Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Enero Group Limited FY23 full year results. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brent Scrimshaw, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Well, thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining, Carla Webb-Sear, CEO, our CFO, and myself for the Enero Group full year 2023 results conference call. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay our respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. The agenda for today's call is outlined on slide two. I'll first provide an overview of Enero's business performance highlights and how we're responding in real time to a dynamic market. Carla will then take you through the group financials. I'll then outline the continued evolution of our strategy along with the trading update. We then look forward to taking your questions at the conclusion of our presentation this morning. Starting with business performance and turning to slide four in your deck.
In FY23, a number of global macroeconomic challenges impacted the marketing services industry. Of course, Enero Group was not immune to this, with many well-documented and significant client reorganizations in the technology sector, leading to, in some cases, delayed campaigns or project scope reduction. Despite these headwinds, on an underlying basis, Enero Group delivered AUD 241.6 million in net revenue, an increase of 25% year-on-year, driven by growth in OBMedia and a full year contribution of our acquisitions. EBITDA grew 19% to AUD 78.8 million, while net profit after tax, reflecting Enero's 51% of OBMedia, declined 10%, driven by softer earnings and wholly owned agencies, together with higher amortization and interest expense associated with the acquisitions. The group delivered AUD 54.4 million in free cashflow, an increase of 30%, reflecting strong cash conversion.
The strong cashflow allowed us to rapidly reduce our bank debt ahead of plan. The board also declared a final dividend of AUD 0.045 per share, fully franked, representing a payout ratio of 44% compared to 43% in FY22. Our full year dividend is AUD 0.11 per share, per share, fully franked, representing a full year payout ratio of 42%, up from 40% in FY22. Slide five focuses on Enero Group's financial highlights on an economic interest basis, reflecting our 51% ownership of OBMedia. On this basis, revenue increased by 20% and EBITDA grew 5%, which is a solid outcome, given difficult market conditions. Slide six shows a bridge of EBITDA growth from FY22 to FY23, highlighting the key drivers of our performance.
Now, as revenue softened through the year, we executed a number of cost reduction initiatives across the portfolio, which delivered a total of AUD 16 million in savings. We'll hear more about our cost reduction program later in this morning's presentation. Now, despite that significant cost reduction, our organic business, which excludes acquisitions, saw EBITDA decline by AUD 3.8 million. Our agencies were impacted by a challenging market, in particular in the U.K. and in the U.S.A., and OBMedia delivered another strong year of growth. The net impact of acquisitions and disposals to EBITDA was a positive AUD 3.1 million, while foreign exchange movements delivered a benefit of AUD 2.8 million. Moving to slide seven, we show Enero's segment performance.
Creative technology and data continued to perform well, with revenue increasing 19% to reach AUD 69.6 million, while EBITDA grew 30% to AUD 36.3 million, driven again by a strong OBMedia performance. In addition, we expanded our EBITDA margin to 52.2%, compared to 47.9% in FY22. In brand transformation, we experienced a more difficult trading environment, and whilst revenue increased 20% to AUD 128 million, EBITDA declined 21% to AUD 22.1 million. EBITDA margins declined to 17.2%. Given the economic environment, we realigned the cost base in the second half of the financial year to deliver improved margins in Q4 in the mid-20s. Our cost management initiatives enabled a continued focus on the core strategic capabilities that ensure our business remains well positioned to address changing customer needs.
We also continued to carefully manage corporate costs, now representing 5.9% of the group's net revenue at AUD 11.7 million, down from 6.7% of group net revenue in FY22. Slide eight demonstrates the diversification of our revenue across industries and geographies and the longevity of our client relationships. Revenue continues to reflect our strategic focus and is well diversified by industry, with the largest categories of technology and digital media. In technology, we're largely operating in the B2B segment through the Hotwire Group and its reputation, relationship, and revenue service offering to capture client investments in cloud, cybersecurity, and more recently, the rapidly growing semiconductor industry. Geographically, we've transformed Enero Group into a truly global business over the last three years, with around 70% of revenue now derived from outside of Australia.
