Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the GTN Limited full year FY24 financial results conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Before I turn the call over to Peter, I would like to remind listeners that this call is subject to disclaimer and important information included on the company's full year earnings presentation. With that, I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Peter Tonagh, Chairman. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to our overview of performance in the 2024 fiscal year. We're really proud to report a very solid financial performance for the year, while also resetting the business for the future. We delivered a 4% growth in revenues, a 15% increase in Adjusted EBITDA, a 115% increase in NPAT, and very importantly, we finished the year with net cash of AUD 23.6 million before lease liabilities of AUD 3.6. Most importantly, we delivered this result while finalizing our transition to a new executive team, resetting the cost base, and extending a number of key affiliate agreements. Brent will take us through a bit more detail on each market and on the full year performance, but I do wanna focus on a few highlights.
As I mentioned, total revenue grew overall by 4% to AUD 184 million, while adjusted EBITDA, our primary measure of performance, grew by 15% to AUD 22.3 million, and NPAT increased by 115% to AUD 5.7 billion. If we were to remove the AUD 2.1 million of costs of transitioning to our new team, adjusted EBITDA would have grown by over 26%. Australia's our biggest market, and under Vic Lorusso's leadership, continues to be our most profitable market. Vic managed to offset a revenue decline of 3% compared to FY 2023 with very effective cost management program to deliver an adjusted EBITDA of AUD 21.4 million, which is a 20% improvement over FY 2023.
I do wanna highlight that the non-Australian markets accounted for more than half of our revenue in FY twenty-four, 53%. Of special note is our Brazilian market, which under Fabio Menezes, our newly appointed country head, grew revenue by 42%, with a AUD 2.4 million turnaround in adjusted EBITDA. UK revenue, under John Quinn, grew by 20%, and notwithstanding the very challenging half in the radio market in Canada, Donna Gardner and her team contributed AUD 3.4 million to our adjusted EBITDA in FY twenty-four. I'm particularly delighted that our balance sheet remains strong, even with our ongoing share buyback program and the return to paying dividends.
As at June 30, 2024, we had AUD 23.6 million of net cash before lease liabilities of AUD 3.6 million, which, together with the removal of all of our financial covenant obligations from our existing debt facility agreement, provides us with optionality for future capital management and growth initiatives. As a result of that, we're delighted to be able to declare a final FY24 dividend of AUD 0.017 per share, bringing our total dividend for FY24 to AUD 0.028 per share. Overall, we're really excited about the future opportunities for GTN, and we're very grateful to the ongoing support of our shareholders. Before I hand over to Vic Lorusso, our CEO at ATN, I wanna draw your attention to page 28 of our investor presentation.
While we don't often talk about it, at GTN, we're deeply committed to supporting the communities that we work in. It's core to who we are. Over to you, Vic.
Thanks, PT, and good morning, everyone. You'll notice a few new slides at the beginning of our GTN presentation, providing a detailed company overview and clear representation of our operating business model. So GTN currently operates in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil, four of the 10 largest advertising markets in the world. GTN began operations here in Australia in nineteen ninety-seven, and has selectively and successfully expanded into other attractive markets. GTN provides a broad reach advertising platform that enables advertisers to reach audiences, large audiences, frequently and very effectively.
GTN is one of the largest suppliers of traffic reports to radio stations, provided by high-profile on-air talent. In exchange for providing these reports and paying cash compensation in most instances, GTN receives commercial advertising spots adjacent to traffic, news, and premium information from its large networks of radio and television stations.
These spots are bundled together by GTN and sold to advertisers on a national, regional, or specific market basis in a very unique market offering. Before I do hand over to Brent, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of our country heads and entire GTN team to thank our chair, Peter Tonagh, and our board of directors. I've been with our amazing company for over twenty-four years, and truly, the past twelve months have been the best twelve months internally for our company, and we are very excited for the future. Our teams are more motivated, energized than ever before, and on behalf of our country heads and all our GTN staff, I'd like to thank our very experienced and supportive board, who have been instrumental in the smooth and successful management transition.
