PEXA Group Limited (PXA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone. It's great to see everyone here. My name is Hany Messieh. I head up the Investor Relations function here at PEXA. I'm delighted to have you join us, both in the room and online. And I would especially sort of like to welcome those that have traveled to -- down from Sydney here in the room. I just need to point your view to the typical sort of legals that I know that you are all aware of. And with that, I'd like to hand over to our Group CEO and Managing Director, Glenn.

Thank you, Hany. And before I start proceedings, I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners on the land which we are meeting, pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and the Aboriginal elders of other communities who may be here today or listening virtually as well. Look, again, just as Hany said, I just want to thank everyone who are attending in person and also listening virtually as well. And as you can see on the slide that I've got, Slide 3, our objective today is to provide you with an update on the Australian and U.K. businesses of the PEXA Group and also our technology investment. And in doing so, I'm absolutely delighted that I'm being joined by several of my executive colleagues who will present with me today. So please let me introduce them to you. We have Les Vance, who is our Chief Customer and Commercial Officer, who leads our Australian exchange business and also our distribution channels. Les is a highly experienced financial services executive, including his time as a C-suite executive with the Westpac Banking Group where in that period, he led numerous areas, including regulations, technology and operations. Les will cover how we are growing and enhancing our leading Australian exchange business. Ivan Motley, the Founder of the .id Group, Informed Decisions. Ivan is a leading geographer, data and insights and entrepreneur who has successfully developed, grown and commercialized the .id Group. And Ivan and Scott Butterworth will provide more context of our extension into digital growth products and services and broader value pools within the PEXA Group. Joe Pepper, our new U.K. PEXA Group country head, who is leading our U.K. businesses. Now Joe has considerable expertise in property and financial services within the U.K., including his previous role as CEO of the TM Group, one of U.K.'s leading providers of title search and other related property information. Joe will provide his own personal reflections and an update on the PEXA expansion into the U.K. Eglantine Etiemble, our PEXA Group Chief Technology Officer. Eglantine has held senior technology executive roles in Australia and internationally, working across multiple organizations and sectors. And Eglantine will provide an overview of our technology strategy and investments in support of our Australian, U.K. and rapidly evolving company as a leading property tech and data platform business. And I'm also joined by Scott Butterworth, our Group Chief Financial and Growth Officer. Now many of you will know Scott who, prior to joining the PEXA Group, was a senior executive in the U.K. and Australia for financial services and legal firms. Scott will provide an update on the financial outlook and the progress we have made with our PEXA productivity enhancement program. Now in addition to my colleagues today who are presenting, we've also executive colleagues Alice Morrison and Sabina Sopov, who are leading our legal, governance, risk, people functions, and our experienced executives who bring depth to the PEXA Group through their expertise from previous positions at other leading businesses. Now once we're through the agenda today, I'll provide some closing comments, and then we'll allow some time for some questions of myself and my colleagues about the PEXA Group. Now let me start, and I'm on Slide 5, I'm sure you'll agree with me that there are various significant trends impacting the property markets globally. Now given the origins of our company, the PEXA Group, we are well placed to provide solutions to address the issues that these markets face. In Australia, despite the short-term issues created by higher interest rates, favorable demographic trends should continue to underwrite good levels of demand for a property over the midterm. And with the current TAM of approximately $300 million, as Australia's #1 electronic lodgment network operator, we are well positioned to profit from the transactional flows arising from the property market growth. However, at the same time, challenges, including climate change, disruptions to property supply chains, limitations on the availability of land and ongoing changes to the use in the post-COVID era of property, are creating additional volatility and risk for property markets stakeholders. Yet these risks create profitable opportunities for the PEXA Group. In fact, we can already see the impact of these discontinuities with Australian governments providing billions of dollars in investments to address housing shortages, climate responses and other things such as those around the property sector. In fact, we're already seeing it's a fast-growing market with a current TAM of approximately $500 million. And we, at the PEXA Group, have assembled a leading set of capabilities in our digital growth business to help property stakeholders deal with these risks and create value from these changes to the property market and allow us at the PEXA Group to profitably grow our business with existing and new customer segments. Further to that, affordability and cost of living strains and putting pressures on governments and other stakeholders to reduce property frictions and delays experienced across the property markets. And our unique exchange capability solve many of these issues and put us in a strong position to create value from resolving these detriments in Australia and in the U.K. and in other markets. And in fact, across the U.K., New Zealand and Canada, we currently estimate the TAM to be around $750 million. Now turning to Slide 6. Set out in this very simple purpose-led strategy, we are following a number of key strategic thematics to take advantage of these property trends. Our strategic priorities start with enhancing the Australian exchange business, which Les will discuss in more detail with you. We are extending our reach into logical adjacencies with digital growth, which, as Scott and Ivan will note, provide us with access to new value pools while strengthening our relationship, deepening our relationship with existing customers and bringing on new customers. As Joe will discuss, we are also expanding internationally, starting in the U.K., to create additional opportunities to monetize our market-leading IP. And supporting these efforts, as Eglantine will overview, we can also continue to evolve our business not only through our technology platforms but other capabilities to effectively support and sustain our group growth and efficiencies. We've been consistent with enhancing our business and extending our services and expanding our services internationally whilst continually evolving our business to be more efficient and productive. And it's all based on our purpose of connecting people to place and our values of making it happen and count by innovating for good and by being better together. Now as set out on Slide 7, the effect of this strategy is that we are expanding our customer reach far beyond the provision of the exchange to financial institutions, governments, property developers and practitioners. Of course, we will continue to serve these customers. But with our broader business, we now have the ability to solve more of their needs more effectively and to grow sustainable revenue and profit broader than the pure exchange. And at the same time, these new offerings are also allowing us to appropriately build our influence and connection with other key property market stakeholders, opening new sustainable growth opportunities for the group in Australia and overseas. Now turning to Slide 8. Of course, the execution of our strategy must take account of the economic environment in which we operate, and our current view is that the economic outlook in Australia and the U.K. is mixed. As Les will describe shortly, the Australian exchange transaction volumes have lifted from the low point in '23. However, the outlook for per capita GDP growth remains flat to negative. The Reserve Bank, as many of you would have seen, has flagged that it expects inflation to remain higher for longer and with a consequential impact on interest rates. And as a result, we do remain cautious about the housing market prospects and transaction volumes as we move into calendar '24. And similar comments can be made about the outlook for the U.K. in '24. Now as I turn to Slide 9, this perspective on the external environment, and we do take into account the external environment through our planning, and our activities of the past few years have helped shape our focus as we move to become and remain the leading property exchange and digital solutions business in Australia and as we progress on a sustainable basis in the U.K. We have a clear strategic position, and our focus over the next year is continuing to execute this strategy with disciplined pace and a focus on efficiency to create sustainable, long-term value for our owners and our other stakeholders. I'm now going to hand over to Les, who's going to talk more about our progress and momentum in the enhanced Australian exchange platform and business component of the strategy. Thank you.

