Good day and welcome to the Corporate Travel Management first half year results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Jamie Pherous, Founder and Managing Director, to begin the conference. Jamie, over to you. Jamie, you may begin.
Good morning, everyone. Sorry about that. My name is Jamie Pherous. I'm Founder and CEO of CTM. I'm also joined this morning by Cale Bennett, our CFO. We're both pleased to present our 1H 2023 results. Look, this call should take about 30 minutes with a bit of time for Q&A after the presentation. Also my apologies for the short time between the results release and this call. I'm in Omaha, in the U.S. at the moment, we're having the call quite early Australian time to kind of, to accommodate the late afternoon here. Thanks for your patience. I think if we can go straight to slide five, please. The 1H 2023 group financial highlights.
I need to point out that this result is a record 1H TTV and revenue for the company, higher than FY 2019 by quite a margin. TTV of approximately AUD 4.2 billion, revenue of approximately AUD 291.2 million is a record for CTM's first half. More importantly for the market, this revenue is exactly where we thought we'd land for 1H and puts us on track for FY 2023 and FY 2024, as we'll talk later through this presentation. This is really a testament to our strategy through COVID, our financial strength, and as you'll see through this presentation, the strong client wins that set up a positive momentum that we're seeing right now in 2H 2023. Secondly, I just wanna point out this is a real clean set of results. The underlying is minimal.
It's just for some Helloworld acquisition costs. That's important because at the end of the day, it's not about EBITDA, it's about making money. Whilst EBITDA for the 1/2 is AUD 51.3 million, the business is generating fast-growing PBT at AUD 30.4 million and NPATA of AUD 22.1 million. Again, reinforcing CTM's recovery and return to business as usual. We are also paying tax, a sign of real underlying profit generation. Thirdly, it's important to note that during the half we were clearly in rebuild mode and good staff was scarce. As a result, EBITDA included an AUD 8.4 million expense for investing in people ahead of the recovery to ensure we had the staff to service customers through this recovery.
As you'll see later, we expect to leverage this capacity imminently in the second half, why the margins will be going up. Next is the financial side of things. From a financial point of view, we remain in an enviable position. Clearly, we have cash and balance sheet data over AUD 110 million and continue to have no debt. Next, we're declaring interim dividend of AUD 0.06 A share. This is following on from our AUD 0.05 Per share final FY 2022 dividend as the recovery for CTM continues. We expect dividends to grow in line with NPAT and PBT growth in the second half. Now as we look forward, we expect a record 2H EBITDA result at a higher margin.
This is largely due to recovery momentum, significant new client wins transacting, which we'll touch on, and operational improvements via the scale we've created through COVID. We're now starting to get those results. The outcome is we now expect the second half to be beyond a normal second half skew, which we'll explain to you through the presentation. We're now in a position to provide guidance for FY 2023, underlying EBITDA of AUD 160 million-AUD 180 million and underlying PBTA of AUD 120 million-AUD 140 million. Both these outcomes will be a record result for CTM, and it's nice to share that CTM D&A is low, and it's approximately AUD 40 million per annum. You can see moving forward how we're looking. If we can move on to slide six, our recovery trajectory.
Yeah, this slide charts our path graphically through to FY 2024, is just an update from our slide pack in the last financial year. If you look at this slide, as you can see on the left-hand side, FY 2019 is pre-COVID, also our record year. What we always wanted to do, as we've said, is it's when we cut through those record times. When you chart the green line, which is revenue, FY 2019 revenue, and the blue line, which is the FY 2019 EBITDA level, you can see the growth required to achieve FY 2024's forecast is much lower than what we need for the growth in FY 2023. Essentially, as you can see, the graph is flattening out in FY 2024, more to a steady state growth position for CTM. That's important to note.
As we go through this slide pack, we will talk to you a lot about why we feel so confident in the next two years. Basically because of the momentum we've got, significant knowing client wins and the new trading that shores up our confidence for both years. If you now go to slide seven, our people. Whilst much of the recovery is now behind us, it required a really large upfront investment, attracting, retaining, and developing our team through what was a very complicated recovery cycle for the industry, where, as we said before, transactions took nearly double the amount of time compared to pre-COVID as the supply chain was rebuilding. There's four key points I wanna make. Firstly, it's about our operational executive team that's navigated this recovery. All have remained together through not only the downsize but the recovery.
Between myself, our COO, and all our regional CEOs, all have over 30 years average experience in growth and execution. This has been critical to getting us to this point and beyond as they hold the IP and DNA of CTM. Secondly, we have rebuilt our workforce capacity ahead of the recovery. We needed to do that to support additional service demands through what we expected would be a rapid recovery. Pleasingly, we are now back over 3,000 staff with expectations of very negligible employment growth from here on in the second half. Noting that we have that AUD 8.4 million of unused staff capacity costs expensed in the first half. CTM really is back to BAU, maybe a little bit more than you think.
Thirdly, because we moved to profitability before our peers, we were the first to reinstate full salaries, bonuses, and long-term share schemes. All, of course, are being expensed in the P&L and not viewed as non-recurring costs because we see it as a future investment in the business. We've also added an array of new benefits to attract and align staff to customer success. And lastly, we've invested more heavily in bringing our clients and people together to reconnect, develop, and recognize our outperformance. In fact, we've just completed all of our four regional awards and conference programs around the world with wonderful feedback from not only our staff, but our suppliers. This investment is higher than it's ever been, and the cost forms again, part of the 1H result and guidance.
