Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for our half year result presentation. You're joining us at a fairly exciting time, given that we are now finally starting to see some fairly positive signs. COVID cases are starting to level off or decrease in our key markets. Restrictions are easing, that's starting to happen at pace, which is pretty promising. Demand is rebounding in what is probably a fairly early stage of our recovery. It's so exciting that Skroo can hardly contain himself, and you'll hear from him first up. Adam, our CFO, will then run you through the first half results. He'll hand over to Chris in the U.K. for a strategic update on Corporate, and Mel will finish things off with Leisure update. Thanks, Skroo.
Thank you, Haydn. Yeah, we'll start basically on slide four. Is that slide four, Haydn? That's the way it works. Look, this is pretty obvious how our growth since 1982. We're now 40 years. We're just celebrating 40 years now. One of the things on that slide, if you look at the last box there, it basically shows that during COVID, only about 30% of our TTVs coming from Australia, but we expect that to settle down at around the 50%. On the next slide, a couple of things.
I think some of the things that the Flight Centre Travel Group can say is we do have this global business model that's given us 24 years of growth, 26 years since we listed in 1995. We also have a very good relationship with most of our suppliers, and that's something we put a lot of work into. Obviously, we all know we're now in 26 countries with our own equity business, as well as about 100 countries with equity and licensees in the FCM brand. One last thing, we do have an experienced and I think capable team in my team. That's the seven of us in what we call a task force. We've got quite an experienced board as well.
I think our average person in task force, seven of us, have been with Flight Centre for about 25 years. On the next slide, which is six, obviously, this is a bit of a trading update and outlook, as well as our strong global presence. I think the COVID has helped us get obviously a lot leaner. We've had to during hibernation, and we do wanna maintain a leaner and more efficient organization. Obviously, trading conditions are improving, particularly over February and all, and it was heading that way in November, but obviously, the Omicron did have an impact on that.
If you look at slide seven, I think we know that the Omicron is decreasing, but we've seen it's a very mild disease, very contagious. I think the latest figures show it's 1/14 as severe a disease as the Delta, but it's 6x as contagious. Travel restrictions in most areas, and we can exclude New Zealand and China in particular, which is important to Australia, also we've been in China now, I think, for 13 years. Most of our business there is domestic travel, which is going quite well. The demand just in the last few weeks in most of our countries, which are opening up, like the U.K., U.S., Australia, is rebounding quite quickly.
You'll see that on slide eight, some of the patients in hospital, which Haydn managed to find out. On slide nine, obviously, Australia is opening up now, and Australia is still a very important part of our organization, both in Corporate and in Leisure. Most of you will know what's happening. Even WA is coming back to Australia, opening up on March 3rd with fairly similar conditions to the rest of Australia. On slide 10, if you see the updates coming in, the climate of change, as Haydn's put it. 43 updates in early February in terms of the changes in conditions with COVID-19.
There's obviously still some restrictions in various places, but generally, a lot of European countries now have reduced all restrictions, and we feel that will come in nearly every other country, all our major countries anyway. Going to slide 11, a little bit further about our trading update. You can see that, we've had significant growth in February about 50% in Leisure and Corporate on December and January. As I think we say, we've said quite often we'll come back to our pre-COVID TTV in somewhere around 18 months to two years, depending a bit on the market, depending a bit on the COVID. If you look at slide 12, most of that's fairly obvious, but Asia is still a bit of an issue.
As I said before, China is still trying to eliminate this virus, and good luck to them on that. We expect slowly but surely Asia to come back. All the other countries that we operate in generally are easing restrictions quite quickly, and they'll come back soon. Probably China and the rest of Asia, we think will be pretty much open in two-three months, which is a pity. You know, I suppose we can say we're not really heavily dependent on Asia, but we'd like to see it come back quickly. The last slide for me is another on our outlook. Obviously, our momentum is picking up. We've seen that, particularly in February. We think it continued strongly in March and April.
I think most countries where we trade, the confidence is returning after COVID. We're pretty comfortable that over the next 12, 18 months to 24 months, we'll return to profitability, pre-COVID profitability, over the next couple of years. Now guidance, we're obviously not providing guidance. There's too much up in the air at the moment. Two years of COVID, we're reasonably confident we've got most of our major assets intact. We expect to return to profitability over the next few months, over the next six months at the latest. Assuming that government restrictions aren't reimposed, back to a normal level of productivity over the next, as I said, 18 months to two years. Thank you.
I will now hand over to, Adam, who's our CFO. Thank you, Adam.
Thank you, Skroo. Look, as Skroo mentioned, there is a lot of momentum picking up over the last three-four weeks that we do feel changes the outlook for the next six months versus the prior six months. I'll just take a few minutes to reflect on some of the key financial metrics for the half that we've just finished before handing back to Chris and Mel to again expand on our key strategies to capture more than our historic share of the market rebound. To start with sales, we have seen strong growth delivered during the first half, despite the impacts of Delta in the first quarter and Omicron late in the half and the associated ongoing travel restrictions in some of our key markets.
Our total sales were almost 120% above the prior period, and also comfortably above the FY 2021 second half, which is typically a seasonally stronger trading period. We saw sales jump immediately after the August to September Delta waves to a COVID-period record in November. Through the first half, as expected, our Corporate businesses represented nearly 60% of total sales, and reached 57% of pre-COVID trading levels in both November and December. Adjusting for the Australian hotel quarantine work, Corporate sales in November were just under 50% of pre-COVID levels. The Corporate business globally was just under breakeven for the month in November, which is the first time since the pandemic began.
While being subdued for most of the half, our Leisure sales also picked up in November to be more than double TTV for September or 30% of pre-COVID levels. As you'll see on slide 17, so the market data we're seeing early in the recovery indicates we've increased market share in all geographies across both Corporate and Leisure. Sales for the half have resulted in AUD 316 million in revenue at a revenue margin of 9.7%. That margin remains below pre-COVID levels due to the disproportionate domestic weighting sales, the low margin hotel quarantine work undertaken in Australia, and the higher Corporate sales weighting compared to pre-COVID.
In Leisure, our revenue margin of 11.8% continues to improve over the prior compared period and will increase further on the expectation that international sales, particularly in Australia, increase significantly following the removal of border restrictions and the passing of the Omicron wave. The Corporate revenue margin, when adjusted to remove the hotel quarantine work, was actually 10.6%, which is reasonably consistent with pre-COVID levels. In all, even in difficult trading periods brought about by the Delta and Omicron variants, our underlying performance improved during the half but was masked by a reduction of AUD 65 million in net government subsidies, mainly in the Australian Leisure business.
Regionally, while the important Americas and EMEA regions saw a significant reduction in losses on the back of very strong TTV, ANZ was impacted by the removal of the JobKeeper subsidy as well as domestic and international restrictions through most of the half. Asia was also heavily restricted during the half. If you look at page 21, you'll see that we've also continued to maintain our structurally lower cost base during the half, while also investing in our people, systems, technology and products to drive future growth. As I say on page 21, where we show an analysis of costs against the prior corresponding period and against pre-COVID. Looking forward, we do expect that our cost base will be materially lower than a comparative pre-COVID basis due to the structural changes we've made to increase productivity, increase scalability, and rapidly grow more cost-effective Leisure models.
