I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Haydn Long, Media and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Mel. Good afternoon, everyone. I've got the usual crowd here with me. I've got Adam Campbell, our CFO, and the CEO of our GBS division. We've got JK, the Leisure CEO; Greg Parker, the Supply CEO; Mel Elf, the Head of the Corporate Productive Operations Initiative in FCM. You'll hear shortly Scroo barging through the door. He's on his way here, but not quite here yet. I'll start off with Adam with some opening remarks, and then we'll probably go straight into Q&A. Adam.
Thank you, Hedo. Good afternoon, everyone. Look, as you've seen this morning, we've amended our guidance for the current financial year to between AUD 300 million and AUD 335 million and announced a buyback of shares of up to AUD 200 million over the next 12 months. I'll just give a quick overview of some of the areas of the announcement before I hand back to Haydn and we go straight into Q&A. First of all, I guess I'll probably start by saying, look, it's always disappointing to downgrade results, and the reasons for us are really threefold. The first is the impact of cyclical macro conditions, further investment that we've made in key growth drivers for future years, and unfortunately, the impact of some underperforming businesses.
The current macroeconomic and macropolitical environments have certainly exacerbated the volatile trading conditions experienced throughout the year, which has seen lower-than-expected TTV growth in our core brands, and as business and consumer confidence has fallen. We do expect that to continue over the important May and June periods. Within corporate, this has been seen largely in downtrading of customers, although our pipeline of new customer wins remains strong, meaning that as conditions stabilize, we should see the benefit of this drop into our TTV. In leisure, our primary TTV growth has been seen in our specialist and independent brands, with macro conditions impacting our larger Flight Centre and Travel Associates businesses, and therefore impacting our overrides revenues in a similar manner to what we saw in the first quarter.
Although conditions haven't been ideal, we've continued to invest in areas that we feel will benefit us considerably in the future, including TP Connects, where we'll see an additional AUD 5 million year-on-year investment in that strategically important business for us, investing in Corporate Traveller growth in the northern hemisphere and in particular in the U.K. and U.S. markets, the ongoing investment in productive operations, which we will continue to see the benefits start to realize, the rapidly growing cruise sector in leisure, and finally in technology, including the benefits of AI to increase productivity and our customer experience. Of course, our results have also been impacted by areas of the business that have simply underperformed.
StudentUniverse continues to operate well below pre-pandemic levels, and although we expected the business to break even this year after the strategic and operational changes we've made over the last 6 to 12 months, we now expect that it could lose up to $10 million. The business is now being reviewed, and we do not expect losses from the business to continue into 2026. Our Asian business was also highlighted at the half-year as dragging our corporate results, and although we initially expected the business to recover its first half losses over the full year, we now expect a combination of additional take-up of provisions and extra investment in technology, processes, people, and infrastructure, given the region's size and complexity, to result in a full-year loss of between AUD 8 million and AUD 10 million.
The important element with that business is that we invest enough now to ensure the business returns to appropriate profitability in FY 2026. As well as focusing on these underperforming businesses, there are a number of other areas that we're focused on in the short term to address some of these issues. Firstly, our Global Business Services Division, which runs at a monthly cost base of around AUD 20 million, has a number of initiatives underway to reduce costs, improve scalability, and improve the employee experience. These include restructuring our operating models, increasing the use of automation, and improving quality and commercials for our offshore partners as we continue to scale these operations. These benefits will be seen more as we progress through FY26 and will be in a position early next year to quantify what we expect those benefits to be.
Productive operations and the corporate target of a 5% reduction in FTEs remains on track and should also realize further benefit in FY 2026, as well as the broader recruitment freeze for non-essential roles that we have throughout the business. We will obviously also have a very close watch on general expenditure and prioritization of investment and CapEx, with a target reduction of between 15%-20% CapEx in FY 2026. On a more positive note, we have also announced a buyback of up to $200 million of shares over the next 12 months, which underlies our belief in the strength of our business and our balance sheet and our commitment to increasing shareholder returns. Haydn, I think we will pause there and just go to any specific questions.
Thanks, Mel. We'll go to Q&A now. Guys, we've got quite a few here in the queue, so we'll try and fly through them as quickly as we can to get to as many people as we can.
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 and put your hands up to ask your question. Your first question comes from Michael Simotas with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, guys. The first one for me is just trying to think about an earnings bridge into FY 2026. If we sort of assume that the second half earnings run rate is a reasonable base to think about going forward, and we'll make our own assumptions about underlying growth, how much benefit do you think you can get from reduced costs in GBS, and how much of the investment that you've pulled out is actually in that underlying base number and not pulled out below the line? Because I think a lot of the losses and investments seem to be in the below-the-line items, just trying to think about a clean number heading into 2026.
Yeah, Michael, it's Adam. In terms of what's been pulled out to the underlying PBT number, certainly productive operations, as we have done previously, will continue to be pulled out. That's the incremental cost of productive operations. Also, some of the one-off costs associated with GBS initiatives will be pulled out of that. Now, that's some of the external costs we might have there, any restructure costs that are one-off in nature, etc., will be what gets pulled out of that number. The actual, if you like, BAU number that we currently have in GBS remains in our underlying numbers and will remain in there until such a point as it's actually reduced out of the business overall. To that point, to answer your question on that, as I mentioned, we've got about AUD 20 million per month run rate there.
We haven't announced what we believe the benefit to be there, but certainly, if you look at some of the areas we're looking at in terms of revisiting our operating models and the way that we operate through finance, through technology, through our people and culture businesses, etc., we believe that there's a lot of opportunity to be able to reduce that cost and to bring that down. We're in the process at the moment of different levels. We're a bit more advanced through technology than we are with, say, people and culture and then finance, but certainly, we are expecting that there should be some reasonable benefit coming through that. The other element that we'll talk to as we get to that point is what needs to be reinvested versus what can be banked.