With the addition of ROI DNA, we've added the variable retainers category to our agency analysis, with 11% of our revenue now sitting in this category. The group's diversified, but synergistic strategy continues to deliver results, with 31% of our revenue now from clients who have relationships with more than one Enero Group business. Moving to slide nine, and over the next few slides, I'll provide further insight into how we are proactively responding to a dynamic and changing global marketplace, both within OBMedia and also across the agency businesses. It's important to remember that the Enero Group sits at the convergence of a rapidly evolving global market that continues to offer large-scale opportunities for future growth, despite the short-term macroeconomic challenges that we're all experiencing right now.
On slide 10, OBMedia has grown significantly over the past four years, with revenue increasing at a CAGR of 93%, while EBITDA grew even faster at a CAGR of 108%. Truly impressive numbers. As we previously discussed, working in partnership with the world's two largest search engines, the growth in OBMedia has been primarily driven by ongoing investment in its technology stack to enable more effective media buying, its expansion of traffic sources driving volume, and its ongoing commitment to traffic quality. Moving to slide 11, in Q4 of FY23, OBMedia proactively halted the traffic of several publishers in order to preserve its quality metrics with our search engine partners. After further evaluation, prioritization of our search engine relationships and a continued commitment to quality has resulted in the decision not to reinstate these publishers.
OBMedia's growth in FY24 will be from a lower base. This chart shows June and July actual revenue on an annualized basis to help inform the new trading baseline for OBMedia. In FY24, growth will be driven by continued expansion of publisher relationships that meet our quality metrics, with EBITDA margin expected to normalize in the range of 55%-65%. I want to reinforce that OBMedia is a strong contributor to the group's performance, and we remain optimistic about its growth prospects, with opportunities including new product launches, traffic diversification, and ongoing technology investments. Turning to slide 12, which provides a summary of the achievements of our agency businesses in FY23. ROI DNA's revenue grew by 3% year-over-year, despite the impact of reduced client media spend due to the well-documented technology marketplace slowdown.
Hotwire has now fully integrated GetIT into the Asia Pacific region and continues to transform its communications consultancy capabilities and its unique market position. Hotwire's tech-focused business delivered a 12% organic revenue decline during FY23, despite adding a series of new clients, including Sony, ThoughtSpot, and Cricut. BMF continued to perform strongly in FY23 as it further diversified, invested, and grew its customer experience and its innovation capabilities. BMF continues to be lauded for its creative leadership and effectiveness as the home of the long idea in the Australian creative landscape, winning three Australian Agency of the Year awards, and globally, with two coveted Cannes Lions and a number of D&AD Pencil awards. Pleasingly, BMF delivered a 4% revenue growth year-on-year, excluding one-off federal government work in FY22.
As previously announced, BMF also further extended its long-running and award-winning partnership with Aldi Australia. Orchard delivered a solid full-year performance, highlighted by winning Optimizely's Asia Pacific Rising Star Solutions Partner of the Year, and key client wins including Carlisle Homes, Beyond Bank Australia, Epson, and Janssen. Orchard's consumer revenue grew 11% year-on-year, reflecting its market-leading digital transformation capabilities. Government relations and corporate advisory firm, CPR, continued to drive transformation, build reputation, and grow brand recognition for its high-profile clients, with revenue flat year-on-year. On slide 13, creating world-class work for our clients not only drives our business performance, it also attracts great people, and we continue to add a number of blue-chip brands to our client roster across the agency portfolio in 2023, including Lego, QBE, Tennis Australia, and a2 Milk.