The improved operating performance during the half has also been seen in increasing numbers of our businesses, either profitable or approaching a monthly breakeven, including South Africa, France, the UAE, the EMEA region overall, Corporate Traveller in the U.S., Liberty and Ignite. We've also seen record profits from the Pedal Group and Avmin, with Pedal achieving sales in excess of AUD 200 million and a first half PBT of AUD 32 million. Earlier, our Corporate businesses globally were just under breakeven in November, and we expect to be back in profit sometime in the next couple of months at around 55% of pre-COVID TTV. As Chris will talk to, we are already seeing increased activity and are benefiting from our diverse global customer base. As an example, we have greater exposure to government accounts after major wins in France, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
Importantly to note, the U.K. government is now one of FCM's largest U.K. clients. In our Leisure businesses, we expect to be in profitability late this financial year at around 45% of pre-COVID TTV. This exact timing will obviously be heavily dependent on the Australian market. Our monthly operating cash outflows have dropped down to AUD 21 million in November, by far the lowest level since the pandemic began, and remained under AUD 40 million in December, despite the Omicron impact and seasonality. That rapid reduction in cash outflows from being in excess of AUD 41 million in September to AUD 21 million in November highlights the opportunity for further rapid recovery over the coming months. Finally, our liquidity position remains over AUD 1 billion, with AUD 1.5 billion in cash and investments.
We are ready and well-placed to capitalize on what now shapes as a strong post-Omicron rebound. Just before handing over to Chris, I wanted to briefly highlight the continued focus that we have on Corporate Social Responsibility. In December, we appointed our first Chief Sustainability Officer, and in January we made a public commitment to set targets aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative for a Net Zero Planet by 2050. These actions, along with the Reconciliation Action Plan adopted in Australia just this month, being a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact and the relaunch of the Flight Centre Foundation, highlight our commitment to the broader role that we are able to and must play within the community. I'll now hand over to Chris for further insights on our Corporate businesses.
Thanks, Adam. I'm gonna give an update on our Corporate strategy, which we called Grow to Win at the beginning of the COVID crisis. The reason we called it that was we decided we had no idea how long COVID would go on for, and we didn't know what size the market would come back to. We decided as a team that our plan was to grow by winning market share, by retaining our customers and winning new customers, and delivering two brands that were fit to win in a post-COVID world. I'm really pleased to give you an update on that progress. Before I do, we'll just have a quick look at the Corporate Traveller outlook over the next 18 months. We expect the returns of business to be around 60%-75% of pre-COVID levels in FY 2023.
This is work that's been carried out by the TTV, by various other bodies, plus extensive research that we've done with our own customers. Obviously, it depends on different sectors and different regions of the world, but we believe this will be approximately the average return. Customer needs have changed. There's a lot less tolerance of leakage we're finding, which means that a lot more discipline of mandating that travelers use their TMC rather than go and book independently online, which is obviously good for our volumes. Also, a really strong focus on sustainability. We've invested a lot over the last two years to make sure that we have great sustainability solutions in both Corporate Traveller and FCM to help our customers deliver their sustainability goals.
From a competitive landscape perspective, we're seeing that there's much less choice at the top end of the market, so we very much position FCM as the alternative to the traditional three TMCs. With Amex's acquisition of Egencia, that's meant that we really are getting more invitations to RFP. As you'll see later on, we're winning a lot more new business. On the smaller end of the scale, pre-COVID, we saw a lot of digital-only disruptors in the SME space. What we're finding is that customers are very much looking for really good quality people back up as well as great technology, and that's really benefiting us too. We see these trends carrying on over the next 18 months. Just recapping on our strategy, where we play.
Well, we play a two-sided model with our travel customers, and our supply customers. We address the market with two brands, FCM in the large market space, which really offers customers global consistency across 100 markets, and its core flexibility. We give customers choice, and that flexibility combined with global capability has been one of the real reasons that FCM has been winning so much business. In the SME space, we operate Corporate Traveller in six of our core markets. Again, the reason we have two brands is we believe that large market customers and SME customers have fundamentally different needs. We bring to market dedicated brands with different CVPs, different products, different management, different focus, and that really enables us to deliver for both sets of customers.
We also really work very closely with our supply customers, the airlines, the hotel chains, et cetera, who we deliver volume for, and there's gonna be even more work that we work with these guys to deliver premium customers as COVID recovers. I'm really pleased that we've worked so closely with them over the last two years, and that's embedded in their new products. Our strategy on the page starts with the standout winning brands, Corporate Traveller in the SME space and FCM in the large market space. Two differentiated brands with dedicated CVPs aimed at their market segments. Each of them have their own product.
Melon in the Corporate Traveller space, which is our new digital platform dedicated to SME, and enables SME customers to book, to manage their travel program, get all the data they need, do expense management, and have access to all the latest content. We're really excited about Melon being launched in U.S. and Canada, and it'll be launched in U.K. and the rest of EMEA in the coming months before moving on to Australia and New Zealand later this year. On the FCM side, we have the FCM platform, which really gives customers a differentiated offering. It gives the choice of proprietary booking in all of our core markets, and also choice of working with chosen vendors and strategic partners such as Concur, Cytric or Serko, and really offers customers a choice.
They can have proprietary booking in some markets while choosing to have best in market solutions in others. We're winning lots of customers off the back of the platform. It went live in China earlier this year. It's now live in many markets with pilot customers and will be launched to all customers later this year. Below that, we have our sales and marketing machine. In both brands, we have dedicated sales and marketing, and that's because the two different customer types have a very different sales cycle. By having dedicated sales in the SME space and dedicated sales in the large market space, it really means that we can target those customers simultaneously and win at both ends of the market.
I'm really pleased to say that throughout COVID, we've heavily invested in our sales and marketing machine, and that's one of the reasons that the numbers I'll be talking about later are so impressive. We then have what we call our hybrid service model, and that's really bringing the automation, the robotics, the data science to our operation. That means we achieve two things. One, a really consistent global customer experience, which our customers value. Two, much greater levels of productivity. We've been committed that we will not bring back our 2019 business in the post-COVID world. We'll bring back a much more efficient, productive business, and that's why we've made such significant investments in this area.
Below that we have our content and supply, and our Corporate business works very closely with our Leisure business to make sure that we get the best access to content, the right most appropriate content into our customers' hands, either via mobile, via our booking tools or via our consultants. Mel will touch on this a bit later, but we're really delighted that we are seen as a global leader in NDC, for example, in the air space. That's again a major reason why customers are choosing to do business with both Corporate Traveller and FCM. At the base of everything, the foundation is our culture, our people.
Our customers tell me all the time, "Yes, you have great technology, you have great data science capabilities, great content, but really it is your people that make the difference." We've spent a lot of time and effort to make sure that our people remain motivated and remain focused on delivering for our customers throughout COVID. Looking at now, the outcomes of the strategy. This slide shows the timeline, and we've broken this down from the beginning of COVID Q3 financial 2020, so January 2020, right up to the present day. At the top you can see a lot of the initiatives that we've launched in Corporate, so our new global structure, the launch of our Grow to Win strategy, that we're resizing our business, the dramatic cutting that we had to do while maintaining a great customer experience.
The brand consolidation into two global brands, the rebrand of both our brands, and then some of the launch of the platform with Duty of Care Approval and the other features right up until the investment in Japan recently. We also made investments in technology, TPConnects, which again, Mel will touch on later, the WhereTo booking capability, which powered proprietary booking in both Melon and the FCM Platform, hotel aggregation, sustainability, and also the acquisition of our consultancy business, TPConnects and Shep, the browser extension technology, which is a core part of the FCM Platform. What you can see is the outcome of that. Since the beginning of COVID, we've signed annualized AUD 4.5 billion Australian revenue business. These are typically in the FCM space, three-year contracts where we expect at least a double extension.
This is one year spent, but you can extrapolate it over several years. You can see here we've broken the wins into half years, and you can see the wins going over time. These are really some of our customers that we can talk to you about today. Very well-known brands such as Spotify, AXA, JPI, KPMG, Procter & Gamble, Electronic Arts, Sony, Bridgestone in the commercial space. For the first time, we pivoted to government business outside of Australia, and we've done very well in winning this French government business with UGAP, but also the U.K. government business, several departments, including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the British Council. If you look at the next slide, what we're showing here is the future projections of these wins.
