First Trust S&P International Dividend Aristocrats Fund Price & Performance (FID)

If the market holds at this at the same level or it grows. Our financial planning [indiscernible] is fully integrated with our financial planning software as well, and we'll see that on our IT Cape case. We have got, the branded core Fiducian platform. And within the core platform, we have quite a comprehensive investment menu comprising operation funds, manager accounts, as well as external managed funds. In the next slide, we have just given some visuals on net inflows as well as the relationship between the Pansaca administration and the platform revenue and profit before tax. On the left side of the chart, as you can see, the core platform net inflows In the recent past, the first half, we have as I mentioned before, we have recorded $186,000,000 net inflows and roughly about 60% of them is brand new money that's coming into our network, which is going through our platform. And roughly about 40% of that is is all the external platform if it's right for the clients. The adviser might have recommended them to Fiducian platform, and that's what's coming through about 40%. [indiscernible] Taking a step back, the average revenue that we have got for the platform side of the business is roughly about 60 basis points.

And that includes the normal administration fee, any transition fee the interest margins that we earn, but also the expense recovery, any other pocket expense recovery that we do from the fund as well. We are very pleased to observe that both salary as well as franchise planners are contributing from our FFS network into the net inflows. And as I mentioned, it's coming from both angle organically as well as inorganically. With that, just moving on to our oxalium and patches. As you might heard and might have heard from our presentations before, that we are very energetic and very focused and enthusiastic about the new batch new batch product that we have got launched out. Over a couple of years back. And Oxilidion as of today got the same level of service for the rest of federation platform that we provide, which is really way ahead compared to where the industry stands. But the auxiliary pricing point is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, headline rates in Australia at the moment along the backbone providers. So we are really hoping to disrupt the disruptors, some of the newcomers that have come into the platform business platform industry and platform business.

And we really hope into attracting those clients That, that could benefit from the service that we provide. So total, we have got roughly about five batches, and we have also working through a very strong pipeline of IP networks What we're experiencing is that some of the some of our competitors, as they have grown bigger and bigger, Their appetite for a smaller financial advisors or financial advice group is sort of waning, and there's a space that we believe we can go and add value. We've got an extensive investment menu that can be offered through this platform. And we have been able to clock in roughly about it's early days. But roughly about $30,000,000 in net inflows in the new platform. So overall, taking the IFM monies as well as the platform and measures, we have caused December roughly about 440,000,000 And as I mentioned, the Office and Sales Development team is working very, very hard to to convert some of those people into pipeline and negotiations are underway. So the way the way we saw this was slightly different to what we hear from some of the more successful platforms like HubNet Wealth and Colonial and others where they speak of [indiscernible] big developments in technology We see that our technology is as good as the best, if not better.

But really, the difference from us is service. At the end of the day, clients generally send an application form in and that's processed sent to the custodian. It's invested. You get a report back. You get a confirmation. And then on a quarterly basis, a half yearly basis, you get your statements and you can see your investments [indiscernible] every night. Besides that, we also have something called drill down where a member or an investor can actually see every single listed security held anywhere in the world and the percentage against it. So where we see it is it's not so much more technology or talking about it because it's Not rocket science. Where we see the difference is our service. And a lot of the big platforms are not looking after the smaller advisers. People with smaller volumes of money to move. But we are and we are helping these advisors to set up their processes to indeed improve their statements of advice and improve their processes of helping clients. And that's why we're seeing a fair bit of interest coming through now Not many numbers, but I know that just last week four new advisers came on the platform we didn't even know.

So it's starting to build and I think we're reasonably positive about it.

Moving on to the constant and part of the business. As you guys know, we are multi manager. Which means that, we don't manage, we don't we don't buy PHP and sell Rio. But we, we choose fund managers. And we work with over 40 fund managers for domestically as well as overseas fund managers. And our investment team, their objective is not to shoot the lines out, but really to generate target generating average returns by taking low average rates. Funds under management, again, compared to similar comparison as we saw in platform. Was sitting roughly about £4,500,000,000 about six months monthly average December 2023. And we are starting the year at about 5,700,000,000.0 So roughly about 1.1, 1,200,000,000.0 more compared to where we are where we were, what our average was about one year back. And again, extrapolating that to the margins that we have, that could potentially add $5,000,000 extra revenue compared to v six monthly average back in December 2023. As you might recall, we also launched a new bond product, a new investment bond product through Generation generation life. And also the the conversation is still going on with the governments as to what happens with the 3,000,000 cap and soup animation.

