Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for the announcement of Cuscal's results for the half year ended 31 December 2025. I'm Craig Kennedy, Managing Director of Cuscal, and I'm joined today by our CFO Jennifer Brice, who joined the business in October 2025 as CFO, and I'm pleased to say that she's hit the ground running, bringing momentum and a clear vision to the role.

Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to all First [unclear].

Today, I'll touch on some of the highlights from the last 6 months, including the Indue acquisition. Jen will then review our financial performance in more detail before I take you through our priorities and outlook for the remainder of FY 26.

We'll then take some questions. Now let's go to slides.

First half performance underpinned by consistent execution of our strategy. We continue to see steady growth across all our core capabilities in the half, with a 9% increase in transaction volumes delivering 13% underlying NPAT growth.

On 1 December last year, we were pleased to complete the acquisition of Indue. Our robust capital position supports the decision by the board to declare an interim dividend of 4.5 cents.

This is in line with the 4.5 cent pre-IPO dividend we paid last year. Before I hand it over to Jen, a few comments on Indue.

It was the Indue acquisition, and we first shared with you the compelling opportunity it presents. Having had the keys to the business now for almost 3 months, I'm pleased to report is in line with our expectations, and we maintain our high confidence in achieving the target cost synergies.

Post-integration, we expect this acquisition to deliver [unclear] with a return on invested capital of over 20%. We're at the start of a multi-year integration program with full run-rate cost synergies expected to be realized by FY 29.

Early progress includes standing up the integration committee, welcoming Peter Ryan to the board as a non-executive director, and establishing the necessary work streams for integration. Our current focus is on planning the client migrations, and we've got clear line of sight.

It's all easy, but this is work we've done before. We know how to execute, and we're confident we will deliver.

I also want to recognize our people. Employees have stepped in quickly and are already making a meaningful contribution.

The collaboration and focus on execution across the combined teams gives me confidence as we move forward as one organization. Jen, over to you.

Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be joining my first earnings call with Cuscal and to be reporting continued strong momentum across the business.

I'll begin on slide 10, which highlights that our key metrics have improved. Today's commentary focuses on underlying results, which adjust for significant one-off and acquisition-related items.

With Indue having contributed 1 month to the results, we're also providing numbers excluding the Indue contribution to give you a sense of organic performance. Transaction volumes grew 9%, including 20 million transactions from Indue in December.

Net operating income grew 10%, which I'll break down shortly, and EPS was up 4%, noting the higher share count following the primary share issuance at Cuscal's IPO in November 2024. Net operating income increased 10%, including a $5.3 million contribution from Indue across December.

It's worth noting that December is typically a strong month for transaction volumes, with seasonally high retail spend, gift card activity, and interest income from higher client balances. Excluding Indue, NOI grew 6%, supported by solid transaction growth and incremental revenue from product innovation.

Transaction volumes increased 9% overall, or 8% excluding Indue. Issuing grew 9%, with transaction-based revenue growing in line with 7% volume growth.

Acquiring increased 10%, with strong 18% transaction volume growth attracting volume-based commercial incentives to deliver transaction-based revenue growth of 14%. Payments grew 15%, and transaction-based revenue grew 14%, supported by continued NPP momentum and take-up of Confirmation of Payee.

Slide 12 shows the bridge of operating expenses from first half FY 25 through to this half. Underlying opex increased 10%, or 6% excluding Indue.

The main driver was employee costs, which were up 20% due to the addition of Indue and also ongoing people investment in areas such as fraud and scam monitoring, cybersecurity, and risk management capabilities. As internal capability has grown, this is reflected in the 22% reduction in other expenses.

Technology expenses increased in line with enterprise licensing and product investment. Depreciation and amortization fell 4%, helped by our move of premises and non-recurring R&D benefits.

Looking to the second half, we will remain disciplined with our expenditure. However, we do expect a slight near-term drag from Indue given its lower margin profile.

