Federated Hermes U.S. Strategic Dividend ETF Price & Performance (FDV)

How are you? Are you able to hear me okay, Sean?

What's that?

Are you able to hear me alright?

Yeah. Is that background okay? There's a bit of light coming through behind me. No. I can see I can see fine. I don't think that's an issue.

Okay. So Jerry, Gerry? Hey, Sean. Yeah.

With the questions, they could come thick and fast. They could come not at all. Peter Reid's indicated in the past he's had difficulty getting through.

Got it. The Q and A function is on, so we should be able to see all the questions that come through as long as they type it into the and A function. I'll raise that at the start of the call as well. I'll give a bit of overview how we'll run it it will just be as usual, we'll start with your kind of commentary and presentation of the deck before we drop into Q and A. And I'll just give everyone a reminder. Sorry, yeah.

There's quite a few people in the attend days list. I assume that that won't go live until you press the button. [indiscernible] Hey, Sean. Yeah. Just Hi, Sean. Believe, we can get started now. So hi, everyone. Thank you for dialing in, and welcome to FTB's twenty twenty four Full Year Results Conference. Begin with a presentation of the 2024 results from Sean. Before following with Q and A afterwards. Throughout the presentation, please feel free to put your questions into I'll now hand it over to Sean to begin with the presentation. Thanks, Sean.

Thanks, Jerry, and welcome everyone who's joined us this morning. As Jerry mentioned, we're going to take you through the investor presentation that accompanied the audited financial statements that were lodged. Earlier today on the ASX, do also want to welcome to the call our Chairman, Anthony Koch, who has dialed in, as has Francis Poe, who's head of our Audit Committee as well. So you have a couple of the company directors on the call for your availability. Jerry, we'll go straight into the presentation, and I'm just going to share my screen for those who are able to see it? And we'll talk to those who might be on a telephone. Give you indication of the topics we're covering We updated the market at the January as to our quarterly and in effect our full year results. So they are in market. What we released today was the audited financial statements.

And we've provided additional information in this investor deck.

On the details around those audited financial statements, which given our structure are always take a little bit of narrating and understanding. In terms of the P and L and how that works with the various holdings that we have across our operating regions. Those of you who are familiar with us will know the background to the model. Perhaps those who are newer to the story, will be more familiar with some of the brands that are noted And some of the models that have obviously high profile brands, our model is the same. We operate online marketplace platforms in emerging markets. We're across three regions.

Our model is very simple. It is online classified where it gets a little bit interesting for us is the opportunity to do more than just online classifieds and that is to help our consumers coming to our websites and our sellers who are advertising on our websites connect beyond just a search and discover which is typical of saying REI or a car sales experience. [indiscernible] work with them to help facilitate transactions beyond just search and discover That's a hot topic at the moment. It's a topic that we are very high conviction on in terms of monetizing the ability to facilitate transactions It's something that we're continuing to work on and I'll touch on a bit more today. Particularly relevant to some of the things that are happening in our Latin American business where we've taken some decisions. Over the previous number of months, which we believe put us in a much stronger position medium to longer term around the sustainability of that opportunity. So core classifieds, going very well in of our countries, our ability to monetize transactions going well in most of our countries with some hard decisions made on what kind of model we want to take into the future around generating value from those transaction opportunities.

Our results in what was a fairly tough year I think when we got into Q3 and q four, we we we found that the trading conditions were particularly difficult in a lot of our regions. We were pleased that if I look at the end of the year into Q4, Our businesses in Asia returned to revenue growth and profitability. Our businesses in MENA Return to growth and profitability in three of our four businesses in our LatAm region. Grew and grew profitably as well.

We're doing some work on Infocastis around the type of transactions that we want to push through that platform and the model that underpins them Our revenue was slightly up on last year, despite some of those strategic decisions we took in the back half of last year. We did invest significantly in our operating platforms, through the course of 2024. That was a deliberate decision. If I go back to 2023, we were free cash flow positive. We had reasonably strong bank balance, and we needed to address some technical debt that had accumulated in particularly our platforms in LatAm, which we did through the course of last year. Pleased to say that our December cash balance returned to free cash flow positive. Our cash balance increased from Q3 into Q4. So whilst that investment took place in 2024, we see it as a long term investment and we saw it as a couple of tough decisions that we took 2024, which obviously impacted our results and we acknowledge that. And first and foremost, we want to acknowledge that no one is happy with where the share price is at, but we believe that the decisions we took in the latter half of last year I geared at improving the trajectory of that share price moving forward.

