% up Platform up 39% as well; and Tech Solutions, up 23% year-on-year at $27.2 million, a pleasing result there. On the NPAT front, the underlying and statutory NPAT up 68% to $79.5 million or just shy of $80 million. We've got our final dividend fully franked termed at $0.32 per share, bringing the full year dividend to $0.57, that $0.32 is up 64% on the prior corresponding period. underlying EPS for the year diluted is also up 45%. So a really great set of results arising from how we run the business and our clients and our strategy and the good execution we've got in the marketplace. In terms of some other highlights for the year, in terms of our leadership and growth, we've had very strong growth in the business and very strong leadership in the industry, having had as a great lead indicator for the future, another 572 advisers choosing to start using HUB24 in the last year. And that's the largest increase in advisers we've had since FY '21. $5.3 billion of transitions finished for EQT over this year and the year before and another 1 for ClearView $1.3 million. So to complete those large migrations at the same time as having record-breaking organic flows for us, a great result. Discovery is up at $1.9 billion, which is great having launched only just over 1.5 years ago. And we have the leading platform according to investment trends across multiple client segments, including the High-Net-Wealth segment, Mass Affluent and mass market segments, and we'll talk a bit more about High-Net-Wealth later on in the pack. Class is also growing at the highest level it has since FY '20. In terms of executing our strategy at the same time, I've spent some time later talking about Engage, which we've launched, which is leveraging our HUBconnect technology. We now have 7 myproperity enterprise agreements on full with large national licensees. We'll talk about the High-Net-Wealth and the reach piece a little bit later in the pack. And of course, we're doing lots of enhancements to both Class, NowInfinity and the platform. And whilst we're doing that, we're also conscious of building for the future with increasing our quality, our service and our efficiency to automation, upgrading our infrastructure, leveraging AI and emerging technologies to create customer value and shareholder value and productivity and efficiency for both of us as well as investing, of course, in our people and our culture. Just some highlights there. All that results to have had a consistent approach to investing in the business and delivering profits over time. And if you look at this slide, here on Slide 8, in terms of our consistent delivery of growth and profitability. The revenue CAGR for the business of 4 years is 38%. and the underlying EBITDA CAGR is 46%, and the chart there has that broken down across our segments and our corporate revenue. And our funds under administration full year CAGR is a 24% growth rate. As you can see, it's been fairly consistent, reliable growth, and we hope and we intend to keep delivering that moving forward as well. [indiscernible] growth translates into changes in market share, where rates #7 in market share, but we're at the same level, give or take to our nearest competitor. And in the marketplace, HUB24 has once again had the #1 market share gain over 12 months, having gained 1.4% overall market share with the next participant gaining only 1.1%. And our share has increased. So that's over the last 12 months. And the market itself is growing, having had $36 billion of net inflows into the market. It's the highest industry annual net inflow since 2008. And the site corresponding [indiscernible] $7 billion of net inflows. So the market is growing, and our share in the market is growing as well. As I said earlier, there's 572 advisers who have chosen to start using HUB24 this year. And having a deeper look at some of the trends in advisers, 33% of advisers in Australia now use HUB24, and that's a full year CAGR of 14%. In June '21, there was 16% of advisers, now 33% at the end of FY '25. The average balance for those advisers has gone up from round about $14 million to about $21 million, $22 million per adviser in that period of time as well. So we have more advisers using the platform and the penetration of the share of their book and their clients has increased over that time as well, translating that to overall market share. We've grown from 4% to 9% over the last 4 years. And as I said a little bit earlier, number one, in terms of market share gains over the last 12 months. Having said that our growth continues to arise from existing and new advisers, on this slide, you can see some of the details of that. For this year, 81% of our flows have come from existing relationships. And we talk about how existing relationships typically give us positive net flows perhaps after 6 years or being on the platform that is reliable ongoing flows to existing clients. 16% of flows in FY '25 came from new advisers with existing licensees and 3% from new relationships. HUB24 has access through relationships to more than 70% of the adviser market, even though only 33% actively using us. So we have an opportunity to garner support from more and more advisers as we continue to execute. In terms of FUA as I already said, the FUA per adviser is up to $22 million. up from $14 million in FY '21. But with an industry average of $76 million per adviser, you can see there's a runway to go in terms of extending our reach and servicing more of the advisers book of clients with an average of 22 at an industry average of 76. 11% of the advisers on our platform have more than $50 million of FUA in HUB24 illustrating the levels of penetration we can get to and the long runway we have with those existing relationships as well. So still a great opportunity for us to continue to grow our existing and new advisers moving forward. Having a quick look at our Technology Solutions and [indiscernible] businesses. Class is maintaining its market share at about 30.5%. The system itself is growing on an accelerated basis, and Class has had the largest increase of accounts in FY '25 since FY '20. The corporate passenger part of the NowInfinity business is growing at 1.4x system. So great results there in terms of growth moving forward. And also in myprosperity, we're seeing results there as well with increased customer engagement. You can see the number of log-ins per firm, logins per customer. So people are using the tool more and more for its rich capability. We've got 7 enterprise agreements signed with large licensees. Those licensees have 1,700 practices across the industry, which we hope to, over time, have quite a few of those signed up to using the service. And interestingly, since we bought myprosperity practices or customers have become HUB24 customers. And those customers have delivered over $1 billion of FUA to the platform. So you've seen the reciprocity and the sales synergies, if you like, from us building an ecosystem with Platform, Class, NowInfinity and myprosperity starting to play out in our results. Our people are wonderful, and I'm very, very thankful and pleased and proud to be able to lead our business. They're very dedicated and very passionate about delivering on the promise we make to our customers. We've got just shy over 1,000 people in our business. our staff engagement is up year-on-year to 78% in the top quartile. We're endorsed as an Employer of Choice for women by WORK180, we're certainly purpose-led and values driven embedding our values into our culture, that are on the slide there. We're investing in career growth at all levels, improving our employee value proposition have a graduate program. We've extended and scaled up an intern program. In fact, we have been named in the top 20 -- of the 25 best small intern programs in Australia, it's a delight seeing young people come into our business with their ideas and passion and the ability to start a career with us. We've had some external recognition of our people and culture this year as well with finalists in the 6 Star awards, multiple funds in the women wealth awards and women in security awards, that's technology security and 3 excellent awards in the Australian HR awards as well. So people are very big focus for our business, and absolutely supporting our sustainability objectives, which I'll quickly talk about on the next slide before I hand over to Kitrina. So a quick update. We've made some ground on our sustainability objectives with our key focus areas, made significant progress towards our 2023 net-zero goal for Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We've renewed our commitment to United Nations Global Compact, we certainly invested in cybersecurity capability and digital initiatives supporting industry scalability and security as well, and we certainly delivered on our customer promises with strong NPS results as well. So continuing to focus on how we make HUB24, a sustainable business for our shareholders, our customers and for community at large. Thank you. I'll turn over to Kitrina Shanahan, our CFO, to talk about our financial results.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#3

Thank you, Andrew. So here, we have the group Platform and the Tech Solutions snapshot of the revenue, underlying EBITDA and the customer numbers. So the group revenue was close to $407 million for this year and underlying EBITDA of just over $162 million Platform being the largest segment and the largest driver was $323 million worth of revenue and $143 million -- just under $143 million worth of underlying EBITDA and as Andrew mentioned, just over 5,000 -- 5,097 active advisers using the platform as of 30th of June. Tech Solutions revenue was up to $77 million this year and underlying EBITDA of $27 million with again 6,500 accounting practice using the Class solutions. So moving on to the next slide, we have the group financial results. And here, you can see the growth year-on-year with the underlying EBITDA margin for the group, up 3.8% to 39.9% and in full year '25. Underlying NPAT was up 44% to just under $100 million at $97.8 million for the year, and statutory NPAT was up 68% to $79.5 million for the year. Full year dividends for the year of $0.56 per share, up 47% on last year. and the underlying diluted earnings per share of $1.178 per share, up 45% year-on-year. And on the right-hand side, you can see the contribution for operating revenue and underlying EBITDA from the platform taxations in the corporate segment. So moving on to the next slide, we have the Platform segment. And here, we have custody FUA growth of 34% with a platform of just under $13 billion -- $112.7 billion for the year. and noncustody FUA up 16% year-on-year at $23.7 billion. This brings the total FUA at the 30th of June to $136.4 billion, up 30% year-on-year. And again, as Andrew mentioned, we had record net inflows for this year, record for HUB24 of $19.8 billion which also included $4 billion of large migrate funds, and it was a record for us, including and excluding the large migrations. On this slide, you can also see the platform underlying EBITDA margin of 44.2%, which was up 3.5%. You can see on the right-hand side in the graph on the right, you can also see the $8.5 billion of positive market movements into the custody FUA. So moving on to the next slide. We have the platform custody revenue and margin. And on the graph on the right-hand side, you can see the revenue margin was consistent throughout the year at 32 bps first half, second half and full year '25. This was down 1 bp on second half '24 and down 2 bps on full year '24. This is driven by positive markets, average balances increasing and accounts moving into higher tiers or reaching a fee cap. And there were 1 bp margin compression during the year with cash balances reducing as a percentage of FUA. For full year '25, the average cash balance was 6.9%. And for full year '24, the average cash balance was 7.4%. There's more details of this in our analyst and investor pack. Okay. So continuing with the platform composition of FUA and revenue and the revenue margins, you can see the retail has increased as a percentage of our total custody FUA, and it's up to 87% of the portfolio is now sitting in the retail portfolio. It was 84% in full year '24. This is due to a hard proportion of the net flows coming into the retail portfolio. And in the chart on the bottom right-hand side, you can see the mix of the custody revenue margin, with the retail revenue margin coming down year-on-year, 2 bps consistent with my previous commentary on the previous page, and the institutional revenue margin coming down last year full year '24 at 13 bps coming down to 10 bps average across the year. In the analyst and investor pack, you can see that the second half '25 institutional margin was down to 7 bps. And this is due to a mix of the portfolio. We completed the $5 billion of migrations from EQT in the year. And so now, EQT and private bank clients are the largest component of the institutional FUA and their wholesale rates reflecting the scale and the lower cost to serve for these portfolios. Okay. So moving on to the next slide. We have the platform underlying EBITDA and margins. And on the right-hand side, you can see the trend with the continued growth in the underlying EBITDA margin with operating leverage and growth, delivering a margin of 44.2% this year for the platform. And we've also got the 4-year platform underlying EBITDA CAGR of 39% there. Okay. So now moving on to the Tech Solutions part of the business. And as Andrew called out, Class has had 1 of the best years in, I think, since full year '20, Class number of accounts grew 4% to over 215,000 accounts. NowInfinity business is growing incredibly well. We've got 12% growth in the in there NowInfinity, talking about orders. just over 214,000 documents produced in the year and companies on Class Corporate Messenger, over 862,000, up 7% year-on-year. The class underlying EBITDA grew 23% to $27.2 million with an increase in the underlying EBITDA margin of 4% to 35.3%. Okay. So now moving on to the group expenses. So we have total expenses have grown 13% to $307 million, this includes operating expenses, depreciation and amortization and interest expenses. The largest driver of the increase comes from employee-related expenses with our LTE growing 8% year-on-year. And at the 30 of June, we have 962 full-time employees. The growth has been seen in the operations area, which has grown in line with the FUA growth and is linked to the number of accounts and the size of the FUA that we're servicing. We've also had employee growth in the technology and the product teams and again, to support the growth that we are seeing across the business. Moving on to the next slide. Here, we have a walk of the group's underlying EBITDA, underlying NPAT and stat NPAT. So we have group underlying EBITDA of just over $162 million. Then we do a walk down to the underlying NPAT with share-based payments of just under $14 million, which is consistent with last year, which was $13.5 million. Depreciation and amortization has ticked up year-on-year and is now $19.4 million. which is tracking and aligning with the CapEx levels. Capitalization across both the platform and the Tech Solutions business was $19.1 million in full year '25. And so you can see depreciation and amortization are just in line with that. Interest expenses have increased year-on-year with a large part of that to do with the property moves that we've done and the interest on the leases increasing. And then the last call-out that I'll raise is the effective tax rate is just under 20%, and that's consistent year-on-year. The main reason it's below the corporate 30% level is because we have R&D tax claims, and we also have the purchase of treasury shares also impacts the tax rate. Then moving on, just a couple more slides. We've got the group's cash flow and the balance sheet, the group has 115 -- or had $115 million of cash on the balance sheet at the 30 of June. There's also borrowings. We have a loan facility with CBA of $30 million, so a net cash balance of $85 million. The CBA loan matures in June '26, but we have the flexibility to either repay that loan or to -- or over depending on the uses of the cash. And we've called out a couple of the uses of the cash on this slide, with an increased loan with the super fund trustee, the loans up to $100 million with $5 million drawn up of 30 of June, but you can expect to see that increase in the first quarter. There will be a drawdown at the 30th of September to align with the new APRA HPS 114 standard. Another use of the group's cash is the [indiscernible] share scheme, purchasing treasury shares on market to service those employee share gains. And so then moving to the last slide before I hand back to Andrew to talk about our strategy and outlook. Here, we have fully franked final dividend for the year of $0.32 per share, which is up 64% year-on-year. taking the total dividend for full year '25 to $0.56 per share, up 47% year-on-year. And then on the right-hand side, you can see the group CAGRs from the dividend of 54%, underlying EPS of 52% and a total shareholder return over the last 4 years of 34%. And with that, I will hand back to Andrew.