You know, lastly, internal feedback suggests that CTM has never been a better place to work. We think it puts us in really good stead to serve our customers in the second half and beyond. Now on to slide eight, performance by region. I think we can go straight to slide nine if we can. We're waiting for slide nine to come up. This is a summary of the group result already mentioned back on slide five. I won't rehash the details, but a reminder that the result includes a one-off AUD 8.4 million investment for excess staff capacity. While this expense forms part of EBITDA that you see, we expect to leverage this capacity imminently in the areas where it exists. Also wanna point out that we're still investing.
Group overhead was up around 30% to AUD 9.2 million to ensure we have the right skill set to best support what will be a 75% larger business upon full recovery versus FY 2019. It's really about the outlook, and that's what we're gonna touch upon as we go around the grounds. We are taking very strong momentum into 2H due to a combination of activity recovery and significant known client wins transacting. I wanna give you two examples of this momentum, which we've shared on this slide pack. Firstly, January was North America's highest booking volume since FY 2019. Secondly, the European region had a record profit of all time in the month of January. Now, this is good news because January is one of our weakest months of the second half for both regions.
As a result, we expect a strong second half underlying EBITDA beyond our typical 2H skew and at a higher margin as represented by our guidance frames. If we go on to slide 10 to go around the grounds. Before I go into the grounds, I want to talk about our performance by region compared to a very recent Global Business Travel Association report that just came out, a survey, as you can see here. Again, this survey was done mid-January, and what you're seeing is our three key regions, Europe, North America, and APAC of recovery. What we can do is compare in the green circle on the right-hand side, how we're going to the market. As you can see, APAC bookings for GBTA are roughly back at 65% of pre-COVID.
By the way, I'm talking bookings, not TTV. TTV is not a really accurate position of the market 'cause we think air prices are inflated. It's really about the revenue that can generate to make profits that we think is more valuable coming out of this cycle. Going back, when you look at that, the markets APAC bookings are roughly at 65% recovery. CTM/ANZ is at 78%. North American market's about 60% recovered. CTM is at 73% in bookings and revenue. Europe is back at about 61%. CTM is at 146%. This is the first reason why we are now confident we will recover in FY 2024 much earlier than the industry because clearly we have won significant market share versus the industry, and we are seeing that outcome in revenue growth.
Further, we have large know and new wins trading in the second half. Things are looking well for CTM. The second point of this survey, which is really valid, is that 77% of the clients surveyed expect to take more business trips than last year. This corroborates the momentum we're currently experiencing in January so far. Now let's go around the grounds. We'll go to slide 11, North America, if we can. North America, this is still a record TTV and revenue for the region versus FY 2019. TTV of $1.43 billion, revenue $146 million with a $16.6 million EBITDA. For the sake of repeating myself. The U.S. went through a well-publicized stalling of recovery back in May, June of 2022 that continued throughout the half.
As you know, this result in the U.S. holding $6.4 million of staff capacity costs for recovery that quite frankly, never materialized in the first half. Given the scarcity of resources, six months ago, we had to take a long-term view and deliberately carried this cost in the first half. This is the difference for us between a decent first half and a great first half, actually. It's really onto the outlook that matters. The corporate recovery has resumed, with January booking volumes at the highest level since COVID, a positive sign. We are winning lots of new business with a big chunk starting in January, and it's pleasing to see just under two-thirds of all new clients choosing our Lightning booking tool.
As a result of the excess staff we're carrying and integration completion, we're now highly leveraged to a small incremental revenue gain, which we talk on the next slide. This is why I expect a stronger than normal second half skew in the region. If we can go to slide 12 now, and this slide shows the leverage to a small revenue recovery and the position we're in at the moment. Let me explain this slide. The first column represents the 1H 2023 normalized for the excess staff costs we carried for recovery that didn't occur. At that current run rate of 1H at 73% revenue recovery, we expect to make around $4 million a month on a go-forward basis.
If you look at the second column, as you can see, for a small increase to 80% revenue recovery, revenue grows by AUD 2.7 million a month, but costs grow only by AUD 0.7 million a month. This is because as we grow and leverage the operational capacity, we expect support costs to reduce over time now that integration is complete. At 80% recovery, we expect to make AUD 6 million a month. As we've said before, 80% is the magic recovery number to leverage the scale, productivity, and operational improvements from the integration we've done. The last column shows 100% revenue recovery. We expect to make AUD 10 million a month. Again, why is that growing so quickly? It's because the fixed costs or the support costs, they're done.
The only cost we're really adding beyond 80% is incremental, travel agency support to support new transactions. As I said below, importantly, we expect to surpass 80% revenue recovery during the second half in North America. Let's go on to slide 13, Europe. This European result is an outstanding achievement. I'll say that straight up. TTV of AUD 924 million, revenue over AUD 45 million, EBITDA of AUD 17 million, all exceeded FY 2019. Just a reminder that the region is cycling off a record 1H 2022 due to the very large one-off COVID-related projects completed last year that we've previously flagged. Importantly, TTV has nearly doubled since FY 2019. We expect the region to be approximately AUD 2+ billion at the end of the financial year.
This scale, combined with new revenue streams as a result of project expertise we've developed through COVID, puts us in very good stead and has expanded our addressable market in this region. As a result, our expectation for the region is really considerable. January was a regional record profit, and due to significant known client wins starting in the half, we expect a very strong 2H on 1H growth, well beyond normal seasonal skews. To put this into perspective, the region is expected to be our largest profit contributor to the half by quite a margin. Now on to slide 14, ANZ. ANZ also recorded really good TTV over AUD 1.3 billion in the half, and record revenue of over AUD 80 million in the half, delivering a AUD 23.5 million EBITDA result.
