Count Limited (CUP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Doug Richardson. I am the Company Secretary of Count Limited. I'm pleased to be your host today. Welcome, and thank you for joining us this afternoon for the Count Limited investor briefing of our half year FY 2025 financial results, the results released to the market yesterday morning. Before we begin the presentation, we would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we are meeting on today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay our respects to the elders past and present. We extend respect to all people present today. In today's briefing, you will hear from our CEO and Managing Director, Hugh Humphrey; and our CFO, Keith Leung. There will be an opportunity for questions to be asked following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to our CEO, Hugh Humphrey.

Thanks, Doug, and good afternoon, everyone. And can I add my welcome to the Count half year 2025 results presentation call also. We are very pleased with our first half results. In the period, the business achieved a number of new and significant milestones as a result of strong ongoing demand for financial planning and accounting services and the completion of the integration of the former Diverger assets, which has been incredibly well executed. We continue our disciplined execution against our strategy, and we're seeing benefits emerge from the value that we create through our flywheel. That means we're no longer limited to just driving value within each segment, we're beginning to drive value across each segment. We delivered organic and M&A growth in all 3 of our segments, showing the balance of good client demand, coupled with a strong pipeline of ongoing acquisitive opportunities. In Wealth, funds under advice, or FUA, grew to $36.2 billion, driven by new adviser recruitment, new clients, new contributions and market growth. Our separately managed accounts, or SMA, portfolios increased by plus 12% over the last 6 months to $3.54 billion, and net flows for the period were positive at plus $380 million and up significantly on the prior corresponding period when it was $184 million. Six new firms have adopted our SMA investment philosophy in the period, and we have a pipeline of potential firms. So overall, we now have 144 firms using our SMA solutions, the Count portfolios for our managed discretionary account or MDA solutions. In the Equity Partnerships segment, we continue to grow our segment organically and through M&A with the benefit of prior period acquisitions flowing into this half year result. Consistent with our strategy of improving returns on invested capital, we divested our 85% shareholding in Evolution Advisers, a legacy investment and an underperforming asset. This divestment unlocked capital and improved our EBITA margin. And from $2.2 million of revenue in the first half, Evolution Advisers generated just $45,000 of EBITA. In services, we significantly expanded our offerings through a number of acquisitions. Services EBITA was up 315% over the prior corresponding period. We continue to embed and look to integrate our services offerings through initiatives in the second half. There are large organic revenue growth opportunities that the business is now turning to. And next week, our first national sales leader commences in our business, and they will lead and drive a combined sales team. We have completed the integration of Diverger and have now closed the integration office. Future opportunities have migrated into the business as usual functions. As a group, we're pleased to increase our interim dividend to $0.0175 per share. This is an increase of plus 17% above last year's interim dividend. This uplift in dividend is an outcome of the step change in the company's scale and financial performance. Also, following consultation with many of you, we have introduced a dividend reinvestment plan for the interim dividend. On this slide, you can see the statutory figures on the left and the underlying on the right. And we're presenting both sets to give you the transparency of the impact in that period of the integration costs associated with Diverger and the separation costs following the Bentleys WA divestment. Revenue grew strongly by plus 54%, to $74 million. Our overall underlying EBITA margin increased from 13% to 19%, which reflects the improved business earnings profile, particularly from Wealth and the improved margins in the Equity Partnerships segment. Our underlying EBITA grew to $13.9 million for the half, which is a more than 140% increase on prior corresponding period. Statutory NPATA attributable was $5.9 million, and NPAT attributable was $4.0 million. Underlying NPAT attributable was $5 million, an increase of plus 245%, and underlying NPATA more than doubled to $6.9 million. These underlying results give you clarity on the real momentum of the business and its trajectory. I'll now call out a few of the key drivers in each of those segments. The Wealth segment has grown significantly with underlying EBITA at $5.8 million for the half, driven by the scale of our financial planning firms and growth in our SMAs to $3.54 billion of FUM. We have a pipeline of Count network firms assessing these goals-based adviser-led SMAs, and we have reappointed an experienced internal business development manager to lead this adoption. With 6 new firms adopting our SMAs during the period, total firms embracing this philosophy now stands at 73. As one of the largest wealth advice firms in the country, we see a tremendous growth opportunity for this within and beyond the Count network. Just in Count network alone, we have more than 500 firms now, and of course, potential outside the group. The Wealth segment reflects this half streamlined back-office functions, and enhanced service offerings across the 3 AFSLs. Our work on advice technology is delivering better outcomes. The advisory benchmarking results reveal that Count advisers are 12% more productive in delivering simple advice documents and 23% more productive in delivering complex advice documents compared to the industry averages. Of course, this means that our capacity to see more clients is superior to the competition, and indicates capacity for continued growth. EBITA in the Equity Partnerships segment grew by plus 12%, a combination of organic revenue growth and M&A and in particular, reflecting increased demand for financial planning. Around 25% of the total revenues in this segment now come from financial advice. But how we see this is only 25% of total revenues in this segment come from financial planning. There remains significant upside for the firms to increase Wealth revenues. Corporate costs continue to decline