I'm also pleased to announce this morning a new multi-year partnership between Enero agency, BMF, and Alinta Energy here in Australia, which represents a significant win for the agency. This is in addition to an existing partnership between Alinta Energy and Enero agency, CPR, adding to our growing synergy of multi-agency client services. On slide 14, we provide an update on the significant cost reduction initiatives I mentioned earlier, implemented across the group in 2023. The chart on the left-hand side of the slide demonstrates that H1 margins were impacted by ROI DNA's investment in staff ahead of demand, as well as a softening in Orchard's USA business. It's also important to remember that 12 months ago, following two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the worldwide labor market was exceptionally tight, with talent extremely difficult to find.
We implemented a series of significant cost management initiatives that both protected our unique capabilities whilst removing costs across the business. On the right-hand side, you can see that structural cost reductions will continue into FY24, should revenue levels remain constrained by market conditions, while one-off cost savings may return in FY24, subject to business performance. Now, back on the left, our FY23 H2 performance reflected strict discretionary cost controls, and we remain confident that our FY24 margin for agencies will be within our target range of at least 18%. On slide 15, we believe that ROI DNA and GetIT continue to position the Hotwire Group for future growth, particularly when the tech marketplace returns to more positive sentiment. In FY23, however, these acquisitions were impacted by macroeconomic headwinds and the current well-documented challenges in the tech industry.
These acquisitions added scale in the United States and expanded our presence into Asia for the very first time. They also accelerated the transformation of Hotwire's reputation, relationship, and revenue services into a truly global strategic proposition for clients as the preeminent global tech communications consultancy. The ROI DNA business model is geared for accelerated growth when tech ad spend returns, and we're beginning to see a future pathway for that, given the more recent positive tech market sentiment. Turning to slide 16. It's also important to remember that the strategic rationale for the acquisition of both ROI DNA and GetIT not only significant, significantly expands the total addressable market for the Hotwire Group, but enables Hotwire to be uniquely positioned to capture a share of the large and growing client investment in the digital transformation marketplace.
As we evolve our capability to serve the needs of forward-thinking brands through these two businesses, we unlock that digital transformation and analytics marketplace, which, when combined with the traditional marketing services marketplace, provides a TAM of $1.2 trillion. We're now well positioned with significant opportunity for future growth. With that, on slide 17, I'll now hand it over to Carla, who's going to run us through the group financials.
Thanks, Brent. Thank you everyone for joining our results call today. I'll begin with the statutory profit and loss summary on slide 18. It's worth noting that OBMedia, for which Enero Group holds a 51% interest, are consolidated at 100% in this slide and the annual report that Enero Group published today. Enero Group delivered net revenue of AUD 241.6 million, an increase of 25% year-on-year, driven by acquisitions and strong growth in OBMedia. Staff costs of AUD 141.6 million were up 27% due to investment in OBMedia and the inclusion of our 2 acquisitions in the consolidated results. This represents a staff ratio of 59%, a slight increase from 58% in FY22.
As previously mentioned by Brent, the cost management initiatives occurred from late Q2 and Q3. The impact of savings associated with restructuring and freelancer management are expected to drive further benefit when annualized in FY24. Operating cost ratio was 9%, compared to 8% in FY22, as the group focused on containing discretionary spend during the year, which offset some of the inflationary pressures. EBITDA of AUD 78.8 million increased 19% year-over-year. Depreciation and amortization predominantly increased due to the amortization of new intangible assets recorded as part of the acquisitions. Net finance costs in FY23 reflect a full year of interest expense, given debt was drawn down prior to the 1 July acquisitions, and also includes the present value interest unwind related to contingent consideration payables.
Our effective tax rate of 24% was slightly lower than the prior year at 25%. Non-controlling interests of AUD 25 million increased from AUD 16.8 million in FY22, reflecting the minority interest associated with OBMedia. Net profit after tax before significant items to equity owners was AUD 24.4 million, a decline of 10% year on year. The constant currency variance slide is available in the appendix to our presentation, and it addresses currency movements and provides investors with a better view of the underlying business performance, given Enero's global footprint now. Turning to slide 19. I just quickly want to run through and highlight the significant items for FY23 and FY22. They are fair value adjustments in FY23 relate to the gains on contingent consideration following the true-up due to lower earnings expectations.
