Welcome everyone to Ten Lifestyle Group plc's webinar for its half year results that were announced yesterday. I'll hand over to Alex Cheatle, CEO, and Alan Donald, CFO, in a moment who will present the results. Then also we'll carry on a Q&A for results in which you can put forward any questions. Please either type them into the chat function or raise your hand. I'll come to everyone's questions. Without any further ado, I will hand over to Alex to start the presentation.
Great. Does that come up okay?
Yes.
Super. Well, hello everybody. Thank you very much for coming along today. We're day two of our investor roadshow, good to have you all on this call. Essentially, as an overview, we'll dive straight in. We're very pleased with the financial results and the operational results of the last six months. Revenue was up 49%. EBITDA, we did more in the first half of this year than we did in any previous year, previously. We also had our maiden positive profit before tax. That was a big step forward, and we're now touchingly close to cash generation, which we target for the current six-month period that we're in now. Particularly pleased to be able to report another period where we've had a 100% corporate client retention.
We've retained every corporate client that's worth more than GBP 250,000 a year with us. We've never yet, touch wood, lost a corporate client where we've launched our digital platform. The net corporate revenue retention rate means that if we had GBP 100 of revenue last financial year or the last comparative period, what revenue now do we get from those same clients? That's 144. That's 44% growth from existing clients. It shows a really solid business and good relationships with our corporate clients. Active members are up 43%. All of the success is partly down to our continued investment in tech and the better proposition that we're putting in front of our members.
You all know this, that our mission is to become the most trusted service platform working behind global brands. That remains the mission. It also, we are very much focused on four pillars. More of that later on, but travel, dining, entertainment, and retail, which includes experiences and events. All of those four pillars are supported by inspirational content, whether that's e-zines or emails that we send out, other articles, videos that our members see that inspire them about those four areas and how to get the best from our service in those four areas. Corporate client list, very strong. These are blue chip, market leading banks and wealth managers on the whole, as well as some credit card businesses as well. We have got no mid-tier U.S. banks.
City National Bank, which is like the Coutts of L.A., is actually owned by Royal Bank of Canada. We've got a really strong blue chip, very solvent client list, which we're very happy about. It still is dominated by financial services, whether that's premium credit card businesses, the top end of retail banking, like a kind of premier type offering, private banks, Coutts would be a good example here in the UK, or wealth managers like St. James's Place or Schroders, and some of the other, Nomura in Japan, for instance. They pay us to look after our members. That is 88% of our revenue. Why they pay us?
The more that our members use our service, the more attached they are, the more well retained they are by the bank, the more likely the bank is to get new customers, who are valuable to them joining the bank, and the more likely that they, the individuals, are to increase assets under management, spend on card, and all of the other things that make a customer more profitable. That is very much something that's happening in market, is corporate clients are paying us more because they're seeing return on investment that they get. It's a huge market opportunity. We're the established market leader in concierge. We've got this growth engine that we've talked about before at the heart of our business model. How are we doing overall?
We are still winning new contracts, we've got a stronger pipeline than ever, we've retained all material contracts. The growth engine, we'll touch on some of that later on, we're becoming more efficient, we're becoming better in terms of service quality, we're becoming more engaged with our members, we're getting more money from our corporate clients that we can then invest back into improving our proposition in tech and improving our profitability. There's something else in terms of market opportunity. Historically, we've said, you know, today we are the market leader in a relatively small market of lifestyle concierge, tomorrow, because we'll be the best place for high net worth to mass affluent to organize travel, tickets, dining, and retail, that will be a vast opportunity.
There's another way of thinking about the market that we're addressing, and that's the thing about the market for financial services loyalty. The market for financial services loyalty is between GBP 3 billion-GBP 4 billion globally. That's what's spent by financial services companies on loyalty. We are today a fraction of a fraction of that. We're 0.2% of spend on customer loyalty in the financial service sector. We wouldn't expect to win a huge chunk of that market. Because some of that is spent on the mass market, some of it's spent on products that we're not attached to, but a lot of the spend is for the mass affluent, the high net worth and the ultra-high net worth and people that have got money with wealth managers.
Today, we are only 0.2% of the total market. It's kind of interim way of thinking about the total addressable market for us. We put this up at the last time that we presented as well, but I think it's important to say that one reason why we're able to become more profitable at the moment is because, and quite quickly more profitable, is because we are doing more of the same. We're not having to invent new wheels, as it were. We've got a large member base. We're growing that member base, sure. Actually we could double our business and double it again just from our current membership base. We are clearly expecting to win new contracts as well. We don't need to develop our service outside of travel, dining, live entertainment, and premium retail.