There is both a cost-out and a cost mitigation strategy at play that we've got in the GBS space.
Okay. StudentUniverse losses, I think, are pulled out, but TP Connects investment is in the base?
Yes, sorry. That's correct. The rationale behind that is consistent. In TPC, we continue that as being part of our ongoing business that we expect to have a similar investment in going forward, and we are going to leave that in those numbers as we have previously. We really needed to make a call with StudentUniverse. If we leave it in and we end up closing that business, we would need to adjust our range when we actually come out in August. We made the call that we would take it out. You can make your own call on what to do with that, but one way or the other, we are not expecting to have those losses travel into FY 2026.
Okay. No, that gives us enough to work with. And then just the second one for me on the balance sheet. I mean, given TTV, it seems relatively stable. We should not assume any dramatic change in the negative working capital position. Is that reasonable?
Yeah, that's fair. We're certainly seeing our normal trending in terms of operating cash flow as expected. We're probably seeing softer TTV in both corporate in terms of FCM, CT, and also the larger leisure brands. The specialist brands are the ones that are really driving that additional growth. You shouldn't see too much change, I wouldn't have thought, Michael.
Okay. Just a last quick follow-up, if I can. I appreciate the stock's trading where it is, so buyback looks attractive. What gives you confidence to take on a little bit more debt in this environment?
Look, we're not really taking on more debt. I think what you're probably referring to is rather than using that AUD 200 million to pay down convertibles.
Exactly.
Yeah. We have a syndicated debt financing facility of AUD 200 million that is undrawn on the balance sheet at the moment. We also have operating cash inflows still coming in at a good level. Let's not forget we're still on track, and our guidance is somewhere around about the same profit as we did last year. We're still expecting to see our cash flows following the same trajectory as we did last year. We should see that building over time. We have a put on the 2028 convertibles for AUD 200 million in 12 months' time. We're confident in being able to utilize either existing cash or debt facilities if we need to do that. As you know, we're pretty active in that space in terms of managing those CBs. We'll be on the front foot on that over the coming six months as well.
Yep. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lisa Deng with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. My first question is more about composition of the guide down. Say we're at $320 million for the year and we were, say, previously trending towards $365 million. That gap of $45 million in the second half PBT, can we understand how much of that is TTV, how much of that is revenue margin impacted by super overrides, and the balance, please?
Look, we won't get a direct breach of that amount, Lisa, but what we can say is our TTV in our core brands has been softer than we would like. We've got growth coming through there, but it's softer growth than we're expecting to see come through. That then feeds through, particularly in the leisure space, into our overrides, which will then have a direct impact on revenue margin. As you know, we are a growth business, so it's important for us to grow our top line. Actually, before I just go there, what I will say is the growth we're seeing in the specialist brands is important growth to us as well. Let's not undercook that. It doesn't have a direct impact on overrides, but it is profitable growth.
A business like Travel Money, we're seeing top-line growth and also margin growth, which is a great outcome for us, but it just has a different weight in terms of margins than some of those other businesses. I think it's important that we do grow. We all believe we're a top-line growth business. That impacts not just things like revenue growth through overrides, commissions, transaction fees, etc., but also our cost base. If you look at some of the initiatives we've got, such as GBS being established, the real benefit we're going to see with that, the real benefit we'll see through productive operations comes as our volumes increase and increase, but our cost base doesn't have to.
I think that the real area to look at with that is going to be we need to see that growth at a top line to really get the flow through it at most levels of the business.
In terms of that top-line growth outlook into 2026, I mean, what do we need to see to sort of restore, I guess, transparency or confidence or an improvement? What are some of the KPIs we need to be looking for?
I think generally speaking, we spoke about this at the heart. What we'd like to see in our leisure business would be sort of mid-single-digit growth for TTV. What we'd like to see in the corporate business is probably a bit higher than that. Probably sort of mid to high single-digit TTV growth is generally what we'd be looking for. That probably gives an indication of what we think would be a reasonable outcome for us.
Yeah. Final follow-up is corporate in terms of SMEs, so the Corporate Traveller. How has that been slow as well? Because we've talked about TTV growth in lower-margin businesses, as opposed to FCM.
Smell here, Lisa. We've actually just seen we've just pulled the stats for March and April. We've probably seen, given April's got public holidays, Easter, here in Australia, school holidays as well, then taking into account the political instability, we've seen a reduction overall of about 9% across corporate. I would probably argue that that would be quite seasonal, not detrimental, obviously, in terms of the factors taking into play there. We would expect that downturn with Easter and public holidays, etc. Having said that, in the SME space, we actually have seen growth in CT North America. The rapid growth plans that we put into place in the North American business have definitely come to fruition, and we've actually seen growth in April in that particular brand.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bob Chen with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, afternoon, guys. A couple for me. Just one firstly, just on Asia. I know the collections were sort of an issue in the first half, and there was some expectation that that would get recovered in the second half. What's sort of driven that delay, and what's happened in Asia, and how should we be thinking about the trajectory into FY 2026 when you do start collecting properly in that region?
Yeah. Look, without a doubt, the first focus for us in Asia is to get in that invoicing backlog and debt collection. That has been our first focus and priority, and all customers have got all the information that they need in order to pay. There is no doubt it is a little bit slower than we anticipated. We are collecting weekly. We just probably have not collected as much as we thought at this point, but we are still hopeful that by the end of June, we will have a majority of that debt back into the business. Some of it may overflow into the FY 2026 period, however. Once we have that in place, we are confident that FY 2026 will turn that business into a profitable business. We have got all the tech people working on any of the challenges that we have there, so it has moved into the productive operations projects.
We've got good traction on the underlying challenges, and we're pretty confident that we've resolved those now. It's really just a matter of getting that invoice and debt collection through.
