I would now like to hand the conference over to Matthew Sandblom, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead.
Welcome to the 3P Learning investor presentation of our half yearly results. I'm Matthew Sandblom, Executive Chairman of 3P Learning. Jose Palmero, CEO, and Dimitri Aroney, CFO, will be joining me on this presentation. I'm very pleased with the progress that has been made since I've joined 3P as part of the merger of Blake eLearning in May last year. Bringing these two companies together made a lot of sense as each had complementary skills. We still have to make it work in practice and bring two cultures together while still delivering good financial results. This is today's agenda. First, I will give an outline of our overall progress, followed by more detail provided by our CEO, Jose, and then Dimitri will give us more detail about the financial results for the December half.
There'll be a Q&A session, and there's also some more detail on our finances in the appendices. On this page, we highlight some of our major achievements for the half just finished. We've had a big improvement in underlying EBITDA, up 106%. We've also increased our revenue to AUD 44.3 million, which is obviously a big increase due to the merged companies and also growth in both markets. Our B2C billings, which is to our consumer market, are also up 12% year-over-year. Our annualized sort of recurring revenue rate is now AUD 65 million, which is an improvement from 3%. Oh, 3% from twelve months ago.
We've got a lot better cash flow and, we're increasing our customer numbers quite significantly, and we're also continuing to invest a lot in our product development, both in new product and existing product. New products include Writing Legends, which I'll speak a bit more about in the next couple of slides. Now, continued strong growth in our direct-to-consumer business with billings up 12%. The previous year's numbers had already been strongly positively impacted by widespread COVID lockdowns. It's a credit to our marketing team to get good growth off this high base. Our billings for schools have also managed to grow even as we made some significant cuts to the size of our sales team and stopped actively selling products like ReadiWriter and WordFlyers, which we plan to sunset.
In January this year, we regained the distribution rights to Reading Eggs in Canada, which we think we can grow into a multimillion-dollar market in the next few years. We've also contracted with several large brand names to provide corporate social responsibility programs over the next 12 months. Most of this revenue will be recognized in the next financial year. As previously announced, we've also acquired the Writing Legends program as the foundation for our push into the third part of our three Rs basic skills strategy, reading, writing, and arithmetic. To ensure the greatest chance of success and that the program matches the quality of our other programs, we have pushed back the release date of this program from the H1 of the next financial year to the H2 of the 2022/2023 financial year.
For Mathletics, we have done most of the minor fixes customers wanted while we work on some major product enhancements to be released in the second half of 2022-2023. These enhancements should deliver good revenue growth in the following financial year, 2023-2024. For the current half, we are confident we will meet revenue and EBITDA guidance and generate strong cash flow. I will now hand you over to Jose Palmero for his update.
Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone. As Matthew mentioned, our focus for the H1 of the year has been the operational integration of Blake, including achieving synergy savings, growing B2C revenue, and aligning our product offering with our learning fundamentals or three Rs product strategy. I'm pleased to report that we have completed the integration of the two businesses, and our next step is to follow that up with work on our combined company purpose, values, and culture. As of today, we have achieved annual synergy savings of AUD 9.5 million, and we will continue looking for other savings, including options to consolidate software contracts and office premises, for example. Onto revenue.
I'll provide further details in subsequent slides, but we posted revenue of AUD 18.8 million for B2C, with billings up 12% on the H1 FY 2021, and annual recurring revenue for B2B hero products of AUD 65 million, which was up 3%. We also acquired Canadian school distribution rights back from Edmentum for $600,000 with a book of business, which we have started servicing from January 2022 with our existing sales team in Canada. It's important to note that we have a strong relationship with Edmentum, and that they will continue distributing Reading Eggs to schools in the United States, but no longer in Canada.
We've also made further progress with several major brands for CSR deals to launch in this second half, particularly in the U.K., and continued discussions with MOE in the Middle East, but there are no material changes to our previous updates. To expand on the B2C results, we show here the billings performance for B2C Reading Eggs and Mathseeds for the past two years. Highlights this half were the performance of our direct web channel, which grew 20% to AUD 8.9 million this half, compared to AUD 7.4 million for the same time last year. This channel accounted for 49% of our B2C billings, which as , is more profitable for us because we don't pay commission fees. iOS continued performing well and steady at AUD 7.6 million this half, despite the recent data privacy changes.