We now have very strong collaboration in all countries and departments with our extraordinary people across the GTN group. The future is very bright and exciting for GTN staff and shareholders. So thank you, Peter and board, for your hard work and dedication to our company. I'd like now to hand over to Brent, and take us through the detailed GTN financials for FY twenty-four.
Thanks, Vic. From a financial perspective, revenue for the full year 2024 increased 4% to AUD 184.2 million. Revenue increased for both BTN and UKTN, while ATN and CTN reduced after improved FY 2023 performances. When compared with FY 2023, Brazil revenue increased 42% and the UK increased 20.5%, while Australia revenue decreased 3.1% and Canada revenue decreased 10.7% in Australian dollars. Revenue from the UK, Brazil, and Canadian operations benefited from favorable foreign currency movements. When measured in local currencies, Brazil revenue increased 33%, the United Kingdom revenue increased 12.2%, while Canada revenue decreased 12% compared to FY 2023.
Adjusted EBITDA for FY24 was AUD 22.3 million, in the middle of the range that we called in April 2024, compared to AUD 19.3 million in FY23, an increase of 15%. The adjusted EBITDA increase was driven by a 4% increase in revenue for the period, in addition to the operating cost savings in the ATN business. Network operations and station compensation expenses increased 6%, mainly due to increased costs related to the improved UK performance, supporting their incremental revenue in FY24. Network operations expense included AUD 2.5 million of costs related to the aerial drone light shows, and we'll talk about that more later. Included in the operating expense is a one-off cost of approximately AUD 2.1 million related to the transition of the previous leadership team within GTN.
Pleasingly, group NPAT increased 115% to AUD 5.7 million in FY24, with an earnings per share of 2.8 cents, which will all be distributed as a dividend to shareholders. Adjusted NPAT, which is defined as net profit after tax, adjusted to add back the tax effect non-cash amortization expense related to acquired intangible assets, increased 42% to AUD 10.2 million. The increase is primarily related to the improved operating performance in FY24, which was partially offset by higher depreciation expense related to the drone business. During the second half of FY24, the business negotiated the removal of all financial covenants from the existing facility agreement. The company repaid an additional AUD 16 million in bank debt during FY24, reducing debt to AUD 8 million as of the 30th of June, 2024.
Due to the group's strong balance sheet and improving financial performance, the board has decided to declare a final dividend of FY24 of AUD 0.018 per share. The dividend is unfranked. This takes the total dividend to AUD 0.028 for the year. In addition, the board has adopted a target dividend policy of approximately 100% of net profit after tax, NPAT, to be paid as an interim and final dividend. This policy can be altered at any time on the liquidity needs and performance of the company, and is subject to an adjustment for non-recurring or non-cash items that may impact NPAT. Previously, the company announced that it had initiated an on-market share buyback for up to 10% of its outstanding shares for a period of up to 12 months.
Since the beginning of FY 2023, the company has repurchased and retired 15.8 million shares, which represents 7.4% of the share base for 7.3 million. After the cessation of the previous program, we've recently announced a new share buyback program starting on the twenty-ninth of August. The strength of our balance sheet and increased flexibility in our bank facility now provides opportunity for future capital management and growth initiatives across the business. I'd now like to turn back to Peter for an update on the first half FY 2025.
Thanks, Brent, and just a slight correction, Brent. You mentioned AUD 0.018.
Oh, thank you.
Final dividend, AUD 0.017 is the number. Thank you. In terms of our future results, clearly, as you all know, future results are likely to be highly dependent on the economic conditions in the markets in which we're operating. But we are very pleased with the July, August 2024 review, which is currently trending at more than 10% ahead of the same period in FY 2024. All four of our markets continue to be very well positioned with solid affiliate lineups, strong sales teams, and a very strong competitive position in our largely unique offering. We have a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity, and we believe that everything is in place for strong financial performance as the economic conditions continue to improve in some of the markets we operate in.
