Generation Development Group Limited (GDG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Generation Development Group's webinar regarding the recent acquisition of Evidentia. On the line today, we have the company's CEO, Grant Hackett; and the company's CFO, Terence Wong. Before I hand it over to Terence and Grant to go through the presentation up on the screen, I'll just remind you that you can submit questions through the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen, and we'll get to those post the end of the presentation. But on that note, Grant, I'll hand it over to you. Thanks very much.

Fantastic. Thanks very much, Simon, and good morning to everyone, and a big thank you to all the support that we've had out there for GDG and in particular on the acquisition of Evidentia. We're super excited about this opportunity. This comes back on the 50% or 60% on a fully diluted basis, acquisition that we did of Lonsec in June, and that was completed on the 1st of August last year, where we're really starting to be the market leader in the managed account space by combining these 2 businesses together. Just to give you the headlines of the deal that you can see here in the exec summary on this slide, on the 10th of February, we entered into a binding agreement to acquire 100% of Evidentia Group, which is a group that predominantly focuses in tailored managed account solution space. That means we will be the outright market leader in this particular space, because we are combining the #1 and #2 players in terms of funds under management. It means funds under management, and this is a number as of the end of December and has continued to grow and obviously achieved good results since then of $25 billion. This means that we'll really cover the whole gamut in terms of solutions in the managed accounts category. So anything from ready-made solutions through to implemented portfolios, which we've already got at Lonsec as part of the solutions there. And then really owning the tailored space where we're able to come up with tailored solutions at scale for financial practices and licensees. In terms of the upfront consideration of deal, it will be $320 million. In addition to that, there will be an earn-out of $40 million. Now this is going to be based on top line revenue. and this will be a combination of both Lonsec Managed Accounts and Evidentia's Managed Account businesses being combined together. We thought this was the best way moving forward. And we're going to talk in a little bit more detail in a second why we've restructured the group to be able to drive performance across all of our key products and categories. But we thought this formula of 46% in total top line revenue growth was the best number to go with and the best formula or approach around the earn-out, because it really does drive the right behavior and alignment between bringing these 2 businesses together and really capitalizing on the opportunity of growth, and it's really the growth thematic for GDG that we've been focused on and being executing on in any of our products and services, and that's either through legislative or structural tailwinds are the areas that, in particular, we've been going into. This will be funded through a $287.9 million equity raising, plus the $75.1 million GDG scrips, which is obviously the Evidentia shareholders rolling over into GDG. There's an additional raising of $30 million, $10 million of support, $10 million worth of synergy realization plans that we are currently putting in place and have working groups that are coming up with the various initiatives and the time frames and milestones that we want to execute that, and also some of the future growth initiatives through the Evidentia business and other opportunities within GDG that we see moving forward. The good news about this acquisition is that it's double-digit accretive on a stand-alone basis -- based on the FY '26 numbers that we've got. We didn't want to include any synergies as part of this deal. We see it is really stacking up on its own and a great opportunity for GDG to really own that managed account sector moving forward. There's a lot of good competitors in this space, and we -- all the professional courtesy to them, the likes of [ Zenith ], which have been very strong here. We see other groups such as [ Drummonds, Kwila ], of course. There's a lot of other managed account providers that are in that sort of $3 billion to $5 billion category that have done a phenomenal job and continue to do a phenomenal job with their clients, but we see the size and scale of bringing the #1 and #2 businesses together, and the businesses that really been growing the fastest in this space because of the gamut of opportunities and solutions that they provide their clients is a great opportunity for GDG to capitalize the growth and the structural change that we see in this particular area of financial services. Simon, if you wouldn't mind moving just through to the next slide. This really just talks around, I guess, the history of GDG where its focuses was, it's kind of current strategic objectives and what we see moving forward in terms of inorganic and organic growth opportunities for the group. Really, we started out with Generation Life and investment bond provider with a single mono-line products back in 2017 when a lot of new people joined the group and re-branded it, really saw that opportunity for the changes inside superannuation there, where they cap super and the amounts that you could actually put inside super. We've definitely been able to achieve some significant growth, and we'll go into that detail towards the back end of this presentation today before I open it up for questions, but it's been a phenomenal growth story there. We also launched into the lifetime annuity market. I mean that really goes to thematic of an aging population that's living a lot longer than what they intended and making sure that they've got certainty around their income in retirement. And we also invested a lot in Lonsec over the course of the last 4 or 5 years when we did that initial 37% equity investment back in September, October in 2020. In terms of our current strategic objectives, we want to continue to innovate like we're doing in a life company at the moment. We really see that in the investment bond offering. We've got a new PDS that will come out in the second half of this financial year. Again, that will provide more tax optimizations and more choice to our clients. And we see this really growing amongst financial advisers and the support that we continue to receive from the intermediatory and financial advice community. We're investing in financial and managerial capability in our GDG lifetime annuity segment. So we've got some exciting new initiatives that we're looking to announce over the next few months in the lifetime annuity space. We've invested a lot of time and energy and effort into our distribution, all of the systems and processes and product solutions that we have in this particular space. We're yet to get the scale there, but we know that this thematic is going to be around for a long time, and we're only 1 of 5 players, one being an industry superfund who has a solution in this space. But when you look at post retirement assets growing to well over $1 trillion and almost $2 trillion by the time we get to 2034, 2035. It's a significant opportunity in a space that's only 1% category that we believe will go to a 5% to 10% category over time. We've continued to invest heavily in the growth of Lonsec. You've seen that come through in the numbers and all the updates that we've done over the past few years since we did that initial investment. We've also completed the integration of Lonsec over the last 6 months since we took full ownership of that asset, and we've looked at opportunities to continue to turbocharge the organic growth. But as you can see by the acquisition of Evidentia, we've been fortunate enough to look at some M&A activity, which is very, very complementary to the group and our overall strategic priorities. In terms of what GDG looks like moving forward, we want to continue to be #1 and obviously, grow the leadership that we have in each of our sectors. We're very determined, very competitive. We set ourselves huge aspirations here to be totally frank, and we're pretty tough on ourselves. And I feel like post this acquisition, there's a lot of expectation around that, and we certainly intend on delivering to the numbers that we set ourselves internally here at GDG. We see this as a highly strategic opportunity. Like I said, you're bringing #1 and #2 together in a sector that is growing incredibly quick. And we'll continue to -- this opportunity continues to increase the breadth and depth of GDG share register. We had some new shareholders they can take up significant stock over time, to come on as part of the capital raise that we did on the 10th and the 11th of February just last week. And we continue to see that support coming out of the trading halt on Wednesday. We've seen the share price rally up because we believe this is a great growth opportunity and a great growth story in GDG, and we intend on fully executing on that. We certainly have an alignment and a strong culture within our team that's determined to achieve the outcomes that we're looking for. And as I always say, win the right way as well. A bit of an introduction into the Evidentia business. Obviously, people know GDG, and our underlying products and Generation Life, but -- and Lonsec quite well as we've educated the market on many webinars and road shows that we've done over the past few years, but this is a phenomenal business with a bunch of phenomenal people that really are high performing in their field and have got a very, very strong sense of clarity in terms of what they do, how they execute and how they work with their customers. So a very impressive team from the start. That's something that I know my Chairman and I, Rob Coombe really noticed we're dealing with the likes of Pete and Will, who lead this business, just the level of professionalism. In terms of the background of this business, it really only started back in 2018. A very experienced team, like I said, was put in place both from an investment point of view, but really from a financial advice and practice point of view, they really understood the financial advice industry and the layouts and a lot of strong relationships there, given the backgrounds at large in stores and some of the businesses that Pete used to run previously. They've had a huge track record of growth. Just in less than 5 years, they've been basically gone from 0 funds under management to almost $13 billion, as you can see on the screen there, and that just continues to accelerate from everything that we're seeing at the moment. So we're pretty pumped about what the future holds, combining all of these businesses together and having some really strong leadership in place across both the Evidentia and Lonsec side. We see that FUM turning into around $28 billion worth of FUM by the end of FY '26, which that will deliver an EBITDA of around $21 million in our forecast for Evidentia. They've had strong performance since inception. That's talking about not the business performance, but the underlying investment performance that they've had with the various partnerships or practices or individuals that they actually provide investment advice for all of the different strategies across the old strategies that they only brought to market, I think it was September last year. They've had incredible performance across all of the -- sort of various time frames that you would look at the performance for the underlying strategies. And we did a lot of work around the benchmarking of that, and an outstanding reputation with the financial advice practices and their peers that they're up against with the Net Promoter Score, which is very, very high of 86. I mean to get that sort of score, you only have a couple of people that will rate you an 8 or 9 out of 10, and it sort of drops to that sort of mark. And I know it very well coming out of 1 of the big 4 banks after a few years, we used to see that score every single quarter. And I never saw one like that coming from one of those big inflows. You can see just on the bottom part there, I'll get to the value proposition on the right-hand side in a second. You can see there with the revenue growth, $10 million going up to $35 million from the actuals of '24 to the forecast of FY '26. You can see the funds under management growth going from just under $10 billion to up to that $28 billion number that I touched on for the forecast. That's closing FUM, not midpoint for that year of FY '26. And then as we move into the right-hand side of this slide, you can really see the value proposition that Evidentia have with the groups that they work with. So the advice strategy, so making sure that they're helping in supporting strategies and the advice piece for those practices implementation of the investments and making sure that the performance, but not only the performance but the way in which the advice is received or any strategy changes from an underlying client might be done, but also the process within the advice practice as well. So they really only create a big amount of efficiency within the business. So the amount of compliance and paper work and administrative burden that a financial advice practice has to do post the Royal Commission of 2018 is really cumbersome to their growth and really sort of -- it's like walking through custards, it's very, very difficult. So when you have a managed account solution come in and when you have someone who is as strong in terms of investment performance, implementation and practice management as Evidentia, it really has a big impact on the financial advice practice and in terms of the way that they manage their investments, manage their practice and the amount of efficiency and administration and compliance that they have. They also really helped with the CVP for their clients. So they'll form a lot of part of the client communication, whether that's on macro thematics, whether that's on client portfolio performance, whatever it might be around that client communication, Evidentia is embedded as a part of that and help support and deliver all of that to their clients. A lot of this adds up to a lot of business growth. So it adds up to a lot of business growth because, one, you're creating a lot of efficiency within your business, so you get more time back where either you can either