We don't need to move, and we're not expecting to move into any other major categories. It's doing stuff that we already do better, and it's selling into financial services better is all that we need to do to double our business and double it again. We are also experimenting and testing the waters in various other markets too, but financial services is the banker, forgive the pun, for our market opportunity. Finally, now that we're profitable on a PBT basis, we are targeting cash generation, the ultimate measure of profitability in this current second half of the year, so the period from March the first through to the end of August.
As we then become more profitable, we can invest some of that back into having a stronger balance sheet, more cash on the balance sheet, and some of it will go back into growth and improving the business into that growth engine. It is worth having a look at the growth engine, which is on our website in the investors section, and we've updated that with the latest data for these results. It's a 7-minute video. I'm not gonna play it today because almost all of you have seen it, but it is on our website. Please, please do look at it if you haven't already, because it really brings alive how our model works in practice and how we've achieved the results we're reporting today, and indeed, the great results we reported in November as well.
Shareholders and prospective shareholders that have watched that have given us great feedback on it. Alan, over to you for the financial results.
Thank you, Alex. Just look at the financial highlights to start with. As Alex said, our net revenue grew by 49%, a little bit of help with currency as we grew by 39% in constant currency. Within our net revenue, our corporate revenue, what we get paid by corporates to look after their clients, was up 49% year-on-year. Our supplier revenue, mostly travel-related hotel commissions, was up 42%. That meant that our adjusted EBITDA of GBP 5 million was up GBP 4.1 million on the prior year. That meant that actually, we, as Alex said, we made a profit before tax of GBP 0.4, up GBP 3.2 on the prior year. We ended the period with cash and cash equivalents at GBP 7.2 million. Moving on to the income statement.
As I said, revenue grew by GBP 10 million. As activity came back, we did have to increase our costs. That was mostly recruiting more LMs to support the growth. Our operating expenses grew by GBP 6 million, 30%. That meant that our EBITDA margin for the half year came in at 16% against H1 2022 4.3%. A quadrupling of our margin over the period. We continue to invest in our digital capabilities, and I've got a slide later to talk through that, but that's why our amortisation increased to GBP 2.5 million in the half year. As I said, it was our first maiden PBT since IPO in November 2017.
This is our normal net revenue chart that we show that where the growth came from. As I said, a little bit of help with currency at GBP 2 million. As Alex said, our net corporate revenue retention rate of 144%, that drove our base corporate revenue up GBP 7 million year-on-year. We did win some new contracts in the period, quite small, but they will grow as we embed it into our business. As I said, supplier revenue has grown by up to GBP 1 million as global travel restrictions were lifted. The next slide looks at supplier revenue and how it has recovered. You can see the impact of COVID, where it went right down through the COVID period.
We've recovered strongly. We're now at GBP 3.4 million for the half year, up 40% on the previous half year. That equates to about 11% of our net revenue. There is some seasonality in our supplier revenue as travel was mostly in the second half of the year, so that will be strong in the second half. Also within the first half, a lot of the growth was through non-travel activities. The margin of 11% was slightly down 11.4% last year. We split that net revenue by region. You can see, our EMEA region returned to strong growth at 33%, again, driven by our base corporate growth I talked about and supplier revenue coming back. Our largest increase was in our Americas region.
That's up 102%, again, driven by base corporate and supplier revenue growth. If you remember, we had one large contract that we won just prior to COVID, but that's new, didn't really expand at all until post-COVID, and that's come back strongly, and that's helped the growth back in Americas. APAC is still with the continuing COVID restrictions, has sort of subdued the growth with 6% growth year-on-year. If you look at down by adjusted EBITDA by region, our EMEA region, which is our most mature region, EBITDA came back up to GBP 4 million and up GBP 2.2 million. The margin in that region is now 30%, but that's getting back to historic margin levels of between 30%-33% we make in the EMEA region.
Americas has moved into profit for the first time ever, with a profit of GBP 1 million up GBP 2.2 year-on-year. That just was the drag on the group's profit. Now we've gone into profitability, we will see that improve in the second half of this year. APAC, a slight loss in the period. We did have to invest in some resources, especially in Japan, just to uplift the service levels and activity, and that reduced profitability slightly. As I said earlier, we continue to invest in our technology investments, and this is the normal graph we show. This shows our total spend on technology, be it on capitalized but also on the infrastructure and comms. Why do we do that? It creates competitive advantage.
We believe we're the only one as a transactional platform that our direct competitors do not have. It also drives efficiencies with our Lifestyle Managers using TenMaid, which improves service levels, and that will ultimately drive revenues for us. Lastly, and more importantly, operating cash flow. We generated GBP 3.5 million in the half year through our PBT improving. We did have a lot of help in working capital because one large client was a bit of a late client receipts which we've now received. Then we add back on our normal non-cash items to get to our operating cash flow. As I said, still invested in our technology, and we capitalized GBP 3.7 million in the half year.
