Link Administration Holdings Ltd

ASX:LNK

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q3

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Good morning, everybody. John McMurtrie, Managing Director of Link Group here, joined by Andrew MacLachlan, CFO; and Craig Curry, Head of Investor Relations. We have put out an announcement this morning, which I think you all had the chance to look at it. We certainly felt strongly that it was worthwhile giving an update based on what we've seen as softer trading conditions in April. And we've redone our read forecast through to June '19. Of the adjustments, the overwhelming factors you can probably say, 60% of the adjustments are in relation to the performance of LAS, I'll come back to that in a minute, and 40% then combination of fund admin, particularly the regulatory changes in Corporate Markets. Looking at Link Asset Services, we did give an update at the end of February. At that time, it was widely held that Brexit would occur on the 31st of March. That was then kicked down the road to the end of October. The -- there's a fair bit of evidence now that the service sector in the U.K. is suffering from that continued uncertainty. Within the 3 business units that comprise LAS that we will be progressing with, Link Market Services, IPO activity on the main board in London and the secondary board is down dramatically and associated secondary market activity. Banking & Credit Management business based in Dublin is tracking reasonably well through the period, and Link Fund Solutions, the #1 player in the U.K. market, #2 in Dublin is also holding up reasonably well given those uncertainties. Fund administration in the dying days of the parliament prior to the calling of the election on May 18, a series of pieces of legislation were passed in and around the intent to take out duplicate accounts in the superannuation system. Like many things done that's under the pressure of time, there were some elements of that package that still remains somewhat subject to interpretation. The end result, however, is that any account balance of less than $6,000 and where there's been no contribution made for 16 months, as at June 30, 2019, that account will be swept into the ATO in October of 2019. The second element is that those accounts that are going to be swept in October will lose any insurance associated with them on July 1. The communication to members covered off on this has been extensive from all fronts, not just the ones we support. I suspect that the degree of understanding among members of the changes is somewhat relatively low. Our contact centers have been hit with a lot of inbound inquiry following our communications, and as we signaled, costs remain under some pressure. Yes, some of that activity will be compensated for by fee for service. I would say, these changes though are probably among the most major changes ever to impact superannuation from an operational point of view. Some funds and some of our funds have, if you will, preempted the sweep into the ATO in October and have been sending some of these inactive accounts into eligible rollover funds. And that process really began in April, it'll run through to June and then all the way through to October. That was also why we wanted to make this announcement because that impact would've been expected to be more in the '19/'20 financial year but it has having an impact particularly in the June quarter, the last quarter.Just on Corporate Markets, we remain in a competitive pricing environment. My observation is that with election in Victoria in November last year, the state election in New South Wales and now the federal election, 70% of Australia and the national level have all gone to the polls in 6 months. There was some indications that the degree of uncertainty from a business point of view is going to reduce now that we've gone through that political cycle and where corporates then over to take -- go back and take a longer-term view in relation to job creation and investments. I'll leave it at that and happy to take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have our first question from Ed Henning from CLSA.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

John, couple of questions for me. Firstly, just on the impact to the budgetary changes in '19, you've called out previous impacts of around $52 million or $50 million, how much do you actually expect to come through in the second half of '19?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

This is a moving fee. And because some funds have been ERF-ing up to June 30 and then will continue to ERF through to October. That -- the collective impact now -- the collective impact, it will hit on October 31 when all the members that are either ERF all go to ATO when those numbers will be known. As we've said before, our top 5 funds are all growing member numbers at a pretty healthy rate. It's sort of 3.5% to 5%. Part of that is in the aftermath of the Royal Commissions and the big move into industry funds. So the fact -- and the other point I'd make to is because of that growth in member numbers, underlying growth for our large clients that we -- in our contracts, we have various mitigations, including the right to reprice, which works -- can work against us as well, but where over a period of time if there's a member movement of X percent, then we can sit down and reprice. Some of them are rapidly growing member funds, sort of growing their numbers so when we know what the final numbers are at the end of October, some of those mitigants can be used. In other cases, we don't think the contracts will necessarily allow that. So in short, until we get through the end of October, there is a degree of uncertainty, particularly given that underlying member growth for our key clients.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