As shown on slide 13, our balance sheet remains strong, and we retain a stable AA- credit rating from S&P. A reminder that as a regulated ADI, we retain client deposits, which eliminates settlement risk.

We're also required to maintain appropriate capital levels, represented by our capital adequacy ratio. Following the Indue acquisition and the associated deployment of excess capital, our capital adequacy ratio has moved from 27.3% to 19.7%, which is just above our target range of 18% to 19%.

Return on equity for the half was 6.3%, which is in line with the prior year. I'm really pleased with the strength of our financial performance, and with that, I'll hand back to Craig for comments on the outlook.

Thanks, Jen. Looking to the second half, the business is well positioned for continued [unclear] integration.

Our focus remains on risk management uplift and extending products into new segments. Given the strength of our first half performance and the completion of the Indue acquisition, we are lifting our outlook.

We now expect high single-digit transaction volume growth to translate to mid-teens underlying NPAT growth. We expect first half earnings to represent about 55% of our full-year underlying NPAT, in part due to the fact that we had higher net interest income in H1.

The capital held above target levels has now been deployed in acquiring Indue. It's worth noting again, the deployment of that capital is expected to generate a greater than 20% return on invested capital in 3 years.

Teams focus and execution in H1 and look forward to continuing our momentum in the second half. With that, we'll now open the line for questions.

Morning, Craig and Jennifer. Done.

Good result. Can I just ask in terms of the client deposit balances on your balance sheet, the 4.1 billion at period end, how do you sort of guide us in terms of, I suppose, strength that you saw during the first half and seeing into the second half as to where they may land for full year?

Alastair, just as a general rule, the balances we hold to either pre-fund settlement or as security deposits are commensurate with our transaction volumes. It's a bit dangerous to look at December as a bit of an outlier because it is the period where we hold the largest for pre-settlement and security, etc., and then it goes back to a more normalized pattern throughout the year.

The general thing to watch is, by and large, if we're increasing the volume of activity, then deposits will increase. As we've got a relatively fixed margin on those client funds in terms of the interest we generate.

You would normally never see that 1 month in December, and we wouldn't have to have this discussion to explain it. It's just because we had only Indue on the books for that 1 month, and in that period, that actual month is our highest in terms of deposit holding.

There's no attrition in the client base. It's generally our banking clients that hold most of those funds.

There might be a little bit of seasonality occasionally in terms of if they leave any excess funds with us, but by and large, there's no abnormal patterns throughout the rest of the year. It's been very consistent and tends to follow our transaction volume.

Thank you. In terms of volume growth, much strong performance versus what we can see from an RBA data set, which obviously is very different because it's predominantly major banks driving that, can you give us a bit of an idea across your segments as to what some of the nuanced client intricacies were that sort of gave you that 8% growth versus ex-Indue year on year?

Yeah. Yep, thanks, Alastair.

I think we've consistently mentioned that one of the benefits of having the portfolio of clients that we've got is we'll have some people performing at system, some below, and some above. It's been a good period in terms of we've got a couple of clients in different segments performing well above system.

That's just really an indication of their priority, their growth, how much they've put behind their effort to grow in that period. We've got a couple of banking clients, or a few banking clients in particular, that have enjoyed good growth, and some in the acquiring sector as well.

Then

before passing on to others, just in terms of noted your sort of high confidence after 3 months in your $15 to $20 million of after-tax synergies, have you had any sort of change in thinking as you've had your hands on the keys in terms of how the sort of timing will occur over the 3-year period to 29 of extracting those?

There was almost never going to be any room for movement in the timing because the larger synergies are attached to fixed timeline contracts of major vendors. Even if we can get out earlier, Alastair, we've still got to pay out the balance of the contracts, there's no net saving attached to that.

The only opportunity for any improvements in the numbers would be if we can more efficiently migrate or reduce the cost to achieve them. It's a fairly fixed program, there's not a lot of latitude in that regard.