But what we believe is we are very well poised if it becomes law and as the people look for look for revenues, look for new products to put their money into the into the into new structure. If the cap comes through, we are fully ready for that. [indiscernible] currently, we offer roughly about 15 managed investment schemes. And also a few of the SMA products as well. As I say, our focus is really on on over long term returns and the long term process. And when we are stuck to anything and we have when we have delivered on the process, what we have experienced is top quartile for top design returns. In 37 out of 64 ratings in all across the fund manager survey. That's does for us, about 168 fund managers. We have also put up their the returns here, one year, three year, five year, seven years. And I'll just request, indeed, to maybe just give a little bit more flavor on the returns and some of the regularities of that strengthens.

Yes, Rahul, thanks. Look, we're multi manager 29 managers in our balanced and growth funds. The balance fund somehow had crept into the growth area. As you can see, it's being measured against growth managers whereas In the balanced category, when it comes down into the balanced area, it'll have a much superior performance. Compared to other balanced funds because it's not that don't have that much in growth assets. I think it's done reasonably well. Obviously, it's been very hard for active managers to beat the index. There's very few who have been able to do it. But as history tells us always and as we've been watching, give it a little time when there's a mean reversion, the active managers always outperform over the longer term. So we retain that bias. We do have some index style managers just as an anchor. And we have increased exposure to them over this period. But you can see over the longer term, it's it's done quite well. The one year returns for our specialist funds like technology and India I think it's now technology would be about 45% for the year. So it's I think people are doing well, funds are doing and don't worry about the ranking.

What's important is the actual return. Which is, if you see over the year after growth is 18%. [indiscernible] I think we're doing okay and as we expected.

Thank you, indeed. A quick visuals on the other front revenue and profit before tax compares with our average average fund. And again, going back about five years, June 2020, level of funds was roughly about 2,700,000,000.0, which has doubled to about 5,400,000,000.0 now in December 2024. And corresponding growth from revenue from $9,500,000 to $16,900,000 and also the profit from $4,200,000 to $8,900,000 a little bit over double Now we often ask the get asked the questions so why federation funds if Fiducian doesn't? Select PHP and doesn't sell real, why come to fiduciant at all? Why don't we go why don't the clients go directly to BT or Colonial or Weber? Now the fees that we charge are very similar to what the industry charges, what the single manager charges. So just for the sake of argument, if a client wanted to go to a BT Australian share fund, So taking the example of balance farm, if one client wants to put $1,000 $5,000 actually get access to what about 23 different fund managers, 27 different fund managers. To their $1,000 investments. And that's that's practically impossible for a single client to invest only $1,000 and access 27 different fund managers.

And using your example, Beatty or Osbil Shep, and both of whom are underlying fund managers for us. If you put $1,000 you would get BT, you put $1,000 with Fiducians Fiducian, you get six different share managers for the same money, same fee. Correct. Yes. So they get a diversification, they get a process. As well as they are not no worse off from the fees compared to where they bill. Pay what they'll pay elsewhere. And one of the benefit that our model has, unlike a pure fund manager, is that as our volume grows, the margin that we get from our fund managers, there's a potential for that placement as well. So by that, again, I'm making up these examples. But if we have appointed BT as a fund manager, we might pay them 50 basis point for the first 40,000,000 that we give them to manage. And then again, maybe for the next 25,000,000, we might not give 50 basis points, we might only give 40 basis points and so on and so forth. So as the funds grow, there's a potential for our margins to expand. The clients still pay the members still pay the same fees that they would be paying.

But the the proportion that goes to the fund managers has got a potential to reduce. Which would benefit Perrigen as a group as well as the shareholders. The annualized revenue is roughly about 48 basis points on the average term. And that's after paying off the fund manager cost for us. Just moving on to the FinTech capabilities. About About 2012, we in sourced the the platform. And all the technology which is faster, the our platform administration is fast tracked and all the technology is in house. Have got a development team, a testing team, results team, etcetera, everything in house. And what we believe is that we just full control over the development cycle and as well as the turnaround time we have got for the All the development cost that we do, everything is expense. Nothing is sitting in the balance sheet for the shareholders to feel the pain in the future years. So unlike our competitors we expense everything. So there's no sin sitting in the balance sheet that'll come up as an expense in two years or five years' time. And and there's been some tremendous developments for automation. We don't have a staff burgeoning model here.

