Good morning. My name is Emma, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CTM Fiscal Year 2023 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, again, press the Star one. We ask that you limit yourself to two questions per person, as the call will end promptly at 9:45 A.M. due to scheduled meetings. For those who didn't get a chance to ask, management will endeavor to follow up in the next 24 hours. Jamie Pherous, founder and CEO, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Emma, and good morning, everyone. I'm joined today by our CFO, James Patterson, and we are pleased to present our full year FY23 results. Let's move to Slide four, the FY23 highlights, and go straight to Slide five, if we can: Group Financial Highlights. Look, as, as an opener, throughout this investor pack, you'll hear a lot about two themes this year. Firstly, it's our ability to convert revenue recovery into profits. Not just EBITDA, but importantly, profit before tax and net profit after tax. Secondly, the late FY23 momentum that we've experienced really sets up our FY24 results due to profitable new client wins transacting, and that's continuing through the year. With this in mind, let's look at the key financial metrics on the right-hand side.
Firstly, revenue of AUD 660.1 million was higher than we anticipated. We guided to AUD 648 million in terms of our recovery back to 100%. As I said before, we are converting this incremental revenue recovery into profits. As you can see in the right-hand side table, we delivered EBITDA of AUD 167.1 million, but also PBT before client amortization, PBTA. We've got PBT for the rest of this presentation of AUD 124.8 million, an underlying NPAT of AUD 92.5 million, which we think is good. It's really about the momentum we take into FY24. We've certainly seen a rapid turnaround in the second half.
Q4 2023 revenue was above 90% of our pro forma FY19 revenue. Since February, EBITDA has averaged over AUD 20 million per month, and PBT has averaged AUD 16.5 million per month. That's why we have good confidence moving forward into FY24. Next, of course, is our continued balance sheet strength. We have zero debt and cash of AUD 151 million at 30 June. As a sign of confidence in our cash generation moving forward, the board has reinstated dividends at our 50%-60% of NPAT policy. We've declared a final dividend of AUD 0.22 per share unfranked. This momentum sets up our FY24 guidance. You'll see we'll also be going to PBTA, given this is most relevant to investors.
We look forward, underlying PBTA arranges roughly AUD 193 million-AUD 233 million, up 55%-87% on FY23. Underlying EBITDA from AUD 240 million-AUD 280 million, up 44%-68% on FY23. What I want to reiterate is the lower end of guidance will deliver us a record EPS in FY24, we think this validates our COVID strategy. As we understand, we'll be one of the first companies in corporate travel in the world to come back to record EPS. Let's move to Slide 6, our scorecard that shows the key metrics that matter.
First, if I look at the top row, FY23 metrics, our new client wins during the year totaled AUD 2.95 billion, and the majority of these had not yet transacted in FY23, which is, again, is important for FY24. Client retention again remained at 97%, which is our long-term target, and our 30 June staff count was 3,206, up only 12% on the prior year, as we leveraged the vastly larger scale of the business. You can see staff numbers went up at a lot lower rate than our revenue. As, but as I stated earlier, it's all about our 2H23 momentum. If we look at the second row, as we said, since February, EBITDA has averaged over AUD 20 million a month and PBT, AUD 16.5 million a month.
Importantly for us, and we talk about how we're converting revenue to profits as we move forward, the 2H 2023 EBITDA to revenue margin of 31.5% is getting very close to our terminal target of 32.7% margin that we said we'd get at a full recovery or AUD 810 million of revenue. Now if we go on to Slide seven, let's go around the regions, and if we can go straight to Slide 8, please, the group overview. Just looking at this group overview, this is really a holding page that summarizes the region and group costs, but I want to bring your attention to three things. Firstly, the circled area or 2H 2023. As we said, it was a big step up.
You can see 2H 2023 revenues of AUD 368.2 million, converting to EBITDA of AUD 115.8 million at a margin of 31.5%. Also, it's something important to note here is that you'll note the very different recovery speeds of regions, which is still tied to a choppy year as the industry recovers from COVID. Looking through this, it's important to note it's our geographic and client diversity that mitigates performance risk at a group level from an investment thesis. We're always going to have unders and overs, but the key point is we just keep performing, and that's a key message I want to share.
Next, you'll note that TTV is no longer an accurate measure of performance, and we'll talk to revenue and how it converts to profit through this pack and moving forward. Now let's go through the regions. We might move straight to Slide 9, North America. As you can see, revenue was up 40% to AUD 303.7 million, and EBITDA was up 65% to AUD 44.8 million. If I come to the highlights, most importantly, we have completed integration. What does this mean? This means all of our focus now is on growing market share and leverage, leveraging our scale through technology and automation gains. Integration outcomes are really going to plan for us.
