Wrkr Ltd (WRK) Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
February 9, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Trent Lund
ExecutivesHello all, and thank you for your patience. I'll just wait 1 minute, and we will record this webinar, so we can put it up on the Wrkr investor site. But just bear with us 1 minute. Some have already started providing a couple of questions. Feel free, if there's specific questions you want us to cover through this, just type them into the Q&A, and we will definitely either point out we're addressing them through the presentation or do them at the back end. And thanks, Keith, for getting the ball rolling. Okay. All right. I think we're ready to go.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesReady to go.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesOkay. I'll just reset that we're recording here. Apologies at the moment. So, thanks, everybody, for joining us. This is a perfect timing to speak on behalf of Wrkr, of course, myself, Trent Lund, CEO; Karen Gilmour, our CFO.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesGood morning.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesWe thought we'd run through today our quarterly update, talk a little about the PaidRight acquisition, what the planning is behind there and really try and get through this to leave as much time open for Q&A as possible. We're always interested in the sorts of questions that you have and how our company is presenting to you in the market. So, thanks again, and let's get going. So, First of all, just a reminder for new shareholders, Wrkr, we are a RegTech company transforming compliance from hire to retire. So, our aspirations as a business is to go right from the hiring of an employee all the way through the compliance requirements in the life of an employee to setting them up to exit the business, retire or move on to their next job. The purpose is fairly simple, not so simple internally, but it's about making compliance effortless, and compliance just gets harder and harder in this country. So that remains a great challenge or a worthy challenge. Focus right now, continue to streamline our operations, but we are working on our initial market focus and just starting our expansions in outside of Super. But Super is our prime area. But to talk a little bit about just a snapshot of where we are right now. So, for those who follow the -- our establishment of staff incentives and the likes for options this year, you will have noted we have a target of contracted users. We have already exceeded the 5 million in terms of users. A reminder, that is a unique TFN that we put on to the system and put their money, their pay from employer into the super system. And so that's critical for that base. So, we've exceeded beyond that target, particularly between AustralianSuper REST and our own existing customer base, and we intend to continue to stretch beyond that. The most important goal this year is putting a minimum of those 5 million live and active on the platform to ensure that we're bringing that value right through FY '27, having a full year of income for Super payments being processed. Obviously, acquisition of PaidRight Holdings Pty Limited, which was a 100% acquisition. We're going to talk about that in some detail, but that's something we're incredibly proud of. REST Pay Go-Live, so REST Pay, if you Google it, you'll see their narrative in the market from REST Super, and that is something I actually was in attendance the other day for a champagne launch they had internally. They had about 90 people. Myself, MUFG were also present talking about the launch and Go-Live of REST Pay and how incredibly proud they all are. The second, obviously, AustralianSuper. We've moved into production testing has already commenced. So that's fantastic at the moment. We will do more in that space. We expect an early March launch. They will have to be satisfied themselves before they go live. So, expectation that you'll see more publicly in that early week of March. That said, they are testing with live customers. So, the platform -- the only way to test the payments platform is real payments. So they have already started bringing on some payments. Headcount has reached 80. It's possibly a little over that actually, but in terms of when we look at contractors supporting us, but talent acquisition has been fantastic. We don't expect to keep growing and growing to unreasonable numbers. I've always suggested that around about 100 is the right headcount for us over time. This headcount factors in taking on, obviously, a little more work in the delivery of the super funds. And of course, those numbers will be bolstered through the PaidRight acquisition, some 14 people. The final one is cash at bank is still very, very healthy for the business, $16-plus million in the bank as we edge far, far closer to seeing our income streams start to rise. So, from a market presence perspective, and this really does matter, we -- the fact that we do AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust through Beam and REST. Those 3 funds alone represent about 36% of the entire market, which talks to the concentration. So, our software is right across that sphere, something we're very proud of. So, let's jump ahead. We're really about software compliance at scale. I'll talk a little bit about where PaidRight fits in. It stands out pretty clearly. Think about our business, as I've mentioned a few times, is quite simply one unified platform, but we move money, we move credentials and we move highly regulated messages. While we've built our presence through superannuation because it had the largest tailwinds, the largest movement and change in regulations, actually, wages and payroll is a far more substantive set of rules. If we think from terms of client compliance moments, it's tenfold in the superannuation compliance moment. So, it's