There's no prospect of bringing the dollar value of synergies forward just due to the nature of the contracts that we're retiring, if that makes sense.

Sure. Maybe one more.

Just on 40% to 60% payout ratio stat that you've sort of, notwithstanding a very strong first half, you've paid out at the bottom end of that. Is there any signal in that, or you just going to square things up at full year with dividends?

No, there's no signals there, Alastair. That's consistent with the pattern of the last 15 years with my conservative board.

We always take a more cautious approach in the first half and make it up in the second.

Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on maintaining the business momentum while you digest Indue. I was wondering if I could ask first on the payments NOI up 15%.

You've highlighted the payments platform. Just wondering if you can talk to us a bit more about what's driving such strong growth in this segment.

Payments platform.

On NPP? Where the majority of the innovation in and around the NPP, where people are deploying new solutions, delivering new experiences, we support the majority of those clients.

We've also got clients like Bendigo, ING, ubank under NAB, all-time payments very early and have been very big advocates of getting their consumers to adopt that as a payment form. Sorry, Matt, you're very faint in the background.

Hopefully, I heard your question appropriately.

Yeah. No, that's perfect.

Thank you, Craig. Hopefully, you can hear me okay.

Just if I could move on to financial crimes, up 19% on NOI. You've also called out the FTE uplift to support fraud and scam monitoring, cyber, and risk management.

Is this uplift in FTE now, and are you recouping, are you passing on the higher costs to your customers?

Matt, you just dropped out in the first part of your question. I wasn't sure what you're asking about FTE, if you could just repeat that for me, please.

You've called out an uplift in FTE due to fraud and scam monitoring, cyber, and risk management. With that higher FTE, are you recouping those higher costs through higher revenues because it appears that the financial crimes NOI has started to rise.

It's up 19% year

on year. What we invest in cyber is an internal expense that isn't related to revenue, so that's a separate matter.

That's an uplift that the whole banking sector has gone through under their CPS 234 requirements. You're right.

The general principle behind what we do in terms of our financial crime domain, we're not highly motivated by profit there. The intention is to give our clients a safe environment to grow their payments where we are profit motivated.

If we didn't provide a safe place for them to grow their payments, they'd be at a competitive disadvantage, and they'd lose transactional market share to others. Equally, if we were putting up the pricing too much there, that would also make them non-competitive, and we'd lose activity and obviously defeat the purpose because we wouldn't be getting transaction fee income.

We're trying to strike that balance. Obviously, as our volume grows and you've got new types of crimes being committed, we have to respond through both the technology that supports that and the headcount that interfaces with those clients.

The whole idea is that, I think to your point, there should be some relationship between our increased costs there and the revenue. We're obviously not looking to subsidize anybody there, whilst we're not highly profit motivated in that segment, it should be self-funding both the improvement in capability we need and the headcount.

Thank you very much. I'll leave it there.

Hi, all. Just a few questions building on from Alastair.

In the outlook guidance upgrade, can we just unpack what's that predicated on? Does that capture any of the surcharging parameters that look to be coming in?

Is it on an underlying basis from changes in the client base, or is it purely just some of the above-system growth that is coming from that?

Obviously, as we go forward, the key thing to keep an eye on is we've now got the combined revenue and client base from Indue, and we've got a program of integration underway that has both an investment to achieve that integration, and then when it's realized, you've got the benefit of the reduced run rate. That's the bigger prize and keeping an eye on that.

I think the important thing is to track how we're going with that integration program and that we haven't had material client losses during that period. I can tell you that that continues to be the case, and we've got confidence in that program.

What we've tried to balance is we know that because of where we're at for the year, we run the risk of people not accurately forecasting based on our prior guidance, and so we're trying to give you an uplift for the full year. Equally, we don't end up with a number because there were factors in the first half that aren't being repeated in the second.

Most notable is the benefit that we had from interest income where that capital has now been employed in the acquisition, and whilst it's got a very attractive return on it over a period of time, it's not overnight. We're just trying to give everybody that guidance in terms of how you'd look at the first and second half.