On the final slide, or on the slide with the outlook, we do comment on a couple of other elements that I'd just like to touch on. The first of those is that we have reconfigured our drone business. We've exited the drones business in Canada, and we've sold our drone swarm to a local provider in Canada. The second thing we've done is we've significantly reduced the fixed cost base of our Australian drone business with a focus on supporting key national clients from our radio business. And so there's a significant reduction in the overall cost of drones with the removal of the Canadian drones, and obviously a significantly lower cost base in Australia. The other thing I just wanted to comment on is we've commenced expansion into some new regions in Brazil.
As you've seen, Brazil's performing very strongly from a revenue perspective. We've funded the growth into those new regions through the sale of a redundant helicopter asset. The only reason I raise that is I think it's a great sign of the way in which the management team is thinking about funding their own way to expansion. There's obviously very strong discipline around any expansion, but when that strong discipline's accompanied by a focus on self-funding, it really creates a great mix. The final comment, I've said it before, but I just want to be clear that we're unable to forecast future revenue beyond the indication of how we're traveling in July and August.
We do have a short lead time in advertising sales cycles, and so therefore, the results beyond August are going to be highly dependent on market conditions. That ends our prepared remarks. We'll now open the lines for questions.
Thank you. And if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. One moment, please, for the first question. And our first question today will come from Daniel Ireland with Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Well done on the results. Operating cash flows were excellent for twenty-four. Brent spoke to the growth initiatives because the business is performing quite well. You've done well with bringing the costs down. But looking forward, I think the market's looking towards growth. What are the plans for that? What are you looking towards to grow the profitability of the company going forward?
Yeah, so I'll grab that one initially, and Brent, you can jump in if you like. So we basically see there's a number of options for us. The first is grinding more out of our existing business, simply through continued tight cost management, the renegotiation of affiliate agreements as they come up, optimizing the inventory levels, et cetera. So that's really, I think, just the grind to continue to drive the margin up. We also have enhanced our sales teams. We have a new sales leadership team in Australia, which is performing very well. One of the reasons that we've seen the pacings for July, August so positively impacted. We've got a new sales configuration in Canada, which we also think will help there.
We have recently appointed Fabio as our CEO of our Brazilian business. He's from the sales side of the business and continues to have a strong focus on growth in that market. Our takings have indicated that the UK is driving revenue well. So from the core underlying business, we see great opportunities just to optimize with what we've got, reconfigure a little bit the inventory that we have to sell and continue to drive sales force effectiveness. Second area for us is just expansion within the core business. I mentioned Brazil as an obvious example. We've expanded out of the areas we currently operate in Brazil to Florianópolis, which is a very attractive market in our view, and we'll expand further into another region of Brazil, Recife, shortly.
Those expansion opportunities are the sort of thing that we look at just as a matter of course. They require some investment, minimal investment, but and pay off pretty quickly, but obviously, there's a strong discipline about looking through and working out which geographies are attractive to us. I think the third area for us to grow into is driving new opportunities which are adjacent to what we're doing, whether that be adjacent geographies or whether it be providing different services to our existing suite of affiliates. I can be very clear. I think right now there are no concrete opportunities in that area that we're currently pursuing, but we are actively exploring those opportunities, and they all are and will be subject to very strong financial discipline before we embark on them.
Very good. And then just with the Australian business and the sellout rate, I mean, you touched on the changing of some of the sales team. Is that what's driving that increase in the sellout rate in twenty-four? Can you just talk through about that? Is that sustainable going forward? A little bit more color on that would be helpful.
Yeah, I might just hand over to Vic, as the leader of that business. I think he's perfectly positioned to comment.
No, thanks, PT. Yeah, we've put on a new national sales director in Karen Holmes, very experienced in market, and we've really addressed the ATN unique offering internally to the external market, where, you know, ATN's offering is in collaboration with radio, but a complete different offering. And I think that point internally has really driven a new excitement level through our sales team that have gone to market in a completely different way and reeducating our client base of how unique the offering and where it's positioned.
So hence, sellout rate and spot rate we're seeing, you know, a nice increase slowly, but I said it's a short market, but we've got a reinvigorated sales team, and we're quite confident of the push and the go forward throughout the business from that side.