And just on -- is the total number you still expect around $50 million at this point?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Yes.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Okay. And just the next question, just on -- you touched on some increase costs for different activities or whatnot, what is the quantum of these kind of one-off costs that will potentially roll off in '20?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Yes. I'd say, there are a couple of components to that than certainly the one -- the ones we flagged, we did migrate to new clients, RBF and Russell onto our systems, and believe me it -- migrating large databases in superannuation are extremely complicated affairs. I would say, we do it better than anybody else. We've had a great track record of doing it, particularly when you add defined benefit into the mix. We are getting on top of those, but we are still having a resourcing level to make sure we can move quickly to back to BAU, which is going to roll now into the September quarter. That's one element. The second one is because of all of these progressive mail outs to members in the inactive category that -- and we see this in e-mail traffic and also in contact center volumes that the volumes have vastly exceeded our own expectations. And these were expectations we formed jointly with our clients. So those volumes have stayed up at very, very high levels. And that potentially could roll through, there will be the other certain funds doing further mail outs in June. So we think that level of activity could well roll through until the end of October when the final sweeps occur to the ATO.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

And what's kind of the quantum we're talking about? Is it like $5 million for each of those things?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

I don't think we're going to put a number on it, Ed, at the moment. It's a combination of those 2 things. They are as John said, we would expect them to roll off by October, but we're not going to put a number on those individual components. But suffice to say, obviously, more than we expected when we sort of came into this half year.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

But I think, Edmund, we'd see this as a one-off cost burden that will largely roll off from the end of October.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Can you give me a total number then instead of splitting out between the two, as a rough number that will call up and roll off, just to make life easy for us all?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Well, given that we've got June, July, August, September, we have 5 months to go before the sweep to the ATO at the end of October. And based on -- I mean, the first intensive mail out occurred in around middle of April. And different funds are doing further mail outs to say to members, if you want to retain your account, you've got to opt in. So there's been further heavy mailing activity scheduled right up to October. I can't say, but certainly based on, say, our volumes in the month of May, then assume this cost element is going to carry through till October. So -- but I can't give you a number because we watch that, as you'd expect, very closely. But in my experience, in the superannuation industry, for a so-called disengaged set of members, they're all at a sudden starting to get quite engaged. And so if we -- if that was to -- and we've got the Investor Day in London on June 18, what we'll endeavor to do is watch closely how our volumes are tracking in June and we may be out to have something more to say on that at that session.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Okay. And just on that, I guess, what will you if you -- if given guidance today, what will swing you into the kind of the top or the bottom end of the guidance range, essentially?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

Well, it'll depend on the level of activity that we see in that part of the business and also what we see in terms of the Brexit impacts. I mean the bottom end of the range, obviously, is hopefully worst-case scenario, in terms of what we see continuing through there. So that's -- they are the other 2 factors.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Okay. And just so one more while I've got you, the additional costs, a lot of by mention will get offset by revenue, don't you have costs or if you've increased contact that you get paid back in revenue?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. I mean there is some ability to charge for that. But we are also seeing things like the expectations we had around annual leave, around vacancies, around over time, all those sort of things have been impacted by that activity level that John said. So not all of that is rechargeable back to the clients. The direct cost, obviously, of the program clearly are. And that will flow through both this year and next year.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Brendan Carrig from Macquarie.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

Just on the synergy side of things, so you've obviously reaffirmed the synergies. Maybe I'm being a bit cynical here, but if you're expecting the synergy run rates to stay the same, which is going to be about $15 million in the next sort of month or so to be realized and then that will roll through next half, how can we be really sure that they're actually being achieved versus cost being elevated in the remainder of the business?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

So -- I mean, the Superpartners synergy program is a 5-year program that we're coming to the end of, right? So that is something that we track on a monthly basis. Some of the costs that we're talking about here are very much sort of one-off in reaction to the activity levels that we're seeing as a result of the PYS legislation. So we track the two separately. And certainly that 5-year program as Superpartners synergies is tracking to our expectations and what we previously advised.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Also, Brendan, I take the view around the time of the legislation moving through the parliament to give effect to these changes, when there were a lot of people in the industry saying that the industry could not handle this amount of change in such a short time period, there were elements of what was finally agreed, much of which was under the cover of darkness in camera that probably would have benefited from a bit more thought, that's not the case. We took the view, let's rip the Band-Aid out. Let's get those duplicate accounts out of the system and then we can all move forward. And the encouraging thing I think for our client base is, the large funds are growing at a pretty good rate, and there are no signs of that member growth is abating in spite of the fact that Royal Commission is behind us, except, I should add, behind us except that the government will be making a response to the Royal Commission recommendations. We expect that, that's going to push more accounts back into the industry fund sector.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