And of course, as a significant shareholder myself, these things are obviously critical not just to everyone on this call and all of our shareholders, but but also to me as the CEO and founder of the business. So I want to assure people that it is a red hot topic internally, and we're very, very focused on making sure the decisions we make are the right ones for the longer term, and we're very, very focused on making sure that we're running the businesses with the best interest of shareholders in mind. Now our share price obviously is not where we want it to be. But I think we traded toward the end of last year in much more better shape Our cash balance improved. So our cash increased the December And we think we're through a lot of those hard decisions, not just around investing in platform, but also rationalizing our platform or rationalizing our portfolio rather when it comes to a couple of the businesses that we couldn't see scale [indiscernible] they are being exited and that'll tidy up portfolio in Asia and in MENA. So we'll have a full suite of growing profitable businesses that we want to focus on in 2025.

So it was a busy year for us. It was a it was a tough trading year for us. We did finish slightly up on the previous year, which was encouraging, but we did suffer a bit on some of our EBITDA performance based on a bit of that investment in platform and operations to really get us set for what we believe will be a a much better performance as the gear unfolds. The strategic review, just quickly in summary, is a hot topic as well. We signed a mandate with Investment Bank to conduct a strategic review at the end of twenty twenty four. [indiscernible] took some traction as we got into January. We we have probably just paused that ever so slightly because we wanted to get our audited financial statements into market, which we've done today. And really give that strategic review a full set of accounts to work from And then obviously, the big focus of that review is to look forward and understand ways in which we can unlock better value for our shareholders and the origin of that review is trying to figure a way in which people or the markets or we can help people better understand, particularly some of the scale and opportunities we have in our LatAm business.

When we started this business, we were two thirds Asia and a little bit of LatAm. As I sit here today, we're sort of two thirds LatAm and we have Asia and MENA. So we're a significantly different business We need to ensure that we're doing everything we can from a from a structure perspective, from a shareholder perspective to make sure that the value we believe exists in our businesses is being realized. And as we case. Give you a look at our portfolio and go and do the math on each of the region's standalone you very quickly get past our market cap. There's lots of reasons, our share price is where it is, but again, I want to to reiterate the fact that as CEO and Founder and a significant shareholder my focus is laser like on making decisions, particularly in the back half of last year to improve our medium to longer term trajectory. Get our businesses growing, but also do it with much better capital management as we head into the balance of 2025. In terms of outlook, as I mentioned, we took a conscious decision to invest in our platforms through 2024. We were free cash flow positive 2023.

We had a bank balance. We wanted to make sure we deployed some of that money sitting on our balance sheet. Into options and choices that we thought will create future value. And this was significant for us as we roll into 2025 with that significant investment made we start to then return to being free cash flow positive. And that capital management is probably the number one topic internally if I were to share what we talk about from day to day. And that provides us a much stronger platform for growing and making sure our businesses are focused on business models that are scalable, that are profitable, that increasingly are self-service to drive margin. And ultimately giving us a better revenue mix continue to be very focused on our cost base. We did increase our cost base in 2024, but again, it was a conscious decision because we needed to invest in some parts of the business we think are going to provide good long term value for shareholders. And again, I just want to reiterate the focus on, really strict capital management, which we which we're very focused on internally. And will be a big feature of how we continue to unlock growth into 2025.

When you look at the results, as I mentioned, it was not as strong as we'd hoped. We had good growth toward the end of the year in our regions. Again, with the exception of Infocastis. And I'll talk to the regions in some detail. We saw a steady recovery in Pakistan, particularly in Samin, which is a significant business for us. So that bodes well for, again, 2025. And a lot of the evidence we look out of the macro pictures in our markets. So We're seeing inflation decline. We're seeing interest rates come down and we're seeing increased activity levels commercially in particularly property and people buying property and where we have cars businesses the automotive markets as well. And just to give that some context, in Pakistan, which was a really important business for us, which suffered through '23 and '24, We've seen inflation now reduced to 4%. It's the lowest it's been since pre COVID. Inflation touched almost 30% going back about a year. In Pakistan, they've had five rate cuts month on month over the last five months. So interest rates are now down to to much lower levels. So whilst all of that doesn't help us reflect on our performance in 2024, We believe with the series of hard decisions we made internally in the back half of the year, the focus on capital management, and ensuring that all of our regions, return to growth it puts us in a much better position in '25 and with the benefit in our view of some macro factors moving in a more positive direction, particularly when it comes to people's purchasing of homes and and to an extent cars.

