Good day and welcome to the Flight Centre Travel Group half-year result 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, please press star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Haydn Long, head of investor relations, to begin the conference. Haydn, over to you.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for dialing in for another one of our award-winning half-year result presentations. Today I'm joined by our CFO, Adam Campbell, and the CEOs of our corporate leisure and supply divisions, namely Chris Galanty, who's dialing in from the U.K., James Kavanagh, and Greg Parker. I'm also joined by Melissa Elf, our Chief Operating Officer of the corporate business. Mel will join us on some of the meetings over the next few days. You will, of course, also hear from Skroo, who'll kick things off with a short intro before finishing things off with some commentary about our outlook. We're not sure what he'll do in the middle, but probably a bit of heckling, I suspect. I'll now hand over to Skroo.
Thank you, Haydn, and good morning, everyone. Our first half PBT this year was comfortably in excess of AUD 100 million, as you've probably seen here. We're on track to deliver a record full-year TTV above the AUD 23.7 billion result that we achieved during the 2019 financial year. Also, earnings per share is up strongly to AUD 0.397. We're paying a AUD 0.10 per share interim dividend, and total shareholder returns relating to the period are about 7.4%. This is based on our share price movement over the period plus the interim dividend. Profit is still trailing pre-COVID, but this is a pretty good recovery considering international travel has ground for almost two years, and Australia's international borders only reopened two years ago. China, of course, as you remember, was in January 2023. It's never been easy. This has been achieved against a backdrop of economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
We have inflation, interest rate increases, and most of you will have heard about the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war. But the level of recovery strongly underlines the travel sector's resilience. Travel, we believe, is nondiscretionary, and this is the case in many customers' eyes. It's been referred to as the emergence of a traveling class, which is different, obviously, the business and economy class, with the means and propensity to travel, and that's exactly what people want to do. Generally, people simply adjust travel plans at destination if they're concerned about whatever's happening in the world. So I'll hand over now to Adam for more detail on our results. Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you, Skroo. Good morning to everyone as well. Look, as Skroo indicated, our journey not just towards recovery but returning our business to sustainable growth at both the top and bottom line, and once again, operating at a 2% PBT margin has continued during the first half. Our key focus areas of sales growth, improved revenue margins, controlling our cost base, and the proactive capital management can all be seen in this morning's announcement. TTV of AUD 11.3 billion with growth of around 17% in both corporate and leisure was our second-best start to a year, and combined with a 130 basis point increase in revenue margin led to revenues of AUD 1.3 billion, just under 30% up year-on-year.
The revenue margin rebound has come about predominantly in our leisure businesses but also in corporate and reflects general stabilization or improvement in total available margin across our product ranges and the successful deployment of strategic initiatives. These include new revenue streams, a focus on ancillary product sales such as Flight Centre's Captain's Pack and Travel Associates' Purple Ribbon Service, increased attachment of higher-margin products, and investments made to improve customer experience. Our cost margin is again just under 10% and reflects the permanent structural changes made during the pandemic, as well as the discipline held across all divisions as we balance cost control with appropriate investment in key growth drivers. The growth of scalable leisure brands, corporate's productive operation initiatives, and the establishment of our Global Business Services division to create greater global operating leverage will all continue to drive downward pressure on cost margin.
All of the above has come together to deliver an underlying EBITDA of AUD 189 million and an underlying PBT of AUD 106 million. As noted at the full year, our balance sheet is now in a very solid position, and during the first half, we have further strengthened the balance sheet and undertaken around AUD 425 million in capital management initiatives. These included utilizing AUD 84 million to buy back convertible notes, repaying AUD 250 million of bank debt, and AUD 30 million of overdraft, all able to be redrawn if required, the payment of AUD 40 million or AUD 0.18 per share fully franked final dividend, and the announcement today, as Skroo mentioned, of a 10-cent-per-share fully franked interim dividend.
I'd also like to reiterate, we are a 2% PBT margin business, and the company-wide focus on returning to that level has become a rallying cry or a north star for the company overall and for each of our individual business leaders. We have a clear path in place, including the continued focus on revenue margin initiatives across corporate and leisure, operating leverage opportunities to scale our cost base well below revenue growth, and reduced losses in our other business segment. These reduced losses are being driven by factors such as, firstly, we've made the difficult decision to close our loss-making U.S. wholesale business, and we also closed our underperforming Indian wholesale FX business in July. Pedal will distribute profit to the group once again this year after stock-related losses in FY 2023.
Our GBS business will integrate 1,400 people globally to provide greater efficiencies and better outputs while supporting our frontline people. We've fast-tracked our investment in TP Connects, and we'll start to see the benefit of that in FY 2025. We've already started to see a year-on-year turnaround in our Travel Services businesses as normal travel patterns return. To be clear, though, we're not going to artificially hit that target or to sacrifice longer-term success to do so. That means we won't abandon strategic initiatives that don't have the required profit margins while they're scaling up, and we also won't slow growth in profitable but lower-margin businesses to hit the target. We've included a slide on page 9 on the results. While I'll leave Chris Galanty to talk to their respective divisional results, I will note that both divisions have had a strong first half.
Leisure's PBT of AUD 60 million with TTV in excess of AUD 5 billion and revenue margin increasing to 12.1% set them up well for the second half. And the strong pipeline of wins in corporate has led to just under AUD 6 billion in sales with a corresponding 20 basis point increase in revenue margin. Combined with the investment Chris, Mel, and the team are making in Productive Operation s, I can see a very clear path to very strong results over the next 18 months. The other segment I'll now just touch on briefly. The TTV reduction of AUD 170 million reflects the closure of the underperforming Indian FX business I mentioned earlier. And the largely flat result year-on-year is a combination of profit improvement in our touring business and DMCs offset by the accelerated investment in TP Connects.
As I mentioned earlier, we've also made the decision to close our loss-making U.S. wholesale business, GOGO. Given the decision to close that business, we've excluded its operating losses from our underlying results to assist in future period comparatives. Other items that have been excluded from underlying results include an AUD 48 million gain from the buyback and remeasurement of convertible notes, some relatively small costs incurred to date on Productive Operations , the normal post-COVID employee retention plans, which are going to finish up this year, and the amortization of convertible notes. I'll just spend a minute on that amortization of convertible notes because it does have an impact on our guidance range.
By excluding the amortization of convertible notes from underlying results both now and into the future, we're removing the fluctuations that would otherwise be seen as we reassess the amortization period each reporting period and every time we buy back more notes. This is non-cash and simply a technical accounting treatment that doesn't reflect the cost of holding those notes. The coupon on the notes or the interest expense is the actual cost and continues to be recorded in our underlying results. As Skroo will note shortly, our first half results and our trading through January and February is in line with our expectations, and we're therefore maintaining our trading guidance for the full year.
The impact of the accounting change I've just spoken to will, however, increase the range to AUD 300 million-AUD 340 million as we exclude AUD 30 million of convertible note amortization from our full year underlying result. For transparency and consistency, we've also excluded this from the prior year numbers so that year-on-year comparatives remain appropriate. I'll just finish by highlighting a couple of important items in terms of the balance sheet. As noted earlier, we've proactively managed the balance sheet during the half by buying back convertible notes and paying down debt and overdrafts. We've also generated a modest amount of positive operating cash flows, which is important given we traditionally have negative operating cash flows in the first half followed by strong inflows in the second.
During the period, we've also extended our AUD 350 million debt facility until April 2026, converting the facility back to an unsecured format and with more favorable commercials and covenants. The strength of our balance sheet remains a key asset for us and will form part of the backbone of our future growth and success. I'll now hand over to Chris.
Thanks, Adam. Good morning, everybody. I'm pleased now to give an update on the performance of our global corporate business. I'll start just by reminding everybody where we play in this segment. Uniquely, we address the market with two brands, FCM in the large market and global space, which operates in around 100 markets of which just under 30 are equity, and Corporate Traveller in the SME space, which operates in 6 markets globally. The reason we address the market with two brands is it enables us to target our offerings specifically to those two customer types whose problems we believe are fundamentally different, and therefore, by having a tailored solution to both, it enables us to win better and succeed more. Similarly, this applies to our supplier value proposition whereby targeting two specific customer types, we can deliver better returns to our suppliers than to our competitors.
