Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Redbubble Limited 3Q Trading Update. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Louise Lambeth, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, here in Australia, and good afternoon, evening for our U.S. investors. This is Louise Lambeth, Head of Investor Relations for Redbubble Group. Welcome to this investor call following the release of our FY 2022 third quarter trading update provided earlier today. With me on the line, I have Redbubble CEO, Michael Ilczynski, and CFO, Emma Clark. The key information for today's update is contained in the ASX announcement and accompanying slides that were released to the market. The financial and operational metrics are from internal management reports and have not been subject to audit. Mike and Emma will speak shortly, and we will then open up the lines for questions. This session is also being recorded. Before we start, I would like to call your attention to the safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking information in our ASX release.
That safe harbor statement also applies to this investor call. I will now pass on to Mike.
Thank you, Louise. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today, where we'll go through the Redbubble Group third quarter and year-to-date trading update. I will speak reasonably briefly before passing to Emma to walk through the financials. At a high level, the Redbubble Group delivered third quarter marketplace revenue of AUD 96 million, which was largely in line with our expectations for the quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was consistent with year-to-date at 37.5%, and we continue to see elevated customer acquisition costs impacting our GPAPA margin. OpEx was slightly below budget, driven by slightly lower staffing expenses. These factors resulted in operating EBITDA loss for the quarter of AUD 6 million. Given the year-to-date result, we are reiterating our FY 2022 outlook statements provided in February.
We have a significant cash balance on hand, having ended the quarter with cash balance of AUD 94 million, which continues to give us the ability and the confidence to invest for our future growth. As I said at the start of the year, the team and I have sights firmly focused on driving sustainable growth for the medium and long term. During the quarter, we continued with the investments we are making across the business to build our capabilities and expand our capacity, which has included hiring more than 100 new staff into the Redbubble business since July 2021. This has really boosted our capacity, particularly within the product and engineering teams in the redbubble.com business. As we've stated, these teams are focused on improving our technical foundations, but we are also starting to see some improvements in the on-site experience.
To give you a few examples, we recently launched our first add-to-cart recommendations on the Redbubble site. When a customer adds a product to their cart, a carousel of recommendations based on that product now appears. We've added list functionality to both of our Redbubble native apps, so we see a lot of use behavior, particularly among our Gen Z audience, around creating and sharing lists of products and designs. Adding this feature to our apps has been our number one feature request, so it was great to have that out this quarter. We've been experimenting in our search results to boost newly onboarded artists to improve their ability to get discovered while not degrading overall conversion results. This experiment is showing good promise. We also remain on track to launch our pets category in the Redbubble business later this year.
Additionally, we remain really focused on driving retention and repeat across both businesses. For Q3, a record high 47% of our marketplace revenue for the group was generated from repeat customers. We also shared in this release some initial cohort data. This was some initial cohort analysis. This was looking at new customers who first purchased on Redbubble in the second half of calendar year 2020. So this was the real COVID-impacted cohort. We compared that with new customers from the same time a year earlier in 2019, pre-COVID. What the analysis demonstrated was that the H2 2020 new customer cohort was some 64% larger than the 2019 cohort. Despite being so much larger, the 2020 cohort's twelve-month repeat rate was very similar to the 2019's rate, 20.3% versus 21.7% over twelve months.
This is really encouraging for us as it's demonstrated an ability to retain those COVID-impacted customers at virtually the same rate, even though the 2020 cohort had the reopening phase during 2021 in their following twelve months in the U.S. in particular, which should have had a negative impact on repeat online behavior as offline stores reopened. We also believe it demonstrates that the Redbubble value proposition does appeal to a broad mass consumer segment, that we can build loyalty as we scale. That's why our focus is equally on improving retention and building our brands so that we can drive increasing numbers of new customers over time.