That AUD 4.5 billion, what is it like into the future? Well, the first bar chart shows 100% of our business in calendar year 2019, shrinking right down in calendar year 2020 as the world closed down. You can see the red part of that bar is the pre-COVID customers and the black part is customers that we signed and started trading during the COVID period. A bit more of a recovery in calendar year up to December 2021.
As we project 12 months into the future, what we're showing here is if the market recovers to 70%, when you add in the black amount, which is the customers that we've signed or already trading, plus the gray bar here, which is customers that we have signed but are currently in solution design and implementation, so haven't actually started trading yet. If the market recovers to 70%, we'll be at about 115% of our pre-COVID levels this year. That's important because this does not include the customers that are in our future pipeline. These are businesses, customers who have signed. This really is the validation of our Grow to Win strategy, focusing on too many brands with great products and being very aggressive and out there in the sales and marketing function.
Just very quickly, over the next 18 months, what we see is to accelerate our customer growth. As I said, our pipeline, our future pipeline is looking the strongest it's been, even stronger than what we've seen over the last couple of years. We carry on with our technology roll out to both Melon and the FCM Platform, and we keep investing in innovation and meeting customer needs, which is a really important part of why customers value what we do. Keep accelerating our investment in productivity and automation, and really leveraging the new market dynamics, particularly on the content side around features such as NDC.
Look, it's been a really challenging couple of years in many ways, but also, it's been a really positive one and we're really pleased on where our Corporate business sits today and where it's heading in the future. On that note, I'll hand over to Mel to talk about our Leisure business.
Thank you, Chris, and hello to everyone. It's great to talk to you after two years of essentially nil international travel and limited domestic travel, which is now changing and changing fast. Firstly, let me give a quick snapshot of the Leisure travel market compared to, say, the Corporate one. Firstly, there is no doubt there is huge pent-up demand. All, and that's all our Leisure brands, models, and markets are experiencing a surge of inquiry and bookings right now, including New Zealand, even though it's still fairly restricted. South Africa, which was first into the Omicron wave, is already showing a rapid V shape to that recovery. Unlike the business travel segment that Chris talked about, the Leisure segment is expected to fully recover and we are already now thinking beyond recovery.
Secondly, customers' needs have also shifted in Leisure, just as in Corporate, and while they do want DIY, they also want advice and expertise, especially when it comes to very complex international travel at the moment. Thirdly, regarding the competitive landscape, while there hasn't been as much sort of consolidation as there has been in the Corporate space, there have certainly been exits, and our supply partners confirm that we are the most active in the market. Thus, we believe we're very well placed to capitalize on this market recovery because of the following things that we've managed to achieve. Firstly, we have a structurally lower cost base, which is permanent. We have also retained a strong and highly accessible shop network. I keep reminding everyone, I think in Australia, 90% of customers are still within a 10 km physical access of a shop.
We are operating with a stronger stable of omnichannel offerings and complementary businesses and have very much enhanced our online capabilities where we're also gaining share in the intermediary online market. We are delivering new products and productivity tools, and also driving productivity improvements through a much more experienced consultant cohort and optimizing our shop network and staffing levels. We are also already experiencing market share growth, even in this very early stage of recovery in RSA and even New Zealand, as I mentioned. Of course, we have invigorated the famous Flight Centre brand, which as Skroo rightly let us know, is turning 40 this year.
I'll just recap briefly on our overarching Leisure strategy, which we're now referring to as our horizons of growth and Leisure as we again, as I said, turn to not just recovery, but beyond that. This strategy remains unchanged from previous updates, and I think continuing momentum provides evidence we actually, we do have the right plans. First, of course, is the iconic Flight Centre brand, which we intend to not just retain our market's leading position but improve upon. Our blend of irresistible deals, savvy people and technology, wrapped in one of the most famous and loved travel brands, will ensure that it remains the number one choice. Next, we have our premium play with Travel Associates, which has been a winning business for over 20 years, delivering exceptional service and advice to frequent and discerning travelers.
We have our emerging and rapidly building B2B or independent division. These core three approaches to winning in the Leisure segment are then expanded upon by our complementary yet independent businesses. These new kids on the block, a bit on the side I sometimes call them, are accelerating rapidly to be the number one in their segment. Underpinning this portfolio of brands, albeit smaller than pre-COVID, is a globalized set of services, content, and technology, very similar to, as you can see, Chris described in Corporate. This Leisure, let's call it a GBS, is where we have spent much energy over the last two years maintaining investment in key tech platforms, pursuing access to content like NDC, and building a world-class product merchandising capability.
With new core land and air platforms that have also been implemented in this time and standardizing globally, we're now maturing also our intelligence layer to drive better customer experiences and business outcomes, including productivity, exactly as per our Corporate side of the house. The next slide, I think, just reminds everyone at this point that even prior to COVID, we had transformational plans for our Leisure business, and that is indeed what we're seeing now. This period has allowed us to fast-track the rebalancing of our portfolio and create a more balanced split of sales across channels and models. These graphs hopefully help to answer that question I get asked all the time of how we'll recover our full TTV in Leisure with a smaller shop network. We, in fact, expect to go beyond our pre-COVID TTV, and as you can see, with a much more even weighting.
If we turn our attention to Flight Centre, it is the transformation that I'm the most excited about. 2022 represents Flight Centre brand's 40th birthday year, and Flight Centre is now positioned to be a major Leisure player for decades more. I'd like to think another 40 years. Flight Centre represents a better choice for mass-market holidaymakers, the best choice. Why is that? It's the unique blend of a famous and trusted brand which has now been modernized and is driving higher consideration, and we are seeing already new customer growth. An industrialized merchandising capability, ensuring Flight Centre's value-based roots in discounts is now delivering irresistible holiday deals. Our savvy experts, who have tirelessly and heroically in some of the industry's worst times, looked after our customers and others.
Technology across multi-channels, which this year will become truly blended when we roll out our Omnicart capability, where customers and experts, and indeed social circles, will be able to build and work on the same holiday plans on or offline. Flight Centre will uniquely combine this great brand, irresistible deals, savvy experts and technology to remain market-leading. Recently, we've appointed Andrew Stark as the global MD to drive this Flight Centre 4.0 global strategy, and I know he and his team are already talking beyond that recovery. Our next horizon of growth is our B2B or independent strategy, where we are rapidly gaining momentum, and as we emerge from COVID, well-placed to become the home of the travel entrepreneur.
The content and technology capabilities that we actually build and continuously work on for our own brands, both in Leisure and Corporate, can easily be extended to independent affiliate members and small groups. Additionally, a great capability that we've brought into the B2B Leisure segment, they're directly implemented from the Corporate side of the house, is our world-class BDM sales approach. Content, tech, and sales model are then wrapped around our culture where ownership and entrepreneurialism are at the core of our success. Over this period of low sales, we have been investing in building this Leisure market-leading model in the independent space. Like Corporate, our BDMs have signed a lot of business. We have a strong pipeline, and projections are very solid. We're already seeing some of our B2B businesses in profit as well. Our third core Leisure arm is our premium division.
Travel Associates, as I mentioned previously, pre-pandemic, was a great brand and business model, and during this time, we have lifted it to a more luxury position by working with partners like Virtuoso and expanding our model to include At Home with TA and a soon-to-be-announced new affiliate program, which actually links to our B2B strategy. Premium and luxury travel will grow rapidly. There's no doubt the rich are getting richer as a result of this pandemic, and we are now turning our attention to our plans in the Northern Hemisphere and our growth opportunities there, which may include acquisition at a point in the future. Finally, our complementary to independent brands, our third horizon, if you like, which given the strength of their models in a changing competitive landscape, provide further horizons of strong growth for Flight Centre Travel Group.