Just a quick summary of some KPIs in our first half scorecard. We're pleased to see transaction volume up 20% on the prior period, revenue margin up 18 basis points, underlying PBT margin up 37 basis points. Pleased again to see strong customer retention with contracted customers retained at 98% and strong new business wins of AUD 1.3 billion. Just delving in a bit more detail into those numbers. Firstly, I'm pleased to say we continue to significantly outperform the overall business travel sector with proven organic growth model delivering further TTV growth. In fact, record first half TTV of just under AUD 6 billion, which was a 17% increase on our previous best, which was set last year, with strong sales in all four regions.
In fact, if you look at our TTV by geography, you can see we're very well diversified globally with around 30% of TTV coming from the Americas and Australia, New Zealand, around 27% from EMEA, and now 13% from Asia. It's important to note that the 20% increase in transaction volumes now takes us well beyond our pre-COVID 2019 levels, and this is in a market segment that has only recovered to approximately 70%-75% of pre-COVID numbers. So again, our Grow to Win strategy has delivered significant growth. We have again high customer retention both brands and it's around 98% in the contracted customers. The new sales wins of AUD 1.3 billion, which have already been secured up until the end of January, are weighted more towards medium to SME customers, which was part of our strategy this year.
Pleasingly, the scale that we're seeing is starting to generate better, stronger profit growth. We saw a 53% increase in underlying PBT, with both revenue margins increasing and cost margins decreasing due to economies of scale. This economies of scale is driven by productivity levels, and one of the key things is that we've been able to right-size our workforce, which is the process we're continuing with after the significant upstaffing in the post-COVID recovery. I'm also pleased to say, a very strong uptake in our proprietary digital customer platforms, Melon Corporate Traveller and the FCM Platform. We've seen record numbers in the first half followed by our best-ever month in January across both platforms, and I'll come to that shortly. I'm also pleased to say that we continue with our strategy of delivering new and resilient income streams.
Obviously, most of our revenue still comes from travel management services, but we now generate around 80% of our revenue from non-travel management services, and that will continue to grow into the future. Something I've spoken about before is our hotel attachment rate, and I'm pleased to say that over the calendar year, we saw a 10% increase in our attachment rate, which really shows the strength and the value of our corporate global hotel program. If the future remains positive, we as a management team will stick with our consistent Grow to Win strategy, which has been clearly communicated through our management team and through the business over the last few years, and we will continue to focus on the execution of that strategy.
Moving into the second half, we had solid January results which were in line with our budget, which was really great because it was an aggressive budget. So results and the new year, new calendar year carries on strongly. And talking to our customers, in line with what we've seen from independent surveys like GBTA Business Travel Outlook Poll, our customers are telling us that most of our customers intend to spend more on business travel in 2024. Just to recap on our strategy on the page, the summary of why and how we're winning, starting at the top, our two global brands. Below that, the services and products that they deliver to our customers, obviously travel management being our number one service, but increasingly a new range of products which solve further customer problems and enable us to generate more revenue.
Our proprietary customer tech of Melon Corporate Traveller and FCM Platform, both of those which are distinct platforms but share commonality behind the scenes, they continue to grow across the world and have been a major reason why we're winning and retaining customers. We continue to invest in our industry-leading organic growth machine, our sales and marketing machine, to make sure we don't just retain customers but we can win more customers than our competitors by having superior marketing and sales capability. Productive Operations, which I'll touch on a bit more shortly, is really about us creating a single global operating system to improve productivity and create an even more compelling customer experience through consistency. Supplier partnerships and proprietary aggregation are really important to our customers and a reason why we win again.
I won't go into that because Greg will touch upon that later as we approach this as a Flight Centre Travel Group. Then the foundation of our success, as I've always said, is down to our culture and most importantly, our people. Moving a bit more onto the Melon and FCM Platform, the growth of these products which we've invested in throughout the COVID and post-COVID period have been a major reason why we win and retain customers. Melon is by far the dominant booking platform now for all of our new customers in the USA and Canada and is finishing pilot and about to go into mass market launch in the U.K. This really gives our customers a superior experience and enables us to improve the control of that experience and therefore the margin of returns for ourselves and our supply chain.
FCM Platform has been live to all new customers throughout the last year, and in the forthcoming months, we'll be migrating all of our remaining customers onto this platform. So by the end of this year, all of our customers will be using FCM Platform. And again, this proprietary technology which is absolutely tailored to the specific customer types but shares common functionality behind the scenes is one of the major reasons why both our corporate brands are winning. Expanding a bit more on Productive Operations , this is our internal strategy to transform the operations of our business globally. It really has three key elements. The first one is the digitalization and standardization of operations.
This means moving onto a single operating system with the same software, the same configuration, the same automation across both brands, across all markets, which gives our customers a more consistent experience, particularly in FCM where this is very important to the customers, but also much better economies of scale for our business. It should lead to significant growth in productivity. Part of that productivity is driven by the second point, which is enabling self-service capabilities in our platforms. This means customers, wherever they can, will be encouraged to self-serve rather than rely on our people to carry out tasks for them. This should give customers a faster experience which they desire, but also it should mean that the productivity of our people continues to increase. In fact, it should rapidly increase. The third and important part is content access and distribution.
This means that the right content, whether it's an airfare or a hotel room, gets to our customers via the right channel at the right time. That can be direct to our customers via our platforms or to our consultants, which means our customers get better pricing and we can get better returns. This Productive Operations strategy has begun already, been deployed across the world in different elements, and it's going to lead to the productive transformation of our business over the next 18 months. An important part of Productive Operations is our use of AI. I'm not just going to talk about our AI center of excellence which we established over the last year. Instead, I'm going to just point out a specific achievement of AI that's already live in our business. The way customers choose to deal with us in an offline fashion is email.
They can chat or call, but predominantly, we receive emails from customers. Our new AI features, which has been built into productive operation, intelligently categorizes incoming emails. This prioritizes urgent travel needs and potential revenue opportunities. It ensures prompt, targeted responses which significantly boost our consultant efficiency and therefore our customer satisfaction. What this means is it doesn't just automate the process. It frees up our consultants to spend more time adding value to our customers. One of the many ways that AI is already impacting our business, but with our center of excellence, we see that increasing significantly over the forthcoming months and years. To finalize, I'll talk about our key drivers. Firstly, we want to continue with organic sales growth, not just retaining customers but making sure our sales and marketing machine is out there winning and onboarding more customers than ever.
Those customers will really benefit from Productive Operations , so us really driving self-service through our platforms but also increasing automation and digitization of all of our transactions. This leads to greater efficiency and scale benefits and fundamentally great margin improvements for us, both from a revenue margin but also a cost margin. So as I finish, it's a good time for me to thank our people for the fantastic work that they've done for us and our customers over the last six months. And on that note, I'll hand over to JK to give an update on Leisure.
Thank you, Chris. Hi to everyone. I'm delighted to update on the Leisure division, and I'll cover off on three key areas. Firstly, a business overview, then touch onto the highlights of our results, and then we'll focus onto the future. On the first slide there, you'll really see that Leisure is really positioned to grow following the transformation that has been achieved in recent years with opportunities to grow in our core markets of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. Really, our challenger position is in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, and Singapore where we hold less than 5% market share. Our strength here really lies in the diversity across our brands, our sales and service channels with a more productive retail network now of 550 stores which are supported by digital booking apps who have continuous functionality improvements supported by efficient call centers.
