Count Limited (CUP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Doug Richardson. I'm the Company Secretary of Count Limited, and pleased to be your host today. Welcome, and thank you for joining us this afternoon for the Count Limited investor briefing of our FY 2025 financial results. The results were released to the market this morning. Before we begin the presentation, we would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we're meeting on today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay our respects to their 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. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to our CEO, Hugh Humphrey.

Thank you, Doug, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Count's Financial Year 2025 Full Year Results Presentation. This year has been nothing short of a milestone in Count's 45-year history with very strong performance and a number of significant achievements, including boosting funds under management to over $4 billion at the 31st of July 2025, higher revenue and margins across the business and the realization of significant cost synergies following the successful integration of the former Diverger businesses, which has been incredibly well executed and delivered benefits beyond our expectations. We continue our execution against our strategy, and we're seeing benefits emerge from the value that we create through our flywheel. We're no longer just driving value within each of our operating segments. We're beginning to drive value across our operating segments. And our business platform means that we can onboard new acquisitions and generate additional margin from a range of value-added products and services. We delivered organic revenue growth and mergers and acquisitions growth across all 3 business segments, demonstrating a balanced growth performance. Compared to 2 years ago, underlying NPAT has more than doubled and EBITA has almost tripled. For shareholders this has meant that our share price has almost doubled and our market capitalization tripled over the last 24 months. More importantly, you can see the profile of the business has fundamentally shifted with the high-growth wealth segment now contributing 1/3 of the business' EBITA. Equity Partnerships remains at our core, delivering around 40% of the total EBITA and services is an emerging contributor around 1/4 of EBITA. The change in the business mix with our acquisitions ensures that we're well positioned to capture the tailwinds of the wealth accumulation and accelerating into generational wealth transfer in the Australian market. We are very pleased with our full year results. Here, I have presented the statutory figures on the left and the underlying on the right. And laying out both sets of financials gives you the transparency of the impact in the period of the transaction integration costs associated to Diverger and the separation costs following the Bentleys West Australia divestment and the normalization of the Evolution Advisers divestment. Whilst we're not in the business to exit businesses, divesting these 2 legacy underperforming assets is an achievement for the team and had delivered an improvement in earnings. Revenue grew strongly by plus 28% to $143.6 million. Our overall underlying EBITA margin increased from 15% to 20%, which reflects the improved business earnings profile, particularly from Wealth and the improved margins in the Equity Partnerships segment. Our underlying EBITA grew to $27.7 million in FY 2025, which is a more than 67% increase on the prior comparative period. Statutory NPATA attributable was $12.7 million and NPAT attributable was $8.9 million. Underlying NPAT attributable was $10.9 million, an increase of plus 89%, and underlying NPATA increased plus 84% to $14.7 million. We were pleased to see the completion of the integration of the former Diverger businesses having achieved $5.1 million in cost synergies outperforming our 2024 revised expectation of $4 million and well above the $3 million originally announced in 2023. In Wealth, funds under advice grew to $37.8 billion driven by new adviser recruitment, new clients, new contributions and market growth, offset by pension payments. Our separately managed accounts or SMA portfolios increased by plus 24% over the last 12 months to $3.9 billion. And net flows for the period were positive at plus $380 million and significantly more than double the net inflows from the prior corresponding period when it was plus $178 million. We now have 80 firms adopting our CARE SMA investment philosophy, and we're in discussions with the pipeline of firms looking to embrace it. In total, we have 159 firms in our network using our SMA solutions, the Count portfolios or our managed discretionary accounts, and this is set to grow. In Equity Partnerships, we continue to grow our segment organically and through M&A with the benefit of prior period acquisitions flowing into this year's results. The Equity Partnerships segment continues to improve margins despite going through a period of increased acquisition activity and some system upgrades. Overall, the average EBITA margin across the firms has increased from 21% to 23%. As we increase exposure to financial advice revenues in this segment, this sort of trajectory should continue. As an overall group, we're pleased to increase our final dividend to $0.0275 per share. This is up 22.2% on last year's final dividend, and this uplift in dividend is an outcome of the step-change in the company's scale and performance. For investors, the total dividend over the year of $0.045 per share represents the highest dividend count has paid out in the last 8 years. Similar to the half year, we introduced a Dividend Reinvestment Plan for the final dividend and we recommend that to shareholders. Now I want to turn to the segment performance. The Wealth segment has grown significantly with underlying EBITA at $13.0 million for the half, driven by the scale of our financial advice firms and growth in our SMAs to $3.9 billion in FUM as at the 30th of June 2025. And total firms embracing our philosophy now stands at 80. As one of the largest wealth advice firms in the country, we see tremendous growth opportunity for this within our network of 500 firms as well as potential outside our group. The Wealth segment reflects these are some streamlined back office functions and the enhanced service offering across the 3 AFSLs. EBITA in the Equity Partnerships segment grew by plus 5%, the combination of organic revenue growth and M&A and reflecting increased demand for financial planning. Around 25% of the total revenues in this segment now comes from our 73 employee financial advisers. We see significant upside in further growing the financial advice revenues as a proportion of total revenue over time. And our EBITA margin has improved over the period as we saw further uptake of outsourcing in our Equity Partnerships segment. While still at an early stage, we are starting to see substantive use cases for automation and AI and the returns and efficiencies that they can generate for our firms. M&A activity, of course, is very beneficial for us in the medium to long term. However, we do tend to see one-off productivity dips in the 6 to 12 months following completion of those transactions