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We would like to invite you to our 2024 Annual General Meeting to be held at 10.00am on Thursday, 14 November 2024.
We would like to invite you to our 2024 Annual General Meeting to be held at 10.00am on Thursday, 14 November 2024 at our Yarra Falls office, 452 Johnston St Abbotsford VIC 3067. Access will be via the main entrance to the building.
How to get to the AGM
| Train | The nearest train station is Victoria Park station, which is a 10-minute walk from the Yarra Falls building. Victoria Park station is a stop on both the Mernda and Hurstbridge lines. |
| Bus | Bus route numbers 200 and 207 stop outside the Yarra Falls building on Johnston Street. |
| Car | Car parking is available at the Abbotsford Convent car park at 1 Heliers Street or otherwise in the surrounding streets to Yarra Falls. |
| Accessibility | The venue has ramps and lifts for any accessibility needs. |
Registration
Shareholders can register at the meeting from 9.00am. If you have a smartphone, please bring it with you to use the online voting platform during the meeting. If you do not have smartphone, other options will be available.
The Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday, 14 November 2024 at 10.00am Melbourne time, both virtually and in person.
Attending virtually
To attend online and vote in real time at the meeting, you can visit meetnow.global/CPU2024 on your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Online registration will open 1 hour before the start of the meeting.
For further instructions on how to participate online, view the online meeting user guide.
Attending in person
To attend in person, come to Yarra Falls, 452 Johnston Street, Abbotsford, VIC 3067.
Computershare delivered strong financial results and finished FY24 as a significantly more resilient business with the right foundations for the future. This is a direct result of good operational progress and management's delivery of a series of complex technical programmes, disposals and acquisitions in pursuit of our strategy to simplify and build around the core businesses of Issuer Services, Employee Share Plans and Corporate Trust.
Highlights included completion of the immense technical integration of Wells Fargo Corporate Trust, acquired in 2021, and growing it further with the purchase of BNY's Canada Corporate Trust business (which should complete later in FY25).
After waiting patiently for the right market conditions we also completed the sale of our US Mortgage Services business to Rithm Capital in May, so concluding our key simplification goal.
Computershare's strong financial position has enabled us to execute disciplined investments in our businesses, whether that be in Employee Share Plans, where we made further strides in transferring clients to the feature-rich EquatePlus platform and completed the strategic acquisition of the Solium Capital UK business in December, or further digitisation investments, particularly in Issuer Services, to drive growth, innovation and efficiency.
1Management EPS is inclusive of FY24 share buybacks. Guidance of around 116cps excluded share buybacks. On this basis, FY24 Management EPS was 116.7 cps vs. 108.0 in FY23, up 8.0%.
2Unfranked; Total dividend per share for FY24 is AUD 82 cps; Compared to FY23 final and FY24 interim dividend per share of AUD 40 cents per share (cps)
These efforts bore fruit in the financial results. Management Earnings Per Share (EPS) – an important measure of our profitability – was up over 8%, slightly ahead of guidance, achieved by driving earnings across our integrated businesses with high quality core fees, more cyclical event-revenue, transaction revenues and margin income.
We achieved this growth despite some challenging conditions in global markets. A continued high interest-rate environment did help deliver an increase in margin income, but also impacted new deal volumes and the number of corporate actions we managed.
Encouragingly, as market sentiment improved in the second half of the year, US structured debt volumes started to improve, and our US Corporate Trust book returned to overall growth.
Employee Share Plans delivered a particularly impressive performance, as a result of good sales and client retention combined with increased trading activity; and Issuer Services produced over 10% revenue growth. Good, focused, cost management helped us in delivering operating leverage and margin expansion.
The professionalism and continued commitment of more than 12,000 Computershare employees across the globe to put clients and customers at the forefront of everything we do is evident in these outcomes. Their efforts have put Computershare in a good position to achieve ongoing growth in our three, capital light, core businesses of Issuer Services, Corporate Trust and Employee Share Plans.
2024 marks 30 years since Computershare listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) – so it's particularly special that we're continuing our tradition of delivering strong returns for shareholders this year.
These returns support a strengthening balance sheet that provides us with meaningful flexibility looking ahead. We more than halved our net debt in FY24 following the sale of the US Mortgage Services business.
The Board is careful to balance investment for long-term strength with providing returns to shareholders. We're around halfway through our AU$750m share buyback program and have renewed it for another 12 months. In FY24, we were pleased to deliver a total dividend of 82 Australian cents per share, an increase of 17.1% on last year
Computershare has strengthened its focus on having a positive impact on the environment, our people, and communities through our Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) work. This is ever more disciplined and core to how we do business and I am pleased to report we are already implementing changes necessary to meet the forthcoming Australian sustainability disclosure standards.
You can read more about our initiatives on pages 16 to 18 and we'll provide more details in our third annual ESG Report, which will be released in October.