So thanks, Glenn, and it's a pleasure to be here today and to be able to talk with you. So the PEXA Exchange now processes nearly 90% of all property transfers across the country and virtually all refinanced transactions. It operates in all states and territories other than Tasmania, which we expect to come online in FY '25, and the Northern Territory. We're connected to all banks across the country, from the 4 majors to the small credit unions to around 10,000 legal and conveyancing firms, as well as developers and a small number of other corporates and government bodies. This makes the exchange an important national infrastructure. We recognize the responsibility that comes with that, both to our customers and to the broader community. This, in turn, requires us to have ongoing focus on the things that our customers really care about, which are, firstly, coverage. So we aim for full national coverage across all transaction types. It's inefficient for our customers to need different processes to deal with different forms of transactions, and that applies both at a national level. So banks, for instance, don't want to still be drawing checks and manually handling settlements in Tasmania, which means that although Tasmania is a small part of the national total volume, it is an important part for the productivity of our banking customers disproportionate to its overall size. And it also applies within states where, for example, a practitioner can settle a purchase in Queensland through the PEXA Exchange if their customer has 2 names or more, but has to revert to the old processes if the customer has a single name, which is not just for pop stars but also is common in certain communities. Second, we need to focus on resilience, reliability and security. The PEXA Exchange needs to be work -- it needs to work and be there when people are wanting to transact. Third, regulatory compliance is a must. And fourth, efficiency and integration. Integration is a key part of our strategy and our customer value proposition. Integrating the PEXA Exchange into the systems that our customers use in their day-to-day activities adds value for our customers, including by improving efficiency, by reducing risk and improving quality and by providing more reliable and timely management information, which enables more informed decisions and business controls. Our approach to integration is to be equal access. We will integrate with anyone, be it a customer or a provider of systems that support our customers, such as the practice management software which supports our practitioners, or banking platforms. And we'll do so on an equal basis within each class. This encourages reach, innovation, and supports customer choice. For PEXA, integration deepens our connection with the customer, which means the customers value the exchange more and therefore are less likely to consider alternative providers. Our continued focus on these aspects and the way we work with our customers provide strong customer satisfaction, which is important not only from the perspective of the exchange itself, but also the deep understanding, credibility and relationship we have with our customers means that our customers are open to considering our new value-added offerings through digital growth. From the perspective of the exchange segment, the key revenue drivers are the volume and mix of transactions. So as we can see on Slide 12, transaction volumes hit their low point in the March quarter, and quarterly volumes have increased in total about 15% since then. Transaction volumes are currently broadly consistent with that seen in the first half of FY '23. As you can also see on the graph in terms of mix, there's been an elevated volume of refinances in the market over the past 12 to 18 months, in particular, with refinances increasing in the first 3 quarters of this calendar year to 27% and 28% of total volume. We've seen a marked turnaround in October with refinances dropping significantly down to 23% of total transaction volume for the month, which is significant from a PEXA point of view because while transaction volumes overall have held, this is a more profitable mix for us as transfers have a higher margin than refinances. We continue to operate and observe a disciplined exchange to -- a disciplined approach to investment in the exchange, including in relation to maintenance, security and resilience to meet regulatory requirements, to support integration and value-added services and to provide the critical capability to manage the PEXA Group efficiently and effectively as reflected in the enhance -- evolve pillar of our strategy. As set out on this slide, of the $37.4 million of CapEx reported in FY '23 in relation to the exchange, $8.8 million relates to regulatory and compliance, on which I'll talk more in a moment. $16 million relates to the enhancement and maintenance of the exchange, and this includes matters such as resilience and security which Eglantine will talk on more in a moment, and features for our customers in the exchange such as autobalance, which eliminates the need for banks to process manual settlement adjustments, often of small amounts, on the day of settlement, which not only creates an efficiency for the bank, but it also reduces the risk of a settlement falling over late in the piece and therefore an end consumer having to reschedule a settlement and not moving into their house when they expect to. $5.5 million related to the build of new APIs and to support our value-added offerings to support both improved servicing to our customers and to support growth revenue. The build of new APIs is demand-based, and any build in this space is subject to business case assessment on overall feasibility. And finally in this, a total of $7.2 million relates to building new capabilities which support both the exchange and the wider activities of the PEXA Group, including things such as the new group sales force customer relationship management platform and our new data management capabilities. Turning to Slide 14 and regulation. The big impact here is interoperability. Interoperability remains an incredibly complex and challenged program. After a number of years of effort, a pilot involving 2 very simple vanilla refinance transactions, one hosted on PEXA's Exchange and the other on that of the other ELNO, was finally undertaken in September. That pilot confirmed what has been clearly apparent for some time, being that interoperability is far more complex to design, execute and build that are represented or assumed at the start and that the original benefits were significantly overstated and the costs, risks and adverse stakeholder impacts significantly higher than was originally represented. Indeed, recent commentary from the ABA has noted that no loss of functionality to the banks as a result of interoperability is acceptable and that the current interoperable design will not achieve that outcome. The ABA has also noted that ARNECC, as a regulator, does not regulate financial settlements and that, that creates an unacceptable risk in interoperable transactions. This is significant in that other industry stakeholders are now beginning to actively speak up and identify the sorts of issues with the interoperability model and the governance of the interoperability program that we've been raising for some time. We remain of the view that the policy is flawed and that the pilot transaction provides a suitable point still early in the overall program to have a proper and fundamental review of the policy settings. However, we recognize that this is a regulatory call and that therefore, unless and until there is a review and a change of policy, PEXA will and must continue to deliver and to constructively participate in the interoperability program. In addition to interoperability and the significant commitment that, that creates, this Slide 14 also shows the other elements of our regulatory-related spend. Firstly, to drive the coverage expansion, and as I mentioned earlier, 2 new jurisdictions still to come online: Tasmania expected in FY '25 and discussions have commenced with the Northern Territory government to bring them online following that. We also have lower coverage in WA and Queensland which we are looking to address, with a significant release in WA earlier in October providing a key threshold to increasing coverage there. And in the other states, we will continue to look at those smaller documents which still create friction points, things such as bankruptcy notifications, discharges, easements, the sorts of transactions which don't happen often but still need to be brought into the digital world. And then finally, we are operating in a regulatory environment and one in which our systems need to connect to those of the state land registries and offices of state revenue. So as with any regulated environment, there will be a level of maintenance spend required to maintain currency and to accommodate the changes in regulatory policy going forward. So turning to the priorities as set out on Slide 15, which are aligned with our customer value proposition. Maintaining the resilience, robustness and security of the exchange is absolutely paramount, and regulatory compliance must be taken as a given. We will continue to expand coverage of the exchange with the aim of full national coverage for all transaction types. And we'll make it easy for our customers and other providers, such as practice management software suppliers who support those customers, to integrate with the exchange and we'll do that on an equal access basis. Through that integration, we will look to add value to our customers and to deepen and expand our customer relationships. For example, in addition to supporting our banking customers with efficiency in their operations, banks want their frontline bankers to be able to understand the status of the transaction and what needs to happen so that they can manage customer relationship, the expectations and the engagement. Currently, that's done through a series of calls from the frontline banker to the operations center. Our tracker offering helps them solve that problem and deal with that automatically so that the banker can see the status of the transaction and avoid those calls and improve the customer experience. That same need from the banker's perspective applies whether or not the bank is doing its own mortgage processing or it's done in an outsourced provider's. Our tracker offering applies equally to cover that situation. And brokers also need to understand the status of the transaction to be able to manage the relationship with their customers. And currently, each transaction involves the broker or the aggregator ringing up the operation centers of the banks multiple times to follow up, check up how is it going. So we are working with the brokers, the aggregators and the banks to expand our tracker offering to further connect the broking community as well to provide reliable, consistent and timely updates to all parties to the transaction who need to know it from a single source of truth and therefore, avoid the friction costs that currently exist in the system. And as we know that in the current environment, the broker experience is a key competitive battleground for the banks, and so they are acutely sensitive to this. We're focused on driving efficiency and productivity, including through the productivity enhancement program which Scott will talk to later. This includes tilting our customer engagement towards greater use of digital channels and strategic workforce planning, including refining the operating models for our customer-facing teams. For example, in April, we restructured our practitioner team, which reduced the headcount by about 25%. But through our revised operating model, through greater use of digital and data, we've maintained customer satisfaction and also tilted the emphasis towards sales of our value-added offerings, such as SendFX, to deliver on digital growth revenue. And the strong customer relationships and the credibility that have been built through the exchange means that our customers are open to hearing from PEXA about our digital growth offerings. We're leveraging those extensive customer relationships and the deep understanding of our customers for our new insights businesses. For example, Land Insight has leading data on environment and climate hazards. Our knowledge and relationships across financial institutions means that we know that the major banks generally will prefer to get data to which they can apply their analytics capabilities to understand the risks in their portfolios. Our FI team and Land Insight have developed a data offering for those customers. And our technology team has enabled us to deliver that through Snowflake to enable it to be very easy for our customers to absorb, and Eglantine will touch on some of the work we've been doing in terms of that ease of use for our customers in a moment. There are proposals currently under consideration by those major institutions. On the other hand, the small regional credit unions have a similar need to understand the environmental and climate risks in their portfolios, but they don't have the capability to do the analytics to understand those risks. There are not many operators with a reach similar to ours to that component of the banking sector. So with Land Insight, we've developed an offering to help our customers understand their risk, and we're happy to say that we have our first customer from regional New South Wales for that offering and are in discussions with a number of other credit unions. So in summary, with about 90% of all transactions now coming through the PEXA Exchange, it's an important national infrastructure, and we are clearly focused on the responsibility that comes from that in terms of completing national coverage for all transaction types; in terms of the critical importance of resilience, reliability and security; and in terms of the importance of enabling integration on an equal access basis to our customers and to service providers who support them so that the PEXA Exchange is integrated into the systems they use in their day-to-day activities. We're focused on efficiency, productivity and disciplined investment choices. And we're also conscious of the credibility and the relationships we have with our broad customer base provide the foundation of our ability to sell additional digital growth offerings to those customers and are leveraging those relationships for that purpose. So with that, I'll pass to Scott to talk more about the digital growth offerings that we're now supplying to those customers.