We're pretty tight on how many people we employ, but as we automate more and more and more, we find some tremendous values added. And cost benefits. So there's been a lot of modifications constantly in the background. But as Rahul said, [indiscernible] Have a fantastic system that is really up to date and everything is expensed.

No. Absolutely. We don't capitalize anything.

And indeed, if you indulge me to share one of the example that I always at least always trying to take up, is the 2012 the funds under administration was roughly about $850,000,000 At that point of time, we had roughly about 18 to 20 people in the type administration team who were who were supporting the clients that we have. So today, we are close to [indiscernible] staff numbers also to eight triple eight accordingly. But actually, we have got roughly about 16 staff as of today supporting the supporting all the clients. So although our funds at administration has grown about four to five times, we have been able to contain the number sugar system efficiencies that we experience. And as Indi touched upon earlier, Main differentiating factor is really the service standards that we provide which we believe our [indiscernible] What the what the other advisers are accustomed to. So that's the Fast Track, Force, which is our in house financial planning software. And again, a full fledged software that comparing with XPlan without the clunkiness of XPlan and the slowness of XPlan. [indiscernible] the market leader that caters to maybe 10,000, 2,000, 5,000, advisers and has got many varied feature which no one uses.

But our, ASK software, which is Force, which which really focuses on the efficiencies for the advisors that we have, and through that, they can spend more time with the with the clients rather than doing the back office work. And both of those systems are also fully [indiscernible] which gets, which is a real time system. The test upon in a different context. That is every client has got not only the access to what investments that they are making, but also the underlying investments just from a tip of a button So if they want to see a finish and balance fund, what are the actual investments? So one click of a button and about 700 or 800 stocks come in. In the same proportion that client is holding. So very, very powerful system, especially when all of those come together. We have also recently launched launched out our Fiducian mobile app And, and with that, there's direct access for the clients. So to, to get more engaged with their account holdings and the affairs that they and the financial affairs that they have with production. [indiscernible] And maybe I'll move on from this slide maybe with one example, cybersecurity trend and true multi factor authentication looked at that point, but actually, we rolled it out about maybe two and a half years, three years back.

But that was interesting because maybe about three months back or four months back, one of our competitors made a big announcement in the media saying that they have now rolled out MFAs or multi factor authentication. And we are thinking that's great, but that's something that we have already rolled out three. Three years back. So we often don't, don't advertise that much. We often don't maybe promote that much, but our system is very much cutting edge, competitive. [indiscernible] Planning does the enabler of steady flows We have got about 78 Fiducian advisers across 47 office all across Australia. [indiscernible] for them as well as the revenue revenue targets, which I'll, requesting you to give a little bit more flavor on that. Yes. We had AT last time we announced. One lady broker shoulder and decided she'd like to retire So her business we've sold off and funded another one of our existing advisers to take that over. And merge it with her with with his, cloud base. And there's one other adviser, I think, in South Australia who retired as well. But it's not that we're sitting idle. There's conversations going on with quite a few [indiscernible] Who are talking with us and who might want to join us.

Two documents have just been sent out. I think mainly both of them went one Northern New South Wales, one in Queensland. And there are a number of others in progress. So we're going to continue to build We got a project team that's aiming to get us to at least a hundred advisers. And they meet regularly to plan this strategy and get nuance. We are looking also for acquisitions and there's one which seems quite positive There's another one in the North.

One will bring another six advisers, the other could be more. But, we're both in negotiation with them. And they're both looking very positive. And that will raise the numbers as well besides simply getting new franchise on and these franchises will hopefully bring clients with them. That's even better at low cost. It's looking good. We we will not get to a thousand advisers like some people want to do. Think it's more trouble than But if we can have up to a 50 advisers at best and raise the target for them so that we can get at least a billion dollars of new inflow a year. So it's probably I'd say, the highest inflow you can get around in Australia.

No. That's true. Thank you, Andy.