Andrew Alcock executive
#4

Thank you, Kitrina. [indiscernible] our strategy and outlook. Our strategy has 2 main focus areas, growing our market leadership at the same time as continuing to transform our industry and look for opportunities to create value in new ways. So the left-hand side of the slide, and we've talked about this before, it's about having a strong growth outlook and us continuing to lead in our chosen businesses for HUB24 Platform, Class and NowInfinity, certainly well positioned to increase our market share from the current 9% in the platform and to continue to benefit from industry transformation and be a leader in that space. We certainly tend to keep doing that. And in Class and NowInfinity, they're also accelerating the growth and great results there in terms of their market share. So those 2 businesses and then sales those business models and leading that is part of our strategy for creating shareholder value keep ourselves at the forefront in those business lines at the same time as looking for how we can create additional shareholder value through our technology solutions which is leveraging our grid capabilities to look for efficiencies to financial professionals and their clients with HUBconnect, myprosperity and portals and so forth. And in itself, having those 2 prongs of our strategy, creating growth synergies for each other. So our technology and data solutions innovation, creating growth opportunities for the platform in Class and vice versa. So we have a great opportunity to do that. And the world in which we operate or the market, we continue to operate is certainly structurally growing and it's creating opportunities for us, and we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. In terms of demand for advice, that's increasing in Australia with 2.7 million in seeking bus. There were 3.5 million or 3.6 million Australians looking to transition from accumulation to retirement, which is a trigger for needing advice and needing platform solutions. Of course, there's an intergenerational wealth transfer, I expect over the next 2 decades up to $5.4 trillion. And so it's increasing demand for the services, the platforms and advice business offer to the marketplace. The industry is undergoing transformation continuing to undergo transformation in terms of [indiscernible] participants in the platform space, but also in the adviser space. 90% Advisers now privately owned or privately owned licensees. 36% of advisers saying that they intend to, over time, use a single platform, up from 13% 4 years ago. And so the business models of advice practices start thinking about how do they lock in with a model that helps them with their business and productivity, and particularly in the business like ours where we offer solutions across all customer segments and all different life status. With efficiency and compliance still being the 2 top challenges rated by device firms and certainly a focus area of our technology in our business in terms of how we help with efficiency, productivity and compliance management. And the market opportunity, 98% of the industry net inflows by the last captured by 2 platforms over the last year with HUB24 having 54% of that and industry spend or -- specialist platforms over the last 4 years, gaining 10% market share with HUB gaining 5% of that. So the trends are there our strategy, our technology position, our footprint and our capability has a significant position to continue to benefit from these trends in the market and the industry. We'll do this, and you've seen the next slide before. We'll do it the way we do this is through the 4 pillars in our strategy by leading today helping to correct tomorrow building together. That's part of our overall purpose to empower better financial futures together with advise, fund manager with technology providers with customers and how we build a better outcome and thinking about our future and leveraging the businesses we have today to get outcomes to bunch of professionals about 1 way of doing business, single view of wealth, efficient access to our ecosystem and flexibility recording insights. I mentioned our footprint across different client segments. So we'll skip over this slide, but it talks about the different product ranges we have for different life stages from all of our business brands and other different segments. The only addition on the in that footprint is HUB24 private investor, which we launched in the last few months, which I'll talk about on our next slide. So some examples of how we bring our strategy life, and we've got some innovative solutions behind the [indiscernible] clients. We launched HUB24 Private Invest, which is an innovative product with a unique design, easier access for wholesale investments for wholesale clients. with different or streamlined disclosure documentation and onboarding processes, accessing a broader range of investments, including some alternatives. We do the administration of custody and non-custody assets in that product and flexibility for adviser and their fees a whole of wealth reporting through Engage, which I'll talk about on the next slide. But it is about expanding our addressable market. As we said early investment trends Ratos is having the best offer in the High-Net-Wealth space. There's $3.4 trillion worth of assets in High-Net-Wealth. 28% of advisers are focused on High-Net-Wealth and wholesale clients, and the 690,000 investors and growing. Only 22% of those investors are advised that we can build products and solutions and work with Advice businesses to increase that penetration. It will certainly expand our addressable market so and our key customers. And improving productivity is the goal as well with these tools and solutions we're launching. So extending that, and that's an example of us thinking about our strategy and cutting across different segments. Another example on the next page is Engage, which is an evolution of our present market-leading reporting capability. We've launched that recently. It is -- it's a transformation in technology that advisers can use to have engaging discussions with their clients using their own terminology to build reports real-time that change based on different cuts of data so to bring advisers efficiency and advocacy. It allows them to tailor this reporting for their own business. And the future will allow them to publish these reports and also extract data for these reports for their clients, and it leverages our HUBConnect capability, which is integrated data that sits outside of the platform that allows performance reporting and reporting from multiple sources. Hence, you can get the universe for your investments, even if it's on another platform, over time, that's the plan here. Engage will run currently runs inside the HUB Platform, but it will also be a cornerstone of myprosperity for customers to use myprosperity to see Engage running across all of the assets they feed into myprosperity,; regardless of what the held by HUB24 or [indiscernible] by HUB24. We've had some great feedback from that, also being recognized in some surveys about Engage before we even launched it to the marketplace. And as always, we're leveraging emerging technology to scale and customer value to enhance our customer proposition and to also enhance the productivity and efficiency business to get benefits for our shareholders. Our innovation lab has been [indiscernible] since 2018. We continue to use AI and machine learning and the low code and robotic process automation to increase our productivity. We're having a phased rollout by on tools across our business, it is helping us with our servicing model. We use it with IT development. We use it to deliver services for our clients. An example is our advice [indiscernible] , which is award-winning that used AI to do that in the marketplace. Virtual mail room we have to streamline the collection of data and documents and storage for customers. Of course, our focus with these technologies is certainly strong around governance and security and the responsible use of the technology, having good procedures and policies in place. at a great robust cybersecurity framework with tools that allow us to ensure privacy. For example, safeguarding customers documentation through using the [indiscernible] my prosperity, losing data redaction tools, where we're communicating with information, certainly underpinning our innovation in those areas to implement our strategy and create value, as I said, for customers and shareholders. So that's just some examples of bringing to life our strategy and what we're doing in the market. There's many more. We're certainly focused on extending that lead in our current marketplace and continuing to reshape how the industry works. And so moving forward, we've updated our FUA guidance for FY '27. You might remember that at the end of FY '24, had guidance at $115 million to $123 billion of FUA at the end of FY '26, rolling out 1 year ahead of that or 1 and beyond that, there's a $33 billion increase in the lower end of that to $148 billion by FY '27. And a $39 billion increase at the top end of the range of $162 billion. That's based, and Kit can talk about the space to continue net flow momentum and market movements and a range of growth assumptions. It is a broad range as the business gets bigger. And we certainly aspire to hit towards the top end of that or to exceed that as we have in the past. But giving you some guidance, so that's the range we think we can hit moving forward, given our current plans. We're in a great position to leverage structurally growing markets as usual, unlock value and capitalize on these opportunities for customers and shareholders. Strong and reliable growth. We expect that to continue from existing and new customers. Our operations are scalable. We're seeing EBITDA margin. We're able to invest in the business same time as enhancing margin. And we're in a great position to continue to grow market share. Of course, with a strong balance sheet, great cash flows that support our ongoing investment and delivery of shareholder returns. So thank you very much, that ends the formal part of our presentation. Very happy to open up for questions from those of you who have dialed in.

Operator operator
#5

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Cam Halkett with Wilsons Advisory.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#6

Great results [indiscernible] as always. Andrew, you mentioned a fast start. So let's perhaps begin there. Just to go to understand the composition of FUA to mid-August, please, if the $118 billion, just noting NASDAQ and ASX200, both up around 5% since June. So perhaps just some color there on how do you start in terms of flows and the contribution from markets.

Andrew Alcock executive
#7

So our market [indiscernible] correlate totally to the market, as usual, it doesn't generally do that. It's about 50% correlation to the market movement. So roughly half of that gap from the ending number for June to today is new flows and half of it is improvement, I can probably tell you that, is a strong start. It is a seasonally strong period, but it's great to have a good strong July and August heading off, but we've been pleased by that. And that's probably the answer to the question, Cam. We'll see how we continue to go. As we said, great leading indicators with the number of advisers as I put, so we are seeing stronger flows than perhaps would be expected so far.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#8

Yes. And I think your account growth on platform was up half-on-half as well. So probably a bit of that coming through too. If I can then pivot to, I suppose, reinvestment requirements looking into '26, winding back to the prior year. First half was softer. You put the foot on the gas through the second half, leading to an 8% increase in head count year-on-year overall. But how about FY '26, what are you guys needing in terms of net adds and reinvestment, please?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#9

Yes. So we -- you can see the fast start we've had. We're continuing to grow totally believe in the strategy. And so you can expect the FTE, which is the largest driver of the expenses to grow anywhere up to and around that sort of 10% sort of growth rate. And then from an OpEx perspective, you'll see other things coming through things like salary increases, variable cost cut costs, et cetera, as costs were correlated to the growth in the funds under administration. So OpEx could be in that sort of mid-teens range growth as we move into full year '26.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#10

Yes. Thanks, Kit. And then perhaps last 1 and then I'll hop back in the queue. I suppose just around migrations, particularly on the large image, we've seen both EQT and Clearview over the last year and a bit. So a question for either of you. Is there any reason investors should think that sort of 1, maybe 2 a year run rate and margin migration should change with what you're seeing in terms of market activity.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#11

So the large migrations, we had obviously an excellent year in full year '25 with 2 migrations coming through. We've said in the past that you can expect to see a large migration come through every couple of years. There's always a couple that are in the pipeline. That's probably -- when you can see the momentum in our underlying net flows, that's going to be less of a factor moving forward is how I would think about it.

Operator operator
#12

The next question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie.

Tim Lawson analyst
#13

Maybe just a follow-up to what Cam asked. In terms of the FTE growth and OpEx spend. Can you just slip that, Andrew, to your sort of comments on sort of the technology and where you think that operating leverage sort of end up maybe not this year but going forward?

Andrew Alcock executive
#14

In terms of FTE growth. Look -- and Kit you might help me and , we certainly are focused on opportunities and being able to invest in opportunities if they make sense for us. And so generally, our FTE growth will be in variable growth in operation areas and in technology areas. We are absolutely building an ecosystem that brings all of our products together because there are opportunities to leverage that, and we're seeing the green shoots and the advocacy that from the market. So it's about investment in strategy. to grow all parts of the business and should yield returns. So there's still operating leverage though in the fixed cost areas of the business. Absolutely, there has been hence, you've seen the expanding margin. At the same time, we've been increasing headcount. We've got a 3.8% margin improvement. Not that we're saying we'll do that again and again. But you can see that we're managing the business to both. Does that help answer?

Tim Lawson analyst
#15

Yes, that's great. And then just on the comment on migrations. You seem to be saying that it's a little bit less of focus. Can you sort of unpack that a little bit? Is that just sort of fee level or less opportunities? Or what's the sort of logic to that being maybe slightly less in a focus?

Andrew Alcock executive
#16

A couple of things. On 1 sense, with the amount of flows we're getting organically, they might be -- they might have less of an impact to our growth. We used to think a $500 million migration was large. Now we're just on $5 billion. We've done quite a few in a short period of time. And so yes, we're always talking to opportunities like that, but we're also being quite clear on what we choose to do. So as we say, you might see them every couple of years. We've had a rush in the last few years. So it's something we don't talk about unless we land something and it's material and market sensitive. So but at this point in time, we're saying we're expecting to focus on our strategy and increasing the penetration of our client book and we'll selectively take on those opportunities if that makes sense. They can be expensive and they take a long time but we're very pleased with where we are, and we're still open for business in that regard. And if we have something to talk about, we certainly will.

Tim Lawson analyst
#17

And then just on just behind the flows, can you just talk about what you're seeing in -- on the -- out of superannuation funds into the platform?