as a percentage of total revenue from circa 10% in the prior corresponding period to circa 8% in this half. Whilst we are investing and we are in a growth mode, we carefully manage our corporate overheads. We have a very successful M&A function with a strong pipeline, and we completed 4 tuck-ins in the period that will benefit future results. The Services segment grew significantly with revenues fivefold over the prior corresponding period, and exceeding $15 million for the half year. We're well recognized as the leader in technical education expertise to the entire accounting market and increasingly in the financial planning market. We have a client base of more than 6,000 accounting and financial planning firms with constant touch points through our help desk and education events. Beyond unifying our sales and marketing functions, as I mentioned earlier, we're in the early stages of a program to unify our technology platforms within the education services space. This will unleash significant cross-sell capabilities within our combined customer base between the various brands. Our trajectory is strong. We're fortunate to be well positioned to benefit from a series of wealth megatrends underpinning Count's future growth. Industry reports highlight the accelerating demands for wealth advice, and our maturing population in Australia is hungry for financial planning and retirement solutions. Count presents 3 unique investment solutions, targeting adviser firms and their end client needs. They meet the needs of our target market segments, including simple low-cost solutions and solutions for more complex and sophisticated investors. Our SMA proposition suits firms that want to embrace a philosophy, a goals-based advice philosophy that drives productivity and efficiency by leveraging technology, outsourcing investment decision-making and minimizing the cost to the end clients. Count is investing in our SMA solutions and the associated client engagement tools. The Count portfolios are paper-based, externally managed and sit on BT and CFS platforms. They have a markedly different value proposition to the SMA investment philosophy. Typically, they target clients with simple, low-cost investment strategies. And lastly, the Managed Discretionary Accounts, which were only just launched late last year with 3 firms, are in the early stages of leveraging the MDA proposition. This offering targets sophisticated firms that have a strong and clear investment philosophy and the MDA offering provides flexibility and risk frameworks for firms to manage their client needs in a structured and very timely fashion. Our Equity Partnerships portfolio delivered another solid half of growth with double-digit growth in both revenue and EBITA. More pleasingly to me is the improvement in the average firm EBITA margin, which lifted from 21% to 23%. We see opportunity for this margin to improve further as firm's financial planning revenues continue to grow. And we continue to grow this segment through exiting underperforming legacy investments, including Bentleys WA and Evolution Advisers, driving operational excellence on cost management through the use of Count's outsourcing firms, ensuring the right leaders are in the right place and driving the future growth of these firms, using an assessment and development framework from a specialist leadership consulting firm, driving higher growth through cross-selling financial planning to our accounting clients and quality M&A where it meets Count's strict investment criteria for financial returns, cultural alignment and leadership depth. Our Services segment continues to go from strength-to-strength with the expanded service offering into educational help training, outsourcing and IT services. Over the last 3 years, this segment has grown half year revenues more than fivefold. Our specialty is education expertise. We already have 6,000 accounting and financial planning firms as our clients in this segment, and that is 65,000 individual accountants and financial planners as our clients. Accessing this client base to add more value to them through expanded services is key to our future success as demonstrated in the Count flywheel. Our mergers and acquisitions pipeline is very healthy, and we see plenty of positive market activity across the sector for Count, both in accounting and in wealth management. We have successfully executed 1 new transaction each month of the first half of this financial year. Count has demonstrated a strong track record of not just acquiring but also integrating businesses. This execution capability is critical to our growth ambitions. Industry trends with retiring principles in accounting and financial planning firms and the strong need for succession planning have fueled more M&A activity in the market. M&A is competitive, particularly in the Wealth space, as you would have seen in recent announcements with Insignia, Perpetual, LGT Crestone buying CBA's private advice business, AZ NGA buying AMP's equity stakes, et cetera. In a number of these transactions, the multiples paid have implied returns markedly below what Count would accept. And whilst I'd like to see us make more financial planning acquisitions, we continue to be very disciplined and selective with our acquisitions in this space. When we talk about M&A, we target 4 different types of transactions. Firstly, transformational ones that are transactions like Affina, Diverger, Count Financial. These transactions give us significant scale. They're material to Count to a particular segment or a number of our segments. Count has demonstrated its capability to integrate well on these transactions. The second is direct acquisitions such as Solutions Centric and Bruce Edmunds. They're generally new standalone equity partners or additions to the Services segment that are a future platform for organic growth. And the third is merging existing equity partnership investments to create mega firms to benefit from real scale and operational efficiencies. Lastly, we have tuck-ins, which are highly accretive transactions, taking into the fee parcels and extracting the most operational synergies such as removal of leases, head count and other overheads. Before I hand over to Keith to talk about the financials, I'd like to thank our equity partners, our accountants, all of our financial advisors and our services firms who support our customers and clients and deliver these strong results for the half year. This year, we turned 45 years old. And I'd also like to thank our community, including our Founder, Barry Lambert, and the Count Foundation, which has never been bigger or more important to us in serving and making an impact on everyday Australians. Keith, over to you.