an important space for us to grow into as well as disbursements, which we already process some today, which is payment union fees and the likes. Credentials, while we're already moving heavily in that space around due to our Super, so tax IDs and so on, industry checks is where you'll see us do more of into the future. But from a messages and ATO reporting, certainly, that remains the underpinning of our technology and some of our key licenses, where PaidRight really brings a new element to it, that is the additional regulation checks, everything from diversity results for everyone with over 100 employees, for example, information that needs to be shared with fair work in the disclosures or working through an EBA. So, by background, we're still in exactly that same swim lane, and we're really bolder -- becoming bolder and bolstering our capabilities there. So where can our platform reach? We talk a lot about Super and the reputation that we are growing in that Super space is really the permission to move forward. But the areas you will see us do more of is really onboarding. So not just putting people on and onboarding them to their Super, but onboarding them into their contract, signing their policy adherence and so on for an employer. This real expansion phase that we see in pay, and we'll talk to that narrative towards the back end. Credential verifications. This is becoming more and more of a concern and requirement for employers. So, you'll see us moving towards the biggest scalable checks, increasing on what we already have today, things like APRA, medical license verification. We'll move far more broader across those industries. and benefits and reward is our future value that we are building a position to play. But one thing I just want to kind of explain why do we look at these segments in these bundles really because we see each of them representing a very similar market size and market opportunity to super. So, we believe as we build our position in Super, we believe we can build ourselves towards touching 50% of the market. If we're touching 50% of the market with those compliance moments, we're in the perfect position to add each of these other bundles of compliance moments. So therefore, creating entirely net new segments of growth into the future for our business. So, we won't reach a peak on Super and slow down. We expect to continue to grow. Of course, where we grow today is our white-label tenants, which you see in REST and also AustralianSuper and now a range of smaller boutique funds coming online. We also have our Wrkr branded platform, some 600,000 users on that platform, but we continue to grow in that space, and that is selling with and in partnership with digital service providers such as payrolls. And then obviously, our direct to employer. And as we've mentioned before, you will see at the end of this month, the Wrkr brand starting to be far more front and center for small business operators where we have a much larger revenue take, although it is a much smaller market mass market. And starting with Super, just 4 key points, and I'm sharing a little bit for those who are new because we have a lot of new investors. I've seen some near 20% actually in growth. But why Super at the starting point? It's a really high trust market. So, as we see our success moving forward, we are gathering and building on that trust, which means we're able to go to market with some of Australia's largest brands. So REST Pay, it's branded. Not only are they serving their own 30-odd thousand businesses, they're actively taking that solution or our solution out into the market in their most recent published article was to around 200,000 businesses. So as an example, we expect similar to higher numbers from AustralianSuper alone. The regulatory tailwinds are still very strong. I do want to point out that -- so the government PayDay Super is happening. There's no question on that, though there is -- I certainly probably have raised some concerns that the market is not yet as prepared as it should be. AussieSuper and REST, REST being the first will be ready. We're also delivering on PayDay Super readiness with Australian Retirement Trust. We know they will be ready, but we are seeing plenty of examples in the market where there is work to go for the funds or more to the point, a lot of work in the payroll space yet to happen. So, some slower take-up, but we're happy to see that our clients are progressing, and we hope they will exceed their expectations because of that. Partnership definitely accelerates that growth, and we shout out to MUFG Retirement Solutions, who remain a strategic partner for us, and we work very closely with them now, particularly into these boutique funds and broadening their portfolio, which has been very important. And we'll continue that approach to work very closely with our partners and new partners to drive expansion for the business. That network effect, I think, is fairly obvious. So, I'll leave it to Karen just to talk through some of the numbers, and then we'll get into the acquisition itself.