Ingrid. The country, we have got roughly about 5,000,000,000 funds under advice and about 1,600,000,000.0 in external platforms. So external platform is an interesting one. So there'll always be situations where clients money should should remain in external platforms. Be it for capital gains issues or whether they are social security benefits and so on and so forth. But, if it's right for the clients, as the advisors meet their clients, their their clientele, it's right for the client, they may recommend that to Firdresson platform and Firdresson funds. And there's an opportunity as is a part of that to migrate across to a federation platform. A quick, mention on the staffing. Staff numbers December 2024 was pretty much similar slight increase of roughly about four to increase the support of 20 to support the increase in business growth. [indiscernible] our staff really really, tend to remain loyal. So we have got one of the highest retention rates in amongst our cohorts I myself joined Finishing about thirteen years back and Indi Continencely reminds me I'm still one of the newest person in in his team. So what we believe is that when we look out to this staff, when we treat them as equals, treat them as family, and they will reciprocate and also then give give their best We invest quite a lot on training and professional developments.

And staff retention remains remains key for us. We, we may have a average compared to the market. And and all of those things have helped. Even during the COVID period, we we made zero staff redundant. We start by then and we often see that same feeling. So being being risk related towards us. So with that, I just wanted to talk about the financials a little bit. I'm on page 14 now, slide 14 now. Operating revenue, about $44,000,000 gross revenue, 14% growth compared compared to the prior comparative period. Net revenue, about $33,600,000 gross margin, 76%. I don't intend to go through all of those numbers but as you can see, the two triangles show quite a quite a strong growth. Underlying NPAT roughly about 9,900,000.0, 20% growth under a steady 8,600,000.0. Dollars Online EBITDA margin improved from 29% to 31%. [indiscernible] [indiscernible] What we find really amusing and and of course satisfactory is is our profit numbers. So underlying NPAT, underlying EBITDA, whichever measure you take, And mind you, we have got a platform of roughly about 4,000,000,000. And, we have got some of our peers, some of our competitors who are sitting about hundred billion, north of hundred billion.

And their profit is roughly about 2.5 times three and three times compared to our profit. So although we are at 4,000,000,000, and some of our competitors sitting at 100,000,000,000, 25 times compared to what they have their platform versus ours. Their profit is actually just about three times more than us. That really shows maybe I'll just ask this question. So what do you think about that, Indi? So how how are we different? Compared to some other peers?

I think just this morning, I received an email from one of our institutional investors who said he's amazed by the continuous growth in the earnings and profit over ten years and And I said, you know, it surprises me that the market has completely missed the very powerful compounding nature of this model. And you'll see that as volumes grow, As we get more money in and the market holds, the profit starts to compound higher and higher and faster. So it's a very powerful model and it's worked with us in tough times and in good times. The objective for me is always to give a good return to our shareholders. They get good income from the funds. Or the investment and to the point that if it's frank, it gets higher. And in a few years time, like now someone who might have invested in 02/2015 or something like that would be getting almost [indiscernible] thousand dollars would be getting almost $450 as a dividend. Which if you compound, it gets close to 700. Which means two years you get your money back. So that's what I think some people think it's old fashioned. They like to see huge acquisitions and billions of dollars coming in and And my view is always that the revenue if the revenue grows by a certain rate, Our profit should grow by a higher rate So we're using shareholders' capital well.

When we do use that money to increase revenue, it shouldn't be at the expense of the profit declining. Because then whose money are we using just for the sake of buying things for the sake of buying We don't do that. As I said before, we do have a few discussions in the pipeline. Which hopefully, and I think I'm sure will be EPS accretive If people want too much money or it's not good enough for us, we just walk away. Thank you.

A quick look on the segment reportings. The main message from this slide is the fact that all of our business segments are contributing positively to the bottom line and adding value. [indiscernible] The next slide, a quick visual on FID performance from from June 2012 to date. And during this period, including all the all the dividends, all odds actually went up by about two fifty and, Fiducian about almost about 1,500 percentage. Dividend payout policy is 60% to 80% of underlying net profit after that. Why underlying net profit? You might ask because that's the closest to the cash profit. There's the closest proxy to the cash profit. All the cash profit that we are in, both position is that 60% to 80% of that. Will be paid out as dividends. So one of FY twenty twenty twenty five, we are declaring about $0.219 dividend per share. And as indeed mentioned, if someone invested $1 there, we have experienced quite a lot of dividend growth even leaving aside the actual price growth. In fact, over the twenty five years, we have been able to be, we have been listed. We have been able to generate double digit growth. 19 out of those twenty five years since listing.