Thanks, Les, for that overview of the enhance leg of our strategy and the work that we're doing to keep building our exchange business. Les and Glenn have each spoken today about the importance to PEXA of extending our customer franchise. And today, Ivan and I are going to talk to you about how digital growth contributes to that agenda. In working that through, I want to work to answers to 3 questions. Why digital growth for PEXA? What's the strategy we're following in order to execute to that opportunity? And what's the progress that we're making in terms of execution of the strategy and our priorities for the future. Let me turn to the first of those items. Put simply, the digital growth agenda puts PEXA in reach of a TAM of about $500 million today, which we expect to grow at about $1.1 billion over the next 5 or so years as a result of the need to manage the risks associated with the volatility and discontinuities called out by Glenn earlier. Around about $100 million of that $500 million relates to value-added services, and we expect that to grow at about $0.6 billion to $0.7 billion over the next 5 years. Now PEXA is well placed to participate in that opportunity. We have very strong distribution channels, particularly as Les described, into financial institutions and into practitioners. And I'd go so far as to say that on the FI side and indeed on the practitioner side, there'll be very few organizations which have our reach into those communities. However, our distribution channels are also increasingly reaching into the government sector and into the developer sector. We also have unique capabilities and products that we have either built or acquired that allow us to participate in this segment. And furthermore, we've increasingly assembled a set of both regulated and unregulated data assets that allow us to progress those opportunities. Now as we progress the digital growth business, we're actually strengthening our core activities. That's because we're actually going deeper into our existing customer relationships and strengthening those relationships with that extra depth, but also building relationships of influence with new segments across the property market. So digital growth is important to PEXA, but how are we executing to the strategy? Let me start by saying what we're not doing. We're not building a business which is focused on selling raw, untransformed data. That business is very low margin and highly competitive. What we're interested in doing is building a business based on value-added solutions, and those solutions are being pointed at the key issues and problems that property market stakeholders are being faced with today and into the future. Let me describe our set of activities and our strategy. First of all, as you would have seen in the newspapers over the last week, governments and others are struggling with key issues around where to invest: to either provide housing or to provide other forms of national infrastructure, such as roads, schools, hospitals and railways. That decision-making can only be done at the local level. With knowledge about local demographics, local economics and the roll on and roll off of housing stock, .id allows us to participate in that conversation. And in fact, .id is the leading provider of this sort of information into the local government sector and increasingly, into other levels of government and into the private sector. Ivan will talk more about .id in a moment. Secondly, having decided where to invest, the next question that you need to ask is, well, how do I optimize the value of that investment? Value Australia is pointed at exactly that problem. Value Australia is a result of 5 years of award-winning research based on AI technology with a very strong AVM. But not only is it a strong AVM tool, it provides the functionality to ask what-if questions. What if I added another bedroom to my property? What would be the value impact of that? What if I built a railway station in this suburb? What would be the value impact on all the properties in that suburb of making that decision? That makes it an invaluable tool for developers and financiers as well as for governments who are wrestling with questions of value capture in order to fund critical infrastructure. Now as we've seen from the floods and fire events of recent years, it's very difficult to make a property decision in Australia these days without considering the impact and the increasing risk of climate change. Furthermore, as we open up more land for housing, it's important to understand the previous uses of that land so we can deal with any hazards or environmental issues associated with that prior use. Land Insight is the business which allows us to answer that question. It has access to over 150 years of data on man-made hazards associated land use in Australia. Furthermore, it has increasing use and access to environmental and other climate-related information. Lastly, no participant in the property market want to see value accretion eroded by friction costs, whether that's churn, poor service, duplication, delay. We have a set of tools that allow property market participants to manage down those costs and improve service. Those tools are workflow tools, as Les was describing earlier. Those tools are service add-ons, such as SendFX, and also bespoke data analysis. So you can see that we've got a very clear strategy to execute to the opportunity that presents itself to us. The next question, I think, that I'd like to help answer is what's the momentum and progress that we've made. And in short, we've made very strong financial and nonfinancial progress over the past year. Turning firstly to financial progress. For the 2 operating businesses that we acquired, .id and Land Insight, we've made very satisfactory progress in growing their sales under the ownership of PEXA, and that's due to the distribution and other resources we've been able to provide to those businesses. In addition, the commercialization of Value Australia is progressing well. And in fact, we are about to start our first paid proof of concept with that asset, only a year after it came into the PEXA fold. We've also made very strong nonfinancial progress. We've more than doubled our product pipeline over the past year, including innovative new products such as Market View 2.0, which Ivan will talk about in a moment. Furthermore, we've expanded our influence and reach across the marketplace by providing credible, reliable and insightful analysis on issues such as affordability, financing issues and the availability and supply of land. Most importantly, we've built out our property bureau. Our property bureau is our data warehouse that contains the repository of nonregulated data in respect of land in Australia. A year ago, there was about 72 million records in the property bureau. There is now just under 1 billion. We now have 30 common data points and points of attribution that we can use to describe each residential property in Australia. And that solution is powering Value Australia and will increasingly power other products we're building in digital growth. Now key to a lot of the work we've been doing is the input and impetus provided by .id. So I'm going to now hand over to Ivan to discuss more about .id's journey with PEXA and also for you to hear from one of Australia's leading demographers. And I'm sure you'll enjoy the ride.

Thanks, Scott. Thank you, everybody. .id stands for Informed Decisions. We're a data analytics company that brings deep spatial insights to local government and all businesses engaged in location decision-making across Australia. We help our customers make high-impact location decisions, such as what is the magnitude and nature of change of demand for housing, infrastructure and services and where? How and where will development of infrastructure add value in the property market? How are constraints impacting land supply across the nation right now right down to that neighborhood level? How can we speed up the process of dwelling approvals, housing construction? What are the factors driving livability of neighborhoods across the nation? As the founder of .id, I'm delighted to bring together PEXA and .id as a means of accelerating the .id subscription business and also our consulting business. Not only has PEXA provided additional resources, but that combination of the PEXA business has provided us with new channels, extended marketing reach, new capabilities and additional data opportunities. This slide represents .id's forecast tool, which we recently launched nationally. This is but 1 of 7 products we have in the market. This solution consists of data sets that provide cohesive, robust forecasts of land, settlement patterns, dwelling forecasts and demographic demand patterns right at that hyperlocal level for the whole nation. PEXA's support and capabilities has enabled us to build this solution into a national tool. This not only enables us to better serve our traditional local government clients but helps us extend our client base to include national and state infrastructure agencies, national retailers, education providers and planning and economic consultants to name a few verticals engaged in the essential activity of increasing Australia's housing supply. This is another example, .id's national livability data set. .id's Living in Place tool provides decision-makers and investors with subjective insights about what residents value in terms of local amenity, how they perceive those livability attributes are being met in their environment, in their particular neighborhood, what is their lived experience. This tool provides local government, regional development authorities and infrastructure agencies with a powerful evidence base to guide community-centered, effective decision-making and resource allocation. Again, as a subscription tool, time series is of the essence. How is the livability index changing year-on-year, place-by-place? This goes directly to the need to understand community attitudes and experiences to plan and develop -- plan for and develop better, both for the private and the public sector. PEXA's support has meant that we have also built this into a national data set, a national asset for PEXA to deliver to the market. This means that location decision-makers not only understand the impact of their decision in their own context but can benchmark them across other areas across the nation. Since completing this build out earlier this calendar year, we have lifted sales of this product by 50%. Not only has our PEXA relationship increased the velocity of our business into existing and new markets, but it's enabled us to add value to other unique and valuable digital growth products across PEXA. For example, Market View 2.0 is a PEXA prototype product that leverages PEXA Group data and .id's national forecasts. Market View 2 is being developed in collaboration with existing customers and gives financial institutions a view of their mortgage market share at the local level, connecting people to place. This tool provides a forecast of lending growth in a catchment area and is a powerful tool enabling, therefore, financial institutions to plan their distribution footprint. So once again, I feel it's important to understand that the .id-PEXA relationship has increased the velocity of our business into .id's existing markets. It's enhanced our entry into new markets and is adding value to the unique and valuable digital growth products across PEXA, as I've just demonstrated. So thank you for your time and interest, and I'll flip it back to Scott. He's going to wrap up on the digital growth business.

Many thanks, Ivan. It's always a pleasure to hear about your enthusiasm for all things .id and PEXA. Just want to return to the questions that I asked at the start of this session. Why digital growth for PEXA? Well, because it strengthens our business by providing us with access to broader and deeper customer relationships in a high-growth market where we have strong assets and attributes that enable us to play competitively. How are we attacking the opportunity? We're doing that by providing value-added solutions to property market stakeholders that allow them to deal with the big issues in the property market, both today and into the future. And in terms of progress, we've made very solid financial and nonfinancial progress over the past year, but there's still more to be done. As you can see from this exhibit on Page 25, we have 3 sets of priorities as we move forward. The first is to continue to grow the individual businesses within the PEXA Digital Growth portfolio; secondly, as Ivan was talking about with Market View 2.0, bring together more of those attributes from across the portfolio to create new solutions and value-added solutions for our customers; and lastly, as these businesses begin to grow, make sure that they're scaling in a cost-efficient and capital-efficient fashion. I'll now pass to Joe to talk about our other growth opportunity in the U.K.