Okay. Thanks. In terms of that sort of second half downgrade, can you give us a little bit more color on how much of that was driven by general downtrading from your customers versus more US-specific issues, given the volatility in the political environment over there?
Yeah. Look, it's a little bit hard to tell. I think they're all interrelated, to be fair. I think what we've seen with some of the impact from the U.S. political issues is really flowing through into corporate, for example, as downtrading. It's taken a hit in that business confidence that we've been seeing flow into the downtrading. I think they're actually intertwined together. I'm not sure that we can really separate it too much, but Mel, do you have any sense of that?
We've definitely seen downtrades between the Canadian transporter, between Canada and the U.S., just with the Canadians not traveling into the states, but that isn't a huge portion of our overall TTV. We've also seen a decrease in South Africa because a lot of the NGOs are our customers, which obviously have a high affiliation with the U.S., so they've probably stopped traveling there. Again, it's a small portion of our overall TTV. It's probably, as I said, hard to say for the month of April, given Easter and the public holidays, as to see the true impact. We are down on the U.S.A. in the month of April, without a doubt, which again could contribute to Easter. I think we'll have a better reflection in May, to be honest. Look, we're definitely seeing it in those two pockets.
The rest of the world, I think that will come to fruition in the next couple of weeks as to what the real impact there is.
Okay. Great. Just given you've got that seasonal May, June sort of skew as well, what are you baking in for your fourth quarter on the back of some of the weak data you're seeing right now?
Look, yeah, as you can imagine, we've had to make some assessments on the current run rate going through. Without a doubt, we are expecting the softness that we're seeing to continue through May and June. As you say, both leisure and corporate, they're important months for us. We've had to take what we can see. We've broken it apart by region. We've broken it by brand, demographic, etc. Obviously, a significant amount of analysis gets done to be able to get to that point. Ultimately, it is a forecast based on the assumptions we're seeing at the moment. That's why we've had to sort of keep that range relatively wide in fairness as well, even though we've only got a couple of months to go in the year. Yeah, there are just so many swing factors that could come through there.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, all. Just first, or just for me. Just on a, this has been asked a couple of times, but just in terms of bridging, it is about a AUD 50 million reduction in guidance versus what you had said previously at the midpoint. If we sort of put together, say, Canada's losing money, call that AUD 3 million-AUD 5 million. Your Asian corporate sounds like it is probably another AUD 5 million headwind versus what you thought. TP Connect, you have got a bit more investment, so call that AUD 5-ish. It looks like there is about AUD 30 million-AUD 35 million that is just from overrides and negative leverage. What I am just keen to understand is, is that sort of ballpark right in terms of how we think about it?
If this run rate was to continue through the next half, it feels like it's going to be pretty difficult to grow earnings in the first half, notwithstanding a lot of initiatives already in place. I'm just interested in your thoughts on those comments.
Yeah. Ben, I think certainly there is a significant part of the guidance, which is reduction in TTV in corporate and leisure, and that flow on to leverage. Leverage here is not just about overrides. Leverage is also about our cost base, which also is impacted there, and other revenue streams, let's face it. TTV, overrides is a direct impact, but in our corporate space, if we've got downtrading, we also have less revenues coming through there. CT is impacted by overrides, but FCM not so much. It's more around that transactional fees, etc. Revenue generally has been an impact there. Asia, we expect it to get to break even. There's probably more like a AUD 10 million impact. There's bits and pieces there, but certainly to answer your question, a big piece of it is to do with leverage, without a doubt.
If I look into the first half, certainly we're not expecting a magic broom to come in on the 1st of July and to clean out all the issues that we're currently facing. We expect that there'll probably be some turbulence that goes into that first half as well. What I would say is looking on a like-for-like, we had a pretty rough start to this year in the first quarter. I think that we're probably reasonably based as we look at it over the full FY26. We actually feel reasonably confident and comfortable with that when you break down some of the drivers behind this year's numbers being the macro conditions, which, to be honest, we either expect will settle down or people will learn to live with a little bit better and sort of accept that there's that level of volatility there.
We've got the investments that we're making, we should start to see that benefit from those really start to come through in FY 2026. Frankly, some of the own goals that we've kicked this year, we will fix prior to hitting FY 2026, so we shouldn't have to drag with those either. I'm relatively, and I say that very cautiously, but relatively optimistic as we look forward over the next 12 months that we start to see some reasonable growth rates returning there. Will that be from the 1st of July? Probably not, but I'm reasonably comfortable with it. Scroo, do you have any thoughts around that one?
Yeah, Ben, look, I'm a bit reflecting on what Adam said. I think we'd certainly like to think that most of our major issues have been reasonably well looked after before we get into the 2026 financial year. I'm reasonably confident, barring things that happen that we, the macro things that it's a bit hard to understand yet exactly what might happen, what's the downside. I think the other side of that is I think people will get used to what's happening to some extent unless there's a major blow-up or something. I think overall, we're reasonably confident about 2026. As Adam has said, some of those are issues that we have to fix ourselves, and I think I'm reasonably confident they're under a level of control, the ones that we can make a difference with.
That's really helpful. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sophia Mulligan with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just had two quickly. First one, just on the productive ops program. I guess, Adam, could you talk through the timing of the costs coming through, but then also the benefits you're expecting over the next three halves or so?
Yeah. Look, I'll have a first crack at it. Mel's here as well, so she can certainly jump in there. Look, from our perspective, I think we're expecting a similar run rate this year for the full year in terms of those costs as we did last year. That will continue into next year as well. By the time we sort of get to the second half of next year, we should be starting to, at the very least, be offsetting those costs with some of the benefits that we're realizing. We should be getting to the point where we stop bringing some of those costs out from the underlying results, particularly at the levels that they are at the moment, given the investment that we've been making there. Mel, do you want to sort of talk to some of the benefits and realization of those?