To support the growth in the business and our working capital, we did implement an invoice financing facility just to manage our working capital flows. Also we got additional loan notes at the start of the half year just to give us that extra buffer. That meant our net cash grew in the period GBP 6.6 million-GBP 7.2 million at the half year. That's all.
Thank you very much, Alan. Operational update. This we've already talked about. We've retained our corporate clients, we've won new ones, and we're growing around the world, and we've continued to invest in our tech. One thing I wanted to point out is that wealth managers and private banks who form a big chunk of our business, they typically have historically thought that they offer banking services, lending services, investment services, and estate planning. An increasing number of them are now offering through us lifestyle services as well as a way that they can engage, retain, and acquire customers. That's really where we come in. Now, different banks and financial services organizations, you execute our services or we execute our services differently depending on the value of the customer we're looking after.
Very roughly, we've got three types of customers. Very high-value customers, and these are high value to the bank, to their financial services company. A very high-value customer might have a load of investments or cash with the private bank, let's say, or the wealth manager. A medium value customer might just have a credit card that they're paying for and they put a bit of spend on that generates revenue, but it's way less profit per unit, per unit member. The high-value customers might be people that have got, you know, GBP 100,000 in the bank, maybe they've got a few products with the bank, and they've got the banking relationship. A medium value customer might be worth, you know, up to GBP 100 a year per eligible member.
High value, GBP 100-GBP 1,000. Very high value could be worth many thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, sometimes at the ultra-high net worth and even hundreds of thousands of pounds every year in profit to the organization. Clearly, that means they can afford to invest more for the very high-value customers. What happens then is they say, "Please use this concierge service, and you can use it by calling them up, or you can use it by using digital, and they will tell them about it a lot." We get high penetration, as in a high percentage of the eligible members use the service, but relatively low proportion are digital. Relatively low. Maybe 25% of use will be digital today for a client like that.
On the medium side, they're gonna market it less to that member group because they can't afford to have everybody using the service. To make it more cost-effective, we're going to say, "Here's a digital service, and there'll be a high touch backup," but it'll be very much positioned to the users as a digital-first service. Instead of 25% being digital mix, it might be 75% digital. That's how they think about that, and we execute differently depending on whether they're medium, high, or very high. We've got a video for you now that brings alive what we've already invested and what we are investing into our 4 propositions to improve those propositions through tech, actually working better in each of these 4 categories. I'll share that with you now. This is a 5-minute video.
Our proposition is made of four lifestyle pillars: dining, entertainment, travel and retail. All are strengthened by Ten's content, our technology platform and our expert lifestyle managers. Our platform offers priority access and benefits at a growing comprehensive selection of the world's best restaurants. We secure that access because we drive extra profitability for restaurants. One-click booking is becoming the default, pulled digitally from the restaurant's reserved inventory, giving us far better access than the restaurant's own site or OpenTable. A dining expert can seamlessly step in when that service is preferred by the member and corporate client. We make different recommendations to suit different members across fashionable places, hidden gems and new openings, at home and internationally. Our platform already does this in a semi-automated way that becomes far more efficient and scaled with AI. Ten will recommend and book millions of restaurant tables globally.
Our platform will be the best way for our members to access the entertainment they enjoy. That's because we collect data on their preferences, age, location, and past behavior. That data, combined with our members' buying power, optimizes profits for the events industry. We sell premium tickets at face value. We don't need to make inside commissions, and our members spend more on extras. Plus, our members have all been vetted by us or a bank, so we don't seed the secondary market. Our closed user group means our offers are not visible publicly, so we don't compete with sponsorship or create PR issues. All that makes Ten the industry's most preferred channel and allows us to secure ticket inventory even for sold-out shows. We already manage many sale or return allocations and will manage far more in the future. Covering most popular events.
In addition, we have allocations today for every event at several top venues, and we are rolling this out globally. Ten becomes the best way to organize entertainment, digitally booking millions of event tickets for our delighted members. Within our travel proposition, we already have a comprehensive hotel offering that is 15% cheaper than the Internet. As Ten scales, we are building direct contracts with a curated range of the world's hotels with even better pricing and value add benefits, including room upgrades and complimentary breakfasts. Unlike the incumbent travel industry, we don't rely on commissions, so we can focus on the best overall value, a mix of the best pricing and value adds depending on the member's preference. On flights, we will offer the best rates on all premium cabins and on a growing number of specific routes.
We already have deals with most leading airlines and all the leading car hire companies. They improve with scale. Luxury holidays create high cash margins for the travel industry. We will match the best high-touch service levels with far lower customer acquisition costs than traditional companies and benefiting from our high-spending membership. Simple hotels, car hire, and flights will mostly be booked online with travel experts available when appropriate. Unlike an OTA, we offer human experts because of our service fee model. Unlike a commission-dependent luxury travel provider, we offer convenient, well-priced online booking because we are not scared of undermining the higher sales conversion that comes with human contact. Retail is the fourth main pillar of the Ten proposition. Luxury and premium brands already offer our members special access, offers, events, and pricing.