Together, they're generating repeat customer rates that range from 50%-70%, and collectively, there's an impressive net promoter score ranging from 47-85 depending on the brand. On the next slide, you'll see a view of our portfolio of brands which really reaches wide, with Flight Centre making up over half the portfolio in the mass market space. We're really accelerating our growth in the luxury travel space with Travel Associates in Australia and New Zealand who had a record first-half profit complemented by Scott Dunn who have settled into our portfolio and group really well and are set to make meaningful contributions in the second half. Our complementary businesses specialize in pre-packaged travel, cruise holidays, and targeted OTA sales and foreign exchange. And then finally, in the B2B space, one of our fastest-growing categories is in the independent agent segment.
The benefits of this positioning provide our customers with access to the widest range of Travel Services . Also for our suppliers, it gives them a single entry point to be able to distribute their product quite far and wide. On the next slide, you'll see the business model shift that has really happened in Leisure. The key callout here is that almost one-third of our sales are now being achieved by lower-cost and highly scalable models of online and independent contractors. In the online space, what's key here is transacting higher-volume, lower-margin products, many domestic, which frees up our stores to actually take care of more higher-value customer products. In the independent contractor space, they typically have lower customer acquisition costs, and of course, we share the margins with these independent contractors in this space.
On the next couple of slides, you'll see a scorecard and a bit more detail which highlights the results of our Leisure division. When we take a look deeper into the performance of these categories, some of the key callouts include our overall TTV growth of 18% which has continued to grow into the January and February periods where we expect to actually reach our peak selling months. All four Leisure categories are expected to transact over AUD 1 billion in TTV and are growing and are profitable as well, with Flight Centre producing significantly more than this. A couple of key callouts in this space is that our specialist complementary category is up over 50% with online sales now hitting AUD 830 million, and our Jet max business, which is an OTA specialist division in the meta world, is growing over 75%.
Our luxury category grew 44% which was aided partially by the Scott Dunn acquisition. The next key callout here is that economies of scale continue to be achieved with revenue margin of 33% and a revenue margin sorry, revenue of 33% and a revenue margin as lifted by 141 basis points. This has resulted in a very pleasing PBT result of AUD 60 million for the half, which was two times greater than the first half in 2019 financial year and 30 times greater than last year, all resulting in a very strong PBT margin of 111 basis points to approximately 1.2%. And that sets us up nicely for a seasonally stronger second half where higher margins are expected. So some of the key drivers of growth include really around our business mix shift.
We're actually selling a lot more profitable international products now, as well as components per booking is actually greater. So in Flight Centre, in the first half of 2019, we sold approximately 2.2 components per booking, and in the half just gone was 2.6. As Adam touched on earlier, we're also attaching a lot more higher-margin ancillary sales such as the Captain's Pack which is now attaching at around 60% of bookings in store. And we also have a lot more recurring revenue coming through from independent contractors with lower customer acquisition costs. We are maintaining high productivity levels even though we have increased marketing spend and also have increased investment in people by adding over 600 more in the corresponding period. Finally, when we look to the future of Leisure, our longer-term objectives are actually laid out and illustrated in the next five slides.
In Leisure, we're really focused on five big moves from omnichannel retailing in Flight Centre to rapid growth in luxury travel, independent agents, cruise and touring, and looking for new engines of growth. To achieve success in these areas, our overarching objective is to digitize and scale our winning operating models so we can serve more customers and generate productive and profitable recurring revenue. So we see this being done through four key areas that I'll just give some insights to. Firstly, it's about scaling our winning models to focus on growing top line. Now, we do expect modest growth in our store network and also sales staff growth in our traditional businesses to actually continue to drive the top line. But other areas of growth will include accelerating Scott Dunn in the luxury category in the U.S.
We announced previously that we opened our New York office and have hired some key management in Manhattan to really drive the performance of this business. This week, we made the very exciting announcement of a new brand called Envoyage. Envoyage will become our principal brand to drive growth in the independent agent category across five global markets. You can see a slide of Envoyage there. I think it's on slide 31 in the pack which represents the new image for this category that we aim to win in over the coming years. In the cruise market, we expect growth to happen across all of our brands. I'll just touch on a few of these. Firstly, Flight Centre is performing very strongly in this category with close-to-home cruise sales and also international cruising too. In January just gone, had a record cruise sales performance post-pandemic.
We also aim to grow the cruise category through My Cruises in the pre-package space. My Cruises, the business, is part of our Ignite portfolio with voted number one cruise agency in Australia, complemented by our newly launched cruise brand which is actually called Cruiseabout. You'll see the slide there. I think it's slide number 32 which will focus on tailor-made cruise holidays, one of the only businesses in Australia to specialize in retail and online backed by call centers. The website went live there in February, and our first store opens in April. The next area of driving growth will be about differentiating our products to continue to increase our revenue margin. This will be done really by manufacturing unique and exclusive ranges that will deliver higher-margin travel products to our customers.
Some of the key callouts in this space is the growth in Flight Centre Holidays, also more packaging in the cruising and touring space with My Cruises and touring. We've launched a range of signature luxury products that will also be unbeatable in terms of the actual value that's included, very attractive in terms of bringing in more customers, and they'll be exclusive to our group with higher margins. As well as that, we aim to continue to actually further grow our ancillary sales offering so we're not dependent solely on supplier revenue for actual growth. The last two points here is about increasing customer loyalty by focusing on more personalized and tailored engagements. You'll see a slide there that just gives you a bit of an overview of some of the things that we've done as part of our omnichannel strategy and investment in digital.
Some of the key areas of focus here is actually developing digital quotes and itineraries that allow us to enable more sophisticated interactions with our customers. We're at a space now whereby we are actually leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, and that allows us to channel inquiry better that comes through from our customers to get to the right consultant and to service up the most appropriate products. We're also developing automated offers to our customers by using AI and machine learning. It allows us to know when our customers are most likely to buy certain types of products, and then we can target product offers to our customers at the appropriate time. And then finally, designing a range of different customer journeys that allow us to actually do greater marketing automation.
The last piece, of course, is ensuring that we have disciplined that we're a lot more disciplined with our cost management as Adam touched on. Productive Operations will be key to drive capital efficiencies in Leisure and ensure that incremental revenues are efficiently delivered to the bottom line. Last but not least, certainly a huge thank you to all of our people who the majority are also shareholders who have contributed to this incredible turnaround in Leisure. I'll now hand over to Greg Parker for a supply update.
Thanks, JK, and good morning, everyone. Underpinning the content sources for our Leisure and corporate businesses is our global supply division. I'll provide a high-level overview of how we are structured and how we operate and then touch on some of the key callouts for the first half.
Our vision is global supply excellence for a local market, and we're approximately two years into our formation. We started from a regional supply business that wasn't fully maximizing our global potential, and I'm now pleased to say we're well on our journey to leverage our capabilities from a group perspective. At the core of our business is the procurement of products. We partner with over 80 airlines both within region and across our global networks, north of 900,000 hotels from the major chains to boutique properties and resorts tailored to both our leisure and corporate customers' needs, 10 mainstream global car and transport operators across a range of direct and aggregation sources, and partnerships with seven insurance providers offering fully comprehensive add-on and ancillary products.
A growing range of 80 cruise operators primarily focused on the categories of ocean and river and 40-plus touring and group operators also catering to youth and adventure. And of course, our valued global distribution GDS partners. To service our suite of products, we have a range of technology vendors that power the backbone of our selling brands from a proprietary hotel aggregation platform in Leisure and a primary third-party provider in Corporate, airline ticketing systems, load and reconciliation processes, cruise and tour platforms in Leisure, and our air content multi-source platform servicing both traditional and NDC air content in Dubai-based business TP Connects. As we've been doing for the last 40-plus years, we've been continuing to invest in building strong relationships and partnerships with our supply chain, showcasing the geographical diversity of our business and brands that span almost every customer segment that our suppliers are targeting.
This diversity is key as not all segments perform and grow at the same pace, which offers security and certainty to all our partners. We invest a lot of time understanding our suppliers' product evolution and their challenges and make sure we're at the table with them and form part of both the creation and the solution. The key way we do this is through a single-door portfolio management structure that is deal with us once, and we open the door to our entire distribution network, some 25 equity markets and 75-plus FCM partners across 100 geographies. Most of our supply chains stay in their own lane. That is, airlines know airlines, and the customers that buy their products. Hoteliers know hotels, and the customers that stay in their property. Similar with cruise, tour, and insurance.