And WW2 growth remains the growth strategy at this stage. [indiscernible] PMR growth, I think over the years, you can see June $2,028,000,000,000 dollars Today, we are about $14,400,000,000 It's a very strong growth growth we have been able to experience over the years. And really my last slide is [indiscernible] is this slide on the screen. And by no stretch of imagination, this is not a projection. This is not an estimate. It's It's more of a conceptual representation what could happen. It's not a forecast, more of a conceptual representation. So if I take take you guys through this slide very quickly, on the left of the screen twenty thirteen, we had we had Fuma of roughly about 3,000,000,000 in 2013. And the green line, other revenue lines, and the red lines are the actuals. So all of the solid lines are the actuals that we have experienced, and all of the shaded's are just a conceptual representation. So as you can see, over the years from 2013, today we have grown to about $14,400,000,000 We ended 2024, December 2024 about, and these are all the average FUMA. December 2024, we were about €12,900,000,000 But over the years, as you can see, the the red line has increased.

But if you look at the green line, that has increased at a fast much faster rate compared to the red line. So the gaps between the red and green, the jaws of growth as we have traveled across the right of the scale as our team have grown. So that jaws of growth have also expanded. And as a result, the horizontal bars which is the EBITDA, Back in 2013, there will be less than 5,000,000 is for that for that year. And on this, so right now, you can see it's roughly a little bit more than €20,000,000 So what we believe is that as we are able to [indiscernible] The potential for the revenue growth is there. And the expense line, as we saw, is pretty much well contained. It'll grow. But much lower, much lower competitive revenue growth. And there's a potential for all these additional revenues to go directly to the bottom line which would help the company to reinvest. Also the shareholders return as well. In fact, we did the acquisition of PSSU back in February 2022, just about just about three years back. And you can see from, in the graph in 2022, there's, the green line suddenly, red line also jumped.

But the green line suddenly jumped. And but the distance didn't really change much. But over the years, as we started getting the revenue synergies from that acquisition, green line grew faster compared to the red line.

And that that cost increase [indiscernible] really a reflection of the fact that we took on 40 new employees from PCCU, which is advisers and support staff. And systems and processes and setting them up in the offices and things. So that's only saw a jump, but that's now paying dividends. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Indi.

So really those are the things we wanted to share with you guys, and I just wanted to open up the flow for questions if you have any. So, Indi, while we are waiting for questions, maybe I'll ask you the first one. So where from here? So we have, as we saw, we have got quite a fundamental growth steady growth and very predictable growth, not one year, you're growing 100% next year going down 20%, but very consistent sustainable growth, but way from, way to from here in the Well, The important thing is we're going to stick to our meeting. Something we understand, something we know. And something we can manage. But we're going to grow on all four pillars the financial planning. We're starting to get new advisors. We're looking at acquiring other businesses of planners With terms of platform administration, we're expecting that there's a lot of money sitting outside in other platforms. As Rahul mentioned, 60% of end flows is from new money and only 47 40% when they review a client and find that the client can be better off in a fiduciant platform, does that money come [indiscernible] we will, I think, continue with that.

And hopefully get more inflows into our [indiscernible] And I think our funds are doing quite well. They get people a secure defensive investment with diversification of managers of styles of processes, and so I think it's a powerful model and system [indiscernible] IT team which helps us get to market faster It helps us when changes are required by regulation to change quicker. And to be able to test and make sure that it's accurate. So, yeah, I think all models must grow and all must expand. The one that's now starting to look good is Oxilium, which Platform for super and non super. Which we have opened which is not for traditional advisors. But mainly for the market to disrupt the so called disruptors And it is starting to gain some traction As I said, the people coming to us who we didn't know who we have spoken with And I think the pipeline there is quite So we is wait and see. But it's starting to gain traction and it's not costing us too much more. Existing administrators are administering and distribution teams working hard to get more people on So that's an interesting part for our business.

Thank you. Thank you, Indi.

There were a couple of questions that was that's that was put to us before. So I'm trying to raise respond to them. So one of the question was, the how much money we have got in oxilium and batch products. As of December 2024 compared to December 2023. As you can see in the screen, if you're admin, which includes the Clouderco platform from our IFM earnings core platform, has about 440,000,000. But if we leave our core platform, only OxiClean badge has currently got roughly about hundred 35,000,000. There was another question more of [indiscernible] We are comparing against Zenit. And previously, we used to sorry, the rankings that we are giving out is Zenit's ranking and not Morningstar as we used to do previously. So in the last year or so, we have switched over from Morningstar to Zenit. As a data provider and pricing and performance provider. And that's why we're using Zenit. I can see there is one question on on the chat and if I just start off and then maybe you can look me out on complementing that as well. So the question refers to I'll read out the question first. Someone once said your high profit margin is my opportunity.