Importantly, TTV has recovered beyond FY 2019 levels, and this includes Helloworld Corporate in the baseline, demonstrating our market share gains that we've made over the last few years, which we've always said all along. This region saw the most rapid recovery surge of all regions in the half with TTV off a big base up over 450% on last year. Truly surprising all of us at CTM. As a result, we had to make significant quick investments early in the half in both our graduate program and supporting a ramp-up in resources to support our largest account in the region, the Whole of Australian Government. Essentially, this investment cost us AUD 2 million without any return in the half, but is clearly paying dividends from late in the half with improved servicing across the board.
The ANZ outlook is also positive, like all the regions. China opening up will be a welcomed, will be welcome news to Australia, New Zealand corporate travelers because we expect the supply to boost scheduling, competition, and as a result of competition, reduce international airfare pricing, which we expect will spark an outbound international recovery for the region. It'll be good for our supplier revenues for the region as well. Importantly, we expect we'll have the staff to manage this expected uplift. Combined with Helloworld synergies, the client wins transacting and productivity gains expected from a more normalized international market, we expect, again, a significantly stronger second half. Onto slide 15, Asia. I'm pleased to say Asia is also now making money. As you may know, we are highly exposed to Hong Kong and China.
Hong Kong opened late in the quarter, and as a result, the region generated approximately AUD 20 million revenue off of 513 million TTV and returned a profit of AUD 3.4 million for the half. It's nice to share that the momentum we are building because over half of this profit came in the last two months of the half, showing the impact of key markets opening for travel. Our outlook is rosy. China was the last piece of the puzzle for CTM to make a full recovery in FY 2024, and unexpectedly, it opened earlier than we thought. When we take into account China's opening, Asia's continuous market share wins, competitors that either left the market or downsized to unsustainable levels, we expect a step change in performance in the second half and into 2024.
As you can see around all regions, everything is coming good at the right time for CTM. Now I'm gonna hand over to Cale Bennett, our CFO, to talk through the group's financial summary slides. Over to you, Cale.
Thank you, Jamie. If we can turn to slide 17, the group profit and loss. CTM has delivered another strong half. On revenue and other income of AUD 291.9 million in 1H 2023, an increase of 79% on the PCP. We earned underlying EBITDA of AUD 51.3 million, up 182%, and an underlying net profit before tax of AUD 30.4 million. Our statutory net profit after tax of AUD 21.9 million continued the momentum from FY 2022. As Jamie mentioned earlier, this was a clean set of results, with just AUD 1.1 million of non-recurring costs in total, driven by integration costs for Helloworld Corporate. We've outlined our D&A expectations for FY 2023.
The impact of the Helloworld Corporate acquisition, a lower Australian dollar, and the timing of project completion and movement out of width pushed our D&A up in the half to AUD 27.2 million, or AUD 19.9 million excluding acquisition amortization. A similar amount is expected in second half. This will bring our total D&A towards AUD 55 million for FY 2023 or AUD 40 million including acquisition amortization, which is a non-cash amount. Our effective tax rate for the half is 28.6%. Expectations for our effective tax rate in future periods should settle around 27%. On to slide 18 and the balance sheet. CTM continues to maintain a very strong balance sheet.
We have not utilized our committed funding facility since June 2020. The company maintains significant cash holdings of AUD 110.3 million, including AUD 30.4 million of client cash. Our reported cash was affected in the half by balance date timing and working capital rewind in ANZ and Europe, which are both now above 2019 levels of activity. Airline sweep payment timing was unfavorable for us at 31st of December 2022. This changes from period to period. June 2023 is a more favorable timing period, as was last 30 June, which we flagged at the time. You can just move on to slide 19, the cash flow. Consistent with historic experience, our operating cash flow conversion remains strong.
Management remains focused on maintaining discipline around cash preservation, noting the working capital requirements of recovery are largely complete in ANZ and Europe, two of our hungriest working capital regions. Our corporate cash balance remains robust, with business profitability contributing cash to the business. Our investment in software has stepped up as we invest in the ANZ region for integration of Helloworld Corporate and in North America as they build out global functionality to our tech suite and work to improve productivity within that business. The lower Aussie dollar impacted the reported number during the half also. We do expect the CapEx program to revert towards historic averages in FY 2024 and beyond as these projects are delivered. If we just move to slide 20, I'll hand back to Jamie to talk to the outlook.
Thanks, Cale. If we can move straight on to slide 21, if we can. We'll talk through FY 2023 and FY 2024 guidance. Onto the next slide, if we can, to 21. Firstly, FY 2023 guidance. As we've said before, underlying EBITDA range of AUD 160 million-AUD 180 million, but importantly, we're giving full year underlying PBTA guidance of AUD 120 million-AUD 140 million, just again to show people that we are, we are making real money. Again, I wanna remind you both would be record results for CTM. Secondly, we expect strong momentum into 2H 2023, and the result is expected to set up a strong FY 2024 with that second half skew.
Thirdly, we expect significantly higher revenue per revenue EBITDA margins in 2H 2023 due to significant client wins transacting, the supply chain stability, increasing productivity, and supplier revenues accordingly. If I look at things, I'll just summarize the group activity update. Firstly, while we continue to monitor recession, we've been doing this all the way back since May or June. We're monitoring those impacts closely. Demand still remains strong. We don't see any signs of macroeconomic impact on recovery at this point. Secondly, the good news is the supply chain is stabilizing, assisting in increased productivity because booking times are lower, so we get better returns at the time. Also, helping our supplier revenue streams and margins. Thirdly, our client wins are great.