Thank you, Scott. Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be with you in person to share some thoughts on the U.K. market and how we plan to develop that opportunity for PEXA over there. However, before I talk about the market, I thought it would be worth me providing you with a quick introduction to myself, why PEXA hired me and why I think the opportunity for PEXA in the U.K. is so compelling. So I've been developing, selling and delivering technology solutions to the U.K. property market for the past 10 years. And prior to that, I spent 15 years developing, selling and delivering business process reengineering solutions to the financial services and professional services sectors. The reason that I focused on the property market was the sheer level of dysfunction in the U.K., and I shall come back to that shortly. In 2013, working with EDM Group through a combination of organic growth and acquisition, I established a subsidiary business called EDM Mortgage Support Services which focused on seeking to improve the property market through the establishment of rule-based RPA technology called EDM PRISM, which we successfully sold to a number of major U.K. lenders including Nationwide Building Society. That business was established for less than GBP 1 million, but we would go on to be sold to Hometrack for over GBP 20 million. In 2017, I was approached by the 3 biggest property services businesses in the U.K., namely Connells, Countrywide plc and LSL Group, and [ asked ] to take forward an e-commerce platform business that they owned for conveyances called TM Group. I managed to double the size of that business, again, through a combination of organic growth, new product development into adjacent markets and acquisition and ultimately achieve the shareholders' goals of selling the business to Dye & Durham for GBP 91.5 million in 2021. Unfortunately for me, Dye & Durham had chosen not to get preclearance from the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, which meant I had to run the business on my own for 2 years under the auspices of the CMA enforcement order and would eventually sell the business on behalf of Dye & Durham in July this year for a similar sum of up to GBP 91 million again. Post-sale, I was intending to take 6 months out, but had always been aware of PEXA and the unique opportunity that, that business had to be a positive agent for change in the U.K. market. So I cut short my planned industry sabbatical when presented with the opportunity to lead the U.K. business. So let me talk about the issue in the U.K. market. If you have one look at this slide, it will tell you there's something different about the challenges that we face in the U.K. and it creates, to my mind, a major reason why we need to change. The U.K. property transaction is still largely based on the Legal Services Act of 1925, with additional modern obligations and regulations, which pressurizes it to the point of breaking, it's hugely disaggregated with over 4,500 conveyancing businesses communicating with 17,000 estate agents and over 20,000 mortgage brokers. These are bluntly small businesses operating with basic process management tools that don't interact with other platforms, creating a layer of [indiscernible], which makes the process take even longer. Twenty years ago, it would take between 4 to 6 weeks for me agreeing to buy a property to me completing on that process and moving into that house. However, over the last 20 years, the government and regulators have repeatedly heaped more work onto the conveyances and the impact on this hugely people-driven industry is that we now see an average time for sale to completion of over 150 days, which is over 5 months. The old adage of time kills deals is true here, 30% of those deals never transact, people bail out of the process due to the sheer complexity and stress of the process or due to life changes that will occur in those 5 months, such as divorce or the loss of work. This means that 30% of the activity in the market is frankly nonproductive. As a further challenge created by these highly manual and unproductive processes, which was illustrated in research I carried out last year with TM Group, where we surveyed over 800 conveyances, and they got a response to over 30% intend to leave the industry within the next 5 years. The market has massively struggled to deal with a modest uptick in volumes seen in the stamp duty holiday of 2020 to 2021 following the COVID pandemic. There is no way the market can handle an exit of 30% of practitioners. This is brought into further focus by the U.K.'s leader of the opposition, making the building of 1.5 million new homes a central plank of this strategy for what looks like to be an increasingly likely incoming labor government. So how can PEXA help to change the market? And why should it? Let's start with the why because it's a lot easier. The U.K. market is sizable, even with its current headwinds, and it can grow substantially if and when the economy can get back to the long-term trends that you can see pre the 2008 crash. So bluntly, the U.K. economy offers PEXA a substantially bigger TAM than it can get from Australia. Turning to the how, PEXA Solution offers substantial benefits to all the key stakeholders, facilitating key improvements to all. However, that probably isn't a unique statement. The problem with the way in which the U.K. property market fails to operate effectively is well known and has created literally hundreds of proptech solutions that are sold to the market to address one or more of the market's failings. That in itself has created a degree of buyer fatigue where potential parts of the market feel like they are being sold so many different solutions. They don't know which one is going to succeed and which one they should be backing. So why do I think that PEXA is the one that gets me excited. Principally because PEXA is a proven technology in a respective jurisdiction, and it was the only one that can be trusted to realistically sell its proposition, especially thanks to the progress being made on a solution that has now been endorsed by the Bank of England. That level of credibility is hugely important to the U.K. market. This creates a saucer of milk, as I describe it, from which we can develop something compelling, which attracts the cats rather than forcing us to hurt them, which is generally a foolish exercise. I'm reassured that I've joined a business where serious progress has already been made, and there is a clear and sensible business strategy in place and ready to be executed upon. The acquisition of a major remortgage business, Optima Legal has been done to help us prove the value of the PEXA technology, and we've made good progress lately in converting that into tangible wins for the lenders involved in that process. The longer-term goal is to create a proposition so compelling that Optima's competitors will want to integrate with the PEXA technology as well, increasing the potential market penetration for the PEXA Tech, well beyond that, which Optima would ever be able to service on its own. I will touch on the planned acquisition of Smoove momentarily. But in essence, the principle is the same, albeit in reaching a different marketplace, the part that handles the bigger volume of transactions as in the part that occurred during the property sale and purchase process. There is a strong and developed product road map in place already, which is delivering the nuance to the core PEXA technology required to operate in the U.K. market, and I'm delighted with the way that, that process is progressing. The so what messaging has been developed upon, and we now have verbal agreement from two of the top ten lenders to use the PEXA technology to deliver a 24- to 48-hour remortgage product by the middle of calendar year 2024, subject to their own technology road maps. We expect that to provide them with a clear competitive advantage, which will in turn drive the remaining lenders to seek to join the platform at the next available juncture. Each lender that joins a platform adds to the volume of milk in the saucer. I mentioned Smoove, and I have to say that there remains a degree of restriction about what we're allowed to say until that process completes. But I can share that Smoove is a business that I know well. They were a significant customer of mine at TM Group, and the logic behind the acquisition is sound. Effectively, it creates another proof point for the PEXA Tech, this time in the sale and purchase market with the ability to showcase the PEXA experience to over 2,000 conveyances that participate in that process. Smoove brings a strong array of technical solutions, which we can integrate with the PEXA platform to create a truly industry-leading platform and make that saucer of milk even sweeter. As well as potentially get more volume if we can create a virtuous circle and help drive up the volume of customers that Smoove are able to attract as a result of the enhanced product offering that they get by combining the 2 products. Many of you will already be aware of our priorities in the U.K. But in summary, 2 months into the role, I am reassured and remain excited about the raw potential for PEXA to deliver change into a market which has a clear and burning need for it. We've made good progress against a number of our key priorities and the strategic road map and continue to sharpen the pencil with the goal of making more progress over the course of the next 12 to 18 months. Now you've heard me mention the [ T ] word repeatedly over the last few minutes. So it's right now that I hand over to the Cook, who helped create PEXA Secret sauce, Group CTO Eglantine, who'll provide an update on the progress the group is making in managing its development of our technology proposition. Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Joe. I really get referred to as the cook, but I'll take that as a potential compliment. And good afternoon, everybody. You've just heard my colleagues going through the extend, enhance and expand pillars, and you would have heard as well that it's all underpinned by technology. So we thought that today, I will take you through what we have been doing in this space, why we are doing it and the impact it's been having so far across a couple of area. The first one is how are we keeping our exchange platform safe and secure. The second one is how we're modernizing and connecting our platform. And the third one is how we're evolving our operation for efficient growth. Les described earlier when he was talking about the value proposition for the exchange. He started by resilience and security. That's paramount. We have no exchange if we don't have those things. So in technology, it's core and tech priority of the rest. Once we've lifted both our cyber and resiliency posture significantly over the past years, we remain humble and vigilant, acknowledging that things evolve rapidly in that space, and that only by constantly challenging ourselves and learning from the best, we're able to maintain the adequate standards. Concretely, what does that look like? First of all, we have the lowest risk appetite, which translate in strong standards, accreditation controls and in secured resource allocation. In the past year, we have maintained our SOC 2 Compliance and ISO 27001 certification. We have successfully completed internal audit and expert review without any major findings. We've improved our cyber posture by significantly reducing the risk of data exfiltration and by improving our security operation. And we've uplifted our resiliency posture by implementing a leading resiliency framework and investing in chaos engineering and observability. On the second point, we are keeping ourselves honest by leveraging advisory committee, a thorough audit plan and live test led by internal and external industry experts. So in the past year, we've increased the number of external review. We've doubled the number of live tested, and we've brought new industry fabulous leaders in our advisory committee directly influencing our road map. Whilst we are growing our internal capability, we are making sure as well that we are partnering with the best-in-class to provide tools and expertise. And you'll see some names on that slide, AWS, Mandiant, Splunk, OKTA, Palo Alto, amongst others. And finally, as Les touched on, when we are looking at resilience, we cannot focus on the exchange only. We have to look at the ecosystem. We have to look at our financial institution, our practitioners, land registries, et cetera, to look at the overall transaction resilience. In the past year, we've launched industry work group to co-design prevention, continuity plan and recovery process in the event of outage. We have as well extended our cyber tools and training to our partner practitioner, helping small business reduce their exposure in cyber security. As a result, we have had 0 critical cyber incidents in the past in the exchange. It's a particularly strong outcome if you consider the evolution of our threat surface. And to give you an illustration of that, when we had 6,000 blocked intrusion attempts among last year, we have 55,000 blocked intrusion attempts a month this year. Another positive data point is our phishing test results, a key indicator, a leading indicator of cyber risk. This is remaining between 3% and 5%, pretty strong outcome if you compare it to the global benchmark of 29%. Equally encouraging, we've had no severity 1 incident since June 2022. And our exchange platform has remained 100% available, superseding the regulatory requirements of 99.8%. This for us at this level of transaction is a first. So in summary, cyber and platform resilience are paramount to us. And with an increasing risk driven both by our own evolution and the sophistication of bad actors, we need to relentlessly continue to focus on our posture. Our second priority is to ensure that our platform has modern modular architecture, enabling speed efficiency and accelerating our acquisition integration. So the first principle we are using is that we are building tech across the portfolio of company reducing assets where relevant. So Joe presented earlier his milk saucepan concretely by integrating PEXA go to our international channel platform and Optima will be able to accelerate market penetration. In technology, we've been fast-tracking this integration with Optima using reusable modules and have been removing 6 months out of the critical path of developments. This is underpinned by modular architecture, where our functionalities are contained in modules, our LEGO blocks, easy to connect and reuse. This accelerates delivery as well as contain our capital spend and will reduce over time tech obsolescence and cost of ownership. We have estimated that the build of the international platform will enable 80% code reuse in any exchange business. The demonstration of that efficiency dividend has been noted in modules such as stock management or subscriber notification, which we created for a jurisdiction, and we are able to reduce them now, avoiding directly 6 months of bill of AUD 3 million. Another aspect of our modernization is enabling connectivity through APIs. So let's take about open access bases to our customer and other service provider. This is enabled by our new API platform and our API road map, which creates an easy to manage, secure access to our platform. The third principle of our architecture is the need to provide strongly govern and easy to access data, enabling internal insight and customer value, as you would have heard in Scott and Ivan's presentation. Our new enterprise data platform internally referred to as ONEData enabled us to remain compliant with the regulation while delivering high-quality real-time data. You would have heard that we've chosen Snowflake as a core solution for its ease and speed of integration with customers, noting that most of our large customers are already on Snowflake. A most recent example of this was referred to is Land Insight. We could rapidly integrate Land Insights with our customers using the ONEData platform, delivering this new revenue source in weeks instead of months. And I'm hoping that the next time we talk, it will be days or hours instead of weeks. Now using Snowflake as our core solution, we have also commercially negotiated a position where increasing scales reduce our subscription cost by an estimated 24% over 5 years as opposed to linear growth in license costs with consumption as is usual, and that's making Scott very happy. This is the perfect segue for our next topic, which is efficient growth. So growing efficiently is our third priority, and it's about having the right resource, the right partners and the ability to scale efficiently. If we're looking at the workforce plan, it's built on building key competency in-house, outsourcing for scale and focusing on diversity. In that space in the past year, we have built carrier and learning pathways through our PEXA Academy, providing clear growth opportunities and lifting competency. We've provided clarity overall requiring internal IP and then furthermore, the clarity of the roles that we could further outsource. We have increased our intake of graduates and intern through university and reskilling program with Vic Uni and Holberton University amongst ourself, again, increasing the balance of gender in our intake of graduates and interns. And we have grown our Ladies in Tech community. As a result, we've been able to positively impact gender diversity, moving from 21% to 30% of Ladies in Technology at PEXA. We've been positively impacting attrition, which has seen a reduction from 11% to 6%. And in our Exchange and PEXA Go platform -- for our Exchange and PEXA Go platform, we are now leveraging development resource largely based offshore in Philippine and in India. A second imperative is to have a more structured approach to our portfolio of supplier, and that's required to get the right thought leadership, the right tools at the right cost. We've been streamlining, reducing our portfolio of suppliers. And that has been allowing us as well, to be very clear and very specific about what we leverage with each of them. So consequently, we've been able to be a longer-term partner, 3-years partnership, 5-years partnership. And in some areas, and particularly around delivery, we've been able to reduce our cost to up to 30%. Cost savings has been in reinvested in strategic initiatives such as our U.K. platform, ONEData resilience or cyber initiative. Another aspect of embedding continuous improvement -- continuous productivity is to leverage emerging technology. We've recently been focusing on AI, particularly providing our engineers with AI-enabled developer experience with GitHub co-pilot. This is expected to improve our developer productivity by up to 20% in coding, testing and documentation. So in summary, we have a long-term approach to the technology operation, ensuring that we continuously improve our workforce profile and engagement that we leverage the best partners for our success and that we grow efficiently. So these are the 3 priorities we are currently executing, and we are confident we're making the right strides, as we've achieved critical outcome such as 0 critical cyber incident in the exchange, 100% uptime in the exchange platform, a highly reusable platform, creating value across our pillars and the control spend management through workforce planning, strategic partnership and emerging technology. I'll now pass over to Scott to cover the last part of our presentation.

