Morning, everybody, and welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting for Airtasker Ltd. My name's Cass O'Connor. I'm the Chair of Airtasker Limited, and I'll be chairing today's meeting. It's now 11:00 A.M., and there being a quorum present, I declare the meeting open and confirm that the meeting has been properly constituted. We begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions, the culture, and the hopes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country. In accordance with the Company's Constitution, this meeting has been held as a hybrid meeting in person here at Australia Square, thank you, Tank Stream, and virtually through the webinar run by the Company's share registry, Automic.
For those online, the Automic Investor Portal will allow shareholders attending virtually to participate in the meeting by asking questions and by voting. With me here today in person are our non-executive directors, Ellie Comerford, Fred Bai, and Peter Hammond, our founder, Managing Director, and CEO, Tim Fung, our Company Secretary, Mahendra Tharmarajah, and our audit partner from Deloitte, Joshua Tanchel. We'll proceed with the formal business of the meeting as outlined in the notice of meeting, which you would have received. This will be after my address and Tim's update on the Company's performance and strategy. We'll then consider the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting, and we will outline voting instructions ahead of that section. I'll invite relevant questions from shareholders after the CEO presentation and during the formal part of the meeting, including every resolution which has been considered.
For those online and eligible to ask questions, you can submit them at any time. To ask a question, press the Q&A icon, which will open up a new screen. At the bottom of that screen, there's a section for you to type your question. Start your question by typing your shareholding SRN or HIN, and that will allow the moderator to identify you as a shareholder. If you would like to ask your question verbally, please type your SRN or HIN and then type "I'd like to speak." Once you've finished typing, hit Enter on your keyboard, and the moderator will enable your microphone to speak. Please note that while you can submit questions on the items of business from now on, I will not be addressing them until the relevant time in the meeting.
To assist our moderator, kindly include the notice of meeting agenda item to which your question relates. Please also note that your question may be moderated, or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, we will amalgamate them together. Due to time constraints, we may run out of time to answer all your questions, and if that happens, we'll answer them in due course either via email after the meeting in person or posting responses on our website. All questions should be addressed to me as the Chair. I will either deal with the questions personally or I'll ask somebody who is better placed to respond. We'll do our best to answer any relevant question that's raised. Finally, I ask that you keep your questions short and to the point so that we may respond to as many of them as possible.
When we reach the formal part of the meeting, voting on all resolutions will be conducted by poll. Shareholders attending virtually and wishing to vote can do so through Automic's Investor Portal. Instructions for logging in and how to vote can be found in the notice of meeting and on the screen you're seeing now. If you've already lodged a proxy vote, please note that you do not need to vote again. You've already counted in the poll on each resolution as per your proxy instructions. Shareholders who do vote via the Automic portal, however, are reminded not to click on the Next button until you have selected your vote for all resolutions, and if you're having any problems registering your shareholding with Automic, please call the support number up there at 1300 816 159, and they'll answer your questions.
To allow shareholders time to log in, I now declare the poll open. Online voting is now open and will remain open until I declare it's closed at the end of the formal business. Your votes must be submitted prior to the portal being closed for them to be counted. Now I'll go to a short chair's address and welcome you all again to this meeting. This year has been one of significant progress and continued focus for Airtasker Limited, and I'm really delighted to share with you the highlights of our performance and our views of the future. For the financial performance, Airtasker Limited delivered on last week's promise of maintaining positive free cash flow into FY24, and we delivered AUD 1.2 million of free cash flow. We finished the year with AUD 17 million in cash deposits, plus AUD 8.3 million of unused advertising inventory on our balance sheet.
The operational factors behind this are our team's dedication to and effectiveness of chosen strategic initiatives. Our group revenue grew by 5.6% to AUD 46.6 million, demonstrating resilience in really challenging macroeconomic conditions in many parts of where we operate. We reduced employee expenses by just under AUD 8 million, or almost 26%, to AUD 22.4 million, and technology, general, and administrative expenses by just over AUD 2 million, or 16.4%, to AUD 10.7 million. Combined, this enabled us to increase our marketing investment by around AUD 6 million while shrinking earnings losses. Operational highlights: In addition to streamlining operations, we made significant progress in enhancing our marketplace reliability. Our efforts resulted in a 26.3% reduction in cancellations, leading to a record number of completed tasks. This improvement directly contributed to an almost 14% increase in our full-year monetization rate to 20% and, just as importantly, enhanced trust in our platform.