As such, both businesses are continuing with a number of experiments this year to drive retention, and those experiments are across all aspects of the customer journey, from different remarketing channels to shipping experiments to physical product experience changes, as well as looking at how we start to build our brands over the periods ahead. We don't normally provide this level of operational detail in our quarterly trading updates. However, given the investments that have been happening across the business, I thought it was important to take the opportunity to demonstrate some of the tangible examples, of the work that we're able to undertake with additional talent and resources coming into the business. We are also making progress with our platform work that we need to undertake in order to unlock future value.
During the remainder of calendar year 2022, we will continue to build on this foundational work required for the next phase, as well as working on some of these opportunities to deliver earned growth in the shorter term. We're all obviously excited about the incredible opportunity that lies ahead of us. Within the business there are multiple high potential growth levers that can enable us to achieve a meaningful step up in scale. I remain highly confident that Redbubble, the Redbubble Group is a compelling investment opportunity that can deliver long-term value to all stakeholders. That being the case, we do not believe that our current share price reflects the fundamentals and prospects of Redbubble and our strategy. As such, the board of management have and continue to actively investigate value-enhancing options on behalf of all stakeholders.
These include organic and inorganic opportunities that could assist in the acceleration of shareholder value as part of our usual consideration for the board of the company. Before I wrap up, I want to spend a moment to discuss how the Redbubble Group has rallied to support the people of Ukraine. Over the past few weeks, our teams have been coordinating to offer Redbubble support of humanitarian relief efforts for Ukrainians. This is including looking at ways we can support the Redbubble Ukrainian artists and amplify the efforts of artists on Redbubble from across the world who have been moved to create artwork in support of the Ukrainian people. Already, we have facilitated sales of several hundred thousand dollars of artist products, and we are donating our profits from these sales.
This means the Redbubble Group will be donating over AUD 70,000 to GlobalGiving and International Rescue Committee to charitable organizations who are working to mobilize resources to save lives in Ukraine and assist refugees. I'm very proud of the meaningful way that our teams work together to show support for the people of Ukraine, and I'm truly grateful for the wonderful response that we've seen from both the artists and customer communities to drive this humanitarian initiative. I'll now pass over to Emma.
Thanks, Mike. I would like to echo your comments and thank all of our communities for their ongoing support of Ukraine. Let's now turn to the year-to-date and third quarter financial performance and our outlook. Please be aware that unless otherwise stated, the financial results discussed are on a delivered basis and have not been subject to audit. On a year-to-date basis, marketplace revenue was AUD 384 million, down 16% year-on-year on a floating basis and down 17% on a constant currency basis. However, this is up 56% on a two-year view. Of this, AUD 96 million was delivered in the third quarter, down 7% on a floating basis and 12% on a constant currency basis. This is largely in line with our expectations.
On an underlying basis for the year-to-date, which is effectively on a paid basis excluding masks, marketplace revenue was AUD 376 million, down 4% year-on-year on a floating basis and 5% on a constant currency basis. Year-to-date, Redbubble has generated gross profit of AUD 144 million, down 22% on both a floating basis and constant currency basis. Gross margins were 37.5% in the third quarter. Once again, this is in line with our expectations, noting that gross margins carry a small seasonal headwind in the third quarter as customer returns and refunds from the holiday season in the prior quarter are processed. On a year-to-date basis, gross margins were also 37.5%. Gross profit after paid acquisitions for the year-to-date was AUD 84.1 million, of which the third quarter contributed AUD 20.6 million.
Paid acquisition as a percentage of marketplace revenue was 15.6% for the year-to-date and 16.1% for the third quarter. As Mike shared earlier, repeat customer spend remains strong. However, new customer acquisition costs remain elevated in the quarter due to a combination of high levels of competition in the digital channels with what appears to be some general weakness in consumer demand. Operating expenses during the third quarter were AUD 26.7 million, which was down 10% on the second quarter result of AUD 29.6 million. As discussed in previous quarters, the second quarter expenses always contain a seasonal uptick to support the peak sales period in November and December. Third quarter operating expenses, however, were up 27% on the prior year.