The client win pipelines at all-time highs, we expect 97% + client retention this year like we have every year since 2000. I'll go around the grounds and just sum up, you know, just to recap where we're at, as we stated earlier. North America, January booking volumes were a record since COVID, we expect us to pass that 80% revenue recovery at some point during 2H 2023. At that point, we'll have strong ongoing profit contributions from this region. Europe, again, we've seen the significant client wins are transacting, expect to provide a company leading 2H result by a big margin compared to the other regions. We also said January was a record profit despite January being a seasonally weak month. ANZ post-vacation period activity at record levels again.
International supply, operational improvements and synergies to provide a stronger 2H 2023. We've talked about Asia with, you know, with, as we've said, we've experienced an immediate activity increase upon China opening on the 8th of January with demand from our corporate base, our shipping supply. Onto slide 22 to 24, FY 2024 trajectory, if we can. Again, this is more of a recap of what we said before. I just want to share why we're confident that we're on track for both FY 2023 and FY 2024. It's really those four points. Firstly, the first point, we've demonstrated how we're tracking well ahead of the corporate industry, referring to the GBTA January survey, back on slide 10. That's particularly Europe, ANZ, and North America.
This is why we expect to be at full recovery by FY 2024. We're just clearly recovering faster than market. We've said that all along. Secondly, it's a significant known wins transacting in 2H 2023. We share with you the large client wins transacting and the known client win that will keep this momentum building through 2H 2023 and into 2024. We shared the early results of the wins via the strong January outcomes in North America and also in Europe. Clearly, a large 2H bodes very well for FY 2024. Thirdly, from a profit point of view, we expect significant incremental margin through scale. The integration completion in Helloworld and also in North America and the flowing operational improvements in productivity we will get from that. That plays out well. Lastly, China is now opened.
This is the last piece in the puzzle for a full recovery in FY 2024 for CTM. We think that region will go well and into 2024 now. Onto our last slide 23, is really about our long-term strategy and execution. It's a good time to remind the market it's been very short-sighted with all the things we've had to encounter in the last few years, just about the key investment piece of this business. Firstly, we have a track record of strong performance and execution. I want to remind you that we've been successfully operating for nearly 29 years, and CTM has delivered TTV, EBITDA and dividend growth in 26 years of those 29 years in all economic conditions.
When I say that, there's a lot of recessions in that and other little economic factors that we couldn't control. The only exceptions that we didn't grow was COVID and 9/11. We've got a very good track record. Secondly, we're in an industry that has huge untapped growth opportunity, and now we're finally positioned to seize that opportunity. As we said before, the corporate travel segment is a huge and fragmented sector, estimated at $1.5 trillion by FY 2025. Yet we are currently the fourth largest corporate travel brand in the world, yet manage under 1% of that global market. There's a big opportunity there. Furthermore, we also expect further industry consolidation after COVID, and CTM clearly has the expertise and the balance sheet to be part of any industry consolidation.
The third point is our value proposition. It's compelling and sustainable to the corporate market. We've said this before, we believe no one can do all three that you need, which is highly personalized service with technology, and deliver a return on investment through good data and reporting to our customers. We believe this is the only way to be long-term sustainable in this industry, I think it's fair to say that we've been able to execute to this strategy at scale in every region we operate. Fourth is the technology competitive advantage that we have. As you all know, we build our own client-facing technology in collaboration with our clients.
This has been a large investment that's delivered strong market returns and margins in ANZ and Europe, with further margin opportunity in the U.S. and Asia once both these regions reach 80% revenue recovery. That's what we're looking forward to. Lastly, it's the investment pieces of CTM. Beyond 2024, we've said we're targeting double-digit compound organic revenue growth and of which 1/2 of the incremental revenue will convert to EBITDA. That means we get double-digit top-line growth, we expect more than that at the EBITDA line. Of course, our FY 2024 growth expectations are already outlined in this paper, but will be much higher due to the recovery phase that we're still going through. Secondly, you know, to do that sort of growth, but also generate free cash flow and not require debt to generate growth is unique.
We also have expectations that 50%-60% of NPAT will be paid out in dividends to our shareholders. Lastly, in the environment we live in, is we're really pleased to say that CTM is already carbon neutral for internal travel, and we're targeting net zero for Scope two greenhouse gas emissions by FY 2025. That's something we're also very proud of, as is our staff. With that, I'm gonna hand back over to the moderator for any questions.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit your questions to two in order to get to as many callers as possible. Your first question will come from the line of Hayley Kim with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just my first one on the incremental EBITDA margin. I think the incremental revenue to EBITDA conversion in the half was well below the 50% you were targeting previously. I understand this is partly driven by, you know, access staff and integration costs, but can you just provide some more color on this, whether there was anything else that contributed to this? Also what this means for your full recovery EBITDA guidance of AUD 265 million.
Thanks, Hayley. It's mostly the staff and other investments we made that we couldn't get a return on. I, as you could appreciate at the time, staff were scarce. We're gonna hold on to them. We're certainly not going to let them go in that market, knowing and expecting a full recovery. I think the takeaway is, FY 2024, we're very confident at this stage of because of-
Okay.
The other things we're seeing. It's the growth to scale, the supplier payments are coming back, the productivity from... I mean, don't forget we've had a lot of integration as well through this that's coming through. Expect better productivity, not only from the integration, but also as travel is getting more stable, the time to make a booking is becoming less. We've got all these things that we're seeing coming our way.
Okay. I guess the follow on is, the logistic related revenue in Europe that you've highlighted. Can you just elaborate on this a little bit more and what that actually relates to? You know, how are the margins for this revenue stream compare to the underlying EU business?
