Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Experience Co Limited Fiscal Year 2020 Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question- and- answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypads. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. John O'Sullivan. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks for your attendance here this morning. With me, I have Owen Kemp, Experience Co's Chief Financial Officer. This morning, Owen and I would like to give you a short presentation covering a very quick business update and overview, followed by Owen walking you through our financial results in a little bit more detail. Then finally, and very importantly, giving you an overview of how we see the outlook, and a trading update for the first part of FY 2021. Turning to Slide four and into the business overview, I think it's very fair to say that in the 20-year history of our company, this has not been a standard year of trading or results, and it's been a year that's frankly been like no other.
Our business has been subject to not one, but actually two black swan events in the Australian bushfires and, of course, COVID-19, and been influenced and impacted by the associated government response to that, whether that be border shutdowns and controls, policies. Also, we've benefited from some form of government assistance, both at a federal government and also state government level. Through the year, however, our focus on our strategic response to the year has been really built around some very key principles. Firstly, being very disciplined, overtly disciplined on the management of our cash. Secondly, being continued to focus on our business simplification that we announced during FY 2019. Then, of course, ensuring that we are ready to respond to our ever-changing operating environment, and also ensuring that we are able to respond and take advantage of the prevailing conditions once the industry starts to recover.
Turning to Slide five and an FY 2020 financial snapshot, and of course, Owen will go through these figures in more detail for you in a minute. Whilst adversely affected by COVID-19 and also the Australian bushfires, plus the different responses to those pandemics, the group still was able to generate AUD 87.4 million in revenue from close to 300,000 customers, which led to an underlying EBITDA of AUD 7.3 million. At year-end, our cash and cash equivalents were at AUD 12.5 million, and our net debt was at AUD 9 million, whilst our NTA per share was AUD 0.119. Our statutory loss from continuing operations is a AUD 39.7 million loss, but what's worth talking to here is that the majority of this loss, AUD 35.7 million of that, is non-cash and a paper change impairment and fair value movement, which Owen will talk to in a minute.
Turning to Slide six and updating you on our business simplification process, which we announced during the course of FY 2020 as being a key part of our strategic response for the business. The pandemic provided us with an opportunity for the remainder of FY 2020 to really measure the business in two distinct phases in response. Quarter three was really all around controlling our costs, and we had been well advanced as we updated you during our half-year financial results and throughout the year on pulling out more than AUD 6 million in annualized cost savings, which also allowed us to attack that cost base further by really looking at reducing operating expenditure and other fixed costs such as leases, usage charges, and also the mothballing of unprofitable experiences.
Quarter four was really about the painful process of standing down over 90% of our workforce, whilst also participating in the available wage subsidy programs launched by both the Australian and New Zealand governments. Also, and very importantly, working with the Australian state governments and New Zealand governments on being able to restart our business as quickly as possible during that quarter of FY 2020. As we stand here today, our strategy is all about executing our recovery. We've been very fortunate as a business that we've been able to restart our operations on a staggered basis from late May. We've seen, certainly for skydiving in Australia, a very good response in drop zones such as Wollongong and Noosa, and also Airlie Beach.
We've also been very fortunate that we have such an engaged and passionate workforce, who throughout all of this, have played a critical role in supporting the company's efforts to return to business quickly. We are still actively engaged in further discussions with both the Queensland and New Zealand governments on further industry support for our business. Turning to Slide seven and asset divestments. As you know, another key part of our strategy for our business was around the disposal of non-core assets during the course of FY 2020. During the course of the year, we've been able to complete the vast majority of this program as a result, which have generated in excess of AUD 21 million in capital being able to be released and significantly reduce our business's debt.
We're still in active discussions on other non-core assets, properties, and vehicles that will further reduce our debts during the course of this financial year. It's very important to note that none of these divestments will impair our ability to grow as demand increases throughout the financial year. Finally, before I hand over to Owen, I'd also like to quickly update you on Slide eight around some business improvement initiatives that we've been able to either complete or are well advanced in completing during quarter four of the last financial year. As I alluded before, we've been able to use this time to further drive these business improvements. The key focus of our commercial team, under the leadership of Kathryn O'Brien, has been about improving the margins on our cost of goods sold by renegotiating the majority of our key supplier contracts with our trade partners.