Many thanks, Eglantine. And I'll just wrap up the session with an update on some finance-related matters. First of all, productivity. As you heard from Les, Eglantine, and Glenn, we've been embedding our approach to productivity, which we call our productivity enhancement program, or PEP, into our ways of working increasingly across the group. We've made good and solid progress so far. In addition to the items that are being called out by Eglantine and Les, our immediate areas of focus have been to reduce duplication across the group to consolidate like activities to increase scale and also to ensure that particularly in the U.K., our capacity is rightsized for the market opportunity that is in front of us. The effect of these changes is that by the end of the first half, around about 25 Australian-based colleagues and around about 80 U.K.-based colleagues subject to the results of a consultation process, which is ongoing at the moment, will leave the business. That's around about 12% of our global workforce, and that will produce a run rate benefit in the second half of around about $4 million to $5 million in cash terms and by cash, I mean, OpEx plus CapEx. I also want to provide a perspective on guidance. As you recall, at the time of our FY '23 results announcement, we also provided a perspective on our critical items for FY '24. Glenn called out earlier that the economic environment means there is some potential downside risk to volumes in the second half, particularly in relation to the exchange in Australia. However, as a result of the PEP program, we believe that it continues to be appropriate to provide -- to reaffirm the guidance that we previously provided. That is to say an operating EBITDA margin of 50% to 55% for the exchange and a group operating EBITDA margin of no less than 35%. We make no change to the guidance for our growth in international businesses. I should say, however, that our guidance does exclude the impact of the Smoove acquisition, and we'll provide more input on that as we provide our results for the first half '24 in February of next year. Lastly, I just want to provide some perspectives on items below the operating EBITDA line. Firstly, turning to specified items. We are expecting specified items for the first half of around about $15.5 million to $16 million relative to an outturn of around about $11 million in the second half of '23. $5 million of the first half specified items relates to the acquisition of Smoove as we previously noted to the market. Another $4 million of costs relates to our redundancies and transformation costs. We're also expecting around about $2.5 million to $3 million of costs associated with the integration of Optima, particularly relating to the movement of Optima from the Capita operating environment onto the PEXA operating environment. And that cost should significantly tail off as we go into the second half. The remainder of the items are called out in the footnote that largely reflect the levels of expend achieved net of FX in the last half of last year. In relation to interest, you'll note that there's a small tick up in our net interest expense. Gross interest expenses increased largely as a result of movements in reference rates as well as the loan drawn for Smoove acquisition. However, that has been offset to a large extent by earnings on our various cash accounts, including the earnings on the source account. Lastly, amortization remains at the levels -- is expected to remain at the levels that we experienced in the second half of last year, reflecting our various acquisitions and also our capital expenditure program. That concludes the update on finance-related items. I'll now pass back to Glenn to wrap up.

Right. Well, firstly, I just want to say, thanks, Scott, and thanks to the team. Before I close, I just want to give you an update on the team. You can see that today, there's been a significant amount of activity being delivered across the company and delivered across the company and executed it well. We certainly are confident but we're cautiously confident in terms of the execution of our strategy, but we believe we're performing well in terms of that execution. And today, you've heard from several members of our team, highly experienced professional executives, Les, Ivan, Joe, Eglantine, and Scott, who are leading this strategy and implementing well. However, as you can see from this slide, the team is supported by over 800 professionals across the group and leaders throughout the group. Diverse and experienced set of executives broader than just ourselves. Who are helping deliver and lead our business strategy. All of them are highly committed to our purpose and all of them around our objective of growing the company to create sustainable long-term value for our shareholders and our broad stakeholders in accordance with our values. Now to wrap up on some of the key messages for the team. And just reiterating a couple of those in particular. We have a business model that we believe is unique that is aimed at profiting from the major trends impacting property markets in Australia, now in the U.K. and broader across other international markets. We are progressing a clear, purpose-led and consistent strategy to leverage these trends. We're making strong progress with a strong focus on execution and sustainable growth. Whilst risks will always remain and do remain, at this stage, we remained on track with the guidance that we provided during our FY '23 update. Notwithstanding the certainly the uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment do create some downside volume risks on the exchange. And as such, we will need to continually review and adjust accordingly to these risks. But can I just add, which you've already seen from Scott and the team, we're committed to improving the operating leverage of the company by progressing a prudent program of productivity enhancements and looking to ensure that we have cross-pollination across our entire business as demonstrated by Eglantine. Let me just add at the end, PEXA has made up of over 800-plus professionals. It is an award-winning unique business across numerous dimensions. And it is focused on sustainable long-term value for our shareholders, customers and our people. I just want to add on, I'm very humbled to be part of the PEXA Group. I do thank everyone who's actually attended and listen today. It's a good company that provides a lot of value, and we're proud of it, but we don't take it for granted. So I thank you for coming, and I thank you for my team who have helped and presented today. And we've certainly got time for some questions of myself and my colleagues as well. So happy to hand over to questions, both in the room but also virtually as well. Elizabeth?

Liz Miliatis from Jarden. Firstly, just on the Australian exchange margins. So you've reiterated the guidance there, 50% to 55%. But just wondering and I think last year, you reported 54%. Just wondering your potential capacity to report at the very top end of that, if not beat that impact because you've obviously got pretty robust CPI increases coming through, which I assume isn't quite being reflected through the wage increases on the other side but then also you're cutting people as well. So just wondering where we might land and why not perhaps upgrade that margin as well today?