2H 2023 EBITDA revenue margins hit 24.5%, and a result of new client wins of $0.8 billion in the region. The region averaged over $6 million of EBITDA per month since March. You can see the momentum is really coming forward. It's all got to do with the wins we've had. When we look forward, the focus is to continue these market share gains, noting two-thirds of all the new clients we're winning are choosing our booking tool, Lightning. We don't expect a full pro forma EBITDA recovery until FY25, which is about $104 million, given our client base has recovered to only 65%, which we talked on the next slide, but we still expect significant year-on-year EBITDA growth due to growing business from new client wins.
Just to put that into perspective, not just the $0.8 billion we've won in FY23, we, we are forecast to exceed that number in FY24 in terms of new sales. We're really getting that momentum now that we're, we're locked and loaded with integration. Let's go to Slide 10, if we can. It just shows how we're really going in graphic detail. First point I want to bring to is the, the first bullet point there. When we acquired Travel and Transport, we told the market that on a full market recovery, we thought we could achieve EBITDA of $104 million through combination, and that included synergies. During COVID, we deliberately downsized our non-core divisions, because whilst they contribute to revenue, they were probably marginally profitable as we were going into this.
We've taken the decision not to fire them back up. We've chosen to focus solely on our core business of corporate and SME, VIP, high-end leisure. This is represented in the left-hand side bar chart, is what it looks like. This strategy is working, as you can see. We've talked about the profits since March, also from the right-hand side bar chart. Let's just look at that for a moment. As you can see there, our client base has only recovered to 65% in 4 Q23, similar to our larger Corporate Travel Management, corporate travel peers. The transactions from new client wins means that we've recovered to 85% in 4 Q23.
On top of that, when you add new and new clients won, that are not yet transacting, we're confident of a full 100% recovery in FY24 on a like-for-like basis when we compare it to normalized revenue base. That's, that's important. I guess the takeaway is that we can grow our way back to higher EBITDA on lower revenue than pro forma FY19. This is going to take until FY25, given our client base has only recovered to 65% in 4 Q23. Okay, on to slide 11, Europe. Revenue is up 70% to $143 million, and EBITDA up 125% to $84.1 million. These are record financial metrics and approximately double pro forma FY19. Why?
It's because we've had major new client and contract wins with very high adoption of automation by all clients, which is what's contributing to the region's high margins. It's important to note that the new bridging and accommodation services contract did not contribute to this result, given it had a delayed start date of 1st June. In terms of outlook, the FY23 full year result is how you should be looking at it as a recurring baseline for future growth and the correct way to view this region. That's how we're viewing it. For us, it's growth from that AUD 84 odd million into FY24. Of course, we expect another strong growth year in FY24, we wish to highlight that the 2H 2023 margins are not sustainable in deriving our group FY24 guidance.
So I'll say it again, all the growth is going to come off that AUD 84 million. That's the recurring base. On to Slide 12. I want to give you an overview of just what we're doing at asylum, but more our, our, our program in terms of our humanitarian success and how this might apply to this new contract. The first thing I want to say that, that this is not new, not a new business segment for CTM. It's merely an extension of our core competencies in corporate travel that we've built over the last four years through COVID. This is one of the things we've got out of COVID because we had resources. I also want to mention, we're really proud of the work we've done over the last four years.
You'll see we've dropped a sustainability update in, in our, in our pack today or to the market, and you'll see just how comprehensive that is. The key point is that we firmly believe humanitarian and crisis travel logistics is a, is a natural extension of what we do, of our value proposition. This really has become a constant global requirement with further opportunities to expand our specialist services across other industries. This applies very well to insurance and crises, and, and other crises that you're probably hearing around the globe as we speak. In terms of this particular contract, I just want to talk very briefly about where our responsibility starts and stops and what it's all about. At a high-level point of view, the challenge for, for the client is avoiding a potential humanitarian crisis.
As we know, large volumes of asylum seekers are making their way through the EU, coming to the EU border and crossing into the UK. The challenge we had when we won this contract was the accommodation and ground transport services previously were managed by a very large number of hotel and service providers, but it appeared they could not keep up with either the volume or the complexity of this particular program. We commenced the contract. It was delayed. It started June 1, 2023, but there are very positive results. Firstly, the customer seen an immediate improvement in service consistency and hotel accommodation utilization. Secondly, there's been significant savings due to systems of procurement experience in crisis and humanitarian management from CTM. To clarify CTM's responsibility, our responsibility is limited to travel-related functions in the UK only.