Restructuring costs predominantly in Hotwire Group, Orchard, and Corporate, gain on sale of businesses in FY22 relate to TLE and TDE. Turning to slide 20. Enero Group's strong balance sheet underpins our ability to deliver growth and manage headwinds while delivering sustainable returns to shareholders. Our cash position of AUD 52.4 million is after the purchase of ROI DNA and GetIT, the repayment of the majority of the debt. Intangible assets and contingent consideration increases relate to the acquisitions and include the fair value adjustments. As Brent mentioned, the company's strong financial position, cash flow, and attractive growth opportunities have enabled directors to declare a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.045 per share, payable in October 2023, representing a payout ratio of 44%.
I also wanted to note that as the majority of our operations are now outside Australia, our franking credit balance at 30 June 2023 was AUD 5.2 million, decreasing from AUD 9.9 million in June 2022. We remain very comfortable that our balance sheet retains flexibility to pursue Enero's growth ambitions. Turning to contingent consideration on slide 21. The contingent consideration balance at 30 June relates to ROI DNA and GetIT, acquired in July 2022, and MBA acquired in April 2021. This balance of AUD 30.7 million has a maturity profile over FY24 to FY26.
Other movements in contingent consideration during the year include a fair value gain of AUD 34.6 million, recognized in FY23, due to the lower earnings expectations, and a second consideration payment of AUD 2.7 million to MBA in H1 FY23. At June 30, 2023, Enero has a net cash position of AUD 13 million and AUD 41.3 million of undrawn loan facilities. Slide 22 emphasizes that we are delivering on our capital management strategy. Enero is maintaining its financial flexibility with adequate cash reserves of AUD 13 million at balance date and zero leverage. Reflecting the company's financial performance in FY23 and strong balance sheet, the directors declared a total dividend for FY23 of AUD 0.11 per share. This equated to a 42% full year dividend payout ratio.
The company's balance sheet, combined with the board's focus on capital management, enabled Enero Group to initiate an on-market share buyback during FY23, having bought around 520,000 shares as at the 18th of August. Enero Group's clear capital management strategy reflects the group's ongoing commitment to delivering a balance of shareholder return and growth opportunities. Turning to Enero Group's cash flow on slide 23. Cash conversion was 102% of EBITDA, as compared to 96% in the prior year. The group continues to target a cash conversion of 85%. Operating cash flow of AUD 61.5 million was a strong increase from AUD 48.8 million in FY22. Net interest payments of AUD 1.5 million relates to the debt drawn of AUD 36.3 million in June 2022.
Tax payments made in all jurisdictions totaled AUD 17.7 million, with the increase coming predominantly from the U.S. and Australia. After cash-funded CapEx and lease payments, free cash flow was AUD 54.4 million. Net investment in businesses of AUD 34.7 million includes the second installment of contingent consideration payment for MBA. The majority of the Westpac loan has been repaid during the year, with $5.8 million remaining outstanding at 30 June 2023. I'll now hand back to Brent to provide an update on the company's growth strategy.
Okay, thanks, Carla. Turning now to slide 25, just in order to remind everyone of our Enero Group operating strategy. Enero Group continue to serve the business, transformation, and creative needs of our clients globally. This continues to represent significant incremental market opportunity. With a clear focus on long-term growth segments, our brands continue to build deep industry expertise and remain well-positioned within each of those segments as we continue to refine our offering. Underpinning our commercial strategy is the creativity, the leadership, and the resilience of our amazing people and our strong culture. Combined with our established reputation for innovation, we'll continue to refine our approach to embracing new technology, such as AI, in order to enhance our competitive offering.