within our Equity Partnerships segment, and we expect those firms to return to normalized trading in FY 2026. Separately, over the period, we had 4 equity firms undertake strategic CRM upgrades that will position them well for the future but did affect their production in the period. We have a very successful M&A function that's highly regarded with a strong pipeline, and we continue to execute tuck-ins to grow scale in our Equity Partnerships segment. In FY 2025, we successfully completed a transaction every 5 weeks. The Services segment grew significantly with revenues up plus 113% compared to the PCP and exceeding $30 million for the full year. EBITA margins continue to be stable at 30%. We've unified our sales functions under one team to drive sales across the various service offerings. And over the period, we continue to engage with our clients through running 219 events with 15,000 clients attending them. We're fortunate to be well positioned to benefit from a series of wealth megatrends underpinning Count's future growth. Our strong FUM growth in the Wealth segment is reflective of the growth and popularity of managed accounts. Across the market, underlying managed accounts FUM is growing at plus 24%, and industry statistics indicate 42% of advice firms have yet to adopt managed accounts. For Count, that means there remains a long growth path ahead. And this is because the benefits that managed accounts deliver for clients and for advice firms are clear and compelling. They help deliver more advice at scale, they reduce risk, they enable client investment decisions to be enacted very quickly, removing the legacies of delay, they improve the profitability of firms and they allow advisers to meet the needs of more clients. Count presents flexibility and choice to its network with 3 unique investment solutions ranging from simple low-cost solutions to the more complex solutions for sophisticated investors. Over the period, we saw increased firm take-up across the network, evidenced by 80 firms now adopting care, FUM increasing plus 24% to $3.9 billion at 30 June and by way of an update to more than $4 billion as at the end of July just last month. And net inflows of plus $380 million, which exceeded market growth, which was plus $364 million. All of this demonstrates the confidence in the CARE investment philosophy and its successful 14-year track record. The Count portfolio is a paper-based externally managed, and we'll transition another $865 million of FUM to be on the Count management, which is expected to be completed before the end of this calendar year, and we will confirm to the market once that is complete. We continue to see tremendous opportunities within our network for driving funds under management, and in particular, our ambition of reaching $10 billion of funds under management within 5 years. We're well on track to deliver this target. And with only 14% adoption of the Count investment solutions across the network, there's significant opportunities to grow funds under management organically and deliver better and more consistent outcomes to clients. The feedback from our clients and our firm has been extremely positive, and we've documented a number of case studies illustrating the benefits of the CARE investment philosophy to clients and to the advice firms. Ongoing investment in the adviser and client engagement tools to support adoption is critical, and our clients really value direct access to our Chief Investment Officer, who directly delivers communications, presentation, investment updates to clients. As investments get more complicated, wealth increases and the world continues to be volatile, clients are seeking better, more timely information to make the right decisions. Our award-winning Wealth segment continues to go from strength to strength. Count won the CoreData Advice Network of the Year for 2025 and was a finalist in the 2025 IMAP awards for innovation with our SMA. This builds on our success last year with the CoreData Licensee of the Year for 2024. Our leading wealth model ensures our network of advisers have scalable advice tech that reduces adviser preparation time we perform well ahead of industry benchmarks. Our risk and compliance functions highly rated by our advisers. And in particular, we carefully monitor our approved products list. We're not afraid to move ahead of the research houses when we need to, and we will always put the needs of our clients first as evidenced by our recent proactive decisions to adjust client exposure to some private credit markets. We're constantly vigilant proactive across our network with audits of advice and their investment recommendations and provide tailored coaching and development to advisers each and every day. Our long-term approach backed by independent external Board governance with deep expertise and investment committee structure that ensures our client needs are always placed first, not the desires of a product manufacturer. We continue to grow through mergers and acquisitions with 11 transactions completed in the year, which includes the divestment of the legacy and underperforming firm Evolution Advisers. We've remained disciplined in our approach and are focused on larger transactions to scale up our Equity Partnerships segment. We see the benefits of driving scale in this segment as firms become acquisition hubs for further M&A activity. In particular, we are prioritizing acquisitions that add wealth revenues to the segment, complementing our core strength in accounting and growing firm margins. In financial year '25, we deployed more capital in the Equity Partnerships segment than the prior period. With the additional scale, we've grown average firm revenues across the segment, and we anticipate further benefits to come from scale as we grow, particularly in margin improvement. The Count Adelaide acquisition of Johnston Grocke is a terrific example of how we're executing our strategy within the Equity Partnerships segment. Revenue here in this firm has grown from $2.8 million to nearly $10 million in just 3 years. Financial planning revenues have been boosted through acquisitions and fresh leadership. The take-up of Count services continue to grow with the firm already adopting our outsourcing solutions and they're looking to adopt other Count services such as our IT managed services and our CARE investment solution. Our integrated model is increasingly critical to delivering scale in the equity partnerships model, removing the noise and enabling our leaders to focus on what they do best, delivering for their clients. We're encouraging the emergence of use cases in driving operational efficiencies through outsourcing, AI and automation. We have a 3-pronged approach to embedding AI within our strategy, which is policies, education and selected projects. The firms that have adopted this are seeing improvements in productivity in client service and Smart Business Solutions is a perfect example where they have achieved significant operational efficiencies from AI and automation, for example, of the small business BaaS process. We believe our role is critical in driving better client experiences in engagement through operating efficiency gains in these productivity gains give time back to our frontline staff so they can spend