We have a rich dataset which provides a holistic view of the travel ecosystem and customers' buying behaviors across all segments, insights that prove invaluable when securing market-leading deals and bespoke unique products for our customers. Our approach is best summed up with this flywheel. Starting from the top, our authentic and strategic partner relationships lead to our ability to negotiate industry-leading content, contracts, and commercial returns, which then deliver sustainable and additional margins for all our selling brands, which powers investment in the scalable technology platforms I've just mentioned and also our streamlined low-cost operation support business. This then enables us to channel products onto our partners, those that suit our customers' preference, and provide us with the best return, which in turn creates value and strengthens our partnerships and connectedness, and the cycle starts again.
The better we become at each of these items increases our nimbleness, increases our value, and powers our supply marketplace. So in terms of the first half, there's a lot of detail on the next slide which encompasses the areas of content and distribution, procurement and Travel Service s being touring, hotel management, and destination management. I won't go into all the details but a few of the key callouts. Broadly, all our categories are performing in line with expectations. In the airspace, global domestic capacity has reached 106%, and international is now at 104%. Closer to home, Australian domestic is 101%, and international is at 98%. New entrants like Turkish and new markets from Delta as well as other airlines should push this close to 100% over the course of the next six months. These stats are as of today and were lower at the end of the first half.
While we haven't managed to fully offset the airline-based commission reductions that took place in Australia and New Zealand at the tail end of 2022 and during FY 2023, we continue to see margin improvement through growth tiers, bonuses, new creative dealing models, and our continued investment in building stronger partnerships. Underpinning our air sales is our strong relationships with Sabre and Amadeus and Travelport and also our investment in airfare aggregator TP Connects. We have fast-tracked development cycles and velocity in TP Connects over the first half to meet our needs and have created new revenue-driving opportunities both through the adoption of NDC, enhanced commercials, and better content offerings.
TP Connects is now powering our proprietary corporate online booking tool Melon and all of the air content that you can see on flightcentre.com. We've increased store users from only a few hundred to over 3,000 users over the last six months.
This move continues to open doors and to have more meaningful strategic conversations with our airline partners. In the area of hotels, margins remain stable as we continue to review our best sourcing options and focus on increasing attachment rates. Our corporate and leisure businesses have grown sales by some 12% and 11% respectively. JK also shared our Leisure Big Moves with one of the key ones being accelerating our cruise growth through our existing brand and the reintroduction of Cruiseabout. We are also launching a new B2B offering with Cruise HQ which will increase our relevance with our expanding network of cruise suppliers and provide access to accelerated and deeper margins. We are now in the final stages of agreeing with a full suite of deals and plan to launch this mid-April.
In the insurance space over the last 12 months, we have undertaken a robust global RFP across all our brands and all our models. We will be transitioning from Cover-More and Allianz to Europ Assistance for our mainstream leisure businesses in the first quarter of FY 2025. Our five-year term encompasses a renewed product offering and improved commercials. Moving on to our Travel Services division, as Adam mentioned, we have made the difficult decision to close our GOGO wholesale business in the U.S. Economically, its very high-touch offering was no longer viable, and it was running significant losses even with a reduced workforce, and we couldn't see a return to profitability in the near term. This will be done over the course of the next month.
Our full range of leisure products will continue to be made available through our existing brands and will underpin the launch of our Envoyage business.
Touring has had a good start to the year with continued strong performance from Backroads, and we're also seeing improvements in the Topdeck business. In terms of hotels, we have circa 1,550 keys at 18 properties in the hotel management space focused in Asia, and it's expected to double in the next 12 months with our strong pipeline of properties. In our destination management DMC business, Asia is now starting to recover with long-haul demand returning and margins are improving. Customers are increasingly seeking immersive and authentic experiences. These businesses are expected to continue and recover and on track to deliver around AUD 5 million by the end of the year. So guys, this pretty much sums up our key drivers of growth. Just to recap, supply margin is stable, and performance is in line with expectations.
Supply is returning, which is bringing down prices and assisting with unique deals and commercial returns. Our flywheel starts and ends with our focus of building upon, strengthening, and providing optimal value to our core partners. I'll now hand over to Skroo to run through the market outlook.
Yeah, thank you, Gregory. As we know, we're Flight Centre Travel Group's a diversified global travel business, and we have a resilient customer base, and we believe we're well placed to achieve our financial year 2024 expectations and targets. After a solid first half with our seasonally adjusted strongest trading months to come, about 70% of underlying 2023 EBITDA was generating during the second half, we've also enjoyed a positive start to the second half with January results in line with budget and February also looking reasonably promising. So we're on track to deliver a record TTV surpassing our AUD 23.7 billion 2019 result as we mentioned at the start. And there are some positive lead indicators. Airline capacity, as we've heard, is increasing. Australian outbound capacity is at 94% of pre-COVID at December 31, expected to reach basically 100% by June 30.
Airfare is also now falling, 13% decrease in Australia during the second quarter. There's an appendix for a map showing the movements and about a 7% decrease globally. This is expected to stimulate demand in the near term. There is upside potential as market continues to recover. The corporate sector globally, although it's only at about 70% of pre-COVID transaction levels, Australian outbound travel's still well behind its normalized level. This charts where we would have been. That's appendix 7 if travel continued to grow at its long-term compound annual growth rate. IATA projects the 2024 calendar year will be a record year for travel in calendar year 2024, 4.7 billion passengers expected to take off versus 4.5 billion in 2019. Profit and revenue margins are improving with seasonal step-up anticipated during second half. Cost margins are stable and set for further reductions driven predominantly by productivity.
Generally, we're successfully executing our key strategies. Our diverse brand stable generally resonates strongly with customers. The corporate business is growing to win and now becoming more productive. Leisure business is achieving economies of scale, delivering stronger profits, and we're also solidifying the balance sheet while retaining flexibility to reduce debt or the convertible note balance and to capitalize on any opportunities that come up. So we're now targeting underlying PBT of about AUD 300 million-AUD 340 million, previously AUD 270 million-AUD 310 million, giving about, and I think Adam spoke about this, AUD 30 million of convertible bond amortisation, which were excluded from the underlying PBT.
The midpoint in new range, which is about AUD 320 million, is about 130% up on the comparative 2023 result, which was AUD 138.8 million, employs a 33%-67% earnings split between the first and second halves. This is in line with our 2023 underlying EBITDA split.
PBT split last year was more like 12-88 because conditions improved fairly dramatically as the year progressed. Our heavy second-half profit weighting is expected to be driven by two main things. One, traditional seasonality. There is typically a heavier second-half TTV weighting in both leisure and corporate. We typically see a revenue margin uplift driven by product mix changes during the second half ahead of the peak northern hemisphere travel season. Secondly, operational enhancements. These include improved corporate profits as Productive Operations gain traction thanks to Mel here sitting in the room. The impact of Scott Dunn, circa 85% of its 2024 PBT, is expected to be generated during six months of 30th of June.
A renewed cost focus delivers stronger operating leverage, and the Global Business Services that are in place that Adam mentioned to help deliver cost and productivity efficiencies in the services we offer our frontline businesses. Also, removal of loss-making businesses, which was mentioned with GOGO and the FX from India. We also have significant turnaround opportunities. As was mentioned, the Bikes JV is now back in profit after significant stock write losses during the financial 2023 second half. There's also turnaround opportunity in the Travel Services businesses, which is the touring and hotels and DMC that Greg spoke about. So the major longer-term priorities, we've got 6 here as per you'll see. Firstly, having the right people on the bus and obviously the wrong ones off it.