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesThanks, Trent, and good morning, everyone. So again, just jumping into the quarter 2 with cash flow outcomes. We had on the back of the capital raise in Q1, we then looked at where we were directing those funds as stated. So continued to focus on the delivery of the REST and AustralianSuper implementations as well as our investment in the APIs for our strategy around the DSP integrations and players such as Workday and Zalaris and SAP. And we also are looking to capture that small business market. So there's been a lot of work going on in the business, and that's been driving some of the higher headcount as well that Trent discussed earlier. And that's all going really well, and the team is working really hard to achieve these things pre- PayDay Super and in line with all of our contractual obligations. The cash receipts in the quarter were $3.2 million. That was unfortunately slightly down due to some overdue invoice around $880,000 at the end of the quarter. So, it would have been a higher quarter than the prior quarter. That's really on the back of achieving more milestones under our MUFG contracts. We've got ongoing change requests with Hong Kong and the future development there of that platform. And I know Keith, you had a question, so we can come back to that at the end around the space of that. And also, just our continuing kind of transactional flows that we get and licensing from our Platform-as-a-Service with Australian Retirement Trust, CSE, IOOF and then our transactions on the QuickSuper side, which will be transitioned over the coming months to Wrkr pay. Capital investment of $1.8 billion in the quarter, just reiterating the things that I've just said about where that investment is going. And then we've used some of the funds to finance the cost of the acquisition of PaidRight, which we're all very excited about, and that probably leads in quite well shortly to Trent talking about PaidRight. Just before I finish off, I want to talk about what the next quarter holds, continuing to invest in the delivery, very, very important quarter for us this quarter. And then once we get through that, we'll start to see the transactional flows come through. We'll start to see that revenue ticking up in line with all of those employees being onboarded for AustralianSuper and REST. And that's still on target for all of those employees to be on before the introduction of PayDay Super. So, it will be nice to see those revenues coming in, and we'll be able to start reporting back to the investors around what that looks like with the metrics as we move forward. And yes, then I guess that's probably everything that's a bit of a highlight for the quarter. I'll pass that to Trent on the PaidRight acquisition.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesSo, in essence, a very, very strong quarter again. And I think this testament to those who know the business in detail and you see the amount of different programs and deliverables that we're hitting plus the addition of new staff, I think that's been an amazing quarter result for the business, just demonstrates the team are being very cautious on where we put expenditure and make sure we put it to the right areas. So let me jump ahead. So, we spoke before really about where we drive. And so, if we think about partnerships, obviously, expanding Super expanding payroll. When we think about direct-to-employer, ATO Small Business Clearing House remains an enormous opportunity, we believe, for our business for a couple of reasons. And just so the real difference is when we're dealing with Super, we don't do Level 1 and Level 2 support. We are a software provider. So, the ARPU number that we get is lower, but we have to do slightly less work to achieve it. We do get a high -- much higher ARPU when we're dealing in a touching and dealing with the customers directly. However, we have invested considerably in our software, both for our partners and for ourselves to make this a very low-touch self-service software with in-application nudging and so on. So, I just want to highlight, that's why you'll see our average ARPU being different, certainly different in and lower on the numbers on the left-hand column, much, much higher in the central column, but that comes at a slight increase in cost to serve. But disciplined investment is really our third plank for the business is where we talk about opportunities to take advantage of the scale and base to increase our ARPU, our average revenue per user and expanding markets. We took the opportunity to expand into Hong Kong early. I think it was too early for the business realistically that you take the opportunities to partner with your clients with -- such as MUFG when they're there. So, we managed to squeeze Hong Kong in. We would do that again for sure, but we don't have a current plan to actively go offshore and invest in talent being based offshore. So, our real short term and the main reason for that is the short-term opportunities in Australia to increase, we think are far more lucrative with a lot less risk. And that goes beyond pay and wages into license and credential verification. So, let's talk a little bit about that. Let's talk about the strategic acquisition. So, most of you would be aware, the final cost for the transaction was $13.9 million. That was 100% acquisition on-scrip, so leveraged our current share price where it was trading at. This is a company that I have had an involvement in for a lengthy period of time. As we've noted, I was a director on the company. So have a very good understanding of the journey that PaidRight has been on. So, 90.9 million shares was the allocation. So, it wound up being about, yes, 4.8% of our issued capital. It really, for us, when we think about the narrative of PaidRight and before I get into the detail, Super is a really important moment. But the industry is moving from -- when we think about the compliance challenge for organizations superannuation has traditionally been a payment of X percent done at the quarter for most businesses and then true up at the end of the year. Some businesses had to do it monthly if you're over 5,000 employees. But it really was an end conversation and wasn't really the core of the challenge, which most payroll teams have been set up around, which is how to pay people and pay them correctly. The Australian pay system is one of the most complex in the world. And so, we really felt to be a business that is solving compliance challenges from hire to retire, actually, there's great risk in only being Super based. It's more likely that a payroll and companies that have strong payroll compliance category would slowly move into our space. So, we felt