The revenue breakdown is fairly straightforward. And again, we released this in end of Jan. And I'll touch on the individual regions. So I won't stop necessarily on this slide, but to say that we managed to continue to grow albeit ever so slightly. And that was held back probably by a couple of key businesses that under performed in the back half of 'twenty four. If I look forward into the expenses, again, we did invest in some parts of the business We reduced costs in other parts of the business. But our aim, of course, is to keep that pretty flat and grow margin into 2025. Just want to reiterate that out of '23, we we were cash flow, free cash flow positive. We had money in the bank. We wanted to take some decisions to [indiscernible] coupled with a couple of macro factors, which probably didn't go our way made for a tough year. But we think that those hard decisions are now in place and we'll see some benefit of those as we move forward into into the rest of 2025. Just to give an EBITDA breakdown, similar story on the earlier slides. We've stood still in a couple of our regions.

We've invested in a couple of others but very, very focused on making sure that the work that was done in 2024 bears fruit in 2025 and you know, this is all about making sure that our longer term trajectory for shareholders is the right one. And again, I acknowledge as a significant shareholder, we're simply in no one happy about where we're at by way of the markets. But I guess there are things that we can control and we can't control. And the things we can control, we're very focused on and that's getting ourselves set for a better business. Our P and L is always a bit of a longer story. Of course, the lines to probably zero in on are the the group EBITDA by way of our AFS lots of stuff that happens below the line around amortization of some CapEx decisions that were made in 2024. And some movement around the associates that we account for in Pakistan. So that is unpacked in more detail in the AFS, in the audited financial statements. But again, want to make sure that all of these markers are pointing in more positive directions as we move into 2025 In terms of the regions, just to stop on LatAm, we had reasonably difficult We had a good start to the year.

We had a reasonable and difficult middle to the year, and we had a frustrating end to the year. If I look toward the end of Q4, which is probably the best indicator as we head into Q1 of this year. I think Carreza business in Colombia grew really solidly toward the end of the year. We saw growth in our business Yapo, which is in Chile. That came off the back of a significant replatform exercise that we invested in through the middle of twenty twenty four. We were able to grow that business in Q4. It's the first time that business has had sort of meaningful revenue growth until we've replatformed it. E24, again, was modest growth, but finished in the black and where we've made some hard decisions is just the way in which our most significant business in LatAm goes about generating revenue from the opportunity around transactions and that's I. E. Strong core classifieds but resetting the way that we go about generating revenue from transactions that occur through our website in the latter half of the year. So that was probably coupled with a little bit of misfortune around external factors in Uruguay, but we're not putting that up as an excuse, but we do believe the platform we've built in moving to a more sustainable approach to generating revenue from from transactions, not just classifieds in Uruguay as the right one, For those of you who perhaps weren't familiar with the data we released at the end of January, we went into a fair bit of detail about The strategic decision that was taken in the latter half of last year, and this just goes to the way in which we were leveraging our marketplace business, our online classifieds business, which remains very strong.

And then using that brand position, that leadership position, the competitive moat that you build in this model, in this online classifieds model, to then generate revenue from transactions. We were working very, very closely with property developers in a number of markets in South America more specifically Uruguay, Paraguay and to an extent Peru.

And we were doing a lot of work with property developers in helping them not just get leads from us, but get highly qualified leads that resulted in transactions. We deployed a lot of tech We deployed a lot of marketing, and this model worked quite well. It generated significant revenue for us and was beginning to scale up. And as it began to scale up, we started to run into, I guess, some systemic or structural problems that existed around this model as it grows rapidly. And that amounted fundamentally to lead leakage, We had a lot of tech deployed helping our customers, our go to market. We'd curate leads, which is buyers of or potential buyers of property. We deployed things like bot chats on WhatsApp. We deployed some algorithms to help us understand buyer behavior. And we were delivering a high volume of very well qualified leads to our customers. As those leads increased in volume, we found that we were suffering leakage once we lost control of that process. And by what I by losing control, what I mean is that the first half of this process, this transaction model that we have in market is on our platform and we control it.

Once that left our platform, we were starting to suffer leakage at various points in the process up to the point of the transaction. Where we had some customers telling us that the lead didn't come from us or they had that lead already in their database. There were lots of issues that started to arise as this thing grew rapidly. Now to solve that problem, we were working even harder to develop and generate leads for our advertisers and help them generate transactions beyond just search and discover, which is typical of a classified site. And, of course, that simply exacerbated the issue around lead leakage. While we were learning a lot of lessons from this model and seeing leakage occur and and and our conversion rates go down and increasingly having to spend more money to generate more qualified leads for our customers We, realized that to scale this up and to keep it profitable and perhaps most importantly of all for it to be a cash generative long term valuable product for us was becoming challenging. At the same time, we'd released in market a a parallel version to how we could approach transactions, which was centered around a product called Iris, Iris is ostensibly an interface a database, if you will, which brings those same those same customers together, which is our property developers, but connects them more so with our brokers across the region typically are a great source of buyer leads.