So why does that not represent a competitive risk to our company's margins? So maybe I'll I'll look at different parts of the business. I'll start with the financial planning part of the business. So financial planning, when I look at our average fees that we charge is roughly about $2,800 from each clients. And as you need also upon before, our objective is to raise that the from between 20% to 10% to 20% during the year. Now what does the industry charge in Australia? So in the industry, if a client were to go to their financial advisers, they'll be paying roughly about 4,600. Essentially, the fee that we are charging is very well below the market. And really, not commensurate with the services that we provide. So what we see is there's more of an opportunity for us to right price it so that it gets closer to what our industry is rather than being much lower. Let's talk about the funds management next. [indiscernible] funds management, again, in our presentation we covered. That is why would a client come to Fiducian at all. Are coming to Fiducian because they are paying the same prices as what the industry has paid, what they have to pay if they go to a normal fund manager, but also they get getting the diversification So we very much very much benchmark ourselves again where the industry is.

And, if the industry, if all of the industry comes down, we will come down also accordingly. But we haven't seen any trend towards that. So again, essentially, we are not hired in the industry. And finally, looking at the platform, our, as I mentioned, Oxilium product it's it's got one of the lowest fee, if not the lowest fee, in the Australian industry. If a client were to come in, the headline rate is about 20 basis points for the first hundred k. From hundred k to 1,000,000, it's about 15 basis points, and then it scales down to zero. So essentially, we are very, very complete competitive on that particular sector segment of the business. Now in the core platform, core administration fee is again roughly about 35 basis points, 40 basis points on an ampereage. That is no different to what our competitors are charging as well. We have, expense recovery and other fees that that take it a little bit more compared to the headline rates. The headline rates are very much comparable. So that brings us to the question that is, how how is Felicia delivering such strong results? Our peers are not able to?

And India, I know you already touched upon it before. Anything you wanted to add?

Well, no, nothing more. I've already said that, that look, we're not just one simple business. We're actually [indiscernible] Powerful compounding nature of this business where we grow financial planning, We expect that more flow will come in. We grow the platform where our fees are pretty static but competitive So more volumes come in, we can charge there. We can charge at [indiscernible] And which are on our investment management, funds management level, So we have that combination very powerful combination backed by our IT And I think it's a it's actually A vote or a defense against competition. Because we capture all parts of the value chain. Whereas many of our competitors sort of stuck with one particular part or either funds management or on the platform and stuff like that.

That's great.

I think it's a strong model.

There's another question that's come through. Could you comment on succession plan indeed?

Yeah. At the AGM last time, I was asked when I had one employee About twenty eight years ago, what's your succession plan? I said, I only got one employee. I haven't even started. I was basically going to wash up the plates and cups and sauces for the evening. Look, the way we structured it is basically, will the business continue as it going [indiscernible] Yes, it will. Because we have the services which Rahul looks after after. He's chairman of that. And he's responsible for that part of the business. Which covers all our services from finance, IT, admin, marketing, that sort of stuff. And then there's another business called Fiducian investment management, Services.

Which is funds management and Conrad Birch is chairman of that and he's responsible for that part of the the business and growing the business. And we have The third, which is financial planning, which is Ravi Sautol as Chairman of Financial Planning. And that's his responsibility to grow the adviser numbers 200 and beyond that 250. And we're working on the hundred.

So, yeah, I think, the business will continue irrespective and I think the only person who is indispensable is someone up in the sky Otherwise, we're all passengers and human beings who come and go. But the business will continue. It's a listed company, and it will find ways to keep going. And if the model is retained, I think it'll be pretty strong.

Thank you, Indi. There's a question from There's a question there about my calls.

Well, I'm still going. But it's getting worse and worse yet. Just like everyone, or I might be on the circuit otherwise. If it went the other way. Well, I'm still playing.

That's very informative. Thank you, Adi. That was one more question from Veritas Securities. Veritas has been covering palladium stocks for maybe a year or year and a half, and they do a pretty good job Rob and Steven Scott from there, any questions, just reach out to them. But question from Veritas is whether we can comment on the seasonality for first half and second half. No. Thank you, Stephen, for that. The so traditionally, what happens in our kind of business and particular Fiducian is that we announce our half year results and then again, we announce our full year results also. And traditionally, we would expect the market to grow up And most of the years, over the long term, it would. And as a result, what we've experienced is that first of all, we are starting the January 2025 which is the second half on a higher level of FEMA compared to when we started in July 2024. That is the first half versus second half. Secondly, again, we expect some market growth to come through also. What the market will do is anyone's case. But our planning assumption is six months in growth or six and a half percent growth over the year.

