COMPUTERSHARE NEWS

7 Mar, 2000

Results For Six Months Ended 31 Dec 1999

Main Features

Half year revenue up 15.1% to $174.1 million from $151.3 million

EBITDA up 40.5% to $34.3 million from $24.4 million

Profit before tax up 100% to $21.1 million from $10.6 million

Net profit up 93% to $10.4 million from $5.4 million

(comparisons are to the six-month period ended 31 Dec 1998)

Further comment: Darryl Corney Chief Financial Officer

Computershare Limited: 61 3 9235 5500

Computershare web site: http://www.computershare.com

The group has recorded an operating profit before tax of $21.1m for the six months ended 31 December 1999 (equivalent six months in 1998: $10.6m). The result for the current six months was achieved on revenue of $174.1m (1998: $151.3m).

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased by 40.5% to $34.3m (1998: $24.4m). A comparison to the equivalent period last year demonstrates the strong performance of Computershare in the past 6 months and the contribution of core business acquisitions made over the last 12 months.

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COMPUTERSHARE NEWS

Results For The 6 Months Ended

31 Dec 1999 31 Dec 1998

$millions $millions

Revenue $Millions 174.17 151.35

EBITDA 34.33 24.45

Profit before tax 21.08 10.58

Net profit attributable to members of the parent 10.37 5.38

Dividend per share (cents) (1998 comparative has been restated to 0.50 0.50 reflect the 4 for 1 share split)

EPS (cents) (1998 comparative has been restated to reflect the 4 for 1 2.20 1.20 share split)

Review Of Operations

Mr. Chris Morris, Managing Director, said that the results were according to plan and he is confident of the group achieving a profit result for the full year at least 75% higher than for the full year ended 30 Jun 1999. Mr Morris noted that the six months to December had been a period of considerable activity for the group with the following significant events taking place during the period:

› Purchase of The Pavilions building in Bristol UK and the consolidation of several UK sites into one central complex.

› Completion of the systems conversion in UK in September. All UK registry operations, including the operation of Sharesave schemes, are now being run on the SCRIP system.

› Successful handling of the demutulisation of Old Mutual by our South African operations and the privatisation of Telecom Eirann ( now Eircom) by our Dublin office.

› The expansion of technology developments efforts and the formation of Computershare Technology Services.

› Acquisition of a 50% interest in 's leading share registry business, Central Registration Hong Kong Limited.

COMPUTERSHARE NEWS

› acquiring a 15% interest in Computershare Limited.

› Acquisition of a controlling interest in the Ci Group. Ci is a major service provider to Computershare registry and is a leading provider of electronic documents to the Australian, and UK markets with services ranging from laser printing, intelligent mailing, scanning, communication design and electronic delivery.

Registry

The global registry business continues to perform well. Improved profit contributions were made by the , New Zealand, South African and Irish operations. In particular and Ireland contributed strongly to the consolidated pre tax result following on from major demutualisations and privatisations handled by these businesses. The UK registry operations provided considerable infrastructure support to South Africa and Ireland during the period.

The UK registry operations results for the six months factored in much of the final phase of restructuring of the UK business. In particular the consolidation of the various UK properties into The Pavilions building, the ongoing process to increase efficiency, the conversion to SCRIP and management of Sharesave schemes and the need to run parallel registry systems for part of the period all impacted profitability of the business.

Computershare Technology Services Pty Ltd

Systems results both in the UK and Australia reflect the commitment to development work in order to be at the forefront of the registry and exchange software industry. Both businesses recorded pre tax losses during the period. The respective results were UK $0.7m and Australia $3.8m

Effective 1 Jan 2000, the information technology resources of the Computershare group have been brought together to form Computershare Technology Services Pty Ltd (CTS). CTS expands upon the activities previously undertaken by Computershare Systems with the core registry development team from Computershare Limited. The bringing together of approximately 250 people under a single focused leadership structure headed by Penny Maclagan represents a significant milestone in the process of maximising the technology development efforts for the group across the globe.

In total, approximately $20.0m per annum of labour costs will now be invested in the support and development of new registry business and financial markets software products with CTS as the information technology research and development arm of the Computershare group. Computershare expenses all research and development expenditure as incurred.

The results for the 6 months to 31 Dec 1999 reflect to a significant degree the group's strategy of focusing most of their efforts on system development for existing core operations and a limited the amount of new external work sought.

During the last few months considerable development effort has been directed at projects to maximise the use of the Internet for Computershare products and services to improve efficiency of core registry operations.

Examples of these development projects are:

COMPUTERSHARE NEWS

› Internet developments including the web front ends for SCRIP, ORMS and ASTS. The web front end for SCRIP (known as Issuer Online) provides Company Secretaries and Investor Relations staff with up to the minute information on their company's share register status.

› Automated workflow for share registry operations. A pilot site is in operation in UK. This project aims to radically reduce the amount of paper and manual processes in day to day registry

› SMARTS Analytics will offer a market analysis product that provides traders with all the necessary tools to establish benchmarks of security behavior, create alert rules and represent data graphically in order to take advantage of profit making opportunities in real-time.

› COSMOS - Work continues on the next generation of Computershare's share registry system, COSMOS, with the application designed to simplify many of the mundane and onerous tasks inherent in share registry operations. The system will run on an NT based three tier client server architecture design and will include full Windows-based functionality, providing the user with all of the benefits a GUI front end can deliver.

Interim Dividend

While the group continues its global registry expansion strategy, the Board considers that increased shareholder value can be best created by reinvestment of cashflows into the business. Therefore it has been decided to maintain the dividend rate at cent per share fully franked (same rate as previous dividends on a post split basis). The record date for shareholders entitled to the dividend is 21 Mar 2000 with a payment date of 28 Mar 2000.

Recent Developments

Since 31 Dec 1999 the expansion of the global share registry business has continued with the first stage of the group's entry into the North American market. The acquisition of the transfer agents businesses of Harris Bank and Bank of Montreal is an excellent first step in the group's strategy to establish a major transfer agency presence in North America. The Harris and Bank of Montreal client list includes household names such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Motorola, Kellogg and Canadian Pacific. Feedback from these clients has already been positive on the benefits of Computershare's SCRIP system, which offers significant advantages over the existing systems due to its ability to integrate share register and employee share and option plans within the one system.

Demutualisation Of Bradford And Bingley Building Society

Computershare Services UK have recently been appointed the Receiving Agent and Registrar for the demutualisation of the Bradford and Bingley Building Society. It is anticipated that there will be in excess of 2.0 million shareholders upon demutualisation.

The appointment was a result of winning an open tender against Computershare's major competitors. Computershare's demutualisation experience, systems capabilities and quality service were all important factors in the tender process.

Notes

COMPUTERSHARE NEWS

Computershare

› Computershare is incorporated in Australia and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (symbol: CPU) with a market capitalisation of approximately A$3.7 billion.

› Computershare's origin was as a technology company servicing the share registration market, and it has seen rapid expansion in recent years into the provision of service registration in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, South Africa and Hong Kong.

› Leading registry clients in the Australia include AMP, Colonial, Coles Myer, NAB and BHP.

› Leading registry clients in the UK include Halifax, HSBC, British Airways, Marconi, Vodafone and PowerGen.

› Announced in January, Computershare entered the US and Canadian market by the acquisition of the transfer agency businesses of Harris Bank and its parent, Bank of Montreal. These businesses will be called Computershare Investor Services.

› Computershare's other main line of business is the development and licensing of systems for the securities industry including systems for stock exchanges, regulators, brokers and investment managers.

› Refer to the Computershare website - http://www.computershare.com - for more information on Computershare.