actually, while it's heavily regulated and defended, it's a good opportunity to build that pillar for our business. So, the IP and the team and their culture and know-how is a very important part of that acquisition. Just talk a little bit about that. This is a core engine that for those who don't know the background, was originally built by CSIRO. And then in partnership between CSIRO and PwC Ventures, which was the team that I led at PwC. We were able to take their core software and build it out really into a solution that was able to give meet a real challenge in the market. And the challenge is this. The Australian pay awards are incredibly complex. And when you strike an enterprise agreement, which there are 4,000 enterprise agreements out there in the market, one single error in someone's pay, i.e., failing boot, so not being better off than what the award would have been for the same calculation means that you have to dispand that enterprise agreement and start from scratch again with the unions and so on. So, it's actually a really high-risk area for businesses, and it's been done and negotiated predominantly by lawyers using interpretation of the law. what PaidRight really is, is one of the first truly mathematics space solutions that takes that written interpretation and converts it to computer readable code, maths, to actually come up with a true answer depending on what your stance might be on the interpretation, allows you to -- if you change your interpretation, see exactly the financial impact. To achieve that result, it really has come off the back of a combination of 10 years of R&D, a little bit more even before that from CSIRO. The software has been tested across over 0.5 million employees in a very, very wide variety of jobs. So that means there are the awards of people from whether you work in deli, the whether you work on the retail counter, whether you work in logistics and shipping or stores and packaging. It's quite a diverse group. About $15 billion worth of wages and going back over 5 years. So that's what the core model has been tested at, which makes it incredibly precise. And so, I touched on before, when we talk about interpretations, the general retail industry award alone, we estimate to be over 72,000 interpretations. So, from that perspective, you've got a huge market of clients who are actually trying to seek help and they are seeking help from trusted organizations. So taking the fact that Wrkr is trusted, taking the fact that Wrkr has scale, and we actually have reached to exactly the same audience, the same people who deal with this payroll challenge actually are the same people paying Super, who are our day-to-day customers either through the AussieSuper REST or through our direct platform and portal. So, we really believe the synergies between the 2 businesses are very large. Their operating revenue today is relatively small. They're about $3.4 million. However, on the back end of quite substantive R&D investment. So, the product has come to a fairly healthy point, still needs ongoing investment as all SaaS products do. In effect, it's 3 products, but really one, Pay Precision, which is real-time checks of pay before the final pay approval, which fits very neatly in with our offering to market. Number two, wage remediation going back in time and assessing. And the third, just general risk assessments. So, from a base, we felt it was one of the stronger companies. And because we knew it so well, we felt confident that there's no bluff and bluster in this product or its team. So, apologies for that. So, what do we really see? This is really to unlock the value. This is our platform scale and reach, our compliance position, our partnerships with digital service providers, system integrators and really our ability to incrementally add to our existing customer base, we believe, can far exceed the go-to-market opportunity that was right there for PaidRight, and we can do it at a much lower cost of sale. PaidRight, this is a real-time pay engine, very strong award expertise, enterprise grade. The sort of clients, customers they've been dealing with circa 50% of the top 10 in the retail sector. They've dealt with some of the larger universities, aged care and so on. So that's certainly high alignment to our customers and target customers and that deep tech R&D. So common DNA, I mentioned, came out of our ventures, a similar mindset, similar operating model and even some similar business partners behind the scenes. We intend our spend -- we don't intend to spend a huge amount, but around $1.5 million to $2 million has been allocated. We will enhance some of the product development, a little bit of working capital to fill gaps and obviously driving the revenue growth predominantly just through lead generation in the first phase. So right now, between now and the end of this financial year, there'll be a stand-alone operation, they'll be in the way I'll describe it, wearing Wrkr T-shirts, but the PaidRight product and we'll be in the one common office common back office support. Moving forward, though, to really be fully integrated. So, every time we're thinking about a customer's compliance needs, we're thinking about a PaidRight opportunity. What you will see in the market in that shorter term in time for PayDay Super is what I would call Super right, and that is our ability to drop a level of detail and let customers subscribe to that as a way to learn about the extra benefits to really prepare them for the on-sell to PaidRight modules, so buying it off in bite-sized chunks. So that really is the core of that business. I'd rather answer your questions rather than just talk at you in this webinar format. So, I'd probably open it up. Maybe we'll go through some of the questions and then get into a little bit of depth about the PaidRight solution itself and why we're so passionate about that acquisition. Do you want to?