more quality time with their clients and improve the client experience. Before I hand to Keith to take us through some more detail about our financials, I would like to thank our firms, our partners and our people who have delivered for our customers and clients and contributed to these strong results for the full year. This year, we celebrate 45 years in business, and I'd like to acknowledge 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 new and existing shareholders over the coming weeks. We have delivered an exceptional set of full year results, benefiting from the acquisitions completed in the last financial year and the organic growth achieved over the period. Underlying revenue on a like-for-like basis, removing the divested operations of Evolution and Bentleys show a 28% revenue increase on the prior corresponding period. Our cost increased over the period at a lower rate relative to the top line, which reflects the increased scale of the business and the cost synergies that were achieved. More pleasingly, we have delivered the $5.1 million of cost synergies for the full year, which are reflected in the financials across mainly the Corporate, Wealth and Services segment. Other income reported has increased over the period, and that is a result of business-as-usual activity, including rebates from suppliers, deferred consideration adjustment, sale of fee parcels, lease variation gains and impacts from share ownership movements within the Equity Partnerships segment. Whilst corporate costs have increased, the overall underlying corporate cost as a percentage of total revenue has declined from 8% to 6% over the last few years. We've managed the corporate costs appropriately, and we continue to see the corporate cost as a percentage of total revenues to trend downwards over time. In respect of interest costs, our proactive cash management have resulted in a stronger interest income in the second half, and we expect to continue to proactively manage our debt and optimize our interest costs appropriately on a go-forward basis. Moving on to the waterfall. We have provided a comprehensive reconciliation from FY '24 statutory to FY '25 underlying results. Organic growth contributed 7% on the underlying FY '24 results, noting that this represents the organic growth of the business, excluding Diverger and other acquisitions during the last financial year and current financial period. In the waterfall, we have also called out other one-off costs that have impacted the results, in particular, the additional system upgrades that were incurred by 4 equity partners during the period, impacting EBITA by $0.2 million. Acquisitive growth stated in the waterfall includes the full 12 months of Diverger and other acquisitions, such as Count Adelaide's acquisition of Johnston Grocke, and some partial year acquisitions and tuck-ins that were completed in FY '24 and '25. The EBITA from acquisitions contributed $11.2 million over the period. We also closed off the Diverger integration and transaction costs, in line with the $8 million total cost announced at the time of the acquisition. We incurred $5 million in FY '24 and the rest of the $3 million in FY '25. In terms of the segment performance, we have seen all 3 segments grow over the period. Our Equity Partnerships segment has delivered another solid year driven by acquisitions and operational efficiency improvements through the adoption of AI and increasing use of outsourcing. During the period, due to significant increased acquisitions in FY '24 and '25, we saw one-off impacts of integration costs hit the Equity Partnerships segment towards the second half of FY '25. Combined with the additional system upgrades in 4 firms, the overall growth rates for the Equity Partnerships segment has been lower than expected. However, we do expect these one-off costs to be normalized in FY '26 as the reoccurring revenues continue to flow through. To give you an idea of these one-off costs, these relate to time spent on client transitions for fee parcel acquisitions, where firms would spend more time on the initial meeting which would be subsequently written off. In our Wealth segment, our SMAs experienced growth of $744 million, underpinned by net inflows of $380 million and market movements of $364 million. It was pleasing to see the net inflows exceed market movements over the period. In the Services segment, we have been driving operational efficiencies through AI adoption. We can see significant benefits in assisting with the marketing materials for the education and expertise offerings and using large language models to mine tax responses for our tax technical help desk. Combined with the unified sales team and the expected completion of the CRM system in services, by the end of the calendar year, these efficiencies can help us further scale our offering and drive improved sales. With the full impact of the significant acquisitions flowing in the full year, we are seeing a commensurate step-change in the cash flow of the business, driven by the increase in the size in scale of the business and the profitability with higher margins flowing across the portfolio. Better management of cash flow from operations can be evidenced with cash flows from the second half stronger than statutory EBITA. The cash flow increase is also a result of the outcomes of various structural initiatives that we have executed over the last 18 months, particularly in relation to tax following the acquisition of 25% of Accurium and 15% of Count Financial that Count didn't previously own in FY '24. We have proactively managed our cash flow to drive better interest income outcomes, and we continue to optimize our payment schedules and cash levels to drive optimal cash outcomes in respect of interest income on an ongoing basis. We have increased the final dividend to $0.0275, which is about the midrange of our dividend payout policy of 60% to 90% of maintainable net profit to Count shareholders. This increase represents a 22.2% increase to the final dividend declared last year. We executed new funding facilities with Westpac in early January. We've increased our headroom and ensured we had sufficient capacity to fund growth given the robust pipeline of acquisition opportunities. We have a strong focus on capital discipline and optimizing returns through new and existing investments, and we're focused on accretive outcomes where we can further improve and grow our earnings. We will continue to operate the dividend reinvestment plan, which we initiated for the interim dividend. This provides shareholders to further increase their holdings, and the funds from the DRP will assist with additional cash to enable the group to continue deploying capital at accretive returns for shareholders. And in summary, we have delivered an exceptional year with increased underlying EBITA and net profit compared to prior period and have delivered great shareholder outcomes. We exceeded our initial expectations of Diverger cost synergies and have realized $5.1 million in the period. We have a great platform of organic growth and a pipeline of acquisition opportunities to continue execution of our growth strategy, and I look forward to delivering on our growth ambitions. I'll pass back to Hugh for some reflections and outlook for 2026.