Thank you, Hugh, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to see so many investors on the call today, and look forward to engaging with the new and existing shareholders over the coming weeks. Over the half year period, we have delivered a strong set of results, benefiting from the acquisitions completed in the last financial year and the organic growth over the period. Underlying revenue on a like-for-like basis, removing the divested operations of Evolution and Bentleys show a 61% revenue increase on the prior corresponding period and a statutory increase of 54% on revenues. Our costs increased over the period at a lower rate compared to revenues, which reflect the increased scale of the business and the cost synergies that were achieved. We are on track to deliver more than $4 million of annualized cost synergies for the full year. Other income reported has increased over the period, and that is as a result of business as usual activities, including deferred consideration adjustments, sale of fee parcels, rebates from suppliers, lease variation gains, and impacts from share ownership movements within the Equity Partnerships segment. Whilst the corporate costs have increased, the overall corporate cost as a proportion of total revenue has declined. We continue to manage our corporate costs appropriately, and we continue to see the corporate costs as a percentage of total revenues trend downwards over time. With the full 6 months impact of the acquisitions completed last financial year, we have seen an increase in our interest cost due to higher debt levels from the Diverger transaction and higher average interest rates. We stand to benefit if the interest rates continue to decline. Following the purchase price accounting of the Diverger transaction, the acquisitions have had a flow on impact to the amortization profile, and in particular, an increased to client intangibles. Moving on to the waterfall chart. We have provided a comprehensive reconciliation from HY '24 statutory to the half year '25 underlying results. And more importantly, the organic growth contributed 9.5% on the underlying half year '24 results. Acquisitive growth stated in the waterfall includes full 6 months of Diverger as well as other acquisitions such as Solutions Centric and Bruce Edmunds and some partial year acquisitions and tuck-ins that were completed in half year '24. The EBITA from acquisitions contributed $7.8 million over the period. In terms of the segment performance, we have seen all 3 segments grow strength-to-strength over the period. Our Equity Partnerships segment has delivered another solid half, driven by operational efficiency improvements and acquisitions. We launched our internal program to drive financial planning strategy choices, which is focused on 5 key areas. Focus areas include financial planning, pricing and the cost to serve, referral generation from accountants and the financial planning service delivery to end clients. In our Wealth segment, our SMAs experienced growth of plus $380 million. This is underpinned by net inflows of $168 million and positive market movement of $212 million. The AFSL businesses have also reaped the benefit of increased scale, and provides a uniform value proposition across the licensees with virtual professional days, marketing events and tech summits. In the Services segment, we are focused on driving higher sales in the second half by executing an initiative in unifying the education and expertise technology platform that will enable our base to drive better cross sell and further sales growth within the segment for the future. With the full impact of the significant acquisitions flowing in the half, we are seeing a commensurate step change in the cash flow of the business, driven by the increase in the size of the business and the profitability of the business with higher margins across the portfolio. The cash flow from operations reflect a close alignment to statutory EBITA. We do operate the associates within the equity partnerships with their own firm dividend policies, typically at 90% payout of net profits. At times, within each associate, the dividends may be withheld due to funding for acquisitions or other investment cash flow requirements such as new leases as an example. We have increased the interim dividend to $0.0175 per [ half ], which is about the midrange of a dividend payout policy of 60% to 90% of maintainable net profit to Count shareholders. We have executed new funding facilities with Westpac in January, increased our headroom by $10 million and ensured we had sufficient headroom to continue to fund growth given the robust pipeline of both corporate level and investment level of our equity partners. We have a strong focus on capital discipline and optimizing returns through new and existing investments, and we are focused on uplifting our return on equity and on the lookout for accretive initiatives where we can further improve our returns. We have also introduced a dividend reinvestment plan for the interim dividend, which provides an opportunity for shareholders to further increase their holdings and the funds from the DRP plan will assist with additional cash to enable Count to continue deploying capital at accretive returns. And in summary, we've delivered increased underlying EBITA and net profit compared to the prior period, and have delivered solid shareholder outcomes. Cost synergies on track for delivery of more than $4 million annualized run rate as promised. And we have a great platform to continue the execution of our growth strategy. And I look forward to delivering on these growth ambitions and continuing our growth trajectory. I'll pass back to Hugh for some reflections and the outlook for FY '25.