I want to make that really clear. That's, that's managing the accommodation allocations, the transport logistics, and the meals. What is not part of our remit is duty of care, security, infrastructure, vessel designs, other accommodation structures and management, like tents and barracks and camps, and any accommodation that, that's outside of the U.K. What is important is humanitarian standards underwrite and form part of the remit. There's three key points that support humanitarian standards. Firstly, the cohort is allowed freedom of movement outside of all CTM-managed accommodation, including one vessel. There's strong governance, too. Rooms and service delivery must meet minimum humanitarian standards and value for money. Lastly, there's a lot of government oversight and scrutiny with this project, as you can appreciate. Their internal audits of all accommodation and transport suppliers all have government oversight.
On to Slide 13, ANZ. Okay, revenue was up 134% to AUD 160.1 million, and EBITDA up 256% to AUD 42.4 million. In terms of highlights for ANZ, we completed the Helloworld Corporate integration, and importantly, we retained not just the Whole of Australian Government, WOAG, but other key government accounts, which to us, really validates the acquisition strategy. It is also widely known that the timing of this acquisition occurred during the most rapid recovery period in the region, and as a result, the business we inherited was under-resourced. We had to find, add, and train significant resources in a time when there was no supply of travel, travel people.
We had to obviously also support duplicated systems in a very complex recovery environment, where every transaction took twice as long in order to service the business. It was pretty unlucky, but it is what it is, and this came at a cost to profit in the region. As a result, we've not been able to convert our full TTV recovery, we have recovered fully, by the way, into profits just yet. This doesn't tell an accurate picture because activity and revenue is lagging TTV due to what I think is unique, mostly to Australia now, and unsustainable high ticket prices caused by a lack of international competition in this region. We really need more competition. We need more international carriers flying into Australia to change this. Pleasingly for our customers, these prices are starting to moderate wherever there is competition.
More importantly from the investment community, what are we doing about this? We have three objectives, and we're keeping it really simple to get back to what we think is pre-COVID or pro forma EBITDA. Pleasingly, there are significant efficiency gains moving the retained government clients from Helloworld to CTM Technology, and this is flagged to occur from January 2024. That's a really good result for us and for our customers. Secondly, supplier revenues will return with international recovery and competition, and in fact, wherever there is international competition, we are seeing both affordable airfares and revenues return. Thirdly, it's the productivity gains through technology. We talked about the duplication of systems that will unwind in December.
Further to that, ANZ is our test case for artificial intelligence and robotic process, and we are encouraged by the early positive signs, which we talk to further in this slide pack. Given the government clients don't transfer over to our systems until January 2024, we don't expect to see these benefits until calendar 2024. As a result, we don't expect EBITDA to get back to pro forma 2019 levels or north of AUD 70 million until FY25. We've laid out three key ways we're going to get there, and that's what the business is focused upon. If we can now move to Slide 14, Asia. This is a, this is a pretty good story, Asia. Revenue was up 198% to AUD 51.6 million.
This was our last region to return to profits, delivering $13.9 million EBITDA versus a loss of $3 million in FY22. The facts are, Asia has gone through a stunning turnaround since China opened up in early 2H 2023. Our corporate market share has doubled since FY19, and we used our COVID downtime very wisely. Automation work completed has meant that in only two months after China opened, Asia is already delivering record profits on just a 70% revenue recovery versus pro forma FY19. The outlook is very encouraging. We're highly leveraged to the Greater Bay Area of China. We've talked about before, in its own right, it's the fourth biggest economy in the world.
And importantly for us, we make all our money from international air in this region, and international air has only recovered to one-third of the pre-COVID levels in Q4 2023. If you think about we've doubled our market share, and it's only back to one-third, it gives us a lot of upside. As a result of our significant market share gains and automation, we are targeting EBITDA margins over 30% and expect to have a record profit year in FY2024. Meaning our record profit was, of course, FY2019, like all the other regions, and that was around AUD 25 million. Let's move to Slide 15, about artificial intelligence automation. In fact, let's go straight to Slide 16. We shared earlier the encouraging signs in Australia and how that can drive productivity. Why are we so excited?