Yeah. So obviously, we're measuring productivity as TTV per FTE, which we're looking for a total 11% improvement across corporate overall with the project. We've seen that already in some of the FCM markets that we've deployed, particularly in Europe, where we have deployed all the systems as part of productive operations, being our inquiry management and our back office in some of those countries. That translates into a reduction of FTE. We're still on track to deliver a 5% reduction in FTE this financial year, and that's with a slight TTV growth. The aim is a 10% reduction over the project time, which again is before TTV growth. We want to continue to grow. We want to continue to invest and grow our TTV, aim being that we keep our costs the same or less.
Great. Thank you. Sorry, just second one in terms of some more boring number stuff. In terms of the one-offs that you're expecting this year in terms of dollar terms, for the next half, we have the stuff that we've already got announced, so the convertibles, the productive ops, and then I guess the magnitude you're expecting from the stuff you've announced today, so the TP Connect, additional investment, and then StudentUniverse, and then GBS?
Yeah. TP Connect, we've indicated it's probably about a AUD 5 million increase over last year in total. TP Connect is included in the numbers, though, Sophia. That won't come out of underlying.
Yep.
That should not be included in that. In terms of underlying, as you say, we have got StudentUniverse. We have got losses in there that we are expecting AUD 8 million-AUD 10 million of losses. If that is closed, then that will come out along with any closure costs that would go through that. There will be some costs associated with the GBS fusion initiatives. In particular with that is the implementation of our HRIS, human resource system, which we expect to be somewhere around AUD 7 million-AUD 8 million. That will be the largest element there. There may be some other costs, but that is the largest portion of it.
Great. Awesome. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Wilson with Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Afternoon, guys. Just firstly with leisure, can you confirm where the impact has been mostly with the lower TTV growth? Has it been mostly for inbound U.S. demand or other areas? I guess in terms of the inbound U.S. demand piece, are you seeing that travelers looking to make trips to the U.S. are largely booking for other destinations instead, or are you seeing a genuine volume impact there?
Yep. Hi, Ben. The main challenge that we see at the moment is actual TTV growth in our big brands, the likes of Flight Centre and then Travel Associates, just making sure that we're getting growth in those brands is actually what's affecting the overall results because they have a flow through to overrides. That, as a result, is kind of what's driving some of the financial downside which Adam has spoke to. When we look at the Americas region overall, it makes up about 7% of leisure's volume across Canada and the US. We have had some minor impact in the U.S. with Scott Dunn, but more recently, only in the last month, with a degree of uncertainty in that space. Overall, though, I think if we just go back to it, it's the big brands that are actually causing the decline at the moment. It's actually flat.
We're just not seeing any growth as what we would have expected in the big brands. You'll see the portfolio overall, though, is continuing to get growth. We shared previously that the target was mid-single digits. At the portfolio level, we are exceeding mid-single digit top-line growth. It's largely coming through from those specialist brands, with some of them having significantly lower margins.
Ben, just to pick up on what JK said, if you're looking at travel patterns out of Australia to the U.S., corporate was actually up a little bit over the first quarter of this calendar year. Leisure has dropped off a little bit, and you'll see that in the outbound numbers that places like Japan have picked up. It's a bit hard to quantify, though.
If someone's not traveling to the U.S., are they traveling somewhere else, or are they just putting it off for a few months? If they put it off for a few months, obviously, we don't get that benefit this year, but we potentially get the pent-up demand benefit next year. I think U.S. has dropped out of the top five or six destinations out of Australia. It's normally top two or three, but somewhere like Japan has taken it up. Bit hard to know, though, whether people have swapped away from the U.S. to other destinations or they're just waiting to see what happens in the U.S. and will then travel. I think Scoo's view is the U.S. does bounce back fairly quickly once things start to stabilize.
Thanks, James. That's helpful. Just moving to corporate then, just further on the downtrading or, I guess, the impact for inbound into the U.S. volumes, Mel, you mentioned you're mainly seeing that from Canada and South Africa. Just a recent channel check we did suggested sort of current trending conditions. You're seeing sort of EU volumes into the U.S. down about 15%-20% and APAC into the U.S. down about 5%-10%. Just wondering, are you seeing something similar to that, or sounds like your volumes from those regions are holding up?
Yeah. I mean, definitely, as I said, we're overall down in the month of April, which, as I said, we're down across the board, including the U.S. I think what's difficult to do, though, because of Easter in all those regions and the public holiday associated, and generally, corporates don't travel around Easter as much as they do other months, it's difficult to pinpoint those particular regions that it's purely a U.S. factor. That is why I mean by May, I think in the next week or two weeks, we'll actually be able to see that trending either continue or not. What we can say, though, is 100% Canada and South Africa are related to the USA. Yes, but it's probably just understanding the specific trend outside of the abnormality of the holidays and the public holidays, particularly if you look in the APAC region with Australia.
We've had, well, this is our third weekend in a row with a long weekend, which people take advantage of that and don't tend to do business trips.
Yeah. Got it. Thanks, Mel. Just one very quick follow-on with our corporate, if I may, just in terms of customer retention in FCM. Whenever you do sort of report it in your earnings proposals, it's usually north of 95%. Can you comment, are you still seeing those retention levels above 95%, or is there a risk that they may dip a little bit below that?
Yeah. We're still seeing in the mid-90s as a retention. We obviously have customers that go out to bid year on year just part of the contract cycle, which we have. We've had good success recently with some of our top customers that we've re-signed, which is good news. Overall, yeah, we are still sitting in that mid-90s.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John O'Shea with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah. Thanks very much. Maybe just to start with, and this will perhaps follow on to the next question. Of the AUD 50 million relating to the downgrade, please give me a rough guide as to how much of that is corporate, how much is leisure?