Andrew Alcock executive
#18

Look, what we're seeing is no different to what has happened in this industry. Is that the typical trend demographically is, is that people get to a certain age and have a certain size of [indiscernible] , they look for advice, and look for flexibility and control in their solutions. And Platforms do typically have better retirement solutions or functionality or options for advisers to either through investment strategies to manage sequencing risk look after retirement, or with the addition of annuity-based products with the platform annuity base or so they involve a life company like Challenge or Allianz Retire+ that we've got on the platform. It's a normal phenomenon. You've got people aging. And so hence, you've got people choosing to take control of their [indiscernible] and seek advice. And so we're benefiting from that. The industry benefits from that. The industry has always benefited from that. That's why we say the addressable market isn't the current platform market, it's the broader industry. There's nothing new to see here, other than from the perspective of the amount of quantum that we're picking up is representative of our awards and our customer service and our product design in superannuation and representative of some of the disruption the industry with not all of the industry platform participants firing with their propositions at the moment, [indiscernible].

Tim Lawson analyst
#19

Sorry, and is it accelerating as a contribution?

Andrew Alcock executive
#20

It's certainly increased in dollar terms, but in percentage terms, I'm not sure I've got the breakdown of that that's coming from the platform market existing or super [indiscernible] . I would expect it possibly has in percentage 20 terms, all parts of our business have increased.

Tim Lawson analyst
#21

And then just 2 quick ones. Just on the sort of maybe the pathway to profitability from myprosperity a bit choppy half to half, just sort of thinking about that strategy?

Andrew Alcock executive
#22

From my perspective, not as stressed or fast about myprosperity itself, being proper. Of course, we're absolutely aiming for that. We did deviate from our strategy when we purchased the business. We focused on building out scale so it can actually deal with those 7 enterprise agreements. I think we've got 100 new practice decision in the last year or 75, but it's actually that its contribution to the ecosystem and how it gets bundled together with our products. So we will move towards profitability in myprosperity. But in itself doesn't change the bottom line of our business. It was a business we bought for $40 million, what does change the bottom line is how it fits our ecosystem, and you'll see it benefiting the flows. So I think part of the flows we're getting advice from the platform is actually the fact that we own that business, and we're using it as the front end moving forward. Kit do you have anything to say there?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#23

I think it's exactly what you've just said in the -- when you look at the ecosystem and pulling it together and the advocacy that we're getting for it and what the opportunities that it delivers in the future. I think that was why we bought it, and it's in -- and that it's delivering to that. And the 1 grade so we talked about there was the 65 practices who were only my prosperity customers who are now using HUB. We also won a large arrangement with -- sorry, we won a deal with a large practice in the last few weeks, on the back of our relationship with Class wanting to extend across our group. So those things are driving efficacy and sales synergies across the ecosystem we're building. The capability will eventually replace the HUB24 and the class of now Infinity yes.

Tim Lawson analyst
#24

Okay. And last question for me, just in the sort of the, I guess, penetration numbers you've given us a first half, 31% of active now 33% and obviously a fall in those that are covered by distribution agreements that are not in the platform. Can you just sort of talk to where you think that sort of what currently 44% [indiscernible] through time?

Andrew Alcock executive
#25

Catch up with your 44% just quickly, but...

Tim Lawson analyst
#26

In the advisers not using the platform covered by distribution agreements?

Andrew Alcock executive
#27

Look we absolutely focus on that. We, as I said, 16% of our flows issue came from advisers who weren't and who are now from those agreements. So we certainly service those national relationships. We have a key account in does that and a BDM team that does that. So I don't have a color on how far it can go. But certainly, there are other platform examples in this industry in industry with more participants where some platforms actually have far more advisers using -- 7,000 to 8,000 advisers using those particular platforms that have had in their heyday. So that's an example of a proxy of where this market has been before.

Operator operator
#28

The next question comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#29

Maybe just a quick comment on the -- there was a mention of bolt-on acquisitions in the balance sheet page, just maybe the kinds of things that you might be thinking about strategically and or if you're looking at things that potentially a more scale acquisitions versus kind of capability IP.

Andrew Alcock executive
#30

We certainly put it there deliberately to let you know that we're not shy to look at those things. Is there any some specific we could talk about not at this point in time. And we'll, of course, only be acquisitive where it makes sense for shareholder and our customer proposition for shareholders. So it's something we remains on our agenda, and we do have an active team that looks at opportunities, but nothing really to talk about right now. But our focus would be if we can actually extend our ecosystem, provide more efficient access, more accessible and affordable access to advice for Australians and actually help advisers and accounts do that job we're are ready to go. So it makes sense and there's a good value case there for our shareholders, we won't be shying.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#31

And then maybe just a question maybe for Kit on the revenue margin outlook. There was a bit of admin margin compression, presumably from higher average balances and the [indiscernible] rate card. But how should we think about revenue margin outlook into '26.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#32

Yes. At the moment, what we're seeing, I mean it's a competitive market, but we're again, not seeing a rational thing. And so you can expect to see the normal sort of up to 0.5 bp maybe 1 bp of revenue margin compression. But again, I guess it does all depend on what happens in the competitive pricing in the industry. But at the moment, it's looking like 0.5 bp to 1 bp.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#33

And does that kind of factor in what kind of cash trends, I guess, we saw cash at the end of the period, tickups to 6.7% presumably, it was running a bit lower than that over the second half.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#34

Yes. So has been sort of a bit variable, particularly over the last sort of 6 months. It was certainly dipped down into the sort of, say, 6.5%. Last year, when you look at full year '24, it was more of an average of 7% and higher in the start of full year '24, whereas when you look at full year '25, it ticked down. But then on an average, when you look at the last couple of, say, 6 weeks and towards the end of June as well. You've got the dividends and distributions being paid out. And so the cash balances over the last, maybe, let's call it, 8 weeks have been accelerated. So -- at the moment, I would imagine that the trend in the first half is considered -- it will be more consistent with what you've seen in the second half.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#35

Okay. Cool. And maybe just to just belabor the point around the first 6 and a bit weeks. You're saying it's around that $2.6 billion of net inflows to start off up to the 14th.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#36

Yes. So for the -- when you're looking at the increase in the FUA of $4.3 billion for the first 6 weeks, yes, the net inflows was about 50% of that. Was that the question, Nick?

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#37

Yes, that was the question. I was just trying to get a more specific number. But I think 50% is the right number, then we'll run with that. So it's a very good start to the year. Maybe just a final question as well. Presumably, you've got some visibility now about the Xplore NBA and where that goes. And presumably, that impacts more the March quarter 2026, is that right?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#38

So with the Xplore MDA, yes, we have been -- I'll let Andrew answer this one, but we have been working on a solution to that.

Andrew Alcock executive
#39

We'll continue to work through that. We have some discussions underway with other third parties that might help us with that, but we expect to be talking more about that in the future. The [indiscernible] , you might know announced that they entered into an arrangement with us to do that through the or [indiscernible] evidential business. So we're working through that at the moment with hopefully a transition where we can both work together to get a solution for the customers.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#40

And so that would be more at the kind of full $2 billion? Or there's an expectation that's not the whole amount of cost?

Andrew Alcock executive
#41

I think there's an expectation that we'll retain more of that than perhaps we thought originally. And so I'm not sure it would be the full $2 billion. It depends on advisers and customers. So of course, they have a choice here. But I think we've got a compelling offer that would perhaps retain more than we thought originally when we decided we closed down that business. But we also have a great opportunity to work with evidential and [indiscernible] , with the technology and interfaces, we're be willing to extend that arrangement and potentially grow further.

Operator operator
#42

The next question comes from James Bisinella with Unified Capital Partners.

James Bisinella analyst
#43

Congrats on the results. Maybe just a few for me. Just on the quarter-to-date net flow number of that $2.6 million. Just wondering if there's any kind of notable commentary on the gross inflow and outflow environment during this sort of quarter-to-date period versus what we were seeing in the prior quarter with some of the volatility coming through in April?

Andrew Alcock executive
#44

There's no marked change or shift. I think it's more of the same. I think it seasonally is -- I would typically say, May, June, July and August used to traditionally be the biggest period of time in an advice-based wealth business because of the need to help clients pre tax year-end and set stuff up post tax year-end, and it is a busy period. But there's no remarkable shift in terms of contribution in or out from that perspective, James. So it seems like just the ongoing growth of our business, some of those leases cases coming through with results at this point. Is that a fair comment, Kit?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#45

Yes. Certainly, there's no real change. The trend is continuing the momentum across everywhere.

James Bisinella analyst
#46

Okay. Great. That makes sense. And maybe 1 more, a bit more of a specific 1 for Kit. Just on the platform and custody fees within that platform segment. I think they were down half-on-half there were 115 in the first half. [ 13 8 ] in the second, and there was sort of 160 bps half-on-half increase in the gross margin there in the Platform segment. So just a couple of parts to that. What was the driver of that, firstly? And secondly, what's the expectation on that gross margin moving into FY '26.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#47

Yes. So the platform and custody fees generally, they would move in line with the FUA because they're volume driven. But as we get scale, we will get obviously improved rates with those. So you will see some of that coming through. Going forward, so I would take second half '25, it's obviously clearly the starting point. It will start to tier up again in line with the fee growth. And so I think that's probably all that I can really say on that. We tend not to give too much of a breakdown as to what's in those. But I think the -- the key thing is it lines up with the operating expenses guidance that I gave you that the operating expenses will probably be in the mid-teens, and you can expect to see the platform and custody fees increase with FUA going forward.

James Bisinella analyst
#48

Okay. Excellent. And sorry, maybe just 1 more. Just on the revenue margins flat half-on-half at 33 bps. That was a good result. Just on April again in terms of the volatility we saw, and there was some increase in trading more broadly on the ASX. Any commentary on the contribution of that to the group across the half?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#49

Absolutely, we definitely saw elevated trading volumes. And we -- you would have seen we had an excellent result, slightly below consensus when you look at our revenue, and that was because consensus had broadly thought that our trading volumes would be even more elevated but certainly elevated higher than they were in full year '24, but just not to the extent that I'm clearly consensus for the [indiscernible]

Andrew Alcock executive
#50

I think that represents the long-term nature of these businesses in terms of resilience and investors -- investing for a time for the longer term, they're less trading base. They do make tactical and strategic asset allocation decisions, but there is a bit of resilience there. And it was -- we've not had a liberation day before, James, let's put it that way. But typically, people kept their call advisers and customers. So whilst we have trading, it wasn't as pronounced is perhaps some ad market analysts thought it could be, but that's because of the nature of retirement savings.

Operator operator
#51

Our next question comes from Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#52

Can you hear me okay?

Andrew Alcock executive
#53

Yes, we can.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#54

All right. Great. Just first one, Andrew, just on the FY '27 FUA guidance, the top end -- I mean if I'm doing the math, it sort of implies maybe $18 billion in net flows, which is quite strong. So maybe can you just touch on what gets you to the top end because it doesn't sound like there's any large migrations. So just keen to understand how you're thinking of that flow momentum?

Andrew Alcock executive
#55

Well, as always, there's multiple ways to get there. and the top end might factor in market movement sensitivities as well. So it might be that if you think the market moved to more than 5% on average, that could get you to a higher end, but also equally the bottom end, if you have a market movement of 2.5% instead of 5%, you get a different outcome. So we're trying to cater for things beyond our control in that as well. The top end would probably imply you could say it could imply -- a could imply less of that depending on the market movement. Kit, I don't know if you want to unpack that?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#56

I think it's completely fair. I think the way to probably think about it is the net flow range is probably in the $14 billion to $17 billion over '26 and '27. But you're absolutely right, Siraj, if you had very normal markets compared to the long-term average, so let's assume 5%, then yes, you do need to be more up at that $18 billion range. But as Andrew said, we have a range of scenarios. And if you have the markets in '25 have been really strong. You would have seen we had $8.5 billion and 10% market growth. if you have a really strong market in the '26 or '27 plus high net flows and you're up in the top end of that range.

Andrew Alcock executive
#57

Of course, but always aspirational. And as you've seen in the past, there's been a couple of years where revised guidance are not I'm saying we're doing that now, but we want to remain aspirational, and we're not sure what we can achieve. No one's done what we've done to date. So there's room in there for that.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#58

Exactly. But just clarifying, Kit and Andrew, I mean, $14 billion to $17 billion is a pretty strong outcome, right, but that $17 billion, assuming that you're not putting any large transitions in that? Or is -- could that include a scenario of that?

