While revenue continues to be impacted by the COVID-nineteen pandemic and the related shutdowns in all of our markets, we have made consistent and meaningful progress each quarter since the effects of the pandemic appeared in March of 2020. Revenue increased by $8,700,000 from Q4 of fiscal year 2020 to Q1 of fiscal year 2021 and increased $11,900,000 from Q1 to Q2 of fiscal year 2021. By the end of Q2 fiscal 2021, all of our entities were again EBITDA positive for the quarter the 6 month period. We showed substantial improvement in revenue and EBITDA in all our markets during the last quarter ending 31 December 2020. As would be expected when comparing COVID impacted periods to non COVID periods, our revenue decreased.
Revenue for the half year ended 31 December 2020 decreased 26% when compared to the prior year period. However, the decrease was only 20% in Q2 fiscal 2021. The improvement in Q2 performance was largely attributable to our Australian operations, which improved significantly. While improvement in our Australia revenue initially lagged but declined to other countries, Australia increased its revenue from $11,600,000 in Q1 to $19,500,000 in Q2, reaching almost $8,000,000 of revenue in December alone. Revenue in both Canada and the United Kingdom rebounded quickly after the initial shock of the pandemic.
UK revenue for the half year period decreased only 4% compared to the previous half year period, only 2% in local currency and actually increased in the Q2 fiscal 2021 when compared to the Q2 last year. Canada revenue, which was down 77% in fiscal Q4 2020, decreased only 15% in the half year ended December 2020 or to the previous year that was 11% in local currency. This along with selected expense cuts enabled us to actually increase EBITDA in Canada for the half year when compared to the same period last year. While Brazil was the hardest hit of all our markets, revenue improved nearly every month and declined on a sequential basis were smaller every month from July to November. We believe this is indicative of the progress we made in Brazil despite a very difficult market.
Our strategy to deal with the current difficult environment and put the company in a position to take advantage of stronger markets in the future is to protect and maintain our 2 most valuable assets are unparalleled affiliate networks and talented sales and management teams. We put in place measures to conserve cash and eliminate expenses where possible. We have had to make some difficult choices such as choosing to eliminate 9 radio from our network. This and other strategic cost reductions combined with our strong balance sheet continue to enable us to ride out this downturn. At December 31, 2020, our cash balance was $48,500,000 and our net debt was only $15,300,000 In December, we amended our bank loan facility to provide revised loan covenants during the period of the modification.
Based on these modifications, we believe it is likely we will continue to remain in compliance with all the loan covenants of the bank facility. During the period of the modification, the group is prohibited from making distributions including dividends and share buybacks. I will now turn the call over to Scott for a complete review of the financials.
Thanks, Bill, and good morning, everyone. Revenue for the half year ended 31 December 2020 decreased 26% to $70,800,000 revenue in all of our operating geographies decreased when compared to the previous fiscal year. When compared to fiscal 2020, Australia revenue decreased 35%, Brazil revenue decreased 60%, Canada revenue decreased 15% and UK revenue decreased 4%. Revenue from all of our non Australian markets was negatively impacted by unfavorable foreign currency movements. When measured in local currencies, Brazil revenue decreased 43%, United Kingdom revenue decreased 4% and Canada revenue decreased 11 compared to last fiscal year.
Adjusted EBITDA, which we define as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and adjusted to include the non cash interest income generated by the financing component of our long term station affiliation agreement with Southern Cross Osterio and excluding transaction costs, foreign exchange gains and losses, refinancing losses and gains on lease forgiveness was 7 point increase of 60% compared to fiscal 2020. We consider it appropriate to add the financing component of our long term station affiliation agreement with Southern Cross stereo to EBITDA because EBITDA includes a large portion of non cash station compensation expense related to the agreement and by including both amounts and adjusted EBITDA, we believe it provides a clear view of the financial impact of the agreement. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was due to the drop in revenue during the period as operating expenses decreased $14,100,000 or 17% compared to the half year period ended 31 December 2019. The decrease in expenses was due to targeted expense reductions, including the termination of the 9 radio station affiliation agreements, JobKeeper and Canadian emergency wage subsidy benefits and lower variable costs, primarily sales commissions and bonuses due to the reduced revenue for the period.