Great. That's all from me. Well done on the result. Yeah, very impressive. Cheers. Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel.
And the next question will come from Conor O'Prey with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Morning, gentlemen. Just a couple, sorry if I missed it, just on the previous question. Are there any-- Canada is obviously the laggard, are there any actions that you need to take there, or do you think that the softness there is really just a function of marketing? The second half was even, the revenue performance in the second half was sort of a bit softer even than the first half.
Yeah. So, Connor, first of all, thank you for joining us, and thanks for the question. I'll take that one. So, Canada is the laggard for us. It's a very, very tough market over there, and we've been affected by, among other things, the closure of some of the radio stations that we are providing. We're doing a couple of things. One is reinvigorating sales over there, under Donna, who's our, the leader of that business. She's made some changes in the sales team and will continue to drive that sales team performance. I think the second thing is an optimization of the inventory.
Together with Brent, Don is working through the affiliate agreements that we've got, understanding the positioning, what's the best inventory, where we can enhance the inventory that we've got, and where we can be more disciplined about some of the inventory that's not as attractive. I don't see Canada suddenly turning around to be in a massive growth mode. It's a market issue more than anything else. But I certainly see improvements, and from a pacing perspective, we're seeing improvements in the Canadian market as weeks pass.
Okay. Maybe on drones, I personally very happy to see some changes there. Kind of like, it's kinda felt like a business that often makes the headlines for the wrong reasons, and so maybe just that's a benefit, but would you expect-
Yeah.
Drones to be. So, so I think buried in the accounts, drones minus AUD 1.7 million EBITDA, would you expect that to be neutral for FY25 or-
So, yeah.
Or still a little bit negative, just supporting the Australian business?
Yeah. Let me start on that, and then I will hand over to Vic to provide a bit more color. I think the drone light shows are an exciting opportunity for our advertisers. To me, they're exciting because what they do is they reinvigorate interest in ATN, in our core business. And so when we talk to a major advertiser and the drone shows are part of a proposition, we tend to get more radio revenue, and that's significantly valuable to us. Having said that, we weren't gonna continue and could not continue in the way in which they were previously being run, where they were running at, as you say, a significant loss. The two major initiatives that we've taken is the closure of the Canadian business.
You may be aware, drones don't work very well in cold weather because the battery life isn't very good, so they have a very limited season they could operate effectively in. We formed the conclusion they weren't adding the value we needed in Canada, and so we sold the swarm of drones. They were largely written down. We sold them at a very good price, so we're very happy with that outcome. From an Australian perspective, we still see value in the drone shows, but we don't see value in giving them away or investing heavily in them, and so we've significantly reduced our fixed costs. We'll still operate drone shows for our major clients, where it makes sense for them.
But I would be confident in saying, and Brent will probably tell me I'm not allowed to say this, but I'll be confident in saying our cost base would be reduced to closer to AUD 500,000 compared to what it was previously, at significantly higher, and either we'll recover that AUD 500,000 in cost through direct revenue for the drone shows or through enhancing the value to our radio audiences. Vic, if I've-
Yeah.
misspoken or missed anything there?
Uh.
Feel free to jump in.
Spot on, and that's the way the forward-looking of ATN using drones as a marketing tool, and we're already seeing some significant interest in that part. So keeping the cost base right down and utilizing the drones in potentially bringing new clients that wouldn't be audio clients into the ATN offering and expanding the relationship on that part. So that's the forward-looking projection on drones, Connor.
Yeah.
Connor, I might just add for clarity that when I talk about reducing the cost base, that has happened already.
Yeah.
It's not we're going to. It's we have.
Yeah. A comment on station cost effectiveness. I think when that phrasing's been used in the past, albeit with a different management team, it sort of meant maybe removing some of the stations or, and no longer contracting with them. Is that what you're talking about there? And is it maybe in Canada, just from your previous comments, Peter?
