Thank you. As we stated in our trading update in May, the COVID-nineteen pandemic has had a significant negative impact on the group's financial performance for fiscal 2020. Revenues have dropped 13% for the year. All of this decrease occurred in the fiscal 4th quarter where revenue decreased 57% when compared to the Q4 of the previous year. This shock to the market ruined what was shaping up to be a good growth year for us.
Year to date revenue for the 9 months ending on 31 March was up 2% despite several $1,000,000 of COVID related cancellations in the latter half of March. Although we were able to reduce costs during COVID-nineteen pandemic, not all of the cost reductions had an immediate impact due to the fixed cost nature of our business and the revenue reduction had a significant negative impact on our profitability measures. There are however a number of positive things to report. In Brazil, revenue increased over last year in local currency despite the impact of COVID-nineteen pandemic. Brazil was our fastest growing market by a considerable margin and had achieved 9 consecutive months of record revenue prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.
Consistent with our growth strategy, we opened Curitiba, our 8th Brazilian market. While Brazil has been especially hard hit by the COVID-nineteen pandemic, our management and position in this market is strong and we expect to rebound well when conditions return to normal. After a slow start to fiscal 2020, Canada produced some of the largest revenue months in its history when compared to the same month in previous years. Canada was heading strongly in the right direction prior to the impact of the pandemic. For the first time in our history, Australia accounted for less than half of the group's consolidated revenue.
We believe that the geographic diversification of the group's revenue and earnings is a positive sign for the future. We returned over $16,700,000 to our shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks during fiscal year 2020, while still maintaining a strong balance sheet. 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, our unparalleled affiliate networks and talented sales and management teams. We've also put in place measures to conserve cash and eliminate expenses where possible. In order to accomplish this, we have had to make some difficult choices such as eliminating 9 radio from our network and reducing the number of our entry level sales purposes.
These and other strategic cost reductions combined with our strong balance sheet will enable our business to be more resilient during this downturn. At 30 June 2020, our cash balance was $57,000,000 and our net debt was only $7,400,000 Our total gearing ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 0.52x as of 30 June 2020. As part of our cash management strategy in May 2020, the company refinanced its bank facility that was set to expire in February 2021. Scott will discuss the details of this shortly. As part of the refinance, our lead lender took over the entire facility, which was previously shared by 2 lenders.
We believe that the bank's willingness to commit additional cash to our bank facility is a strong sign of their confidence in the company. Effective September 1, we have appointed Peter Tona to our Board of Directors. Peter has a great deal of experience as a C level executive with major media companies in Australia such as Foxtel and News Corp Australia. We believe that his expertise in the Australia media sector will prove especially valuable to our Australian operations, which are the largest part of the group. We look forward to his insights as we navigate the uncertainty brought on by the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
I will now turn the call over to Scott for a complete review of the financials.
Thanks, Bill, and good morning, everyone. Revenue for fiscal 2020 decreased 13% to $160,900,000 Revenue in all of our operating geographies decreased when compared to the previous fiscal year. When compared to fiscal 2019, Australia revenue decreased 16%, Brazil revenue decreased 2%, Canada revenue decreased 19% and UK revenue decreased 6%. Through Q3 fiscal 2020, revenue was up compared to the previous year in all of our markets outside of Australia. Revenue from our Canada and United Kingdom markets was aided by favorable foreign currency movements, while revenue from our Brazilian operations was negatively impacted.
When measured in local currencies, Brazil revenue increased 6%, United Kingdom revenue decreased 9% and Canada revenue decreased 23% compared to last fiscal year. Adjusted EBITDA, which we define as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization adjusted to include the non cash interest income generated by the financing component of our long term station affiliation agreement with Southern Cross Asterio and excludes transaction costs, foreign exchange gains and losses, refinancing losses and gains on lease forgiveness was $14,200,000 a decrease of 62% compared to fiscal 2019. We consider it appropriate to add component of our long term station affiliation agreement with Southern Cross and Stereo to EBITDA because EBITDA includes a large portion of non cash station compensation expense related to the agreement and by including both amounts in 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 revenues during the period as operating expenses decreased $800,000 when compared to the previous year. The largest component of the expense reduction was sales, general and administrative, which dropped $3,300,000 9 percent, primarily due to lower commissions and bonuses on the reduced revenue.