It's more related to things outside of travel, logistics and the revenue streams are pretty good, and better than travel. We'll leave it at that for now, but it just sets us up really well in two ways. Obviously, it's a big unaddressable market that no one's really attacked, that we've got a great opportunity to go after. It's working well for us, and it's just gonna set Europe to be much bigger and a much bigger addressable market for us to go after than we probably would have thought pre-COVID. That's probably an advantage of COVID. I think through COVID-
Right.
We proved some expertise for some pretty unique challenges at huge scale that we managed well, and that's playing out for us. We flagged it earlier. Now it's really starting to play out as normal businesses getting back to business that have that same demand and need. I'll leave it at that.
Okay. Okay, quite clear. Then just my last question is on the client wins. I understand that you don't provide your client win values, but can you just give some sense around your client win momentum on an annualized spend basis, potentially, and what this sort of looks like compared to your prior halves and quarters? I guess what I'm trying to understand is you benefited from the elevated level of RFP activity post COVID in the sector. I'm just really keen to understand how much of this has now been played out and whether we're sort of back in the more normalized environment in terms of the client wins and market share gain momentum.
Look, as you know, we don't mention the numbers because we don't have the 100% confidence right now in what a customer says that we've won it out actually happens. I think for us to give guidance, we don't take that lightly. We have a good track record, that guidance and that second half skew tells you two things, just how much is transacting. As I've said over and over in this presentation, we also know of known wins that are starting either started in January or starting very soon that are quite significant.
When we do the math on that, we feel pretty comfortable about FY 2023 and the sort of second half we're looking at doing sets us up very nicely for FY 2024, which would make 2024 a very normal type of year for us. Clearly, we're a much bigger business, so we expect a lot more growth. We've outlined that over the long term, we wanna get double-digit top, and that's gonna go higher. At the moment, we're clearly winning more than that.
All right, great. Thanks, Jamie.
Than that aspiration.
Your next question will come from the line of Darshana Nair with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, Jamie. Quick question on North America recovery. Can you give us a bit of sense on what you're seeing on the ground in terms of color with how different activity was in January versus the past half? In terms of the new client sign-ons in the region, should we think about the margin profile as being similar to normalized levels, or is there anything different about it?
Yeah. Two things. Just the first thing on activity. It's funny. I'm in North America with Kevin, our CEO, and, you know, Kevin's been with me traveling around the world, and he'll say the same thing. He'll say everywhere else in the world, travel's pretty easy, but it's still pretty frustrating here. It's getting better. Obviously, there's been some interesting things that have happened over here with Southwest going down, pretty bad weather events. You know, we speak to the airlines, and the airlines are really conscious of getting that ease of travel back, and they're working really hard at that. Your second question in terms of wins and margins, we're winning stuff at the same old margins.
I think what we're starting to see, and you'll see in the second half as well, is that if you go back to when we made this acquisition, we said we'd get clearly synergies at the bottom line through just the elimination of duplication in one system and the productivity that will flow from that. We're also seeing nice gains in the top line through buying power, which we hope to get, we're really starting to see as things are normalizing. It just bodes well. The challenge for us is, again, we're carrying extra staff for a recovery that didn't happen in the last half.
If we can leverage those that opportunity this half, we're gonna see a stepped up change in profit with a very small incremental gain in revenue, and that's what we're looking forward to.
All right. Thank you. Just a second one on the operating cash flow. Noted that there was a weakness in terms of the timing issue on payments. Can you give us a sense of what quantum that was for? Also, what is your longer term expectations of cash conversions as activities ramp up?
Cale, I'll leave that to you.
Thanks, Darshana. Yeah, look, I guess we have a well, a well-communicated and well poured over timing around our cash flows at each, at each half. I won't talk to the specific numbers for the half, but just I guess when you think about the size of our TTV relative to our EBITDA, I'm sure you can put the numbers together and see that it is swamped by movements in sweep timing, which we can't control. With respect to our cash flow conversion, there's been no fundamental changes in the business from pre to post COVID. You know, we are, you know, we give some terms in Europe and ANZ, but not a lot.
That has mostly played out now. From here, you know, we'll look to revert back towards that, around that 90%, cash conversion percentage is what you should expect.
All right. Thank you very much.
The only variable to play out, just sort of, just letting you know, the only variable to play out is the recovery of Asia, specifically in wholesale, but we'll see that.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question will come from the line of Mitchell Sonogan with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Jamie and Cale. Thanks for taking the questions. James, just quickly, on the FY 2024 guidance, you're still talking about a full recovery, but just taking away any information. You're still guiding to the AUD 265 million of EBITDA, and just wondering whether there's upside to that, given that at the time you're expecting China to have reopened by June this year, and you've mentioned how big that part of the business is to CTD. Just keen to understand what you're thinking about FY 2024 guidance. Thank you.
Yeah. I think the key message, Mitchell, is we're still on track and that's a really good thing to say. I think I don't expect China or Asia to be back in FY 2024 because the time that momentum comes, we've learned from the other regions it takes longer and so forth. There's other regions that are outperforming, like Europe. Europe's gonna materially outperform what we would have thought it would have done when we were back in FY 2019. All in all, the good thing about being diversified, we're, you know, we're gonna take unders and overs, but the way the business is going, and if we continue to do what we're doing, we're right on that pathway. Of course, we'll give guidance next year for FY 2024.
I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but if you look at that graph, you go back to the graphs we're showing pre, that the growth curve between FY 2023 and FY 2024 is actually getting flatter. That sort of tells you how we're thinking about things.