Mike talked earlier about the investments in people capacity with over 100 new Bubblers joining the group this financial year, and this is the main driver of the year-on-year increase in expenses. Even so, we are still running below our internal headcount expectations, and therefore this expense line was lower than we had anticipated, offsetting much of the paid acquisition cost increase. The variance between operating EBITDA and EBITDA for the quarter was impacted by unrealized net foreign exchange losses being a AUD 2.7 million loss in the quarter as the AUD strengthened from 70 to 75 cents during this period. The other item in other expenses are share-based compensation payments. The year-to-date EBITDA loss is AUD 2.3 million. Redbubble's closing cash balance as at the 31st of March 2022 was AUD 94 million.
For those of you who are familiar with the business, you will remember that seasonality of the business always results in a net cash outflow in the third quarter after payments for holiday sales are made to all other marketplace participants. The business operates through a retail cycle and is therefore seasonal in nature. The first half of the financial year is always larger than the second half, and this is reflected all the way down the P&L as well as through the cash flows and across the balance sheet. As such, our financial metrics should be viewed over a full financial year period. At the half year results, Redbubble reiterated its outlook statements, and our year-to-date performance gives us confidence that these will be met.
Redbubble still expects financial year 2022 marketplace revenue to be slightly below financial year 2021 underlying marketplace revenue of AUD 497 million. We remain a much larger business than pre-COVID, and our cash balance will continue to allow us to invest to achieve our medium-term aspirations. We are confident and excited about the medium to longer term opportunity to grow strongly and extend Redbubble's global market leadership. As such, we will be continuing to invest into the business and funding these investments out of our existing cash reserves. Financial year 2022 EBITDA margin as a percentage of marketplace revenue is expected to be negative low single digits%. Thank you very much for listening in. I will now open up the line for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask questions please press star one on your telephone wait for your name to be announce. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are still on the line, please pick up the receiver and ask your question. Your first question comes from Anna Guan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead
Morning, team. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of questions from me, if I can. The first one is just around guidance and I suppose the new information that came out of today. Emma, correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm understanding your comments earlier correctly. You guys are reiterating guidance, but obviously, OpEx was lower than expectations, but also at the same time, paid acquisition costs were higher as well compared to your previous expectations. Would that be a fair read?
Yeah. As you know, thanks for the question, Anna. We have guidance out on both marketplace revenue and EBITDA, not every line in between in the P&L. Yes, as we've disclosed today, paid acquisition remained elevated through the quarter, and OpEx came in lower than our expectations. Obviously, our full year guidance reflects, you know, swings and roundabouts within the lines in the P&L itself, and we do reiterate our guidance statements on both marketplace revenue and EBITDA.
Yeah, understood. Just on that OpEx piece, to what degree is that related to sort of the timing of hiring?
Well, it's largely related to exactly that, Anna. You know, we're recruiting. You know, lots of people talked to us about seeing the role on the Redbubble page and we continue to recruit. Obviously it's just taking us a little bit longer to recruit people in than we had initially forecast in our internal models and that's the gap. We're continuing to recruit those roles and obviously as they come on board that gap closes.
Yeah, okay. Understood. My second question is just around the top line performance in this quarter. Backing out the masks component and also looking at what some of your competitors or comps are saying out of the U.S., I saw it from my point of view. I thought the quarterly top line performance was actually quite encouraging, just given the stimulus impact in the U.S. in the PCP being very difficult to cycle over. Any sort of color you guys can give around the exit run rate towards the back end of the quarter will be helpful. Any color there by any chance?
I'm gonna put that in the nice try bucket, Anna. No, we're not going to give live commentary on where we're at the moment. I will note that for the quarter, you know, on an underlying basis, we were 2% down year-on-year. Yes, we're quite close to neutral in terms of top line. As we said earlier, our revenue was largely in line with our internal expectations.
Gotcha. Okay. That's helpful. Last question from me. Just on the comments around organic and inorganic opportunities, is there any sort of color you guys can give around, you know, any direction where you guys are looking at, how we should be thinking about it? That'll be quite helpful.