spend that growing your business, spending it with time in front of clients and also Evidentia has also helped given the background of the team on the vast experience that they have with some M&A opportunities for those practices, maybe a large practice buying some smaller practices. So they've been able to help facilitate some of those transactions there, and that's meant more business for them in the longer term and obviously, a stronger relationship. And then as part of all of that, they bring that community together. So they do a lot in terms of their client profiling of looking at what sort of practices does Evidentia actually want to partner with for growth? [ Are they ambition ]? Are they young? Do they want to acquire other businesses? Do they want to grow their practice? So they've got a lot of like-minded individuals and they bring those together on an annual or 6-month basis sometimes to basically do workshops and have seminars to see what is best practice and see that everybody across the board has other peers to be able to lean on for problems in business or to be able to look at growth aspirations and be able to deliver and execute some great performance in terms of what they're trying to achieve for their own business. Just moving through to the next slide. This is really just, I guess, a bit of the scoreboard and the strategic rationale as to why we would go into a transaction like this. So the first part on the top left-hand corner there, you can actually see the growth in managed accounts. So 2024, closing off that financial year, a total market of $206 billion growing to a forecast amount of $474 billion by the time we get to 2030. Unfortunately, 2030 is like 5 years away. So you can see that's growing almost 2.5x or thereabouts in the space of 6 years. So an incredible growth story in terms of the actual sector. That's why we really like playing in this space, and we still believe it's really in its infancy. Moving to point number 2, is just the incredible growth and that team has been able to deliver in terms of the performance at Evidentia. So you can see the FY '22 to '24 revenue CAGR of 96%. You can see there that the forecast from '24 through to '26 is 87% compound annual growth rate. And so -- and I'll talk a little bit more detail as well just why we believe we're able to deliver on those figures. In terms of the different markets or products that we play in, just the third point on the top right there, this really talks to there's three kind of core areas that I touched on around the managed accounts. So there's the ready-made solutions, kind of this bit in the middle both Lonsec and Evidentia play in, which is the tailored portfolios at scale which really is for licensees or financial advice, large financial advice practices. And then you've got implemented portfolios, which is really tailoring, I call the suit down to the individual level to maybe a high net worth or ultra-high net worth customers. So there's kind of these 3 layers and 2 legal structures, one being in SMAs, separately managed account or an MDA, a managed discretionary account, and we've got the full gamut of legal structures and solutions as part of our product offering. And the nice thing about when we did the due diligence of this deal is the fact that there was just minimal overlap between the 2 businesses in that middle category. Evidentia has been playing in the space for longer than what Lonsec has. There's going to be a lot that both the groups can learn off each other and sort of pick the best out of both worlds to be able to maximize the value proposition for financial advisers and their clients moving forward. Point number 4 there, you can see the experience team. I've already touched on some of the personnel there, but phenomenal experience from both the investment point of view, but also through to the financial advice. So they really get advisers. They understand practices. They've run dealer groups before. So they understand how that world works, and they want to contribute to the growth for financial advice businesses and advisers full stop. So they're supporting the industry more broadly there as that team continues to deliver exceptional numbers. It's a logical acquisition, #5, you can see joining Lonsec and Evidentia, both #1, #2 in terms of total FUM together. That $25 billion of funds under management really gives us unprecedented scale in this space where there's going to be a lot of benefits that will flow through both to the business of GDG, and obviously, to the financial advice and then customers being the end result of some of the, I guess, opportunities that is created when you have that level of scale. And also the last point there, double-digit accretion, which I haven't touched on earlier in the presentation as part of the executive summary. But we wanted to make sure that this was done on a stand-alone basis. Whenever we've done an acquisition, Terence and I, we want to do this where it stacks up on its own. If there was no integration, if there was no revenue or cost synergies or anything to be included that the deal really stacks up given where the GDG business is at. Moving through into the next part of the presentation. This just deep dives into the segment a little bit more, the managed accounts segment or sector. And you can see that back in 2020, there was total opportunity with funds under management of $80 billion. You can see that's growing significantly. It's 2.5x over 4 years to $206 billion, and you can see down there just in the bar graph here that the breakdown between the different colors is those 3 different areas that Lonsec and Evidentia really play in. So that's ready-made, tailored and implemented areas. And we can see that this particular sector is poised to grow. This is both on IMAP data and also the consulting firm, NMG. You can see there from $206 billion where it currently sits on 2024 actual numbers to grow to $474 billion by the time we get to 2030. So if we're able to take our natural market share, you could see how much our funds under management could grow just over that time period just because of the significant amount of growth in the sector. But our ambitions are to take much more than our natural market share and certainly drive the adoption of managed accounts for a lot of financial advice practices and help support their businesses and their growth moving forward. Moving on to the next slide really just talks about the track record and what we see moving forward for Evidentia. You can see that I won't spend much time here. But from '22, they had only $2.5 billion worth of funds under management. That's accelerated up to close to $10 billion by the time they got to the end of FY '24. As we know, the first half of this year, they're already close to $13 billion and on track to hit the FY '25 forecast. And then, of course, the FY '26 closing FUM number of $28 billion. You can see that what that produces in terms of revenue and the current margins of the group, that's grown significantly over the blue part of the pie chart from that $2 million up to just over $10 million. And we see that just because it's the nature of this business and the operational leverage that you receive and the significant amount of revenue growth given the FUM growth that we have on the