Thanks, Keith. And as you said, a very strong set of results against all metrics. Over the period, we've also refined our strategy with the Board and the involvement of all of our employees. We have a bold ambition to be the leading provider of integrated wealth and accounting services, and this has been supported by relentless execution by the team against our purpose, pillars, enablers and behaviors. We give our people, partners and clients the confidence to look ahead. Our strong position in the fast growth market of wealth management, underpinned by the stability of our accounting business, gives us a long-term advantage that these results can only be achieved by delivering on our enablers across branding, systems and technology and people and culture. And we do all of that through living Count behaviors of thinking with an open mind, acting with bravery and doing what is right. And this bold ambition is fueled by our flywheel, which ensures that we have a sustainable, profitable and integrated business model that delivers superior returns for shareholders. Our execution against the flywheel has been reflected in the results reported today for the full year, and we have a very strong platform to execute and deliver on our bold ambition. I do want to just thank you again for your time this afternoon. We know it's a particularly busy time of the year. And at this stage, I'll hand over to our Company Secretary, Doug Richardson, to open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We have a number of analysts and investors on the call. [Operator Instructions] First question. Andrew, go ahead, Andrew.

I just wanted to start just around the operating leverage within the Equity Partnerships business. So I appreciate that you didn't take the CRM costs above the line or below the line, I should say, nor the integration costs. So just thinking about that sort of relationship going forward, if you achieve, let's call it, 5% revenue growth, what's your feel for what the operating leverage should be through the equity partnerships to the EBITA line?