Elizabeth, let me first just start off and then I'll hand over to Les and Scott who might want to put a bit of flavor on it. I think the first thing that we just want to note is we have still set it within the 50% to 55% range. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, if I take the efficiency program that we just spoke about earlier, some of that efficiency is not purely in the exchanges, it's in the areas outside of the exchange. So as one example, where we've had some of the efficiencies in the Optima Legal business in the U.K., that's outside of the exchange, that's the first [ minor ] example. The second area that we are also conscious of is the Australian property market does have some volatility, which we're still seeing and we have to be conscious of that volatility that has an impact, obviously, on the revenue streams and we have to take that into account. The third area, too, which we shared across the board and Les gave a bit of color on it. we have to continually invest in the exchange and that's including not just on purely on the areas such as the maintenance resilience, which is critical but also in areas such as interoperability of APIs, improving the customer experience as well. And that's important to have that long-term sustainable aspect. So we keep that total balance as we look at the performance of the business. But let me just say, before I hand over to Les, one of the things that we are always conscious of and which we're continually doing is, how can we be more efficient, more effective on the long-term aspect of the business. And that's where Eglantine, for example, shared what she's looking on the broad tech side as well. But Les, do you want to -- Scott, do you have anything to add?

So I think a lot of it was covered there in terms of, obviously, volumes and margins are a key element to that. We are focused on the productivity side of it. But also, as you saw and as I touched on, there is the mix as well as the volume in the aggregate sense. But also in terms of this, particularly while the other businesses are growing, we are seeing our distribution costs coming off. But also, we're supporting the sales revenue for the other businesses there. It's natural that we have an apportionment and we gave you an indication there of the split between those truly group-related costs, the value add and the basics change. But I think we need to make sure we're continuing to drive that productivity focus right through. Scott?

Maybe just to add to that. Elizabeth, I think whilst the CPI increase has obviously come through, mix impacts are quite significant. And whilst mix did improve in October, as you saw from the data that Les provided, it's been -- refi mix has been elevated from pretty much most of this half so far, which reduces -- the impact of the price increases that we're calling out there. I think the other thing to think about is the -- to the extent that the cost reductions impact the exchange, the bulk of those will flow through in the second half.

Okay. Got it. And then a second question just on the U.K. Correct me if I heard wrong. But I think you said you've got 2 out of the top lenders who verbally agreed to transact with you guys in the middle of next year. Can I just double check that statement? And then if that's correct, in terms of what does that actually mean? So is it just a few volume -- a little bit of their market share? Is it -- will test you for a month and ramp up really quickly. And then the 2 out of the 10, are they towards the top end of the turn or the lower end of the turn?

Elizabeth, you always like to tease us on that aspect. But let me just add. And obviously, you've heard more than enough from me over the past 12 months, so I'll again try to answer. But certainly it's 2 of the top 10 that have actually tested on the PEXA Pay. I can say that one of those is in the top 6 as well, which is where you're always going to be coming and asking the further question. But Joe, do you want to give a bit more color for Elizabeth and the broad listeners?

Yes, sure. So it is one of the top 6 lenders and then one of the quick followers, if you want to call it, behind that, they've done it. So what they have agreed to is effectively to using Optima to create a PEXA, Optima combined proposition to create a 24-hour or 48-hour remortgage product, which would be a huge competitive advantage for them in the market. So the question about how much of the volume can they drive through that process as much as they can, I think, is what their ambition is to do. Now what I will say, of course, is that the Optima, PEXA combined proposition isn't going to be ready now until probably sort of April, May. So we're working with them to make sure that as soon as that is ready, that we're able to effectively work with them and that does involve -- there is a dependency on them managing their technology road map themselves, so that effectively, we can start to transact. But it isn't a massive piece of change for them. It's a fairly small piece of change for them. So we're pretty confident that they will be up and running and on the platform by the middle of the year. And obviously, then it's up to us to prove that 24-hour and 48-hour remortgage product works, which we're very confident that it will do. And as soon as they see that work, it gives them a huge competitive advantage over the rest of the market. That, of course, then gives us an opportunity to drive home to their competitors, the importance of getting on to the PEXA Pay platform on the next available opportunity with the Bank of England. So I can't give you an answer as to how many but I can say that it's in their interest and our interest combined to get as much as possible through that process.

Okay. Got it. And if I can sneak in one more, just on the banks, which have tested with PEXA, you're now at 12 -- so with the Bank of England, you're now at 12. I know that the Bank of England is currently going through the RTGS upgrade. Can you give us color in terms of when that upgrade should be done? And in the interim, can you get sort of special exemption to test a few others? Or is it literally just the 12 we have?

Unfortunately, getting exemptions from the Bank of England to do anything is quite difficult. But the next window really is next November, where we expect to have a window for at least 4 more to come through that point. And obviously, our goal will be having had a top 6 lender go through that process, my ambition is to make sure that next November, we've got 4 of the other remaining top 6 lenders going through that process as well because understanding that if they don't, they potentially use another year of competitive advantage, so it creates an imperative for them to move quickly.

One of the 2, Liz, one of these, obviously, Joe will be leading and might have -- but one of the positives for us, is our platform works, works with the Bank of England. We've got a demonstrated track record now. And so that actually assists us in the conversations with the majors. And as what, Joe also flagged, many of those majors are also customers of Optima. So we're having those vibrant conversations now. And obviously, Joe gave the color that one of those majors is actually a customer of Optima Legal, tested with PEXA Pay. So getting that one up and running then helps with those through the conversations, as what Joe flagged. Any other questions in the room first because I'll go online. Whilst you reflect in the room, is there any online, any?

Yes. Thanks, Glenn. I've got a question from Ed Henning, CLSA. Can you expand on what tangible wins you've been able to provide Optima clients? Also, can you confirm, you've engaged with 2 of the top 10 lenders. I think we've probably just answered that. And within this, do you remain confident of getting all of Optima volumes across to PEXA by the end of calendar year '24?

All the Optima volume across onto the PEXA platform by the end of calendar '24. I think we can't definitively guarantee we're going to get all the Optima volume across onto the PEXA platform by the end of calendar '24. But we will certainly work very hard to convert a lot of the Optima volume onto the PEXA platform, Joe. I would say would be a fair objective. But do you want to just -- I can certainly talk to -- but again, in terms of the Optima Legal win, I think one of the critical things we've been able to do is get the Optima Legal onto the PEXA group tech and some of the broader services that creates greater efficiency and benefits and better scale as well. But Joe, did you want to give a further [indiscernible] on some of the benefits for the customers.

Yes. I mean a couple of points there. So the first thing is there won't be -- not every single Optima customer will be on the platform by the end of calendar year. I can tell you that for a fact because Optima deals with 8 of the top 10 lenders and there simply isn't that number of routes open with the Bank of England for everyone to be on and on the platform. But obviously, as I said in my answer to the last question, we will certainly be working to get as many of those over as we possibly can. What we are doing, of course, is using the relationships that we've got with those lenders through Optima to try and sort of drive people in that direction. And we're also doing quite a lot of work in the background around making the Optima proposition more scalable than it has been historically as part of our sort of proposition and our work as well. And we've got another one of the top 6 lenders, is effectively increasing the volume that they send through Optima as of the 1st of December this year because they can see the work that we're doing to make the business more scalable. And we're automating quite a number of the processes as part of that, which is obviously part of the headcount reduction program that's currently ongoing there as well. So there's quite a lot that we're able to bring to the party, which I think is going to help us improve the volume that we get through the process. But no, we will not have every single Optima customer on PEXA by the end of calendar year 2024, may be by the end of calendar year 2025.

Anymore questions, Hany?

I've got a follow-up from Ed Henning as well. You've again mentioned breakeven for the digital business on an EBITDA basis. When will you break even on an NPAT basis, also is a target of $50 million revenue by FY '25 still intact or has it changed?

Do you want to pick that, Scott? We certainly haven't given a guidance on the breakeven on an NPAT basis for digital growth. But -- so it's a good -- tricky to try to get on in it. But Scott, do you want to give a bit of an update on the digital growth broadly in the $50 million?

Sure. I think in terms of the breakeven -- to the extent, Ed, your question is associated with cash breakeven. I think we've said previously and I still remain of the view that there's some degree of CapEx that still will be required to support the growth of the digital growth business, particularly as we continue to build our Value Australia. Having said that, I think the CapEx in previous periods has been relatively limited to some other parts of the group. In terms of the $50 million, that is indeed still our target for the business. We've always said that, that would be a combination of organic growth and inorganic growth. What we have also said and still remain of this view is that we want to make sure that the business model can stack before we do the next round of inorganic activity. And so getting to the proof point for the end of this year is an important part of that.