The remainder of B2C revenue was from Google Play, which grew 31% from a lower base to AUD 1.7 million. In terms of regional segments, APAC was our strongest performer this half, with AUD 9.1 million in billings, up 15% on the previous half and accounting for 50% of our revenue. In terms of performance metrics for B2C, gross billings grew 12% this half while maintaining an ARPU of AUD 123.76. Net billings, that is gross billings less the commissions paid to Apple and Google, were up 15%. Our contribution margin on net billings remains strong at 43%, but this was lower than the 46% in the prior comparative period because we have increased our testing and activity in the U.S. and U.K., which are usually more expensive to market for us than Australia.
On to the B2B market results. We show here annual recurring revenue for the hero products half on half for the past two years. At December 2021, annual recurring revenue for the hero products was AUD 65 million, which was a 3% increase. There was an additional AUD 1.2 million from other products combined, including WordFlyers and ReadiWriter, but the three hero products make up 98% of our annual recurring revenue. Highlights here were Mathseeds growing 13% to AUD 6.9 million across all markets. Reading Eggs growing 6% to AUD 26.1 million. Mathletics showing a small decline of less than 1% across all markets, but still our largest B2B contributor at AUD 32 million. As I mentioned earlier, we started selling Reading Eggs directly to schools in Canada from January 2022.
Our sales team in Canada is well established, so this is a good opportunity to expand our Reading Eggs presence with existing resources. In terms of performance metrics for B2B, the number of licenses from the core business are steady at 4.7 million, with the Reading Eggs and Mathseeds growth offsetting the small decline in Mathletics and the overall churn. To this, we add about 1 million licenses currently distributed by Edmentum. On the product side, as Matthew mentioned earlier, the main development effort has been on new courses and upgrades for Mathletics, Writing Legends, and our new standalone mobile app, Master Math Island.
We also deployed minor releases in January and February 2022 with Skill Quest Reporting, which focuses on understanding, practice and fluency, and Meritopia 2.0, which focuses on rewards. This was to help engagement and customer retention for Mathletics.
On the people side, we started our people and culture program in January 2022 to update our purpose statement, company values, and ESG initiatives. We've also implemented a new long-term incentive structure using share appreciation rights as the instrument. That concludes my part of the presentation. I'll now pass on to Dimitri for the financial update. Thank you.
Thanks, Jose, and good morning, everyone. Before I run you through the profit and loss for the period, I'll take you through our expected half-on-half profile for FY 2022. In summary, the profile of revenue and EBITDA will be affected by the transition in revenue recognition approach on the sale of Blake products to schools. You may recall, since the merger completed on the 28th of May, 2021, that school sales of Blake products have been recognized to contract liabilities on the balance sheet before being released to revenue in the profit and loss over the duration of the subscription period. In contrast, prior to the merger, 3P Learning had been recognizing net commission revenue on these sales upfront.
Outside of this transition, you might normally expect revenue in the H1 to reflect approximately one half of our B2B annual recurring revenue, plus the H1 of B2C revenue. However, as you can see in the chart on the right-hand side, you'll see that our H1 FY 2022 results of revenue and EBITDA are impacted by this transition. The impact of this transition reduces in the H2 of FY 2022, and revenue and EBITDA guidance will be achieved by continuing the B2C billings and B2B annual recurring revenue growth trajectory that we are currently on. Now, let's turn to the H1 FY 2022 profit and loss. H1 FY 2022 revenue was AUD 44.3 million, up 85% on the prior comparative period. EBITDA was AUD 3.7 million, up 106% on the prior comparative period.
B2B revenues increased by 11% to AUD 25.5 million, due to a AUD 6.6 million contribution made from Blake, and this increase has been recognized despite the impact from the transition in revenue recognition mentioned on the previous slide. B2C revenue at AUD 18.8 million in the H1 FY 2022, is now 20 times the prior comparative period's performance. Following the contribution from Blake, which is not included in the H1 FY 2021 results, which are pre-merger. Gross profit has increased 82% to AUD 42 million.
Sales and marketing costs have increased by AUD 10.3 million due to the digital marketing required to drive B2C growth, offset by some synergy savings. Product and technology now includes acquired development teams behind Reading Eggs and Mathletics, complementing our Mathletics team. Expenses are also increased due to the lower capitalization rate, offset by synergies realized.
General and administration expenses are steady as we have more economies of scale and we've realized synergies. It's also worth highlighting that we've made some adjustments for significant items relating to the Blake acquisition in the current year. Let's now turn to the H1 FY 2022 cash flow. Pleasingly, net cash inflow from operating activities after payments of taxes and significant one-off items such as restructuring, retention, and integration costs, has improved AUD 8 million.