Thanks, Keith. Thanks for that update and a very strong set of results against all metrics. Over the period, we have refined our strategy with the Board in November last year and all of our Count employees. We've got a bold ambition to be the leading provider of integrated wealth and accounting services, and this has been supported by relentless execution by our team against our purpose, the pillars, the enablers, and all the while living our behaviors. We give our people, partners and clients the confidence to look ahead. Our 4 pillars of: advice; education and expertise; investments; and equity partnerships are key revenue segments underpinning our results in the half year. These results can only be achieved by delivering against our enablers across branding, technology and systems and people and culture. And we do it by living the Count behaviors of thinking with an open mind, acting with bravery, and doing what is right. This bold ambition is fueled by the flywheel, which ensures we have a sustainable, profitable, and integrated business model that delivers superior returns to shareholders. Our execution against the flywheel has been reflected in the results reported for the half year, and we know we have a very strong platform to execute and deliver on our bold ambition. I want to thank you again for your time this afternoon. I know that it's an incredibly busy time of year. And with that, I'll hand to Doug to open up the mics for Q&A.

We have a number of analysts and investors on the call. [Operator Instructions] [ Ollie ], first question will go to you, we'll just unmute you.

Can I just clarify, the organic growth that you show in that waterfall, presumably that's on the pre-Diverger asset base? It doesn't include any synergy benefits, et cetera, or growth in the actual Diverger assets that you bought. Is that right?

Yes. [ Ollie ], yes, the majority of that is the pre-Diverger assets. And most of that corporate synergy is spread across some of the buckets in corporate and in the acquired, correct. Yes.

I know it's probably a little bit hard to work it out once you've owned an asset for a while, but do you have a good sense as to what the organic growth in the Diverger business actually was over the period on the PCP? And then how much you've delivered in, kind of, synergies actually realized during the period? And I suppose how does that compare to the run rate of synergies because presumably, there may have been some that were still being exited during the half?