Yes. And I think just to add to Scott's point, this financial year and certainly, in terms of the next year, we've got to show tangible demonstration of the progress with our broad insights business, which comes back to some of the points that Les flagged showing that we can tangibly demonstrate that we can get those services into our existing customer base. That includes businesses such as Land Insight and Value Australia. We have to show that tangible progress, not just to ourselves as an exec but to our Board and other stakeholders. Secondly, to that, also building out the tech capability as what Eglantine flagged with Snowflake amongst others, which generates some broader efficiencies as well. And then thirdly, to Scott's point, subject to showing that tangible progress and we've got good run rates, the other aspect, if we were going to do other inorganic opportunities, we have to have a track record to show in the execution of what we've already got. And they would have to stack up of a value basis that our shareholders and other stakeholders say that makes sense. So all those things have to play out for us. So the brutal focus over the next 12 months is the execution of what we got. Any other questions, Hany?

I do. The next question comes from [indiscernible] from Wavestone. Given the lessons from the U.K., the journey evolved -- the evolving now and taking longer, the company talks about the potential to go to New Zealand and Canada. Is there another way that we can leverage and scale the platform but without the capital intensity of the U.K. experience so far? And can you get to the market faster?

Yes. And so let me kick off first and then hand over to possibly, Eglantine and perhaps Scott as well. But I think there's a couple of things I want to share with the shareholders just generally and other listeners, is firstly, we do learn from what we've done. Okay. So we're not going to just repeat the same path every time. We're going to make sure we learn how can we actually do it better, how can we actually ensure that we get better return. So in terms of the first point, [indiscernible], is that one of the things that we've certainly learned in terms of the U.K. and broad base, is our tech does work in terms of our expansion internationally. And as what Eglantine shared, we have also worked that we can actually roll it out in a very modular basis that can be reused in multiple markets. So that's a very valuable insight for us straight away. The second thing we've also learned is, there are other international markets that are interested in the PEXA proposition. And we've been looking at those markets and been testing what those propositions look like. So that's the second thing. So we are -- we do have a window of opportunity. How we leverage that opportunity is going to come down to our bandwidth, execution, amongst other areas. For the third point, [indiscernible], is coming back to your particular area, would we look to do it in a different way in other markets? The short answer is yes. Would it be more of a capital light or other types of formations? We would certainly be looking to explore those areas. It would be pretty unlikely and I probably could add, very unlikely that we will try to do it as a greenfield basis of what we have done in the U.K. It would be more likely, it either be in partnership, license or other forms of entry into other markets. But Eglantine, do you want to put anymore color on that?

Yes. Happy to, can you hear me? So I was sharing earlier, we are having -- we've been exploring the reusability of the platform that we've built in U.K. at the moment and already bringing back some of those modules back in Australia. We were able to test those assumptions. We've been looking very granularly -- with a lot of granularity at the scenario of New Zealand and we are really confident that there is a massive efficiency that we can bring there. So that would be a very different value proposition for us than building the U.K. platform. We'd be able to reuse a large majority of the code that we've been using. If you're taking the point that I was talking about with the one data platform of the API platform, there is a lot of this work as well that would be fully reusable. So there is some pre-investment that wouldn't be required for us in those new jurisdiction. I think another angle, when Glenn is mentioning that we are looking at different approach and different opportunity, it's interesting for us to observe what we can be doing with our partners. So if you're looking at the partners we're working with today, Accenture, Thoughtworks, they're really big names that have international operations and that this by itself is opening opportunities for us as well on top of other things to think about it differently.

And [indiscernible], just one other thing to add is, I know you're also quite focused on this. I've learned over my history, is that you've got to make sure you execute what you've got rather than trying to stretch yourself too thin and not get the right return. So we are very clear about making sure we execute on what we've got. And if we do want to go into other things, we've got to make sure we have the right trade-offs as well. So it's a very clear focus of the exec but also the Board as well. Hany, any other questions?

I do. The next question comes from Scott Russell at UBS. Scott, do you have the breakdown on the [ PEP ] cost savings of $8 million to $10 million between Australia and the U.K. Cutting out [ FTE ] is a large proportion of the U.K. [ FTE ] and a significant step change in the early stage of the U.K. rollout. What has prompted the decision and what roles are being made redundant?

I'll start at a general level and Joe may care to comment upon the U.K. specific issues. The first thing to reflect upon is that the people that we're exiting from the U.K. business are largely operators in the Optima Legal business. And their salaries would be in the range of $55,000 to $60,000. So very low paid people compared to other parts of the PEXA group. The Australian colleagues who are leaving us are much higher paid individuals. And if I was thinking about a split between the cost saves between Australia and U.K., I'd be thinking about a half-half split on -- in general terms. I think also, then I'll hand over to Joe to talk about the U.K. piece, we inherited a business that had staffed up to deal with a peak in remortgage volumes towards the end of calendar 2022. The market has been in a steady decline since that time. And as Joe called out earlier, remortgage volumes in the U.K. are at multi-decade year lows. And so whilst we did take the position that we should hold the capacity for a period of time, we decided that the weight of activity in the market is such that we should release that capacity. Joe, I might just hand over to you.

Yes. I mean I would agree with everything Scott said there. The reality is that the U.K. market for remortgages, the Bank of England confirms is at its lowest level since 1999. It's a 25-year low period. And as Scott said, these are operational people in a business which was heavily people focused historically but we know needs to be much more automated as time goes on. So we're taking the opportunity to reduce the cost out of the operations. We're securing and making sure that we secure the investment in the business and the IT effectively that we need to have in order to ensure that we make that business flexible and scalable so that when the market does come back and I am an optimist, the market will come back sometime. When that market comes back, we don't expect to then have to rush out and hire 80 more people in order to carry out that work. We anticipate that the work that we'll be doing in the interim to automate the processes will ensure that our levels of productivity will be substantially higher in the future.

There's always a part of our business case when we bought the Optima Legal business that we would improve the operating margins of that business. We originally thought that would occur through growth in the volume of the business and getting some scalability as the business grew. But given where volumes have trended to -- we've effectively brought that set of savings forward.

I would add that pretty much all of Optima's competitors have had significant redundancy programs in place as well. So we're not unusual in the market for doing that. But what -- our focus is very much on the operational side of things to ensure that we protect the investment in the IT that we know is the future.

Hany, anymore -- I've -- just got 1 hand over here.

I've got another question, Brendan Carrig from Macquarie. So the next question from Brendan. There are 2 questions. How much of the time delays in the settlement related to things PEXA and [indiscernible] for? For example, land title searches at the local council level? I'm assuming this relates to U.K. because Brendan doesn't specify. Also, what proportion of the transactions fell due to the U.K. offering concurrent settlement process, e.g., if a purchase doesn't go ahead, then the buyer pulls their sale.

Right. Okay. So you're probably the best to answer that, Joe, initially, some of the discontinuities.

Yes. Sorry, can you repeat the first part of the question, sorry?

Sure. How much of the time delays in a settlement related to things PEXA aren't solving for? For example, land title searches at the local council level.

So the target -- and I mean I know this extremely well from my time at [ TM ], the target the government sets, although there's no teeth behind that target for doing land searches and so on, is 10 days. There are outliers to that very much so within the U.K. So if you want to buy a house in Bolton and I'm picking on Bolton because when I left the business, they were particularly out there, then you were talking about an 80-day delay but that is only a very small part of obviously the United Kingdom. So the reality is that there are some that grab the headlines with their kind of sort of fairly crazy situations going within the local authority. But the target time is 10 days and where we manufacture searches in-house as we used to do at [ TM ] and our average turnaround time was about 12 days. So I don't think that, that really is a major cause of the issue. The major cause of the issue in the U.K. is the fact that you've got multiple different parties, all continually communicating with one another in order to understand what's going on as part of the process through basically old systems that don't talk to one another. There is no single version of the truth that anybody can turn to at any one particular time. So effectively, if somebody wants to know what's going on, you often go to the estate agent because that's the person that you deal with. The estate agent goes to the conveyancer, the conveyancer often has to go and ask a lender that may involve either hanging on the phone to the lender for several hours to get through to their call center, which a conveyancer doesn't want to do for obvious reasons or you send an e-mail in with a SLA return time of probably 3 days or something like that. So by the time the information gets back to the individual who's asked the question in the first place, matters have moved on. And I think it's actually getting to a point where you can align all the different parties. If you've got multi-transactions going on at the same time, then you're dealing with multiple solicitors at the same time as well as part of that process and actually getting to a point where you've got everything in one place and everybody knows where it is at any one particular time is incredibly difficult. And of course, that is one of the key things that the PEXA solution does address. So I think there is value in that. Sorry, what was the second question, Hany?

The second question was also what proportion of transactions failed due to the U.K. offering a concurrent settlement process?

Over 30% of deals fail in England and Wales. So the Scottish market is different. Scottish market operates differently. And as a result, the Scottish market has a much lower level of fall-through rates. So I think it's fairly easy, you can point the blame specifically at the way things operate in England and Wales.

I just had 2 questions. I might start with digital growth first, perhaps for Scott. Just looking at the $500 million TAM and the $50 million target, I'm just trying to understand this a little bit better. As you get back to buying businesses to sort of help you get towards the $50 million, is that likely to increase the $500 million TAM? Or is that businesses that are closely aligned to what you're doing and therefore, forwarding that existing TAM by the end of ...