Andrew Alcock executive
#59

If you look at the run rate and the adviser indicators, it's possible that we could achieve that. And so that's 1 assumption. We also have different assumptions where you've got a lower amount and you do have large transitions in there. So -- and it's not that we know the shape of that in the time, but that's possible.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#60

Okay. Second one, maybe 1 for you, Andrew. Just in terms of Shield and First Guardian and all the new press on that, I mean my understanding is you -- I mean, you do not have that on the platform, so that's a positive. But is that helping in any ways in terms of market share for you in the last few weeks?

Andrew Alcock executive
#61

It'd be too early to tell. I think advisers would be happy that our robust processes for putting things on the platform prevented that. We did have a look at those, and they didn't pass muster for us and we don't just rely on external research, we do a thorough process. So and then pass [indiscernible] . I think it's too early to tell about that. I certainly think that most advisers to work with us do know that we have rigor and strength in that area. And certainly, a lot of fund managers sometimes get a bit herky that takes us to well to improve them because of that process.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#62

Okay. Maybe last 1 for Kit. Kit, just in terms of mid-teens growth for next year, I'm a bit surprised it's not a bit higher, especially given you seem to be stepping up on hiring as well. So just -- is there some offset? Maybe it's the platform and custody fees that you just spoke to, just how to think about it. I mean 10% FTE is helpful, but is there anything else offsetting that sort of why the growth is not higher than this year in terms of cost.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#63

We always -- thanks, Siraj. We always have dedicated programs of work looking at our operating leverage, particularly across the operations area, we have a program of work and a team that is constantly looking at back office processes and making them efficient service, an element of efficiency from that program that's continuing and the larger we get, the more impact that has. There's also more efficiency, we're absolutely looking at how do we use in addition to robotics across the business to make it more efficient. And so you're probably seeing some of that come through Siraj, as opposed to something different in the platform and custody fees happening.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#64

Got it. Can I just ask 1 more, sorry. If that's okay?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#65

Yes.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#66

Just into the institutional revenue margins. I actually thought that, for instance, ClearView was actually on the Discover, I mean you just meant to be better. is that based? Is that reduction just a function of timing? Or is that how we should think about it going forward?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#67

Yes, look, how you should think about it going forward. ClearView have actually moved into the HUB24 super fund and doesn't have a private label anymore. And so it's not in the institutional part of the business now. But so the second half is how you should think about the institutional revenue margin.

Andrew Alcock executive
#68

That current client mix, but new clients and shifts and that can change that, as you've seen for ClearView moving out of it so with the current client mix, yes.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#69

Yes.

Operator operator
#70

The next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group

Olivier Coulon analyst
#71

Yes. Sorry, I might be repeating something I misheard a little bit, but the second half, you did say that annualizes to 7 basis points in so is that right? It's like it went from 13 down to 10 for the full FY '25?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#72

Yes, that's correct. That's how to think about it.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#73

Okay. And then, sorry, can you just clarify again the sort of second half cash margin, it averaged around the 6.8% in terms of the pooled cash average through that period.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#74

It was -- second half was 6.7%.

Andrew Alcock executive
#75

They're not margin, it's percentage of assets.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#76

Yes, percentage of FUA.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#77

And then did you mention that if you're thinking that kind of stays roughly at that level into the first half? Or is there an expectation of a mind to hire given that you obviously had some very low full cash percentage earlier in the second half.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#78

So I think in the first half could potentially be -- could be elevated, same as the trend that you would have seen in previous has because you've got July and August with the dividends and distributions coming through before people rebalance you could see a slightly higher percentage in cash in the first half. And so when you're looking over the whole of full year '26, you probably -- it's going to be somewhere between that 6.5% and 7% and potentially could be on the higher end, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Andrew Alcock executive
#79

[indiscernible] You take to by macroeconomic cycles as well.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#80

Yes. Okay. I appreciate that. And sorry, just on myprosperity, I understand the broader strategic intent of the business, and it clearly seems to be delivering that if it's already giving you $1 billion flow and clearly improving NPS, et cetera. But do we have a new timing as to when the business might break even, given the benefits of the 7 strategic kind of license deals that you've executed?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#81

Look, it could be towards the end of '27. we're definitely seeing momentum and a lot of interest. And like you said, we have so [indiscernible] 7 license deals. And so it could be towards the end of full year '27.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#82

Right. And so you gave the EBITDA loss. What was the revenue contribution for the full year, if you don't mind me asking?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#83

It was very similar to full year '24. And so it's between that $3.5 billion and $4 billion.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#84

Yes. So second half, you did materially increase the investment in the product. as well as obviously had a fairly flat top line impact.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#85

Yes. We're -- we have absolutely mobilized on myprosperity going on the front end of all of the solutions and embedding it into the ecosystem strategy.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#86

Yes. So just the last 1 for me on Tech Solutions, costs ticked up in the second half. Do you mind fleshing out where that investment is going into?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#87

Yes. So we did -- Yes, so within the Class businesses, we've got a program of work that we call compliance of the future that is continuing to make it provide efficiencies and enhanced features and functionality for accounting practices. And part of that was share registry fees. So have agreements in place with all of the major share registers to be able to get automated feeds into the -- and reconciled fees into the systems. That came in at full year '25. And so you would have seen an uptick in the cost for that in the second half, in particular.

Operator operator
#88

Our next question comes Tharan Jeyathasan from with JPMorgan.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#89

Maybe just the first one, touching back on the FY '27 forward growth guidance. I know you mentioned in answer to an earlier question, ranges in the market growth assumptions that's simplicity in that. So maybe if you can just help clarify what those assumptions are at the lower end and the upper end. And secondly, I was also just curious to understand why you've given guidance out into FY '27 as opposed to '26. Do you have any clarity as to what you -- what your net flows would look like into '26? Or are you kind of expecting flat trends '26 and '27?

Andrew Alcock executive
#90

I'll answer the first 1 about why we give guidance out to '27, and we've done this for a number of years, because we're a business that's growing rapidly. And we don't really want to be giving short-term guidance having to revise it all the time, and it creates a whole lot of interest and discussion that's actually not necessarily productive. So we're giving guidance out 2 years deliberate to say it's a longer-term trend in the business. And that's been a policy that we've had as a Board and the company for some time now. It doesn't indicate anything about what we think will happen in '26. It indicates a range that we think for '27 or we think that long-range guidance is appropriate, given how rapidly trends and the business can change. In terms of unpacking it, Kit will cut me off in a sec, we don't actually use a particular assumption set to come up with a range. We look at multiple assumption sets and a 3D matrix, if you like to say, here's or the possibilities. So we look at assumptions where there's 0 market return and where there's 5% to 10% market return. We look at maybe -- we have dimensional grids that do that to say on balance with all these factors and levers, here's where you could get to as opposed to we've used 1 particular assumption set to come up with that range. I hope that's helpful. So -- but in those sensitivities, we may look at a range from 0% to 10% market movement and have a look at that. And some of those 10% would push us outside that range potentially, as well depending on the net flow number. So the correlation between net flows and market movement on what gets you there. So it's really a sensitivity table of possibilities of us landing somewhere that we think is reasonable.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#91

That's helpful. Just a second question. You've provided some useful stats on industry average FUA per adviser at $76 million. You pointed out that you're materially lower at $22 million, and that's an opportunity. I just wanted to understand what's the reason for this because it's quite a substantial gap. I just want to understand what the reason for that was. And if you've seen any change in that over the last couple of periods? And how quickly you expect that to trend upward? Like should we expect it to gradually drift upwards? Or have you seen step changes in the past, and so that's something that we can expect?

Andrew Alcock executive
#92

Yes, totally. Look, as we said in the pack, there's some other hints there as well, it does take 6 years for you to get to a point where you might be saturated in terms of what you're going to get from an advice business. That's an average figure, just a but figure. Advisers don't move money overnight. If they're going to change platforms, they're going to do it in the best interest to clients at the right time, at the right life stage. And so it does take time for them to signal that. In terms of historically, yes, we published each year what our average FUA per adviser is what's become, but I think the stat in the pack is $14 million at $21 million and $22 million this year, which shows you that we've increased that by $8 million over 4 years, at the same time as dramatically increasing the number of advisers. So mathematically, you're getting new advices in who start off with much lower than that average to start with, you're still increasing the average over a growing book. That's the best information we can give you. And we also point out that they were 11% of more than $50 million to show you what's possible to actually explain that over time, you can get to those sort of levels. I hope that helps with understanding the way and the numbers behind that.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#93

Yes. That was helpful. Just 1 last question. I know that you announced for a previous question, you mentioned that you expect mid-teens OpEx growth. So just kind of suggest EBITDA margin expansion if you're able to hit your full guidance into '26. But I'm more interested in if you have any kind of medium-term expectations of where that platform EBITDA margin to settle over time?

Andrew Alcock executive
#94

It depends on how we invest. And so we're not shy in saying that we will continue to invest if there's larger opportunities. So have we not been investing at the rate we are, the margin will be far higher currently. And so -- and that's quite dynamic based on opportunities. So we will pivot based on opportunity in front of us based on what our competitors are doing in the market and ships. So what we have said previously is -- there's no reason why you can't get up to the high 40s. Some people say, can you get to 50% because 1 of your peers was doing that? Well, that's also possible. But it's a function of us using an accelerator in a break in a disciplined way. And so having said that, it's conceivable, and we had a great opportunity. We'd actually slow that down based on getting greater market share over time. So it is about how we run the business dynamically. But as a proxy, you can say high 40s, is where we could end up. But who knows.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#95

Okay. And is there other opportunities to kind of push beyond that? I mean if we were to look at a longer-term time horizon at some stage, your reinvestment as a percentage of core should drop. So just wondering picture looking at 10 years. Are there any comments that you'd make?

Andrew Alcock executive
#96

Things you could do. You could have structural cost improvement through using AI and other technology, you could leverage your cost base to push that margin up as you do in a scalable business. Having said that, you could counter that with you could price led to grow volume, but they need to do that profitably. So there's lots of different possibilities here with that. So it's the possibility of additional revenue margins in terms of looking at how you can leverage your ecosystem and, let's say, an app store or work with others to monetize different opportunities to work beyond the ecosystem. And so there's lots of reasons you could increase revenue margin, which would improve your EBITDA margin over time depending on the cost reason you could reduce your cost base over time or a price as a lever as well. So all those possibilities there. What I can tell you is we're focused on executing strategy and making decisions to get shareholders better returns. And there's some discipline and approach in that strategically, that changes given this is quite a transforming industry and continuing to transform.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#97

I understand. Maybe just 1 last question. I know you bought $50 million odd of treasury shares in the period. reduce the dilution. Any comments as to how you're looking at this into '26?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#98

Absolutely. We -- as you can see, we've got a very high correlation of our underlying EBITDA to cash on the balance sheet. And if we do, we -- the employee share scheme that's in place around 1 to make sure that we have market competitive employee rates but also retention and attracting high talent if we purchase the share of the market, it reduces the dilution for shareholders and also as we're using our cash resources, it gives you a tax deduction for that. So we will absolutely -- the intention is to continue to purchase shares on market. And you can expect to see a similar level, potentially might even be higher in full year '26.

Andrew Alcock executive
#99

Okay. I think we'll wrap up then, thank you so much for coming along. Thank you very much [indiscernible] some of you on our rounds as we go through with our road show, but thank you for your support and for all your questions, and it's us signing off.