Look, I think it's shared between the two, to be perfectly honest, John. I mean, if you look at where our range sits, we would hope that for the full year that we get leisure into a small increase in profitability. Corporate, I think, I suggest, would probably be struggling to get to last year's profitability amount. It's pretty much shared between leisure and corporate in terms of the guidance that we've put out there.
Sure. I guess I understand the corporate bit. That makes 100% sense to me. I'm still struggling to try to understand the leisure bit. If you could help me out there, have the leisure bookings out of Australia and outbound forward bookings dropped off because they've been incredibly strong. Historically, that has been the most important area for your business or the most profitable area as main sale of outbound to holiday travel to Australian consumers. Those numbers have been incredibly strong, backward-looking, of course. Have the forward bookings or outbound out of Australia framed your guidance and to what extent?
Hey, John, it's James here. I'll just give you a quick update on Australia. Australia for us has actually performed really strong as well. In fact, in the last few months, we've had some record sales across the first part of this year. It's not necessarily all coming through the brands that we need it to, and it's not necessarily falling on the contracts that we need the sales to fall onto as well. In terms of actual booking numbers and sales volume, we're actually in line or ahead of what the market is doing in most cases. We have had some challenges in other geographies that have affected us as well. Australia overall is going okay.
Okay. Just to clarify that, what you're saying to me is that you're doing better than you're actually not losing share within the Australian business in terms of volumes versus the market volumes that we're seeing. Is that?
Yeah. We're not seeing significant share drop at all. We're seeing that we're hoping and if you look at across the board, all of the brands that we're exceeding in some of them. You can see some of the specialist brands that we've launched are really going gangbusters, but it's more to do with across the entire portfolio what the mix is looking like.
Sure. It is more the mix across the rest of the portfolio in the rest of the world. Is that what you are saying? Or the mix within Australia is not ideal either?
The mix within Australia is not ideal as to where we want it to be in terms of landing on the contracts that deliver the returns that we need to see from an overrides perspective.
Which means the guy in Japan, not the U.S.
A whole variety. That could be true as well, but it's literally across the board where we're seeing. Also, the types of airlines that they're flying on as well just don't give you the best returns, so.
Yep. We just need to get more non-quantitative capacity to Japan, mate. That might help. Okay. Thanks, guys. Just finally on the corporate, lots of announcements regarding wind within your business, and everybody's doing the same. Just trying to understand why that's not necessarily flowing through into the numbers. Is it being diluted by the like-for-like decline in existing clients' activities or talk me through why that's not coming through?
Yeah. It's Mel here. In FCM, we've hit just over AUD 1 billion in signed business. As you know, signed business obviously can take anywhere between three and six months to implement and then start trading. CT, sorry. In FCM, just to cover that off. Yes, we obviously have a strong pipeline. We've got some good wins coming through, but we are definitely seeing some downtrading in some of our existing clients, which makes our TTV look relatively flat. Once these clients start uptrading again, which I'm confident they will, it's just a timing issue, we should see that TTV growth coming through in the FCM brand. The CT brand, what we've been focused on is obviously our rapid growth in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly, which is U.S. and U.K. We're starting to see good results come through there.
What we've been focusing on with that business is looking at signed versus traded business. Our BDMs obviously go out, get the signed value, which most of these SME customers do not really know what they actually spend. We look to convert as much of that value as we can. We've been focusing on increasing that conversion as well. CT, we are seeing pretty strong performance, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia is still holding its own as well. Overall, I think it's a combination of a bit of downtrade, a little bit of loss, which we have as well, and obviously new business wins coming through.
Thank you, Mel.
Okay.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sam Seow with Citi. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Hey, just a simple question on the PBT. I mean, if you strip out the leveraging tax, could you perhaps translate that into what in percentage activity terms that looks like? Essentially, just trying to get a feel of how much you're expecting activity drops in May, June. Yeah, on any metric you're happy to share, whether it's TTV, bookings, or revenues. Yeah, just trying to get a feel on the change in activity stripping out the leveraging factor.
Not sure we can answer that one, actually, Sam. I mean, I think if we look at May and June, certainly what we're looking at as part of our forecast is similar trading trajectories to what we've got at the moment. I don't think you can strip leverage out. I mean, leverage is intrinsic to it, whether it's if you look at our top line, you've followed us for a long time. You know that our top line is really the key driver for us. Growth is really important for us in terms of revenues, but also from a cost perspective and leverage perspective. It really does go hand in glove there.
I think the best we can say is sort of, as we've done, talk to what we've seen to date in terms of where we're seeing that growth come through and what level we're at, and sort of just indicate, "Look, we've got a range of factors and scenarios that we've looked at, but we're certainly not expecting any sort of buoyancy coming through in May and June as part of those reforecasts.
What about foot traffic or inquiries? Is there anything kind of that you can kind of help us understand or conceptualize what the change in activity might be?
It is probably a corporate versus leisure discussion. I think maybe start with Mel with the downtrading. I do not think we are seeing anything new in that downtrading that we have not been seeing over the last couple of months. We are expecting over May and June to see continued downtrading from our key customers.
Yeah. We've got a couple of key customers that we know, obviously, that have put a bit of a travel ban in place to manage their own internal costs. So we're well aware of them and their plans. I would envisage that we'll start to see that uptick of both of those companies. We already have seen a slight uptick in one of those companies, but I would envisage that would be from FY 2026 onwards. They will start to release the purse strings again. In CT, we've had, as an example here in Australia, we've seen a little bit of a downturn in the mining industry, but not a huge downturn, but it seems to be more of an industry. And we do look at CT, Corporate Traveller, more as an industry as opposed to a customer, given the size of spend in that brand.
The average customer is about AUD 300,000 a year. We tend to look at is the industry being impacted as opposed to the individual customer. There is nothing out of the ordinary that I would be looking at at this stage.