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesYes. I think we can start from the top of the questions.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesGreat. So, thanks, Keith. Interested to understand whether you see further opportunities such as the Hong Kong system provided to MUFG, realizing that we -- yes, we have our hands full right at the moment. And was it profitable? So, a couple of things. Yes, it was profitable, delivering on Hong Kong in that we structured it as a more service type delivery. So, your typical 30% margins rather than your SaaS product margins. In an ongoing basis, it will meet our SaaS margins. Hong Kong is still an immature market and not enormous, but it did allow us to collaborate in a pension model rather than in a standard product. So, it's given us a pattern, if the MUFG retirement solutions globally want to move forward with more innovation. I do believe I think we've now created a great framework. That said, we can probably amplify it if we pushed it. But right now, we're -- I think our best people are probably choking on the great opportunities in front of us. So, you're right. It will be -- it was profitable. We can definitely do more. It's just not in our -- this calendar year strategy. A couple of questions, please, regarding PaidRight. As part of Wrkr, one, how much of its revenue will still be coming from compliance consultancy projects, which seem to be the major part of its historical income. I'll just answer that one first. It's a little under 1/3 of its revenue is in true SaaS. But of its services revenue, its services clients tend to lead into SaaS -- the SaaS income is lower because when you do the services work, you go historically back and do 7 years or 10 years in some instances. And obviously, that makes the numbers a little bit exaggerated, but they certainly do pick up the -- a good healthy conversion rate. So, we will focus on -- we'll deliver both, but we will definitely focus our priorities on the SaaS-based revenue opportunity. The other is the PaidRight solution is very accurate and goes in depth across a great deal of data. We actually believe there's a real opportunity for breaking it into smaller components and bite-size chunks, which means it's more financially affordable for a wider array of customers and also leveraging some of our partnerships to take the larger services solution to market and wean ourselves off the services work, so it can reach a true scale and be a better lead gen for us. The second question was is the integrated Wrkr PaidRight solution targeting large enterprises or SMEs. It will -- medium to large, so pretty much over 200 employees is a really good sweet spot. for PaidRight as it stands today. That said, there's a discussion to be had around small businesses who just pay the award and being certain about whether they're paying the award. We just -- at this stage, we don't want to get into being a payroll provider. The way PaidRight and myself would articulate it together is it's hard to be the payroll provider and be the third empire. So right now, this is about compliance checks and verification, not the upfront calculation of payroll. I'm not to say that strategy won't change in the future. And the final question was how competitive will it be against potential -- potential customers solving payroll compliance issues with AI-assisted in-house coding. Yes, really interesting. We've done a lot of tests against the modern AI standards even as Wrkr. We constantly look at that. The AI models have a couple of real challenges, notwithstanding the usual hallucinating, filling in the blanks, you can't do that when you're talking about Pay. And actually, the CSIRO development of the core code is really fit for purpose for regulation, which is around understanding interpretation first and understanding that interpretations have a compounding effect on each other. We found the accuracy difference is a long way away. That said, as AI improves, we will leverage that to continuously improve the product of PaidRight as well. But at this stage, no. We probably have too much data in our model and too higher accuracy, but it will come at time. AI is chasing every bit of software it can. Great. So not that we expect dividend anytime soon, but does the company balance reaching free cash flow breakeven against expanding into adjacent functions through acquiring loss-making technology businesses. No, look, we -- yes, at this stage, we certainly aren't a dividend stock. Our view is there is a growth plan for us, which is really a capital growth, but we want to do that profitably. We intend to not be -- there will be definitely some businesses we think that are undervalued, but I won't say looking for loss-making businesses for the sake of them. They would have to, and I'll use an example, compliance is probably the space we would on credentials is the next space we'd go to. And if I think about something that does a license check, while that business may be unprofitable because they fail to achieve scale, a little similar to where PaidRight found itself. It was running out of speed right at when its product was maturing and our market access really gave us a competitive advantage. We're looking for that type of pattern. We're not looking for things that require huge amounts of