Okay. And then just a follow up on ERF just around the impact of the bringing forward of the $50 million or unmitigated $50-or-so million that you're expecting. So just a concern, there's no change to that $50 million that could be still as mitigating factors and that is purely in your opinion a timing difference from a revenue and that's just hitting this sort of a final quarter of the '19 calendar year?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. That's right, and as we have indicated, some of the funds moving to transfer members, those inactive members to an ERF earlier obviously has an impact on us from a revenue perspective because what we charge is significantly less than obviously what we charge a normal accum number.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

What's the rough -- can you give a rough idea of the percentage that you've seen? I mean obviously, to come up with that $50 million, you had a number of low balance accounts in aggregate that you were expecting to be swept out. Is it -- what proportion of that have we already seen?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Well, in fact, the first move into eligible rollover funds, the actions to give effect to that were April but the actual move into the ERFs will happen in the month of May. And there's typically a lag because the fund would write to those people saying, would bear intention at a certain date to move your account into, in this case, [ Oz ] Fund. And you if you don't want that happen, then call this number or fill in this form. And so it's usually given -- it's usually at least 2 to 3 weeks' notice given. So these things will happen progressively. There are some funds doing another mail out in June. So this is sort of becoming fairly progressive and we will write up until October. So come the end of October, based on the records as of June 30, those that less than $6,000, no contribution for 16 months, they haven't given some signal they want to stay with IR. And if they, for those that are being flagged, if they don't do anything, they will lose insurance on July 1, they will get swept up into the ATO in October. There's so many moving pieces here that it really is, as I say until the end of October, frankly, we won't know, but we're sticking to that $50 million.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

But it's just -- it sounds -- from that response it just sounds like there hasn't necessarily been that many that have already been swept away and so therefore that $50 million revenue impact isn't really hitting anything that you're calling it out in FY '19 impact. Am I missing...

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

There a couple of funds who went fairly hard in April and again in June. So you could -- you're talking potentially 500,000 to 700,000 members that would move before June 30. And with the first of those moves to take effect from mid-May.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question is from Kieren Chidgey from Link.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Kieren, I thought you were in another shop?

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

From -- yes, Kieren Chidgey from UBS, obviously.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

I wasn't aware you were on our payroll.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

The -- maybe just I'll start with a follow up to the previous question and then I've a couple of others. You said 5 -- just to clarify, you said around 500,000 to 700,000 members could actually -- could potentially shift before the 30th of June. Is that what you said in response to the previous question?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

That's what I said. But none of those is before the end of April. So that will be progressively through May. And different funds you've got different time lines in their correspondence to members. And then further through. So the impact will be in our May numbers and our June numbers. It will be, they might move in the mid-months, for example.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

Yes. To put that in context first, John, so around the $50 million unmitigated revenue number you've been talking, what would be broadly the overall member shift? How many members in total were you expecting to lose?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

We didn't provide the member numbers, Kieren, because there's very different characteristics of ERF members as opposed to normal accum members. So we've always felt that it was going to be misleading to talk about total member numbers because the revenue per member is very different between those 2 categories. So -- and...

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Also, Kieran, the -- I think you'd probably find that one of the consequences of these new rules is that the concept of an eligible rollover fund probably by June 30 next year, the ERF and the whole series of them around the system that they would disappear from view because the -- how many duplicate accounts are going to be taken out in the aggregate, I don't know. The estimates seem to range between 3 million and 4 million. But there are -- it's not just [ ERF ] fund but there are other eligible rollover funds, one affiliated with the AMP, one with Colonial and now that they will all -- all those members will be swept into the ATO in the [ fullness of ] time. So the ERF sector would disappear and then it's really a question of the non-ERFs what the number is.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

The 500,000 to 700,000 you're talking, they're non-ERF accounts?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

No. They're members that are moving from accum into the ERFs. And remembering that the revenue that we charge for those is significantly less than the normal accum fund, so hence the impact on us earlier.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

Yes. And so I mean, maybe to ask the question in another way, if you don't want to give us breakdown of $50 million between ERF non-ERF, given the 500,000 to 700,000 are currently non-ERFs transitioning to ERFs ahead of that consolidation, how many non-ERF accounts? What proportion of the total money accounts you expect to lose? Between 500,00 to 700,000...