The improvement was due to the positive contribution made by the Blake business, the realization of cash synergies on the merger, and some small favorable timing benefits on working capital. It's also worth highlighting that receipts from customers were up 95% to AUD 44 million. Even though those receipts from customers increased 95% or AUD 21.4 million, payments to suppliers only increased by AUD 9.6 million.
I'll now hand it back to Matthew to provide final comments.
Thank you, Dimitri and Jose. Now that the merger is complete, the 3P Learning team is very focused on creating strong growth drivers for all parts of the business, including B2C, B2B, and enterprise sales. We have clear plans on what we need to do to achieve these goals and believe we have the right team to deliver consistent high-level performance. Thank you for your time today, and we now open the lines for any questions that you may have of us. There's also some additional information in the appendices about balance sheet and some other sector analyses of our business. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. For the webcast viewers, please type your question into the ask a question box and click submit. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The first question today comes from Xu Yang from Microequities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. A few questions for Dimitri first. In the cash flow statement, the AUD 3 million for restructuring integration costs, does any of that reoccur going forward?
No. The answer is no.
Okay. All right. In terms of the investing outflows, the AUD 2.3 million for Writing Legends, that's the acquisition payment or?
That's correct. Yeah.
The AUD 1 million intangible payment, that's just R&D capitalization?
Yes, that's correct. It's the capitalization of both what we internally generated products that we do through our employees and external vendors.
Okay. Understood. In terms of the B2C segment, just wanna understand what you're seeing in terms of retention rates, as we sort of move through the pandemic. I think at the start, you've had a lot of customers sign up and just wanna understand whether you've retained what the retention rate's been.
Yeah. I think we have a pretty good slide in the appendix that looks at kind of the annual recurring revenue analysis and presents a churn percentage. Overall, I'd say that the retention rates are holding up pretty well. Obviously we went through a COVID sales bump previously. Yeah, pleased by how the retention has been continuing in the subsequent period.
Okay. In terms of the commissions paid to the Google and Apple stores, is there any benefits as they change their commission models going forward for the business?
Well, Google has reduced its commission to 15%. That's definitely a positive, although it's a smaller channel for us than obviously iOS. Except for the renewals after 12 months, they do go down to 15%, so obviously the longer we keep customers on, the lower the commission gets. As yet, we haven't really seen any other major changes to the Apple commission structure.
Yeah. Okay. Last question. In terms of some of the products in B2C that you are retiring, is there any sort of support, product support costs or R&D costs that come out as part of those product retirements?
We have ReadiWriter and WordFlyers, which are both school products more, not so much B2C products. That's, there is some revenue against them, but there would also be some minor costs unless we were sort of continuing on with them, we would have to reinvest and just to bring the products up to the level we wanted. Basically, there's fairly minimal support costs for
We're planning on sunsetting the ReadiWriter by July in the Northern Hemisphere and by December in the Southern Hemisphere. Then, , that should be it. There shouldn't be any minimal costs till then, and then obviously virtually no cost after that.
Okay. That's clear. All right, thank you.
Sure. Before we finish, I just wanted to clarify my first response on the question of restructure costs. Just wanted to make clear that I meant no further restructure costs are expected from after FY 2022. We do expect a small amount, much smaller in the H2 , mostly continuing from arrangements that were in place at the time of the merger.
Yep. Understood. Thank you. Thank you once again. We have a webcast question from Deanna Mitchell. Deanna would like to ask, "Could you please provide some color on the CSR deals that are in the contract stage in terms of size, region, and timing? Are these multi-year deals for Hero products?
Thanks, Deanna. I'll take that one. So basically, there's no material updates to the big deal that we had already announced with the Ministry of Education in the Middle East. We are continuing discussions, but as we said before, we don't wanna make proper announcements until we actually start providing the service and receive the cash for that particular contract. For the other ones, the big brand names at the moment, we're just at contract stage. The launches are planned in the next three to six months. They're exciting deals. They're the one-off deals, the CSR type arrangements that are meant to highlight the benefits of our Hero products, particularly Mathletics. The deal size ranges between AUD 200,000 and AUD 2 million, depending on the deal.
There's several of those at contract stage. But we'll probably see a little bit more of that towards between April and June. We'll give a further update. This is along the lines of or consistent with what we said before about not announcing any of these deals until we've secured the funding. Hope that helps.
Thank you once again. To ask a question, please press star one on your phone or type your question into the ask a question box and click submit. We'll pause for a moment for parties to register their questions. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Mr. Sandblom.
All right. Thank you all for attending today, and I hope that we provided you with some good information. We're always trying to make it as clear as possible and transparent about what we're up to and what, how our business is performing. If you need more information, obviously contact 3PL, and we will do our best to help you. Thank you.