Discl: NWL Held IRL, HUB Not Held

CONTEXT

One of my to-do’s for NWL coming out of the reporting season was to do a quick high-level comparison with HUB24, NWL’s closest competitor. The objective of this exercise was to get a sense of where NWL was relative to HUB and confirm that staying invested in NWL continues to make sense.

Have kept the comparison at a superficial high-level based on info obtained from the ASX website + the FY reports from FY22 to FY25. While both are in the exact same FinTech Investment Platform space, they have different products, different metrics etc such that any attempt to compare at any lower level of detail than this is probably not going to provide any more insights.

Haven’t done a comparison like this before. Would really appreciate any feedback if the conclusions below are flawed ...

SUMMARY

• At roughly the same Funds Under Administration market share as at Mar 2025, it feels like NWL is significantly more efficient/productive/profitable than HUB
• HUB’s revenue is significantly higher than NWL and the gap appears to be widening
• BUT on Statutory NPAT and EBITDA (these being the 2 “directly comparable” profitability metrics), FCF Yield and Dividend Yield, NWL is clearly ahead of HUB, despite having much lower revenue
• So while NWL and HUB are running neck-to-neck in terms of current market share (HUB might be slightly ahead, I suspect) and running hard to increase market share, it does feel like HUB is some ways behind NWL in terms of generating shareholder returns

Based on this simplistic view, it gives me good confidence that staying invested in NWL is absolutely the right thing to do.

The sharp PE difference HUB PE = 108x, NWL PE = 64x, is what throws me out a bit. Given the above, I expected the HUB PE to be lower, not sharply higher than NWL, which perhaps could be a sign that the market is more confident of HUB emerging as the eventual top dog? Not sure if I am interpreting this correctly. 

CHARTS

Discl: Held IRL

Nice 1QFY2026 update from NWL today. 

• Positive momentum across all products & services sums up the quarter. 
• First Guardian update is cautious - FY26 guidance now includes a caveat against unexpected First Guardian costs

The commentary in the update is littered with the usual “record-this-and-that” which I find quite confusing as it is mostly against the prior corresponding period 1QFY2025. As NWL expects to grow each quarter, referencing and gloating about the pcp comparison seems quite pointless other than to generate the buoyant headlines. While there is some seasonality, I prefer to focus on the underlying QoQ trend instead.

• Total Funds Under Administration hit $120.8b, increasing $8.0b QoQ, an above trend increase, building on momentum in the previous quarter - up 7.1% QoQ
• The Quarterly Increase in new accounts of 5,146, up 3.2% QoQ, reverted to trend following the sharp spike in the June 2025 Quarter - the accounts growth is now in short-term acceleration mode - very nice
• Total Funds Under Management was $29.5b, up 0.2% QoQ, driven by growth in (1) Managed Accounts, up 32.6% on pcp to $25.7b (2) Managed Funds, up 23.0% on pcp to $3.8b

FUNDS UNDER ADMINISTRATION

• Continued on-trend increase in Total FUA Net Flows of $4.0b, slight exceeding 1QFY25 and improving on 4QFY25
• Continuing to benefit from ongoing transitions from existing financial intermediaries as well as new accounts from new intermediaries
• Non-Custodial FUA hit $1.0b for the very first time - a pricing increase kicked in on 1 Oct 2025

FUNDS UNDER MANAGEMENT

Sharp uptick in FUM Net Flows of $1.8b, up 63.3% QoQ - a (noticeable!) record as it towers over previous quarters FUM Net Flows.

Just had a chance to review the NWL June 25 Trading Update released on 10 July.

SUMMARY

• A good business-as-usual update and positive commentary on FY26 - no immediate concerns
• Nice above trend QoQ growth on New Accounts - this sets it up nicely for FY26
• FUA and FUM both grew QoQ in line with the prevailing quarterly growth trajectory
• Should translate into a good full year FY25 result

Discl: Held IRL

Nice above-trend increase in Total Accounts and Quarterly Increase in accounts

Funds Under Administration

On-trend Q-on-Q increase in FUA Net inflows - management commentary that “FUA outflows were at slightly elevated levels due to partial withdrawals from larger accounts following increased market volatility. These outflows were primarily from non-fee paying FUA, and as such the financial impact was modest”.

Good positive FUA market movement.

Funds Under Management

FUM net flows of $1.1b for the quarter, 16% higher than pcp, moving back to the long-term FUM Net Flows trendline

FUM Growth was concentrated in Managed Account products - 34% higher than pcp, and accounting for 96% of all FUM net flows.

I am in the midst of (finally) taking stock of my NWL position. I blindly followed MF Pro’s direction to open the position back in 2018, understood the thesis, sort of understood what it was about, but never deep dived until now. It is now my 2nd largest IRL position at 10%+ and 2nd largest winner - living proof that the coffee can investment approach does work, particularly if the company was picked by the great MF Pro combo of Joe & Matt.