Obviously, we've got the investment in the integration program plays out in the second half, which is why we've tried to give you that combination of guidance.

Hayden, also your question about the surcharging, we're not expecting that to have a [unclear].

Yeah. Sorry, I overlooked that.

Just to be clear, Cuscal's not directly impacted by interchange changes or surcharge. We were indirectly impacted, and even if it was a material change, which we don't expect it to be, you still wouldn't really see that in the second half anyway.

Any real change in the market dynamic because of the reduction or removal of surcharging, because it doesn't give one party a competitive advantage over another, it's going to affect

I was coming from a volume lens. Two follow-ups, if I may, just quick on that release of the excess capital.

You're still quite from CET1. Just the M&A outlook maybe over that guidance, is there anything on the horizon just quite simply?

You can assume until we say otherwise, we continue to be active in M&A, and we continue to explore opportunities. We've got a small team dedicated to that, and we continue to be active at the moment.

Obviously, we don't have anything to report or disclose at this time.

Okay. Then just finally, coming back to the guidance too, but more on the bottom line.

Now mid-teens earnings growth. Is that predicated or baking in I can't quite recall some of the regulated data losses.

Are we factoring that in becoming breakeven or even profitable, or is that upside?

I think we've been fairly open that the plan with regulated data is to exit 27 as a breakeven. Normal upside, and it's contributing to a revised outcome, but it's tracking to plan as we would have expected.

Thank you.

Back again. Quick one just in terms of the significant investment program sort of envelope.

You'd sort of flagged that at sort of IPO time as sort of a $30 million per annum sort of number. Sort of interested in where that for this year, and then thinking about, as you look forward the next sort of 2 or 3 years, is there sort of anything from industry or product, ex all the Indue integration that could see that sort of $30 million per annum have a step change?

Not at this stage, Alastair, you make a good point. Obviously, that excludes the investment program to integrate Indue.

What I would say is I think we've been plain that that investment envelope, circa 2/3 of that is expensed and generally about 1/3 of it's capitalized. Whilst that envelope or the outer envelope won't change, the mix within it each period does.

We run all of our client records on a core banking system, for example. That's recently been completed is now part of our operational expenditure, but not an ongoing investment, whereas there are new KYC, AML, and other regulatory changes coming in at the moment.

We will divert some resource towards that. That envelope is generally about any tech refresh, any product build, and any regulatory or compliance requirements.

The mix of those three can change in any period, but at this stage, we're not seeing any exceptional items like we had when we built open banking or in the immediate horizon.

Then just in terms of as you integrate the contracts on the Indue side, and I suppose I'm thinking about some of the mergers that have happened within both banking and the mutual ADI world within your client bases, both Indue and the old Cuscal original, how are you finding the price negotiations in terms of your charges to them and your tiered structures? Is the margin degradation occurring, or how are you seeing price renewal?

There's together with Indue that's changed that dynamic, we obviously try and reward and incentivize those that are growing above system. If you're not performing at system, you probably don't have a lot of leverage in that regard.

There's nothing about Indue that's changed that dynamic. What I would say is that there's a few people that already had a merger path and already had an integration program aside from our integration of Indue, they've got their own path to coming together.

I think, Alastair, we've said in the past, if we've got mergers between two existing clients, then what tends to happen is you've got quite common someone who may be performing below system merging with someone who's performing at or above system. Very short term we're processing the short term, but generally, you're putting a non-growth entity onto a growth engine, in the medium term, that's improved.

Obviously, any greater capability that we provide there, which a client may not have taken up previously or an Indue may not have had, like open banking, for example. That's more in the mix than anything else.

Obviously, if we were acquiring or we had a client that was merging with another client that was not on either of our portfolios, then there's some incremental upside there because we weren't processing any of that business historically. There's not a lot of that left in the mutual sector.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time, everyone.