Operator operator
#100

That does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Operator operator
#101

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HUB24 Limited FY '25 Results briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Alcock, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Andrew Alcock executive
#102

Good morning, everyone, and welcome today to our results presentation. Very pleased to present a very positive result and talk to you about our outlook and our strategy. And of course, leave plenty of time for questions as well. With me today is Kitrina Shanahan, as always, our Chief Financial Officer. And let's begin with some high notes for the business for FY '25. Once again, and we're very pleased to say that we are Australia's leading platform as rated by investment trends in their platform competitive benchmark report for the third year running. We also have the highest NPS score in satisfaction voted by advisers and have on managed accounts capability. And for this year, talking about how those awards and how our business has delivered strong advisory advocacy. For FY '25, we actually hit an entity record with $19.8 billion worth of net inflows. We've been #1 for net inflows or platforms for 6 consecutive quarters. [indiscernible] platform market share gains over the last 2 years on an organic basis. And we continue to have the highest propensity for superannuation members who switch their support, we are the benefactor of that choice with the highest number of inflows from those who choose to switch arising from the delivery of good advice to consumers in the marketplace where people take control of their future and want to invest in the products that suit their needs. I want to pause quickly, we've led with this slide deliberately about where we stand in the market. It has been a great year. And I wanted to recognize and thank both our customers and our team for helping us to deliver in that way. Surely, our customers inspire us to do better and to empower better [indiscernible], and it drives our team really to find a better way. So thank you for your support from customers. Thank you very much for our team who've helped us deliver in this way. and are continuing to look forward to delivering and unlocking value in the future more and more to customers and shareholders. Here's a quick look at some of our overall platform recognition for the year. And many of you will have seen this before, so I won't labor the point, but we have been recognized in multiple surveys across the industry for customer service and product leadership. On the right-hand side, in the top corner, in the last week, adviser ratings have rated us the best platform overall for satisfaction, is super fund satisfaction, adviser experience, client experience onboarding overall functionality invest in national options, which is some accolades we received last week, I believe. So great to see that happening and recognizing the efforts we're taking in the business to create right solutions for our customers. We turn on some of our results highlights and moving straight into the financial results on a great year, $136.4 billion of FUA up 30% on last year with Platforms were up 34% to $112.7 billion. And we have some questions later about the $118 billion, I'm sure, as it the books. We had a fast start to the year. We look forward to unpacking that as best we can during our question session and our portfolio have been reporting service were also up 16%. On a revenue basis, the numbers are equally healthy with the total group revenue over $400 million at $406.6 million, which is up 24%, Platform up 28%; and Tech Solutions, pleasingly, up 9% to $77.1 million. So all our operating segments up with healthy percentages in terms of revenue, of course, translating into underlying EBITDA gains as well for the total group being at $162.4 which is 38% up Platform up 39% as well; and Tech Solutions, up 23% year-on-year at $27.2 million, a pleasing result there. On the NPAT front, the underlying and statutory NPAT up 68% to $79.5 million or just shy of $80 million. We've got our final dividend fully franked termed at $0.32 per share, bringing the full year dividend to $0.57, that $0.32 is up 64% on the prior corresponding period. underlying EPS for the year diluted is also up 45%. So a really great set of results arising from how we run the business and our clients and our strategy and the good execution we've got in the marketplace. In terms of some other highlights for the year, in terms of our leadership and growth, we've had very strong growth in the business and very strong leadership in the industry, having had as a great lead indicator for the future, another 572 advisers choosing to start using HUB24 in the last year. And that's the largest increase in advisers we've had since FY '21. $5.3 billion of transitions finished for EQT over this year and the year before and another 1 for ClearView $1.3 million. So to complete those large migrations at the same time as having record-breaking organic flows for us, a great result. Discovery is up at $1.9 billion, which is great having launched only just over 1.5 years ago. And we have the leading platform according to investment trends across multiple client segments, including the High-Net-Wealth segment, Mass Affluent and mass market segments, and we'll talk a bit more about High-Net-Wealth later on in the pack. Class is also growing at the highest level it has since FY '20. In terms of executing our strategy at the same time, I've spent some time later talking about Engage, which we've launched, which is leveraging our HUBconnect technology. We now have 7 myproperity enterprise agreements on full with large national licensees. We'll talk about the High-Net-Wealth and the reach piece a little bit later in the pack. And of course, we're doing lots of enhancements to both Class, NowInfinity and the platform. And whilst we're doing that, we're also conscious of building for the future with increasing our quality, our service and our efficiency to automation, upgrading our infrastructure, leveraging AI and emerging technologies to create customer value and shareholder value and productivity and efficiency for both of us as well as investing, of course, in our people and our culture. Just some highlights there. All that results to have had a consistent approach to investing in the business and delivering profits over time. And if you look at this slide, here on Slide 8, in terms of our consistent delivery of growth and profitability. The revenue CAGR for the business of 4 years is 38%. and the underlying EBITDA CAGR is 46%, and the chart there has that broken down across our segments and our corporate revenue. And our funds under administration full year CAGR is a 24% growth rate. As you can see, it's been fairly consistent, reliable growth, and we hope and we intend to keep delivering that moving forward as well. [indiscernible] growth translates into changes in market share, where rates #7 in market share, but we're at the same level, give or take to our nearest competitor. And in the marketplace, HUB24 has once again had the #1 market share gain over 12 months, having gained 1.4% overall market share with the next participant gaining only 1.1%. And our share has increased. So that's over the last 12 months. And the market itself is growing, having had $36 billion of net inflows into the market. It's the highest industry annual net inflow since 2008. And the site corresponding [indiscernible] $7 billion of net inflows. So the market is growing, and our share in the market is growing as well. As I said earlier, there's 572 advisers who have chosen to start using HUB24 this year. And having a deeper look at some of the trends in advisers, 33% of advisers in Australia now use HUB24, and that's a full year CAGR of 14%. In June '21, there was 16% of advisers, now 33% at the end of FY '25. The average balance for those advisers has gone up from round about $14 million to about $21 million, $22 million per adviser in that period of time as well. So we have more advisers using the platform and the penetration of the share of their book and their clients has increased over that time as well, translating that to overall market share. We've grown from 4% to 9% over the last 4 years. And as I said a little bit earlier, number one, in terms of market share gains over the last 12 months. Having said that our growth continues to arise from existing and new advisers, on this slide, you can see some of the details of that. For this year, 81% of our flows have come from existing relationships. And we talk about how existing relationships typically give us positive net flows perhaps after 6 years or being on the platform that is reliable ongoing flows to existing clients. 16% of flows in FY '25 came from new advisers with existing licensees and 3% from new relationships. HUB24 has access through relationships to more than 70% of the adviser market, even though only 33% actively using us. So we have an opportunity to garner support from more and more advisers as we continue to execute. In terms of FUA as I already said, the FUA per adviser is up to $22 million. up from $14 million in FY '21. But with an industry average of $76 million per adviser, you can see there's a runway to go in terms of extending our reach and servicing more of the advisers book of clients with an average of 22 at an industry average of 76. 11% of the advisers on our platform have more than $50 million of FUA in HUB24 illustrating the levels of penetration we can get to and the long runway we have with those existing relationships as well. So still a great opportunity for us to continue to grow our existing and new advisers moving forward. Having a quick look at our Technology Solutions and [indiscernible] businesses. Class is maintaining its market share at about 30.5%. The system itself is growing on an accelerated basis, and Class has had the largest increase of accounts in FY '25 since FY '20. The corporate passenger part of the NowInfinity business is growing at 1.4x system. So great results there in terms of growth moving forward. And also in myprosperity, we're seeing results there as well with increased customer engagement. You can see the number of log-ins per firm, logins per customer. So people are using the tool more and more for its rich capability. We've got 7 enterprise agreements signed with large licensees. Those licensees have 1,700 practices across the industry, which we hope to, over time, have quite a few of those signed up to using the service. And interestingly, since we bought myprosperity practices or customers have become HUB24 customers. And those customers have delivered over $1 billion of FUA to the platform. So you've seen the reciprocity and the sales synergies, if you like, from us building an ecosystem with Platform, Class, NowInfinity and myprosperity starting to play out in our results. Our people are wonderful, and I'm very, very thankful and pleased and proud to be able to lead our business. They're very dedicated and very passionate about delivering on the promise we make to our customers. We've got just shy over 1,000 people in our business. our staff engagement is up year-on-year to 78% in the top quartile. We're endorsed as an Employer of Choice for women by WORK180, we're certainly purpose-led and values driven embedding our values into our culture, that are on the slide there. We're investing in career growth at all levels, improving our employee value proposition have a graduate program. We've extended and scaled up an intern program. In fact, we have been named in the top 20 -- of the 25 best small intern programs in Australia, it's a delight seeing young people come into our business with their ideas and passion and the ability to start a career with us. We've had some external recognition of our people and culture this year as well with finalists in the 6 Star awards, multiple funds in the women wealth awards and women in security awards, that's technology security and 3 excellent awards in the Australian HR awards as well. So people are very big focus for our business, and absolutely supporting our sustainability objectives, which I'll quickly talk about on the next slide before I hand over to Kitrina. So a quick update. We've made some ground on our sustainability objectives with our key focus areas, made significant progress towards our 2023 net-zero goal for Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We've renewed our commitment to United Nations Global Compact, we certainly invested in cybersecurity capability and digital initiatives supporting industry scalability and security as well, and we certainly delivered on our customer promises with strong NPS results as well. So continuing to focus on how we make HUB24, a sustainable business for our shareholders, our customers and for community at large. Thank you. I'll turn over to Kitrina Shanahan, our CFO, to talk about our financial results.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#103

Thank you, Andrew. So here, we have the group Platform and the Tech Solutions snapshot of the revenue, underlying EBITDA and the customer numbers. So the group revenue was close to $407 million for this year and underlying EBITDA of just over $162 million Platform being the largest segment and the largest driver was $323 million worth of revenue and $143 million -- just under $143 million worth of underlying EBITDA and as Andrew mentioned, just over 5,000 -- 5,097 active advisers using the platform as of 30th of June. Tech Solutions revenue was up to $77 million this year and underlying EBITDA of $27 million with again 6,500 accounting practice using the Class solutions. So moving on to the next slide, we have the group financial results. And here, you can see the growth year-on-year with the underlying EBITDA margin for the group, up 3.8% to 39.9% and in full year '25. Underlying NPAT was up 44% to just under $100 million at $97.8 million for the year, and statutory NPAT was up 68% to $79.5 million for the year. Full year dividends for the year of $0.56 per share, up 47% on last year. and the underlying diluted earnings per share of $1.178 per share, up 45% year-on-year. And on the right-hand side, you can see the contribution for operating revenue and underlying EBITDA from the platform taxations in the corporate segment. So moving on to the next slide, we have the Platform segment. And here, we have custody FUA growth of 34% with a platform of just under $13 billion -- $112.7 billion for the year. and noncustody FUA up 16% year-on-year at $23.7 billion. This brings the total FUA at the 30th of June to $136.4 billion, up 30% year-on-year. And again, as Andrew mentioned, we had record net inflows for this year, record for HUB24 of $19.8 billion which also included $4 billion of large migrate funds, and it was a record for us, including and excluding the large migrations. On this slide, you can also see the platform underlying EBITDA margin of 44.2%, which was up 3.5%. You can see on the right-hand side in the graph on the right, you can also see the $8.5 billion of positive market movements into the custody FUA. So moving on to the next slide. We have the platform custody revenue and margin. And on the graph on the right-hand side, you can see the revenue margin was consistent throughout the year at 32 bps first half, second half and full year '25. This was down 1 bp on second half '24 and down 2 bps on full year '24. This is driven by positive markets, average balances increasing and accounts moving into higher tiers or reaching a fee cap. And there were 1 bp margin compression during the year with cash balances reducing as a percentage of FUA. For full year '25, the average cash balance was 6.9%. And for full year '24, the average cash balance was 7.4%. There's more details of this in our analyst and investor pack. Okay. So continuing with the platform composition of FUA and revenue and the revenue margins, you can see the retail has increased as a percentage of our total custody FUA, and it's up to 87% of the portfolio is now sitting in the retail portfolio. It was 84% in full year '24. This is due to a hard proportion of the net flows coming into the retail portfolio. And in the chart on the bottom right-hand side, you can see the mix of the custody revenue margin, with the retail revenue margin coming down year-on-year, 2 bps consistent with my previous commentary on the previous page, and the institutional revenue margin coming down last year full year '24 at 13 bps coming down to 10 bps average across the year. In the analyst and investor pack, you can see that the second half '25 institutional margin was down to 7 bps. And this is due to a mix of the portfolio. We completed the $5 billion of migrations from EQT in the year. And so now, EQT and private bank clients are the largest component of the institutional FUA and their wholesale rates reflecting the scale and the lower cost to serve for these portfolios. Okay. So moving on to the next slide. We have the platform underlying EBITDA and margins. And on the right-hand side, you can see the trend with the continued growth in the underlying EBITDA margin with operating leverage and growth, delivering a margin of 44.2% this year for the platform. And we've also got the 4-year platform underlying EBITDA CAGR of 39% there. Okay. So now moving on to the Tech Solutions part of the business. And as Andrew called out, Class has had 1 of the best years in, I think, since full year '20, Class number of accounts grew 4% to over 215,000 accounts. NowInfinity business is growing incredibly well. We've got 12% growth in the in there NowInfinity, talking about orders. just over 214,000 documents produced in the year and companies on Class Corporate Messenger, over 862,000, up 7% year-on-year. The class underlying EBITDA grew 23% to $27.2 million with an increase in the underlying EBITDA margin of 4% to 35.3%. Okay. So now moving on to the group expenses. So we have total expenses have grown 13% to $307 million, this includes operating expenses, depreciation and amortization and interest expenses. The largest driver of the increase comes from employee-related expenses with our LTE growing 8% year-on-year. And at the 30 of June, we have 962 full-time employees. The growth has been seen in the operations area, which has grown in line with the FUA growth and is linked to the number of accounts and the size of the FUA that we're servicing. We've also had employee growth in the technology and the product teams and again, to support the growth that we are seeing across the business. Moving on to the next slide. Here, we have a walk of the group's underlying EBITDA, underlying NPAT and stat NPAT. So we have group underlying EBITDA of just over $162 million. Then we do a walk down to the underlying NPAT with share-based payments of just under $14 million, which is consistent with last year, which was $13.5 million. Depreciation and amortization has ticked up year-on-year and is now $19.4 million. which is tracking and aligning with the CapEx levels. Capitalization across both the platform and the Tech Solutions business was $19.1 million in full year '25. And so you can see depreciation and amortization are just in line with that. Interest expenses have increased year-on-year with a large part of that to do with the property moves that we've done and the interest on the leases increasing. And then the last call-out that I'll raise is the effective tax rate is just under 20%, and that's consistent year-on-year. The main reason it's below the corporate 30% level is because we have R&D tax claims, and we also have the purchase of treasury shares also impacts the tax rate. Then moving on, just a couple more slides. We've got the group's cash flow and the balance sheet, the group has 115 -- or had $115 million of cash on the balance sheet at the 30 of June. There's also borrowings. We have a loan facility with CBA of $30 million, so a net cash balance of $85 million. The CBA loan matures in June '26, but we have the flexibility to either repay that loan or to -- or over depending on the uses of the cash. And we've called out a couple of the uses of the cash on this slide, with an increased loan with the super fund trustee, the loans up to $100 million with $5 million drawn up of 30 of June, but you can expect to see that increase in the first quarter. There will be a drawdown at the 30th of September to align with the new APRA HPS 114 standard. Another use of the group's cash is the [indiscernible] share scheme, purchasing treasury shares on market to service those employee share gains. And so then moving to the last slide before I hand back to Andrew to talk about our strategy and outlook. Here, we have fully franked final dividend for the year of $0.32 per share, which is up 64% year-on-year. taking the total dividend for full year '25 to $0.56 per share, up 47% year-on-year. And then on the right-hand side, you can see the group CAGRs from the dividend of 54%, underlying EPS of 52% and a total shareholder return over the last 4 years of 34%. And with that, I will hand back to Andrew.