Moving to slide 26, to provide a little bit more color on that, we think it's important to provide this deeper context on the potential opportunities that AI can provide across the portfolio in each of our brands. We see particular opportunity in the areas of content creation, data and analytics, and the provision of strategic insight, powering campaign development for clients as we test and learn with AI in FY24. Recognizing, of course, that it's also important to manage AI in a responsible way on behalf of our clients across the group. On slide 27, and during FY23, we also began to develop an appropriate and relevant ESG framework for the group around the world that can underpin sustainable long-term growth for our people and for the planet.
Our first ESG audit has established a critical baseline that will inform the development of strategic goals and enable us to measure our future progress towards the achievement of them. Our starting point focused on the most critical area of our business, which is our people. This includes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, learning and development, employee health and wellbeing, community and industry impact, and environmental stewardship. I'm looking forward to continuing to update the market on our ESG progress throughout FY24 and beyond. Turning now to slide 29, where I can provide you with a trading update. Trading for July remained resilient, despite ongoing challenging macroeconomic conditions, with current expectations that technology-focused clients will begin to return to more normalized trading in calendar year 2024.
OBMedia is expected to grow from its recent rebased trading, shown on slide 11, with EBITDA margins, as I mentioned, in the target range of 55%-65%. In July, agencies are cycling a strong comparative period. Revenues declined 8% year-on-year due to many client reorganizations impacting or delaying spend, predominantly in the technology vertical. The group's health and consumer agencies, Orchard and BMF, have grown 4% year-on-year. Full year benefit of cost initiatives taken in FY23, an ongoing focus on profitability underpin expected increased margins in agencies over the first half compared with last year. We're commencing a strategic review of Enero's 51% investment in OBMedia to ensure shareholder value is maximized.
Moving to slide 30, to conclude today's session, given the disappointing second half decline in our share price, I wanted to take a moment to highlight 5 points that uniquely position Enero Group to deliver ongoing value to shareholders in both the short and the long term. Our strategic framework and portfolio approach is delivering diversified revenue and earnings growth, whilst building differentiated, differentiated capabilities. As I mentioned, we now derive 31% of revenue from clients working with multiple Enero businesses across geographies. The Enero Group now has a truly global offering, working with blue-chip clients at significant scale, with 37% of the group's revenue now originating from clients in more than one geography. We've transformed the group over the past three years, growing net revenue at 21% CAGR between FY20 and FY23, while growing EBITDA even faster at 39% CAGR.
We'll also continue to drive efficiency and profitability through our ongoing cost management initiative you've heard about today. The growth opportunities for the group are immense as we move from a PR comms addressable market, estimated at $50 billion, with the ROI DNA and GetIT acquisitions enabling potential to grow within a $1.2 trillion TAM, including digital transformation. Lastly, and despite our share price performance, we continue to deliver strong returns to shareholders through our buyback program, as Carla mentioned, that repurchased over 520,000 shares as of today's date. Our FY23 dividend of AUD 0.11 per share, fully franked, representing a payout ratio of 42%, and a return on invested capital of 34% in FY23. I'd like to thank you for your attention this morning.
That concludes our prepared remarks, and Carla and I would now be pleased to answer any questions you have. I'll hand it back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the headset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Nick Wiles from Evans and Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys.
Hi, Nick.
Well done on the result today. Thank you for the improved disclosure. Much appreciated. I just had a quick one about the new EBITDA margins for OBMedia. Just, you flagged higher quality, more expensive traffic. Could you just elaborate a bit further on that, whether that's a function of your clients specifically or the industry in general? Thanks.
I think it's just a focus of us around the quality metrics, as we talked about this morning, making sure that we're really working with publishers that really meet the strict criteria around quality for us. In essence, that may mean more expensive traffic.
It is also a reflection of what is happening in the market at this point as well, Nick, as you pointed out in your question.