Network operations expenses dropped $400,000 2 percent, while station compensation increased $2,600,000 3%. Station compensation increases included 12 months of Rogers in Toronto compared to 8 months in FY 2019, an expansion of the relationship with 1 of our key affiliate groups in Australia and additional station compensation in Brazil from new markets. There were no savings in fiscal 2020 related to the termination of 9 radio as these agreements did not end until July 2020. 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 76% to $4,900,000 The primary driver of the shortfall was the revenue related decrease in EBITDA that was previously discussed. In May 2020, the company refinanced its bank facility that was set to expire in February 2021.
The new facility has no scheduled principal repayments and the due date has been extended to 30 September 2023. The current interest rate is BBSY plus 2.5%, which is approximately 2.6%. Distributions, including dividends and share buybacks under the revised bank facility, are limited to 100% of adjusted NPAT. Because of this, the earliest the company is likely to be able to make distributions will be after 1H FY 2021 reporting in February 2021 should adjusted NPAT be positive for that 6 month period. Consistent with our desire to conserve cash and the distribution limitations of the new bank facility, the Board has decided to not declare a final dividend for FY 2020.
I will now turn the call back to Bill for an update on fiscal 2021.
Thanks, Scott. While July August 2020 revenues have decreased sharply when compared to July August of 2019, the amount of the decrease is an improvement over what the group experienced in April, May June. Due to the fixed cost nature of our business model, the improvement in revenue compared to 4th fiscal quarter 2020 will lead to an improvement in EBITDA over that reported in 4th quarter of 2020. Future results are likely to be highly dependent on COVID-nineteen impact on the markets in which we operate. However, when compared to Q4 fiscal 2020 performance, initial trends for fiscal year 2021 are positive.
All 4 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 impact on our operations and results, we have strategically lowered our costs where possible. We have a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity and believe that we will perform well when markets improve. This ends our prepared remarks, and we will now open the lines to questions.
This question is from Calum Sinclair of Macquarie.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just starting with the macro, can you just speak to the differences between the regions in terms of how COVID has impacted the various ad markets and maybe the kind of booking visibility that you're seeing at the moment across each of those countries?
Yes. Look, it was dramatic in all of our markets, the initial impact. Early in March, we started receiving massive cancellations in all 4 of the markets Through April, the cancellations kind of continued. And then things started to ease up a little bit in May, started to get a little bit better in June. And so far July, August September, the billing that we're adding is an improvement in all markets over the billing that was added in April, May June.
It's kind of how we expected it to go. No one had a clue and we still none of us still do have a clue. We don't know when COVID will end. We don't know when the markets will come back. Those are all completely unknown.
But we did cut our costs significantly. We did prepare ourselves. We got a strong balance sheet and we're really positioned to make this to hold out quite a while until the markets do come back.
Yes, that helps. And maybe just obviously on the cost side of things, clearly there's a big improvement in July and then obviously into August relative to the final quarter of the year. But just how much of that is both top line impacts and operating leverage from that versus sharper cost? I guess just trying to understand how much further you might see cost reduction benefit adjusted EBITDA on a monthly basis beyond August, would there be some 9 of other agreements in cost outs?
I'll let Scott talk to the details of the cost cuts. But if we do have more that we can cut, we're trying to maintain a balance between keeping decent staff and decent products and as the markets come back and we are seeing positive increases, especially in Canada and Great Britain, we're seeing very, very decent returns coming there. But as far as the specific cost cuts, I'll let Scott tell you about those.
Yes. I'd say it's probably about $7,000,000 right off the top of my head that has not been reflected at all in the numbers. There's some other parts that are maybe partially reflected, but there's clearly at least $7,000,000 that have not been reflected at all. It does get a little hard to parse out because some of these things, if revenue increased better than we expected, may come back in even though but right now we consider them permanent.
Yes, that helps. Just to clarify, that $7,000,000 is on a run rate basis for I guess looking forward for FY 2021 full year?
Yes, sir.
Yes, great. That's fine. And then maybe just going back to the full visibility. I know previously, I know the market has pulled back in terms of the number of weeks out that you can probably see. But with the cancellations that happened from some customers in March April, Clearly, some industries weren't actually open for business and that's canceled.
So I guess based on the conversations that you've had with some advertisers, did some of that budget actually rolls forward into future periods where it's still available to marketing teams? Or is it sort of canceling entirely and we're sort of entering in, I guess, a completely new budget period for some of these businesses?
Yes. You've kind of touched them all, all of those things. Most of the activity we had in Brazil was like pretty much canceled, not rescheduled, a little bit was. We've got some fairly major orders in Canada that were put off till later when their stores can open back up, didn't cancel them, just moved them and that was good. But like Australia with Melbourne on and back off, that one's been up and down.