FY24 was also the springboard year for strategic media partnerships. These partnerships provide us with extensive reach across various media channels, significantly enhancing our brand visibility and thus demand creation and market penetration. We announced two more partnerships, such partnerships this morning and an extension of an existing one, and you'll hear more about that shortly. As we move into FY25, we're well positioned for continued growth and success. I just want to make some comments about our return to above-the-line media advertising. In FY24, Airtasker made a significant return to this channel, and we continue to do so. Some might say that this is a contrarian bet on mainstream media. Tim will present further details on where we're at as of today, but let me expand on this point. First, I'd like us to consider cost.
Estimates vary, but the general consensus is that from mid-2020 to mid-2024, the average CPM rates of Meta, Google, and TikTok increased by between 20% and 90% CAGR, that is, each year. At least one source shows that Meta's CPM rate increased by 100% in the first 18 months of that period alone. Such increases work against any business or any brand's cost efficiency and ability to plan. Digital retains a place in Airtasker's overall media strategy, of course, but that place is now complementary rather than dominant. Secondly, I'd like you to consider purpose. Airtasker's need in existing and new markets is to reiterate and build brand awareness, trust, and to create demand for our services. Digital platforms are not so good at that. Any and every brand can be on digital platforms, whether they're legit or not.
While not perfect, the more mainstream mass media channels have greater regulatory overview and thus commercial imperative to protect consumers, so at Airtasker, we see our increased focus on these above-the-line channels as strategic. Finally, the structure of our Media for Equity and Media for Convertible Note deals we have put in place since June 2024 makes them extremely cost-effective for Airtasker on a multi-year basis, and at the same time, our media partners benefit from securing reliable forward inventory sales and from having Airtasker as a new customer, new advertiser with them. Our above-the-line marketing activities have shown promising early trends in business activity, and we look forward to bringing you more detail on this in the future. Now, touch on trust and consumer confidence. Trust is the single biggest contributing factor to marketplace success.
High-level trust leads to high customer acquisition, improved conversion, and better retention rates. So it leads to increased credibility, which allows stronger and more premium channel partners. Trust is hard-earned but can be quickly lost, and everybody at Airtasker is aware of this. Our FY25 product development program is focused on continuing to improve marketplace trust and consumer confidence. Regular users of Airtasker will have seen some of these features rolled out quite recently, and they will continue. In closing, I express my gratitude to our dedicated team whose hard work and considered innovation have been instrumental in achieving these results. I also want to thank you, our shareholders, for your continued support and belief in Airtasker's mission and vision.
While we acknowledge ongoing macroeconomic challenges in many of our markets, we're confident that our strategic focus and actions, solid market position, will enable us to deliver sustainable growth and value creation in the coming years. I'll now hand over to Tim.
Thanks, Cass. Thanks, everyone, for joining today's Airtasker AGM, both in person and online. So reflecting on FY24, we really delivered on our goals, and I'm really proud of the work that our team's put into making this a reality. So we are committed to the market to generating free cash flow, and pleased to say that in FY24, we delivered AUD 1.2 million in positive free cash flow and generated over AUD 31 million from our Australian marketplace, which covered not only our head office fixed operating costs of AUD 18.2 million, but also gave us excess cash to be able to create new marketplaces and replicate those profitable economics in our U.S. and U.K. businesses.
The second thing we committed to was improving sales funnel efficiency, and as Cass mentioned, we made a concerted effort to improve marketplace reliability, which would increase the completion rate and the monetization rate in our marketplace, and super pleased to say there that in FY24, we improved that by 26.3%, and that at the effect of increasing our monetization rate to over 20%, that was a 13.7% improvement, and we did that without increasing prices, but rather by just making sure that more customers reached their happy path. The third aspect of our strategy that we committed to was to prove out the media partnership model.
