The Computershare Limited (ASX: CPU) share price will be on watch this morning after the company delivered its full-year FY20 results.
Computershare is best known for its share registry services and employee share plans, but also provides mortgage services. It was founded in Melbourne in 1978 and has now become a global business with over 75 million customer records and 12,000 staff.
Computershare’s FY20 report
Computershare reported that its revenue decreased by 1.9% to US$2.3 billion. ‘Management’ (read underlying) EBITDA fell by 3.7% in constant currency terms to US$650 million, however, this includes a benefit of US$47.9 million from the new IFRS 16 leases accounting standard.
Margin income, which represents interest generated from client-owned cash balances, dropped 18.3% to US$201 million. Meanwhile, management earnings per share (EPS) fell 19.8% to 56.3 cents per share, in line with revised guidance provided in April.
On the bottom line, net profit after tax dropped 20% to US$305 million on a constant currency basis.
Segment results
Looking at some individual segments, revenue generated from issuer services fell 4.7% to US$907.2 million. However, a 3.9 percentage point reduction in EBITDA margin led to a 16.1% drop in management EBITDA to US$263 million. In the issuer services segment, Computershare said its register maintenance services were resilient but there were lower event-based revenues generated during the period.
The employee share plans division actually managed to increase its revenue, rising 1.4% to US$293.1 million. However, again, management EBITDA didn’t fare so well, falling 16.9% to US$56.1 million due a 4.2 percentage point drop in EBITDA margin.
Mortgage services saw a 4.1% increase in revenue to US$640.9 million, after a 20.8% drop in revenue from UK mortgage services was offset by a 21.6% increase in revenue from US mortgage services. Management EBITDA fell 5.5% to US$127.1 million.
Finally, revenue from business services came in at US$244.9 million, down 8.2% compared to FY19. Computershare managed to improve its EBITDA margin in this segment, leading to only a 3.8% fall in management EBITDA.
Computershare dividend
Despite the subdued results, Computershare maintained its final dividend of 23 cents per share. This brings the total dividend for FY20 to 46 cents per share, which is an increase of 4.5% from FY19.
What next?
Looking forward, Computershare said that while providing guidance is more challenging given the heightened macro environment, it remains committed to ongoing transparency. Therefore, it has provided some guidance for FY21.
In constant currency, the company is expecting management EPS to be down by around 11% and EBIT (excluding margin income growth) to be up by around 10%. Computershare is also expecting a seasonality split of around 40% in 1H21 EPS and 60% in 2H21 EPS. This assumes a US$100 million fall in margin income due to lower interest rates.
Computershare expects both employee share plan transaction volumes and shareholder transactional activity to be lower in FY21. However, the company named growing contributions from new issuer services and ongoing Equatex integration benefits as tailwinds heading into FY21.
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