After deep diving the financials, I struggled to clearly understand the products. So I signed up for a product demo last week through the NWL website to better understand the Personal Investor products, as I did also want to explore what was available (and at what cost) vs my current eSuperfund SMSF setup. Here are my notes, of both the SMSF-related products, as well as my takeaways from a “better understand NWL” perspective. A lot of the points should be intuitive, but having the conversation and the ability to ask questions made a huge difference to the understanding.

What I understood, the chart of the key NWL platform metrics at the end of this post and what I thought was an excellent article by A Rich Life’s Patrick Poke sums up why the MF Pro pick of NWL was an outstanding one and why I should absolutely stay invested with a high portfolio allocation.

OVERVIEW OF THE PERSONAL INVESTOR PRODUCTS

THE SALES ENGAGEMENT PROCESS

• The Sales Team response’s to website enquiries - appears to be within 3 business days, which is comforting
• The Sales rep spent 45 mins talking me through the products, pricing and despite my hesitation in product suitability, continued to offer a demo - this desire to take me through the product was good - if I was not clear on what I am after, the demo would have got me

FINANCIAL ADVISOR FOCUS

• 96-97% of NWL customers operate through Financial Advisors
• Each financial advisor has its own “platform” within the NWL platform:
• Tailored functionality
• Tailored screens, reports
• Each client of the advisor has their own login to the Advisors “platform”

FEE/COST STRUCTURE

The explanation of the cost structure and the mechanism in which it is calculated (daily snapshot, averaged then x days in month) helped bring to life how the Funds Under Administration Market Movement metric, what broadly makes up the various NWL revenue lines - Administration Fees, Ancillary Feels, Transaction Fees, Management Fees, and how both these numbers will rise and fall based on how the market moves.

It also provides clues as to where and why NWL still requires a reasonable labour force.

WHAT ATTRACTS NEW CLIENTS INTO NWL

The Sales Rep commented that what attracts new clients into NWL:

• Financial Advisors - once a Financial Advisor comes onboard, their clients come onboard as well
• Detailed real-time and EOFY investment reports from the platform is a key attraction for SMSF customers who focus on the investing side rather than SMSF Administration
• Clients who want access to a range of investment options that they self-manage, without the hassles of running the SMSF administration (Super Accelerator)

HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH ESUPERFUND

It will cost me at least 3x the eSuperfund annual fee to get:

• base Wealth Accelerator
• the “equivalent” SMSF compliance service that eSuperfund provides
• Significantly better investment information/data/performance/dashboards to manage the SMSF’s investment
• Cost will vary based on the daily balance of the Fund
• Cost will also rise further if the SMSF has off-platform or non-custodial assets

A non-starter if you are able/willing to invest time in managing the SMSF admin on a day-to-day basis.

NWL PLATFORM GROWTH SINCE FY2021

Discl: Held IRL

I have a totally embarassing question to ask help on. Can anyone point me to a writeup or diagram which succintly describes what exactly the NWL platform does/manages/provides??

I have poked around Google, the NWL site, went through the Annual Report, looked at the marketing videos, read some of the PDS' but I am still struggling to clearly understand the products and services that are offered on the NWL platform. While some of the content talks about the capability and scope of the product, there is a lot of sales-y speak overlayed and a lot of ghee whizz "IT platform/reporting/data benefits" but I am still struggling to clearly understand what each product actually does for a customer or an wealth advisor. The products I have understood thus far, which is half-coherent:

1. Self-Super: this is an end-to-end SMSF management/administration service akin to eSuperfund, which is my SMSF provider.
2. Super Accelerator: provides the capability to invest in various products - managed funds, term deposits, fixed term annuities - there is a Super Accelerator Plus which provides more investment options
3. Wealth Accelerator Multi-Asset Portfolio Service Guide - a single account which allows you to buy, hold and sell various investments
4. Managed Account: access to a range of professionally managed investment portfolio's, which I gather you can invest in from either Super Accelerator or Wealth Accelerator
5. Global Specialist Series Funds (GSS Funds) for NWL GSS Managed Models
6. I gather it has a Share Brokerage
7. NWL is also a Superannuation Fund in its own right, similar to Aust Super, HESTA etc

I am actually thinking of ringing NWL tomm and booking a demo and asking them to help me understand the platform.

For context, NWL has been a complete coffee-can investment for me. I bought the position based on the MFPro 1 recommendation back in 2018 and other than happily collecting dividends, have done absolutely nothing on NWL. That blind faith in old Joe and Matt was not misplaced, as by then, they were a proven winning team, and I had no doubt that they had done the detailed research to come up with a long-term winner.

NWL has now become my 2nd largest position (after the ALU sale, AD8 crash etc), returning 182%, proving that there absolutely IS merit in the coffee-can approach and that the less one tinkers with a position, the better the outcome.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Disc: Held IRL with total ignorance ...