So in June of 2023, we secured the first of our recent media partnerships with Channel 4 in the U.K., and really pleased to say that over deploying that media between October 2023 and where we stand today, 12 months later, we've now delivered over 100% revenue growth from that period, so really demonstrating that we can replicate this model in brand new markets. If we move forward to FY25, so this year we've really committed to that same goal of maintaining our free cash flow. So although we're expanding out into the U.S. and the U.K., we actually are generating enough cash through our proven model in the Australian market and generating enough cash to be able to expand into the U.S. and the U.K. at the same time whilst maintaining overall free cash flow. And pleased to say that we're making progress on that.
First quarter's gone by, and we've generated about AUD 100,000 in positive free cash flow in the first quarter already, and as a seasonal business, these were the quarters that we expected to be the lower of the cash flow quarters, so a really, really strong result there to start the year. The second thing we said is that although in FY24 we really focused on profitability and were able to balance, had to balance that with top-line growth, in FY25 we're going to deliver double-digit revenue growth in our Airtasker marketplaces, and pleased to say that by investing into our brand and investing into marketplace trust, which were the core pillars of our core product growth strategy, we have already started delivering on that with 13.6% revenue growth on PCP in the first quarter. Third is that we said, you know, that media partnership model is working.
We've proven it in the U.K., and when you find something that works, let's scale that. So pleased to say, and I'll be providing a little bit more detail on this in the coming slides, we're announcing today, this morning, an additional $26.2 million in media capital that has been provided by Channel 4 Ventures in the U.K., together with two new U.S. partners, Sinclair Broadcast Group in the U.S. and Mercurius Media Capital, which is a prolific media capital investor in the U.S. as well. Combining those three new deals that we're announcing today together with our existing partnerships with oOh!media and ARN in Australia, plus iHeartMedia and TelevisaUnivision in the U.S., that takes us to over $50 million in media capital, which we have to invest over the coming years to scale Airtasker's brand globally.
I want to provide a little bit of an update on these media partnerships, and you know, trying to contain my smile because it's pretty awesome. We move to the next slide. The thesis for what we're doing is that we've created a proven model to build profitable marketplaces. If we look at what we've done in Australia, in FY24, we generated about AUD 45.2 million in revenue, and we invested about AUD 14.2 million into the Australian marketplace. That generated a cash flow of about AUD 31 million from the Australian marketplace. It's an awesome business. How did we get here? If you look back to what we did in Australia, one of the key parts of our thesis was investing into a media partnership together with Seven West Media in Australia.
In 2016, you can see there that in those light blue bars, we're investing about $2 million a year in marketing, and we're generating about $12 million in GMV if you look at the dark blue bar on the screen here. Over five years working together with Seven, you can see there in the first year and the second year, we invested close to $10 million in total in those two years, and we were able to triple and then double our GMV during that period to $36 million, then to $68 million in FY18. But you can see there that in year four, in FY19, we started dialing back some of that marketing, and we're able to further do that in FY20 down to about $1 million a year in marketing expense.
But during that same period, GMV continued to scale to over AUD 100 million, and in FY24 is now sitting at about AUD 190 million of GMV off a very tight marketing spend. So what's the lesson from that? You have to generate network effects in marketplace businesses, and by investing upfront into brand building and above-the-line media, we were able to generate that network effect. And once you've generated that, holy smokes, is this a good business model. So if we move to the next slide, you can see here that what we can do now is take this platform, which we've now built in Australia, and use the cash that we've generated in Australia to cover all of those fixed investments into the platform.
When we talk about the platform, we're not just talking about the software platform. We're talking about the people and all the fixed cost investment that goes into making Airtasker scaling possible. Here on the slide, you can see we generated about AUD 31 million in FY24, invested about AUD 18.2 million of that back into said fixed costs or said platform, and that, you know, generated us an additional AUD 12 million or so, which we could then invest into our UK, US, and other new markets to replicate those same economics, leveraging that same fixed cost base. We kind of thought, hey, how do we turbocharge that? Because that's pretty awesome. How do we take that learning from what we did in Australia where we invested into above-the-line media and create a super capital efficient model to do it in the US and the UK?
As we mentioned, we did a GBP 3.5 million pound deal with Channel 4 in the U.K. about a year ago. We've now invested that into the U.K., and it is already showing results. We're 100% revenue up in the first quarter of FY25, and that really accelerated throughout the course of investing that above-the-line media. Then in September of this year, we announced that we'd done $9.75 million in media deals from TelevisaUnivision and iHeartMedia to scale the same thing in the U.S. market. So very, very exciting. If we move to the next slide there, you can see here that the investment structure that we're using to take on these investments is really awesome because we're actually having our media investors invest into the local entities.