Adjusted NPAT, which is defined as net profit after tax adjusted to add back the tax affected non cash amortization expense related to acquired intangible assets fell 73% to $2,600,000 the primary driver of the shortfall was the revenue related decrease in EBITDA that was previously discussed. This was partially mitigated by lower finance costs related to the drop in the BBSY rate. Consistent with our desire to conserve cash and the distribution limitations of the amended bank facility, the Board has not declared a final dividend for FY 2020 nor an interim dividend for FY 2021. I will now turn the call back to Bill for an update on the second half fiscal twenty twenty one.
Thanks, Scott. 3rd fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2021 revenue to date has been weaker than the results of Q2 fiscal year 2021 and more comparable to Q1 fiscal year 2021. While Australia continues to perform better than it had in the first part of the half year, period ending 31 December 2020. This has been offset by our other international markets, which have all been negatively impacted by government imposed lockdowns and restrictions related to attempts to curtail the COVID-nineteen pandemic. To date the revenue decreases have been greatest in the group's Canadian market.
Recently, the stay at home order for the Toronto area, the group's largest market, has been extended to at least 8 March 2021. It is not possible to predict at this time whether these restrictions will be lifted or what impact on revenue will be during the lockdowns and thereafter. Further results are likely to be highly dependent on COVID-nineteen impact on the markets in which we operate. All four of our markets continue to be positioned to perform well with solid affiliate lineups, strong sales staffs and virtually no direct competitors. While the COVID-nineteen pandemic has had a material negative impact on our operations and results, we have strategically lowered our costs where possible, we have a strong balance sheet and with ample liquidity, I believe that we will perform well when markets improve.
I believe we demonstrated in the last quarter how quickly we can improve performance when markets are not closed or restricted. This ends our prepared remarks. We will now open the lines to questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Our first telephone question comes from Calum Sinclair from Macquarie. Please ask your question,
Bill, hi Scott. Good morning, Bill. Maybe just on the results, Obviously, there was a significant improvement in the Q2 on the Q1. Maybe if you can just provide some color on the mix between the sellout and sort of average spot rates, particularly for ATN. Just trying to gauge which side the recoveries come from and which side still has room to recover or how you see the mix of that?
Well, it is virtually all sellout. During the pandemic, the 9 primary months of the pandemic, virtually everybody, every type of media was throwing in extra bonus spots as enticement to try to get people to advertise and compete for advertising, we did as well. And that would have driven our pricing down slightly, but the pricing that we're getting is still what we've been getting in prior years for most of our clients. So it really to answer your question, it really comes strictly down to how many spots we sell is the where the improvement will come from. We had a number of large advertisers, some that were basically completely shut down that didn't advertise at all and we're been working to replace those advertisers.
Great. Is there any progress that you can sort of talk to on that side of things? And maybe just on the cost savings, clearly, the non radio terminations permanent was already disclosed. But On the SG and A side, just confirming part of the reduction is from the wage subsidies. I think it's $1,900,000 And then Yes.
What kind of level comes back to how much of that might be permanent or the bonuses and commissions just come back into that number as the recovery comes through?
Scott can address the JobKeeper subsidy. I think that was a big part of the one that Scott.
Yes. 22 of them, you're right. The number is $1,900,000 which was about 1.4 in Australia and 400,000 in Canada. I would say that the majority of About $5,300,000 of the difference was selling costs. Those are probably mostly come back as revenue comes back.
Obviously, the wage subsidy will go away as that comes back as revenue comes back as well. So there's probably, you know, made probably, you know, left over from that, maybe $1,000,000 or so of costs that probably are somewhat permanent.
Right. Appreciate it. And then just on the outlook statement, I realize that the visibility is short cycle, but given ATN remains the bulk of the earnings, is it fair to expect that continued improvement here Can offset the weakness in sort of Canada, UK, Brazil, given the commentary around new restrictions impacting them for the second half?
Yes. Look, Australia is obviously our most powerful earner. And so it's the most important one to see improvement on. And we're happy with the improvement we expect to see Australia continue to improve. It's our we are off to our best start of a quarter since pandemic hit, as far as overall revenue numbers in Australia.