So in our markets, particularly LatAm, You have a lot of brokers or agents as as they might be called in Australia who lack inventory, but have a lot of clients as buyers. Developers obviously have inventory. But they have no relationship that I've talked to brokers. So we've sort of moved ourselves into a two point zero version of how we want to monetize transactions. Now we released Iris market sometime back. It's been very successful. And we've taken a strategic decision for this to be the centerpiece of how we want to of how we want to monetize transactions moving forward. It solves a number of the problems that we were starting to encounter in the one point o model It's been running parallel in markets, so it's it's past proof of concept. It mitigates the need to invest in generating more buyer leads. It also mitigates to a very large extent the lead leakage we were having by keeping the transaction on our platform within this product, Iris, And then, of course, you end up getting higher conversion rates. So we absolutely understand and accept that the movement to this is caused a decline in revenue in this one business unit, Infocastis in In Latin America, frustratingly, I guess, from my own perspective, other three businesses in Q4 grew quite well in Q4 and we suffered a real hit on the decline in revenue from transactions in the one point zero model.

To the uptick in revenue that we putting ourselves front and center with this two point o model on. So this is this is going to provide us in our view a much better medium to longer term outcome think it'll be a better outcome for the business and consequently for shareholders. It was a difficult and painful decision to make to move to this, but if we delayed it, it probably would have been even more painful and we've made that tough decision to move to this model. Our challenge now as a team is to scale this Iris product and pick the revenue up that we've lost from the one point o version of transactions I guess the silver lining here is this version of how we want to approach transactions in LatAm is far more scalable. It's far more sustainable, and the economics are much better. Task from management is now to get this into market rapidly and see it take up that revenue slippage that we've suffered. Idenfocuses as 2025 unfolds front of us. So we wanted to give investors, our shareholders Frontier insight into the decision and the process and what we feel will be a better outcome for shareholders, but we also clearly and plainly acknowledge that it's been a tough impact, a negative impact on our revenues.

We felt that it was commercially responsible decision to make to get to it. And when I win discussions with our team in LatAm around this movement, everyone is Extremely vested in it. We're all very excited about it, and we all have great confidence that the lessons we learned extracting revenue from transactions in market will be better served by our two point o model, which is centered around a product that we've been testing in market for some time. And have moved to over the last quarter and a half. If I move to MMG, again, finished the year much better. We had a very tough Q3 So these numbers probably reflect what was a really tough Q3. I'm pleased to say that these businesses have started January much better. As have the businesses in LatAm. Of this information was obviously shared [indiscernible] in the January update.

Our businesses in Asia, again, finished the year much better than the sort of middle of the year and consequently gave the full year a much better view. And again have started the year quite well in January. So we're much happier with our start to the year than we are, our middle of the year in 2024. Perhaps just moving on to the associates, and this is a great interest to people because it involves us. I mean, anyone who's followed our business will know that, I mean, was on the end of some pretty difficult domestic economic issues going back sort of eighteen months. What we have seen in this Cermaine business is a very steady recovery in the second half of twenty twenty four. And again have started January very well. So we think the worst is behind us in Pakistan, as I mentioned, some of the macro factors which determine the success of this model are now much more favorable than they've been for quite some time.

Inflation is now down to 4% and there's been five rate cuts over the last five months.

From the central bank in Pakistan, so that bodes well by way of the performance for Zemin heading into 2025. So I guess as I look through the results, we had a good start to '24. We had a very disappointing Q3 and and picked up some of that slack toward the end of Q4. Some of those decisions we took through the back half of last year we're really to make sure that we have a sustainable and scalable business and we can get better revenue growth with a higher quality revenue growth that is reflects better capital management and higher margins as we move forward. So it's been a tough year for the business. It's been a tough year running the business. But I feel like the tough decisions we've taken in the latter half of last year position is much better. And we're very focused on ensuring that 2025 is a much brighter year for everyone. We should take the opportunity to thank all of the team across all of the countries that we operate in through 2024 and also our team based in Kuala Lumpur. But they work in getting us through, particularly the back half of '24 and our clear focus on making sure we have disciplined capital management that we have business models in each of our operating companies that are sustainable and profitable and will grow margin over time.

That we're leveraging that core classifieds business that remains very strong. That we're putting in place an approach to how we can monetize transactions our markets beyond just a search and discover classified model, how we can monetize transactions but do that profitably and do that [indiscernible] scale and do it sustainably. And do it for the benefit of shareholders. So I want to thank everyone for their patience As I said, it's been a pretty tough year running the business, but I feel like we're through some of those tough moments, and, we're looking forward to 2025 and sort of stop on sort of thirty minutes there and I thank our shareholders for their continued support.

And happy then Jerry to move to questions if you think that's now an appropriate time to do so. Great. Thanks, Sean.