And as the market grows, it takes up our funds as well, level of funds also. And finally, what I mentioned is in the first half, we got 186,000,000 net inflows. And every year, we set plans, and this year, we have actually out our surpassed the plan that we have set we have set for ourselves in terms of net inflows. Now as the net inflows come in, that at at the FEMA level also. So essentially, we have got a much higher or at least we normally we would expect a higher Pima average Pima in second half compared to the first half. Which generates more additional revenue. And the last point is the expenses Most of expenses, lot of expenses are staff, staff cost. And staff cost gets reset on July 1, which means the first half, the expenses have already gone up. Which is already baked in. As we saw, the revenue is hasn't caught up as yet as it would in the second half. So the cost is pretty much stable in second half. Revenue hopefully will grow. So traditionally, what we have seen is there's a little bit of seasonality between h one and h two.

Where if the market is going in the right direction, there's a potential for h two b H2 to be higher compared to first half. Stephen? Any other questions or comments? [indiscernible] maybe I'll ask one more questions, indeed. So our, you touched upon this before, indeed. So adviser numbers last, last reporting period 88, this reporting period 78. And as you mentioned, the team is working through quite strong pipeline and trying to convert actually some of them in the next half. Where do you see and I also recall you mentioned, we don't want to be thousand financial advisors. So two questions. So why not thousand?

And second question is, if not thousand, what what are you targeting, Andy? Well, the let me answer your second question first of one one or a thousand. Just have a look at the history in Australia. All those big groups that have gone to a 2,000, [indiscernible] plummeting down. It's not easy to manage them. You can see, like, one of the problems with [indiscernible] Was people were not being properly monitored, not being coached, not being advised, and they were doing things they shouldn't have been doing with their clients. [indiscernible] We feel that about a 50 would be the tops. They could be managed, they can be controlled. We have in fact, an advisor to support person ratio or something like six and a half. So about 13 advisers, there's two of our manager management people in terms of quality assurance, [indiscernible] practice management, business development, supporting them and helping them to do the right thing by the client, and we're very, very strict on On compliance and checking, So there's a cost there and I think if any other group had that ratio, they would never be able to make any money. But there's I think that's about the limit.

And what was your other question, why not a thousand and Yes. So what numbers are we targeting? Yeah.

I think as I said, about I'd say if I can get a hundred and 50 and each one writing right now, we put a target or budget on them to write at least 6,000,000 dollars of new business each year. We can get to six or seven with a hundred and 50, you're talking well over a billion dollars of new inflow every year I think which is probably the highest you'll get in any company in Australia.

Thank you, indeed. I believe we have got a hands up from Claude, and Claude, if you've got a question, you can Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Great. Thanks. I had a question about Octavillion. Just as Andy was saying, would allow growth without you having to have thousands of advisors. What are the actual growth [indiscernible] Like how are you planning to grow this and gain share? Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Claude, let me clarify that first.

When I spoke of 50 advisers, that's purely fiducian affiliated With Oxilium, And we're actually drawing clients from there. These are advisors who are out in the open market There's something like 16,000 of them.

And it's their choice. They can use the products they want. We are pretty strict there. We don't just allow anything. In fact, we review their SOAs, we review their product, we help them set up their SOAs in some cases, We help them with their compliance in some cases, and they find great service from us. So that's an area of growth, something like the hubs and networks have done. And, we were no limit on number of advisers there because they're responsible for their clients not us. We're responsible for our product as either the responsible superannuation entity or responsible entity. So we just monitor the products We look at that. If any adviser has an SMA, which isn't performing too well We get back to them and ask if they're concerned and that they're aware of this And sometimes they take action. Sometimes they say no. We'd like to hold this. But we've done our due diligence to get back to them and alert them to the fact that maybe they need to lift again Yeah.

They're not managing their money.

Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. I guess my question is, so how many advisers of those independent financial advisors do you have on Xilium at the moment? And how do you expand that number? Like how do you actually go in market? What's your go to market for this product? Because you've said how it's like low cost and how it's like got great tech. Also, that's at least part of the picture of gaining market share What's actually strategy then to actually get that rolling out and to try and gain market share with that?