Yep. sorry, just to clarify, is that FY 2024 AUD 265 million EBITDA, is that the full recovery?
Yeah. Well, yeah, we'll be giving guidance somewhere around that mark at a point in time. That's as a full recovery number, that's still what we expect it will take. Yes.
Yep. Okay. Just jumping onto the North American region. If I looked at the revenue and EBITDA recovery, this is just simply doubling the first half versus what your calendar year 2019 pro forma was for CTD and Travel and Transport. It looks like the EBITDA is probably only in the 30%-35% recovery. Revenue's about 65%. I'm just trying to understand how you compare that versus how you're seeing the market over there in North America through 1H 2023. I guess just looking at the commentary from airlines and other data available is tracking at around 70%-75% through that half. Just trying to understand if you think you are meeting the market or if you're exceeding the overall market activity levels. Thank you.
Yeah. I think the airlines, that was a combination of leisure and corporate. Secondly, we know we're at 73%. We know what a full recovery looks like. It's around AUD 33 million a month. In Australian dollars. That's what we're hunting down in terms of full revenue recovery. What I can say is, you know, we've put out January booking volumes. Again, we're not too concerned about TTV because TTV prices are moving around. That's not how we make our money. It's mostly transactional. We're, you know, when we compare to GBTA, that's pretty, that's two-week-old data or three-week-old data. That's a pretty good price point to measure against. As I said, January booking volumes are the highest since COVID. We think we're doing well.
We know we had a big chunk of new clients start in January. There'll be another chunk coming up as well. You know, I think we're in good stead. Like I said, you know, we've done a lot of work through integration and things, and it's really now about how we get to 80%, and that's when we really start to make very good money out of this business at the levels we hope for.
Okay.
You know, to do 100% actually. We've set it up to do well. It's a matter of now of continuing winning and seeing a bit of recovery come back.
Great. Just one super quick one for Cale, if I may, Jamie. Just on the AUD 160 million-AUD 180 million EBITDA guidance, there's about AUD 40 million of capitalized R&D in the first half. What's the expectation for second half built into that guidance? Thanks, guys.
It's about the same as our first half, Mitch. It is stepped up a little bit in in this year for those those points that I spoke to earlier.
Thanks, Cale.
Mitch, if you go to the P&L slide, yeah, it shows the EBITDA. Roughly AUD 20 million first half, AUD 40 million second half is what we expect, and hence the PBT guidance as well. We wanna put PBT guidance out there 'cause we know a lot of other people with EBITDA are making some very interesting non-recurring costs.
Your next question will come from the line of Tim Plumbe with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I'll keep it to two questions. Just the first one, Jamie. You've mentioned historically, you know, that 30%, 70% EBITDA seasonal skew. If I take AUD 51.3, apply a 30%, that gives me kind of full year at AUD 171. You've also commented, you know, you're expecting a stronger usual second half than the typical seasonal skew. Can I kind of read into that based off those comments, that it should be more than AUD 171 if as long as everything goes right?
I'll just hold your horses there, Tim. What would be the best advice? I mean, firstly, just our normal skew is more like a 33/ 66, but we said because of the recovery dynamic, it's 30/70. I mean, you're on the right track in the sense that, obviously in the first half we had AUD 8.4 million of staff costs that we didn't really get a return on. You know, it's still five months to go. It's still a bit up and down, that's why we've given guides of AUD 160 million-AUD 180 million. Let's just see how we go with that and if we do well, we'll talk to it and we'll just see where it goes.
Right now, I mean, just the fact that we're putting out guides of AUD 160 million-AUD 180 million, and a PBT guidance as well is I think is sufficient for at this point in time.
Got it. Just the second one, again, another question around seasonality. I mean, when you guys look at recovered revenues, you're kind of looking at it versus the simple average of, you know, 810 divided by 12, whereas there is normally a natural seasonal skew to the second half.
Yeah.
Top line revenue. I mean, if I go back and look at FY 2022, it's kind of 43.5, 56.5 once I back out Helloworld.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
If I did.
Yeah, you did.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, you're on the right track. I think-
Oh, great.
What we said, we said AUD 291 or so was right on track for what we hoped to do. If you go back.
Yeah.
You know, we're hoping to get to 80% of revenue. The thing is, if you look at this result, it's right on track. Where it's not on track was essentially the extra staff we employed that we didn't get a return on. You know, that was deliberate and I think... I can't stress to you guys that our workforce is nearly back to where it needs to be. What we forecast in new staff is so marginal because of all the productivity gains we're getting in North America and ANZ through the acquisition. My view is that we're a lot more rebuilt than our peers and maybe a lot more rebuilt than you think. Unfortunately, we took those costs in the first half, but we've got to take a long-term view.
Staff were scarce. We weren't going to eliminate staff because a recovery, you know, took six Months longer than we thought in North America, for example. It's just, it's one of those reopening things. We said we're gonna go, you know, it won't be a smooth line to 2024. I think the theme, as you can understand from listening to Carl and I, it's getting a lot more BAU, particularly with the exception of Asia, it's getting very BAU. That's a good thing.
Got it. Thanks.
Your next question will come from the line of John O'Shea with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Hi, John.
All right. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Look, a couple of things from me. Firstly, if you could give a bit of comment around the revenue margin or the EBITDA margin. I noticed in a couple of the regions, revenue margin appeared to get held backwards and what your expectations on that are. The second thing in the U.S. of note, I noticed that American Airlines have made some comments around closing down their corporate division and the likelihood that they don't expect corporate travel to recover to more than 75% of pre-COVID levels. Just wanted your comments on those two, please, guys, if I could.