back of it to $35 million on the FY '26 forecast. Moving down to the next slide. This really talks about, well, what gives you high conviction or the sort of management team at GDG and Evidentia and Lonsec that some of those numbers that we've gone through in the forecast can be delivered because some of it does look quite steep, but you can't underestimate the power of momentum as well. And you can see that, that business has really got that at the moment. So what we're doing here, I'm just going to get everyone just a focus on the blue 2 bar graphs there, bar charts just right in the middle, you can see the current FUA, so this is funds under advice for existing customers within Evidentia has a total of $39 billion. And you can see there as of the end of December, of the FUA, they're managing funds under management of $12.7 billion. Now normally in the business, one thing that we noticed after 24 months if you've dealt with Evidentia is that you would normally have about 61% of that funds under advice, moved to funds under management. So you can see there that $12.7 billion, if we were to have a conversion rate of additional 28%, and we haven't done this over any particular period, but we just wanted to illustrate the opportunity within the existing cohort of customers that Evidentia has that would increase the funds under management to $23.8 billion. So that's not any growth in any of the underlying businesses, which just tend to be around 10% per year for individual practices. This is just if that remains static. And you can see that $23.8 billion would provide a full year run rate of $25 million of EBITDA. So that's a full year run rate on that $23.8 billion. So you can see here just if they're able to get their conversion rate up of new customers. In our plan for FY '26, we only have 6 customers to be able to achieve those numbers that we need based off the current cohorts sort of advancing and graduating to new levels in terms of that funds under advice converting to funds under management. And already this year, they've been able to acquire 11 new customers. So you can see -- when we look at some of those numbers as much as those trajectories look quite steep within the existing customer set that they have and their ability to acquire new customers or a similar nature that are really achievable some of those funds under management numbers. And really, very exciting by the time we sort of look at our 3- to 5-year horizon, what GDG can actually achieve with both the brands of Lonsec and Evidentia in this space. Moving on to the structure moving forward and some of the changes for the group. So this has been we've remodeled or realigned our group. We all sort of come from schools of performance and accountability and ownership. And we want to make sure as we grow as a business, we've gone from sort of $50 million market cap company 7, 7.5 years ago to almost a $2 billion market cap company, is that we want to keep that same underlying performance culture within each of our teams, and we want to make sure that each of our executives also own and run their business and they have their own P&L. They've got their own executive team, product team, investment team, marketing and sales functions, et cetera, where it makes sense and they're able to own that execution and deliver those results. And also anything that they're pegged around any of the kind of remuneration package is really linked to that individual subsidiary business. So if I look at the life company there, you can see that's grown materially. So we were doing just over $100 million of funds under management per year in terms of growth. We did more than that just in the December just gone. So that was an all-time record month that we saw in December of 2024. So you can see the huge amount of growth that we've seen over the past 6 or 7 years in the investment bond space, still getting to scale the annuities products, but we bought the first of its kind investment linked to lifetime annuity, where you can choose your underlying investment and have the ability to be able to switch through those investments or switch around those investments or hold a certain subset of each depending on what your preferences are. Felipe Araujo, who's been a part of the group since 2017, took the role of CEO of Generation Life just over a month ago. In terms of the Lonsec business, now Lonsec really, as a brand name, it's very, very strong, obviously, in financial services. But it's really synonymous with its research and ratings business. So we've kept the name there. Also, it's very, very important to really -- I'm not going to say, clean up the business, but realign the business in a sense where the Research and Ratings business and SuperRatings business and iRate, which you access a lot of these research ratings through is on a stand-alone basis. So we will be spending the next kind of 3 to 4 months, separating the Lonsec Investment Solutions or Managed Account business away from the Research business. And we've also got a separate CEO now of Lonsec, and Michael Wright was running both of those channels that we had beneath Lonsec, but we've got Lorraine Robinson who's been with the group for the last 5 years, stepping up to become the CEO. So a big congratulations to her. And she's a very bright individual, very driven. And I have no doubt that the team will continue to grow and be #1 in the research space. And that moves us into the final part of the GDG structure moving forward is combining LIS or Lonsec Investment Solutions, the Managed Accounts business with the Evidentia Managed Accounts business and really being the #1 player there, and that's obviously that $25 billion plus worth of FUM. Obviously, we're going to continue to drive great performance out through the multiple distribution teams that we have there, the product synergies, the revenue synergies that can be created by combining these businesses together. We'll have Michael Wright, who will be the CEO, and this is the largest part of the GDG business, and he's obviously a very competent, capable executive, has been a CEO of multiple businesses over the past 15 years of his career and is very keen to continue to drive and work with both the Lonsec and Evidentia team. We'll see Peter Smith, who's currently the Co-founder and CEO and Chair of Evidentia, joined the GDG Group Board, which we're very, very excited about, and also be the Executive Chair to oversee this business as well. Just moving through to the next slide. So we're very excited about obviously driving the performance with that structure and moving forward. We finally get to the right balance between having the teams aligned to the right channel and the right amount of accountability for the executives to be able to deliver performance and making sure that their compensation packages are absolutely aligned to delivering that performance and turning the dial. So we can -- like I said, we come off from the background of driving performance and being accountable to that. In terms of, I guess, the scoreboard for the first half of this year, this really talks to the Life company and some of the results that we'll be speaking to in a lot more detail when we get to the half year results coming out at the end of this month, and we will do a webinar for that as