So Airtasker owns 100% of Airtasker USA and U.K., and then invites in media partners to come in and invest into that entity. So really, really exciting that we're creating a new opportunity for each of these new markets, so now media partners can help us build that new opportunity. And then what we've said is that at the end of five years or seven years in the case of the U.S., Airtasker or ART, the listed ASX company, is going to come and buy back equity in each of those entities. And the way that we're going to value those entities is by taking the revenue that's being generated in that entity and multiplying it by Airtasker's group revenue multiple. So from the perspective of media partners, that's awesome.
They have the opportunity to scale local revenue, which they have the power to do, and they're exposed to Airtasker Limited's listed revenue multiple, which is really, really great. It aligns all parties to wanting the same thing, which is make sure that the local entities are actually generating real revenue and making sure that Airtasker Limited's equity story and that investors are happy with us on the markets. So it's great from the media partner side of things. But what it means from Airtasker Limited's side of things is that we're really mitigating our downside risk while providing the media partners with massive upside, which ultimately results in a really, really compelling proposition for both the media partners and for Airtasker Limited as well. So, as mentioned, we are today announcing that we're launching three brand new media deals.
So those deals are one with Sinclair Broadcast Group in the U.S., another with Mercurius Media Capital, a prolific media for equity venture fund, and also with Channel 4 Ventures in the U.K., which is a follow-on investment. So I'll quickly run through each of those. So Sinclair, awesome opportunity here. Sinclair has invested $6 million, which is about AUD 9.2 million of media into Airtasker . Sinclair owns about 185 television stations across the United States, across 86 various markets, which reaches an unbelievable 40% of American households each year. They also own and create a lot of local content, which is really, really exciting because it means that Airtasker can potentially integrate our brand into various morning shows like, you know, Wake Up Washington or Good Morning Las Vegas and do that alongside some really trusted media brands like ABC, NBC, and CW.
We've also announced a similar sized deal, $6 million or AUD 9.2 million with Mercurius Media Capital. Mercurius Media Capital is a prolific media for equity investor that has the, of which the advisors and the executives have invested into companies like Airbnb and Uber and taken them across the world. They have a really, really interesting model in which they provide access to multiple networks like Sinclair, who we just mentioned on the previous slide, like TelevisaUnivision, which is America's number one Spanish language media network, and Willow TV, which owns all of the Major League Cricket and all the rights to cricket in the U.S. market. Some really powerful media channels which we can access in a flexible way alongside Mercurius Media Capital.
And then the third deal we're announcing today is that Channel 4 Ventures, the team with which we did our first recent media capital deal with in June of 2023, is following on their investment into Airtasker UK, providing GBP 4 million, so an up round in terms of both size and also scope into the U.K. And as a reminder, Channel 4 reaches about 47 million people in the U.K., which is about 78% of the U.K. population and owns the biggest streaming platform, free streaming platform in the U.K. They've also got some great content, for example, the Formula One, which is an amazingly growing network and brand across the U.S., the U.K., and of course Australia with massive investment going into that, as well as shows like Taskmaster, which of course have some great crossover into Airtasker territory, some great integration opportunities there.
They're also big, not just in the London market where we've been investing today, but also in Birmingham and Manchester where we intend to expand Airtasker's community. So summary of that is that in June 2024, we've now raised over $51 million in media partnerships alongside some of the best brands in media from oOh!media and ARN. We love those guys in Australia. They're doing an incredible job for Airtasker. We're already seeing some great results from that. And again, playing out that contrarian bet in broadcast media versus, you know, some of the stuff that's being sold in digital, iHeartMedia and Televisa in the U.S. market, which announced in September, and of course these three brand new deals today with Channel 4 Ventures, Mercurius Media Capital, and Sinclair.
So thank you very much again for coming to the AGM, and really, really excited about what we're going to do in FY25 and beyond alongside a great team. And as a final word for today, I just want to say thank you to all of the taskers in the Airtasker’s exciting community. Really, really incredible the work that they are doing. Thank you to the Airtasker’s exciting team. Without this, I mean, this vision that we're bringing to life here is not without blood, sweat, and tears from 100 plus people across the world who make it possible. And then thirdly, to our shareholders, thank you for ongoing support. Appreciate it.