Just from a leisure perspective, it's James here. The main things that we're seeing is that it's just not shooting the lights out in terms of growth. Across the world, it does vary by market. Canada and the U.S., it's down. We saw a big backlash of consumer sentiment from Canada into the U.S. That affects that market straight away with the U.S. being the number one destination. When we go into different parts of the world, you can see the U.K. is off a little bit. Australia is reasonably flat at the moment in terms of inquiry numbers in the last few weeks. It's just starting to lift again. There are some seasonal patterns that are happening across the board. At the moment, it's not shooting the lights out in terms of the original forecast that we had set for ourselves.
As you know, a lot of our overrides are based on growth targets that need to come through. In a flat world, it actually makes it a bit more challenging to actually see the corresponding results come through.
Got it. Just following on from that, the super override reset, you obviously missed this year on some of the lower activity. Appreciate there's multiple agreements. Is there any high-level comments around how you expect the FY 2026 agreements to reset down and how we should think about that leverage in FY 2026? Will it be an easier comb or, yeah, just any high-level comments? Appreciate there's multiple agreements. Yeah, just trying to understand that piece.
Yeah. I might start, and Greg can jump in. I think as a general rule, I think, as you said, we've got multiple agreements with various suppliers. It's not just air; it's hotel, etc., as well. Fair to say again, for us this year, the TTV we're looking for, again, is not where we'd expected. Therefore, the override impact is that we're operating at guaranteed rates or lower rates than we would otherwise have been expecting. In terms of whether we're talking with those suppliers all the time, I don't know that we're obviously not going to be talking about specific agreements or anything like that, but Greg, is there any sort of broad color you'd give to Sam on what expectations might look like?
Yeah. You go, Sam. Yeah.
To add to Adam's point, I mean, our contracts are traditionally structured with baseline guarantees, and it's generally based on last year's revenue. We have growth tiers that sit over and above that. We put both of those elements together and call it total available margin or total contract margin. What we're seeing is, as there is a softer amount of TTV coming into the business and we're just triggering the guarantees, that sort of resets as we head into the new year into FY 2026, particularly as our 1 July is a major contracting cycle for us. We are not heading into FY 2026 with any major changes to total contract margin. More a reset of existing baselines.
The team's always looking for ways to renegotiate existing deals, recut deals earlier, and find out ways that you can use, particularly in the airspace, NDC, and things like that, to drive up margin. We are not anticipating anything to really flow through any major changes into FY 2026. Not negative for now.
That's helpful.
Right. I mean, that's helpful. I mean, fair to say you'd expect 2016 reset to kind of 2025 base levels, right? Just any growth next year, we should get a normal leverage. It depends.
I don't think we'd comment on what we think from that perspective, Sam. I think, as we say, there's a lot of different factors at play there. We'd be hoping, as TTV continues to improve, as we spoke earlier, as we get some of our own areas in-house in order, macro conditions either alleviate or just get more and more accepted and the benefits we're investing in now start to flow through, that will impact not only our cost but also our top line that then flows through to those agreements. That's the best thing we can really focus in on.
Got it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color.
Thanks, man.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Plumbe with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I got kicked off, so apologies if I'm re-asking a question. Maybe further to Bob's question, with the current guidance range, are you saying continuation of what you're seeing now gets you to the midpoint, or do you need some sort of improvement, i.e., from rate cuts, etc., to get you through to the midpoint for the guidance range?
Tim, we've factored a lot of different scenarios in to come up with a range that we think's appropriate. Some of those things are the macro conditions. Some of them are things like rate cuts. Some of them are continuation and variations on the current trading levels that we're seeing through March and April. Some of those, if we'll come together to get us at either end of that range. There are a lot of things that we've worked through from a scenario analysis, but we're reasonably comfortable with what we know that that's the best range for us to be putting out there at the moment.
Okay. JK, I think you mentioned that inquiry levels have been relatively flat. You were expecting them to grow within the core Flight Centre business. Any other comments that you can make in terms of conversion? Is it that inquiries are flat, but conversion is lower? Is it that people are trading down to do lower value holidays rather than more expensive holidays? Any change in terms of consumer behaviour that you can kind of elaborate on there, please?
Yeah. There's a few things there. While the inquiry levels have come down a bit, conversion levels are holding. What's happening is basket size is growing. We're trying to optimize every booking that we can potentially convert. You'll see a continued growth in the things that I've spoken about a lot, such as component growth. The actual average basket size value is going up in Flight Centre. We have a number of campaigns to try and drive activity that are customer incentives to bundle and save, and they've been effective. You can see that it's very much a value-based transaction that's winning at the moment. If you look across the other brands, such as the Ignite business, that whole proposition is based on value. You can see that we are selling significant growth in that space where we're getting double-digit growth.
The consumers' trends that are coming through is that consumers are shopping around. They are valuing deals. We just need to make sure that we can be really cognizant of that and make sure we can deliver good value. I think as inquiries start to tick up again, because with this level of uncertainty, you'll start to see that we'll be well placed to be able to continue to grow.
Got it. Is part of it that you guys are going to be a little bit sharper in terms of your pricing relative to PTP?
Yes, we have to be, just to make sure that we can see these bookings come true. That is not just in Flight Centre. It is across the board because consumer sentiment has been very value-focused with cost of living pressures, etc., etc.
Got it. Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Wei- Weng Chen with RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Yes, a portion of this downgrade, I guess, is due to changes in U.S. entry policies. I mean, that's happened now. Realistically, do we have to wait for another four years or maybe eight years before that unwinds? Is the view that this policy is unsustainable given how important tourism is to the U.S.?
It's hard to know, mate. I think JK might have some comments on it as well. Things like customers being denied entry to the U.S. and grilled for 15 hours and sent home because they flew on a cheap route rather than the more conventional ways of the States probably does not help. If you're a little bit lacking confidence and you hear about things like that happening, it's probably another reason not to travel to the States. I think the view would be that those kind of issues become more rare, and then people are probably a bit more comfortable to travel to the States again. JK, would you agree?