Well, we've got a team now of four whose job it is to go and meet advisors, talk to them, bring them across convert them. Remember that the we're a little late into entering this market. So we have to give something extra. But our competitors are the ones you know and we're actually winning business against them. So these guys have to go back to talk to advisers make phone calls, they get kicked out of the office, then phones put down on them, they go back again, and it's that's one way where they go and speak to them and explain the benefits of being Fiducian. And then these advisers who are using some of the others start using us. So that's the main way. The second is advertising. We're also advertising. We're advertising for advisors. We're advising advertising for acquisitions, we're advertising for not just advisors for Fiducian but also for Oxilium. As a separate product And people can see our website. And that's about the way we're going about it. Sometimes these smaller groups, they want a little support for their training. For their compliance, and we are prepared to give it to them at times free using our own resources.

So there's a lot of work going on there, Claude, to try and build that up. I can say it's early days. But I can also add that it's quite encouraging the way when we speak to these people who have been using other platforms talk to us about the service they're getting from us.

Thank you, Andy. And thank you, Claude, for that question. We have got one more question. On financial advice pricing and how Fiducian is making advice more access Look, there's a lot of talk about pricing and accessible to the market in terms of affordable advice And I've been telling the media over and over again and the government that look, the only affordable advice is that advice which can allow the financial adviser to stay in business. You can squeeze as much as you think but you will get something that you don't that doesn't cover your requirements. So those who are willing to pay the price and those who know that there's a value proposition and a benefit to them from using that advice will come to us. And the other side when you talk about affordable advice, and the mass market, we are now in the process of developing certain software that could use a bit of AI once it becomes readily available. Right now, it's interactive and stuff. And we don't want to give everything away. But where the software can be dealt with a person who may not have too much money. For example, I gave over A truck he was driving to Brisbane and and I don't think that person would be ready to come and sit in front of an adviser for an hour and a half and then come back for another meeting.

They don't have time because when they come back, they to Melbourne or somewhere else. And so they have time to meet us in in Coffs Harbour and they sit on their phone when they have a coffee break or something for half an hour, and that's when our advisers should get to them on their phone ask them their questions, ask them their needs, ask them requirements, It goes into our systems, which are already developed in the software. It churns out some questions and some advice statements. And we should get back to these people very quickly. On the phone and be able to send a new statement or advice to them on their phone itself. Which they can sign off on the phone. And also that gives us permission to see the money they've gotten other products that they're not so happy about. So what is work going on that? Mass market is there. It's It's possible. But with the mass market, these are people with a hundred thousand dollars or a hundred and $20,000 our average is close to 500. $4.74 50 or something like that. So these people also need advice. And generally people with that kind of money, they don't have complex marital issues and problems and three wives and estate planning and kids demanding money and stuff like that.

So they are basically, they need advice on the investment strategy, They need support for their planning They need insurance because maybe the wife passes away, who's going to look after the kids, or the husband passed away, the wife needs money. There's a mortgage, Things like this can be dealt with quickly and can help them but with a plan and a strategy to go forward. That this portfolio serves that now and the portfolio gets amended with time as they go further. And gives them more diversification Initially, more growth So, yeah, we're definitely looking at that to make it convenient, make it easier for actually the client who access this advice Thanks for that question. We are right on time. Indeed, do you want to see any final words? Any final questions or none. I can see. Well, I just want to thank all of you for being at this presentation. And genuinely thank all of you for your support. You've been fantastic shareholders. Our job is always to deliver for our shareholders As I said, the dividends we've been paying for someone who would come in at twenty twelve, fourteen, fifteen. In two years, they would have got their money back with franking credits and we invested So We look after you.

We know that we're not going to spend money willy nilly just like that. [indiscernible] it doesn't create earnings for us. We're not going to the sake of buying assets for the sake of buying them to show hey, we bought this billion dollars and a $2,000,000,000 there. And the share price starts to come off like it has done for some of our large competitors. And you would know all the names. But if we can have revenue going up, we want the profit to grow at a faster percent faster rate which that means that we're spending your money well. As far as we're concerned, we're working hard expanding the business, expanding revenue sources, and I can promise you one thing, we will continue to work hard for you. Because that's our motto It's integrity, trust, and expertise. And, we want to keep our staff keep them happy, and make sure that we generate earnings for you So bear with us, we're working hard and we'll continue to keep working hard [indiscernible] Thank you all. Thanks again for your time. Thank you very much, all of you. Thank you.