Yes, we'll move over to Q and A now. Just a reminder, for everyone, if you do have any questions to please put your questions in the Q and A function within Zoom. Our first question is in relation to the statutory results. One of the questions is if you could please provide some commentary on what is included in the offline production costs and whether that cost line will be expected to change under Iris?

Yes, there's we unpack a little bit on the OpEx there. On Slide page eight, I think. We put our down on the gas on some new product initiatives, which included Centrify, included using events, for example, to try and improve customer engagement, We ran a lot of events in 02/2024, which was to launch and promote both Centrify and Iris. And those events probably won't have the same velocity in 2025. So the increase in production cost was largely driven by getting some of those new product initiatives in market And what I mean by events is getting different customer segments together getting consumers together and actually holding physical events to to promote just not the core business, but ostensibly some of those new products like Centrify and Iris. So Iris now is sort of in market. It's got traction. It's a case of scaling and it won't rely on that as much in 2025, But again, I guess it just goes to the plan that we had in 2024, which was to invest a bit more in getting the right products in market, getting profitable products into market, getting products that are going to be scalable longer term into [indiscernible] And building a platform for the next couple of years.

And We we we, you know, that that increase in production costs, which which were the category production cost would have largely gone unnoticed. Had we got better traction on on some of the revenue items that we suffered from, particularly around transactions and that interacted with Iris in the latter half of the year. So that's that's something we're very focused on, making sure we cap into '25 Thanks, Sean. Question we had was in regarding to EBITDA to cash conversion. What are your expectations for EBITDA to cash conversion in calendar year 2025?

Well, I mean, there's clearly a significant gap which goes to the CapEx investment we made in the platform in replatforming a lot of the the businesses or two of the big businesses in Ladder.

So if I think about January, [indiscernible] [indiscernible] [indiscernible] and I'm not getting guidance or talking to results that are not in market, but you know January, we're profitable and we're free cash flow positive. Now there was a most months last year, we were profitable, but we had a drag on cash because we were investing at So our cash balance from the end of Q3 the end of Q4, [indiscernible] So that's probably the best way to look back and think, well, what what can I expect in 2025? I look at Q3, into Q4, so at the end of Q3 to the end of Q4, our cash balance increased. And we're profitable in that quarter So that's probably the best evidence of the reduction in CapEx I. E. Investment in platforms and how that affects cash and ultimately EBITDA, the reconciliation to EBITDA, Q4 is probably a good example where our cash grew. Stable and grew, and we were profitable. So you're already shrinking that gap I said, there were any number of months last year. Where we're investing some of that cash into products primarily and a bit of OpEx where the gap from EBITDA Takash was was material, and materially not in a good way.

Looking back at the time, we're obviously investing into product. We think that's a great idea, and we love in product because it underpins future growth. But, you know, in q four, our our cash increased. So that's probably the best way to think about how we're approaching capital management as it relates to the the delta or the reconciliation to EBITDA?

Next question is in relation to the strategic review. We have a question asking if you could please provide some more commentary on the strategic and how that's been progressing over the recent period Yeah, so we signed the mandate just before Christmas in December.

We were assured that there wouldn't be a delay because of Christmas, but there, of course, there was. We got into January and with undertaking the [indiscernible] preliminary work on that review. Think we sort of sat back and thought that it would be far better to have all of the Statutory results in market, which is now to enable that review to have fully disclosed twenty twenty four accounts in market rather than behind NDAs. So that was a conscious decision. That review will gather pace post today, essentially. We wanted to get past our our full year results. I know there's some out there that will be thinking, well, hang on. You're now sitting December. It's the February. How come it's not finished? I get it.

Where trying to run it at a pace that suits the business and ultimately our shareholders. And we thought taking our foot off the gas ever so slightly till we got our financial statements in market fully audited, They're all now available publicly. The review now can can look forward and and start to look at 2025 as a as a year to to provide context to that review. The review itself, as I said, was predicated around the fact There's palpable and shared frustration about our our market cap versus our performance. Our performance wasn't great in the latter half of '24. I get that. We still think we're worth a lot more than what the market is attributing value to, and there's a whole lot of reasons for that. And there'll be some very clever people who will tell me that we I should just run the business better And believe me when I say we're in there running the business better every day.

But the share price is obviously the catalyst for us saying, in this review, what are we missing? Are we failing to really help people understand our LatAm businesses, which I think if you stood them alone would be worth more than our market cap. I'm quite convinced that the progress that's the recovery in Pakistan, if you stood those businesses alone, you'd step back and think, gee, as we're trading at whatever price we're trading at today, those businesses are probably now again worth our market cap. And that leaves a lot of other stuff's optionality for free. So when you do a sum of the parts valuation our business, most people go, why are you trading at what you are? Now there's good reasons for that. Some we control, some we don't. We think making sure our capital management is really tight. We think making sure we have scalable, sustainable margin growth business models in each of our operating companies is really important I get all of that. The review is there to say, hey. What if if if we think we're on top of those things and we're making progress, What are we missing by way of our structure?