StudentUniverse, our online student and youth business with its unique validation technology, can offer this younger market great deals and our supply partners controlled distribution. Ignite, our flash sale business, incorporating the My Holiday and My Cruise brands, was able to shift to a domestic and cruise focus and is already profitable year- to- date. We believe set to take over Luxury Escapes as category leader. In summary, our portfolio in Leisure, albeit smaller than pre-pandemic, of category-leading brands and models balanced across channels, we have retained that momentum and were winning pre-COVID and led now by the iconic and modernized and reengineered Flight Centre business, will allow us not just to recover, but go beyond recovery in this burgeoning Leisure segment. While I have the microphone, it's probably prudent to also update on the supply side of our business.
I know many of you will want to understand the impact of recent point-of-sale commission cuts, particularly in the Australian and New Zealand markets, which I might add is one of the last markets in the world to do this. Essentially, we're working to offset the impacts of proposed commission changes in Australia as we have always done and do not see them having a major impact over the longer term. Flight Centre continues to maintain strong relationships with a diverse group of suppliers, and we have many long-term deals in place with airlines, hotel chains, cruise, and tour companies. As over my entire 35 years that this has been going on, some are more friendly than others, and we will continue to work with either.
In Australia and New Zealand, there is no doubt that some airlines, and you've heard about them recently, have flagged changes to agency commission structures, which I'd like to add is just one source of Flight Centre's revenue and overall margin. As always, we have ongoing discussions underway to offset the impact of any commission loss. As I mentioned, this is not new. Average international air point-of-sale commission has gradually decreased over the period from financial year 2010 to financial 2020 by 3%. During the same period, as you can see in the top right-hand graph, Leisure Australian margins, in fact, increased. We do this by various margin maintenance strategies.
Our mix shift, increasing our attachment, our ancillary products, vertical and other aggregation revenue has also been available to us and looking for alternative air margin structures and new initiatives such as the Captain's Package. While we do not support airline moves to reduce point-of-sale commission and the timing to essentially kick a decimated industry, I'll just throw in, we do not see it will have a long-term material impact. Chris did mention, I think it's good at this point to remind ourselves of our ongoing investment in TPConnects, which was actually arrived at because of that situation. This is one of our strategies to secure content and margins. The traditional air distribution models are being disrupted in growth with direct buyer-seller connections, proliferation of new commercial models, et cetera, et cetera.
Thus, Flight Centre has continued to invest in TPConnects to complement its GDS relationship. TPConnects, just so you know, has a two-sided business model, and we look forward to working with this company to augment and expand our own air capabilities and drive its business outcomes in the future. Just finally, a brief mention of our destination businesses. Our destination management company, including our regional Cross Hotels business, so that's our business, and our touring brands of Topdeck and Back-Roads, have also actively worked during the pandemic to structurally reduce their cost base, hone their product, and maintain their sales focus. Again, ensuring as we exit the COVID their future success. Just a nice point to finish on, our Discova DMC has, like Corporate, won a huge amount of business during this period, but is waiting for that actual travel to start.
Again, I think we're optimistic in the Leisure space and comfortable in the supplier space that we're positioned to win in the future. Haydn, back to you.
Thanks. I think it's now time for some questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. I don't wanna jinx anything, but it looks like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, so that's really good to see. I think that means the market is going to need to try to focus on where profitability for your business ends up. I was just hoping you could give us some help on that. I guess there are three drivers: TTV, costs, and revenue margin. I think you've said that you expect TTV at a group level to sort of broadly return to pre-COVID levels by 2024. Skroo, I think there was a comment from you that you expect pre-COVID profit to return within 18-24 months. I was just hoping you could sort of talk through those drivers.
Where do you think costs will land relative to pre-COVID in particular? I'd like to talk about your revenue margins as well.
Good day, Michael. Yeah, thanks for that question. Look, obviously we don't know what the ups and downs are gonna be, but just from January to February, this year we're looking at about somewhere around that 50% growth. I think we've said probably previous TTV around that 18 months mark, maybe up to 24 or it might even be a bit earlier. You know, Corporate's very bullish if you heard Chris before because we've had a lot of wins, particularly in the North. I'm of the view that TTV at the moment is the most important number for us. I think margin will take care of itself.
You heard what Mel said, and I think Chris is of the same view with Corporate that the margins will come back mainly on the mix of business because obviously there's a fair bit so far of domestic, both in America and Canada. Even China, you know, we're doing a lot of domestic in China and Australia, and these are all relatively lower margins. As the international comes back and as we get more hotels, cruise, land bookings, the margin will probably take care of itself, we believe, and come back to something like pre-COVID levels. Might even come back a little bit stronger. Obviously costs, and you identified it's really important that costs don't come back to pre-COVID levels when TTV comes back to there. We're very focused on this.
I think both Mel and Chris talked about the platforms they've developed. We've spent a lot of money on over the last couple of years getting which will lead to better productivity. Obviously we have a lot less real estate to pay the higher levels of rent on. I can't give you exact numbers of how much our costs will be below the 100% pre-COVID mainly because Adam won't let me.
Suffice to say we're very determined to keep a very close eye on that and make sure that when we get back to pre-COVID TTV in the next period of time, 18-20 months or so, that our costs don't come back to the same level.
Okay. Then on the revenue margins, we've spoken a bit about airline commissions, and it sort of sounds like the confidence you can offset that by mix and other things. I guess the other piece is you're expecting to have a much larger proportion of your Leisure mix coming from online that traditionally has been well below bricks and mortar revenue margins. Looks to me like you've got to do a lot of work to shift your mix to maintain your revenue margins where they were before COVID. Am I missing something there?
Yeah. No, I think I'll let Mel have a word on this too. You are right. You know, the more online will be a lower gross margin, but obviously, there's lower costs as well. What was the other part of that question?
I don't know. Just to add to that, Michael.
Airfare commissions. Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah. I think we've had a close analysis of this on our major carriers globally. We expect, at the most, on average, we might be down 1% or a little less than that. Yeah, that's the implication at the moment. There are a number of ways we make margin on air. The front-end commission is only one, of course, and generally.
So-
Yeah.
... to add to that, Michael, to be very clear, this current point of sale and its point of sale margin is only in the Australia and New Zealand market. It actually happened yonks ago in the European and Northern Hemisphere markets. We've seen the impact. As I keep saying, it's just one source of revenue because it's the point of sale revenue at the front end. As you know, we have ongoing discussions with airlines to give us back-end deals. We look at our special private fares, channels, et cetera. Ancillary sales are presenting a huge opportunity for us with our partners and so on. But just to say, we do actually expect our gross revenue and margin in Leisure to decrease slightly over the next couple of years.
That's because, to your point, we want to shift the low-margin product onto online, which is what we're seeing already. We are, as you know, been very much expanding upon that capability. I'm pretty comfortable with trends. What we're seeing is our shop margin is holding up very nicely. Remember, that's still with low international travel availability. Again, at a macro level in Leisure, like we have seen in corporate over the years, we actually will experience some decline in gross revenue. However, it's going to a lower-cost channel, which is exactly what we wanted it to be able to happen.
Chris, do you want to talk about Corporate or Northern Hemisphere?
Sure, yeah. I mean, Corporate, we don't expect any erosion of margins. There'll be ups and downs, obviously. There always is. The commission cuts we're talking about are largely isolated to the Australian business market at the moment. I think in the North. Look, I'll talk Leisure and Corporate in the North from my experience. We've been in a lower commission or even zero commission in many cases environment for 10, 20 years. Actually over that time, our margins actually gone up. Really, look, it's all about providing value. As long as we provide value to our travel customers and our supply customers, then we generate margin. It's as simple as that. You know, I'm very confident we do provide value.
In fact, certainly in the Corporate space, as travel has become more complex, I'm sure this extrapolates to Leisure as well, the value we provide becomes even greater. Margin is one of the things I'm really not that concerned about.