We've also now been able to implement the installation of a new and improved reservation system with IBIS across skydiving New Zealand, and by the middle of September, this will be in place for the Australian skydiving business. Importantly, we've maintained an absolute discipline on our pricing, particularly for skydiving, but also our Great Barrier Reef experiences. That belies our premium position in both of those verticals in the market. We've also ensured that our business also has the right technology platforms, not only to drive growth but also to ensure that our people are supported. We've commenced and are close to completing the implementation of a new payroll, a new safety database, and learning and development systems. We've upgraded a number of our operating websites and importantly now installed Calumo to ensure more timely financial reporting and cash monitoring internally within the business.
I'd now like to hand over to Owen, who will take you through our financial results in a little bit more detail.
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As we are all aware, John has given a good introduction, unsurprisingly, FY 2020 has not met the expectations we had that we went into the year, both at the financial and certainly in terms of what has eventuated in real life. At the half year, we flagged the emerging impact of COVID-19 in our results. That has certainly transpired, which led to our market update in late May. We've all lived through over recent months. I guess when we look at the numbers in our business, it's hard to articulate on the page exactly how that has transpired. It has been very much month- to- month.
The one thing that has been a cornerstone of managing this business is back in January, February, we rapidly transitioned to a stringent cash flow management approach, which John introduced earlier. These are external factors, the ones that weren't going to go away quickly, and they were going to have a significant impact on our business, but also our industry. The strategy from January onwards was very much one of preserving the progress on net debt reduction. It seems unusual to put that on a performance slide, but that certainly has been a key focus of management through the period. That resulted in us not losing too much ground as we'd already made up of our pro forma net debt, which you may recall was at AUD 7.3 million as we turned out of December and the end of the year at AUD 9 million.
A significant reduction on the prior year that you can see on the page. Revenue from continuing operations did decline by close to 33% with the combination of weather back in the first quarter, which now seems like a lifetime ago, which was soon superseded by the external factors created by the Australian bushfires, then once again by COVID-19. The period saw us effectively shuttered in April and May. Think of a business with zero revenue and zero volume. As we look forward, we expect that COVID-19 will continue to impact our business significantly in the short- term. International business remains a key component of our business, and we've built ourselves on that. While we anticipate domestic activity recovery, that will be constrained as long as borders remain closed.
In our results, it does include the impact of an impairment, a non-cash impairment that John alluded to there. That is really a reflection of what the COVID-19 event means for tourism in our industry, our business, for the coming years, particularly in the short- term. As John alluded to there, let's not get overly excited about reading too much into this number as the industry here, when we're back on our feet in FY 2023, 2024, we hope to remain at the exact same capacity that we were at in FY 2019. At the underlying EBITDA level, you'll see there that we turned a half, AUD 9.1 million. We gave away AUD 1.8 in the second half, which included AUD 1.3 million bad debts, which was really due to the rapid transition in the market, which had a big impact on our trade distribution partners.
You would have seen about in the press around the business models and the cash funding models that predominate that industry. As a reference point for you, we were tracking quite well even to the end of February, where we gained another AUD 2 million on the half at the underlying EBITDA line, which just shows the magnitude of the reversal of fortunes as bad debts and then the closure of business came into play for the final month of the year. We're very pleased to have received JobKeeper and Wage Subsidy programs in Australia and New Zealand with revenue to AUD 3.4 million and a net benefit that we estimate to be in the order of AUD 0.6 million in relation to this.
It's important to remember that the majority of our staff are on stand-down, so we're not a super beneficiary here of reporting a super profit as a result of operations. We certainly welcome the opportunity that JobKeeper and Wage Subsidy has given for our employees, who've been instrumental in keeping the workforce together. We could not have reactivated as quickly as we have without it. In the near term, we will remain focused on cash profitability that can be achieved based on emerging market trends. From a financial perspective, and we'll turn to our broader strategy as we exit for the outlook, it's best summed up by maintaining the capacity of the business, that we're in a position to scale up in recovery and execute demand as and when it becomes available. Moving on to Slide 11.