Having the best product and biggest product range, which is a range of great quality, curated, personalized product as well as mass product and service in our service in travel, travel-related fields. Enhancing our famous differentiated brands and businesses. Satisfied customers and great relationship with supported suppliers, which I believe we are very good at. Working on our costs, so productivity in and costs out. Developing state-of-the-art global where possible tech products that make us more productive give our customers and suppliers exactly what they need. And also our growth. We talk about from the alchemy of growth, Horizon One, Two, and Three businesses and growing businesses from Horizon Three, which is basically startup businesses, into Horizon Two, which we've got quite a few now, to Horizon One, which we talked about in both leisure and corporate businesses like Flight Centre, Corporate Traveller, and FCM.
In terms of growth, the ones that we have called out is our Asian corporate in the first half. It's now at about AUD 740 million TTV, and it will obviously more than double that over the full year. Our independents now called Envoyage, again, about AUD 700 million, and it'll be well over AUD 1 billion for the year. Travel Money, again, a significant not only contributor to TTV but also to profit. Travel Associates, very profitable business as JK talked about. Ignite, which is My Holiday and My Cruises, which has a high profit margin business similar to Travel Associates and Scott Dunn, and obviously Scott Dunn, which is a business that's heavily weighted in the second half, so about 85% in the second half. And so as JK, I think, mentioned, all those different pillars will deliver more than AUD 1 billion.
Obviously, Flight Centre a lot more than that, but areas like the Asian corporate is quite exciting the way we're heading now. So thank you very much, and I'll hand you back to Haydn. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. Now it's time to go through some questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. Your first question comes to line of Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Your line is open.
Morning, everyone. Can we start with the revenue margin? You've made some pretty good progress on that, and it looks like it was largely mix-driven as well as attachments, etc., based on what you've said. How much more do you think you can improve from here? To lift higher than this, do you need to start to get a little bit more out of the deals you've got with airlines or combination of what you're doing and maybe a bit of annualization of what you've got should lift them higher?
Yeah. Hey, Michael. It's Adam here. I might get JK and Chris to talk to that. It might be a slightly different story in each of the divisions. So JK, do you want to start?
Yeah, thank you. Hi, Michael. Firstly, on the leisure side, the areas that we've been using to try and drive up margin are working right now, but there's still room to grow. So if you look at things like attachment of a Captain's Pack, which is a high-margin product for us, that's about 60% attachment right now globally. But in some markets like Australia, it's moving up to the 70% mark. We're getting more and more growth. In January, it's lifted again. And around the rest of the world, there's still space to grow there. So we think there is room to grow across all the various divisions in this space.
When we look at the second half, we'll typically see a higher margin uplift in any case, and that's just because of our peak selling season and the bigger mix of international products that are in there and also a lot more revenue that comes through from selling non-air products, which are our higher-margin products, which we expect to actually see in this coming half.
Chris, do you want to talk to corporate?
Sure. Yeah. Michael, to answer your question, I think from a corporate perspective, a lot of it is about mix shift. So Corporate Traveller, our SME brand growing faster than FCM, will make a big difference and also faster growth in northern hemisphere where we operate at a higher revenue margin, particularly in markets like the U.K., U.S., Canada, etc. In addition to that, we are looking at new revenue streams, which are growing. They've grown 100% on last year, up to 8% of revenue, and they typically operate at much higher revenue margins. So they're the initiatives at play. So we do see a bit of opportunity to continue that improvement.
Okay. Thank you. And then second question, and there's a couple of parts, I guess, just relating to the way that you've changed your accounting and presentation of the results. You gave us a first quarter PBT number of AUD 54 million, I think it was. Was that on the new basis, or was it on the old basis? So did it include the amortization on the notes and the GOGO loss, or had you pulled it out of that number as well?
Yeah. Adam again, Michael. No, that quarter one included the first quarter losses for GOGO and also included the amortization for the convertibles.
Okay. So that implies a fairly small contribution from the second quarter, a little bit more than half of the first quarter. Is that consistent with normal seasonality? Because we don't really have a history of your quarterly profits.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, it is. I think we highlighted at the AGM, we definitely expected that the second quarter would be softer than first quarter. First quarter was a strong one, but more importantly, in the second quarter, we saw that first quarter trajectory continue through October, November. But December is always going to be a traditionally very soft period. And certainly, in the last year or two, we've certainly seen things. Usually, we would historically have seen things really start to soften about the end of the first week, second week of December. That seems to have been pulled forward. So pretty much most of December is now a pretty soft month for us. So we were expecting that. The numbers we've put through today are pretty much in line with where we expected to finish for the half.
We were reasonably pleased with that second quarter from a trading perspective as well.
Okay. And just the last one relating to those accounting changes. I might be missing something, but it looks to me like your convertible notes are contributing positively to your PBT result based on this new methodology. Because if I look at the blended coupon across your convertibles, which is what now comes through your P&L, it's probably about a bit under 2% or maybe around 2%. You're probably actually getting a higher interest rate on the cash at bank on the other side of that. It just seems like a little bit of a perplexing way to report the numbers given that dynamic.
Yeah. I'm glad you asked. I had a quick look at your note. I was going to have a chat to you about it, actually, because I think from our perspective, the cost of those notes being a coupon is absolutely, as you say here, is absolutely included in our underlying result. So the cost of those notes is in our numbers. I think your note indicated when I read it that that wasn't the case, but we can absolutely say that the cost of those notes are included in our underlying results. And as you say, at the moment, with the coupon that we pay on those notes, we are effectively in a better position given that we can get a better cash rate for that. That's 100% correct.
Clearly, it's not the reason we did it, if you go back to when we actually did these notes, but that's the impact of it at the moment. I just want to say that taking those convertible note amortization out is something that I think is really important to actually show the trading position of the company. As I say, they're a technical accounting non-cash entry. I won't bore everyone with the accounting for it, but when you pull those convertibles on the balance sheet, you allocate some to equity and some to debt. Then all this amortization is grossing up that debt value up until the point when you think that they're going to be redeemed or bought back. So it's a purely accounting entry. It's got nothing to do with the trading. It's got nothing to do with the cost of the notes.
If we had our time again, we would have taken that under the line from day one. So I think that's the lesson we would have learned from undertaking those notes.
Yeah. I guess just to clarify, the point in what I wrote this morning is that your convertibles have an equity cost and a debt cost. You're now effectively pulling the equity cost below the line. But we're going to have the debate later.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All good.
Your next question comes on line of Lisa Deng from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi. I've got two questions. The first is actually on corporate. One of our peers actually commented earlier that the corporate recovery at around the 70%-75% pre-COVID is largely done, and from here, they're not expecting any further recovery, and the normal industry growth is likely to be in the line of around 3%. I mean, how do you guys think about that, and do you see it differently? Thanks.
Yeah. We've tried not to comment on that because GBTA says that they think, based on their research, Corporate Travel will recover back to 100% over the coming years. Our view is we don't want to guess that. Instead, we want to focus on market share growth. So the market is around 70%-75% based on the numbers you can choose to look at. We're actually at 120% of 2019. So we've very much taken the view maybe it'll get back to 80%, maybe it'll get it back to 100%. Who knows? So our focus is on growing market share. And even though we're one of the largest travel management companies in the world, we still have tiny market share because the market's so fragmented. So it's not something we worry about too much.
We very much focus on winning new customers and growing to organic growth rather than waiting for a 100% recovery.
Got it. And just to follow up on that, if we look at the AUD 1.3 billion pipeline, I think that's already been secured. And I look at last year's first half, that was AUD 1.25 billion. How do I think about that as well? Because they're quite similar, but yet the market's recovered a lot. How do I think about that?
Well, I think they're new signed business amounts. There's an element of estimation in this, particularly on the SME front, but generally, our estimations are pretty accurate. The only real recovery change that we've seen is the opening up of Asia, which opened up sort of January, February earlier this year. The markets had already opened up. I think for us, the big focus for us this year is to improve productivity, make sure more of that revenue flows through to profitability, improve customer experience. Nevertheless, we've carried on keeping winning new business. We're actually really pleased with those sales wins this year, and as you say, they do follow the trend that we've seen over the last couple of years.