well. We wanted to do this webinar today because obviously, we've got the retail offer out, which closes on the 27th of February. And we wanted to make sure everyone had an opportunity to really ask some questions or see from our perspective, the strategic rationale and the reason behind the acquisition of Evidentia and how that all sort of comes together in the GDG business and be able to provide a bit of a performance update to the market, which we've already done in terms of some of these funds under management numbers and what we've achieved in our last quarterly update. So in that, you could see just in the Life company, our funds under management were up to $3.8 billion or 31% on the prior corresponding period. $254 million of growth there over the September, December through the December quarter. So quite an incredible Q2. It's the best quarter we've had on record. And in fact, it's our third quarter in a row, all-time record in terms of inflows, in a single month for the first time we cracked $100 million. It only feels like probably about 2.5, 3 years ago, where we cracked $100 million of total inflows in a single quarter. So to see that in a single month, it was a good Christmas. $250 billion there in sales inflows just for the investment bond, $194 million of net inflows. This is a number I'm extremely proud of. We saw an uplift in withdrawals, probably about 18 to 24 months ago, put a lot of retention initiatives in place. And a lot of those retention initiatives and the communications that we've either done with financial advisers or clients have really worked. If you look at the previous quarter, Q2 FY '24, I think we had about $44.9 million -- I'm going off memory here so please don't quote me. $44.9 million worth of withdrawals or death maturities because it's commonly used as an estate planning vehicle. And it was around $40 million that we actually had. So not only was it a massive percentage reduction year-on-year, but the actual quantum itself and given that we've got FUM growth over the same period of $812 million, you can see on the final tile there, it was an incredibly good result by the team, and they should all feel extremely proud of that half, but -- we're into the second half now. So we're going to continue to deliver some really good numbers relative to Q3. We're feeling confident with the momentum that the business has at the moment. And obviously, some of the moves that we're making from an acquisition point of view moving forward with Evidentia in that structure that we want to put in place. We put structures and realignment of businesses in place in a very considered and measured way. The best way to mark up a business or stall its momentum is to do things in a hasteful or inconsiderate manner and not sort of treat the people that are already in the business executing and obviously providing this value to shareholders the right way. So we're very, very measured in the way we do things at GDG and across our subsidiary businesses and it's people first. And if you get the people right, and you've got the strategy right and it's all about the execution, which we've been able to do extremely well. So we're very, very conscious of that, over the second half of this year, and we've been constantly communicating to our people across the board. And we've also been getting their feedback from clients and customers, obviously, investors on this call in terms of this acquisition, how it impacts them or what their thoughts are and how we deal with those various communications or provide the benefits down the line to the end customer or the financial advice practice that we're dealing with, particularly in the managed account space. Now just moving, I think it's into the final slide here just to wrap it up before we get into questions, and I'll throw it back to you, Simon. But like I said, in terms of the attraction of this for GDG, if there was one acquisition we could do, and I never said this to Peter or Will before sort of completing this, which is in the process of actually completing today on the 18th of February, which we're super excited about, is that if there's one we could choose, it was this business. You don't get opportunities to bring #1 and #2 together too often, particularly in a category that's growing so quickly with two teams that do a phenomenal job, both from a product and a distribution point of view. So like we said, it's double -- low double-digit accretive, so it stands alone, there's going to be synergies or there's already synergies identified within that, but we'll continue to execute those and deliver those at certain sort of milestones and agreed milestone between the 2 businesses. In terms of the outlook of GDG, like I said, coming into Q3, the momentum that we saw in Q1 and Q2 has certainly continued. And any changes, like I touched on in a bit of detail there, we want to make sure that we do very delicately, and it doesn't disturb any of the distribution of the business. In fact, we're very, very conscious of this and spent a lot of time in December just making sure that any offerings that our customers were receiving right now or our distribution was sort of focused on or any tenders or anything like that we're in, but none of that was disturbed. And in fact, we were just looking on building upon what we were doing there in terms of our value proposition. So very, very conscious of the way that we put the pieces of the puzzle and places we acquire new businesses and realign and reshape our business. And once we're able to complete this from sort of FY '26 onwards, we should be really in a very, very strong position to continue to execute and accelerate the growth that we see across the group in each of our key areas. In terms of the financial profile of the business, again, we'll go into more detail once we get into the half year result that comes out at the end of February. But we've maintained a very strong financial position. We have a term sheet from one of the big four banks that we're about to enter to, to have a debt facility in place that we can draw down on to any sort of big payments that we might have coming up. We've got the Lonsec earnout, which will be calculated at the end of this financial year. We'll also have the earnout, which we hope to pay because of the phenomenal performance of the business for Evidentia, of course, at the end of the FY '26 year. Also, there will be other opportunities, other businesses that we can sit down and have conversations with that really fit into the sort of strategic rationale and growth story of GDG, which gives us opportunity to be able to execute those deals with a lot more ease and to do those quicker and there's tuck-ins in any 3 categories that you see us playing in. We believe it makes sense, we'll absolutely do those. So to have the flexibility to do those fast and easy. It's certainly something that we want to make sure we have available to us. That's it in terms of the sort of GDG story. I'll throw it back to you, Simon. But to say the least, we're really, really excited about what's been completed over the last week. Team has done an incredible job to kick off 2025 with a bang. And just looking forward to getting the runs on the board now moving forward, which is obviously critical to making all of this work.