Well, we've been developing AI and RPA for two years, through a lot of trial and error, but because we do it in-house, it has brought two distinct advantages. The first one is we own our IP and our tech, so we can quickly modify and learn and improve with our clients and for our clients, following our normal philosophy. Secondly, We have it working on our existing product suite and data warehouse. It's specific to our customers, and it takes in all customer needs, and that's the big difference to applying it to, say, leisure. How are we thinking about our AI and using it? Our strategy is twofold. Firstly, for customers, it enables them to interact with CTM how they want and when they want, and that's really important, so the service is better.
Secondly, for our agents, it's designed to assist them to be much more efficient and free up time for the high-value, complex, and urgent transactions that remain a significant part of our business. When we come to the results, we're really encouraged. Our intelligence, which we, we named Scout, it can fulfill domestic bookings already, including multi-carrier with accommodation, as well as managing changes and cancellations. Most importantly, this is all compliant within a customer's travel policy. This is because we own the profile software and our, and the, and our data warehouse. Currently, it's supported by 1,100 clients for cancel and refunds, and it's already saving 1,000 FTE hours a month for the business, and this is only the beginning.
The AI offering is, is being continually enhanced in ANZ and being rolled out throughout the regions in FY24, and both RPA and AI will underpin how we're gonna get these better margins in the future. We think it was a good investment, although it took us a bit of time to get right, it's now rocking and rolling. Now I'm gonna hand over to our CFO, James Patterson, to run through the high-level group financial summary. We might go straight to slide 18.
Thanks, Jamie. On Slide 18, the group profit and loss. CTM has delivered another strong financial performance in FY23. Travel demand has accelerated globally post-pandemic, and the group is realizing the benefits of scale and technology investment. On revenue and other income of AUD 660.1 million in FY23, an increase of 70%, we earned underlying EBITDA of AUD 167.1 million. Importantly, this result translates to stronger underlying net profit before tax of AUD 124.8 million and underlying NPAT of AUD 92.5 million, which shows that our business is converting the recovery into profitability. CTM has always been less reliant on volume-based supplier revenue to generate profitability. The fact that nearly 90% of revenue is generated from transactional revenues validates our model strength in this environment.
One-off items for the year were not material, with the expense mostly related to acquisition integrations, which are now complete. Expectations for our effective tax rate in future periods should center around 27%. We will now move on to Slide 19, the balance sheet. CTM continues to maintain a very strong balance sheet. We have 0 debt, having not utilized our committed funding facility since June 2020, and the company maintains significant cash holdings of $151 million, including $12.3 million of client cash. The group's receivables and payables have increased in line with the rapid increase in client activity, which accelerated in FY23. Most of the increase in receivables relates to government business, which is on invoice terms and is very low risk from a credit perspective. Moving on to Slide 20, the cash flow.
In FY23, the group generated AUD 80.3 million of operational cash flow, with cash conversion impacted by the return of activity relating to clients on invoice terms. Despite the fact that all the operational cash flow was generated in the second half, cash conversion was adversely impacted in this period by a rapid increase in UK Government activity on invoice terms, which amounted to approximately AUD 47 million. The rebuilding of the group's receivables balance because of the returning client activity, is now largely complete, and therefore, we expect operating cash conversion to return to historical averages moving forward. Supporting this, as at July, the group's cash balance has increased to AUD 165 million.
Technology-related CapEx was AUD 32.5 million for the year, which is higher than previously expected as a result of additional spend on projects identified during the year, which will deliver immediate benefits and ROI. These projects relate to the Whole of Australian Government Hotels program, delivery of the Bridging Accommodation and Travel Services contract, in addition to AI and automation initiatives, which are showing encouraging results. Our investment in proprietary software will continue in FY24. However, the spend is expected to reduce to approximately AUD 29 million, as the ramp-up phase of the previously mentioned projects nears completion. I will now hand back to Jamie to talk to the FY24 guidance.
Thanks, James. If we can go straight to Slide 22, FY24 guidance. Before I talk to this Slide, we've always told the market that as the market recovered, the important factor was how we could turn incremental revenue into profitability. We are very confident now that we're mostly there in, in our ability to do that, and as a result, the best way to think about our business from an investment thesis is to assess revenue and how this converts to PBT and EBITDA. As a result, we give revenue guidance, and this correlates directly to profit guidance. Guidance is as follows: We see our revenue, it's AUD 770 million-AUD 850 million. EBITDA, again, correlates.
That's AUD 240 million-AUD 280 million, and PBT is roughly AUD 193 million-AUD 233 million. Just to talk this through, to make it very clear to everyone, the top of the range is AUD 850 million. That would be for outperformance in revenue. If the business was to generate AUD 850 million, we expect to deliver EBITDA of AUD 280 million and PBT of AUD 233 million respectively. AUD 810 million revenue was always our FY 2024 target and is roughly the midpoint.