Our platform matches ever more of our high-spending members to the brands they want to buy based on their profile and location. Extra scale means we can offer far more, providing additional personalized value and sometimes integrated into seamless Open Banking or card-linked offers. Brands love that we promote them to a targeted closed user group, invisible to the public. Our members love the relevant, best in-market offers and experiences that we serve them. Our proposition benefits from our beautifully written and filmed editorial. Over time, more of our members will travel after reading our destination guides. They will choose where to dine after watching our reviews, and they will look forward to each release of our inspirational ezines, increasingly personalized to each member. Our four pillar categories work together using data, expertise, content and tech to create joined-up experiences.
When we organize the members flights and hotels, our platform will also recommend and book their meals out, their shopping, and their personalized experiences. It's the ultimate lifestyle and travel management service.
Great. That was a video that we put together for investors, but also crucially, we're using it with our corporate partners around the world and our prospects around the world to explain what we've already got and what we're building this calendar year. Just as a reminder, this slide's very busy, but we've already built a platform that does extraordinary things. It's got a full online travel agency with all of those benefits already on there. We've got the opportunity for people to buy with installments. That's live in Latin America. With some banking programs, people can pay with their loyalty points as well as with cash. There's a lot of personalization, both based on your profile, but also on where you are physically, and so on.
We're very pleased with what we've built over the past few years. We're also building things. Some things we've already built this year. Some things we're in the middle of building, like an integration with Viator that gives us attractions you can book. Trips on the Eiffel Tower and on the London Eye and, you know, the equivalents around the world with benefits not available to the public. We're building entertainment, and we're massively increasing the number of restaurants available on the platform to be booked with inventory, both of tickets and restaurant tables that again, aren't available to the public. We're working now. We already were holding our chatbot capabilities, but clearly just over the last six months, AI has come on so quickly.
We're now working with the new AI and saying, how can that influence our chatbot capabilities? Also, how can we use AI to help make our lifestyle managers a lot more efficient? Very, very straightforward in many areas. In some other areas, really quite sophisticated. Developing and will continue to develop. Personalization, we've already talked about. I will move on from that. Just to say that on the environmental side of things and the kind of good social impact side of things as well, many of our corporate partners, Coutts is actually a great example here in the UK. They want us to also offer our members not just flights and restaurants, but to point out which options might be kinder to the planet and to facilitate the best in our members' instincts.
For instance, one of the things that we're asking our members whether they're interested in is philanthropy. When they are, we're putting them in touch with anything that might be useful around philanthropy. We're letting them know about restaurants that do locally sourced items or hotels that have got green credentials. Things like that are things that we're putting onto the platform. A minority, but an important minority of our members are really interested in that, and many of our corporate clients love it, so that gives us another opportunity for them to promote our service through to our members. Of course, the more members that use our service, the more that grows our revenues. There's a few things about our proposition. Over to Alan to recap on our business model.
Thanks, Alex. As Alex said, we do have the growth engine video. We'll skip that, please, it has been updated, so please have a look at it. Just to remind you, on the revenue model, as I say, you know, on a full year basis, 88% of our revenue comes from our corporate clients who pay us to look after their members, 12% of our revenue comes from our suppliers, mostly travel and hotel commissions that we earn. On a typical contract, you know, we get paid by request. If you high touch, if you talk to one of our lifestyle managers or send an email, that'll be a higher fee per touch. We've got the digital platform where we will have a lower fee, as it's a self-serve.
That generates our corporate client revenue. All of these contracts are long-term in nature, around 3 years and often most of them have agreed guarantee minimums that we work to. We shared this slide at the end of last year, and we've just updated it for active members, which is growing quite strongly, as you can see. This goes on to how we've grown our eligible member base on the left-hand side. We have grown our active members, and then within each segment, we've grown it as well, year-on-year.
Then the next slide Alex went through before, what we'll be driving by category or segment, we'll be driving a different penetration in terms of what the bank can afford to do and different digital mix in terms of where we wanna go from a, from a very high, high and medium, client. Lastly, this is to look at the average concierge revenue per active member. No surprise, actually, those in the very high segment can afford to pay more to us to look after their very high value members, more so than high and medium. That goes with in terms of value of that client to them. Back to Alex.
Great. Thank you very much, Alan. In terms of outlook, you know, we grow our business, the bottom part of this pillar, by starting off with just the run rate, how did we do in the last period? We would hope to have that obviously at a good rate and a good and a growing rate. We grow the number of active members by telling them about how our service has improved, what we've got to offer, engaging people to do with where they live, their age, their interests and so on. We grow the usage per active member as well by encouraging our corporate clients to allow us to do more and more marketing and engagement. Typically, that's happened, as you can see, from the 144% corporate client net revenue retention rate.