So listen, one of the things that we recognize is that there's certain stations that are incredibly valuable to us and we have very deep relationships with. To the extent that we can increase our inventory with those stations, that's something that we're up for and that we have done. We mentioned in my introduction that we've extended some key affiliate agreements. That's really important to us because the really core networks are core to our attractiveness. We also have a long tail of others. We'd like to continue contracting with them, and largely we have. In some cases, we won't be able to because we just won't be able to meet their requirements in terms of the value that they're expecting for their inventory. In Canada, again, it's the same thing there.
There's some networks that are really critical to us, and we will continue to deepen our relationship with them. We love all of our children equally, but some of them we give more pocket money to than others, and that's probably the way to think about it.
Got it, and the last one, don't want to dominate this. Last one's probably for Brent, just on the second half, cash flow, really impressive. I think this way, working capital flow in the first half reversed a bit in the second. Are there any normalizations to do there, or are you gonna see some negatives coming through in the first half? Or is sort of the twenty million plus the twenty-three million net cash the sort of a good go-forward number, plus then just normal working capital movements from here?
Yes, it is. So it's a good baseline moving forward. We had AUD 48 million of receivables, which did come in in the second half, which allowed us to pay down further debt facility.
Yeah.
The timing around payables was-
... you know, an affiliate invoice from the U.K., which was quite substantive in pounds, 1.2 million GBP, which was paid out subsequent to the end of the year. So you're right, the baseline is that 20-23 million AUD, and then incremental free operating cash flow coming in from this year. So, so nothing untoward. It was really timing difference.
That's good. But balance sheet looks great. But thanks, guys. I'll, I'll hand it on.
Thanks, Connor. Thanks, Connor.
Thanks, Connor.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Michael Hoffman with Myer Family Investments. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just on the balance sheet, and you have touched on capital management initiatives going forward, but it's a pretty, it's a very lazy balance sheet as it stands today. Can you expand on sort of thoughts in relation to capital management?
Yeah, I'm happy to jump into that one initially. So first of all, you know, I know you say a lazy balance sheet. I think it's important to recognize the shift in the six-month period, that we were basically net debt of close to zero, just negative at the end of December, and we had a big shift over this period. So yes, there's a lot of cash on the balance sheet now. It hasn't been sitting there, lazy for a long period of time. We are actively exploring capital management strategies. Obviously, we've paid out 100% of our NPAT. The most important thing for us is we now have complete flexibility with our debt facility.
We were limited to paying out NPAT variation with variations to the definition of NPAT, but we're limited to paying that out to our shareholders, either through buyback or through dividends under the previous financing facility or previous terms of the financing facility. Those restrictions have now gone, and so we now have the flexibility. We obviously have announced the dividend. We've announced a further extension of our share buyback, which we will continue once we're out of the blackout period. The next question for us is: So what are the other options? We're actively exploring those right now. There's nothing I can share with you, but we recognize that we've got a strong balance sheet. If we have an opportunity to return that cash in an effective way to our shareholders, then we'll do that.
If we have an opportunity to pursue other opportunities that are very close and adjacent, that we have very strong conviction around, then we will make further investments. At the moment, as I mentioned, there's none of those that are on the table. Hence, our starting point is looking at exploring opportunities to effectively return cash to our shareholders.
Thank you.
And this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Peter Tonagh for any closing remarks.
Great. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you, everybody, for joining the call. I hope you can tell we're delighted with the current group performance, and we remain very confident about the future. Our new locally based executive team is now fully in place and already delivering a very positive impact. I hope you took away from it the enthusiasm about the way in which we're heading from the staff within the organization. There's a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of excitement, a lot of vigor for pursuing growth opportunities. We're well positioned to continue to deliver solid earnings growth with very strong country heads in each of our markets, deep relationships with our radio network affiliates and with our advertiser base.
And as we've discussed most recently in this call, we've got a very solid balance sheet that gives us optionality for both business growth and for returning cash to our shareholders. We look forward to speaking to you again for our first half FY twenty-five results. In the interim, we do hope to hold a more detailed information day for our investors in late October. Thank you again for your support.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating, and at this time, you may now disconnect your lines.