Andrew Alcock executive
#104

Thank you, Kitrina. [indiscernible] our strategy and outlook. Our strategy has 2 main focus areas, growing our market leadership at the same time as continuing to transform our industry and look for opportunities to create value in new ways. So the left-hand side of the slide, and we've talked about this before, it's about having a strong growth outlook and us continuing to lead in our chosen businesses for HUB24 Platform, Class and NowInfinity, certainly well positioned to increase our market share from the current 9% in the platform and to continue to benefit from industry transformation and be a leader in that space. We certainly tend to keep doing that. And in Class and NowInfinity, they're also accelerating the growth and great results there in terms of their market share. So those 2 businesses and then sales those business models and leading that is part of our strategy for creating shareholder value keep ourselves at the forefront in those business lines at the same time as looking for how we can create additional shareholder value through our technology solutions which is leveraging our grid capabilities to look for efficiencies to financial professionals and their clients with HUBconnect, myprosperity and portals and so forth. And in itself, having those 2 prongs of our strategy, creating growth synergies for each other. So our technology and data solutions innovation, creating growth opportunities for the platform in Class and vice versa. So we have a great opportunity to do that. And the world in which we operate or the market, we continue to operate is certainly structurally growing and it's creating opportunities for us, and we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of that. In terms of demand for advice, that's increasing in Australia with 2.7 million in seeking bus. There were 3.5 million or 3.6 million Australians looking to transition from accumulation to retirement, which is a trigger for needing advice and needing platform solutions. Of course, there's an intergenerational wealth transfer, I expect over the next 2 decades up to $5.4 trillion. And so it's increasing demand for the services, the platforms and advice business offer to the marketplace. The industry is undergoing transformation continuing to undergo transformation in terms of [indiscernible] participants in the platform space, but also in the adviser space. 90% Advisers now privately owned or privately owned licensees. 36% of advisers saying that they intend to, over time, use a single platform, up from 13% 4 years ago. And so the business models of advice practices start thinking about how do they lock in with a model that helps them with their business and productivity, and particularly in the business like ours where we offer solutions across all customer segments and all different life status. With efficiency and compliance still being the 2 top challenges rated by device firms and certainly a focus area of our technology in our business in terms of how we help with efficiency, productivity and compliance management. And the market opportunity, 98% of the industry net inflows by the last captured by 2 platforms over the last year with HUB24 having 54% of that and industry spend or -- specialist platforms over the last 4 years, gaining 10% market share with HUB gaining 5% of that. So the trends are there our strategy, our technology position, our footprint and our capability has a significant position to continue to benefit from these trends in the market and the industry. We'll do this, and you've seen the next slide before. We'll do it the way we do this is through the 4 pillars in our strategy by leading today helping to correct tomorrow building together. That's part of our overall purpose to empower better financial futures together with advise, fund manager with technology providers with customers and how we build a better outcome and thinking about our future and leveraging the businesses we have today to get outcomes to bunch of professionals about 1 way of doing business, single view of wealth, efficient access to our ecosystem and flexibility recording insights. I mentioned our footprint across different client segments. So we'll skip over this slide, but it talks about the different product ranges we have for different life stages from all of our business brands and other different segments. The only addition on the in that footprint is HUB24 private investor, which we launched in the last few months, which I'll talk about on our next slide. So some examples of how we bring our strategy life, and we've got some innovative solutions behind the [indiscernible] clients. We launched HUB24 Private Invest, which is an innovative product with a unique design, easier access for wholesale investments for wholesale clients. with different or streamlined disclosure documentation and onboarding processes, accessing a broader range of investments, including some alternatives. We do the administration of custody and non-custody assets in that product and flexibility for adviser and their fees a whole of wealth reporting through Engage, which I'll talk about on the next slide. But it is about expanding our addressable market. As we said early investment trends Ratos is having the best offer in the High-Net-Wealth space. There's $3.4 trillion worth of assets in High-Net-Wealth. 28% of advisers are focused on High-Net-Wealth and wholesale clients, and the 690,000 investors and growing. Only 22% of those investors are advised that we can build products and solutions and work with Advice businesses to increase that penetration. It will certainly expand our addressable market so and our key customers. And improving productivity is the goal as well with these tools and solutions we're launching. So extending that, and that's an example of us thinking about our strategy and cutting across different segments. Another example on the next page is Engage, which is an evolution of our present market-leading reporting capability. We've launched that recently. It is -- it's a transformation in technology that advisers can use to have engaging discussions with their clients using their own terminology to build reports real-time that change based on different cuts of data so to bring advisers efficiency and advocacy. It allows them to tailor this reporting for their own business. And the future will allow them to publish these reports and also extract data for these reports for their clients, and it leverages our HUBConnect capability, which is integrated data that sits outside of the platform that allows performance reporting and reporting from multiple sources. Hence, you can get the universe for your investments, even if it's on another platform, over time, that's the plan here. Engage will run currently runs inside the HUB Platform, but it will also be a cornerstone of myprosperity for customers to use myprosperity to see Engage running across all of the assets they feed into myprosperity,; regardless of what the held by HUB24 or [indiscernible] by HUB24. We've had some great feedback from that, also being recognized in some surveys about Engage before we even launched it to the marketplace. And as always, we're leveraging emerging technology to scale and customer value to enhance our customer proposition and to also enhance the productivity and efficiency business to get benefits for our shareholders. Our innovation lab has been [indiscernible] since 2018. We continue to use AI and machine learning and the low code and robotic process automation to increase our productivity. We're having a phased rollout by on tools across our business, it is helping us with our servicing model. We use it with IT development. We use it to deliver services for our clients. An example is our advice [indiscernible] , which is award-winning that used AI to do that in the marketplace. Virtual mail room we have to streamline the collection of data and documents and storage for customers. Of course, our focus with these technologies is certainly strong around governance and security and the responsible use of the technology, having good procedures and policies in place. at a great robust cybersecurity framework with tools that allow us to ensure privacy. For example, safeguarding customers documentation through using the [indiscernible] my prosperity, losing data redaction tools, where we're communicating with information, certainly underpinning our innovation in those areas to implement our strategy and create value, as I said, for customers and shareholders. So that's just some examples of bringing to life our strategy and what we're doing in the market. There's many more. We're certainly focused on extending that lead in our current marketplace and continuing to reshape how the industry works. And so moving forward, we've updated our FUA guidance for FY '27. You might remember that at the end of FY '24, had guidance at $115 million to $123 billion of FUA at the end of FY '26, rolling out 1 year ahead of that or 1 and beyond that, there's a $33 billion increase in the lower end of that to $148 billion by FY '27. And a $39 billion increase at the top end of the range of $162 billion. That's based, and Kit can talk about the space to continue net flow momentum and market movements and a range of growth assumptions. It is a broad range as the business gets bigger. And we certainly aspire to hit towards the top end of that or to exceed that as we have in the past. But giving you some guidance, so that's the range we think we can hit moving forward, given our current plans. We're in a great position to leverage structurally growing markets as usual, unlock value and capitalize on these opportunities for customers and shareholders. Strong and reliable growth. We expect that to continue from existing and new customers. Our operations are scalable. We're seeing EBITDA margin. We're able to invest in the business same time as enhancing margin. And we're in a great position to continue to grow market share. Of course, with a strong balance sheet, great cash flows that support our ongoing investment and delivery of shareholder returns. So thank you very much, that ends the formal part of our presentation. Very happy to open up for questions from those of you who have dialed in.

Operator operator
#105

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Cam Halkett with Wilsons Advisory.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#106

Great results [indiscernible] as always. Andrew, you mentioned a fast start. So let's perhaps begin there. Just to go to understand the composition of FUA to mid-August, please, if the $118 billion, just noting NASDAQ and ASX200, both up around 5% since June. So perhaps just some color there on how do you start in terms of flows and the contribution from markets.

Andrew Alcock executive
#107

So our market [indiscernible] correlate totally to the market, as usual, it doesn't generally do that. It's about 50% correlation to the market movement. So roughly half of that gap from the ending number for June to today is new flows and half of it is improvement, I can probably tell you that, is a strong start. It is a seasonally strong period, but it's great to have a good strong July and August heading off, but we've been pleased by that. And that's probably the answer to the question, Cam. We'll see how we continue to go. As we said, great leading indicators with the number of advisers as I put, so we are seeing stronger flows than perhaps would be expected so far.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#108

Yes. And I think your account growth on platform was up half-on-half as well. So probably a bit of that coming through too. If I can then pivot to, I suppose, reinvestment requirements looking into '26, winding back to the prior year. First half was softer. You put the foot on the gas through the second half, leading to an 8% increase in head count year-on-year overall. But how about FY '26, what are you guys needing in terms of net adds and reinvestment, please?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#109

Yes. So we -- you can see the fast start we've had. We're continuing to grow totally believe in the strategy. And so you can expect the FTE, which is the largest driver of the expenses to grow anywhere up to and around that sort of 10% sort of growth rate. And then from an OpEx perspective, you'll see other things coming through things like salary increases, variable cost cut costs, et cetera, as costs were correlated to the growth in the funds under administration. So OpEx could be in that sort of mid-teens range growth as we move into full year '26.

Cameron Halkett analyst
#110

Yes. Thanks, Kit. And then perhaps last 1 and then I'll hop back in the queue. I suppose just around migrations, particularly on the large image, we've seen both EQT and Clearview over the last year and a bit. So a question for either of you. Is there any reason investors should think that sort of 1, maybe 2 a year run rate and margin migration should change with what you're seeing in terms of market activity.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#111

So the large migrations, we had obviously an excellent year in full year '25 with 2 migrations coming through. We've said in the past that you can expect to see a large migration come through every couple of years. There's always a couple that are in the pipeline. That's probably -- when you can see the momentum in our underlying net flows, that's going to be less of a factor moving forward is how I would think about it.

Operator operator
#112

The next question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie.

Tim Lawson analyst
#113

Maybe just a follow-up to what Cam asked. In terms of the FTE growth and OpEx spend. Can you just slip that, Andrew, to your sort of comments on sort of the technology and where you think that operating leverage sort of end up maybe not this year but going forward?

Andrew Alcock executive
#114

In terms of FTE growth. Look -- and Kit you might help me and , we certainly are focused on opportunities and being able to invest in opportunities if they make sense for us. And so generally, our FTE growth will be in variable growth in operation areas and in technology areas. We are absolutely building an ecosystem that brings all of our products together because there are opportunities to leverage that, and we're seeing the green shoots and the advocacy that from the market. So it's about investment in strategy. to grow all parts of the business and should yield returns. So there's still operating leverage though in the fixed cost areas of the business. Absolutely, there has been hence, you've seen the expanding margin. At the same time, we've been increasing headcount. We've got a 3.8% margin improvement. Not that we're saying we'll do that again and again. But you can see that we're managing the business to both. Does that help answer?