Great. Thanks, Grant. [Operator Instructions] But we'll just go to some pre-submitted questions from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Can you tell us what split is between super accumulation, super pension and investor?

I don't have that split breakdown on me. I'm not sure if you kind of know that across the yes -- not the level of detail that we have right in front of us, certainly can find that out. And obviously, it's different depending on what the solutions are, depending on the ready-made solution, which a lot of our big customers are the likes of CFS [ route count ] there versus a tailored and the implemented. It's going to be quite different across the board. But in terms of that, I mean it's -- yes, it depends on the type of customer. We know CFS are more heavy on the pension side versus some of them are more heavy on the accumulation side, but yes, we can provide that sort of detail to you directly, Nick.

I'll come back on that one. How is the buildup of the pipeline out to FY '26 being formed probability weighted or confirmed transitions?

So we obviously get a report in terms of current customers and what transitions are going to happen. There's obviously certain wins that have taken place, and they come in the form of probably two. I'm just talking to the managed account space. One is you might win a new practice, and they will bring a lump sum or FUM over and then you're winning all the new clients and depending on the tax treatment of obviously crystallizing some funds and bring it into a new structure and some of the CGT that might be triggered there, they'll determine the rate of conversion for that practice. So that's a bit of a -- a slower burn. That's why we sort of look at that 24-month conversion rate. And we did a lot of analysis and modeling and sensitivity testing on that as part of the DD, and then there'll be big mandate wins. So they might be already using a managed account provider and they've retained that business, and there might be some business that either Lonsec or Evidentia has won, and that will come in. So we've got -- we're not going to talk to the detail of that pipeline naturally. But -- we've got all of that obviously in play. And that's probably what gives us high conviction at this particular point in time that we're able to achieve some of the numbers that we've outlined.

Great. Thanks, Grant. To whom will the benefit of lower fees accrue now that heightened scale like it leads to lower management fees?

Yes. That's something, of course, we'll be looking at. So normally, management fees across the board with some of the managers that you might be using. And that's not only in the managed accounts, it's obviously the scale that we have in Generation Life, too. So normally, the more scale you get this is a scale game in financial services. And when you're dealing with fund managers, obviously, the better the pricing is and a lot of that underlying pricing and that benefit obviously flows through to the end client. And that's just one of the many benefits that scale is able to provide you.

And what could cost to income be in the managed accounts business at scale?

Longer term, I would expect the EBITDA margins of that business to get to 70%, 80%. It just typically for major economics as you get more and more FUM, but your incremental cost is lower. So for example, Evidentia has circa 29, 30 staff running $12.7 billion in FUM, to the extent that FUM doubles to $25 billion, $30 billion, that head count might increase by 3 to 5, say, and you would expect that to keep flowing through. So margins should keep improving over time.

And how important is the technology or platform partner and managed account design and implementation?

So yes, having good relationships with the platform is absolutely critical. It's obviously where advisers access the product. So we've got relationships with all of the major platforms, the hubs, the networks of the world. And obviously, as we set up a new tailored strategy, we have to get it on platform or whatever it might be. We've got a full implementation team in both businesses that do that sort of stuff.

And is there a natural share of the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion advice market that would adopt managed accounts? And are there adviser cohorts for whom it doesn't make sense?

So yes, in short, absolutely. So there's kind of multiple benefits there when you're looking at it from an advice point of view. One is they created a tax efficiency for the client because in a unitized structure, they're normally buying into an embedded tax liability. When it comes to an SMA, MDA, you've got your own cost base there moving forward. So there's a level of tax efficiency. There's better reporting transparency. There's more efficiency for the practice. They can actually change the investment strategy around with a lot more ease and less compliance and administrative burden to doing that. So the practice is able to scale up more. The clients receiving more benefits. So overall, it's able to create a level of efficiency and tailoring really for that individual client that you wouldn't have been able to before. So that $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion market, I see no reason why most financial advisers over time wouldn't be utilizing at least a little bit or a lot of this structure for their clients. What would stop them? The reason we never do those conversion rates or pull-through rates to 100% is because there could be an embedded tax liability for that client that they just don't want to crystallize, which I totally get. So they're just happy to get the growth in the current structure or asset allocation that they might have in a different structure, and they just don't want to crystallize that. And that's kind of where you can see even opportunities in this business because, again, we talked to sort of two key things at GDG. One we're looking for legislative tailwinds or structural tailwinds, structural tailwinds or things like baby boom is going to retirement, living longer, so they should adopt a lifetime annuity to have more certainty of their income and replace that salary that they've had for 40 years, or a structural tailwind. Obviously, people are going from a unitized structure within their financial advice practice and looking at something like a managed account or an MDA depending on what their client base looks like, and there's that big structural tailwind that we're seeing growth from that $206 billion to that $474 billion by the time we get to 2030. So we were -- we saw this a long time ago. We saw this adoption and talking to a lot of advice practices. I used to run sales when I was first here, and I just kept hearing around SMAs, SMAs. We were trying to find a way to actually get into it, and we couldn't quite do it through the bond business, and then we had this opportunity to acquire Lonsec. And we love the Research business because a very strong business. It's got a strong brand, and it continues to grow. Double-digit ever since we've owned it. But we really liked the opportunity and the story around the managed account space. And to give you a bit of an idea of that, it closed June '20 at $659 million of funds under management. And we obviously just finished the half to the end of this year. So we're talking just over 4.5 years later, it's at $12.7 billion, and 85% of that FUM growth has been organic with a small acquisition there of implemented portfolios, which just deepened our product set into the MDA category beyond the SMA category that we have there. So yes, it's -- we definitely see a big thematic in all of that. That's the main reason, we are in it.

Last question for Nick. How can the merged Evidentia-Lonsec business run in a more streamlined manner. Is it an admin ops investment selection, sales, tech, et cetera?