Thanks, Anna. No, I think it's we just wanted to be clear that, you know, it's something that we've talked about really for a year now, but we wanted to reinforce that, yes, we have a very clear organic plan that we believe that can take us through to our medium-term aspirations. That's all aspects of our medium-term aspirations. At the same time, though, of course, part of my job, part of the board's job is to look for those other opportunities, those other inorganic opportunities that might accelerate the path to those aspirations or accelerate shareholder value, and that's what we continue to do.
Fabulous. Thanks, team.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Piper from UBS. Please go ahead.
On the fulfiller network, particularly in the U.S., as you know, cost inflation obviously is a big topic, but has there been a significant increase in the available capacity across the fulfiller network in the U.S. after a lot of investment through COVID, and then sort of demands come off a bit more recently? Just thinking about in terms of absorption of cost inflation across that network.
Hey, Tim. That's a good question. In terms of inflation, we're continuing to see some small requests for cost increases come through in some of our fulfillment networks, but nothing that's material and changes our position on gross profit margin. We do continue, obviously, to manage pretty tightly both our costing and pricing levers to make sure that that margin ends up where it needs to be. In terms of capacity of the network, that is perfectly fine at the moment. As we've discussed in prior quarters, with our network being a seasonal business as we are, the network naturally has capacity to flex 'cause it has to flex over holidays anyway. Obviously, we're running in a non-holiday period, capacity, there's been no capacity concerns in our fulfillment network during the quarter.
Got it. Just secondly, that Etsy, I think it was a week ago or so, the sellers boycotting the platform. Did you see any change in the activity on Redbubble or TeePublic site, as that occurred, either positive or negative?
Thanks, Tim. It's Michael here. I think that, you know, two things is one, we do operate a slightly different business model to Etsy where the way that we set up our services that we offer to artists is a much more aligned model where the artist sets the price, the artist sets their margin. Effectively, our network, our platform charges all artists the same fee to help facilitate and then fulfill their transactions and fulfilling their products. We have a slightly different model that we believe is highly aligned to us. You don't hear us talk about things like take rates because that's not how our model works.
In terms of seeing a change, we continue to see good new content and good new artist acquisition. No real change, but those areas have been reasonably strong for us over the past 12 months. We, you know, we have a somewhat different artist base relative to the broader Etsy base, which are much more makers and creators. We're obviously more focused on digital designers and digital artists.
Yeah, sure. I just thought with what was going on there, maybe the Redbubble platform would have seen maybe a bit of an uptick in either organic or paid traffic coming your way. Has that occurred? That's not the case.
Look, as I said, the Etsy platform is, you know, it's quite a broader platform than us in terms of their product base and their artist base. All of our artists and our content metrics during the quarter remain where we'd expect. As I said, they've been pretty strong all the way through the past 12 months.
Okay, got it. Sorry, just one last one on the marketing side, and I take your point around you know, increased competition and a more subdued sort of demand environment. Just, everyone, we all focus on Google a lot. Maybe can you just quickly talk to some of the emerging or newer social channels out there and how you're approaching your marketing budget with respect to social?
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. We'll talk just at a high level. You know, we've been pretty clear that there's a variety of channels that we use for acquisition. Yes, the Google channels are important for us, but so too are a variety of other paid acquisition, a variety of other marketing channels. The team works really hard at constantly optimizing across those channels. We did talk about in February, as a lot of platforms saw with the ATT changes, that attribution, particularly within those paid social channels, has become more challenging, in terms of the ability to look back and understand what is driving conversion.
That just means that our team needs to, you know, work harder in terms of understanding what is applicable to those channels, and make sure that we're still hitting all of our what we refer to as our ROAS targets, our return on ad spend. We still very much have our first transaction profitable goal that we have across all of our paid acquisition channels, including paid social. Clearly those channels have been challenged over the past, you know, 7-9 months, particularly with the ATT changes. But as I said, they're important channels for us. We continue to look for new, you know, platforms, channels and experiments to those as well.