capital investment. We want businesses that are going to match our profile and access to market. So, we'll -- this is timely. Thank you, Steve. Will the verification business be grown organically or via acquisition? A little of both. We built our own connection to APRA for medical license checks because there wasn't anything in the market. We knew the price point we could develop for. If we can buy something that brings credibility, key iconic clients, or clients who are even in our existing platform, so we can bring their eyeballs into that one-stop shop. They are things we value. I'm open to acquisition, but I'm conscious we want to make PaidRight work first. And so any acquisition would have to be away from using -- impacting those same key people. So yes, M&A is definitely on the cards, but we have quality organic growth in front of us. And I worry about companies who kind of -- acquisition shouldn't just be the story to fill space in the market. You've got to demonstrate that you're bringing the revenue in from these acquisitions and build confidence in the shareholder community first. So that's where we're going. Sorry, it looks like these to me so far, but you can feel free to grab one. is PaidRight just an add-on to clients' current payroll system? Or do they need to totally replace the payroll? Yes, good question. It's an add-on. So, most clients would have a payroll system and many would have a time and attendance system that goes with that payroll system. Time and attendance tells you what hours that feeds into payroll, which tells you how you -- what -- how many hours, minutes in a day for a certain role. PaidRight analyzes that and identifies a range of issues and errors in calculation. And it's usually calculations where a business was unaware of the system impact. So, you worked on a Saturday and a Sunday, and you didn't take a break. And that in certain awards just has a different consequence, which can grow your payout by $30, but $30 every week over a whole handful of a certain staff type. So PaidRight really goes in and does the cleanup of things which are a little too complicated to have factored into a payroll build and deployment. Also, the boot test being pretty key for that. So it's an add-on. Have there been any further discussions with MUFG clients outside of AussieSuper and REST to migrate to the platform, John, yes, we continue to work with the -- with all of MUFG's clients and also direct ourselves. There I said there's a lot of work. Some of the funds aren't as prepared yet and some are smaller, so they don't need as much time as AustralianSuper or REST would do. So, we are -- we have already booked in the first 4 slots for boutique funds from MUFG and are working through those funds in the order and have hired people to work with them. We also are working with 4 -- 5 actually other funds directly, but they're in earlier stages of prep, but hadn't quite got themselves into the position as yet. So yes, it's still a pretty healthy market. It hasn't closed off. I think it's worth saying for some, just so people understand funds that provide a solution to the employer, so that manages all of the pay, they really are the ones that need to get a wiggle on, and that's why REST and AustralianSuper and some of the boutiques at MUFG who have that strategy have worked very quickly. Some are still, we think, a little behind. And you can do the bare minimum as a fund. But I think given the way we see the market shaping up and the solutions that are available to employers, I think that leaves employers a little high and dry and maybe their relationship is a bit vulnerable. So, I think well done to REST and AustralianSuper, they are going to get and the early boutiques, they are going to get a windfall from being prepared. Some funds that have done the bare minimum, they're not going to be in trouble, but the employers will have a higher risk of falling foul of the new Payday Super rules. So that's an area where we'll be keen to bring on direct users. Feel free to steal one.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesThis one is for you and then I'll jump in after that. Give you a break.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesOkay. Great. Is AI risk to your business markets, either directly or indirectly? At this stage, I'd say that's more an opportunity than a risk. We have 2 areas that allow our business to be defended. One of those is we deal with the most -- the highest level of PII data. So, we are dealing with people's tax file numbers, date of birth, age, address, everything required to fully identify an individual. So, number one, that information can't go offshore in any way, shape or form. So therefore, you can build AI models, but you are building AI models off your own data set. Well, that is actually what we do. AI is just still -- it's only really getting the full benefits of AI when it has the world of data available. So, if you can't take that core data, it's really called software. So, we have -- but we are definitely using AI for productivity tools, meeting all of our security standards. We use it for prototyping. We use it wherever we don't touch critical data. But also, what AI is really then doing, so the benefit side it's allowing software companies to develop, prototype and test things much, much faster, and that's the way we're embracing it at this stage. So I don't want to be -- I'm not a naysayer on AI. I like it and I use it daily as a productivity tool, but I feel more fortunate than if I was a website developer. I think you'd be seriously concerned about the longevity of those more traditional businesses. On to you.