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Well, Kieran, you can't actually look at that way at this point in time. The response rate to the mail outs has staggered all of us, which suggests that people even with lower balances are a bit more engaged with this than we all thought. And some of them are opting in to stay in the accounts, some of them are wanting to keep their insurance come July 1. So until we see more of those trends, I think it's a little bit early to say. But the one thing for sure, Kieran, I would think that by June 30 of 2020, our client base will be predominantly active members who -- and then where the ERF component will pretty much disappear. So come June 30 of 2020 then our clients will have members who are -- claims of all the duplicate accounts, and I think from that point of view, we continue to be encouraged by the strong growth rates of our core clients.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

All right. I mean with funds administration, just broadly from a strategic point of view, with the budget impacts rolling through, looks like near the down margins as you move into next year, will be back in the claims. John, back to where we kind of started a number of years ago, so when you think about the business and what sort of margin it should be achieving over the medium term, what can you do? Is there repassing ability that sort of is trying out as industry funds will protect pricing that can take more of or is there further cost out you believe you need to take out of this business to retain it to a reasonable level of profitability?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

I think Kieran, clearly, with '19, '20, then the EBITDA margin will fall. And then the question is thereafter all of those factors you mentioned. But the other thing to observe here to is that the members being sweep in the ATO also have a big impact on our competitors, on in-house administered funds who have to absorb that revenue loss against our fixed cost space. So we actually think our competitive position in the market is actually enhanced through these actions, even though in the short term our EBITDA margin will go backwards.

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

We certainly see that there's some tailwinds for the business over the medium term. As John said, there's strong member growth, we're seeing that continues. We think that there will be more fund consolidation that happens in the aftermarket of the Royal Commission. We're starting to see some evidence of that already. And as John said, we will also continue to look for -- for cost out opportunities, and we do see additional cost out opportunities over and above the Superpartners synergies that we've talked about previously.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

Okay. And maybe just moving to LAS, it hasn't received a lot of airtime despite being 60% of what you're talking about this period. John, just going back to your earlier comments, it sounds like banking -- I heard that business is going okay, Fund Solutions holding up. CPCS I don't think you commented on but presumably that's a more stable business.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

It would probably be -- what I'd say is that the 2 sectors that probably absorb the large share of that 60% offset were LMS and CPC and they are the 2 sectors that probably have been, if you think about what those businesses do, Brexit uncertainty has certainly. In many cases actually, there's committed business, but the trigger is not being pulled until there's some finality around Brexit.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

Okay. I mean it's fairly important differentiation to make how much of the particular CPCS value given you sold that business. Can you give us a broad breakdown, we think the [ 60 ] as to where the impact sits across those 2 divisions?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

No. As you know, one of the purposes of our Investor Day in London is to give a broader explanation of the 3 parts of LAS that we'll be continuing with. I think that might help broader level of understanding. You remember, Kieran, we said partly on the suggestions of our investors that we would keep LAS as a reporting unit for 2 years. It's almost 2 years since we signed the SPA to buy that business, so we're basically going to want to pick the 3 units that we will retain. And assuming that the CPCS business will be sold, we've now received the 3 of jurisdiction's approvals, so there's one more to go. So we'd expect that, that would settle in the next 2 to 3 months. And then we'll give you some flavor more to the 3 operating businesses that we'll go forward with.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Nigel from Citigroup.

[Nigel Pittaway]

A couple of questions, first of all, just focusing on the costs in Australia, I mean, in February you are pretty confident that they would come down sometime during the second half. So precisely what is it that sort of changed that? Is it the sort of legislation going through with a sort of the earlier timetable than you original thought or what changed that so suddenly from that expectation in February that cost would be coming down?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

Certainly, the legislation going through and then obviously the mail outs that have happened, members have created a significant increase in volumes. As John was saying, it was same throughout our call centers that we frankly didn't expect. These were typically thought to be disengaged members they've actually turned out to be more engaged than what we expected. So that's had an impact on the call center volumes and, yes, the consequent impacts on things like over time and leave and all those sort of things, vacancy levels. And then the second piece is, as we've, said the remediation that the client migration activity that we did expect to complete by the end of June hasn't completed as quickly as we'd hoped, and that will go into next year. So there's been elevated levels of costs as a result of that as well.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

And also, Nigel, worth mentioning, when we did speak about our half year results, it wasn't even apparent then this legislation would go back into the House and then through the Senate. So as Andrew said, these costs we're currently experiencing weren't even really in our thinking. I mean certainly, we formed the view at Christmas time that the legislation wasn't going to pass and it sort of came back here, and there was ducks and drakes as to whether it would get passed, but in the event it did. And the other point I would make and I made it earlier was, migrating large amounts of data in the superannuation space, particularly the more complicated product range is extremely, extremely difficult. And I think there have been a few cases recently where others have found how damn hard it is. I would say we're the best at it. But we want to make sure that fund coming into it fold has a good experience and therefore if we're doing it spend more dollars to bid the migration down, we're prepared to do it.