Got it. That's great. Thanks for taking the questions.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Aryan Norozi from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Hope you're well. First one from me, just around cotton prices. I know this is short term, but it's, there's a lot of sort of moving parts. They're up around 70%-80% this year on last year. To what extent has that been reflected in your numbers? 'Cause you don't really run stock turns, so it should come through pretty quickly. How do we think about that in terms of impact over the next few quarters, please?
Yeah, it's a great question. As you rightly point out, Redbubble has third parties on the network, and the third parties are the ones who effectively carry the blank stock. There's obviously quite a long supply chain that comes off the back of that. There has been obviously some talking about the impact of those cotton prices on things like T-shirt blanks. As I said earlier, we've only seen a couple of small requests for price increases come through to date. We do expect more to come through, though I will note I've been saying that now for six months and there's been nothing material yet. Most of our sellers do carry quite a few months of stock on hand and replenish relatively infrequently because of, you know, supply chain disruptions. Those changes do come through slowly.
At the moment, we would not expect them to be having a material impact on our business. As I said earlier, we still have pricing levers in our control as well, should those cotton prices manifest into higher T-shirt blank prices over time.
Perfect. Seasonally, the fourth quarter gross margin has been sort of two [year] basis.
Oh.
Oh, sorry. We lost you.
I think we've lost you.
Pardon me. It seems that we have lost Aryan. Your next question comes from Owen Humphries from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hey, team. Quick question. Just, can you just provide a bit more color when you talk about organic and inorganic? Okay, I obviously understand what inorganic means. The question about inorganic is: What do you perceive is the available cash that you guys could deploy?
Thanks, Owen. Look, I don't think we're gonna answer that specific question to that degree. When we're looking at opportunities, clearly understanding the different ways, the different types of opportunities, the different funding arrangements that might come with that are a clear consideration. I don't think we're gonna specify that there's an exact amount of dollars in that, to any specificity.
You must have a minimum amount of cash you want on your balance sheet at any given time. I imagine that's, you know, AUD 30 million - AUD 50 million. Is that. How do you guys think about that?
Yeah. I mean, once again, don't wanna get drawn into specifics, Owen. You know, as most of you on the call are aware, Redbubble is a pretty working capital-light business. Obviously, with the way that our economics work with customer purchases flowing directly to us on the day of sale and disbursing money to our other marketplace participants. When you combine that model with the amount of cash that we've got on the balance sheet, it's not hard to come up with a range of what the available cash could actually be. We're very comfortable with having that cash on the balance sheet at the moment, most of that all for organic purposes.
When you say organic, is that excluding capital management initiatives?
Such as?
Well, we're talking about inorganic. The gross profit multiple in your business is 1x, so I don't think you'll find that elsewhere, I'd imagine. Just wondering why you wouldn't engage in buyback, given the balance sheet. When you say organic, are you just talking about your current OpEx base being what it is or further investment in your OpEx base for new product lines?
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the extra color. When we're talking organic, we're talking all the things that we wish to do to be able to achieve our midterm aspirations. You will have heard Mike speak, you know, quite consistently over the last six months about, you know, brand spend and how that might be coming in FY 2023. That still remains an option. Obviously, there's no brand spend in our financials at the moment, so that would represent an organic investment. Obviously, what we're going to continue to do is be very prudent and monitor the macro environment. As we said, there is, you know, signs of general consumer weakness.
We see that across the board in e-commerce at the moment, and it's quite a volatile environment, generally from a macro perspective, so we're gonna continue to monitor that. There's also there's prudent reasons to hold the cash in terms of headwinds in the macro environment. Also as we go through the next period, from a economics perspective, you know, I agree with what you're saying now in terms of relative valuation, but that can also change very quickly.
Yeah, Mike, in the past, we've talked about building more of a Redbubble brand. I know the unprompted brand awareness for Redbubble is extremely low. I'm just wondering if you guys were thinking about putting forward an initiative during this year. Has that changed in terms of the quantum, or is that something that you are thinking about in FY 2023?
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Owen. Yeah, exactly as Emma just said. Absolutely, we've talked about the importance of building both of our brands. Both businesses continue to work on their planning around that. We haven't pushed the button on that part of that. That would be part of our FY 2023 planning process. When we talk about our variety of important opportunities, clearly you can see the investment going into our people capacity at the moment. Part of the investment that we, you know, really, you know, we think that is really important is building our brand. That investment will come at the appropriate time.