Look, I'll Ca, I might start with the margins. Look, I think it's a mix of business. If you look at ANZ, obviously the combination of Helloworld has taken that down. I think the other place you might have been referring to is, was Europe, and that was more.
Mm-hmm.
A mix coming off really what was, you know, we had that, a couple of, you know, very large COVID projects that were, you know, probably at higher margins. If I take a view moving forward, John, we don't really look at revenue TTV. We're really looking at revenue EBITDA, and we are very comfortable that that's gonna improve and quite significantly this half because of the scale, better supplier deals, better productivity, and all those things combined. I think that's the most important thing. I think that's what you're referring to. Something else, just come back to us.
Sure.
Secondly, American Airlines. It's been interesting. I can't really comment further than American other than just to reinforce some of their comments that through COVID, they had a big swing to leisure, flying to the Caribbean and all those areas, and they really own that. I think their corporate market share themselves, they're saying is lower than it used to be. I can't really comment on what they said at 75%. I think for the way their business mix is, you know, their
I guess the question is what are you expecting from your business in relation to the U.S. market and in terms of the recovery versus pre-COVID?
We don't really know other than we know we just keep winning. I mean, I think you look at places like, you know, Europe. Europe, if you look at the stats, should be, I think statistically should be a basket case because of the war, it's the most inflation in the world, but we just keep winning business. I think now that the integration of the U.S. is largely done, obviously doing integration and growing at the same time is really hard, but we really have been winning a lot of business and that's continued. I think we're just gonna, like we've always said, it's growth that matters. We can't control that.
We don't have a position. We just don't, other than we think it's gonna keep coming, and we just wanna get to 80%, which hopefully is very imminent. At that point, we start to make good money anyway.
Sure. Thanks a lot, guys.
I mean, I keep coming back to FY 2024, right? We're gonna have unders and overs, FY 2024, we expect to get that sort of revenue. If we get that sort of revenue, we, you know, give or take, we should be getting to that sort of profit that we're putting out there as well. Of course, yeah, a lot of bridge under the water yet, it's... As we said, we're confident in our trajectory 'cause of all the things I've just said in this presentation.
Your next question will come from the line of Samuel Seow with Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the outlook, just wanna understand, or perhaps could you talk to kinda like the average level of corporate activity to hit kinda like your top end and low end of guidance? Within that, any conservatism you're baking in for the macro?
We don't really look at it that way. We're really looking at momentum and knowing wins is how we build guidance. I don't know what else more to say than that. You know, obviously if things go well, we get the top, if things don't, we get the bottom. I think things are getting more BAU for us to give guidance. We're getting more comfortable in predictability of forwards. If you go back, Sam, before COVID, I think we had a very good track record of guidance and how we performed to guidance. I'll leave it at that.
Okay. No, that's fine. Maybe just the half keeping on the contribution in Europe. Kinda can you break down perhaps the travel versus non-travel?
Oh, no, it's all travel. It's just that we're just getting different things in it. It's just that we don't really look at it that way and I don't think we really wanna. It's just a matter of clients and getting different streams from those clients so that they're not your traditional travel streams and I think that's a good thing.
Is there amount that would reverse or is it all ongoing and structural? Just trying to get a feel, is it accounted for, you know, through TTV or, you know, just trying to think about modeling and how we should forecast travel?
Yeah. Yeah. It'll be accounted for through the same streams, TTV and revenue and EBITDA. It's just, you know, it's just different revenue streams for doing some different work, but still travel related is the best thing I can say. I mean, I think you know, if I look out to 2024 and so forth, Europe's gonna be a bigger contributor than we would've thought pre-COVID.
Okay. Okay. All ongoing, nothing reversed? Because I would've thought some of that project stuff was COVID related, right?
It had reversed. That was a big stuff last year. You can see, EBITDA actually went backwards on the half because of that, a couple of really big things we did back in FY 2022.
Okay. Too easy. All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Your next question will come from the line of Mark Wade with CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Pleasing to see the recovery continuing. Question's just on pricing of tickets for planes and for rooms in hotels. It looks like on the way up, pricing didn't really seem to hold back the corporate demand or volumes. I'm just trying to get a sense of what might happen and how corporates might react if prices come back a bit. Does it stimulate even more volume?
Hi, Mark. Yeah, we think so. Talking to our clients, they'll be saying, I mean, there's some parts of the world where ticket prices are still obscene, largely Australia, where international ticket prices are still pretty obscene. To be honest with you, I think the airlines are also acknowledging that now. A bit of, you know, from talking to customers, if a fare, for example, to Sydney to L.A. was AUD 20,000 and they were gonna send three people, they might send one or two , that'll change if it normalizes. We expect it to stimulate demand and just make flying more viable in terms of an ROI. Having said that, as you can see again in the revenue notes, transactions is where we make more money.
Prices aren't as concerning to us as, say, the leisure side of travel. Yeah, we'd expect there'd be a bit more price elasticity than people might think. Even, you know, you see Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, they're pretty expensive as well, and there's a bit of price elasticity on it. The airlines are acknowledging that. If they're acknowledging it, I'd expect that there will be a bit of a boost.
Yeah, that'd be good for you guys then. Just lastly, any the Aussie Government contracts, I know you're loathe to talk to individual contracts, but is there anything we need to be aware of there if that rolls off or when that might be extended to?
No, I think we said the same thing all along is that, you know, the tender is underway at the moment. If we were to lose it, we'd come off, you know, we'd still have the business, the full business in FY 2024. I think, you know, we're doing the best we can. We think we're in the best position to retain that business, but we'll have to wait and see. It comes out in the same officer. If you go to FY 2024 and FY 2025, the contribution isn't as material to the full group as we're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Mm-hmm.