Are we failing to help people understand what's happening in Latabid?

Do we need to orientate our business more around LatAm and if I go back in time, our business was very much through the lens of Asia.

Most of our business was in Asia, and that's fundamentally changed. So the review will get a place once we get our financial statements in market, We have full then sets of information The review then can really focus on looking forward. And and that'll gather pace some After today, Thanks, Sean.

In relation to the strategic review, how does the performance of Infocastis impact strategic review? And do you need to fix things first and show improved performance?

Yes, it's a very it's a question that's Very on point and one that we've asked ourselves. I think when we look at a strategic review and the reason we guess, wanted to get results in market was to sort of cleanse a little bit The idea of the review is to really look forward and help us understand have we got everything right from here in structure, etcetera? Obviously, a massive part of that is the performance of our LatAm business, and a massive part of that LatAm business is infocasters. So the timing of that [indiscernible] It's been unfortunate, but we didn't want to delay I guess, the decisions we were making in LatAm or in Infocastis to make sure we had a scalable approach to transactions. It's cost us revenue. We get it. At the same time, we didn't think necessarily delaying having an external perspective on how we're structured and how we orientate ourselves and and and how we're set up We didn't want to delay that either. I think by getting results in market by giving us some traction into this year and having the review with the capacity to really talk about the future and looking forward and what the model can be is A reasonably what would I say, it's a reasonably sensible path forward but we're very conscious of balancing those two things.

We're not out there We don't want to be out in market doing a review while one of our really important businesses and in LatAm has made a strategic decision is to change the way it goes about generating revenue from a key business line. We know to be out there in a review while that's occurring. But at the same time, I think we've got to have the I guess, the commercial maturity to look past that a little bit and know that that decision around infotecas and LatAm is one we took for the longer term. And the strategic review is about the longer term and helping us understand how we give or deliver better value back to shareholders, moving forward. So look, none of these things ever seem to come together perfectly. I'll be the first to admit that. But we think we're managing it as studiously as possible and we do want the review to look forward and say, how can we make this business worth more? If we've got all of our operating standards and decisions in place and we made a big one about changing models around transactions. If we've now got that in place, give us an external perspective on how we make sure we're maximizing shareholder value if we think we've got all of those those key pieces in place operationally.

And we need to run the business better operationally. We know that again, goes back to just really disciplined capital management, goes back to making sure that the quality of your revenue is sustainable and you can get margin growth You know, and and and as CEO and founder of the business, and I've been running these businesses for a very long time, It's not lost on me that the value that we're creating for shareholders is not in my view, reflective of the value that the business is generating. So it's trying to piece all that together do it do it in a way that satisfies everyone or what do they say? 80% of the time, you can 80% of the people happy with We're trying to move forward on multiple fronts. But it is all geared about getting better outcomes for our shareholders, which we've not done in the last little while.

Great. Thanks, Shum.

The next question is in relation to FDV's performance and share price. So FDV is now entering its fourth straight year of declining share price and is currently trading at an all time low. There are things that have been outside of management controls but there have also been actions that have been detrimental to shareholder value. When will FDV be getting back to delivering value for shareholders? [indiscernible] Totally respect and understand that they are the poignancy of the question. I mean, we did have really strong share growth for the first five or six years. I guess that shouldn't be lost on people, but acknowledge that the last few We've lost value. It would be glib and easy for me to say that, you know, we we are focused on shareholder value. But as the question points out, we've taken some decisions that one could argue aren't in shareholder interest if you looked at it purely from an external perspective or looked at it very much in the moment and I guess one of the challenges with being listed is the stock market is in the moment more so than ever, daily, hourly, So we've got to manage obviously, our shareholders and the reason we exist.

And I think what we realized through the course of last year was that we weren't delivering on shareholder value. In the context of what our share price was, we felt that operationally, we were making good decisions and we made some very tough decisions, which I fully acknowledge have hurt us in the short term. And without without wanting to feel sorry for myself, and I don't, it hurts me more than anyone. So as a founder, I get it, and I'm very much aligned with with our significant shareholders on that Frontier. But we could have continued and we would have reached a point where we couldn't scale fast enough or we couldn't get margin out of some of the key business models that we were trying to grow and that that largely relates to transactions in a couple of our key markets. Add to that, there are factors out of our control, but you can't complain about those by their very nature. You don't control them, so there's no good whinging. But I think we've navigated what was a very difficult 2024 Certainly, from my experience, having run classifieds businesses since the year February, I can't I can't think of a year that was less predictable and trickier to navigate, and I'm not again complaining.