Yeah. Thanks, Adam. I think these things typically are cyclical whenever there's a bit of a political unrest or any type of uncertainty out there. You can see it never lasts too long.
People get used to it. They get accustomed to the way of life, and things settle down again. I suspect once a few trade deals have been locked in, it will actually just give people a bit more confidence. You can see there's potentially also some tailwinds coming through with interest rate cuts and more discretionary cash available to be able to spend on holidays coming up. We will see what happens, but we're not expecting it to go on forever, that's for sure. We think it'll probably be just a few months to get through, and then we'll see what will happen with any upside that comes our way.
Okay. Cool. Thanks. Maybe just a bit more of a first-principles question, but where are the U.S. impacts most being felt? Is it corporate? Is it SMEs? Is it leisure? Are the impacts bigger U.S. as a source or U.S. as a destination?
Probably as a destination. I'll get Mel and JK to talk in more detail to it. If you look at Australia, we've sort of talked a little bit about this of late. If you look over the first quarter, Australian travel to the U.S. for corporate has actually been up a little bit, only a couple of percentage points. Leisure, you can start to see in some of the outbound departure numbers that the U.S. has dropped off a bit. A lot of U.S. travel is domestic, so they do not particularly care in the corporate space, not really impacting that business too much.
No. We're seeing it, as I said, between Canada and the U.S. The Canadians are avoiding travelling to the U.S., and we're seeing it from South Africa. I was just looking at our stats. Month to date, Corporate Traveller in the U.S. is actually up on PTV. It is definitely more of an inbound than an outbound.
Yeah. Corporate Traveller in the US has had a really good start to the year. I think what probably helps us there a little bit—and Mel, disagree with me if you do not agree, obviously—even though it is a big business for us, we have really small market share. If things do get a little bit tough and corporates spend a little bit less, you can normally back yourself to win enough business to make up for that. That has been holding up really well. Probably the average customer is spending a little bit less, but we just win enough business to make up for that. In FCM, it is a bit harder because you obviously do not get the benefit now if you win an account now. Whereas Corporate Traveller, they can start trading pretty quickly.
Yeah. Okay. There are a few questions about leisure volumes not going through the right channels, etc. How does that reconcile with, I guess, your recent shift towards targeting the luxury travel segment? I mean, this is a traditionally more resilient and higher-margin sector. We read kind of your comments as saying that that segment is seeing some disproportionate impacts, maybe.
We operate two luxury brands. The first one is Scott Dunn, and the other one is Travel Associates. The results have been mixed, whereby Scott Dunn has been performing quite strong for us this year. Certainly, we've seen some good TTV growth. Some of that has flown through to the bottom line. There has been some margin compression, predominantly in the family's business of Scott Dunn, which is the Scott Dunn Explorers area. That, as a result, then actually has a bit of an effective flow through to the bottom line. Very much a price-sensitive end at the bottom end of luxury. The rest of luxury is reasonably resilient in that space. In Australia, we've had a couple of issues here with Travel Associates, which meant that it just hasn't seen the growth that we would have expected.
Broadly speaking, we're not too concerned about the future outlook of it. With any of these situations where there is some uncertainty, this end of the market bounces back the first.
Okay. Cool. Just to clarify my understanding of guidance and the guidance range. At the midpoint of current guidance, is that expecting a further deterioration in May and June from April?
No. It assumes that some of the factors that we've seen through April will continue through May and June there. Now, if they're at the same level as the number of factors there, obviously, if they continue at a similar level, then we should be around that sort of midpoint. There are a number of things that could go up and down, which is why we've had to put the broader range in play.
Sorry, mate. I was just going to say May, June, are normally bigger months than April for us as well.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. And then just on the difference between stats during underlying, so in the first half, you had about AUD 30 million difference. How do we think about incremental changes in the second half?
You'll have the similar items that we had in the first half, will obviously flow through to the second half. The other items that we've called out that we expect any costs with the GBS fusion initiatives. I mentioned earlier that's probably likely going to be around about the majority of that's going to be the HRIS implementation, which will be somewhere around that AUD 7 million or AUD 8 million mark. We've extracted out of that, we've noted that we're extracting out StudentUniverse, which will be between AUD 8 million and AUD 10 million. Any other sort of they're the key areas that we expect at this point to come out on top of the first half.
Yeah. Perfect. Like 15-ish?
On top of the first half? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. On top of the first half.
For the convertibles, you've got amortization, etc., in there, which will be in the second half as well as first half, etc.
Yeah. Thanks.
Production operations run rate as well.
Yeah. Cool.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Julian Mulcahy with E&P. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. I mean, the downgrade puts you even further away from that 2% pre-tax PBT target. I know you've kind of walked away from that. I get the macro drivers here, but it also seems to be like the competitive landscape is shifting the wrong way also. What were you expecting really in the original result forecast? Were you being too optimistic?
Hindsight would say that, yes. I mean, I think that's with hindsight, obviously, we're not near that. Look, I think what we're expecting there was we came through last year with a reasonable run rate. We had impact in the first quarter, which we spoke to. As we moved through the second quarter, we started to get some good trajectory coming through. Our expectation as we sort of ran through was that we would be able to see that continue. At the half year, we were talking to the fact that we're at the low to midpoint of that initial guidance. Just a bit of uncertainty, a bit of volatility that's gone through, which has been hard for us to piece even month-on-month growth together. We've had a month or two of good growth, and then it's come off, etc.