Which is always the way we operate in terms of diversity. I can't really share at this point what that profit contribution is, but it's obviously a much lower margin per dollar than other clients being the biggest client in that region.
Yeah, makes sense. Okay. All the best. Thanks, guys.
it's not gonna affect FY 2023 or FY 2024, put it that way. Win or lose.
Your next question will come from the line of Wei-Weng Chen with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just a couple of questions here. Firstly, on guidance. Just eyeballing the charts, it seems like your EBITDA, guidance is expected to be generated on about AUD 650 million of revenue. Is that kind of right? You guys didn't give a revenue range.
Give or take. Yeah. Give or take.
Yeah. Following up from a prior question, that AUD 160-AUD 180 guidance, is that purely a function of the top line or are there kind of cost factors within that?
It's top line, but also as we said, you know, as you move forward, every incremental dollar from now, gets a little better because of, we've got the fixed costs are pretty much done. We've built out our workforce largely, so that the incremental workforce build from here will just be frontline. It won't be anything else, largely. Thirdly, supplier deals. As things are opening up, there's more competition nationally. Those supplier revenues are starting to come back in. As you can see, because if we break down revenue, that they have been largely nonexistent in most markets. That's why.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. Just on this new addressable opportunity in Europe, maybe can you speak to, you know, in a steady state, proportionally, how much of sort of European revenue that's expected to contribute to?
We don't know yet. We'll let you know in the second half.
I guess follow up as well.
Yes.
Sorry. Just following up, sorry. Is that TTV generating as well? Is there anything we need to sort of know about in terms of sort of TTV margins or EBITDA margins for that sort of new sort of work?
No, I think it's the same scale play. I think we expect all the EBITDA revenue margins to go up more from scale than anything else, which is what we've said. Other than that, it's just like, you know, it's like everything else, right? I mean, you run a global business, you plan what you think every region's gonna do. You're gonna have unders and overs. At this point in time, Europe's certainly an over. That's how, I guess, business works and why we're global and diversified. No, in terms of TTV rev, nothing's really gonna change other than it's more the scale.
You know, as you can appreciate, too, in Europe, it's doubled since pre-COVID, pretty much, so that's a lot more scale. Nearly everyone's using our technology over there. It's just got those other, synergy gains that wouldn't happen in a normal corporate business.
Yeah. Okay. Then just last one, if I can. Just I guess the reality right now is, you know, there are definitely certain segments of the economy globally, who are pretty cost-focused at the moment. Have you had many clients sort of shut down travel or put measures in place to stymie, you know, employee travel spend?
No, no we haven't, actually. We have a lot of interest in it because we can report on it. That's the most important thing which I think puts us in good stead, too, because we become more of an advisor with potentially another revenue stream down the track when people have to hit their, you know, their Scope two, Scope three numbers and how travel relates to that. Secondly, we haven't seen anyone say, "Oh, no, we're gonna stop travel or halt travel." I mean, you guys hear a lot about the tech industry, but I think the reality of the tech industry, while it's a high profile, it's a very low percentage of corporate travel.
I think, to be fair, that a lot of those tech companies carried a lot of fat weren't making profit and, you know, interest rates going up, the rubber hits the road. We're not seeing that in other industries. You know, I'm sitting right now in our Omaha headquarters, and I look around me, there's some big construction and cranes and heavy machinery things going on, and this is where we're probably, you know, over-indexed, so I think we're in a good place.
All right. No, thanks for that.
Due to time, our final question will come from the line of James Bell with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I just wanted to circle back to the questions around seasonality. Is 30/70 the new normal seasonal split given the business mix, or is that particular to a recovery year like FY 2023?
Yeah. Yeah. It's particular to recovery year, James. I mean, I think at a point in time it'll go back to historical. I mean, we think it's more 33/66, but clearly, when you look at, you know, just what's happened in the second half, it wasn't their last second half, you're gonna get more of a skew. Furthermore, we might get, you know, at the top end, we're getting a little bit more of a skew than that because, you know, in a normal year, we don't carry that many extra staff. I think that's 200 staff. We wouldn't normally do that. It was one of those, you know, recovery moments that we made a call deliberately to do that for the longevity of retention and winning business. They're not normal things.
When you back all those things out and you do your math, I think you're gonna get a 33/66 split and a 30/70 split. I'd bet that, I mean, it sort of tells you a bit more about our range. Yeah, it's short term. We don't know what 2024 is gonna bring yet till we get there. Eventually it'll be more of a normalized, which is I think was around 33/66, wasn't it? Give or take. I think the key point is we'll guide every year, knowing what we know.
Got it. Then at the end of June, you guys were talking about an exit run rate, at AUD 143 EBITDA.
Yep.
Guess I was after whether you had an update for that exiting December.
Oh, December doesn't really count. I mean, obviously December is a very, very quiet month. It's really, as we said, I think we said last time, we said April, June is fairly reflective of the whole year because of the way we average out a year. It's not really about the run rate there, I think what we've told you to give this guidance, to talk about the four regions, the way they're going to point out what happened in the U.S. in January and Europe in January, tell you so much about momentum, don't they?
Okay.
We've put out guidance there, yeah. Guidance is guidance, I guess.
With that, I'll hand the call back over to Jamie for any concluding remarks.
Thanks everyone for your time, and have a good morning. Of course, we're available all week, investors and doing roadshows, so I hope you get on one of those calls. Thanks again to everyone. Have a good day.
Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.