Yes. No, thanks [ Ollie ]. Look, the organic growth and we -- and this is something that we do look at. It has been quite positive. I don't have the exact number, but it is definitely quite positive. The reason why, I think we -- there is a portion of that, obviously, the 8 months that we don't have, and so we wanted to show this on the chart, particularly stripping out some of the partial year benefits. But it has been quite positive from our end from what we've seen. And you can see the evidence of that, particularly in the CARE side of things, the growth from CARE and particularly also in some of the services that we're starting to see. But I think particularly on the Wealth side, you can see the significant margin uplift that you can, as well as the top-line growth that's been happening on the Wealth side of things.

And I think, [ Ollie ], just to add to that, yes, from a cost synergies perspective, that run rate through the first half was a touch above that $2 million, so certainly on track for the at least $4 million in the financial year. And with -- in terms of the organic revenue, it is worth just, I suppose, remind ourselves this half that we've reported is relatively early days. The transaction only completed on 1 March last year. So this period was -- as you're probably sort of indicating, was -- our focus was consumed more with the integration and the cost synergies than on driving the revenue synergies, which, of course, we're now turning our focus and attention to.

And then just Evolution, I mean, obviously, a pretty healthy multiple implied in that purchase on EBITA, probably a little bit less on revenue multiple. I know it was a legacy asset. You've had some cultural challenges, et cetera. But I suppose -- and I presume that you tried to get some sort of partnership agreement or merger with another firm that might be able to do an owner driver type model and bring your equity ownership down. But why was that not successful in terms of, I guess, retaining that business, but with more incentivized direct management of the business?

Yes, thanks [ Ollie ]. And as you well know and appreciate, and I say often, we're not in the business of selling accounting financial planning businesses. We're in the business of growing and acquiring financial planning and accounting businesses. In this instance, there was a misalignment of shareholders and a number of different pathways were assessed and put forward and I hasten to add over an extended period of multiple years. And so a relatively unique set of circumstances around what was an investment that had been made a long time ago under a different model. That asset was originally a 100% asset and had changed a number of times. And so in this instance, the best course of action was to exit the asset and support the other shareholders to take it in the direction that they want to take it. Keith, did you want to add anything to that?

Yes. [ Ollie ], I think also when we do that consideration, and I know your point around merging into others, but it's also an opportunity cost where we saw a lot of work that it would take to merge that versus acquiring a similar type of size of book. And given we see so many of those opportunities, we thought that was the right opportunity cost because it's going to take a lot of time, and this makes a lot more sense for us to really drive the returns and actually get to a better outcome.

That firm will remain as a client of the Count AFSL -- Count financial AFSL services. So we still generate revenues from the advice business, and we're pleased to be able to continue to support them in a different way.

And then incrementally, I mean, the drop-through of earnings that's coming through as you're growing that CARE's portfolio, how is that kind of looking? And then I suppose you got $1 plus billion in the Count portfolio stream currently externally managed. Is there any consideration as to how that might be brought more into the fold?

So thanks, [ Ollie ]. I think it's obviously a really interesting area of the business. With the CARE portfolios, it is a goals-based advice philosophy with a set of technologies and processes, client engagement tools. Obviously, we have an internal research and an internal investments team. It has an investment committee that includes a number of external parties on that investment committee. So it's a real system, and we're very supportive of that. What that means is that a firm doesn't just sell the SMA, a firm chooses to embrace the whole philosophy and run their business in a way that we think is then more efficient, effective and streamlined. So from that perspective, yes, there is a big addressable market for us. It's a sort of, I suppose, a process to engage with the firms, match it to the right firms, take them through the training and then let those firms embrace that. Hence, you see that we sort of onboarded a number of firms in the period and that run rate, we might expect to lift a bit, but it will be the firms doing the right thing for themselves and for their clients. Strong growth in there from all facets. The existing firms finding opportunities to put more clients on there, existing clients making additional contributions, new firms embracing the proposition and putting clients on there, and markets were strong in the period, too. So obviously, there's a fairly large amount of pension payments that come out of that, too. So it's great to see the growth net of those pension payments. In terms of the paper-based model portfolios, there are a number of future opportunities for us to consider in that space, which would include, now that we've got internal capability, thinking about whether that's something that we would do in-house. But at this stage, that sort of $1 billion is, as you say, managed externally.