Michael, I'll give some even more color to that. We've actually had maintenance, if not growth, in some of our margins of a lot of other products which were growing exponentially, particularly our hotel space. Remember. Well, maybe you won't remember. We took out a whole wholesale layer. We've kind of compressed our layers as well. All of those things help to hold up our revenue.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. Just as a first one for maybe to you, Adam. I don't know how easy this is going to answer, but I'll ask anyway. Just in terms of the return on capital profile and how to think about that, and maybe if you give us some color on how Corporate versus Leisure looked pre-COVID. Then looking forward, obviously with the store base now, we should be seeing some pretty material improvements in your incremental returns. I know there's probably a lot of CapEx heavy in the next little while. Is there any sort of color you could give us around that in terms of how to think about it? Because it just feels like the mix of the business, you could see 300, 400, 500+ lifts in your returns. Corporate mix probably drive that higher.
It feels like Corporate obviously will be off a low base. Sorry, Leisure and online base is gonna be a much more mature portion of Group earnings as we look out three-five years.
Yeah. Ben, as you say, it's a difficult one to answer here, but what I would say is the capital base of the Corporate business is, as you know, has traditionally been a lot lighter than in Leisure. We see that continuing. I mean, that won't change dramatically as we look forward. We will continue to be, you know, having certain elements of capital deployed on, particularly CapEx around things like development of new technologies, et cetera. That won't shift dramatically.
Typically, if you go back five years, we was probably spending somewhere in the order of AUD 50 million-AUD 60 million a year on CapEx for our shop networks. That started to shift over the last few years to be more technology-driven rather than shop-driven. Again, you know, with the level of shops that we've got at around, you know, 40%-45% of where we were pre-COVID, we're not looking to dramatically increase that. The capital that we had deployed in that space previously won't be deployed here.
What we will continue to see, though, in Leisure as well as Corporate, is that focus on technology to drive productivity and customer-facing ability. I think we'll certainly be lighter as we go forward. You know, our CapEx spend previously was somewhere in the order of AUD 100 million a year. Typically, I wouldn't see us going back to that sort of level. This year, we'd expect somewhere in the vicinity of probably AUD 35 million-AUD 45 million in CapEx as an example, just to give some color to it. That might increase a little bit over the next couple of years, but it wouldn't be increasing to the similar levels as we had pre-COVID.
Just on that, in terms of the tech spend. You're doing obviously a phenomenal job winning these contracts in the Corporate, the big ones. Is the spend around tech, is that sort of you've got the base and actually put a lot of money into a lot of businesses pre-COVID. You can't pull that back, the base is there. Is there a step change? Would there be any shift in terms of more need around things like SaaS in terms of through the P&L? Or is it clean in terms of that cost base? It's what Mel was talking about, and then also no incremental step up in terms of tech CapEx.
Yeah. Chris, do you want to talk about that in terms of the tech base for Corporate?
Yeah, I didn't quite hear that very clearly, Ben. Could you just repeat the essence of that question? So it broke up a bit.
Oh, apologies. In terms of the Corporate business, it seems like it's in a really good position to scale. What I'm trying to understand is, do you need to put a whole bunch more CapEx on the tech side in or do you feel that you're where you need to be? Should we expect to see any pick-up in SaaS payments that'll run through the P&L?
Right. Okay. We are in a very good position from a tech situation. However, we do intend to continue investing in both products. In both the Corporate Traveller product, Melon, and the FCM platform. We want to keep investing to make sure that they remain at the forefront of their respective segments. We will keep spending, but the actual core investments have been made. In terms of SaaS payments, we won't see those increase as we scale because a lot of the technology costs are now proprietary. You know, there should be good unit economics as we scale through those platforms. That's certainly the aim. Obviously, the main part of productivity strategy is not to replace the same number of people.
The volume of transactions we can do, and more and more of our technology enables full servicing of transactions as well. Not just the booking, but the ongoing maintenance of them, the data and analytics can be done by customers themselves. Really, you know, both from a, largely from a people saving, we expect pretty good unit economics to improve as we scale up.
Ben, I can add a little bit for Leisure, if you like, because. Sorry, Skroo's just coughing all over me. What was I gonna say? We've used this period to actually bring that scale capability. I mentioned that we've introduced a whole new land platform. We're still bedding it down, but it will give us the ability to scale. Your point about a new step-up, we're actually doing one as we speak on our Omnicart capability. When I say a step-up, it's a whole package that's sort of no more than AUD 20 million over a period. You may see us in Leisure doing small bundles, but essentially we've got those core platforms in now.
We've made those investments already, so I wouldn't see us having to have major, massive increases from that. I think we've got the scalability. We're still bedding down a few things, but the Omnicart will give us the scale on the online on a blended variety, which will actually allow us to sell a much more, a fuller range of content online as well.
That's really helpful. Just final one from me, either Skroo or Adam, just around pre-COVID, you talked to PBT margins of 2%+ in terms of what you're targeting. Obviously, the timeline's not relevant now, but when you look out over the next few years or so, as the business outlooks in terms of shape of where it's going and changes in commission, et cetera, is that still something you'd aspire to do a 2%+ PBT margin?
Yeah. Ben, it's Adam. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, I think there's a moving part there as you highlighted. Look, we certainly feel that if we don't come out with a 2%+ PBT margin, then we've wasted what was an opportunity we never wanted to receive, but we were given. I would be expecting that the cost base in particular will drive an increment in that target. As we progress over the next six to 12 months and get a bit more feel for how things are progressing and the business coming back, we'll start to revisit what that might look like in a little bit more detail with yourself and the market.
Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
That's all.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Darshana Nair from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. I think I'll certainly start on the cash burn. November was a record month in terms of activity, potentially high both on Leisure and Corporate, but you still had a cash burn of AUD 20 million.
How the cost increases have been going through, and is this more of a, like, you know, timing factor in terms of increasing cost ahead of expected activity?
Yeah, Darshana, it's Adam. Look, actually, we see that AUD 20 million outflow as a really positive outcome actually. If you look at over the last six months, we've you know, I think we spoke at the AGM, and at that point in time, September was a AUD 41 million outflow. To quickly bring that down to circa AUD 20 million off the back of increased TTV flowing through was really positive for us. Probably indicates where we could see things going over the next month or two as well as we see similar, if not stronger trends emerging post-Omicron. In terms of costs, I think what you see there is the cost increase was fairly limited during the month.
Our variable costs or what we show on there as our variable costs, we're still around that sort of 15%-20% level, which is where they've been tracking over the full six-month period. We have had a slight increase in the underlying cost base, but nothing significant in the month going into it. What we have seen though, just I step back from November and more broadly look at the half, we have seen an increase in our cost base, particularly in relation to personnel costs. I think that if you look at that compared to prior comparative periods, that's really due to a couple of things.
First of all, we did reinstate a lot of stood-down employees earlier in the calendar year. We had the full wage impact of those employees back with us, particularly here in Australia when JobKeeper finished. We brought those individuals back. You know, given the Delta impact, in particular through August and into September, we weren't operating at full productivity for that cohort. It was important that we brought them back, and then we're getting ready for what we know is now coming in terms of that tremendous buildup of demand. Certainly an increase there.
In the prior comparative, we also had a lot of wide-ranging pay cuts across the business that, while people aren't earning over and above package now, and there are still some pay reductions in play, they're not to the same extent as they were early in the pandemic. Also as volume comes back, and this feeds into the variable cost base, Darshana, as we do pay our people in the front end based on commission, so in sales. Payments to our frontline employees have increased as revenue has started to rebound.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that color. Secondly, in terms of Leisure, looking at the profile of full recovery, you've called out B2B and call centers roughly at 20% of the business. Can you also give us a sense of how the revenue margins are expected for this versus, let's say, physical retailing versus online?