We also win new contracts with existing clients. There might be a bank that's given us to do one of their customer groups, giving us to another customer group. We win new contracts with new clients, and we've never had a healthier pipeline of new clients than we've got today. Outside of that, in financial services, we can roll out to other financial services people in new geographies. Most of our growth and most of our pipeline is in markets where we already are, but we do have some opportunities in new markets as well, geographically. We can move into other verticals, which is outside of financial services. As I say, we are experimenting in markets from employee, where we've got some good programs, but we're not selling very aggressively in that market.
We've got some opportunities with luxury brands and luxury car brands as well, and also with luxury property. Those are all in play, but we are not selling with much investment into any of those areas. It's financial services that our focus is on. This is taken from the stock market announcement, very short and sweet. Just to say that our expectations for the full financial year are unchanged, which means that Peel Hunt, our broker, has got an expectation out there that we will do 11.9 EBITDA, and we are happy with that. Has got an expectation out there that we'll do GBP 62 million net revenue, and we're happy with that as well. That is the end of the formal presentation today.
We've rattled through it, but I know we normally get some good questions from this group, and hoping we have some today. Remember to take yourself off mute if you've got questions, or to use the chat function.
We have a couple of questions coming in on the chat.
I'll let Alan take the one on cash that's in the chat.
As I, as we've said, we are targeting to be cash generative in this half of the year. Going forward into next year, we will look to generate cash from our own operating profits. As part of that, the tech investment we will make. We will not see any. It will probably grow at inflation, but we will not be growing that at the same rate as our net revenue will grow. We'll sort of maintain it and probably it could be plus inflation. The target is to generate our own cash as a business and to use some of that to replenish the balance sheet.
We pay, repay loans, also and reinvest back in the business as we get as we continue to generate profits and cash into the new year. We talk about a certain macro environment. What we've seen to date, because of our members and their, you know, at the mass affluent and above, we have seen no decline in terms of what they wanna do in terms of using our service. We haven't seen any sort of issue there from a cost of living perspective. It doesn't impact our membership base as much as others.
Great, thank you. Other questions?
Just summarize the question before addressing it, or do you want me to?
No, that's good. One question in the chat is, how has the supplier network evolved over the past 6 months? Who are our closest competitors globally, and have we noticed anyone closing the gap? Are we seeing Amex making inroads, and how does AI impact? There's a lot of different questions there. Our closest competition, the people we come up against in corporate tenders, are Aspire, who are owned by an international medical assistance business called International SOS. Aspire are big in Asia and North America, and we come across them head-to-head in tenders. Typically head-to-head in tenders for their business. We also come across John Paul, who are owned by Accor Hotels, and we occasionally still come across Quintessentially, although that's far less common than it used to be.
Against all competition, we really compete with our digital proposition, which is unmatched in the market, and the fact that we've just got more successful case studies around the world and a more consistent, data-driven, well-engineered service. That tends to be why we win, the majority of the contracts that we tender for and retain our existing contracts. We'll come on to AI in a moment. Are we seeing Amex make inroads? I mean, yes, Amex are doing some good stuff in terms of, they are developing their own digital platform. However, we believe our digital platform is a little ahead. The two of the advantages that Amex had over our digital platform was that they had, more content available to the public before you logged in, and that's something that we're addressing.
They also had Viator, which I talked about earlier on, which we should have on our platform by the end of the summer. There are quite a few areas in which we think, our member experience of using the platform is superior. The supplier network has evolved partly by doing more direct deals with airlines and with hotels. We've got 750,000 hotels globally that we've got deals with through intermediaries, and we've got, around 5,000 that we've got direct contracts with. That is growing. Not just direct contracts, but direct integrations into their inventory, which is then on our platform, which really improves the value proposition on our platform still further.
With tickets, we're growing our ability to get tickets for shows, concerts, sporting events globally by growing out our global contact base really there and our global credibility, which is working really well for us too. I think in dining as well, just more better relationships with restaurants and in particular, asking the restaurants to give us guaranteed availability at peak times is what's really driving the business there. AI. I mean, AI is going to really help us as a business become more efficient. It should help us actually, because we've got a digital platform on which we can leverage AI, it should help our service delivery be able to move more to digital over time, as well as make our Lifestyle Managers more efficient.
I think what we have been aware of for 20 years now is that it's not enough for us to do things instead of our members and save them time. We have to do things better than our members could do it themselves, even if they themselves are using a different AI toolbox to achieve their results. That's why it's so important that we have restaurant availability that's not available on the internet. That we've got tickets for music, theater, and sport that isn't available on the internet. That we've got deals in travel and upgrades and so on that aren't available on the internet because then our AI gives you better than the internet and other people's AI just gives you know, the internet.