Yeah, sure. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, "please press star one" on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll now pause for a moment to allow participants to register their question. Your next question comes from Eduardo Riquelme, private investor. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Hi, Brent. Hi, Carla. I just wanted to clarify the just slide 11, just on OBMedia. Just the FY23, June, FY24, July annualize. Are you saying, are you saying basically that revenue is gonna be is gonna be down, what? 36% in FY24, and then there's obviously some substantial margin compression there as well. That's likely down, you know, on an earnings basis, you know, 50% or so. Is that, is, is that correct?
What that slide represents is the actual results in revenue for that month over an annualized period. What you can see is, in June versus July, that revenue base is growing. You are correct in picking up on the fact from the margin perspective, that there has been a. As we've steered to in the past, we had talked over last year about an expectation that OBMedia would generally deliver in that sixties range, and while reflecting on FY23, it was at a higher level. The guidance we've given into FY24 remains at that level of margin range that we have guided to in the past.
Okay. Maybe just a quick follow-up. Just the strategic review, you know, does that reflect outside interest in OBMedia, or does that reflect, you know, the deterioration in the business?
I have two comments there. I think, number one, we continue to be confident that OBMedia and the team that we've built will continue to grow, albeit off a smaller base, Carla just referenced. The second thing, more importantly, the board's always looking to maximize shareholder value and looking for opportunities to do that. I think that is quite simply the only reflection at this point in time.
Okay. Yeah, I'll, I'll hop back in the queue. Thank you, guys. Thanks.
Your next question comes from Nick Wiles from Evans and Partners. Please go ahead.
My question just actually got asked, so I'll jump back in the queue.
Your next question comes from Tim McArthur from Asymmetric Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, Carla. Hi, Brent. How are you both?
Hi, Tim.
That's good. Just slide 23 on cash flow. Can you just run me through why the target's 85%? What, what leads to the slippage from EBITDA to gross operating cash flow to have the target at 85, please?
Look, the target has been something that in the past has been a reflection on where we've looked to look for growth in terms of areas around further CapEx or areas in terms of investment. You're right, Tim, though, that while the target remains at 85, other than, and I guess that's a reiteration we put in, because at the half, we had a bit of a timing point. It's fair to say, if you look at the history over the last number of halves, more often than not, we have been above that 85% target, so it is on the more conservative side. As you can see from what we've delivered at the 30 June, it has been a lot stronger than that target.
Sure. Okay. Perhaps just on OBMedia, are you, are you giving us any color in terms of growth rates? You're expecting it to grow, but are, are you expecting it to grow, obviously, from this rebase level at, at sort of similar to what we've seen over the last few years? Has there been a slowdown in OBMedia or can we be expecting strong growth?
What we've done is just given you current information around trading. Obviously, we don't provide guidance or expectations in terms of growth rates, we've tried to give everybody the best look through as we can in terms of both the rebase and how OB continues to trade in both June and July.
I mean, the one thing to point out is this business is a daily business. What you can see in the June and July results are also a bit of a reflection of what's happening within the days. It is off a base that is growing.
Okay, sure. With the strategic review, is there any other color you can give on that? Are you, are you looking, you know, to sell? Is that, is that the, the, the primary aim, or are you looking to, to spin out, spin out the business? Anything you can say?
I think there's two things. One, just to reiterate the confidence we have in OBMedia and the team, but I think it's very premature to speculate on a number of potential outcomes, to be perfectly honest.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Matt Maven . Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, guys. Just on OBMedia, just checking to understand that chart right. That's annualized growth. It's about 10% July over June. That's kind of 10% in just a month. Am I reading that right? If they continued growing at that rate, we're talking like 100% growth annually. Is that the right way to read that chart, if that July growth rate continues?
We're not, we're not making a comment onto how that goes across the full fiscal year, but it is representing one month in isolation, then annualized. Obviously, given where we are in August, it's, it's a point in time with only two months operating in this current period. So treat them, like I said, as an actual delivery of that month and then annualized. Like I also just pointed out, keep remembering it's a transactional business. It's a daily business, so therefore, there's a bit of day count as well.
Great. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.