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesOkay. We've got some questions here from John just around the PaidRight investment, the capital investment into the business and then what that investment looks like moving forward. So, in terms of when we'll start to kind of amortize the investment into PaidRight, basically from acquisition date, it's in market. So yes, we'll be looking to start that. Then we're going to have additional investment. So as Trent mentioned and what we raised in the capital raise -- spend was about $1.5 million to $2 million worth put aside, and that will be a combination of what goes through P&L and what will go into the capitalized bucket. There's things like marketing that we're going to be doing and continuing straight up. And then there's things that we need to do to integrate the platform into Wrkr and then as well as get kind of the product that we're really looking to drive given our reach through the employers through our MUFG partnership and making sure that we're positioning that correctly for our strategy to make the most of that PaidRight IP. So there will be some investment across both looking to amortize starting now and we'll continue to work on that over the next 6 months, as Trent said, keeping it separate from the business while we focus on the delivery for AustralianSuper, REST and the other MUFG funds that we're well advanced in negotiations with and then yes, moving to look at that integration space in the back half of the year.
Trent Lund
ExecutivesRight. Thank you. So, there's a great couple of questions here on -- so let me cover on Westpac's QuickSuper. Luke, will Westpac's QuickSuper remain reasonably strong, a reasonably strong competitor? And do you believe they will take a sizable share of the small business clearinghouse? I don't believe they will take a great share of small business clearinghouse predominantly because that product of QuickSuper resides in institutional banking for Westpac. So, it's not as -- I don't think it's not as clear cut that it would suddenly become a consumer or small business-based solution, although they have got some customers on in that size, they have typically come on from a fund. So no, I don't think they're chasing that side of the business, which is why it's such a good opportunity for ourselves. Though that does -- so it hasn't changed my vision for our -- for that part of the growth. Second question though was, has the decision by Westpac to bring QuickSuper up to date and Payday Super suitable had any effect on our vision. So no, not at this stage. So just for everyone to be clear, the way the product stack is you have the gateway itself, which all gateways to retain their license must be beta Super ready and we'll do interoperability testing between each other. And while that is a reasonable program of work and ongoing because we can't go any faster than what the ATO testing and combined testing guidelines are, Westpac will definitely reach that level. The next level is the Clearing House of payments. I think their investment there is appropriate and there's not -- as a bank, there's not a great deal of work for them to do. I think the big area where we're not seeing a challenge is the really the employer experience and all of the stapling and the other key capabilities, which, to be honest, that's really the REST is bread and butter, and that is what certainly feedback from AustralianSuper is why they selected our software. So, I feel that our vision is still very much right. That said, never underestimate competitors. I much rather than be a partner. But at this stage, they remain a competitor to our business. I think we'll watch closely what the landscape, how it shifts. I think quality is the focus right now. Software companies who are delivering and delivering with quality through this first half of Payday Super, you're either delivering problems or you're delivering value. If you're on the right side of that ledger, we think the growth opportunities will be there regardless of competitors. So that's certainly our focus. Hayden, what onboarding processes give you confidence in achieving 5 million users before Payday Super? Great question. Certainly, a couple of things there. Like all companies, we'd much rather another 6 months. We wish people signed contracts earlier back when we were first negotiating, but we're comfortable with the current time frames that we have. What gives me confidence is each fund that we're dealing with, AustralianSuper by far the largest, servicing about 160-odd thousand businesses. And they are very well prepared. Their in-house programs are very strong. They have external people working on it. So, we are really just delivering the software, provided we deliver the software on quality on time. I've seen all of their execution plans and the same for REST and they are to a high standard. Both have external support, both from MUFG and Big 4 consultancies and their in-house teams are a high