Got it. And then the second question is actually on leisure. We talk about trying to improve, I guess, the conversion of revenue to profitability. Just in terms of the way we think about the portfolio of brands there, especially with the Cruiseabout and also the Envoyage launch, do we think that these brands potentially will have dissynergies or drive more costly acquisition, and therefore, that drop-through may not be or the improvement to drop-through that we should be looking for may come at a later stage? How do we think about the fragmentation of brands?
Yeah. Look, I think the way we look at it is because the portfolio is quite diverse, it allows us to make sure that we can have reasonably good growth dropping through to the bottom line. And if you look at the different categories, because we've got luxury in there, which is growing quite significantly, that's a higher-margin division. As well as if you look at the complementary segment, one of the incredibly fast-growing divisions is Ignite in our complementary specialist areas. And the margins in that business line are very strong too as well. So the fact that we're diverse means that growth across all the categories were reasonably well spread enough to make sure that we can continue to get good bottom-line growth.
Okay. Thanks.
Your next question comes on line of Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Your line is open.
Thanks for the time. Just on the guidance and just understanding some of the movements in the sector markets, it feels like the goalposts have moved a little bit given the GOGO business and the Indian business are going to be closed, which obviously provides some tailwinds. Can you just give us an idea around how some of those puts and takes, particularly around the other line, look into the second half? Because obviously, you're going to have another month and a bit of Scott Dunn. You're going to have it's not the number from the benefit from GOGO will be and also India. And then any other movements within that other line that you can help us with just for the second half?
Yeah. Ben, look, I think there's a few components in there. I think the second half weighting, I think if you take the midpoint of guidance, it'd indicate that we'll be about 1/3 first half, 2/3 second half weighting. And I think we're pretty comfortable with that. There are a few moving pieces. So if you think about that other segment, the Pedal Group is now in a profitable position. Second half of last year, we recorded share of losses from that business, but we will record a relatively modest and minor bit of contribution from the Pedal Group in the second half, which will be a bit of a turnaround there. Our touring and in-destination businesses will also be a positive turn for us year-on-year as well.
Scott Dunn, as you say, Scott Dunn, we've got a slightly—we took that on board end of February, I think, JK, of last year. So again, as you say, we'll have a slight uptick from that for that month and a half or so. So there are a few things there that will be a positive for us. We are expecting TP Connects to continue its current run rate in terms of investments. So that'll be slightly higher than we did last year. And so that'll offset a little bit of that. But if I look at the other segment, I'd certainly be looking for maybe AUD 5 million, maybe up to AUD 10 million improvement half on half that we'd see in that segment.
What did GOGO and the Indian FX business lose in the second half of last year to lose money in the second half of last year?
Yeah. GOGO lost around $3 million-$4 million in the second half.
Thanks. And then just on sort of this 2% aspiration, I always like to ask about this, but just how are you thinking about that now? I think you sort of said end of fiscal 2025 now. You've obviously going to have a sort of a 5, about a 10 basis point benefit from now, more change in how you're disclosing that. How are you thinking about the path to 2%? Is it something you're targeting for the full year of 2025, or is it more an exit rate, and you're hoping to achieve that for fiscal 2026?
Yeah. No, we're certainly aiming for that for the full year of FY 2025. So again, good to get the question so we can provide that clarity. We are still targeting that for the full year. We would expect the first half, as you know, will be below that and probably well below that, but better than the 0.9 we've got this year. But we would certainly expect that the second half would be at a higher run rate. So we are aiming for 2% for the full year with those caveats that I said earlier, and I think they're important ones. But if you look at the business right now, even now, in corporate and leisure, we've got sporadic months where we're up at or even slightly above 2% for those businesses.
We need to get that month after month, and we need to get it up for those businesses to the mid-2% rather than 2% or thereabouts. So there's still a bit of a way to go, but we're certainly seeing some good movement there. And the other element, as we've just spoken about, is that other segment, which is a drag then on the front-end divisions. So getting that down to a more manageable level and, again, some of the decisions we've made in terms of GOGO, the FX business in India, and also the turnaround of some of those businesses that I mentioned earlier is certainly going to help us with that. So it's not by no means is it a walk in the park. We've got a long way to go to get there, but we are still focused on a full year FY 2025.
Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Ben.
Your next question comes on line of Tim Plumbe from UBS. Your line is open. Tim, your line is open.
Sorry about that, guys. Just two questions from me, if possible. Apologies, I had to join halfway through. Just wondering if you guys can talk. I appreciate you guys mentioned that it dropped off in December, but if we think about the corporate business, can you talk at all about any Middle East impact that you saw across that business? And in the December quarter in particular, did you see any tightening of corporate budgets there across your customer base?
Hi, Tim. Well, the Middle East, I mean, it's obviously not great to have a highly public conflict like what's happening in either Ukraine or the Middle East. But actually, I don't think it's had that much of an impact. It's not a huge somewhere like Israel is not a huge business travel destination, and people are still travelling to destinations such as Dubai, which were a lot busier, or even Saudi now. So we've not seen a big impact. There's always a slight tightening of companies' budgets at the end of their travel spend year, and for many customers, that is the calendar year. So it's not unusual. I think probably what and this is just my view.
I'm not saying this is 100% correct, but my view is also that work patterns have slightly changed as well post-COVID in that people tend to finish up international travel slightly earlier in December than they maybe did prior to 2020. And my view's formed by talking to customers. So we saw a similar pattern last December where the corporate travel dropped off slightly earlier but then bounced back vigorously in January. So I don't think the war's having much of an impact, and there's an element of budget. There's an element of just working patterns having slightly shifted in December.
Got it. That helps. And the second question, just around the corporate business, appreciate you mentioned right-sizing from a headcount perspective. If I do a quick back of the envelope and I look at half-on-half revenue uplift versus EBITDA, it kind of looks like about 20% of revenue dropping down. If I look at it on a year-on-year basis, it looks like about 40% of incremental revenue dropping down. How do I think or how should we think about the operating leverage here, particularly for the second half of 2024, please?
Yeah. I think your math is pretty accurate. I think that what we're seeing from is that drop-off to profit drop-down to profit continuing to grow. I think with Productive Operations , it's not all going to happen overnight, but what we're really saying is we upstaff massively to deal with customer demand and the sort of complex nature of travel after COVID. So we really put a lot of new people on. What we're finding is a lot of our people are more experienced now, so they're a lot more capable of handling more activity. Plus, with automation and digitalization, we see the cost base improving from a people cost perspective, and we think that will carry on throughout the second half and into the following financial year as well. So we're actually quite optimistic about we could just call it productivity growth.
We're actually very optimistic about it, and we see that carrying on every quarter from now on in.
Tim, I mean.
Thank you.
Just on that conversion, I think you might have been looking at it from half of last year to half on this year, which would be right. But half one versus half one of prior year is about 40% conversion for corporate. So it does have a bit of that seasonality given the strength of the second half in corporate would play into that as well.
Got it. So I mean, should we be thinking 60% drop-through into the second half of is that the right kind of quantum?
Look, I think that's probably not too far from it. As I say, 50/50, it was about 40%. I'd like to think we're up in that corporate space heading up to that direction of around 50%.
Great. Thanks, Adam.
Yeah. December definitely drags down the first half, and obviously, that only occurs in one half.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes on line of Ben Wilson from Wilsons Advisory. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just first question on the leisure side and solid progress on margins in the half. I'm just interested in, I guess, the health of your leisure customer, I guess in particular, your Australian travelers. I think at the June result, you superimposed your travel bookings against CBA's sort of well-viewed chart around change in savings and spending across age cohorts. I noticed in their half-year results, people in the 35-54-year-old age brackets, savings balances have now gone backwards in the half. That's probably not your largest cohort but still an important one. So just interested in, I guess, how you're seeing the health of your leisure customer base.