It's a good question. So I'll just break down the $500 million first. About $100 million is value-added services and that's the piece we expect to grow very sharply to about $600 million to $700 million. And the businesses we bought compete largely in that segment. Then there's about $400 million which we think will grow roughly at economy growth rate, which is things like title searches and the like. Any business that we would buy would be in that value-added segment space. We've got -- the solutions we've got cover about 80%, we think of the potential in that market. So it's more likely than not that it would be deepening the propositions rather than extending the TAM. But every now and again, something comes along that might change that. So for example, the opportunity to buy Land Insight actually increased our reach from about 75% to 80% of that value-added services segment because previously, we weren't able to provide a solution in the climate and environmental space.

The other thing just, if I could just add to it. One of the other opportunities for us with the insights business, I'd say on a broad basis, is actually how do we bring those businesses together to make a more compelling proposition but also have to make it more effective and efficient as well. And that includes using the distribution mechanisms but also using the data and the capability. So one of the areas, at Ivan's business, for example, .id does particularly well, is they have great reach to local government, local councils. They have a particular methodology. How do we actually leverage Land Insight into that type of business far more effectively. Now we haven't got to all that yet but that's an opportunity for us as well.

Okay. And just broadly as a follow-up to that, in that $500 million, is that often looking at the value you bring to customers for things that are not already doing rather than looking at spend they're doing that could be better allocated to you?

I'll talk about the $100 million rather than the $400 million because the $400 million is kind of like pay per title search or something like that. By and large, there is a displacement of value from manual activity to automated activity. So if I take Value Australia, for example, to do the simulation work that I described, you're usually paying a specialist valuation provider to do effectively that work by hand, take longer and probably do less iterations. Now what Value Australia allows you to do is, actually displace a lot of that manual effort and do it faster. So that's the first source of that value change. In addition, there are opportunities and part of the opportunities to create additional pools of value, particularly in relation to that use in value of land segment, around about 40% of the value of Capital City land in Australia is tied up in zoning. And as you would know, there's a very significant uplift in value once you change the zoning of land. Assets like Value Australia allow you to actually argue the case for the changes in zoning. And that provides a new pool of value which we can participate in.

Okay. And then I just had one for Joe on the U.K. The 2 of the top 10 that have given that verbal indication around Remo, are they saying anything about their desire to move on to transfer? Is there any sort of conversation on that from those 2 lenders?

So by transfer, do you mean sale and purchase?

Yes, sale and purchase.

Yes. I mean they are very keen, obviously, to see what we've got. But the reality is we're still 12 months away from actually having something real to offer in that sort of space at the moment. But once they're on, once we're connected, then the point is as soon as that proposition is available, then they are able to use it. And I think the key point is, it's a very -- sell and purchase proposition is a very compelling proposition to the conveyancers but it must have lenders using it, otherwise, it's worthless. So the key point is, how many lenders can we get on to using the platform in the short period of time because that will then create the -- that will increase the power of the proposition to the conveyancers as and when the sale and purchase platform is ready.

So I guess before you touched on, if you have those 2, you get a bit of a tipping point on the Remo, others look to follow. What about the catalyst for that to be a tipping point when you have the product ready for sale and purchase for the lenders?

Well, obviously, the more that we get on, fundamentally the better. So what's the tipping point? I would say it's probably 3 of the top 6, just using basic math. Once you've got 3 of the top 6, you're probably not far off 50% of the market transacting in that way. What -- the opportunity with the conveyancing market is going to be, once we've got that in place, then obviously, through the Smoove transaction, we're in a position where we are effectively able to showcase the PEXA technology to the 2,000 firms that are effectively on the Smoove platform today. And that's where I think the opportunity will arise when they start to see the opportunity for things transacting and the way the things can transact in a kind of using the PEXA toolset. I think they'll be very quick to move towards doing that for their own originated work, not just the work that is originated through Smoove.

Maybe just to add to that, I think hint is a little bit in what Les was saying about banks in Australia not wanting to run split processes. And once you get past the credit piece for Remo, the process is the same for sale and purchase as it is for Remo. So our strong hypothesis is that once we get a critical mass of Remo work on platform, it's going to be too much of a pain to run split processes, Remo versus sale and purchase and that will then drag the sale and purchase through.

And the other aspect is, you got the Smoove also does sell versus the [indiscernible] that also gives us a bit of an opportunity as well.

I mean you've got to bear in mind that 70% of U.K. [ work ] for lenders is intermediated. So effectively, there's a broker in between and they're constantly -- obviously, all the lenders are constantly trying to court the brokers to get hold of the business. What do the brokers care about? They care about the deal completing. They care about getting paid, whether that's a remortgage deal or whether that's a sale and purchase. So if we can show that using PEXA means that the deals are far less likely to fall through and they'll happen quicker then suddenly the broker is getting paid quicker. The broker is getting paid quicker because one lender is using a PEXA platform, that broker is going to be far more excited about giving that work to that particular lender in future. So it creates a massive competitive advantage. So I think it does become a self-fulfilling virtuous circle ultimately once we start to get people on it. But the most important thing is we must get lenders onto the platform, which is obviously what we're doing with the remortgage work at the moment.

Hany, anymore questions?

The last question I've got online is from [ Tina Wilson from EME Capital ]. What does management view as the biggest risks in the U.K., both in terms of execution and business expansion?

Yes. Well, certainly, I would say that the -- firstly, biggest risk from our side is ensuring that we actually get the financial institutions onto the platform. This is going back to Joe's point, that demonstrates the scale and then you start to get the network effect. So that's the first. The second element, which is still consistent throughout is that network effect. So Smoove gives us the network effect with the 2,000-odd conveyancers. Optima Legal should help. It's got a network effect with financial institutions as Joe flagged. And then the final aspect is the churn that we contently execute on the platform rollout and the distribution lines. So that would be the key element of risk for us. But what we're going to show is a tangible progress by June and then the following 6 months as well, with Joe, first and maybe Scott might want to add on.

Yes. I mean I would say the fundamental challenge we've got is selling into a hugely disaggregated market that is tough to sell something new into. There are a lot of proptechs out there trying to sell stuff into this market, it's really difficult, it's really sticky. What does PEXA have? Why am I here? It's because PEXA has got this proposition that the core of it being the PEXA Pay part, which I think is the key USP that nobody else in the market can get anywhere near. How do you make that powerful? By getting the lenders on the platform. So that -- it's not easy. But if we get the lenders on the platform, it means our USP is stronger and stronger and stronger and that then becomes the reason to actually be hopeful that we will be the party that will break this. There is a clear burning platform here. The market cannot continue in the way that it's operated. All the political parties accept that. They accept that there is a need to do something differently to that, that they're doing today. The leader of the Labor Party here is likely to be the next Prime Minister, has made building 1.5 million new homes a central point of what he presented at party conference less than a month ago and that's a key part of their economic strategy going forward. If you build 1.5 million new homes, you've got to sell 1.5 million new homes. At the moment, the market could not do that. And given the fact that practitioners are saying they're going to leave the market and it's people-focusing, then that's clearly a challenge. So I think something has got to give, something has got to be done here. And I genuinely think PEXA has got the proposition, which gives us the best chance to make that happen.

And the other thing, before Scott and Eglantine, maybe add is, it's one of the areas in terms of addressing the risk. Hany, coming back to the question is, whilst we've got a good proposition, we've made good progress and we're building the various parts of the business together. What Joe brings to the table is a strong track record of execution and delivery in financial services and the conveyancing fraternity just generally in the U.K. But Scott, did you have anything to add and then maybe Eglantine might have a take on risk. If you have any further things to...

No, I think the -- not to repeat Joe's very good explanation. I think financially, the risk is always that you get tempted to do the next dollar when you shouldn't. And we have a series of Board-led processes to put the right tension into the process to make us resist that temptation.

Yes. It's -- just to add, it's a good point on that. Just for everyone there, rest assured, we have to continually show progress against key milestones. And that's not just from the exec, for the U.K. Board and the group Board and it's a very vigilant process there. Eglantine, anything you want to add from the technology perspective.

Yes, maybe I'm repeating myself a little bit but cyber remains a huge risk for us. And the benefit we're having in U.K. is that we are bringing the maturity and the focus, the process, the tools that we've already implemented over a decade in Australia. So we are able to fast track this pretty radically. But at this stage of our development, cyberattack would be extremely -- would cause great damage for our deployment in U.K. From the platform perspective, I think Glenn earlier, you referred to a prudent productivity improvements. We've been very rigorous on making sure that we have an optimum way to deliver this platform and we've been taking a really strong view at leveraging, offshoring an external partner to reduce the cost there. However, we're maintaining really strong standards of both of delivery and quality there. So that -- I would probably not put the platform deployment as a major risk here.

Thanks, Eglantine. All right. I think we're pretty much out of the questions towards the end. So just a couple of things just to add -- to wrap up. Again, just really big thank you to everyone who's listened and also attended. We don't underestimate the time. So thank you for your interest in the company. Secondly, we are committed to ensure that we deliver with a strong execution. So I just want to reemphasize that. Thirdly, we will continually make sure we're available as much as possible through handling the team in terms of how we're performing against our plan and our strategy. And that includes access to not just myself but the other executive colleagues in multiforums and multi processes. And then the final thing, just of those of us who are in the room that my colleagues and I are here. So if you want to have a conversation with Joe or Ivan or Eglantine, Les and Scott, feel free because they're here to have a conversation. We just want to have another conversation in different aspects of the business. So a big thank you, again and really appreciate the time. Thank you.