Darshana, it's Mel. We wouldn't see in the call center, but we've got a couple of different call centers based on what they're servicing. The call center and we're sort of going through a bit of a process at the moment of looking at how we might structure those moving forward. If they're handling the same type of product a la our international package, we wouldn't see the margin being any different. It just depends on what actual content. A lot of our irresistible deals we're pumping out at the moment, we're actually showing about a 4x conversion factor. Again, we're putting a lot of those into the stores. The contact center will allow us to flex during peak periods.
Again, there's no reason why the revenue margin should be any different in the call center if it's selling the same type of product. If it's servicing a point-to-point domestic, no, of course not. There we work on how many touches, et cetera, you generally need to service the booking, which obviously in the last period's been completely out of control. It's really about the like-for-like product and where it's put.
Got it. How about the B2B business?
The B2B business is a different model because obviously in that instance the external agent is our customer, and they dictate the margin. We have nothing to do with them in terms of what they price that product at. We've got some pretty intensive modeling. It's a low-cost business. The margin, again, we can supply them with gross, we can supply them with net. It's a bit difficult to give you a specific on that one. We wouldn't expect it to achieve as much as a higher PBT margin as something like our premium business, but it should be able to still deliver. I think Ben just mentioned that 2% one before. We know it will still achieve that.
It's not a business, B2B, that operates necessarily with a gross revenue margin because they decide the pricing.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Seow from Citi. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. This question, potentially for Mel here, picking up on some comments you made about the ancillary opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
Perhaps could you give us an update on, I guess, the NDC and the kind of commission structures airlines are talking about, I guess, to sell the richer content?
Getting access to ancillaries is not necessarily related to NDC access, and we certainly already had some ancillary capability. I mean, this is a bit similar to NDC, though, that airlines have completely different schema as to how you access ancillaries. It's a bit of a technical jigsaw puzzle. I was gonna say nightmare, but anyway, we're quite able to get very high margins on ancillaries. Some ancillaries, and when I say high margins, you're 40% or 50% on, you know, seats, bags, et cetera, 'cause for them it's just cream. Obviously it's a very small amount in terms of the gross ticket value. What we've been doing is rapidly expanding our ancillary capability. Online, I think we now do seats, bags, et cetera. We'll try and make sure we're accessing, if you like, all those opportunities.
The airlines like it because it's one of those things, if they can get the ancillary sales up front, it actually helps them manage the supply of those ancillaries on the flight. They're generally quite open to working with us on that basis. That's sort of on the ancillary side. By the way, we also, as a Leisure business, have our own ancillaries. The Captain's Package is a classic example of that, where we wrap up price drop protection insurance, et cetera, into a bundle for our customers. Not only do we wanna get margin from selling the airline's ancillaries, we're now putting into the marketplace our own ancillaries and getting very good take-up of those because they're good quality products. That was on that side.
On the NDC side, again, that was a lot of our rationale into the investment in TPConnect, as I said. A lot of the NDC is not necessarily about the airlines will pay more margin on that space. It's getting access to the best fares in the first place for our customers. Some of those may or may not be supplied at gross or net, and again, then we can work out what pricing we wanna put them out at. Generally, we match airlines when we go out on a point-to-point basis on air. Obviously, when we create bundles, air and land bundles, we can do all sorts of things to make sure our customers get great pricing.
Okay, great. I guess when you look out at the bulk of when the international outbound flights look to be, you know, coming back in the mid of the year for, you know, the Northern Hemisphere summer, et cetera. Just wondering how we should think about how you're investing in capacity ahead of demand. I mean, is there a scenario where you see cash burn getting bigger before it gets better as you invest in marketing and staff ahead of demand? Or how should we think about that over the next couple of months before the planes start flying?
Sam, that's probably our daily consideration. We know that capacity internationally out of Australia, I think it's about 60% by about April. We monitor very closely with the supply chain what the capacity is like. By the way, it's the same on the hotel side. You got a lot of hotels are operating still at 50% capacity 'cause they all can't find staff, and they're having to meet COVID protocols, et cetera. Again, to your point, and we've seen in the last few weeks, you know, you look back to November and demand increased exponentially. We start trying to market more and put more people into our business. Then, of course, Omicron hit. Then February, it's rebounding so quickly.
I won't, you know, we certainly are looking for more people quickly. The marketing, which we almost turn off in those instances because we've become over inquired. That's the strength, particularly of a brand like Flight Centre. Quite often you don't need to go out screaming. If the market opens up, they come to us in droves. Look, it's gonna be a juggling act. You're right. We have some quite good modeling on forward projections of booking profiles, so that to your point, we don't overspend unnecessarily. Again, we're just managing that. Yeah, certainly marketing, we can pull levers very quickly, particularly as we rely a lot on digital marketing. With staffing, it's a little bit harder. We can just sort of try and staff to the capacity we think we'll need.
Okay, that's great. Just one more, if I can. You guys, I guess, really benefit from a cash flow point of view, you know, when people get confidence and book further out in advance. I guess, can you help us understand, I mean, choose a metric of your choice of what that used to be and I guess what that is now?
You talk about forward booking profiles?
Yeah, the duration, I guess, between what it used to be and what it is currently now.
Look, to be honest with you, we're actually just trying to establish what that pattern looks like. I mean, we've just literally in the last few days seen new bookings overtake rebookings, which is a nice thing. I'll give you one example, cruise. We're making bookings into 2023 and beyond, well beyond at the moment. I'd argue the cruise profile is probably extended in terms of forward booking. It's hard to say. I think you'll see in the next few weeks the international long-haul and which is what we're noticing, and I think I just saw an inquiry stat that U.K. has now moved up or U.K., Europe's now moved up in the inquiry stack above short-haul. You'll start seeing the forward booking profile of some of that as well. It's a moving target at the moment, to be honest.
Sam, we noticed when some of these border announcements come, you get a real rush from the VFR customers who are looking to travel fairly quickly to get home to see family and friends, et cetera. You also had with November a lot of announcements about borders reopening. There was quite a lot of bookings for December for people going away over Christmas, obviously. There has been a bit of a mix. It's probably not the normal booking window. Historically, it probably had contracted a bit to about three months for international-
Mm-hmm.
... on average. Historically, it was much higher than that. At the moment, there's some that are, you know, a couple of weeks, and there's some that are.
Months and months. Yeah.
18 months in advance for cruise. It is a bit of a moving feast at the moment.
All right. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate the call.
Thanks, Sam.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mark Wade from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Just to start with, just curious to try and understand perhaps from Chris, just what's been the secret sauce that's meant you've been able to get so much of these new business wins and also even in your side of it, Mel, on gaining market share and Leisure. What's been behind those outstanding gains?
Well, look, yeah, both SME and CT are winning, and I think it's just a very simple strategy we've stuck with over the last couple of years, which is brands very much focused on customer needs, really making sure the products we're bringing to market and we're talking to customers about are exactly what they're looking for. I think in SME, there's no doubt that the...
The focus on having a new product out there that gives great proprietary experience, but also has flexibility built in, is a differentiator. There's nobody else doing it. The way we offer a consistent experience, and choice is unique and customers seem to be really loving that. I think also that we made a decision right at the beginning of COVID not to cut back on solution design and implementation, not to cut back on sales, and that has meant we've been very, very active in the marketplace. Rather than growth through acquisition, we decided to grow through customer acquisition. It's really just sticking with the strategy.
I think having two brands, one focused on SME, one focused on large market, means we can simultaneously win at both ends of the marketplace, which again is very different from most of our competitors. Look, I think it's just having a very clear plan, having management and our people focused on it, not getting distracted, and having differentiated brands and solutions. It really is that simple.