EBITDA, we expect we can get that 32.7% margin, so this will be a slightly higher than the midpoint, or we think that's AUD 265 million if we do AUD 810 million. AUD 770 million is our base case, and this is assuming no further market recovery. This is becoming more unlikely given the data points or three key data points we talk to on the next slide in our activity statement. While we've got a wider range than normal, it's because we're still in recovery mode and things could still be choppy, but it is what it is. First, the other thing, too, when we come to the economy, as we've said all along, we're not seeing anything, we haven't seen anything, we continue not to see anything.
In fact, the forwards look very positive. We do remind you that over half or around half our client base now is essential travel and government clients, and these clients are typically more resistant to economic impacts than normal corporate travel. It's also timely to remind you that even at the bottom of this range, CTM will deliver a record earnings per share. Whilst others, peers raised capital or debt to survive COVID, we took a different route, and achieving record EPS in FY24 clearly validates our strategy and how we've navigated our way through COVID. In terms of profit skew, we think it's gonna get back to normal, broadly in line with historic trends, which is, first half will be one-third of profit, second half, two-thirds.
Just at the bottom there, we've added an EBITDA to PBT bridge, noting the difference between EBITDA and PBTA is conservatively around AUD 47 million. Let's go on to Slide 23, the summary and trading activity. As we said, we're currently on track right to the middle there, as we've said. Why we think the revenue margin is going to go up and get to 65% in terms of that midpoint of the revenue of AUD 810 million, is because as we forecast our staff numbers to only grow by 6.5% in FY24, versus that revenue range of 17%-29%. That's because of the two-year investment in artificial intelligence and robotic process starting to deliver returns. We're really starting to leverage our scale.
Now I wanna really touch, I guess, on three, three key data points that are very encouraging for us. Firstly, it's our July trading data. Whilst July is typically seasonally quiet for corporates because of the Northern Hemisphere vacation, July transactions are up 42% on July 2022, and revenue is up 34% on July 2022. This is largely a result of new clients won and transacting. We have reached 15% of our annual sales target by the end of July, with a very healthy sales pipeline, pointing to another good growth year for CTM. This, so we should. We've got a bigger scale and integration is complete, so our focus is a lot, a lot more aligned to the things that matter in our business.
Secondly, we're encouraged by the recent survey of CTM clients that, that we undertook in late May. The, the key point here is we ask clients: Will you spend the same or more on travel in the next 12 months? We expected the first two, client meetings and internal meetings, they're the things that we know customers travel for, but we're really buoyed by the next two. International travel has been lagging. Now, people are saying they're gonna spend the same or more. It's 85% of clients will do that. The other big one is same-day business trips. That has been materially lagging in recovery because of, because of just constraints in supply and frustration, and our customers are saying they expect to spend the same or more, of 84% will spend same or more on same-day business trips.
The third encouraging point is the most recent Global Business Travel Association estimates to travel, which they recently upgraded a few days ago. They've said that further market recovery will likely continue, and when I look at CY 2023 to CY 2026, it's gonna average at 7.9% per annum, or roughly 2% a quarter, through to calendar 2026. Now, that's quite a bit higher than the long-term average of 3%. So what this means, it likely adds to CTM's EPS compound growth rates through market share gains from winning for the next number of years. So we think that's a good thing from an investment thesis. We want to remind you of our financial metrics as well. As we said, no debt. We expect operating cash conversion to return to long-term averages.
James has talked about how cash really came back in July. We've reinstalled our dividend payout, which gives us confidence in our cash flow. Lastly, we expect record EPS in FY24, and we think we're probably the first people in the world in corporate travel to do that. What this really means is it all positions us exceptionally well for mergers and acquisitions. The corporate market was meant to be back to 100% recovery by 4Q 2023, and it's somewhere between 70% and 80%, depending on the market. Also, for the corporate market comp set to survive, they, they, they got that through, through COVID, but often with high debt.
I think what the market seemed to have forgotten about is the capital required to support returning clients, like we had to do as well, those returning clients on invoice terms as they ramp up activity. All in all, this is combining to create some real value opportunities that we haven't seen for a long while. Before I hand over for questions, I've attached an appendix on slides 24 and 25 that recap our original assumptions to a full recovery. It's nice to look back and think just how well we're going versus the actual market outcomes. If we can go to slide 25. This slide recaps this recaps our COVID strategy.