We definitely don't see that from a sales point of view. There's multiple products, different distribution channels, key relationships there, everything from licensee down to the individual practice. So that's absolutely key. If there is ever any duplication in there, we will either look at redeploying someone across the organization or we'll see what sort of ends up happening or how that sort of plays out. So there'll be maybe a level of cost efficiency in there. We're not really looking at this from a real cost banging two businesses together and getting a whole heap of cost out of it because the reality is that, one, there's a lot of revenue synergies in there that we can create, given the size and scale that, two, this is a growth story. So we want to make sure that we've got the team and the resources there to be able to grow. We do have the technology there in both businesses to be able to continue to scale up at a very fast rate. So -- it's not like there has to be a huge CapEx project that we're looking at. For instance, they're all on Salesforce -- all the platforms. They've got all of that sort of up and running, they've got implementation teams there. So this is really a growth story. And there's -- when I talk about revenue opportunities, there's quite a few things in there that I'm not going to go into detail on this call. But even just from a product point of view, I know talking to the Evidentia team, they've had a lot of their clients, big clients are there saying, it would be great if you had an MDA. So for my biggest client who might have $20 million with me at our firm, I can actually have a managed discretionary account which they can actually [indiscernible] transfer with triggering any tax liability, tailor it down to right to their very needs, excludes certain asset classes where they may have large exposures elsewhere or in the business that they could be running. So yes, there's a lot of opportunity there for cross-sell as we bring these two groups together. Like I said, we've got working setup, just to look at both the revenue and cost synergies and then make sure they're executed and implemented in the right way because that's where things can go really wrong.

Great. Thanks, Grant. Just some more submit questions. Do you see a greater market share going to ETFs instead of SMAs and managed funds? And if not, why?

So I mean, at the end of the day, it's individual choice if people want to use underlying ETFs. I mean you can use ETF and part of your portfolio construction within your SMA and your MDA. So you're not prohibited from using that particular product. Some people like that kind of index typing strategy with a bit of a core satellite approach. In terms of growth in ETFs that will probably continue, but we don't see a reason why that would detract from the growth rates that we've seen and the projections that we've like independently verified for this particular sector. Why one will outgrow the other? I don't have the thesis around that, and I'm not going to get a sit here and certainly make something up, but I definitely think there's room for both.

And can you clarify the incremental $25 million EBITDA scenario you provided on what EBITDA basis is this incremental?

That's the run rate under revenue. I mean in terms of -- if we had that $25 billion, $26 billion of FUM, the run rate -- annualized run rate circa $25 plus billion of EBITDA. So that's annualized rate.

Yes. It's based off the current margins that we're receiving today on the $12.7 billion going up to the $23.8 billion. And if that $23.8 billion was the opening and closing FUM for the year, that would lead to a run rate of around that $25 million EBITDA mark. So hopefully, that's clear.

Great. And can you comment on why the margins at Evidentia are lower than Lonsec?

Different product formulations. So when you're looking at implemented, that product margin in there, given the level of tailoring and time and resourcing around it can be 3x as much as something like that. So ready-made solutions, which, again, Evidentia you don't play in that particular category, a different bunch of margins. When you are dealing with an individual advice practice that might be giving you $400 million or $500 million from that one client, of course, there's going to be a little bit of margin compression and negotiation in that. So overall, you're going to get a lower margin. We know what that blended margin looks like for that type of business, and that's why we're comfortable with the numbers moving forward. But that's where you would see the difference is just the different product sets.

The difference is mainly on the revenue margin side on the EBITDA margin, it will be quite similar in a sense that on your higher margin MDA products, for example, you have more operating cost of service, that higher revenue margin. But if you look at -- look down on the EBITDA margin to the extent they cost less to service a lower margin product, the overall EBITDA margins be similar.

And my understanding is that the Lonsec Investment Solutions will continue to have their own stand-alone offer. Will the Lonsec Consulting team and Evidentia team merged to construct portfolio solutions?

So we're just working through all of that at the moment. There will definitely be emerging of teams at some point across some of the areas where it makes absolute strategic sense to do so. And there is no good having multiple teams out there doing exactly the same thing. But when there's nuances and there's differences and there's obviously different value propositions, we'll be making sure we keep all of that separate. As you saw in the realignment of the GDG structure moving forward, the managed accounts business will be called Evidentia. Obviously, the Lonsec name has remained within the Research and Ratings as a kind of headline part of that particular area of the business, but within our managed accounts areas, there will be a multibrand strategy that runs there across both Lonsec and Evidentia. And we fully appreciate that the Lonsec brand holds a lot of currency with a lot of advisers given it's been around for 3 decades, the research and the integrity of the research is being paramount and a big part of the overall sort of investment planning and thesis. So we want to make sure we retain those brands where it makes sense.

Okay. Thanks. And was there a competitive process to acquire Evidentia? Or did you approach them?