The Skydive result here was principally volume-led, with the corresponding impact on cost leverage flowing through to underlying EBITDA. In the second half of the year, we saw a really strong start in North Queensland and New Zealand. While on the eastern seaboard from Byron Bay south, we saw it constrained by the Australian bushfires. As at today, we've recommenced activities at eight drop zones in Australia, and our NZONE product, been our flagship in the New Zealand skydiving market and globally recommenced on the 28th of May with Skydive Wanaka opening up in the month of July.
We've spent a considerable amount of effort positioning the price point of the portfolio and our distribution structures, which John has spoken to already, to ensure that we're capitalizing on our cost base of the current environment and the lower volumes that we expect as we go through the initial stages of recovery. A key element of this strategy is not discounting the skydiving product in Australia, but being prepared to flex for a price-sensitive domestic consumer that we're going to be seeing in New Zealand in the immediate term while international borders remain closed. One thing I'd like to make absolutely clear here is the Australian Skydive business has been the engine room for returning the group to underlying EBITDA breakeven for the month of July. We expect that to be the continuing trend in the immediate term. Moving on to GBR Experiences on Slide 12.
GBR Experiences, for those unfamiliar with the segment, focused very much on tropical North Queensland and highly reliant on travel into the Cairns Airport from both international and domestic audiences. In the second half of the year, we were encouraged by increased domestic activity, which led to improved conditions on the prior year for the December and January months. That was quickly hit by the, firstly, the closure of the China group market in late January, followed by the closure of the international border to China in early February. We all know what happened to international borders from there and domestic travel. This market is typically, in terms of our product, a fixed schedule market. We run the same services each day, same capacities.
This has not been able to be achieved in this period, and we've spent a lot of work led by the General Manager of GBR Experiences, Adam Jones, to flex schedules, workforce, vessel capacity in ever-changing demand and social distancing environments. We have certainly welcomed the Queensland Government support for the region, which has included concessions from Ports North, the statutory authority responsible for the Cairns Marina, our main cost base for rentals and the rent relief they have provided. We're also delighted to be named an iconic tourism business under the Queensland Government Tourism Icons program, which will provide up to AUD 1 million for us to assist us through the COVID-19 recovery phase.
That all said, moving forward, the uncertainty remains on the Queensland Government pathway to unrestricted travel in the immediate term, with September school holidays looking highly unlikely and possibly a constraint as we head into Christmas and January periods. That said, through the long term, we remain steadfast that this is an attractive market to be in. On the balance sheet, Slide 13. We continue to focus on net debt is the big story here. With a net debt of AUD 9 million at 30 June, we've continued to make further headway into August, and I'll come to that in a moment. We leave the year with net assets held for sale. That being our assets under the asset divestment program of AUD 7.3 million. Already, since 30th of June, we've executed on AUD 1.1 million of those, leaving us with just over AUD 6 million to execute.
Once again, as John alluded to, without impacting the earnings capacity of the business as we went through the recovery period. As you'd expect, the dialogue has been ongoing with our incumbent lender, the NAB, and I'd like to thank them for their support to date and acknowledge their pragmatism in helping us work through the strategic review. Also in these very uncertain times where forecasting remains an ever-changing beast. We thank them for their support. In looking at the balance sheet before we go into cash flow here, there's an encouraging gain as we go through July and August, and John will come to those. We still work in an environment where we're governed by next week's news and events, and we'll continue to respond to that as and when it emerges.
Moving on to Slide 14, and hopefully everyone appreciates the artwork on this slide. Rather than giving you the statutory cash flow, I thought more prudent for John and I to present how we look at the business and how we've taken the business from AUD 29.4 million net debt that we entered the year on, to today having net debt of AUD 7.8 million, despite the most challenging of circumstances. If I look at this page, without getting into too much of the detail, the first phase for 31 December pro forma is all about the strategic review and executing the divestment path. The second phase from 31 December to 30 June is about preserving the gains we made and continuing to edge away at reducing that exposure.