It might give you the internet more efficiently and better, but we should be able to do it more credibly and with assets you don't have on the internet. AI will help. I'm not sure it'll help our competitors close the gap 'cause they don't currently have a home, a credible home on which they could put AI. Our direct competition aren't really the biggest challenge. It's the competitors that today we can't name that we need to be very aware of. You know, that's something that we are...
We're not complacent about our current competition, but we're even less complacent about tomorrow's competition, that we need to make sure we continue to invest smart in our tech and in how we embed ourselves with our member base and with our corporate client base as well. A question from Stephen Michael Smith. Thank you, Stephen. Would we anticipate investing more in digital or in member benefits? You're in reducing cost of the service. Yes. It's a little bit of many of those things. I don't think for the next four or five years, we'll be returning cash to shareholders in dividends.
I think we are more likely to be investing it into growing the business and growing the profitability and success of the business by improving the member proposition with things like benefits and discounts, which will allow us to charge more to our corporate partners. I don't think at the top end, amongst the high value and the very high value customers, we've got a challenge with reducing cost. If we're delivering value, the equation works very well for the banks to continue to pay, and we're not under a lot of direct competitive pressure on pricing. However, in the medium value, we need to continue to invest in tech to make more of the proposition digital, 'cause that's how we can get a lot more usage in that mass affluent space.
A lot more usage, so it's a lower cost per use of the service that drives customer value in a more cost-effective way for our corporate partners. Alan, anything else you'd like to say on that?
No, I think, I think you covered most of it. As I said earlier, when we become cash generative, we will look to replenish our balance sheet, but also reinvest where we can, to drive the revenue line.
Yeah. Again, Peel Hunt's expectations out there in the market today are that we will grow our EBITDA this year from GBP 11.9 to, I think it only goes up to.
Eight, I think.
8. Not a huge jump next year, but we do want to show the discipline of improving the profitability over time. Because we've got more net revenue, our net revenues will grow, or should grow, albeit well, faster than that. That will allow us to invest some more into the transition to digital. That'll be discretionary spend, and we'll spend it if we've got a good ROI for that.
We have a question, I think, from
Hi. Hi, Alex. Hi, Alan. Hi, Kezia.
Good to see you.
Yeah, good to see you guys as well, congrats on the numbers. I had a question about just the general macro environment, the cost of living issues, you know, trying to think about the end consumer and how I know at the very high value and maybe it's less of an impact, but I'm thinking through my own behavior as well. I'm a bit more cautious with the high-end restaurant bill than I used to be a year ago. I'm guessing other than the cream of the cream, that's probably generally the case. How are you bracing for what's to come? Maybe we're still kinda eating into savings for a bit. Maybe you haven't seen it through February 2023, or maybe you have. I just wanted some commentary around that.
Then a bit related to, I guess I'm just reading Mark's question, a bit related to that question as well. I guess I won't echo exactly what he said, but I'd be curious what you heard, what you've been hearing in conversations with institutional investors, whatever meetings you had throughout the day.
Yeah.
Since this morning. Would love to get some feedback and key questions that you're getting from them or pushback.
Sure.
into the investment case.
Let me deal with the last thing first. On the stock market side of things, the feedback we're getting is, you know, well done on the results. A lot of investors, there's been net outflows from the London Stock Market every month for I think 23, 24 months now. That's not helped because there's been a lot of money. A lot of people just don't have money to invest of the normal fund managers in our kind of market. Particularly at the lower end of the market, as in, you know, sub 200 million. Some of those guys have also been hurt by the WANdisco, I guess we can call that a scandal.
For those of you that don't know, that was a technology business in the UK that I don't know if it was fraud or not. It looks a lot like fraud from where I was sitting. It looks like there was a lot of false numbers put out into the marketplace, and some people lost a lot of money on that. Some of the people that lost a lot of money on that are the kind of fund managers that would normally invest in a business like us. Things like that haven't helped. I think that's held back our share price, just the lack of liquidity in the market. At some point, it's gonna have to change, because you're quite right, Mark, we're 1 times net revenues today.
That seems very, very low to everybody. We don't get anybody saying they think we're overpriced. Nobody says that. Nobody said that at the last set of results, and nobody's saying that today. We are literally very, valued at 5 times EBITDA as well. Again, that is for a business that's growing with a strong competitive position and, a good profit progression. That seems really wrong to most of the shareholders that we speak to. I think what people are saying to us is, be patient, you know, that things will change because there will be money coming into the market. You know, a business like ours is the kind of business that people are looking to invest in.