Whilst all our peers chose to navigate it differently, often with massive capital raises or massive debt profiles, as you know, given our, our financial position, we had an enviable position we came into it. We acquired transformational acquisitions of Travel and Transport and Helloworld Corporate, and that's really how we approached it. This table charts our pathway to return to AUD 265 million EBITDA. I, I won't read it out, you can all see that. You can see that this was always based on the assumption of a 100% corporate travel recovery by 4 Q23 to happen in FY24, yet the market has only recovered to somewhere between 70%-80%. For us, like Asia, the actual corporate market's only recovered to 33%. Yet despite this, why are we on track?
It's really three factors, I can't stress these enough. We have had a real disciplined focus to, on, upon profitable market share gains, and we have won an additional AUD 2.95 billion in FY23 on top of the other profitable clients we've won through the cycle. As I said, with FY23, the majority of that AUD 2.95 billion is not trading, it flows through to 2024. As a result, we've been able to turn this growth into profits. The proof of this is our 4 Q23 exit momentum. We said revenue is running higher than 90% of pro forma FY19, and the EBITDA run rates are over AUD 20 million, and PBT at AUD 16.5 million a month. It's just good to reflect on how we're going.
I think we'll probably move straight to slide 26. This is a glossary, just for those that understand some of the acronyms there, but we might just move to straight to slide 27 and take questions if we can.
As a reminder, if you would like to take a question, ask a question today, press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, in the matter of time, we ask that you limit yourselves to two questions per person. Your first question comes from the line of Sam Seow with Citi. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just on ANZ overrides, noticed there was a step up there in the second half on the first half, but they're still well below FY19 levels. Just wondering if you expect that to get back to pre-pandemic levels and potential time frames we should be thinking about?
It's a good question, Sam. I think 2 things happened through COVID, and you can see in our revenue disaggregation notes. We're moving more and more to the customer, which we think is a lot safer way to play it. There is no doubt that international overrides are lagging, and they will come back with international competition. That's why we implore the government to, you know, to ensure that more aircraft are flying in and out of this country because of the high prices and so forth. It is one of our three prongs to come back. It's the smallest of the three prongs, but it is certainly one of them.
Thanks. That's helpful. Just following on from that, you've got transaction revenue at 89%. What would that look like then in a normalized world and, and your shift in business? I guess I'm just trying to understand-
Uh.
What the revenue run rate might actually be if things are normal. Cheers.
I think, I think the volume base, we expect it to come back higher. That's just another tailwind, that's not. I mean, the good thing for us is, when you look at the way we're, we're earning revenue, you know, being near 90% of it being from, you know, transactional, it's a really good sign that we're, that we're converting the revenues, the incremental revenue into profits without the tailwind of overrides. The way we look at it, it's just another thing in our pocket in future years.
Awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Mitchell Sonogan with Macquarie. Your line is open.
Good morning, Jamie. Thanks for taking the questions. Just looking at the European result, clearly a very strong result there. Just wondering, can you talk to expectations for EBITDA margins in 2024? Just looking at FY 2022-2023, you had 78% of incremental revenue converted to EBITDA, and you've made a comment about the second half EBITDA margin not being sustainable there. Just trying to understand what drove that really high conversion to profit, but also how we should think about that trajectory into 2024. Thanks.
Yeah. No, thanks, Mitch, for the question. I, I think, yeah, you, you, you summed it up. I mean, twofold. The base, the base of AUD 84 million is a recurring base, so that's what we're going to grow upon. The, the reality is the business has doubled. It's all using our tech over a large scale. Obviously, when it use our tech, a lot, lot, lot of it's touchless. We, we think that all in all, something around that margin is probably sustainable moving forward for the BAU business. Then, of course, when we look at next year, you know, we know we've won a lot of business and that's transacting, and of course, we have this other, this other, you know, project that's just started in June.
We'd expect all things being equal, that probably that margin is going to stack up moving forward, give or take, the, the full FY23 margin.
Okay, thank you. Just touching on the, the Bridging Contract there. You mentioned it didn't contribute to the result, and started 1st of June, but you've also called out the, the $47 million impact on cash flow from UK government invoicing. Can you maybe just talk to that? Was there no revenue and profit recognized from that Bridging Contract? If there was, can you maybe just provide a, a bit of detail about how much was? Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, sure. I, I think as, as you probably know, it was meant to start in March, and it didn't. You can imagine that we had a lot of people employment before that date, setting it up, that we didn't have anything to do till June. I think the revenue from June offset the, the cost of, of having, having those people for, for three months. In terms of the cash out, a lot of it was to pay for some things on behalf of, of the client that, that were reimbursed in July. Moving forward, it's now very much like for like.