You'll see there that we didn't give away a lot in the second half, which may come as a surprise. Certainly we leave the period very pleased, albeit tracking behind where we would have liked to have been if we entered the period. Very pleased with the progress and continue to be so. In our last update in May, we noted a max monthly cash burn rate of approximately AUD 1 million cash outflow a month. We have brought in the June result ahead of expectations. Today, we have reset our internal targets to cash break even, and will continue to remain mindful and respond to operating conditions while COVID-19 remains at play. I'll now turn back to John for the trading update and outlook.
Thanks very much, Owen. Before we hand over to the group for questions, I thought it'd be prudent to give you both a trading update and also how we're looking at the outlook for the business as we move through FY 2021. Look, in setting the context for the trading update, I think it's important to reaffirm, and many of you know this already, that the first quarter of every financial year for us is always the lowest trading period, rate period for our business. Pleasingly, since July, we've been able to operate, with the exception of our Victorian drop zones, our drop zone of Glenorchy in New Zealand, all of our drop zones and all of our Great Barrier Reef experiences are now operating.
What this has meant in terms of performance for July, that on an underlying EBITDA measurement, we have been profitable for the first time since February. As you can see from Slide 16, July 2020 saw prior compared to prior volumes or prior year comparisons, for skydiving Australia about a 37% of the previous year and a 48% result for New Zealand. I should counter that New Zealand's 2019 result in July was built heavily around weather events. It shows a pleasing performance with only two of the three drop zones operating. Our experiences in the Great Barrier Reef were in and around 20. Directionally for August, for volumes, we're seeing very similar trends to what we've experienced within July. As Owen has alluded to before, our net debt position is around that AUD 7.8 million mark.
Turning to Slide 17, again, appreciate the artwork on this. I think the key thing to emphasize here is that we're still operating in a very fast-changing and ever-evolving environment as we've seen in recent times by what's been happening in Victoria or what's been happening on the North Island of New Zealand. That said, for the medium term, we still remain very optimistic about the business and the prospects for this business because we do know that once domestic travel and then demand returns, then followed by international demand returns, that our business, probably better than ever before, is well-positioned to take advantage of this demand. Also remembering that the underlying consumer demand for experiences in many respects has never been greater, particularly as people emerge from hibernated states.
For us, the way that we're looking at the recovery for the industry from a COVID perspective is really built around three things. Firstly, it's built in around the response to the pandemic, the control of community transmission, and also how government responds to ongoing outbreaks with inside the community. Secondly, it is around border control, not only internationally, but very importantly within Australia, what is the national policy on border movements and the free flow of people in between our interstate markets. Of course, the key driver of aviation capacity, how that returns domestically, both in Australia and also New Zealand, but also then internationally into the key gateway markets of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and also in Auckland.
For us, in terms of growth drivers and looking at how do we take the business forward, a key part of our strategy for this financial year and also into FY 2022 will be looking around three themes. We are still acquisitive. We are looking for the right opportunities in the Australian and New Zealand market, and we have a number of ongoing discussions in that Experience vertical that also associated with Adventure. That said, though, as you can appreciate, COVID-19 has made that process a little more difficult than previously before from both a logistic but also a commercial perspective, but we're still working through that. We're also focusing on new product development within our own business.
I think one of the things that we have the opportunity of looking at now is that we have good scale within our Skydiving business and also our marine products, and there are some opportunities where we're building on at the moment in and around new products. Finally, as I emphasized earlier on in the presentation, is in and around our product positioning. We are unashamedly proud of our positioning within the skydiving, the tandem skydiving industry in both Australia and New Zealand. We have the best equipment, the best drop zones, the best tandem masters, and we intend to continue our pricing discipline in and around that business. Equally on the Great Barrier Reef, we have some of the best products operating out of Cairns and Port Douglas on a daily basis.