I'd also say that we're actually seeing quite a few fund managers who are, who we've seen many times now. We're meeting a lot of people that aren't yet holders. We've got some people who are holding half a million GBP of the shares, who would normally hold GBP 3 million-GBP 4 million, and they want to build up the stake, but they just don't quite have the cash available right now. Over the next six months and into our full year results, we'll have then had really good results six months ago, really good results today. All being well, really good results at the end of the year as well. That'll be 18 months of very strong results and 3 reporting periods.
We should make a big song and dance about that from, you know, after the summer when we do a trading update, all the way through to our full results. We would hope to see, but I get in trouble if I say anything much more than that, but we would hope to see the share price begin to re-reflect the value of the business a lot more than it does today. Does that help answer that? Your first question, could you remind me of that again? Just the headlines, it'll come flooding back.
just
Cost of living.
cost of living related.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just how you're bracing for that, I guess.
So far, we're not seeing that, but I do think that the Some of our members, you're quite right, aren't feeling the pain and are unlikely to, but some of them will. One of the things that we haven't really told our membership base about yet, but we're telling them over the next 3, 4, 5 months, depending on the program, is this 15% off hotels proposition. Some members are still traveling, but those that are very interested in value, that's a really good value proposition. We're also talking about the fact that we can, many of our banks, remember, have actually got more money to spend on customer loyalty.
where you look at the front page of the FT today, you know, mid-market US banks in all sorts of trouble, and yet the banks that we deal with tend to be, you know, very, very, very solvent, very well rated. They're making more money than they've made since before Lehman's crashed from cash-rich customers because they're, as you all know, you're getting very little interest in your bank account, and yet your bank can lend that money out at much higher rates. They're making more money from cash-rich customers than they've made in years. They've got more money to spend on acquiring those customers and crucially on retaining them.
We're finding that even if there's a diminution of feel good amongst our customer base, we've actually got banks and wealth managers wanting to spend more to retain and engage those customers. We've got more opportunity to go out and speak to people, and that more than mitigates any kind of cost pressures on our customer base. We are finding that in some businesses, like restaurateurs opening up a new restaurant, they're even keener to work with us than they were before because there's just a little bit more nerves out there about whether it's gonna be a success. Maybe three or four years ago, just pre-COVID, people were pretty happy that if they opened a new restaurant, if they had the right team, it was gonna boom. Today, there's slightly more nervousness around that and some of the.
That's certainly true for hotels. Even some hotels in some parts of the world that are reporting 100% occupancy is 'cause they've shut 2 floors. They've got 100% occupancy of 80% of available beds. We're finding that we're finding it very easy to do deals with hotels around the world, maybe easier than pre-COVID. There could be some advantages with the market getting a little bit tighter on the supply side as well. It's something we're gonna keep a weather eye on for sure, okay. Mark, did we answer your question there? If you're good with that or any follow-up questions, very happy to have them. Thanks, Mark.
Sorry, just to confirm. basically what you're saying is supply better, number of customers goes up, but so that offsets some of the volume per customer-
Yes, that's right.
-risk.
Probably the biggest risk is in that medium value customer base.
Yeah
... where people might be spending less on their credit cards, credit cards might have more risk. We are typically going after the more solvent, books. We're not working with the guys that make their money from people being late with their credit card payments. We tend to be at the much more stable end of things.
Great. Thanks. Thanks very much.
Thanks. Okay. Thanks for the question. Any other questions or thoughts from anybody? Yeah. Okay, very good question. Thank you for asking about our people. I think it's often underreported to shareholders. Our HR recruitment brand, you know, it's been a difficult market for recruiting. We are finding that it's an easier market for staff retention today than it was 6 months ago. This was staff retention, particularly of our Lifestyle Managers, was a bigger issue for us 6 months ago than it is today. Having said that, we've put a lot more effort into growing the concept of lifestyle management as a profession and as a career. We don't want it to be a role that people do for 2, 3, 4 years. Professionals stay enrolled for a lot longer.
Even people that you probably wouldn't think of as a professional, but the kind of travel expert that works at Trailfinders or Audley, they expect to hang on to their best people for 15, 20 years. We've learned about that, and we've learned about what professionals have done to create many more stages of development for our lifestyle managers. We're investing more in training, and we allow the very best lifestyle managers, if they're still performing, to actually earn a lot more. Essentially, we double the bonus pot for our best lifestyle managers after they've reached the highest level that you can get to as a lifestyle manager, so that there is a great earning growth as you get towards the most fulfilled part of being a lifestyle manager, the most developed part of being a lifestyle manager.
There's more that we're doing as well. I think we talk a lot about being the magnet for talent in our sector, and we're making that true. We've got loads of examples of that. We're also getting better at who we hire, and growing. We've also got an apprentice program in 2 markets around the world as well, which have both been very successful that we're likely to roll out. Alan, do you want to talk about wage inflation and how we counter that before we come onto... I'll then take malicious cyber attacks.