Tim Lawson analyst
#115

Yes, that's great. And then just on the comment on migrations. You seem to be saying that it's a little bit less of focus. Can you sort of unpack that a little bit? Is that just sort of fee level or less opportunities? Or what's the sort of logic to that being maybe slightly less in a focus?

Andrew Alcock executive
#116

A couple of things. On 1 sense, with the amount of flows we're getting organically, they might be -- they might have less of an impact to our growth. We used to think a $500 million migration was large. Now we're just on $5 billion. We've done quite a few in a short period of time. And so yes, we're always talking to opportunities like that, but we're also being quite clear on what we choose to do. So as we say, you might see them every couple of years. We've had a rush in the last few years. So it's something we don't talk about unless we land something and it's material and market sensitive. So but at this point in time, we're saying we're expecting to focus on our strategy and increasing the penetration of our client book and we'll selectively take on those opportunities if that makes sense. They can be expensive and they take a long time but we're very pleased with where we are, and we're still open for business in that regard. And if we have something to talk about, we certainly will.

Tim Lawson analyst
#117

And then just on just behind the flows, can you just talk about what you're seeing in -- on the -- out of superannuation funds into the platform?

Andrew Alcock executive
#118

Look, what we're seeing is no different to what has happened in this industry. Is that the typical trend demographically is, is that people get to a certain age and have a certain size of [indiscernible] , they look for advice, and look for flexibility and control in their solutions. And Platforms do typically have better retirement solutions or functionality or options for advisers to either through investment strategies to manage sequencing risk look after retirement, or with the addition of annuity-based products with the platform annuity base or so they involve a life company like Challenge or Allianz Retire+ that we've got on the platform. It's a normal phenomenon. You've got people aging. And so hence, you've got people choosing to take control of their [indiscernible] and seek advice. And so we're benefiting from that. The industry benefits from that. The industry has always benefited from that. That's why we say the addressable market isn't the current platform market, it's the broader industry. There's nothing new to see here, other than from the perspective of the amount of quantum that we're picking up is representative of our awards and our customer service and our product design in superannuation and representative of some of the disruption the industry with not all of the industry platform participants firing with their propositions at the moment, [indiscernible].

Tim Lawson analyst
#119

Sorry, and is it accelerating as a contribution?

Andrew Alcock executive
#120

It's certainly increased in dollar terms, but in percentage terms, I'm not sure I've got the breakdown of that that's coming from the platform market existing or super [indiscernible] . I would expect it possibly has in percentage 20 terms, all parts of our business have increased.

Tim Lawson analyst
#121

And then just 2 quick ones. Just on the sort of maybe the pathway to profitability from myprosperity a bit choppy half to half, just sort of thinking about that strategy?

Andrew Alcock executive
#122

From my perspective, not as stressed or fast about myprosperity itself, being proper. Of course, we're absolutely aiming for that. We did deviate from our strategy when we purchased the business. We focused on building out scale so it can actually deal with those 7 enterprise agreements. I think we've got 100 new practice decision in the last year or 75, but it's actually that its contribution to the ecosystem and how it gets bundled together with our products. So we will move towards profitability in myprosperity. But in itself doesn't change the bottom line of our business. It was a business we bought for $40 million, what does change the bottom line is how it fits our ecosystem, and you'll see it benefiting the flows. So I think part of the flows we're getting advice from the platform is actually the fact that we own that business, and we're using it as the front end moving forward. Kit do you have anything to say there?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#123

I think it's exactly what you've just said in the -- when you look at the ecosystem and pulling it together and the advocacy that we're getting for it and what the opportunities that it delivers in the future. I think that was why we bought it, and it's in -- and that it's delivering to that. And the 1 grade so we talked about there was the 65 practices who were only my prosperity customers who are now using HUB. We also won a large arrangement with -- sorry, we won a deal with a large practice in the last few weeks, on the back of our relationship with Class wanting to extend across our group. So those things are driving efficacy and sales synergies across the ecosystem we're building. The capability will eventually replace the HUB24 and the class of now Infinity yes.

Tim Lawson analyst
#124

Okay. And last question for me, just in the sort of the, I guess, penetration numbers you've given us a first half, 31% of active now 33% and obviously a fall in those that are covered by distribution agreements that are not in the platform. Can you just sort of talk to where you think that sort of what currently 44% [indiscernible] through time?

Andrew Alcock executive
#125

Catch up with your 44% just quickly, but...

Tim Lawson analyst
#126

In the advisers not using the platform covered by distribution agreements?

Andrew Alcock executive
#127

Look we absolutely focus on that. We, as I said, 16% of our flows issue came from advisers who weren't and who are now from those agreements. So we certainly service those national relationships. We have a key account in does that and a BDM team that does that. So I don't have a color on how far it can go. But certainly, there are other platform examples in this industry in industry with more participants where some platforms actually have far more advisers using -- 7,000 to 8,000 advisers using those particular platforms that have had in their heyday. So that's an example of a proxy of where this market has been before.

Operator operator
#128

The next question comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#129

Maybe just a quick comment on the -- there was a mention of bolt-on acquisitions in the balance sheet page, just maybe the kinds of things that you might be thinking about strategically and or if you're looking at things that potentially a more scale acquisitions versus kind of capability IP.

Andrew Alcock executive
#130

We certainly put it there deliberately to let you know that we're not shy to look at those things. Is there any some specific we could talk about not at this point in time. And we'll, of course, only be acquisitive where it makes sense for shareholder and our customer proposition for shareholders. So it's something we remains on our agenda, and we do have an active team that looks at opportunities, but nothing really to talk about right now. But our focus would be if we can actually extend our ecosystem, provide more efficient access, more accessible and affordable access to advice for Australians and actually help advisers and accounts do that job we're are ready to go. So it makes sense and there's a good value case there for our shareholders, we won't be shying.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#131

And then maybe just a question maybe for Kit on the revenue margin outlook. There was a bit of admin margin compression, presumably from higher average balances and the [indiscernible] rate card. But how should we think about revenue margin outlook into '26.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#132

Yes. At the moment, what we're seeing, I mean it's a competitive market, but we're again, not seeing a rational thing. And so you can expect to see the normal sort of up to 0.5 bp maybe 1 bp of revenue margin compression. But again, I guess it does all depend on what happens in the competitive pricing in the industry. But at the moment, it's looking like 0.5 bp to 1 bp.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#133

And does that kind of factor in what kind of cash trends, I guess, we saw cash at the end of the period, tickups to 6.7% presumably, it was running a bit lower than that over the second half.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#134

Yes. So has been sort of a bit variable, particularly over the last sort of 6 months. It was certainly dipped down into the sort of, say, 6.5%. Last year, when you look at full year '24, it was more of an average of 7% and higher in the start of full year '24, whereas when you look at full year '25, it ticked down. But then on an average, when you look at the last couple of, say, 6 weeks and towards the end of June as well. You've got the dividends and distributions being paid out. And so the cash balances over the last, maybe, let's call it, 8 weeks have been accelerated. So -- at the moment, I would imagine that the trend in the first half is considered -- it will be more consistent with what you've seen in the second half.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#135

Okay. Cool. And maybe just to just belabor the point around the first 6 and a bit weeks. You're saying it's around that $2.6 billion of net inflows to start off up to the 14th.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#136

Yes. So for the -- when you're looking at the increase in the FUA of $4.3 billion for the first 6 weeks, yes, the net inflows was about 50% of that. Was that the question, Nick?

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#137

Yes, that was the question. I was just trying to get a more specific number. But I think 50% is the right number, then we'll run with that. So it's a very good start to the year. Maybe just a final question as well. Presumably, you've got some visibility now about the Xplore NBA and where that goes. And presumably, that impacts more the March quarter 2026, is that right?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#138

So with the Xplore MDA, yes, we have been -- I'll let Andrew answer this one, but we have been working on a solution to that.

Andrew Alcock executive
#139

We'll continue to work through that. We have some discussions underway with other third parties that might help us with that, but we expect to be talking more about that in the future. The [indiscernible] , you might know announced that they entered into an arrangement with us to do that through the or [indiscernible] evidential business. So we're working through that at the moment with hopefully a transition where we can both work together to get a solution for the customers.

Nicholas McGarrigle analyst
#140

And so that would be more at the kind of full $2 billion? Or there's an expectation that's not the whole amount of cost?

Andrew Alcock executive
#141

I think there's an expectation that we'll retain more of that than perhaps we thought originally. And so I'm not sure it would be the full $2 billion. It depends on advisers and customers. So of course, they have a choice here. But I think we've got a compelling offer that would perhaps retain more than we thought originally when we decided we closed down that business. But we also have a great opportunity to work with evidential and [indiscernible] , with the technology and interfaces, we're be willing to extend that arrangement and potentially grow further.

Operator operator
#142

The next question comes from James Bisinella with Unified Capital Partners.

James Bisinella analyst
#143

Congrats on the results. Maybe just a few for me. Just on the quarter-to-date net flow number of that $2.6 million. Just wondering if there's any kind of notable commentary on the gross inflow and outflow environment during this sort of quarter-to-date period versus what we were seeing in the prior quarter with some of the volatility coming through in April?

Andrew Alcock executive
#144

There's no marked change or shift. I think it's more of the same. I think it seasonally is -- I would typically say, May, June, July and August used to traditionally be the biggest period of time in an advice-based wealth business because of the need to help clients pre tax year-end and set stuff up post tax year-end, and it is a busy period. But there's no remarkable shift in terms of contribution in or out from that perspective, James. So it seems like just the ongoing growth of our business, some of those leases cases coming through with results at this point. Is that a fair comment, Kit?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#145

Yes. Certainly, there's no real change. The trend is continuing the momentum across everywhere.

James Bisinella analyst
#146

Okay. Great. That makes sense. And maybe 1 more, a bit more of a specific 1 for Kit. Just on the platform and custody fees within that platform segment. I think they were down half-on-half there were 115 in the first half. [ 13 8 ] in the second, and there was sort of 160 bps half-on-half increase in the gross margin there in the Platform segment. So just a couple of parts to that. What was the driver of that, firstly? And secondly, what's the expectation on that gross margin moving into FY '26.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#147

Yes. So the platform and custody fees generally, they would move in line with the FUA because they're volume driven. But as we get scale, we will get obviously improved rates with those. So you will see some of that coming through. Going forward, so I would take second half '25, it's obviously clearly the starting point. It will start to tier up again in line with the fee growth. And so I think that's probably all that I can really say on that. We tend not to give too much of a breakdown as to what's in those. But I think the -- the key thing is it lines up with the operating expenses guidance that I gave you that the operating expenses will probably be in the mid-teens, and you can expect to see the platform and custody fees increase with FUA going forward.

James Bisinella analyst
#148

Okay. Excellent. And sorry, maybe just 1 more. Just on the revenue margins flat half-on-half at 33 bps. That was a good result. Just on April again in terms of the volatility we saw, and there was some increase in trading more broadly on the ASX. Any commentary on the contribution of that to the group across the half?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#149

Absolutely, we definitely saw elevated trading volumes. And we -- you would have seen we had an excellent result, slightly below consensus when you look at our revenue, and that was because consensus had broadly thought that our trading volumes would be even more elevated but certainly elevated higher than they were in full year '24, but just not to the extent that I'm clearly consensus for the [indiscernible]

Andrew Alcock executive
#150

I think that represents the long-term nature of these businesses in terms of resilience and investors -- investing for a time for the longer term, they're less trading base. They do make tactical and strategic asset allocation decisions, but there is a bit of resilience there. And it was -- we've not had a liberation day before, James, let's put it that way. But typically, people kept their call advisers and customers. So whilst we have trading, it wasn't as pronounced is perhaps some ad market analysts thought it could be, but that's because of the nature of retirement savings.

Operator operator
#151

Our next question comes from Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#152

Can you hear me okay?

Andrew Alcock executive
#153

Yes, we can.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#154

All right. Great. Just first one, Andrew, just on the FY '27 FUA guidance, the top end -- I mean if I'm doing the math, it sort of implies maybe $18 billion in net flows, which is quite strong. So maybe can you just touch on what gets you to the top end because it doesn't sound like there's any large migrations. So just keen to understand how you're thinking of that flow momentum?