Mark, from a Leisure perspective, you know, to answer the question, why do I think we're gaining market share? A couple of things. Well, firstly, Flight Centre is a very famous brand. You know, I don't think sometimes we realize the asset of having a brand that's well-known in the marketplace, and we've been active in the marketplace. Even though we haven't been doing a lot of above-the-line marketing, we've become very good at digital, at social, et cetera. Even on a PR perspective, and I'll give you again, I'll use South Africa as an example. Right throughout the pandemic, out there in marketing, telling customers what's going on, you know, trying to be the face of the industry, and Skroo's done a lot of that here.
I will say our leadership have done a great job on that, and our supply chain tell us that we have been the most active. I think that's it. We've also got this real machine of irresistible deals that's been going out. I think we're much more agile now, and to be honest, having less places you can go to, it's easy to channel where to market. We've got a really good much more industrialized merchandising capability where we share content globally and can get it out very quickly. I can tell you now we've had deals and products in the wings waiting for markets to open, and as soon as they do, we get them out in minutes to our database and in those social channels.
The other thing I think we're gaining market share is the channel choice now. You know, because we've got online in all markets, et cetera, et cetera. I think particularly Flight Centre, and I'll use that one, is why it's better than the alternative. If you go direct to supplier, you don't get choice of product. You know, you come to Flight Centre, you can buy any airline, any destination, any, you know, hotel, and you can also choose your channel. If you wanna talk to someone, you can, and if you wanna do it yourself, you can. It's been interesting. There have been customers in our stores over the last couple of weeks, particularly, who have basically, quote-unquote, said, "I've never gone into a store until now. I need some help."
That's why I think we're gaining market share, because the series of assets that we have around our, you know, ability to, you know, shop how you want, the great deals matched to where you can actually go, and having, you know, expert support when you need it. I just think it's never been front of center, and I think we've got a much better offering as well as consistent customer experience. I can't see any reason why we wouldn't continue to gain market share.
Yeah. I think you're in a good position and, you know, appreciate you highlighting that again. Just turning on to the financial requirements of the business, what would be the trigger, if any, to require any additional capital?
Pay raise for Haydn and Lord Mel. Mark, I... Look, we're not – we're certainly not looking at any sort of requirement around that. If you look at the liquidity position that we're in, I think, you know, we worked pretty hard over the last two years, to stock that up and shore it up, and we're pretty comfortable with where we're up to right now. As I say, you know, we're – we've got a bit there in the chest now that we can draw on as, particularly as things start coming back, to help drive that growth forward. So there's no expectation of any requirements for further capital at all.
Okay. That's really helpful and clear. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Most of my questions have been asked, but I've just got two, if that's all right. Mel, can you maybe give us a bit of a sense? I mean, lots of technology and productivity improvements that have been going on within the business. If we think about the bricks and mortar business once demand comes back, and we're in a business as usual environment, how much more TTV could each staff member generate given the productivity improvements and technology developments that we've seen?
Tim, that is kind of the, you know, what's the meaning of life? That's our question. Number one is that we've got a more experienced cohort. The delivery of those guys was higher anyway, so we take that as the baseline. I mean, the less locations, and these are our more productive locations we retained anyway because we were generally getting more turnover per person or per square foot, sorry, square meter of real estate, et cetera. We've taken all that into effect or into account, and then the system, the technology is really just building.
The problem, by the way, with technology is because we've been doing so many changes versus new bookings, and even in Corporate, you know, your levels of automation and are affected when you're in a change, heavy change state versus a new booking state. I think we saw with New South Wales, certainly back in November, and I'll be interested in February when we're finished. We've had the highest productivities in our stores at an average level in New South Wales in November. That fills me with confidence. I think Liberty in America is already achieving higher than pre-COVID productivity levels. Yes, we have goals of how much we think it can get to, based on a series of lots of things. What's that number? I mean, again, you know, could it double? Potentially.
You know, there's still, like, how much capacity can an agent actually handle? At the moment, remember, it's complex. I'll give you another example. Normally, in an online space, you'd have a ratio of how many touches to a booking, and sometimes over the last few months it's been 1:1, which is unheard of, because you're having to, you know, change so much stuff. Again, look, hard to give you a number, but just to say we're already seeing product capability uplift and the technology is still bedding down, and that's in a high state of change environment.
I'm quite comfortable we can get to the productivity that we need to achieve the, particularly the PBT margin, which, let's face it, Leisure was the issue in PBT margin pre-COVID, that will allow us to get back to that magical 2%.
Got it. Just one question for Chris. You mentioned no margin degradation within the Corporate business. When I look at the pipeline of wins that you've had over the last 18 months, which has been really impressive, is it fair to say that is more heavily skewed towards larger or FCM clients that might have a lower TTV margin attached to them? While on a per customer basis it might be the same, once you change customer mix, you might see a slight dilution?
Yeah. I mean, that is potentially true. Look, the volume of wins is skewed towards FCM. The thing to remember is we talk about the big customers, the brands, that we refer to in the slide deck, but there's also a lot of SME business in there as well. We just don't mention the names because you won't have heard of them. There's also a lot of small and medium customers that make up that AUD 4.5 billion, and they typically do trade at a higher margin. The other thing to remember is most of our growth is coming in the Northern Hemisphere. Northern Hemisphere typically trades at a higher margin than Australia, New Zealand. What you're saying is correct, but broadly, we think there are other things that will mitigate it.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Wei-Weng Chen from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. A couple of questions from me. Just on the 60%-75% corporate recovery in the next 18 months. That's not a structural expectation of a drop, right? Just more of a point in time, yeah. And then just to follow up, have you had any thought on what that longer-term number might be?
Well, I've had lots of thoughts on it, yes. Look, I think that the 60-75% is general industry consensus. It's what airlines are talking to. It's what other TMCs. It's what GBTA is. It's roughly what our customers are telling us. I think that, and I know there is disagreement here. I don't think Corporate Traveller will ever come back, certainly not in the short- to medium-term future to 100%. I think it will be lower. What that number is, I really don't know. I don't think anybody really knows. People are putting very accurate estimates out there, but I don't think anyone knows. I suspect it's gonna be somewhere around between 70% and 80%. Look, it's our job to remove erroneous travel. That's what our customers pay us to do.
We don't want customers traveling, both from a sustainability perspective, and from a cost perspective. We don't want customers traveling when they don't need to. Again, just to reiterate, the whole message behind our strategy from the beginning of COVID has been we don't need it to come back to 100%. Our strategy is about growing by winning new customers, not by the market recovering to 100%. We're actively trying to save customers money and, you know, ensuring that they don't travel unless they need to. We're very relaxed about that.
Yeah. Great. And then, I guess my next question is a follow-up to that. So slide 33. At 70% recovery, your pre-COVID customers go back to 61%. So if I do the math on that's about AUD 1 billion of lost TTV, and then add the AUD 4.5 billion that you've won. Does that mean we should think about a more AUD 3.4 billion net win?
You can look at it that way. Yeah. I mean, you're right.
Yeah.
Our existing customers are not gonna trade at the same level, and so yes, you can net that off if you look at it that way, yeah.
So.
I hope I understood the question correctly.
Sorry, Chris, just with that, though, Wei-Weng Chen, that's not AUD 1 billion of losses going through. That's a market reduction impact.
Oh, okay. It's just that I thought at 70%, your 100% would go to 70%, but it's gone to 61%. So billion.
That's 61% of 100%. If you add up 61%, 23% and 16%, that's 100%.
Yeah.
Okay. All right.
It's just the proportion.
Oh, okay.
Is where the total comes from, Wei-Weng Chen.
Oh, okay. Fair enough.
Yeah. That's not 61% of the 100%. That's 61% of the new total.
Okay.
Our retention rate. Sorry, just to...
Sorry.
Our retention rates have actually been excellent. It's one of the things we're very proud of as well. We've lost very, very few customers over the last two years. It's not just about winning. We don't talk about retention, but it has been really excellent.