That will continue to be a key part of our growth strategy as we move through FY 2021. Thank you once again, ladies and gentlemen, for your time this morning. We do, as always, appreciate your interest in the business. Could I just finish off today before we take questions on thanking and acknowledging the broader team at EXP, many of whom have made great personal sacrifices during FY 2020, and also to both the Australian and New Zealand governments and various state governments within Australia who have supported our business through programs like JobKeeper and the Wage Subsidies as we navigate through what has been a very exceptional and extraordinary year. With that, I'll conclude the formal part of our presentation and Allan and I are happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you.
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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Our first question today comes from Allan Franklin with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Morning, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to chat today. Just three questions, if I may. Just the first one in terms of domestic tourism and making the most of the opportunity at hand. Could you talk to any sort of targeted marketing or sort of campaigns that you might be sort of running in Cairns or Queenstown in particular? I mean, I do notice Qantas are running 55 return flights in August to Cairns, which is a mark sort of pickup on recent months. Yeah. Any sort of comments on that?
Look, I think the thing for us is we have been consistently marketing to the domestic market particularly through the channels where we know that that 18-24-year-old market for skydiving, which is our core market and our engine room, if you like, on platforms such as Facebook and such as Instagram. We've also, as we see from time to time within our business, offered specific campaigns. For example, for skydiving in Australia at the moment, we're running a targeted Father's Day campaign because we do know that's a popular time for our business. In and around specific geographical campaigns, we do work very closely with the local tourism boards in destinations like in Queenstown and also Wānaka, as well as Tourism Tropical North Queensland in Cairns and then throughout Australia, so bodies like Destination Wollongong. We continue to work with our trade partners.
If anything, one of the areas that I think we've been very active in during the pandemic and then as we've come out of the pandemic is, I guess, is that marketing, and that's why our new reservation system in New Zealand and also which will in mid-September come into the skydive business in Australia is very important. We've also, in North Queensland with our reservation system, put them all onto one platform for the first time in the business. That's also going to help us with the direct channels to customers as well.
Allan, if I may, might just add another layer to that, which is evident in the numbers we see. Traditionally we've spoken about a bias to probably aviation capacity driving the short-term volume. I think it's probably worth throwing out Australia's skydive is very much driven by its self-drive market at the moment. I think you mentioned there the Qantas example where as we're all aware or may not be aware, but John and I live and breathe this every day. Queensland is predominantly an intrastate market at the moment. There is a slight increase in capacity from Adelaide and areas like that, but that's not going to shift the needle.
The key for us, no matter how much money we could spend on marketing, will actually just having that Victoria and New South Wales patronage open up, and that will be the key driver of where we start to see the volume return.
Yeah. No, thank you. Just a follow-up maybe, in terms of any color you can provide on how you're sort of thinking about price and price elasticity and/or on most of the sort of volumes coming through on weekend experiences and obviously closed during the week and then sort of a push onto the Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Is that sort of how you're running a lot of the drop zones?
Just answering the first question in and around pricing. One of the key decisions we took as a company coming out of COVID-19, particularly in Australia with both the Reef and also skydiving, was to maintain our pricing, and particularly in and around the skydiving business, which is in Australia really is the engine room for us right now. We made a deliberate choice not to price discount in a material way. Certainly, in some drop zones we've actually increased our pricing. We haven't seen an adverse impact to that. As I said before, we unashamedly believe that our skydiving product in Australia is a premium product. The same goes for New Zealand, and we've seen in July and August the volumes that we spoke about earlier before.
On the Reef, we have similarly kept our pricing at pre-COVID-19 levels because we don't believe that discounting our way out of this is necessarily the right strategy because we are, at the moment, also benefiting from the fact that our direct channels are now accounting for close to 80% of our business, which I think is really important for us to take advantage of that. In relation to frequency and volumes, naturally this has been evolving. If I look at our Wollongong drop zone is consistently now running seven days a week. Our Noosa drop zone is consistently running between five and seven days a week. Interestingly, up in Airlie Beach, we're seeing the same. Other drop zones we're seeing are probably a more infrequent usage of those drop zones.