It's my job. I get it. But I think we're we're on a much better platform as we head into 2025. I think if you talk to the people in market, in the businesses, they give you an interesting perspective because they're running the businesses day to day. They're on the ground. And they will tell you they're very very bullish Now what's probably lost on them, and it's not a criticism, but it's just a fact their focus is day to day running a business. The bigger picture, which is connecting, you know, how we operate on the ground to the responsibility we have to shareholders. And that's been a gap in the latter half of last year, but we had to sort of push through. And here we are. So I don't have a magical answer for that question. It's a little bit of a loaded one, but at the same time, it's bit of a Dorothy Dixon to say that we are absolutely focused on on shareholder value, but at the same time, we've had to take some decisions that we feel are better long term. If you add to that the frustrations around things that we can't control, And but we feel like we've taken some really strong disciplined decisions in the last of quarters, particularly around capital management, particularly around making sure you have margin growth businesses that we can scale over time.

So I fully understand the frustration that comes through in the question. There's no one more vested in the stock price than me. So I guess it's a case of wanting to see these decisions that we've made in the latter half of last year and into this year put us in a better position in 2025 and beyond. And at the same time, we've got a strategic review externally, which is which is really designed to test Our structure and our setup and the way we've been operating and tell us if there's from an external perspective, at least in a sort of capital market slash structural way, how we can do it better. So I think the board and management are very united on that front. I mean, Anthony Clark, our Chairman, Frontier on on the call as well. So he's anyone wants to ask for his comment on on on these matters, they're most welcome too. But You know, we we are we have high conviction on on on what we're doing, and just got to push through what's been a pretty difficult period for us. Thanks, Ron.

Next question is around Iris. How does Iris change any of the financial dynamics with three sixty LatAm as it seems like Maybe the transactions business is a low margin agency business with high receivables. Could you walk us through how the source of revenue, cost structure and timing of cash receipt is changing? Well, it changes because if I look at model one point zero, which is on screen, if people can see their screens, We were very focused on Using a lot of tech to prescreen buyers, we would filter them through. We would bot chat to them on WhatsApp until we could match them to a property that one of our customers, our property developer customers had We then would effectively send that highly curated ready to buy person to the developer And we would get paid at some point post to the transaction after everyone else. So you had a bit of a disconnect between the investment upfront and and and ultimately getting paid. The economics were the financial economics were still fine, but as this model scaled, you were suffering lead leakage platforms. So you have customers coming to us and saying, well, yeah, you sent me this lead, but I spoke to this person a year ago.

So doesn't really qualify as your lead, so I'm not going to pay you. So So this model worked very well as it went from small to medium, as it got large, it ran into some Structural constraints and economic realities of getting paid last after the transaction, after everyone, to generate the transaction, and then really not having full control of that once it leaves your platform, when you're doing this modest volume, your ability to control this process is far greater. But as you scale up, and we were, we found that our conversion rates were starting to decline. So you go chase more leads because you want to increase your your transactions. You think that's the answer. So becomes a diminishing return business. At the same time, we released iris into market. So we've been running this in parallel [indiscernible] we recognized that there were some potential flaws in the first model.

What this does is it moves us to a different role in the transaction, if you will. So we are we are solving more of a problem that's in market structurally that allows us to participate in the transaction. So you've got property developers in our markets in LatAm, have a lot of inventory. You've got brokers or agents, as they're called in Australia, who tend to have a lot of buyers. Not much inventory. The two parties don't talk to each other. That's just the structure of the industry. That's just how it is. We started to develop a product which allowed developers, and it was largely modeled off the MLS system in The States It's not the same as the MLS system in The States. It's simply modeled off that where where you create a database, you create an app, an interface, that allows developers to put their inventory in, and then it gives access to our broker network across all of our markets access to that inventory. So you then become at the center of the transact so rather than being the lead generator you you almost outsource that task to your brokers, and at the same time, [indiscernible] become a centerpiece of the transaction So to put simply, we moved from being a a source of buying to a a different role in the transaction, which is an intermediary.

We solve a problem at the same time. So you then control the transaction. It stays on your platform. And the difference here is you get paid first and you distribute the rest of the proceeds to the other parties to the transaction. So the fundamental financials at the center of this are the same. The difference is you're not investing upfront. You're creating a centralized source of inventory and buyers and sellers for the transaction. You're then collecting the fees that relate to that transaction. And then after the fact, you're dispersing those fees to the parties who are on either side of the transaction. So what we're trying to solve from one point zero is mitigating the initial investment upfront providing leads. We're then trying to keep control of the transaction on our platform, on the IRIS product And as a result, you don't suffer the same lead leakage and you have much higher conversion.