Thank you, team. I can confidently say that that was the excitement highlight for today's meeting, and now it gets to be, you know, rather more formulaic, but that was, that was true before.
Before we go on to the more formal part, do we have any questions regarding either the chair address or the CEO address from shareholders who are eligible to vote and to ask questions? Any in the room? Yes.
I've got a few questions, actually. Just really interested to hear the update and what's been going on. It's nice to see everyone again. But if I may just ask a few questions, that's fine. First one is, moved to focus on traditional media rather than digital, given your Tasker base and your customer base is largely a younger demographic who use social media as their principal means of accessing kind of information.
I'm just curious what data you had to make that decision, given that I get that it's cheaper to use traditional media, but dollar for dollar in terms of return and response, what digital, what data did you use to come to that conclusion?
I think one of the really interesting things about the data that's available in marketing is that a lot of the digital platforms sort of sell you on this idea that, you know, it's a money printing machine where it's sort of a $1 in equals a $1.20 out, and they actually use a lot of language, which is like a cost of acquisition with an attribution model which sort of scientifically formulates that response. I think what we've learned and which I think most marketing experts would sort of tell you is you can't know.
It's an unknowable thing to know why a certain kind of media created a certain kind of consumer response. There are a huge amount of data signals that we can use, and we have a very complex, sophisticated system, I should say, of about 17 different metrics, which we use to give us indications of which marketing is producing what kind of customer result and outcome. But I would say there that the data is definitely something that needs to be interpreted, and we need to apply a lot of our, you know, expertise in knowing how to get a result from that.
To touch on the question about sort of the age of the people that mainstream media or broadcast media sort of reaches, I think again, that is a really interesting and compelling narrative that's pushed by digital media companies, which is that you've got, you know, old people don't use mobile phones, young people use mobile phones, and, you know, young people don't watch mainstream television. I would say things like national sports, things like BVOD streaming on smart TVs and things like that is actually making a massive comeback, especially when you look at things like audio, our partnership with iHeartMedia and ARN, super powerful. I mean, if you look at what the young kids are doing now, the podcasters are the biggest heroes, and those are the folks that we're getting access to by these kinds of networks.
So I wouldn't make that distinction that, you know, the internet's for the cool young kids. That's probably true in the 1990s or something like that. But in today's media landscape, I think there's, you know, equal reach in all age demographics across the world.
Is it your question yet? Yeah.
No, just keep going. Go for it.
Follow up.
Yep. And the U.K., so awesome, 100% increase in revenue in the U.K. That was obviously from a small start. I know that the kind of international strategy is a bit ongoing. And when you looked at the GMV increases from the Channel 7 on the graph there, quite a steep curve there. How do you anticipate that's going to go for the U.K.? Because it's obviously a bit slower to start with.
You obviously had a much smaller brand presence rather than in the U.K., but where do you see that going? Obviously, you see it going somewhere because of the investment in the U.S. and the replicating model. But at what point do you think the U.K. and the international market is going to really substantially form a much bigger part of the revenue?
So the question, just to repeat for those who are online, is like when is the U.K. going to show some growth like we saw in Australia, which is, you know, really showing like the triple, triple, double sort of growth. So first of all, we're really stoked to be delivering 100% revenue growth year on year. So we are starting to see that. One thing that I would say is that when you're on the revenue growth curve, you never know that you're on the curve.
You actually look at each year and you go, "Man, I'm so dissatisfied with 100%. I'm so dissatisfied with 100%. I want it to be even faster than that." And I can say that through my experience, we experienced a very similar thing with Channel 7 when we did that partnership. We were like, "Oh man, 10% week on week, not enough, not enough." 10% week on week actually adds up to something like, you know, 50,000% year on year growth or something like that. So I would say that we've experienced a similar thing in the U.K., and it's only experience that can tell you you're on the wave right now. And it is happening. I would say that one of the differences between Australia and the U.K. and the timing of these investments is that when we did this in Australia, we were in a growing economy.