[Nigel Pittaway]

Okay. Just given a lot of the sort of disappointment in Australia with these cost overruns, how is that T&I basically is in line with expectations? Wouldn't sort of additional cost sort of flow into that division as well?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

No. So I mean the T&I division did bear those cost in the first half, but there's an apportionment of those costs into the Fund Administration business because there needed to be a sharing of those costs between the 2 businesses. So that's why you're seeing that impacting through Fund Admin in the second half.

[Nigel Pittaway]

Okay. And then sort of obviously, I mean you have touched on this, but the offset in terms of sort of nonrecurring revenue for some of this activity, I mean, we're seeing presumably that the migrations can't get offset. Previously always sort of additional activity and has been seen as a positive, so what is it that's sort of really making the revenue offset not as strong in this instance?

[Andrew MacLachlan, Chief Financial Officer]

So there is a direct revenue offset in terms of the incremental resources that we've had to bring onboard to actually make actually all of the changes to our systems. So that is obviously chargeable -- fully chargeable sort of pay-for-service work, all of the activity around getting our -- ample of our systems and processes ready to deal with the legislation as it comes into effect. But some of the indirect impacts around the increased volumes into call centers, the increased over time, the inability to take leave, running much lower levels of vacancies, all of those sort of things, they're not all directly chargeable. So that's been some of the impact. And as you said, obviously, the remediation cost associated with those client migrations are not chargeable.

[Nigel Pittaway]

Okay. And then just looking at big market services in the U.K., I mean, obviously, you say you that you've won a number of IPO mandates that have been subsequently postponed due to Brexit. A lot of your sort of competitors in that market have also talked about a fair amount of fallout from the Capita acquisition in that division. I mean would it be fair to just think of that as an additional contributing factor?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

So I think, Nigel, it's fair to say that historically the Capita client base was sort of more of the smaller end. So lion share of the AIM listings are probably underrepresented in the FTSE 100. We have lost some clients in that space that went through the processes around sort of the second 6 months of last year. We have made a change at chief executive level in that business. Susan Ring, a very seasoned and experienced professional, has come in to run that unit. We're seeing signs of stabilization. And also the LMS business in Australia is quite an integrated business involving Orient Capital, Corporate Markets, company secretarial and employee share plans. We want to get the U.K. business a lot more integrated along those lines. So that's in the process of happening. We don't enjoy losing clients, but we also know and we had that bidding Fund Admin that we've done a lot to remediate and to deal with concerns of our clients, and we think all of that process now has been brought to an end. We have in Fund Admin, you combine their IT operation with technology, with our technology and operations pieces, we're getting good feedback now about our capacity to better support our clients in that technological journey. And the London, the LMS in U.K. is a bit the same story.

[Nigel Pittaway]

Okay. Mainly just to finish off on the big picture question, I mean, people often think of Link as being a steady business, your earnings have been relatively predictable. I mean obviously, there have been a few issues over the past few months that made that pretty difficult. I mean do you view that as sort of this a -- this as sort of a one-off feature or do you think that the given the nature of the industry and the difficulty with these migrations, et cetera, actually the earnings of your business have become less predictable?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

No. I think Nigel, we've still got a high level of annuity income streams resulting from our client relationships. And I see, if you look at Brexit, you look at the regulatory change here, I just see this as swirling winds where it's going to pass. So -- and I look at them more as one-off. So I think one of the disciplines we try to bring to bear and that was having being privately owned for a long time before we went public was trying to invest in areas and in geographies where the businesses are sustainable and where once we invest, we want to continue to reinvest. And one of our lessons is 3% to 5% of revenues invested in ongoing CapEx, and we've been at the top end of that and probably we make no apology for that. And I think all our lessons, looking at sustainable business, if you don't continue to reinvest, that's when you're going to meet some problems.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Brendan Carrig from Macquarie.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