Look, I think what we were looking at was some good underlying growth at a top line across both corporate and leisure. We also were expecting a couple of these underperforming businesses to have done better. StudentUniverse, we were expecting to get back into break-even, if not profit. Asia, we were expecting, certainly were not expecting to be in the situation we are with that for the full year. There are some one-off things there that certainly have impacted on it. Again, one of the main areas is that top line that we really did expect, that our top line growth for corporate would be sort of mid to high single digits, and for leisure would be mid-single digit growth, not just overall, but in those key brands of Flight Centre and Travel Associates, etc.
Just on the competitor side, you said you've had to be a bit sharper on pricing. You haven't lost shares, so you had to be quite sharp on pricing. Do things like quarantining triple deal fully, is that starting to impact? Then just the online competition starting to erode things a little bit, people much easier to actually compare prices. Is that kind of what's working in the background as well at the moment?
Yeah. I'll just give a quick update from a leisure perspective. It's definitely competitive. You'll probably see over the last while, if you look back at the number of sales that have been out, which is a symptom of consumer sentiment coupled with across the globe, you'll see the amount of sales that have been operating back to back. Different brand models, the triple deal type model is very similar to our Ignite style model. Those package-based value type offerings are quite attractive from a customer standpoint, typically because it's fixed pricing and everything is included. We're no different. We're having great success in that space too with the businesses that we operate in that area. There's also been a bit of a shift in destinations, and that has a flow-through effect too as well in terms of the types of airline contracts that we're selling onto.
There is a material effect of that that flows through.
Right. Cool. And just finally, with the StudentUniverse costs now being taken out, what was the first-half cost loss?
JK, you want to talk ahead?
I think probably around four.
Yeah. I was going to say that. I think Julian would be around about 4 million.
Right. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Belinda Moore with Morgans. Please go ahead.
Hi, Adam. Do you mind if I just check? What's your 2025 CapEx budget? What are you expecting in 2026 given the reduction? I think last time your guidance, the loss for other was 70%. Is it now effectively 75% given the added TP Connects loss? Thank you.
Yeah. Belinda, CapEx for this year, we're tracking somewhere around about that AUD 110 million-AUD 115 million for the full year is our current year tracking. The other segment, yes, we were looking at improving that overall, particularly given some of the improvement in some of the operating businesses that we've got in there. That will be offset by the additional TPC investment. We are still expecting a small improvement year on year though. The other segment should improve, but not as much as we'd originally forecast.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Ryan with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. It sounds like, to an answer a little bit earlier, a lot of the corporate demand down trading is coming probably more from sort of like close-in bookings. I think there were some comments before about customer dialogue around the last couple of months. I'm probably more interested in what your customers are thinking in regards to budgets for the rest of the year and just what you're hearing there and sort of when they think that that might be adjusted, if at all.
Yeah. It depends on the customer, to be honest, in their different financial years. Obviously, everywhere around the world has a different end of financial year. We see those patterns play out with those particular customers where they either spend the rest of their budget or they put a hold if they've overspent on that budget before end of financial year. We know we speak in the large market in FDM, we speak to these customers consistently around their patterns, their spend, their budget. We know fairly well in that large space. In the SME space, it's not so clear, to be honest. We just need to work with them on an individual basis. Yeah, obviously, we've got two customers that are down trading that I've spoken to. We've seen it this month just with the Easter period and holidays, but nothing outside of seasonality.
You haven't sort of heard about any major adjustments for the rest of the calendar year, in other words?
No. No. Not that I'm aware of.
I guess in regards to the cost-out initiatives, obviously, some of these will take a little while to implement and probably have a benefit over multiple years. How are you sort of framing the revenue environment when you come to those sorts of decisions to sort of accelerate those initiatives?
In corporate specifically, Matt, or do you mean?
Just overall. Because I guess you're having to make a call today by bringing some of these actions forward a little bit. Presumably, that's got a view into 2026. Are these sorts of cost initiatives sort of, I guess, almost preemptive of what you might be seeing?
Look, I think if you look at the corporate productive operations and we were looking for a 5% reduction in FTE this year. That's been in place for a while. We talked about that at the half year. That's not in response to this. Obviously, the easiest way for us to cut costs would be to cut people. You're not in a position, it's not like COVID where you weren't selling travel. If we cut people, it has a TTV impact. We would think that the current downturn is a cyclical thing and you'll get a recovery. If you sort of tamper with your sales force too much, you don't get that upside benefit. We saw after things like the GFC going back many years, there was a big uptick in travel straight after it.
I can't remember the exact number, but I think we had about 15%-16% growth in outbound travel the following year. A lot of this stuff, we have to be careful that it doesn't impact TPV and revenue, and it's not a knee-jerk overreaction. The corporate stuff is different. They've been looking at that for quite a while, and I think they're going pretty well. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. The other FTE reductions that we're looking at are largely support areas where we might have some stuff that can be automated or some stuff that can be done through AI rather than necessarily needing to have a bum on the seat. With Adam's, the stuff Adam actually left, we sort of run a bit over time, as you will have noticed, and he ran out the door.
With the GBS stuff, some of the savings that we'll get there are by doing things like consolidating the BPO providers that we have at the moment. Given that we have three or four, I think, from memory, there might be a decent saving there. The IT model, there might be a decent saving there. With CapEx, we think that we can get that 15%-20% reduction without impacting the key systems that we're introducing in corporate and in leisure. We just got to be careful that we don't do anything that don't overreact to what we're currently seeing because our view is very much that it's a cyclical short-term thing and we'll get some decent recovery after it. Does that answer your question, Matt?
Yeah. That's great. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, I think that's it. We do have to run. Thank you, everyone, for your time today and for dialing in. Let us know if there's anything else that you need. Thanks also to Mel Elf and Belinda Rafiee, the Leisure CFO who've stayed with me for the duration. The rest gradually ran. I think someone had to go to the bathroom, the rest had other meetings and disappeared. Thanks very much, guys. Let us know if there's anything else that you need. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.