We made good progress in building a more balanced, stronger Computershare with a focus on higher quality earnings from our core businesses of Issuer Services, Employee Share Plans and Corporate Trust. The sale in May of Kurtzman Carson Consultants (KCC), the Bankruptcy and Class Actions business, simplified the portfolio. We were also pleased to announce on 3 October 2023 the sale of our US Mortgage Services business and we continue to work on strategic options for the UK Mortgage Services business. We believe the core Group portfolio of businesses is driving improvement in the consistency of our earnings. To help protect Computershare from potential future downward moves in interest rates, we have locked in $1.2bn of Margin Income through an active hedging program, the majority of which will be received over the next five years.
We expect FY25 to be another year of positive earnings growth. Although our plans anticipate lower interest rates globally and therefore lower margin income, we anticipate this should be more than offset by other profit drivers. We expect the counter-benefits of a lower rate environment such as improved client balances and event revenues and lower interest expense, combined with new cost control initiatives and the impact of recent acquisitions and productivity investments, to underpin the momentum in our core businesses and deliver growth. Specifically, we are guiding that in FY25 we expect Management Earnings Per Share (EPS) to rise by around 7.5% to 126 cents per share
The Board would like to thank shareholders for their support and to thank CEO Stuart Irving and Computershare's dedicated team for their work delivering positive outcomes for customers and shareholders over the past year
Paul Reynolds
Chairman
All references to Management Results in the Chairman's Report are in constant currency unless otherwise stated.
This guidance was provided subject to the assumptions, detailed financial data and the important notice on slide 58 regarding forward looking statements of Computershare's FY24 Results Market Presentation available at www.asx.com.au.
For the rest of the annual report
Our 2024 ESG Report will be available from 16 October.
Management revenue was up 2.1% to $3.3bn. Management EBIT ex. MI was up 21% and margin income was 7.3% higher at $832m
As the year unfolded, we saw the start of recovery in some of our more economically sensitive event and transaction activities, as well as ongoing growth in our high-quality recurring fee revenues. With improving client balances through the second half and delays to anticipated rate cuts, we also generated more margin income. Management earnings in the second half of the year were up over 14.7% compared to the first half results.
Our focus on our three core businesses – Issuer Services, Corporate Trust and Employee Share Plans – is paying off.
Revenues were up in our Issuer Services business, with all revenue lines improving – including Register Maintenance, Corporate Actions and Governance Services.
Our Employee Share Plans business is performing strongly, with companies increasingly using equity to attract, retain and reward their employees. Client paid core fees and transaction fees both rose, and our volume of assets under administration remains high.
Our Corporate Trust headline revenues declined modestly due to a range of factors, including higher interest rates affecting the volume and mix of new deals, mainly in the first half. Encouragingly though, this improved in the second half and we finished the year with an increase in Corporate Trust client balances compared to the prior year. We see scope for further recovery in FY25.
As the Chairman mentioned, we also made good progress focusing the group on our key businesses and disposing of assets that we decided are better owned by others. The sale of US Mortgage Services and KCC will help us focus on our core businesses, reduce debt and improve returns. Excluding the assets we sold, return on invested capital (ROIC) would have been over 35% for the year
We have also put plans in place to protect Computershare from lower interest rates. We have hedged over $1.5bn of margin income with the majority of this to be paid to us over the next five years
We are excited to build on our long history of innovation by investing in technology. We have multiple technology projects running across the group to help build on the customer experience we provide and improve the efficiency of our processes.
New technologies coming online in FY25 and FY26 will replace many of our existing customer-facing products within Issuer Services. We've also rolled out products to continue improving the operational services we provide to our clients and their customers.
Given my history in Computershare's technology team, you can imagine how enthused I am about these projects, which will help further enhance Computershare's client and customer offering.
The 30th anniversary of our listing on the ASX in 1994 was an important reminder of how far Computershare has come. Over the past three decades we've grown a team of about 50 people in Melbourne to more than 12,000 employees around the world.
Amid this growth, our team has remained committed to driving Computershare's success by delivering certainty, ingenuity and advantage to our clients and our Purple culture has been maintained.
We support our team to thrive at work and beyond by nurturing a company culture that empowers people to be themselves, build strong connections, maintain good health and continue developing their skills and experience.
We are well placed to deliver another year of positive earnings improvement in FY25, thanks to our business growth, investments in technology, lower interest costs and efforts to limit costs generally. With our strong core businesses, balance sheet and cash flow we will continue to be able to invest in our core businesses and reward shareholders.
Thank you to our shareholders for your ongoing support over the past year, along with every member of the Computershare team and our Board.
Stuart Irving
CEO and President
For the rest of the annual report
Computershare's 2024 Annual General Meeting will be a hybrid meeting at 10.00am on Thursday, 14 November.
At 10.00am on Thursday, 14 November 2024 at 452 Johnston St Abbotsford VIC 3067.
You can participate online to view a live webcast, ask the Directors questions and submit your votes in real-time.
Our Chairman, Paul Reynolds, provides details of Computershare's overall progress throughout FY24.
Computershare is committed to addressing ESG issues: Read about our progress.