And then just on -- maybe the last question, and I'll let others ask questions. But the education platform that you're talking about in terms of unifying, what does that bring to you? What's the investment that has been made to date, either in the OpEx or cash flow wise, if it's been capitalized and I suppose, the payback that you expect on that?

Yes, thanks [ Ollie ]. So to date, a lot of, obviously, the integration work, particularly in the half year that we're talking about, was around aligning, obviously, making sure we have employee contracts standardized single instances of Microsoft, et cetera, they're on the same platforms. In terms of the education platform, our vision in that space is, you can imagine, obviously, a single sign-on for our accountants and financial planners where they can see a shopping center of all of our services propositions. As you'd appreciate, given Accurium, Knowledge Shop, TaxBanter, et cetera, have come from being relatively standalone businesses, that would offer us the opportunity to really drive increased awareness of the enhanced propositions and cross-sell opportunity there. Still at this stage, we haven't seen much movement in terms of the percentage of clients in the Services segment that take up more than one of those services. So the upside is significant. We're just at the early stages, as I said, of commencing works on that project, and it will be too early to say what that investment looks like, but the investment will be sort of commensurate to the kind of returns that we think we could achieve through cross-sell and growth in the revenues there.

[Operator Instructions] Gove it a few more seconds for any other further questions.

Better getting quick. I know { Ollie ] will have more.

Yes. { Ollie ], have you got any final questions? You do? [ Ollie ], go ahead.

I was just going to say, in terms of the pipeline of partnership opportunities, how is that looking? And then in the context of some pretty big multiples paid in recent deals, are you still managing to find things that are at attractive returns both, I guess, pre and post synergy?

Yes, great, thanks. And I'll get Keith to share some thoughts in a moment, too. But from my perspective, yes -- the simple answer is yes. We've done transaction every month in this half. Our pipeline, whenever we have these calls, I think I say it's never been stronger or healthier, and I think that's true again. And one of the big changes when I think back to even just a few years ago is we were very much an outbound M&A house and with a strong reliance on brokers and other things that I have to say now, we're very much an inbound recipient of opportunities. It's well known in the market that we're a leader in that space, and there aren't many transactions that would happen without us having been asked to look at it, which does give us the opportunity to be right across the multiples that are being paid in -- obviously, in the Services segment, too, but particularly across accounting and financial planning. All the transactions that we've done are within our investment framework and guidelines. So we're very pleased with the returns that they'll -- they are and will generate. And yes, we do see a number of opportunities falling within that framework often, [ Ollie ], that's because of the uniqueness of what we can do when we make an acquisition. And so for example, acquiring a financial planning business within a large strong accounting firm that we might own already allows us not only to place value on the financial planning firm, but also on the opportunity to grow clients through introducing the accounting clients to the financial planners. So there's a number of unique transactions along those lines that we have and will continue to announce. Some of those larger ones, as you see, there's been some real hunger, and we think some of those multiples are a bit toppy, but that's not every transaction, and we're fortunate to have a number in the pipeline in all 4 of those categories of transaction types that we do. There's no shortage in that space. And it's also why we're very focused on building our integration capability and ensuring that we can bid in these acquisitions very quickly to free up the capacity to be ready for the next one. Did you want to add anything to that, Keith?

Yes, thanks Hugh. And really great question, [ Ollie ]. Look, it's not -- our value proposition, particularly to these firms, it's more than just financial. We're in there. We're in there together to cocreate value. And a big part of that value creation, as Hugh said, is providing that financial planning value add as well as the future growth opportunities that we provide. And generally, we are at the stage where we're almost getting inbound deals one a week, sometimes twice a week. And that gives us a lot to provide these firms on growth opportunities, whether -- and that also creates -- depending on the location, creates a lot of synergies, whether it's taking out rent, taking out admin staff, et cetera. So it's much broader than just the dollars that they receive. It's actually the value prop is all around cocreating value so that there's a bigger, much bigger pool. And given our ownership model, it allows that value to then be shared with the incumbents.