So our conversion on the one point o model had slipped to below 1%. On this model, it's back up to 5%.

So the lead management is critical, keeping it on your platform and keeping control of it so you can convert more you get paid sooner, and it's a better It's better on mitigating, number one, that the flaws in the one point zero model the actual financials are still the same, but you're not investing anything upfront and you actually the transaction through to close. And able to then get paid, excuse me, and you disperse the balance of those payments to other parties. So that's the difference. Now to remind people that this this this Iris platform has been in market parallel operating in parallel while we tested it and realized that this is a much easier product to scale across the region. And ultimately to have sustainable and BA a margin generating way that an online marketplace can monetize the activity which happens after a consumer sort of does the search and discover piece. So This is they're the fundamental differences. Now we wouldn't have got to this had we not learned from the first version first version was working really well. Until we ran into what were economic and process constraints that The movement to evolve that is where we've landed with with the lessons learned, the product that's been in market, and the fact that mitigates a lot of the issues we were having in that one point o model.

Thanks, Ron. [indiscernible] calendar year 2025 CapEx be relative to 2024?

The answer is off the top of my head. I don't have that number. We don't typically provide forward guidance, but my simple comment would be less Thanks. The next question is, would you consider paying dividends if free cash flow is over, say, $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 We are absolutely committed to Improving shareholder returns So if we got to the point where we were generating free cash and accumulating it, We would absolutely Frontier it a dividend. I don't want people to come off this call going, great, moment they hit a number, we're going to get a check. I'm simply saying that philosophically, that is that is absolutely why we exist. We're now very focused on our capital management We want to make sure that that provides stability for the business and takes away if someone's looking at our business and a lot of people are critics before they're advocates, If they want to point to different things and cash being one of them, we're simply removing that from the narrative. We're very focused on capital management. So if we get to the point where we have more cash than we need or more cash than we can find something to do with that is a better return for shareholders, absolutely that would be a consideration.

Thanks, Ron.

We also have a question on [indiscernible] And what drove Fincare's strong performance relative to the rest of the region. One of the things that happened with Fincare in 2024 was that it improved its competitive position. So Everyone knows [indiscernible] in online classifieds, when you're the market leader, you build Effectively, a marketplace. So so in our markets, if you're a market leader, you don't create just the place people go. You create a marketplace and then the momentum that creates gives you opportunities to do a whole range of things. ThinkPad has improved its leadership position versus number two by some margin during 2024. And was able then to improve its average revenue per customer, I. E. Could push through price rises easier, could do more innovative product releases with greater uptake more traction, [indiscernible] It really, I guess, was evidence of the value of market leadership [indiscernible] And the competitive moat sounds a bit cliche that you create and the benefit you can extract. And I think in emerging markets being number one is is hypercritical. It's if you look at what's happening in Australia with CoStar bidding for Even a number two in a market like Australia is considered a great business.

Being a number one in any market is considered to be Now now that doesn't always mean you have this flawless execution capacity which monetizes that market leadership position. That's where the work is. That's where the work has to be done. But Finco benefited from improving its competitive position, improve your competitive position, most of your other metrics tend to follow. So it had a really strong year.

Thanks, Sean. That comes to the end of the Q and A section. I'll now hand back to you for any closing remarks.

All right. Look, firstly, want to thank [indiscernible] many and varied shareholders for their patience and support. I fully acknowledge that the performance in the latter half of the year was not what we wanted. We started '24 quite well. And it was very, very frustrating through Q3 and we recovered a bit in Q4 and like I said, all of our businesses grew with the exception of Infocastis in Q4.

And I hope that we continue to provide people with information about the strategic decisions that we're making that are being done day to day and how that reconciles back to a performance such as infocasters, but we have very high conviction on that being the right decision as we move through this year. And we want to set ourselves to deliver better shareholder outcomes in 2025. And again, I want to thank the FDV team the management team in all the various countries who have worked really diligently over the last number of months and through what has was a tough year for everyone. But I want to thank those shareholders that have continued to support us, Frontier to show the faith, and rest assured that we're very focused on improving those shareholder outcomes in 2025. And as per usual, Gerry, I think I make myself available pretty much to anyone most of the time. So always happy to connect with people in between reporting. Within reasonable limitations. I think we have about 10,000 shareholders, so I can't do can't talk to everyone, but we want to continue to make sure we are communicate with the market about what we're doing and what we believe are the right long term decisions.

And we look forward to 2025 Thanks, Sean. That brings an end to the twenty twenty four results conference.

You everyone for attending.

Thank you, everyone.