You know, our current plan is that would be during FY 2023, but we're yet to go through our FY 2023 budget cycle, which would confirm that.
The last question, just around the medium-term aspirations, which the market obviously doesn't believe at the moment. I noticed you guys didn't talk about your expected margin profile. Has that changed, or is that just you've just kinda kept the top line growth expectations there?
Oh, no, absolutely. Thanks for asking the question. No, absolutely. No change. Maybe apologies. Remember last time we didn't mention it at all and we were asked, "Does that mean we're moving away from it?" No, we haven't moved away from it at all. But our top line and right through the P&L, we believe that if we can achieve that scale, our previous EBITDA margins of 13%-18% are absolutely achievable at that level of scale. At AUD 1.5 billion GTV, at AUD 1.25 billion of marketplace revenue, we are very confident those margins are achievable at that level of scale. Our challenge, our opportunity is to get to that level of scale. That's what we need to do.
That's why the investment's going into our platforms, into our people. That's why our investment will be going into our brand. Yeah, just to be really clear, we just didn't wanna fill up the whole release going through every line in the P&L. To be really clear, no change in any aspect of our medium-term aspirations. Thank you for asking the question.
I think I'll just add this point, just completely for the avoidance of doubt. Obviously, this is a quarterly update focused on the quarterly and year-to-date financials, which is why we didn't go line by line through that. If we are going to move away from our midterm aspirations, any of them, we will say so at the time. If we have not said anything, it is that they're still intact. They're intact until we say or if we ever say otherwise. We should explain on that basis.
Yeah. I appreciate you asking. Thank you. Yeah. It's important to avoid any confusion. Thank you. Yeah.
One last very quick question. Historically, the fourth quarter has seen a little bit of seasonality to the upside versus the third quarter, excluding that, obviously, the big pickup in the second quarter. Is there any change in expectations that the seasonality will be experienced in the fourth quarter?
Yeah. We're not gonna give any guidance specifically on the quarter, but obviously, given we've given third quarter year to date, and we're reiterating full year, which only has one quarter left. We can mathematically work out what the fourth quarter should be in order to be able to achieve those guidance numbers.
'Cause consensus, I'm just thinking when you say slight, slightly below, I don't. What does the quantum of slightly mean? Are we talking about 2% or 10%?
Well, slightly. We're not gonna give anything more than slightly below. Slightly below AUD 497. Like, there's only a range that you can come in at that's slightly below that. I'm gonna leave that to you, but it's slightly below. Once again, given we've got third quarter in at AUD 384, like, you can look at historically what fourth quarter does and what the current trajectory of the business is, and you'll come down to a relatively narrow range.
Yeah. Good one. I'll leave it. I'll pass that to you guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mike Younger from Prime Value. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. I just wanted to clarify, when you're talking looking at closing the valuation gap that you perceive, is that, on the inorganic side only looking at outward opportunities, or are you also looking at potential to realize value from inward opportunities?
Thanks, Mike. I think, you know, as you would expect from any board or management, we have to look at all opportunities. We will absolutely proactively investigate a range of opportunities that might provide value for all, you know, for all stakeholders across the business.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question is a follow-up from Aryan Norozi from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Sorry, apologies, I got cut out. Just two more from me, please. Just around the customer acquisition cost backdrop. I mean, you obviously mentioned that you saw some level of improvement, I think last half early into this quarter, but that's sort of still remaining elevated. Can you just give us an idea around how you're thinking about that, particularly with respect to Google's cookie changes in 2023? I mean, how should we expect? Will that be another step up in CAC over the next sort of 12, 24 months, please?
I'll talk to the second part, and then Emma will talk specifically over the quarter. Look, in terms of the cookie deprecation, that's obviously something that the industry is aware of, and coming. You can imagine that there's a lot of work, both, you know, internally for us here at Redbubble, but also right across the industry to work through that. I think that is. Given that it has been flagged, you know, well in advance, there's plenty of opportunities for the industry to work through what that means and adjust. Whether that causes another step up, I'm not sure, to be honest.