Maybe I'll raise the perennial one. It's actually biennial. Latest on the CBA, thinking around the stake, I'm aware that there's still a class action that I think may be going into their thinking in terms of the stake, et cetera. But yes, what have they been indicating to you in their discussions? Are they still see the stake as noncore, or has that changed?

Yes, thanks [ Ollie ]. And it's okay, you don't need to be apologetic when you ask that question. But there's probably 2 parts to that around the CBA as a shareholder, and -- but I might start with the class action. I just sort of hasten to add that I don't speak for CBA. They speak for themselves. I can share my perspectives, but it's -- I'm not talking on behalf -- obviously, on behalf of the bank. But in terms of the class action, on 22nd of March, 2024, so almost a year ago, the trial completed in the Federal Court after a 12-day hearing before Justice Halley. He gave no indication of timing to deliver his judgment. And clearly, almost a year has passed since. The matter has been run by CBA, and it's contemplated by the indemnity provided by CBA to count back in October 2019. That's where we stand in terms of the class action. As and if that pertains to CBA shareholding, they -- I would understand their position remain. The public position is that their shareholding in Count is not core to their long-term strategy, and it would be their intention to divest at some stage. I also hasten to add that they've been our largest and very supportive shareholder since December 2011, so 14 years now. Clearly, after the transaction with the acquisition of Diverger, their shareholding was quite substantially diluted, and we're appreciative of their ongoing support.

I mean the Diverger transaction, I admit to initially having a few questions, but this result and the second half result from FY '24 certainly answers them in spades. It's been a very successful transaction to date and looks like it's giving you some great growth levers. Given the scale of the synergies that have been available in this type of transformational deals, like obviously, Affina was similar, is there appetite for more of those? And I guess, is there -- are there assets where some of those owners are looking at the future and realizing that without doing the combination, they're really leaving a lot of value on the table? Because -- I mean, obviously, like Diverger was making what, $6 million of EBITA or maybe $7 million if you're being generous, and you've shared effectively with those shareholders and another $4 million plus, it's obviously fairly accretive to do these type of combinations.

Yes. I mean, I think that's a point well made, [ Ollie ]. And we're really pleased with the progress we've made the way we've integrated and true to, I suppose, our logic at the time, which was that the transaction made an awful lot of sense in terms of driving scale primarily in the Wealth and the Services segment through that particular acquisition. The business in both those spaces and also in the Equity Partnerships, we scale very well. The increase in the cost base is nowhere near commensurate to the increase in the revenues. And through that period, we've invested in a number of new roles as well because the business has changed and the capability that we needed in a number of spaces has changed. For example, we've now built a corporate technology team that we didn't have before, which is included in the cost run rates that you see today. So the simple answer is, yes, the right sorts of transactions. We know that we're running a terrific business, and we see momentum and growth regardless. But as and when similar opportunities emerge, we'll certainly explore them. I hasten to add too, sometimes the expectation on price we don't think stacks up, and we've seen recently a couple of transactions that we think will be very difficult to generate those sort of returns on, not ones we've done, but ones that have been out in the market. So we don't rush into those, and we keep pretty disciplined. But we're very interested in scale opportunities. And as I said, closing out the integration program is a key milestone to make sure that as and when those more transformational opportunities emerge, we've got the capacity to digest them.

[Operator Instructions] If there are no further questions, I will now hand back to Hugh to close the investor briefing.

Thanks, Doug. And thank you, [ Ollie ]. I think you always ask a very thorough set of questions and cover all the key matters on people's minds, so they're more than happy to use your questions to voice their own thoughts. I know we've spoken to a number of our shareholders and analysts through the course of today, and we've got face-to-face meetings starting from tomorrow and for the next couple of weeks. So I'm sure there will be more discussion to come. Thank you again to everyone for making the time to attend our investor briefing today. We do know that it's incredibly busy time of year, and we try not to make it too onerous. And thank you for the questions, [ Ollie ], and the feedback from others. We really value your engagement. As we said, we would -- Count has delivered strong growth in all 3 business segments. We appreciate you being an investor in Count. We look forward to continuing to work hard to deliver for you. Thank you for your time today, and this can officially conclude the investor presentation.