You know, we were really in a time where everyone was thinking about, "How do I start a business?" You know, ZIRP, you know, in terms of interest rates, you know, let's go, and, you know, over the past three years or so, that has been a very challenging environment, especially in the U.K. market. So I think we, you know, we're facing headwinds there. So 100% of this market is probably a 300% in the old market. So really, really confident that when that rips back, we're going to see some even more compelling results.
Last question. Assuming you will spend all of the money that's available to you from your media partners, what's the kind of, what's the upper limit on the dilution effect that will have on shareholders?
So I think a question there for those at home is about dilution of the related to these media deals. And I think this is one of the really, really potentially sophisticated aspects of these deals, which we'd love to unpack a little bit more. So I really appreciate asking the question. So the way that we structured these media deals is that we created a new company for each of the new opportunities that we're going after, and the media partners are investing into those entities. What I think is really important about that is that we're mitigating downside risk. So we're not betting the Australian profitable business, which is, you know, proven and, you know, profitable business. We're not betting that. We're saying, "Hey, let's create a new entity called Airtasker USA to go after that opportunity.
Let's give our media partners a really healthy, you know, percentage of that opportunity." In the case of TelevisaUnivision and the deals that we've done in the USA, we've given about 17% of equity to our media partners to be able to do that. I think most importantly is at the end of these deals, it's completely performance-based because the way that we are ultimately going to, you know, realize the value of these investments is that we buy back the equity in that local entity from those media partners. We do it based on a valuation, which is the revenue that's being generated in that entity multiplied by our revenue multiple. We've really balanced those two things out.
And if you look at, you know, what that means, it means that if not a lot of revenue is generated out of those entities, we're buying it back for not a lot. If there's a lot of revenue generated by that entity, we're buying it back for a lot, but holy smokes, we own 83% of that revenue that we're generating in the U.S. market, and so I think that is a super compelling way to be able to scale this business model in that you're not going back and, you know, doubling down on the thing that you've already built. It's like there's a new opportunity, come into the new opportunity and it's scaled incrementally, and so the dilution cannot be more than the revenue that's created in the business.
And actually in this case, you know, if we were to deliver a 50% revenue contribution from Airtasker USA, we'd be taking about an 8.5% dilution in the business, 17% of that 50% upside. So I think it's super compelling. And I think once people sort of dig down into that, you know, we'll probably see some interesting movements on the share price.
That was a great question, Mark, and one that we have all asked around the boardroom and we have all delved into the models. And it really is, it really is impressive the way it all cascades out. Do we have any questions from the floor?
No questions on the line, Chair.
Okay, terrific. Thank you. So now we'll go to the formal part of the meeting. Let's get up these, yeah, registration and have a vote slides again.
Voting is going to be conducted by a poll, the results won't be announced immediately after the vote. After the resolution has been called, we will only be able to show you the votes that have already come in. But once the poll votes have been collected by the returning officer, then they'll be put up online later this afternoon, it's likely. For the purposes of this poll, we appoint Adrienne Atkinson of the Automic Group, who's sitting just outside that door as the returning officer, and she will conduct the poll. Shareholders who are attending virtually, who've already submitted a vote, should only submit another vote or lodge another vote if you wish to change your vote and you'll copy the instructions. Otherwise, you don't need to do anything. Online voting is now open.
We'll remain open until the poll is declared closed. Automic is online and available to answer any technical questions relating to the voting process. Do we have any questions about voting before we begin? Sure. Okay. As set out in the notice of meeting and explanatory statement, which was mailed email to all registered members about 28th of October 2023, there are six items of business today, and they are displayed on the screen. The reason that they're number seven is that the financial report is for information only. It's not a voting item. The resolutions one through six are there as item two through seven.
Proxies have been inspected and all valid prior to this meeting, and all of those validly lodged have been accepted, and proxies have been received so far, representing 133.5 million ordinary shares, which is 29.5% of the issued capital of the company. We'll show you these numbers and how they voted as we go through each resolution. All undirected proxies or open votes that have nominated the chair of the meeting as their proxy will be cast by me, and they will be cast in favor of each representation, so let's go to the business set out in the notice of meeting. Financial report. This first item is to receive the company's financial report for the year ended 30th of June 2024. Financial report includes the financials and the reports of the directors and the auditors.
