PEXA chief executive Glenn King to retire

PEXA chief executive Glenn King will retire by the end of the financial year.

The announcement comes as the company admitted having concerns about meeting targets in major growth divisions.

The ELNO provider that covers 89 per cent of Australian property transactions did report a 21 per cent increase in statutory revenue, up to $340 million for the year, and a 16 per cent rise in operating earnings.

It also reported an 11 per cent rise in revenue to $292 million for the year, and an operating EBITDA margin of 54.5 per cent.

The group is $18 million in the red, but this is a $3.8 million improvement on the prior year.

Unlike PEXA’s Australian business which had operating EBITDA up 13 per cent at $159.1 million, the international division recorded an operational EBITDA loss of $37.2 million.

PEXA attributed this to investments in the PEXAGo platform, business integration activities, lower revenues from Optima Legal, and the impact of acquiring Smoove.

Mr King, who joined PEXA in 2019 and led it through IPO in 2021, will stay on until a new MD & CEO is appointed.

PEXA Group Chair Mark Joiner said: “Mr King has transformed the PEXA Group over the past five years, with a singular purpose and a successful strategy to deliver solid outcomes for our customers and set up the Company to deliver its future growth ambitions.”

Regarding its expansion plans for the UK, the PEXA report noted results as “below trend” because of “external factors beyond PEXA’s control.” The timing of reaching its market share aspirations was “inherently uncertain,” the report added.

“Our international expansion, starting with the UK, continues. Development of the PEXAGo platform, which is designed to be used across jurisdictions, proceeded to schedule,” Mr King said.

“NatWest and another bank have verbally committed to using the platform, and we are working with them on their onboarding programs.

“Whilst we have completed the underlying integration of PEXA’s platform with Optima Legal’s processes, we did not transition Optima Legal’s flows onto the platform as we expected.

“However we have received requests from two large and four smaller banks to test PEXAGo’s payment capabilities through the Bank of England.”

He admitted that Optima Legal had a challenging year due to subdued remortgage market activity.

For the year ahead, PEXA plans to maintain its focus on customer service, and expand into Tasmania and grow in the Northern Territory, as well as building further integrations into the property market. 

Internationally, it will “cautiously explore opportunities in other international markets, including Canada and New Zealand.”