Yeah. No, that's super to hear. And then just the last question just on the Leisure business. So appreciate there's a plan A in place to kind of offset the reduced store count. I guess given that there is an expectation that customers will want, I guess, more hand-holding in post-pandemic travel, just wondering, is there a plan B in place if you start to realize that, you know, the store counts are starting to impact on sales? Would you roll out more stores again, or what would you do? Increase staffing?
Well, yes, there is a plan A and B. Remember a lot of our stores probably operate as a dispersed call center, because we still get a lot of our volume of business on the phone, as opposed to, you know, that hundred-year-old piece of technology, not the Internet. That's probably more of our plan B. If we want more stores, and by the way, we did just open the first new store in South Africa. Good store. It was actually a massive mall that we couldn't get the right deal. We exited. We've come back in at a better location, cheaper rent, and killing it. If we wanted to, yes, we would open, but it would be selective.
We would more use the call center because we can channel the phone calls into that kind of environment.
Okay.
For people servicing, yes.
That's all from me. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Simotas from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, guys. Thanks for taking a quick follow-up. The chart you've got on slide 47 is very intuitive. I was just hoping you could give us a little bit more color just so we can understand the dynamic on what your all-in airfare gross margin has done over that period. It looks to me like you've made up a lot of the ground with mix. What's the airfare mix to sales done? And how much of that offset has been through mix versus other things that are in your airfare commissions?
It might be hard to be very specific on some of that. Actually, it's a good reminder. I don't know if everyone remembers. It was just post the GFC. We had the first decline in front end, and this is what this graph reflects. You used to get 9%, what they call BSP, at source commission. That dropped to 5% back just around the GFC time here in the Australian market. As I've mentioned, it had already happened in Europe and North America decades before that. That was the first decline. We're showing that that was a step change, and we've managed to offset it at a revenue level in Leisure. That would be mix. Yes, definitely selling more of land content. Things like our Captain's Package was introduced not long after that. Our own series of ancillaries.
Sorry?
Yeah.
The other one that I don't think we went vertical on our land space at that time, too, quite heavily. A plan we'd kicked off in about 2008 or 2009. In fact, the same time. We actually got closer to the source in terms of our hotels, car hire, et cetera, et cetera. It was a mixture of all those things, not necessarily a quantum shift in actual mix of what we sold. I don't know if you remember also, just how long I've been around with the GFC when we were doing a lot of the roadshow at the time. We also went for a lot of guarantees versus a very, you know, cyclical sort of profile with our partners.
We tried to secure much more surety of margin, et cetera. Again, I think a lot of those strategies. It wasn't necessarily a fundamental shift in mix. Yes, we've certainly been selling more and more land, but a combination of all those things. It'd be hard to pin down one specifically as the key driver.
Michael, to answer it slightly differently. You know, if you look at probably what the average airline paid us as a margin for international out of Australia, it was probably somewhere between 8%-12% typically for an airline, some more, some less. What you can see in those red lines, there was a mistake in the initial table. If you're looking at the initial one that was lodged, maybe have a look at the second one. The words are correct, but the...
Yeah.
The commission percentage has been mixed around in the graph. If you look at the commission, it's gone from 6.7%, as Mel was saying, post-GFC, when commissions went from 9% to 5%, basically. It's now down to around the 3.7% ahead of these changes. The overall margin's gone up, partly because of what Mel was saying there with the new products. Also, a shift from front-end to back-end margin, which is, yeah, all the travel agents are talking about this at the moment. Helloworld mentioned it. CTM mentioned it. No doubt Webjet will also mention it. You know, if they're taking it away from the front, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It just depends how much you make up in the back end or through other means.
Haydn, over that period, did your all-in gross margin, if you like, or commission, whatever you wanna call it, from airfares as a percentage decline a little bit?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. I think there was a data point, I can't even remember where it was, that airfares were about 50% of Australian Leisure TTV. Is it less than that now? I mean, obviously not right now, given COVID, but just before COVID.
That's why I'm saying that hasn't changed radically. I think it is still around that. It's a bit more. At the moment it's interesting 'cause it's domestic. Remember, your domestic airfare as a proportion versus an international is so much less. I think it'll be interesting to see that pattern as we come out with international. Again, going back to this, we've really industrialized our merchandising capability during this period. We're putting out a lot more packages and bundles now. It's, you know, again, as I said, it's really resonating well with customers. They love it because, you know, we're experts. We're putting out there what you should be doing in these destinations, not having as much bespoke consultant quoting per se. That's helping out.
That will help with the margin as well.
Thank you.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Drew from Carter Bar Securities . Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just a couple of quick questions. Just with respect to that, the Leisure VTB channel mix. I just wanna know sort of how wedded are you to that FY 2024 mix. I mean, when I look at, I guess, FY 2019 versus FY 2024, obviously, you know, the core channel has been stores. I don't doubt your ability to run them. But obviously online needs to triple. I'm just wondering, you know, how accountable are you gonna hold yourself to that mix? If stores are making good sales, productivity's good, how hard are you really gonna drive that online? And what are you gonna do to achieve that?
Peter, it's a great question. Are we wedded to it? No. We've done modeling based on what we think. Remember, there are scenarios around this. If customers were flocking into stores, the margin was holding and our new store network or reduced store network was delivering great returns, we would go with the flow. It's one of the things I think we've created in Leisure over this period is optionality, that we go with the market. So that if, as I said, stores continue to be something and people, and let's be frank, it's the people, not necessarily the store they want to have access to, then we'll ramp up more in our sales centers. Your other part of your question is how accountable. We have been rapidly industrializing and upgrading our online capability.
You know, we've had various people in our business over the years, and I'm really comfortable we've got people with expertise, know what they're doing. You heard that that's the step up investment we're doing at the moment with Leisure is in our Omnicart. That's gonna be great because Omnicart, unlike just online, we will have multi-channel. You'll actually be able to start a booking. A customer can, you know, hold some things in their cart, then go into a store, and vice versa. It's actually very different to an online offering. It's not just supporting an online transaction, which any OTA can do. It's actually the ability for customers to almost start one, go and want some help and go and speak to someone or vice versa.
A consultant to start the discussion and a customer go, "I need to think about it, but I might complete it online." It will be unique and quite different. Back to the accountability. It's certainly in play at the moment to make sure those things are delivered, that we're getting the performance out of them, and that further investment requires actually seeing returns on that capital. I'm pretty comfortable we've expanded on our skill set and our talent pool. We've invested in the right products. I think, you know, we can. That's why the graph is here, the trends there. To your point, if we were completely changing from 2019 to 2024, but we can already see the momentum and the flow is there. I'm comfortable, as I said, and confident that we can deliver on.
Are we wedded to it? Not necessarily. We'll go with the flow.
Pete, just to put it slightly differently, we will hold ourselves accountable to make sure that each of those offerings are the offerings that our customers need, and that they're available. The percentage will be dictated to by our customers.
Excellent.
It's been by our choice, it'll be their choice.
Yeah, no, that's a good explanation. Just the last one, maybe for Chris. I just wanna clarify how you actually arrive at the value of those new customers. Do you get an FY 2019 spend and then you know apply a discount to it based on you know it not returning to 100%? I'm just curious how you quantify that value of those clients.
In essence.
In essence, yes. That spend is not based on what we think will trade this year because obviously no company is traveling at normal capacity. It's really the data we get from customers, which is typically FY 2019, and we apply discounts based on what we think it will return to. We do that with the customer. It's not just us plucking a number out of the air. Remember when we sign these accounts, they're typically three-year. If they're FCM, they're sometimes five-year. We do expect at least two terms of the contract. It's normally more than that, but at least two. When we say that number, you can extrapolate over that number of years. It's not just a one-year thing.
Yeah. Understood. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Pete.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Long for closing remarks.
Well, thank you very much, everyone. Anything else required, give us a call. We're around during the day. We're actually in Sydney seeing some people and doing a few virtual calls as well. Travel back safely. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.