I'm, you know, as I said, there is a lot of work and a lot of new tech coming through to adjust to those changes. Both ourselves and the whole industry does have a fair bit of time to adjust to those changes. In terms of during the quarter, I might let Emma talk to that a little bit.
It's one of the challenges in talking interquarter, because obviously we came out and did the half year results and talked to those briefly in January and then in February again. Everyone kept asking us at the time, "What's happening with CAC this week, today, tomorrow?" I keep saying that they're a bit volatile, and I know everyone hates hearing that, but that is actually true. Even over the quarter's results that we are reporting, there was volatility in that line. At various points during the quarter, CACs were actually low, competition, you know, was decreased and organic demand was strong. At other points in the quarter, that wasn't the case.
Certainly, you know, it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone on the call to know that as, you know, fuel prices have gone up, we've got the war announced in March, you know, consumer demand during that March period was a little bit more subdued. But it does change quite frequently from day to day and from week to week.
Perfect. Just for clarification, you mentioned 2% for the fourth quarter in an earlier question. Could you please clarify what you're talking about? Are you saying that the fourth quarter to date is up 2%? Sorry if I missed that bit.
No. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. No comment on current quarter to date. That was in response to Anna's question about the revenue quality, was it in line with our expectations and from an underlying perspective, what was it doing? The answer I was giving was that for the third quarter, on an underlying basis, which excludes marks and earnings on a paid basis, it was a negative 2% growth rate year-on-year on a flowing basis.
Perfect. Last one, just around the hiring piece. I mean, how far through that hiring process are you? You expect to be full by the end of this quarter. Can you just give us an idea on how many full-time heads you expect to employ over the next sort of 3, 6, 9, 12 months, please? Just so we can get an idea on that pipeline.
Thanks, Aryan. Appreciate it. There's a couple of things. There's one, we still do have a number of vacancies, particularly in the Redbubble business. We have filled a number of those vacancies with consultant and contractor staff, so on medium-term contracts. That's been a real help to us this calendar year in terms of giving us some of that capacity to you know, get moving on some of these opportunities. What that does come at though, is a bit more of a run rate. They're obviously more expensive resources than permanent FTEs.
Part of our challenge is both to increase our total number of staff, but also over the next three to six months to be rolling off some of those contractors into FTEs, which is, you know, a challenge for our talent team to be doing both. Also actually brings down the run rate from that we're experiencing. We still have a bit of work to do on the talent side. We're not putting out exact targets because of these two issues. You know, and you can imagine this depends on who's, you know, the exact person that's being recruited. Are they filling one of our vacancies, or are they rolling in for a role currently filled as a contractor?
Our FTE number would therefore be the same, but obviously the cost, you know, goes down in that scenario versus if it's a vacancy, the cost goes up. I'm sorry I'm not giving you an exact answer, but you know, there's quite a few moving parts at the moment in the talent space.
Yeah. I think what I would just add to that because we've been asked this question consistently before, particularly around the operating expense investment. We are not at the moment planning to do another big step up in operating expenses in the next financial period. That being said, as we've progressively built up our operating expense base during this financial year period, we go through the gate at the thirtieth of June at a certain run rate. Obviously it's that run rate that matters. Next year will be higher than this year, just based solely off the run rate. We're closer to the end of the hiring than we are at the start, I think it would be safe to say.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Ilczynski for closing remarks.
I just want to say thank you all for joining us today. We very much appreciate the questions. I also want to take this moment to acknowledge Louise Lambe th, who's been our Head of IR and with Redbubble for almost five years. Louise is unfortunately leaving us soon to go on to a wonderful new opportunity. This is her last Investor Relations call with us, and I just want to take this moment to acknowledge and thank Louise for all the work she's done with all of our investors. Thank you all for talking to us. We look forward to talking to a number of you over the coming days.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.