So I'm very pleased with that. I'm pleased with the progress we're making. It will likely be offset. Brazil is a mess, but their currency is a mess too. So it doesn't really have as much impact as it would.
Canada is right now shut down until March 8 and That's a or Toronto is and that's a big one for us. And Great Britain is introducing ideas on how to come out of the pandemic, but Great Britain has survived fairly well for us. So I believe in general terms that Q3 will be very similar to Q1. I believe it will be better than Q1 because Australia will do better. And the other markets will be reducing the Canada will certainly not make money in Q3 and Brazil will certainly not make money in Q3, but it wouldn't be surprising to see U.
K. Come near what they have done in the past. So all in all, I think you'll see a Q3 that's similar to Q1, but probably better, slightly better.
Yes, that'll help. Maybe just a final question on any improvements or I know you've come out of Australia to what's the business more closely? How should we think about anything that's being done to drive operational improvements as the recovery continues? There's been permanent changes to the business that have been made that might sort of help you on the other side or as the revenue recovers.
Yes, our original intent was to come was to relocate over here in March, but we got locked out for a bit of time. And the whole reason was to reinvigorate restructured the company over the years as management changes and we had a number of management changes unfortunately in the last Few years here in Australia, one of our long term sales managers had gone to the hospital with a disease and had been replaced by another manager who left. So we had a bit of and void here for the last year. I've been here now for 4 months. We're spending a lot of time improving structure, improving habits that we've gotten out of the habits that made our business very, very strong or starting to be compromised and exaggerated during the pandemic.
So we're reinforcing a lot of those disciplines And we're really happy really, really happy with the progress. And a lot of these disciplines enabled us to make a lot more money in November December just by managing inventory more properly. When I got here in end of October, we only had like $5,000,000 on the books for November and they were saying they were out of inventory. As I dug into it further and further, I could see it's just because they weren't They were picking in times and dates and flights and stuff like that. So they were out of the important inventory, but it wasn't done guaranteed.
So we were able to move a lot of this inventory around and get another $1,000,000 into November. And December, we probably got another $1,500,000 alone in just through inventory management. Since then, we've brought on an inventory guy to We can take over the inventory management, we're training him with our disciplines and I believe that he's going to have a great impact on of the company. And so that's a long answer to some of the changes that we went through, but the structural changes definitely improved significantly our November December months and are creating more opportunity for us as we go forward.
Thanks. I appreciate your time. That's it for me guys.
Thanks,
The next telephone question on the line is from Julien Macaulay from EAP. Please ask your question Julien.
Hi, Bill. Just a question back on the pricing in Australia. You said there's been a lot of sort of freebies given away. How quickly do you reverse that sort of psyche from the market?
Well, that's a supply and demand question, it's really supply as demand goes up that those habits go away and the need goes away. So we were one of the efforts that we're making is to be a lot more scientific so that our sales reps when they go to into pitch don't get out negotiated. So So just I'll give you just a hypothetical answer or a question or answer. So a sales rep goes into an agency and the agency says, oh, we have to have 20% bonus or you're not getting or you're not going to be in on this buy. So the easy answer is that the sales rep just says, okay, well, we'll give you 20% bonus.
The real answer is to give them data to show that, hey, every one of our bonuses is all by itself, it's not in a long spot break or it's not on a weird hour, they're all in breakfast and drive. And to demonstrate we don't need to give 20% of our spots away like other forms of media do in order to get sales in. So that's just like an example of what kind of happens. So it's just reinforcing those disciplines, reinforcing what makes our product strong and get them to understand that we're not competitive with radio stations and we shouldn't be compared with radio stations for a complementary product, radio stations have great targeting and great reach in the demographics and we have unmatched they have great frequency and unmatched targeting. We have unmatched reach and that's the way we should be sold, not trying to say, hey, don't buy radio by us or don't.
And so it's reinforcing this is how the whole product was meant to be is to be part of of buying, not all of the buying, not directly competing with radio. Long answer, but I hope that helps.
Yes. I mean, like you reported like average price of $121,000,000 in that half. So given that you improved over the period, what would have been the average price in the month of December?