Okay.
Okay. Thanks for taking the questions, Jamie.
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Wilson with Wilsons Advisory. Your line is open.
Thank you, and hi, Jamie. Just my first question, just relates to new client wins. I know you said approximately AUD 800 million came from North America in FY23. I assume that the vast majority of the remainder of the AUD 2.2 would have come from Europe, just given the strength of that region. Just interested in your thoughts on whether you think you're in a position to win a similar or, or, you know, or higher or lower level of client wins going forward?
Yeah, we did. Specifically in North America, we expect more. We thought it was a really good result for North America. We expect more now. I, I think when you look at North America for what it is right now, we've got a good reputation. We've got a very good value proposition. Everything's integrated, now it's the machine is just moving forward. As I've said before, they've started the year very well. They are leading the market in terms of where they are versus their forecast as well, which they're currently exceeding. We expect a bigger number from them this year, and that's why we said with North America, it's another important point to note, is that we don't need a recovery to get back to where we want to get back to.
We can grow there.
Okay, great. Thank you. I'm just interested in ANZ, roughly what level of EBITDA margin uplift we can expect in FY 2024. I, I know you've said that the sort of automation uplift from the WA contract probably won't start until January. Just, just interested in your thoughts on uplifting EBITDA margins over FY 2024 for ANZ.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think for us, it's a two-year pathway back, and that pathway will probably be a little bit more skewed to FY 2025 than FY 2024 because of the things we're doing. Where we sit today, our service is really good in Australia now. We're, we're really pleased. It's, it's at the level that we, that we demand, but at the moment, we're still supporting two different systems, which isn't very efficient. I think when you, when you think about that panning out, we've got to, we've got to keep those people to support two systems until we get to December, January. It's from that point on, we'll start to see that. I think you're going to see an improvement in margins in the second half in terms of EBITDA margins.
In 25, getting back to the sort of margins we used to do is hopeful. That's what we're hopeful for.
Thank you. So just to follow up to that, obviously the Helloworld Corporate business was a lower margin business than, than, CTM.
Yeah
... in, in ANZ pre-COVID. Do you think you can recover to your pre-COVID margin levels as a result of the automation activities?
I, I think it's our aspiration, and I, and I think, I, you know, it's early days for AI and robotic process in our business. As I said, that we're really pleased with it. We've been, we've been, you know, doing it for two years. It took us about only to the last quarter to really get it right, you know, because obviously how it works. There's been some wonderful examples we'll, we'll talk about later in the year in, in terms of how that's working. We see it as a game changer for our business. As we said, it's, it's, in, in some circumstances, it's clearly better for a customer that they can contact us, text, voice, whatever they want to do, and get something done, and also for our staff.
You know, when you come to our business, I keep saying the same thing, and why we think we're successful in the, in the higher end or the more demanding part of corporate, is that expertise and service are, are a premium, and still 30% of all our international travel is last minute, or complex. We want to free up our people to do that sort of work, which is more valuable for our people. It's more satisfying, but very much so for our customers. That's an obsession. If you step back now, you know, we've, You know, coming to 2x the scale, we were pre-COVID. We want to leverage that scale, and that's where we're at. The business is really simple this year.
How do we how do we win more market share? How do we retain customers? How do we get, our, our productivity and automation, you know, we, we get better outcomes, and we're using the technology at our fingertips to do that.
Thanks very much for taking my questions.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from the line of John O'Shea with Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Morning, Jamie. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, I can.
Thanks, mate. look, just a couple of questions from me, if I could. first one on, on the, on the UK procurement. you mentioned in the presentation that you have experience in this regard during COVID. Just to be absolutely clear, can you, just give us an idea exactly what that was, so the market can get an understanding of your capabilities in that area? I guess that's the first question.
Yeah, I think it. We sort of, we touched upon that on the slide pack, on slide, is it 12?
Yeah, I did see that.
This all started way back with COVID. It started with, the first thing we did was with Thomas Cook when they collapsed. We, we got the call to, to get everyone home as fast as we could when the airways were closed. Through that, we learned a lot. And, and from that, there's a lot of things we've done that we can't disclose, but the ones we can disclose that are public are the ones we have. Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan extractions. We've also done UK citizen repatriation as well through that cycle. Through that, we've built up, I guess, three things: a lot of expertise, very good software and process around this, because it's very complicated work. We've built up a lot of controls as well to make sure it's effective and efficient.