There is no vote on this item as a discussion item only. The company's auditor, Joshua Tanchel of Deloitte, is present to take questions relevant to the conduct of the audit and to the preparation and content of the independent auditor's report for their fee. My colleague, Ellie Comerford, chairs our audit and risk committee and does a stellar job, may I say, chairs our audit and risk committee and is also available to answer questions if needed, as are Tim and Mahendra. Are there any questions or comments on the financial report or the reports of the directors and auditors from the room? No? Online?
No questions online.
Terrific. Are there any questions specifically for our auditor relating to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and contents of the auditor's report? None from the room?
No online. None online.
Thank you.
Do we have any other questions or comments relating to this item? Fantastic. Let's move to the resolutions. Resolution one is about the remuneration report. This resolution is a non-binding resolution. The resolution is that the remuneration report, which is also disclosed in the annual report, be adopted. This resolution is subject to voting exclusions for anybody who is a beneficiary of any of the items in the remuneration report. As such, we have a much smaller number of votes being registered for this resolution than we do for others. Are there any questions about this resolution from the room? Are there any questions about this resolution from online? Okay, terrific. I now put the motion.
No shareholders attending in person, and I'm just going to illustrate for you with my own votes, may now vote for this resolution. So you can see we had a turnout of about 14% that were eligible to vote, and almost 99% have voted in favor of this resolution, which is terrific. Thank you. Okay, resolution two. Resolution is about the re-election of my colleague, Peter Hammond, who sits next to me today. Pete is, in addition to being in NED, an excellent chair of our Rem and Nom committee and has been involved with Airtasker for way longer than I have. So I'd like to invite Pete an opportunity to say a few words about his experience and expertise and his contribution to Airtasker in his time as a director.
Thanks, Cass. Thanks. Thank you, shareholders, and also to the other members of the board.
First of all, I'd just like to thank you all for the opportunity to be re-elected to the board of Airtasker. It's really a privilege and an honor to represent the shareholders in a company like Airtasker, which has got incredible, what I believe has got incredible potential and has had a great, strong track record. Having served as a non-executive director since 2013, I've witnessed firsthand the remarkable progress we've made, and I'm really proud of the contribution that I've been able to make to the journey. Our venture fund, Exto Active, has participated in every capital raising since the time that I joined the board in 2013, and we've never sold a share. And the reason is because we really do believe that this brand and this business has the potential to become, you know, the Airbnb of local services.
I think with what we're doing at the moment, you know, we're really on track. We've got a great opportunity ahead of us. So, you know, we continue to be a big believer in this business. When I first came onto the board, the monthly gross marketplace volume was 2% of what it is today. So we've seen exceptional growth. And the success is a testament to the collaboration, the resilience, the shared vision of the team and the company. It's not easy to take these businesses through these processes. It's not easy to get to grow this marketplace volume in a marketplace type business. And I think it's a testament to the team and the dedication of that team to achieve that. Airtasker is now in a really great position. We've got a very scalable platform. You can see what we can produce out of the Australian marketplace.
We've got a very capital-efficient business model. I think we've got a really trusted and growing brand. And I think it's a fantastic brand. And we continue to evolve that brand. Many people, you know, that I speak to can't believe that it's a brand that's coming out of Australia. It's really starting to grow and have a big presence. And it's really got an incredible team. Now, we do a lot of work at the board to, you know, work with our team to make sure Tim's got the right team because the team is everything. And I think having the right team and having that right team incentivised correctly is critical.
That's why, you know, in the rem committee, we spend a lot of time with our advisors and with the team really trying to make sure that we've got a structure in place that will deliver good results for the business and really good results for the shareholders and making sure that our team are well aligned to what the shareholders want to see as well. I think with these media partnerships that we've been able to put in place, or Tim and the team have been able to put in place over the last year, we'll really start to drive this brand awareness globally. I think the next few years will be pretty pivotal to the business. I'm super excited to see how we go with this war chest that we've essentially got.
As the chair of the REM committee and also a member of the audit and risk committee, I work very closely with the executive team, with Tim, and also with the fellow board members to help shape the strategy, refine the corporate governance that we have around the business, and ensure that Airtasker remains well positioned to scale internationally in the right way. My background, my business, I'm a co-founder of Exto Partners and combined with the experience as a director on a number of different and director and investor in a number of different businesses, high-growth technology companies, including marketplace businesses, AI businesses, and other global enterprises, gives me deep insights into the opportunities and challenges that are faced by these sort of fast-growing companies.