Yes. Thanks, Andrew, and I'll -- I might make a couple of comments and then invite Keith to add some as well. When we talk about the introduction of some of the CRM capabilities in those projects, they do deliver some disruption to production, and that often affects the core of the accounting business. And I think in that space, we accept that general sort of organic revenue growth is always in the sort of the low single digits at sort of 2%, 3%, 4% type range. Where we're seeing some real opportunity, of course, is from the financial planning revenue perspective. And as we mentioned earlier, only 25% of our total revenue in this segment comes from financial advice, and the margins -- not only are the margins higher in the advice space, but so too is the revenue growth rate. And maybe, Keith, you want to add a couple of points on that.

Yes. So Look, I think one of this is really around timing, Andrew. Whilst it has impacted productivity, the recurring revenues are pretty much there. So that has obviously deferred some of that revenue and pushed that into the first half of FY '26, particularly in relation to those systems. A good majority of those firms, and that's why we don't take that to the bottom line in statutory, and we don't call them out as one-off items is because we do have 19 firms, and they do have the system upgrades. A majority of them have gone through that, and we're probably towards the back end of the firms that we'll undertake those system upgrades. And then in regards to those one-off, particularly the integration, we did see a big step-up in our acquisitions particularly in '24 and the start of '25, and we had a few that came through, obviously, announced in the last few months. There is significant work, particularly in that first meetings with clients, as I referenced. But once again, those reoccurring revenues are still there, it's just being pushed from a timing perspective into FY '26.

That's great. And then just one more question, if I could, while I've got the floor, just around the appeal on the court case more, just not so much a view on how you think it unfolds, but just a time line, if you're any clearer on what that time line looks like at this stage?

Sorry, I missed the question. I was reading one of the questions online.