Just a quick follow up. You obviously touched on the REST contracts, I'm not going to go into the details of that, but can you make any comments just about the Superpartners contracts that are sort of approaching renegotiation period as you sit here today?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Brendan, just on that, I think, the new CEO of REST has been reassembling her senior team. A lot of those appointments have been made literally in the last month and some are still coming. So I suspect that by July, August, that new team will be together. The quality of the debate negotiations is high. There's a high level of engagement and probably suffice to say that as some senior people come in, they all wanted to have their little say on how the contract gets restructured, but all going according to plan. And as far as the other point, the other contracts, you might recall, basically the contracts with the former Superpartners owners were 5-year contracts, running from the time they migrated onto our systems. The exception was Aussie Super, which was 5 years from stepping, so December. So that 5-year for Aussie ends in December this year. Then we've got later next year MTAA in October, HESTA in December, Host and Cbus around March, April or April, May of 2021. So 2 years from now, we've got HESTA and Cbus and -- sorry, Cbus and Host-Plus, and in more like 18 months, we've got HESTA and MTAA and with Aussie coming.

[Brendan Carrig, Research Analyst]

These negotiations or discussions have opened with Aussie yet or they -- you're going -- you're waiting till the end of the year?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Look, we've had, I'd say, good conversations with all of the funds, with Aussie expiring the end of this year, I think you probably say that there's been good, healthy conversations, and I think with a strong intent from both parties to bring about an extension sooner rather than later.

[Operator]

Next question is from Kieren Chidgey.

[Kieren Chidgey, Executive Director & Research Analyst]

My question has been just asked and answered.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Ed Henning.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

John, just before you mentioned about obviously a lot more contact in the contact centers and disengaged members that you've thought were disengaged actually contacting, does that mean that you're seeing more members reactivate from the funds?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

In fact, some of the queries have been in relation to the members that are not entirely sure what they're meant to do and what the implications are. And this has been particularly the case in relation to insurance. And so often that first conversation can be followed by second or third or fourth prior to the point at which the member will know they're going to lose their insurance if they are in the inactive bucket, which is going to be swept to the ATO. But there's 2 ways of looking at this, I mean one way is that the assumption that smallholders are not engaged has proven not to be true. But it can involve 3 or 4 calls. But I would say, the quality of our conversation with our clients who see an opportunity to engage with their members as being positive -- has been positive as well. What Andrew signaled was, we can't really say at this point what the offsets are going to be, other than all of their clients have expressed great support for our teams. And I have not seen, since we've been in the space for almost 13 years, our operations under so much pressure because of the collective impact on email trails and telephone calls.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

So just on that, if people are looking at their insurance and people are going off, I've got a low balance, but want to keep my insurance, do you anticipate a proportion of the members to reactivate?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Yes.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

And higher than you did originally?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

We probably -- frankly, we probably assume $0 million.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Okay. And so you assume $0 million and the $50 million, therefore hopefully some reactivate, so hopefully the number from your experience will be below the $50 million by the end of the period?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Yes. It's too early to tell though to be. I mean to put...

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

To numbers on it, but intuitively.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

There's certainly been a high level of engagement than when we anticipated, and that potentially has a positive outcome.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Okay. That's great. And just a second, back on the contracts of all the former Superpartners, with all the budgetary changes going through and the changes in members, will this potentially fast track some of the contract renegotiations. So you go through, we've got a change in members, you can redo the contract earlier?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Not -- look, not necessarily. I think they're 2 separate issues. I think all of our clients are really wanting to batten down, get through this period to October. And then our clients are generally saying to us, why would you ever -- why would you actually want to change the administrative through this particular period because all that's going to do is distract you from the main game, which is investment performance, good quality administration. So that's a message we're getting from our clients.

[Edmund Anthony Biddulph Henning, Research Analyst]

Yes. But I didn't mean change in administrative, but I mean, look, there might be a change in members. You've got to ratchet up, ratchet down calls, why not just to agree to terms for the next 5 years?

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Well, I think I would say -- here's what I said about the impact on our operations. And I'll say there's a similar impact on our client's operations, too. So this is generating a lot of attention, and I think we all collectively drew bread against a very tight time frame and we will certainly one that took the view, there were others in the industry who wanted to fight back and push this things down the road, we said, no, let's do it, let's actually pull the Band-Aid off. So end of October, we've got a client base with a membership base that is thankfully growing. We think we'll continue to grow and from that growth we can then look at heading back up the EBITDA margin restoration that I think Kieran spoke about.

[Operator]

There are no more further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back to speakers for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[John M. McMurtrie, MD & Executive Director]

Thank you all for your time. And some of you I know we'll see you in London on June 18. Thanks very much. Have a good day.