With this expertise and also my background with KPMG, where I was for quite a long time before Exto Partners, I think I can make a meaningful contribution to the business, not only with the funding strategy, but also the governance and the overall strategy of the business. With that, I seek your support for re-election. I want to reaffirm my commitment to Airtasker to achieve its strategic goals, foster innovation, and ensure the continued growth and alignment with our shareholders' wishes and desires. Our fund is obviously a major investor in the business, and obviously we're very well aligned to all the other shareholders to make this a success. Thank you very much for your trust and support. I want to thank the other board members who, you know, this is a great board to work on and a great team to work with. Thank you.
Thanks, Pete. You'll note from the notice of meeting that all of the directors unanimously recommended that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. In my year and a tiny bit on this board, I really appreciate Pete's substantial contributions across not just REM, but just internal strategic assessments, common sense, which sometimes is hard to find, and collegiate manner. It is a really great board to work on. We will have a lot of fun and we're, you know, a hardworking but productive board. If you have any questions regarding this resolution, please raise your hands if you're in the room or raise them on questions. Fantastic. Now, we'll see the proxies, which are now up to the full amount because everybody but Pete was able to vote for this, I think. Exto was able to vote for this.
Exto Active, yeah, with, you know, just shy of 99% approval rate. So thank you for that. Okay. Now we'll move to resolution three, which is the issue to the CEO of performance rights. And these are the short-term performance rights. And just a note about this resolution and about the resolution four, which follows it, which is about long-term performance rights. In the notice of meeting, and as you can see up there, the wording is very formal and doesn't really get to the point. These are performance rights. They're not a gift of this amount of money to Tim. They have to, the rights are granted, but there are lots of thresholds that Tim has to meet before vested to him and turned into shares. Okay?
For the STVR rights, for the short terms, those thresholds are a combination of financial and non-financial goals, which we discuss and we negotiate every single year. You know, they're on track and some of them are pretty stretchy. I just want to explain that because my guess is that most people reading sort of glaze over after they get to, for the purposes of ASX listing or 10.14 and all other purposes. This resolution is subject to voting exclusions, i.e., Tim can't vote on it. If you have any questions, can you please raise your hand? Okay. Or submit online. Fantastic. We'll now look at the proxies received for this and see that that has been very clearly voted in the affirmative, which we appreciate. We really want Tim to have the same incentives, you know, aligned with shareholders.
We think that these performance rights are a very good way of doing that. The next resolution, resolution four, is regarding the LTVR, so the long-term performance rights. This is a lesser amount in dollar terms, but much the same structure. Although the LTVR rights are really, they're awarded over three years and they're about Airtasker's share price performing against a basket of similar shares. Do you have any questions, either from the floor or online, regarding resolution four? [audio distortion] Thank you. We now turn to the proxies and show that similarly, we have a resounding affirmation of this. Is that the right word? Acceptance, approval of this resolution. Okay. Let's go to resolution five. Resolutions five and six are ratifications of previously announced media deals.
So the first one is a ratification of the issue of the convertible note to oOh!media, which we announced, I think, just before the end of the year, in June. Anybody have any questions regarding this resolution or about that media deal in particular? Fantastic. Let's have a look at the proxies. And once again, resounding approval of that ratification, which is fantastic. And finally, the ratification of the issue of convertible notes to ARN Media, which was completed on July 4th. Any questions regarding this resolution or the media deal? Questions? Fantastic. Let's have a look at the proxies. And we have similarly thundering approval of said resolution. Okay. So that concludes the resolutions to be voted on today. I ask the returning officer, Adrianne, to collect the votes that are in the room and call on all shareholders online to ensure that you've submitted your votes.
And now you can press the next button, which would be great. I'll be closing the poll in about 30 seconds. Okay. Seems to be no further questions. So I'll declare the poll closed. And Adrian's going to process all of those votes, and then we'll finalize those numbers. Looks like we're going to be approved on all resolutions. Just before I formally close the meeting, are there any final questions or comments that anybody would like to make about the year that we've just had, about the year that we're about to have or we're in the middle of, or any other aspect of them, either from the floor or online? Excellent. Well, that concludes the formal part of the meeting, and I declare this meeting closed.