Yes, yes, sorry, Andrew, thank you.

Do you want me to repeat that?

No, got it. And I think we had a similar question just coming through online. So yes, look, I just want to start by acknowledging and then thanking Matt Comyn and his team at the bank. They've been a terrific supporters of the business. They've had been our largest shareholder for 14 years now. And as we know, nearly 6 years ago, they did declare that they would -- their intention to exit their holding in an orderly fashion when market conditions were right. Those conditions haven't emerged yet. We do feel though that we're coming to the point where those conditions are likely to emerge in the coming period. And that's really driven by completion of a lot of the remediation activity and whatnot. You'd have seen clearly that the class action against Count Financial was dismissed and costs awarded, and there is an appeal that's been lodged there. There is still a process to play out in that space.

Thanks, Andrew, for those questions. Is there any other questions that we have?

Just I might extend because Andrew [indiscernible] had a similar question, but also had a question, Keith, I get you to comment around notwithstanding the decline in corporate cost as a percentage of revenue. Can you give us some more detail over the $2 million increase in costs and what should -- in what should largely be a fixed cost business. But I'll start with the third part of his question, which is at the multiples you're paying for tuck-ins and the like change in the last year. And I will start there. And certainly, we're seeing a lot of interest in both financial planning and accounting businesses. We have seen some examples of where businesses, particularly private equity and particularly offshore private equity are paying higher multiples, both for accounting and for financial planning businesses. In terms of the transactions that we've been doing, you'd see that we continue to be very disciplined. We're clear on our return on equity hurdles and we don't push through transactions that don't meet those hurdles. Our key advantage is in the '19 large-scale accounting and financial planning businesses that already count, Count as an equity partner. And the 500 firms that we deal with day in, day out through our financial advice licensee businesses, which means we're the first port of call when somebody has a transaction to undertake a succession plan you want to exit a business. So we see a real advantage of working our network, and that's where we come back to our integrated flywheel and the value that we add to those relationships. Keith, do you want to touch on the costs?

Yes. And I'll add a few, just particularly around the corporate cost. And yes, they have increased. I mean, it is also -- whilst it has decreased as a percentage, there is still an increase because the shareholder base, and there's still a number of fixed costs sort of associated with relative volume type, particularly with the employee base going up to 180 people. You can imagine the software costs, certain elements of the shareholder base, particularly with Computershare, there still is an increased cost to that. There is a benefit, obviously, through the synergies that we've talked about. And so whilst previously Count and Diverger, a good example is the insurance cost. It's not exactly 1 plus 1, but equals 2. It's 1 Count's insurance, Diverger's insurance, but it ends up being sort of the 1.5 type outcome. So there is absolutely the synergies there, but there still is a slight increase due to the size and scale of the organization. And that's what effectively that $2 million cost represents.

Importantly, obviously, we track it and have done for some time as a percentage of total revenues, and we've seen that come down over the last 2 years, and that would remain our objective looking forward as we continue to build scale.

Yes. And then just touching on the multiples. I mean we do see that generally, the market activity has increased. And no doubt about that, most people would see that in terms of accounting multiples being paid as well as for financial planning generally across the sector. Where we have, and particularly how Hugh's talked around our existing kind of footprint, we've got these 19 firms. And where we are, particularly when we do those transactions and where we drive obviously, quite superior return on capital outcomes is because we have a number of cost synergies that enable us to meet the investment hurdles, which is our ROIs in the teens. And that's through synergies, whether it's through lease savings when we look at acquisitions and building these 19 firms into larger-scale organizations, back-office synergies when we look at these acquisitions, and we increasingly look at that, and that drives a much lower kind of post-synergy multiple. And so that's increasingly the benefit of our footprint and how we would then drive those superior returns.

Oli, I can see you've been waiting patiently from E&P. Go ahead with your question, Oli.

Yes, just on the money that you're in-sourcing from GDG. Can you remind us when you think you'll be bringing that in, and I suppose, contribution? I mean it's obviously not going to be shoot stations, but I guess it's all incremental.