standard. So, we feel comfortable. The reality is -- if I deliver this software to any of your businesses today and you've never seen it before, you will be familiar with the experience because you paid Super. As long as you paid Super once before, you will understand. The language is fairly normal. It takes between 7 and 11 minutes to set up a business from scratch with no historic information, load all your employees, be prepared to pay and pay your first Super payments. So, it's fairly self-explanatory. We've been watching the rollouts go out to very large numbers in -- from -- on the REST side and the number of people seeking help or chat through the contact center is fairly low at this stage. So, to the extent it's people who've dealt with paid Super at all before, it's a fairly seamless process to get started. Luke, does acquiring PaidRight give you additional resources to build your own? No. In short, there's too much opportunity in PaidRight itself to -- one thing we're really wanting to avoid is taking that talent and defraying it into other pockets of the business, really smart people, very capable, but -- and so we want to share best practice, but we definitely won't distract if anything will add to their capability because the -- what we believe we can charge for full remediation is higher on a per employee basis certainly than making a payment into your Super. It's -- to us, it's a much higher ARPU product. just won't be relevant to all 7 million of our target clients, but will be of a similar net value to the world of Super for us. So yes, we don't want to distract that business. We'll add to it. Can Wrkr Pay be offered as a stand-alone product? Or will it be provided through third-party payroll company? So no, it's both stand-alone or integrated. The way Wrkr Pay works, our Super product and our pay capabilities and our credentials, you can either connect and link your payroll for certain payrolls, you can just submit a file from your payroll system either automatically through security or you can upload a file and there's a file mapping solution if you have a system that is giving an irregular file format or you can manually just put it into a grid fill for small business. So those 4 methods mean you can use any payroll you like in Australia and you can still use Wrkr for processing super contributions, for doing your single touch payroll report lodgment to the ATO for paying the wage amount to an employee and paying disbursements, so union fees and so on for an employee and keep all of that in a single dashboard with all of the audit trail. So pretty rich capability. MUFG with MUFG's possible acquisition of Grow impact us? Yes. Look, if they were -- I mean, twofold, no doubt, it would make them busy and that -- we don't want them distracted just as much as they don't want us distracted. But Grow is a -- as a product and a company has successfully bought across a couple of their clients, HESTA and I've now forgotten it, that's come to me in a minute, Australian Ethical. So, HESTA and Australian Ethical are definitely 2. They would be effectively winning them back, and that would be great for us because we could then target them ahead of schedule. The additional part though we would need to integrate into the Grow API. However, it's a fairly modern software stack. And we -- given we've already built all of the patents of integrating into MUFGs Spire platform, I think integrating into a second one of their platforms would actually be far less difficult. So, for us, it would be great, but we could still go after that client base if that acquisition weren't to go ahead, just it's probably a bridge too far on our available talent right now. So, I hope that answers well. That was a lot of questions today. We've answered all of them. So, I want to -- and I'm conscious we probably have 45 minutes as well and truly stretched. It's definitely an hour. I want to thank everybody for turning up. It's a large group of you. They were fantastic questions, a lot of interest in the business. A probably final word, I would say, while we've gone through the detail and a personal note, I'm really excited. This is a milestone. Our business has now acquired a company, and it was a company that really I looked at either where should I deploy all of my time, either join Wrkr or join PaidRight. And I felt PaidRight, to be honest, was a better certainly a better problem space to go and address. It's a clearer problem to understand in the market. I mean, paying people in Australia is front problems, a front page of every newspaper on a weekly basis. It's high risk to company reputations. It costs them a great deal of money. There's definitely a need for a tool to help. That's -- so I'm so excited that, that tool is sitting inside a company of Wrkr, which has connections to market, partnerships and enough critical mass across the business to give that software the opportunity to be what it can be. So, for me, personally, it's -- this is going to be a very exciting part of our journey. So, thank you, everyone. As always, we will put this post up, so you can watch it again later. Feel free to reach out with any questions through our investor hub and have a fantastic week, as we will. Cheers.
Karen Gilmour
ExecutivesThank you.
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