Andrew Alcock executive
#155

Well, as always, there's multiple ways to get there. and the top end might factor in market movement sensitivities as well. So it might be that if you think the market moved to more than 5% on average, that could get you to a higher end, but also equally the bottom end, if you have a market movement of 2.5% instead of 5%, you get a different outcome. So we're trying to cater for things beyond our control in that as well. The top end would probably imply you could say it could imply -- a could imply less of that depending on the market movement. Kit, I don't know if you want to unpack that?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#156

I think it's completely fair. I think the way to probably think about it is the net flow range is probably in the $14 billion to $17 billion over '26 and '27. But you're absolutely right, Siraj, if you had very normal markets compared to the long-term average, so let's assume 5%, then yes, you do need to be more up at that $18 billion range. But as Andrew said, we have a range of scenarios. And if you have the markets in '25 have been really strong. You would have seen we had $8.5 billion and 10% market growth. if you have a really strong market in the '26 or '27 plus high net flows and you're up in the top end of that range.

Andrew Alcock executive
#157

Of course, but always aspirational. And as you've seen in the past, there's been a couple of years where revised guidance are not I'm saying we're doing that now, but we want to remain aspirational, and we're not sure what we can achieve. No one's done what we've done to date. So there's room in there for that.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#158

Exactly. But just clarifying, Kit and Andrew, I mean, $14 billion to $17 billion is a pretty strong outcome, right, but that $17 billion, assuming that you're not putting any large transitions in that? Or is -- could that include a scenario of that?

Andrew Alcock executive
#159

If you look at the run rate and the adviser indicators, it's possible that we could achieve that. And so that's 1 assumption. We also have different assumptions where you've got a lower amount and you do have large transitions in there. So -- and it's not that we know the shape of that in the time, but that's possible.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#160

Okay. Second one, maybe 1 for you, Andrew. Just in terms of Shield and First Guardian and all the new press on that, I mean my understanding is you -- I mean, you do not have that on the platform, so that's a positive. But is that helping in any ways in terms of market share for you in the last few weeks?

Andrew Alcock executive
#161

It'd be too early to tell. I think advisers would be happy that our robust processes for putting things on the platform prevented that. We did have a look at those, and they didn't pass muster for us and we don't just rely on external research, we do a thorough process. So and then pass [indiscernible] . I think it's too early to tell about that. I certainly think that most advisers to work with us do know that we have rigor and strength in that area. And certainly, a lot of fund managers sometimes get a bit herky that takes us to well to improve them because of that process.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#162

Okay. Maybe last 1 for Kit. Kit, just in terms of mid-teens growth for next year, I'm a bit surprised it's not a bit higher, especially given you seem to be stepping up on hiring as well. So just -- is there some offset? Maybe it's the platform and custody fees that you just spoke to, just how to think about it. I mean 10% FTE is helpful, but is there anything else offsetting that sort of why the growth is not higher than this year in terms of cost.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#163

We always -- thanks, Siraj. We always have dedicated programs of work looking at our operating leverage, particularly across the operations area, we have a program of work and a team that is constantly looking at back office processes and making them efficient service, an element of efficiency from that program that's continuing and the larger we get, the more impact that has. There's also more efficiency, we're absolutely looking at how do we use in addition to robotics across the business to make it more efficient. And so you're probably seeing some of that come through Siraj, as opposed to something different in the platform and custody fees happening.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#164

Got it. Can I just ask 1 more, sorry. If that's okay?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#165

Yes.

Siraj Ahmed analyst
#166

Just into the institutional revenue margins. I actually thought that, for instance, ClearView was actually on the Discover, I mean you just meant to be better. is that based? Is that reduction just a function of timing? Or is that how we should think about it going forward?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#167

Yes, look, how you should think about it going forward. ClearView have actually moved into the HUB24 super fund and doesn't have a private label anymore. And so it's not in the institutional part of the business now. But so the second half is how you should think about the institutional revenue margin.

Andrew Alcock executive
#168

That current client mix, but new clients and shifts and that can change that, as you've seen for ClearView moving out of it so with the current client mix, yes.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#169

Yes.

Operator operator
#170

The next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group

Olivier Coulon analyst
#171

Yes. Sorry, I might be repeating something I misheard a little bit, but the second half, you did say that annualizes to 7 basis points in so is that right? It's like it went from 13 down to 10 for the full FY '25?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#172

Yes, that's correct. That's how to think about it.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#173

Okay. And then, sorry, can you just clarify again the sort of second half cash margin, it averaged around the 6.8% in terms of the pooled cash average through that period.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#174

It was -- second half was 6.7%.

Andrew Alcock executive
#175

They're not margin, it's percentage of assets.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#176

Yes, percentage of FUA.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#177

And then did you mention that if you're thinking that kind of stays roughly at that level into the first half? Or is there an expectation of a mind to hire given that you obviously had some very low full cash percentage earlier in the second half.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#178

So I think in the first half could potentially be -- could be elevated, same as the trend that you would have seen in previous has because you've got July and August with the dividends and distributions coming through before people rebalance you could see a slightly higher percentage in cash in the first half. And so when you're looking over the whole of full year '26, you probably -- it's going to be somewhere between that 6.5% and 7% and potentially could be on the higher end, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Andrew Alcock executive
#179

[indiscernible] You take to by macroeconomic cycles as well.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#180

Yes. Okay. I appreciate that. And sorry, just on myprosperity, I understand the broader strategic intent of the business, and it clearly seems to be delivering that if it's already giving you $1 billion flow and clearly improving NPS, et cetera. But do we have a new timing as to when the business might break even, given the benefits of the 7 strategic kind of license deals that you've executed?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#181

Look, it could be towards the end of '27. we're definitely seeing momentum and a lot of interest. And like you said, we have so [indiscernible] 7 license deals. And so it could be towards the end of full year '27.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#182

Right. And so you gave the EBITDA loss. What was the revenue contribution for the full year, if you don't mind me asking?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#183

It was very similar to full year '24. And so it's between that $3.5 billion and $4 billion.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#184

Yes. So second half, you did materially increase the investment in the product. as well as obviously had a fairly flat top line impact.

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#185

Yes. We're -- we have absolutely mobilized on myprosperity going on the front end of all of the solutions and embedding it into the ecosystem strategy.

Olivier Coulon analyst
#186

Yes. So just the last 1 for me on Tech Solutions, costs ticked up in the second half. Do you mind fleshing out where that investment is going into?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#187

Yes. So we did -- Yes, so within the Class businesses, we've got a program of work that we call compliance of the future that is continuing to make it provide efficiencies and enhanced features and functionality for accounting practices. And part of that was share registry fees. So have agreements in place with all of the major share registers to be able to get automated feeds into the -- and reconciled fees into the systems. That came in at full year '25. And so you would have seen an uptick in the cost for that in the second half, in particular.

Operator operator
#188

Our next question comes Tharan Jeyathasan from with JPMorgan.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#189

Maybe just the first one, touching back on the FY '27 forward growth guidance. I know you mentioned in answer to an earlier question, ranges in the market growth assumptions that's simplicity in that. So maybe if you can just help clarify what those assumptions are at the lower end and the upper end. And secondly, I was also just curious to understand why you've given guidance out into FY '27 as opposed to '26. Do you have any clarity as to what you -- what your net flows would look like into '26? Or are you kind of expecting flat trends '26 and '27?

Andrew Alcock executive
#190

I'll answer the first 1 about why we give guidance out to '27, and we've done this for a number of years, because we're a business that's growing rapidly. And we don't really want to be giving short-term guidance having to revise it all the time, and it creates a whole lot of interest and discussion that's actually not necessarily productive. So we're giving guidance out 2 years deliberate to say it's a longer-term trend in the business. And that's been a policy that we've had as a Board and the company for some time now. It doesn't indicate anything about what we think will happen in '26. It indicates a range that we think for '27 or we think that long-range guidance is appropriate, given how rapidly trends and the business can change. In terms of unpacking it, Kit will cut me off in a sec, we don't actually use a particular assumption set to come up with a range. We look at multiple assumption sets and a 3D matrix, if you like to say, here's or the possibilities. So we look at assumptions where there's 0 market return and where there's 5% to 10% market return. We look at maybe -- we have dimensional grids that do that to say on balance with all these factors and levers, here's where you could get to as opposed to we've used 1 particular assumption set to come up with that range. I hope that's helpful. So -- but in those sensitivities, we may look at a range from 0% to 10% market movement and have a look at that. And some of those 10% would push us outside that range potentially, as well depending on the net flow number. So the correlation between net flows and market movement on what gets you there. So it's really a sensitivity table of possibilities of us landing somewhere that we think is reasonable.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#191

That's helpful. Just a second question. You've provided some useful stats on industry average FUA per adviser at $76 million. You pointed out that you're materially lower at $22 million, and that's an opportunity. I just wanted to understand what's the reason for this because it's quite a substantial gap. I just want to understand what the reason for that was. And if you've seen any change in that over the last couple of periods? And how quickly you expect that to trend upward? Like should we expect it to gradually drift upwards? Or have you seen step changes in the past, and so that's something that we can expect?

Andrew Alcock executive
#192

Yes, totally. Look, as we said in the pack, there's some other hints there as well, it does take 6 years for you to get to a point where you might be saturated in terms of what you're going to get from an advice business. That's an average figure, just a but figure. Advisers don't move money overnight. If they're going to change platforms, they're going to do it in the best interest to clients at the right time, at the right life stage. And so it does take time for them to signal that. In terms of historically, yes, we published each year what our average FUA per adviser is what's become, but I think the stat in the pack is $14 million at $21 million and $22 million this year, which shows you that we've increased that by $8 million over 4 years, at the same time as dramatically increasing the number of advisers. So mathematically, you're getting new advices in who start off with much lower than that average to start with, you're still increasing the average over a growing book. That's the best information we can give you. And we also point out that they were 11% of more than $50 million to show you what's possible to actually explain that over time, you can get to those sort of levels. I hope that helps with understanding the way and the numbers behind that.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#193

Yes. That was helpful. Just 1 last question. I know that you announced for a previous question, you mentioned that you expect mid-teens OpEx growth. So just kind of suggest EBITDA margin expansion if you're able to hit your full guidance into '26. But I'm more interested in if you have any kind of medium-term expectations of where that platform EBITDA margin to settle over time?

Andrew Alcock executive
#194

It depends on how we invest. And so we're not shy in saying that we will continue to invest if there's larger opportunities. So have we not been investing at the rate we are, the margin will be far higher currently. And so -- and that's quite dynamic based on opportunities. So we will pivot based on opportunity in front of us based on what our competitors are doing in the market and ships. So what we have said previously is -- there's no reason why you can't get up to the high 40s. Some people say, can you get to 50% because 1 of your peers was doing that? Well, that's also possible. But it's a function of us using an accelerator in a break in a disciplined way. And so having said that, it's conceivable, and we had a great opportunity. We'd actually slow that down based on getting greater market share over time. So it is about how we run the business dynamically. But as a proxy, you can say high 40s, is where we could end up. But who knows.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#195

Okay. And is there other opportunities to kind of push beyond that? I mean if we were to look at a longer-term time horizon at some stage, your reinvestment as a percentage of core should drop. So just wondering picture looking at 10 years. Are there any comments that you'd make?

Andrew Alcock executive
#196

Things you could do. You could have structural cost improvement through using AI and other technology, you could leverage your cost base to push that margin up as you do in a scalable business. Having said that, you could counter that with you could price led to grow volume, but they need to do that profitably. So there's lots of different possibilities here with that. So it's the possibility of additional revenue margins in terms of looking at how you can leverage your ecosystem and, let's say, an app store or work with others to monetize different opportunities to work beyond the ecosystem. And so there's lots of reasons you could increase revenue margin, which would improve your EBITDA margin over time depending on the cost reason you could reduce your cost base over time or a price as a lever as well. So all those possibilities there. What I can tell you is we're focused on executing strategy and making decisions to get shareholders better returns. And there's some discipline and approach in that strategically, that changes given this is quite a transforming industry and continuing to transform.

Tharan Jeyathasan analyst
#197

I understand. Maybe just 1 last question. I know you bought $50 million odd of treasury shares in the period. reduce the dilution. Any comments as to how you're looking at this into '26?

Kitrina Shanahan executive
#198

Absolutely. We -- as you can see, we've got a very high correlation of our underlying EBITDA to cash on the balance sheet. And if we do, we -- the employee share scheme that's in place around 1 to make sure that we have market competitive employee rates but also retention and attracting high talent if we purchase the share of the market, it reduces the dilution for shareholders and also as we're using our cash resources, it gives you a tax deduction for that. So we will absolutely -- the intention is to continue to purchase shares on market. And you can expect to see a similar level, potentially might even be higher in full year '26.

Andrew Alcock executive
#199

Okay. I think we'll wrap up then, thank you so much for coming along. Thank you very much [indiscernible] some of you on our rounds as we go through with our road show, but thank you for your support and for all your questions, and it's us signing off.

Operator operator
#200

That does conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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