Thanks, Oli, and good to hear from you. That process is underway, and it will be complete before the end of this calendar year. In terms of its contribution relative to its -- I'll ask Keith just to make a couple of observations around that.

Yes. Look, it's -- we'll get a few basis points exposure as a result of that. And look, it's not like a CARE that generates 22 basis points, but it will be representing a few basis points benefit to Count, obviously, by bringing that in-house.

Yes. And then just on CARE, could you expand a bit on how you're seeing the pipeline there of firms that are thinking of using it, that you're in discussions and your aspirations on, I suppose, further stepping up the amount of net flows as more firms come onto the system?

Yes, great. And Oli, just as a reminder to investors, we have a back story with CARE as it was coupled with the GPS Wealth business and had been that way for nearly 14 years. And on taking over ownership of those businesses, we've invested in CARE in a number of ways. We've increased the resourcing and the investments function. We have invested in the brand, and we're making investments in the advice technology that underpins the client experience as well. We've also appointed a business development resource in the team, and we've expanded the offering outside the GPS network to include Paragem and Count Financial. And what that does is really say that the sort of historic sort of circa 80 firms that were sitting inside primarily the GPS network. We can now talk to the 500 firms right across the licensees. And in fact, we don't limit there. We have some interest from outside the group as well and some users of CARE outside of the group also. So we see a big opportunity. The process there. It is an advice philosophy. So we go through a process of educating the firms around it. If it fits their client needs and they choose to adopt it, we encourage them to pick up the technology to process the whole experience. So it's not just an SMA. It is more -- it's a philosophy to run your business by, which means that I suppose the uptake is, in a sense, is a little slower, but then the scale comes later. So our approach has been to introduce the firms to educate them around it and build a pipeline and take them through the first client case and see where it goes.

Yes. And at any stage, we have a pipeline of 20 to 30 firms that we've identified, and we go through that change management process and show them what that first piece of advice would look like for the client along with the client engagement tools. So yes, so it's quite a -- as we said, it's sort of hand-in-hand combat type of approach because it is introducing them to those client engagement and getting them to adopt that process with how they engage with clients.

And really good starting point for us is our 19 equity partners, and as you know, historically, most of those have come from being very strong in accounting and are building their capabilities and financial planning. So standing up a complete set of tools, capabilities, client experiences and advice process efficiencies have been very powerful for those firms. So we see good solid opportunities in our equity partners as well.

Yes. No, that's perfect. And MDA still looks kind of a bit embryonic you're offering there. Can you talk to us about your plans there? I suppose, maybe try to accelerate that?

Yes. Look, it's probably fair to say it's our primary focus. CARE is really at the heart of what we offer and because of the depth of the capabilities and the philosophy there and that's where we're focusing a lot of our attention, but we also recognize we have a broad range of needs across the group. And so we want to make sure we're relevant to all of the firms. Some of our businesses, because of our size and scale and history are very sophisticated businesses. They've already got extremely well-defined advice processes, investment philosophies, investment committees, et cetera. And in those situations, they're looking for a more bespoke managed discretionary account solution. And so hence, we do offer that. But obviously, we lead with CARE, and then we follow with the Count portfolios and with the MDA solution as well.

Thanks, Oli. Any further questions Oli? I might just have another quick call around of the meeting. If there's any further questions from investors or analysts?

Anything come through online, Doug?

No, nothing additional. So with that, Hugh, I will now hand back to you to close the briefing.

Well, thank you very much. And again, thank you, everyone, for making the time to attend our investor briefing today. I know that Count has distracted attention away from Qantas and Wesfarmers today, but we appreciate it's a busy time of year. We're coming towards the end of the results period, and we thank you for choosing to be with us and for your questions and feedback, we value your engagement. I appreciate you being investors in Count. We look forward to continue to work very hard to deliver for you. And I think this officially concludes our investor presentation. And thank you very much.

Thank you.