Yeah, and when you say repatriation work, obviously, we're talking on behalf of the government work we're talking here, of course. Is that?
That one was for the government, yes. Yes, it was.
All right. Were they all the, for government that you've done, or some of them being, been for private?
There's been other things that isn't government.
Okay.
Lots of other things.
Yep. Okay, mate. I mean, obviously, you've mentioned in the presentation about, you know, recovery levels in different markets and 65% in some markets and so forth. Let's play devil's advocate for a moment, and let's say that that number sort of doesn't recover permanently. Would you agree that the path to profitability for your business, other than obviously reducing costs, is then to continue to win above, above trend market share forever and a day? Is that kind of the way we should think about it, or, or do you think that that is a, a too pessimistic way of, of viewing the stock and the, and the industry?
I, I, I think you are on the basis that we've given guidance, John. We've told you that we're on track for everything we always said despite that, which, which, which leads to the fact we are winning business. I've said before, when you look at the range, we've talked about if we outperform, that will be because we outgrow. If we underperform, that will be because the market is not growing at all, that's totally inconsistent with what we've seen in July, which.
Yeah
... which we talked to, which we said, you know, they're big, they're big numbers versus last year. It's not consistent with what our, our survey of late May, which was only, you know, what's that? you know, eight, eight or so weeks ago, 10 weeks ago, as said, and it's also not what GBTA said, 15th August, which is last week, about, you know, roughly a compound rate of 8% a year. The, the, the point is, is that we've said, like with America, we, we can grow out of it, and we expect to, and we're in a good position. Again, for our guidance, you can see we've got the run rates already. If we didn't have the run rates-
Yeah
would be different. I mean, we've-- like as I've said, and I wanna make it very clear, we don't expect to be at the bottom end of guidance. It's just there because the guidance is wide because, you know, we've been through a choppy time, and it's still recovering.
Yep. Now that's clear, mate. Thanks very much for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Han with Morningstar. Your line is open.
Good morning, Jamie. Do you mind if we go back to slide 25? On that slide.
Yep
you remind us that you, that you built your, recovery assumption on $19 million in EBITDA from additional growth-related activities. You're basically saying at that time, you were already budgeting for wins, like the UK bridging contract, which you've subsequently won?
No, no, it's just that our model's always been organic growth, Brian. It's just, it's just a matter of we thought we'd get to AUD 246. We'd probably win that amount of profit, and that was and that's where it is. I think when I look at that slide, this is profit, by the way, not revenue. Normally, if profit's only back to 70% or 80%, most businesses are breaking even at that side. It shows goes to show how much work we've done. What that slide is meant to show is that this is all the things that we've done, the 2 acquisitions and the synergies and some extra growth to get to AUD 265 million. This was back in 2021 and 2022, right?
When we made the acquisitions, in the, in those financial years. What, what, what we wanna make really clear, for that to happen, everything had to be back to 100% to do those numbers. The fact that it hasn't says to you that we've won a lot, lot more than, than we would have thought over the years, which is what we've always said. That, that's the key point.
Right. Okay. Jamie Pherous, it, it feels a little weird talking about profitability on a humanitarian project like the UK bridging one, but can you shed some light on what kind of margin you're expecting on that contract on a sustainable basis?
Yeah. Well, well, firstly, firstly, it had no contribution to the numbers. When you look at FY23, you've got to look at it in isolation of that. And secondly, I can't, I can't talk to that, but what I can talk to, it's, it will not contribute more than 10% of our profits, and it's a very, very large contract. It's low margin, but it's also about high efficiency, and our remit is to save money for the UK taxpayer and for the government. I think we're doing a really good job of that. What I do understand, since we've taken over, you know, people see one vessel, but the vessel's at the tiniest part. It's a very, very large project. You can...
It's publicly how many how many people are being housed in hotels, which is right now about 99% of it. I know we're doing a good job in, in two things, in procurement, in allocation, and, and control the process. We're getting good results, and it's something that we're really proud of.
Okay, great. Thanks, Jamie.
This concludes the time we have available for questions. We do apologize if we were not able to get to you. I turn the call back to Jamie for closing remarks.
Yeah, thanks again, Emma, and thanks, everyone, for listening. We're around all week, and as we said, if you haven't got a question through, please reach out to Allison Dodd, and we'll try to schedule something. Just more a matter of time. Thank you again. Have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.