We basically made the decision, as we alluded to in May, that we would only operate Drop Zones and services if they were making money or if they were cash accretive when they were operating, and we've held that discipline. Some are working, like Mission Beach and Cairns, are consistently operating on weekends, but when we get into holiday periods, that may extend out to four days. Byron Bay will be a Drop Zone that once the Queensland border reopens, it will go back to being consistently a seven-day-a-week operation. On the water and the reefs, it's the same principle. Some services have returned to seven-day-a-week operations, such as Fitzroy Island is now operating consistently seven days a week. On weekends, we're operating two vessels out to the island.
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Last, just a quick one on CapEx, if you can sort of comment on how you're thinking about that over the next period.
I'll answer that one, Allan. I think it's a good question, and it's one that you'll see in the cash bridge that we presented here. That's been one area we've looked to scale back. Obviously, we've decreased activity. We can bring that in. It will continue to respond, and I think that's the caveat on everything at the moment. I'm looking at more of a number in the order of AUD 3 million-AUD 4 million, so down on previous periods. That certainly won't have us going backwards. Equally, that said, there's an opportunity at this time as the market is not moving around too much, and we're not bringing as much volume in.
There might be some strategic opportunity to bring services in, such as a boat or vessel off the water and do a survey, do a refit, and get ready for the post-COVID-19 recovery. None of that is expected to be in the order of millions and millions. We are looking at one project in particular around our pontoon product up on the reef. That'll continue to emerge over the coming months.
Yeah, sure. Noted. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John O'Shea with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Well done on-
Hey, John.
certainly on getting the balance sheet back in order, guys. It was a good effort in circumstances. Just a question from me on the Slide 16 it was, where you talked about the July 20 kind of passenger numbers versus previous period and GBR Experiences versus PCP, noting the fact that you said that was break-even EBITDA. Could we sort of draw the natural conclusion there that's the sort of numbers that relate to a break-even type scenario? I appreciate the fact that they're fairly quiet months, but should we be thinking about that in broad terms across the full- year as those sort of numbers as being the ones that would deliver a break-even EBITDA across the full period?
Yeah. Look, I think that's a good question, actually, John, and good morning, and thanks for joining. I think that is a good way of doing it, and that's certainly when we've been looking at the numbers and the reason for putting that in. To give us all a bit of a sense check there is obviously the mix. In short, yes, I think that is a good way of looking at it. The one thing I'm very mindful of, and we reiterate to our team almost weekly, is around just be careful with percentages at this point in time because they're small numbers, and when you use a percentage, we all know where you end up. With that caveat, but I think directionally, yes, that's right. We will have the cost base naturally shifting around as JobKeeper trails back.
It's not going to be hugely significant for us, though, month- to- month. The rent relief, but we're seeing some positive signals out of Queensland that key landlords such as Ports North and I would say more broadly, landlords have been very cooperative with us, recognizing the difficult situation that as a tourism supplier we are in at the moment.
Thanks very much for that. Just a second question from me on the kind of debt profile, how you're sort of seeing, correct me if I missed this, but the profile of the debt and the immediate sort of needs to the maturity profile?
Look, I think how we are looking at that, I think, look, the first thing I'd say is we speak to NAB very regularly on this, and they've been with us since we started the strategic review. It's probably a bit unique that we're not speaking to them just in the context of COVID-19. It's been an overall debt reduction exercise that they've been undertaking here. When we look at the maturity there, I think maybe the way of thinking of it, I hate to sort of step ahead of the game until we sign final documents. With NAB, I certainly am not thinking that we're going to have a situation where the rug is pulled from beneath us, for example, John. I think that's just not going to happen, quite frankly. That's on the corporate debt.
I think in terms of that, as we sell down the assets, we'll be looking to apply the additional funds to that. In the short- term, we'll be using any operating cash flow gains just to sort of eat into that corporate debt. I actually feel quite comfortable with the finance lease arrangement here, which you see is pretty even profile. They're backed by assets that, yes, they're not worth as much as what they were 12 months ago, but they're worth more than what the financing is on them. If that's helpful to sort of evaluate. It's not something a loose leaper on the debenture.