Yep. And thanks, Ben. I think not too much has changed, actually, from a demographic standpoint. However, what we are seeing is certainly a lot of rapid growth in a younger demographic through some of our digital channels. But broadly speaking, the demographics haven't shifted too much. What we have seen, though, is the one area that was affected the most was families, and that's starting to normalise a little bit more now because airfares are dropping a little bit, and the cost of travel is starting to be a bit more attainable to different segments of the market. So broadly speaking, not too much change. And we think that looking into the future, because the way airfares and that are going, we expect to see more kind of families travelling a bit more. We're also seeing.
Thanks, Ben.
Yeah. Just the inquiry numbers, by the way, just to share with you, have continued to grow. So we're actually not seeing a slowdown by any stretch in terms of the inquiry numbers, and there's lots of different numbers being thrown around people actually making choices on travel over other things. But for us, in terms of what we're seeing across the board, we're still continuing to see growth going into this financial year.
Great. Thank you. And then my next question on corporate. Just interested, if you can, quantify roughly what the PBT margin uplift is from a customer using your platform, I guess whether it's Melon or FCM versus a third-party platform?
Yeah. We don't quote a specific number on it, but a way to think about it is if we're using our own proprietary technology, we're not paying vendor technology costs. So that's the first benefit we get on every transaction that flows through. But secondly, we also charge travellers an annual software fee for Melon, so that's incremental revenue. And the real opportunity, I think, we'll see come through as more and more people use the platform because we're spending a lot of time trying to configure availability and preferencing results, which A, save customers money but also enable us to preference preferred partners where customers save money but we also have better commercial returns on.
Although we don't actually put a specific number on it or a percentage on it, there are various factors which would drive commercial benefits but also to make clear customer benefits as well.
Thanks, Chris. Sorry, just last one if I may. Just back on leisure, I think a slide mentioned you added about 600 people in the half. Can you just provide a bit more color as to what parts of the business that were added? And I think corporate, you said, was right-sized at the full-year result. How do you see the workforce in the leisure business now?
Yeah. So across leisure, it's reasonably spread across the various brands. You'll see the brands that we have kicked off being Cruiseabout would have had an uplift in staff in that space. Flight Centre has continued to grow in our retail network. We've also had growth with Scott Dunn coming into the business as well. So overall, they're probably the major drivers across the business, and we've opened one or two we've opened quite a few stores in Travel Money as well, which would actually contribute to the staff growth in that space.
Okay. Thanks very much, guys.
Your next question comes on line of Mark Wade from CLSA. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just as competition and capacity returns to the industry, are we at that sweet spot yet for travel agents, do you think? That's one where, I guess, ticket prices are probably attractive enough to get sufficient bookings, but then supplies are really forthcoming to you guys to provide great incentives to travel agents. Or is something else kind of standing in the way yet, like high operating costs for airlines, or is it flight delays turning off the leisure customer? So yeah, are we at that sweet spot yet for the agent?
Yeah. Skroo here. Look, we're reasonably confident. Obviously, some of the airlines are not paying a lot of money in certain areas, but generally, we feel we've still got a fair way to go, Mark. I think whether we're in a sweet spot now, I think and Chris did say before, when you look at the northern hemisphere in particular, we have such low market share. There's so many opportunities. In our independent space, we've got a lot of opportunities to grow as well, even if the travel agency industry is just intermediated a bit. So I think you could argue there's a reasonable sweet spot at the moment for travel agents, but we don't think that will change over the next year or two at the earliest. Do you have anything to add?
I think we're steady for now.
Hey, Mark. It's Greg here, mate. Just to add a bit of color to that, I think we mentioned last time that we had three groups of airlines, and we put them in three buckets. The first one was those that use, I suppose, their business position and market share to drive probably unfavorable returns to the industry. And we had another bucket, which were those who were looking at mutual ways to advantage one another and be creative with dealing models. And then we had the third bucket, which are the ones that we love, which didn't have any reflection on COVID. They're putting additional capacity into the market, and they're looking at ways to reward sales for that additional capacity, and they're paying above pre-COVID sort of levels. Our job, obviously, was to move as many from that bucket one into bucket two and three.
We've had a little bit of success in that, but also at the same time, we've had very limited movement between those in bucket two and three going back to bucket one. We're maintaining where we're sitting in terms of margin at the moment, and it's trucking along pretty well.
Okay. More bucket three then. Fantastic. And lastly, conceptually, how do you go about, say, JK, on attracting that younger leisure traveler that wants those kind of edgy places and they're pretty well-informed? They might be a bit out of the habit of traveling overseas post-COVID. How do you get them back on the radar for Flight Centre? Look, I think it's just making sure that your value proposition stands up to what they're looking for. Flight Centre is very much a mass market offering, and we think quite deeply around how we attract different segments of the market. So you'll probably see some of the activity. We've really boosted our social presence. How we show up in terms of speaking to that audience is very different to how we would speak to an older demographic.
And a lot of that then is designing the right travel products and working really closely with our supply partners to make sure that we're relevant. And you can see the channel is going to be important too as well. So we've invested quite a lot around making different product types available, obviously, a lot through our stores but through our digital networks as well, that's suitable for the different demographics as to where they're shopping.
Okay. Good one. Thanks, guys. All the best for the year ahead.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ben.
Your next question comes on line of Sam Seow from Citi. Your line is open.
Morning, all. Thanks for taking the question. Just maybe an easy one on the convertible to start. I imagine you'll buy back or close that out with normal debt, so the amortization will convert to real interest eventually. So I guess the question with the accounting change is, is your cost of debt more or less than the combined coupon and amortization?
Well, we've got a few options in terms of how we close out the bonds. Sam, part of it may well be done via debt, but part of it may actually be utilizing existing cash reserves as well. So there's a few options that we've got. As you say, we've got a pretty healthy balance sheet now, which is really underpinning things for us, which is fantastic. In terms of the cost of debt, the cost of the bonds is a combined number of just under 2%, 1.625, I think, for the first one and 2.25 from memory for the second. So it's a relatively cheap source of debt. The amortisation doesn't actually come into the cost of the debt. It's only the coupon that we pay. So it is a relatively cheap cost of debt.
When we're looking to manage that, we're balancing the cost of that debt with future dilution, and we want to be able to manage that future dilution impact more than anything else. So on the one hand, we've got a pretty cheap source of funding there, but we need to proactively manage it because we don't want to see that drop through into equity in the future. So that's the thought process at the moment.
Yeah. Yeah. I guess that when you add the amortization there, that was going through the finance cost line. The cost of debt was over 6%. So I guess what I'm trying to say is.
Yeah. That's the idea.
Yeah. So what I'm trying to say is, can you close that out with is your actual cost of debt or real interest less than that 6% or 7%?
Yes, it is. Yep.
Yeah. Okay. Cool. Hey, and then just quickly on corporate, it looks like pleasingly, you'll want a lot of that business without using price, with good revenue margin. But the reported PBT looks like costs may have been a drag in FCM. So just wondering, what are those costs? Are they transitory or related to the onboarding of the new wins? And maybe what that FCM margin looks like second half, 2024, or early 2025?
Sure. Well, I'll start by answering that, and I might hand over to Mel, COO, who I think is in the room with the other guys in Sydney. We certainly do see the FCM margin continuing to improve. It's already improving. We see it continuing to improve. There are costs of growth. So FCM's been through a quite explosive growth period over the last couple of years and has been the major driver of our two brands in being so far ahead of 2019. As I've said before, that first year of winning and onboarding customers does come with costs as well as lower margins for year one. But we typically win customers on 3- or 5-year contracts. We normally expect to have 2 turns of that contract.