So it wasn't a competitive process, so they didn't put themselves on the market. So there's been some long-term relationships there. There was discussions previously. We did the deal with Lonsec where we acquired the other half of that. And post that deal, we kind of sat down with Pete and just went through in a little bit more detail potentially what we could do together and really -- most of the due diligence, of course, we did all the financial and legal and all of the sales and distribution efforts in the commercial side of it in a lot of detail with a lot of modeling that went into that to get high conviction around the numbers that we present. But really what it came down to was cultural alignment. Do we see us all sort of going in the same direction? Everyone's business stand-alone could do exceptionally well. But do we see we were to get into a marriage together that 1 plus 1 is 3? And really, we've got a lot of comfort around that, dealing with Pete, dealing with Will. He's brought a team, both Rob Coombe and I have presented to their executive team on several different occasions about the GDG Group. The way that we approach it, the way we approach everything from culture through to compensation and how that all sort of comes together and just the sort of underlying competitive nature and aspirations of both the group, we really saw eye to eye. So I think a deal came about not because people wanted to get out of his business or anybody's team did or get a big price. It's because they saw an opportunity to grow and do new things and take more opportunities that they currently didn't have through the scale of bringing both of those businesses together. So yes, it was really the relationship that turned into a deal and an opportunity. And like I said, I would have never said this to Pete at the time. But if there's one deal I could do, this is it. And so I'm very, very pleased for GDG and the shareholders.

And just a couple of final questions. How much investment in technology is required to support the next leg of growth across Evidentia and Lonsec?

Minimal investment, they're pretty under heavy investing. The infrastructure is there. We will do it on a case-by-case basis in terms of synergy realization. So we've got a suite of circa 10 synergy initiatives that we're targeting. Some may require a bit more investment than others. We will do it on a case-by-case basis, but has no major spend expected.

Yes. Any technology spend will be around realizing some of the revenue synergies. That's mainly where we see some of that $10 million going. But not around if we were doing exactly what we were doing today, we have plenty of scalability left in the existing infrastructure, just to be really clear on that.

Right. And what are some of the hurdles you see with this acquisition?

Well, like any acquisition, you're bringing two cultures together. So that would be one, if I'm being completely honest. You're restructuring your overall business. So you got to make sure you do that delicately. There's always a level of anxiety around change for -- even if it's positive change, and this is a growth story for GDG and its staff and an opportunity to do more things group-wide. There's a level of reassurance that's required for people that have absolutely no control over this. So that's something that we're consistently addressing and always managing and really, really focused on and making sure that we do the right thing as we sort of step through the process or make any changes. Obviously, there's always competitors out there that when you go through these transactions, we'll probably talk to some of your clients and want to take your business. So I totally get them wanting to do that. So that's another hurdle and something that we're very aware of and very focused on making sure that we stay close to all our customers throughout the entire of this process and actually show the benefits of what we've been able to do here and how that flows through to them. And the obvious one is expectation. Every time you do something and people kind of see you as a growth business and you've got to achieve something new. There's an expectation to come with that. I know our team is certainly up for it, but we recognize that people expect us to perform. They expect to see good numbers, and we expect to deliver them, if I'm totally frank. So yes, there's going to be a few things. There's not a day you don't wake up a business where there's not a bunch of problems you're trying to solve. It's just are they less today than what there was yesterday and they're more tomorrow than what there is today. That's the only thing that you're sure of.

And just a final question post stepping back a little bit, Grant. You mentioned the strong growth in the market. Where does this growth actually come from? Is it because the population is getting older or what lines?

Look, the growth coming from the big structural change. Like I said, we don't necessarily need to see the market grow. The market is growing. The overall pie is obviously growing. The wealth of the country is obviously growing. So that then flows through to financial advisers. We see less financial advisers, but they're getting a bigger share of wallet. We're seeing more Aussies. I think there's this election, I think over 50% of the people who are eligible to vote are going to be age 55 plus so that in itself is how much people need financial advice in retirement. And obviously, those baby boomers and the last sort of couple of cohorts of that are just in the process of probably transitioning into retirement. So there's a lot of wealth in this country. It continues to grow, continues to expand. We see struggle change coming into the product areas. We look at the life company and the investment bond. There's continual talk of either tax reform or new tax reform being embedded, and we see that Division 296 and superannuation always being an area of topic. You see changes potentially to trust structures, as always talk around more death taxes and things like that, that people have to be acutely aware of and need good financial advice around, and that's what we do. We're a product manufacturer here at GDG. We work a lot with the intermediatory group to be able to solve a lot of those problems for Australians. And that opportunity continues to grow bigger and wider as the country develops and we want to go into areas where that's accelerating, not where it's sort of at average rates.

Right. Thanks so much, Grant. Thanks, Terence, and thanks all for attending. Grant, I might just hand it back to you for closing remarks, and we'll finish up there.

No worries. Thanks very much, Simon. A big thank you to all of our shareholders, everyone from the big in-stores through to the moms and dads, that really hold the stock. We know we're custodians of this business for a period of time. And whilst we have the opportunity and privilege of being able to do that, we certainly want to make sure that we drive the absolute best performance. Like I said, we're a very, very competitive bunch, goal-oriented. We have clear aspirations here. We have clarity on what we want to do, how we want to do it and who we want to deal with, and we look forward to continually executing that, both on the organic and inorganic front as we see opportunities. We're going to be very prudent with any acquisitions that we do or any sort of strategic initiatives that we take on because we understand we've got a lot on our plate. We've got 3 very, very good businesses with 3 very, very good leaders in place, and we want to continue to deliver those returns for shareholders and also enjoy our time here while we're doing it. It's a lot of fun being a part of a winning team. I've been on winning and losing teams, and I know which one, I prefer to be on and GDG is certainly a winning team at the moment. And yes, there's no time for complacency or lack of focus. We've got to make sure that we continue to deliver to the expectations and aspirations that we have both internally and externally with the group. So thanks for your time.

Thanks, all.