Sure. Thanks a lot, guys.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sudipta Ghosh with Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you. Couple of questions from me, please. Firstly, on the competitive environment in North Queensland, are you seeing any impacts from STA Travel going into administration? Can you just talk to the broader competitive landscape that you're seeing there around any of your competitors potentially struggling in that market?
Yeah. Okay. I'll pick that one up. John, good morning. In terms of STA Travel, it's almost a red herring for us. I think that I wouldn't read anything into that. There may be little pockets of exposures. Look, they're not a big trading partner of ours. I can look at Kathryn's getting my attention and saying, not an issue at all. It's very minor. That's that one dealt with. The competitive situation, I'll get John to just follow- up here. What we're seeing, and this is not just North Queensland, but even in Queenstown, even in other parts of Australia, is big government programs for our industry in tourism. There is a lot of people who are being kept afloat by JobKeeper and Wage Subsidies and the various support programs available, particularly in the SME space.
In fact, if you're an SME, it's probably easy to have financing relief with your bank as well. It's not like we're being flooded with opportunities, John, that we're looking at and saying, Look, that capital structure is emerging. The game is going longer now, and that's the phrase we use internally, is that we'll remain patient, and if there are good assets, we've got our eyes open to anything. I can speak for John here in knowing how many conversations he's had on looking at competitive landscapes and what the opportunities are there.
I think the broader competitive landscape up in North Queensland, you're not really getting a true picture of this because as Owen said, programs like JobKeeper, programs such as the various rental relief programs that the Queensland Government has put in place. Even some of the programs that the federal government have put in place, and there's been some industry support packages that have been provided to certain operators in Queensland or North Queensland particularly. I don't think you're gonna get a true view of that probably until we get into September. I think there's a couple of points coming up. September, when we see the first reduction in the JobKeeper rate, and then obviously in March when we see it come to a completion currently.
As Owen said, for us, it's been very welcome, but it hasn't been something that we're not sort of sitting here relying on it because of the way that we're trading. I think that's when you'll start to see it. Some operators have got frequencies that are similar to ours up in North Queensland. Some are still in mothball. Some are just trudging on and operating seven days a week, but with a handful of numbers. It's varied across the industry up there.
I also think a lot of operators up there are gonna wait to see what happens with the Queensland school holidays, to see how they go out of that and whether or not then they can sustain themselves through to December and January, which, I think for North Queensland will probably be a more popular time than ever before because, it will be a time when people just wanna get away, and get to a different part of Australia, of course, if they can.
Thanks. Just a second question for me. Can you provide any color at all on the skydiving split across Australia and New Zealand? I understand that used to be disclosed previously. Any color at all around that?
In terms of volumes, Sudipta, is that?
Yeah
correct?
Volumes.
Yeah.
Potentially profitability as well.
Yeah. Well, we manage them as a combined segment, which is why we disclose it that way. You'll see, given the scale of business now, we're not trying to present too much information as we go through this period in Australia and New Zealand. Certainly comfortable at the volume level because that's where the costs don't get blending and distort margins. The volume level for FY 2020, of the 127,700 jumps, about just under 89,000 were in Australia and just under 39,000 were in New Zealand. In terms of price points in Australia, you're looking at an average yield at the skydiving revenue per pax is just over AUD 400. In New Zealand, it drives up that high one. You get that number, it generally will track closer to AUD 500. Historically, that is.
Now as we move forward, that yield will come back as that market is constrained with a domestic audience. That's why the margin will be playing around a bit there in the short term as well. I think it'd be fairer to sort of look at margins for the skydiving segment overall, which we expect to be in that sort of 20%-25% if we have low volume. Hopefully, if we can get the volumes up more, we'll approach the more historical rates of just under 30%.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand it back over to Mr. O'Sullivan for closing remarks.
Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen, for your time, thank you again for your interest in Experience Co. I hope all of you have a great weekend and great rest of the week. Don't forget to book a skydive or go on one of our other products. We'd love to have you. No discount though. Thank you.
This concludes our conference for today. Thank you for your participation.