So really, when we win a new customer in FCM, we expect the customer to be with us for 6 or 10 years rather than 3 or 5. So the investment is there for very good reason. But we are now doing a lot of work on productivity, particularly in FCM. So Mel, I don't know if you want to quickly touch on a couple of things we're working on, how we see that impacting the next few months in FCM.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. So yeah, as Chris mentioned, we're working on our cost base and our productivity in FCM in particular, and that's largely around our Productive Operations transformation, which is really going to see our productivity and efficiency really improve over the next 18 months as we really look to standardize and digitize our operating platform. So in terms of cost out, we're obviously looking at a single operating global system, which will obviously bring a great deal of benefits in terms of uplift of productivity of our agents. Also looking at directing a bit more self-serve traffic for our customers, which they're actually asking us for, but it's also a benefit in the sense that customers can self-serve and our agents can be more productive and focus on more complex transactions.
As part of that and looking at that standardization, we're obviously looking at a cost out of our systems across the board as well. Consolidation of systems will lead to some benefits in relation to duplicate costs that we're possibly carrying today.
Got it. But would it be fair to say with the onboarding of all those new clients that year one is just generally unprofitable, and then you'd expect a relatively sharp step change as you kind of roll into year two onwards?
Yes. That's true. To be clear, yeah, that is correct. But to be clear, that observation applies to FCM. We actually get a much faster movement to profitability in Corporate Traveller because there's a much lower cost of onboarding customers.
Got it. Hey, and then just quickly while we're on the margin on corporate, do you have an estimate of how elevated, I guess, ticket prices were across your book and what the like-for-like, I guess, corporate PBT margin might be on pre-pandemic ticket prices, noting that, I guess, all the airline prices are coming back?
Yeah. I mean, we don't have an exact number on that, but the observation, I believe, is correct. I think the airfares, particularly international airfares, are still very high. I think that they will eventually come down as more capacity comes in. So that does depress the margin. And let's face it, I think somebody asked a question about a sweet spot earlier. I think a sweeter spot for us is when airfares continue to come down because, particularly for business travel, people are more likely to travel, and it does stimulate competition. So not only does it improve our margins, but it gets more people traveling. And we do think in the future that airfares will continue to come down.
Just to confirm, in the corporate side of the business, you don't make any less revenue if ticket prices come down?
We do in some cases, but few cases. So if we have airfares which are commissionable, then we would earn less margin on those commissionable airfares. But they make up a much, much smaller percentage of tickets than they did in the past. So when customers are paying us transaction fees, it really doesn't which is the majority of our revenue. It doesn't make any difference whether the ticket's AUD 5,000 or AUD 10,000. So it really doesn't matter.
Got it. Got it. Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color.
Thanks, mate.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from the line of Wei-Weng Chen from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Hi there, guys. Just a quick question from me on what the Indian losses were and how come you didn't take them below the line as well?
Yeah. Wei-Weng, it's Adam. It was a break-even business. It was underperforming, not loss-making. So the real reason for closing that is the amount of effort we were putting into it. We were generating quite a lot of TTV, but at very, very low margins. So it was very much a break-even business.
Okay. And then I guess the follow-up question was, how many other businesses do you guys have kind of outside of the market view like GOGO? Do you guys have on watch at the moment for closure? And if you can't really answer that maybe collectively, what's the quantum of losses that you think you could save by closing some of these businesses?
Yeah. I'll answer that one. Look, fair to say we're looking at all of our businesses, those that are profitable and those that aren't, because what we're looking for is what the true potential is that we can get out of those businesses. So even businesses that are making AUD 5 million, AUD 10 million, AUD 15 million, the focus for us is, how do we make that a AUD 10 million, AUD 15 million, AUD 20 million, or AUD 30 million, or AUD 40 million-dollar business? So fair to say at this point in time, we're running the ruler over all of our businesses as we have been, really, as we've come through and then out of COVID to make sure that we're operating them in the best way possible.
I think the best answer to that is if you look at some of our businesses and most of them probably do sit in that other segment, to be fair, where you look at things like TP Connects, which is a really important business that Greg oversees, and we're investing in that now. We'll start to see a return on that over the next sort of 12 months. Certainly, over the next 18 months, we'll see that with external revenues coming through, and that'll start to improve for us. But outside of that, things like our investment in the Pedal Group, our touring businesses, our DMCs, our hotel management, there's a lot of those businesses that are a lot smaller that we're really working through. How do we get them up to their full potential, and how do we support them to that level?
Rather than sort of making it feel like there's a list of businesses that are loss-making, it's more around those that are, in our view, underperforming. How do we lift them up over the next 18 months? Because they've all got a really important part collectively to play in us hitting that 2% margin for FY 2025.
Yeah. Okay. And then the next question was just on guidance. I just wanted to ask on your confidence on, I guess, the second half. Obviously, you have a forward-looking profile. So I guess based on that, I guess what percentage of the way do you think you're kind of already there? And then I guess where are the swing factors that get you either to the top end or bottom end of guidance? And I guess how much better or worse do things need to get to hit some of those limits?
Well, let me answer that probably by saying, clearly, we've got confidence in the range, or we wouldn't have reiterated it today. So we certainly believe that the range remains valid for us. As we said this morning, trading through January and February has been very much in line with our expectations. As you know, the second half is really important for us, and particularly that last quarter is very important for us from a seasonality perspective. So I think as we're sitting here right now, we're certainly trading well, very much in line with our expectations, but with a really critical four or five months ahead of us. So that's probably the best way to answer it, to be fair. But everything we're putting in place now, all of our focus areas that we've got are coming through the way we expect them to.
We've had some good momentum in that first half with revenue margin, with cost containment. So I think we're in a reasonably good position for this year, but as I say, some pretty hefty months in the back part of the year.
Cool. All right. Thanks. That's all from me.
Your next question comes on line of John Bennett of Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Morning, team. Can you hear me okay?
Hi, John.
Hey, John.
Hello. I'm John Minnett again. This is the second time we've had that screw. I'm getting a reputation here. So thanks very much. A couple of questions have been answered, but I just wanted to obviously, you've clarified around the FY 2025 2% target, which is obviously still out there. What are you assuming in relation to revenue margins in relation to that? So obviously, second half of the year, obviously, strong seasonality and in normal terms, a much improved revenue margin at the group level. What are you assuming that does to get to your FY 2025 2% target in broad terms?
John, it's Adam, in broad terms, the expectation is we'll continue to see some improvement in revenue margin but also at cost margin. If I look at it, if I break it by business, I think revenue margin, certainly across both corporate and leisure, as I think both Chris and J.K. spoke to a little bit earlier, we see that there's opportunities for that to continue to improve and to increase. I do think that in corporate, cost margin will play an equal, if not bigger part in their quest to get to that mid- to high 2% PBT across the board for corporate. Whereas I think with leisure, it's probably revenue margin driving it and productivity through the business as well that'll get to their sort of mid 2%. So I think there's still plenty of room for us to move there.
Yeah. That's great. That gives me good clarity there. Second one from me. I'm not sure I've ever seen a positive operating cash line in the first half. So can you kind of talk me through what happened there? Normally, we see a negative number there, and sometimes a pretty big one. So can you sort of give me some sort of color around that?
Yeah. Look, I think what you're seeing there, John, is a couple of things. We have had positive before, but as you say, most times it's negative or very much flat. So it's only a small positive, but it is an important positive operating cash flow. I think what you're seeing there is a little bit of that return of the leisure business jumping up a little bit in terms of growth. Remembering that leisure, we generally get the money upfront. We get cash upfront, so they're positive. Whereas in corporate, we generally have a lot of our customers on account. So I think what you're seeing there is really just that good result that we've seen in leisure in particular. In the corporate business, there's been certainly a focus on collecting, particularly as you head into a more quiet period like the December period.
You really want to be collecting and following up on those. So it's just normal things like that, John. I think it's just a factor of the results that we've seen come through. But it is quite positive. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, as I said, I know we've all seen it, but maybe I've just forgotten one period when you did it. So certainly something that I hadn't seen before. So that's pretty much it from me, guys. Thanks very much. Most of the other questions have been answered. Thank you.
Thanks, John. See you on Friday.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
As there are no further questions at this time, I'd like to hand back to our presenters.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Catch up with a lot of you over the next few days. Look forward to seeing you all. Thanks again.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.