Yeah. Of course, wage inflation across the globe is different. It's still quite low in Asia, and as you know, high in Europe and the States. We did give wage increases to our staff. We've got a cycle of wage increases mostly go through in October, November, but it depends on the region. We did have to put wages up to reflect the cost of living. However, what we did do is that to pay for that, we did price up on clients. That's the first time we've done that as a company for a long time. That covered off any wage increase, so it protected the margin. You know, we'll continue to look at that going forward.
We have clauses in our contracts now that we do an annual review of RPI or CPI, depending on the country. It is, you know. We saw wages go up. We've countered it with pricing up, but and we'll continue to look at that going forward.
Thanks, Alan. On the hackers, this is a really interesting area, and it's definitely on our risk register. We need to keep our data very secure. Where we are helped is that we are ethically hacked a lot more often than any other business that I can name. Not only do the big corporate clients ethically hack us, so that's Visa, Mastercard, HSBC, NatWest Group, gosh, a number of others. They, for their own corporate governance, have to ethically hack us because we hold customer data. That gives us quite a lot of confidence that our systems are well set up. All of our people are CRB checked.
We do background checks going back many, many years to check that we, you know, we know who they are and that they're kind of good. We've got. None of our computers can you plug anything into. We're PCI compliant to the nth degree, to the very highest level in every office around the world. There's a variety of other things that we do as well to keep data safe. However, we're gonna keep treating that as a board-level issue. We're gonna make sure that we continue to get, have experts inside the business and outside the business, and we're gonna continue to be very happy that our corporate partners are constantly hacking our system to make sure that it's as bulletproof as it can be.
We are, you know, we're learning about that all the time. We've also got checks in place, you know, standard checks in place, you know, we do multiple choice questionnaires with our staff about how they should act in circumstances. We ourselves ethically hack ourselves in a way. I'll send emails to Alan's team saying, "Please make this payment immediately, blah, blah, blah." If they did, that would be a massive issue. They've got to actually speak with me, ascertain it's me. A voicemail doesn't count anymore in a world where people can mimic people's voices. We're very, very careful about that. It stays on our risk register, and it'll be on our risk register for the duration. Thank you, Richard.
Good question. Other thoughts from other people or questions at all? Love to have them. On the macro front, thank you, Thomas. Change of tone in discussion with corporate clients. No. Not really, no. We've got a bigger pipeline than we've ever had, and it's interesting why that is. Again, banks, so many retail banks are deciding to invest more into trying to get a bigger slice of the pie from their affluent and particularly their high-net-worth customers. They want to get a hold of assets under management. They want to retain those cash-rich customers. That part of the business is more profitable than it's been before. We're actually seeing more enthusiasm from people because...
Quite a few people that have never had a concierge program are talking to us about wanting one, because they need to have programs to attract and retain those high-value corporate clients. Actually, if anything, we're seeing people being more positive than they were pre-COVID. That could be partly just time in the market as well that's helping us. I think we're seen as being part of the furniture in markets where we used to be new. Latin America, Japan, you know, we used to be new and, you know, foreign. Now we're seen as part of the Brazilian banking ecosystem, the Japanese banking wealth management ecosystem with a really good client base. I think that helps things as well.
As clients become more cautious, typically, they want to invest more in retaining those clients. Another thing to remind you of, and some of you have been investors in TEN long enough to remember this, but in the year after Lehman Brothers collapsed, we grew our business 33%. Now, that was at a time when, you know, U.K. banks were really in all sorts of trouble, and they were the biggest part of our business back then. Barclays, NatWest, and Coutts were our three biggest clients. Barclays and Coutts were our two biggest clients. But our business overall, including with those two clients, grew. Why? Because they needed to keep customers that were cash rich. That helped us.
Really we've got a lot of programs where we're at 5% penetration, where only 5% of the eligible customer base have used our service. We're more excited and thinking. Well, our conversations are more with our corporate clients about how we can grow that to 10%, 15%, 20% We've got more clients wanting to grow that than we've got clients. I can't think of a client today that wants us to reduce cost amongst the high-value and very high-value customer groups. If anything, it's more positive today. Any other final questions by voice over or in the chat function? We can take them either way. No? Well, thank you, everybody, for making it.
I see a lot of friendly names, and thank you for being, many of you, long-term holders of TEN shares and long-term supporters. Some of you newer, welcome as well. Please do feel free to buzz me a note or the investor relations email that goes to Kezia, and then she makes sure that one of us will answer it. We'll be happy to answer anything that we can within the realms of us being a publicly listed business. Sometimes it or mostly, it has to be something that is either only color or or something that we've already answered publicly. Thank you again for showing up tonight. Thank you for being long-term holders, and we hope and expect that to see good things happening in the future.
Thanks very much for your ongoing support.
Thank you from me too.