And again
were It is really very much, Joel. I mean, the price is fairly solid. I mean, the range over the whole periods like from like $1.14 to $1.30 and the December wasn't the highest of the 6, believe it or not. So although it was on the upper end. So it's fairly tight.
So as Bill said earlier, it's really a sellout driven exercise much more than rate, although obviously rates not set in stone.
Yes. Julien, we get much higher rates than that in the metro markets and we're still getting much higher rate like a major advertiser, one of the major agencies for us, we're getting an average of 210 to 200 depending on the circumstances and we're still getting those rates. So I review, we don't sell any deals that are the same rate. So it's not like our pricing is going down. It's the mix of the pricing that changes our spot rate more than anything.
And in COVID, the bonusing added to a lower yield because it's a spot that's going in at 0 sold. But the rates that we're getting, just so you understand, are not lower now than they were this time last year in most of our almost all of our deals.
Right. But is it like is the sell out in like these 1st 2 months of this half Back above that sort of 60% level?
What was the question, Julien?
Is the sellout right in the 1st 2 months, so January, February, Is that back above the sort of 60% rate that you've done in recent years? Or is it still near that 49% that you reported in the first half?
I mean, Bill, that would be I look backwards
It's a funny question, Julien, because it's again an over analysis of something that doesn't make sense. So if we give away if we have 200 spots to sell and I give away I sell 100 and my sell up's 50%, but we give away 50 free. I've really sold 150 and my sell out rate is 75. So it's something we look at all the time. But I've said over and over and over again, it's an analysis that was kind of looked at to give you guys a handle to try to determine.
It's almost meaningless. The true indicator here is revenue Because let me give you one this is the best example I can give you. I can every advertiser we have spends more money this year and they buy more spots and they buy them all at a higher rate. All those three things can happen and our average spot rate can go down. And it's because every advertiser has a different mix.
So what I'm telling you is our spot rate is not going down, but the mix can change. So let's say an old line advertiser who gets $160 rate, he increases way more than a guy who has a $200 rate, maybe he only increases a little. The mixture of that makes our average spot rate come down. That doesn't mean we're selling or have selling pressure or price pressure. So what I'm assuring you is we don't have pricing pressure right now.
We have supply we don't have enough supply to drive during the COVID months. We didn't have enough demand to not give away so many bonuses.
Yes. Cool. Understand. And just on Canada, When you picked up the extra Roger network, the expectations, but Given that it's been a little while now and we're in the depths of the market, do you worry that that original contract will expire before you actually got any benefit out of it?
No, actually, I'm fairly confident that all of them will review because they're all hurting. They're all radio is really hurting in Canada and every single one of them we've been in contact with. I'm not I'm not saying it's not impossible, but they're not going to chase away revenue at this particular time in their lives. So I would bet heavily that they all renew.
Okay, cool. And just finally on the ad market in general, television sold out, Outdoors improving, when do you think we'll see a pickup in radio? Or is that kind of where we're starting in That's right.
Look, I think the revenue is improving in radio in general. My feeling is that everybody's expectations for 2021 need to be tempered a little bit, because so much of like international travel is not going to happen in 2021, may not even happen in 2022. That's a fairly big segment of the advertising pie and number of businesses have gone out, spending is going to be less. So I expect that Clearly, advertising revenue for radio in Australia will go up over last year because the pandemic is not going to be as bad as it was. But I don't think the calendar year of 2021 is going to be as big as the calendar year of 2019.
I would be happy if it's 85% to 90% of that. Now the good news is that with the cost cuts that we've made in Australia, for instance, I feel like we can make really good money even though the market may only be 80%, 80%. And kind of that's what you're seeing in the December quarter of our last half is that we were able to make really, really good money.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
Thanks, Julien.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the call back to speakers for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you. So despite the impact of the COVID-nineteen, we remain confident that we will survived the crisis and perform well in the future. We have retained an excellent management team, strong balance sheet. We've implemented strategic cost cuts. These factors have favorably positioned us to capitalize on the expected advertising recovery.
And I think we've shown our ability to recover quite quickly in the December quarter last half. So we're confident that we have ample liquidity and we're in a position to survive and thrive even if the recovery is slow to arrive. We look forward to speaking to you again after fiscal 2021 results. Thank you very much.