So you can't really point anything, but everything you mentioned happened. But look, we're we do feel like the environment is improving in all of the places. Maybe people are just getting used to it, but the sales environment, the briefings are improving, the contacts improving. So we don't feel it's we don't feel we're in desperate straits at all.
Okay. Now that helps. Maybe if I can just ask one last question. Forgive me if it's disclosing the accounts, I haven't got through each page yet. But are you getting JobKeeper in Australia, which I assume you would be, is that sort of helping you for this September quarter materially?
Any, I guess, help on wage gains and how you might benefit in this sort of quarter and sort of top 'twenty one would help?
Yes, I would give you the numbers. It's not a big amount because the thing about our business is we're not very labor intensive. So the but you may have looked every bit helps. Yes. We
also have similar program in Canada, which is called the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. So between the two programs, we had about a $1,400,000 pickup. Of that, about $850,000,000 was in Australia and about $500,000,000 was in Canada. So it was helpful, but certainly not the driver in some of the other places that you've seen. So that's why we didn't really highlight it in the results.
Yes, fair enough. Yes, thanks for answering that question. I'll let someone jump on.
Thanks, Karl.
Our next question is from Mike Younger of Grace.
Thank you. Just wondering if you can give us a little bit more of quantification of how July August revenues tracking versus TCP, please?
July August combined are doing much better than the 50% decrease that we had in the Q4 and dipping down into every market is different, like Australia may be getting into the 40s, whereas Great Britain is only in the 20s. And we even had a month where Great Britain, I think it's July, Great Britain is only down 2% and Canada has actually got a month that's up. But Australia, where our biggest portion of our revenue is, is still not where we want it to be, but it's improving. Like every signing for every month in all the markets is better. We kind of built our own internal models to see how long we could last under bad circumstances.
And we're not making projections because it's insane to do so under these conditions. But the model that we're doing better than the model that we built. We're happy with where we're at. We're happy with what we've maintained from our business. We're happy with the improvement in revenue and we're happy with our balance sheet that we can hang on for a long time.
Okay. And you comment on whether the arrangement with 9 radio, whether that change in the lineup that you're now offering early days, but is that having an impact on revenue or rate at this point?
We haven't lost an account yet because of it. It's a very strategic thing that we were looking at anyways because most of the 9 radio stations have lost all of their ratings. And virtually 2 GB and 3AW were the only stations left that had significant ratings, but they're much older demographics. So by eliminating 100,000 spots of our whole network that were very low rated stations and even GB and 3AW didn't have high younger demos and replacing those spots with things like KISS and Nova and Smooth, our offering actually became better for advertisers. So we've had a wide range of responses.
Some people said that we didn't want those stations anyway. Some people asked if our reach has improved or gone down and because we're adding more smooth and Nova and KISS and all those, actually our reach is going up. So it was something we've had in the works for several months anyways that we had to renegotiate Channel 9. We'd like to keep them. We'd always want to have all of those stations and all the networks.
But during this particular portion of the pandemic, having those stations has no impact on our revenue, but has a material impact on our cost. So it was quite easy to walk away at this point in time. And the goal is to get through this pandemic, survive as strong as we can and then reload when things come back. Long way, the cost impact was very beneficial to us getting rid of it. The revenue impact was next to none.
Okay. And I presume that when you talk of the $7,000,000 in cost that have come out of the business, dollars 6,000,000 of that is that non agreement? Yes.
That's correct.
And I guess just back on the prior question around the July August trading. So I mean we saw the listed radio companies talking to us, I think, in the order of a 25% decline as to what they're looking at, at the moment. So are you suggesting that your business is still down around that 40% mark?
Not in all markets. Every market is really different right now. Like I say, Canada is actually ahead. Great Britain is very, very close. Brazil is worse and Australia is improving quite a bit, but not where we want it yet.
It's very difficult. It's very easy for most people to compare us to radio stations, so you're doing worse than radio stations. But you got to remember, we're actually a different product. We don't I guess the analogy I would use, I'll give you analogy, but we don't sell small packages because we make people buy a whole network. So a radio station can sell a $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 order to somebody.
We can't really do that. So a when things are bad like this, there's we lose most of our top end revenue. So I'll give you two examples. If Mercedes if stock market crashes and a lot of people lose their money at high income levels, probably the sales of Mercedes Benz goes down. Whereas at the low end, probably Fiat still sell because nobody they don't care.
On the opposite thing, if a factory goes out of business and a lot of lower end jobs lose their a lot of people lose their jobs, probably the sales of Fiance go down more, but it doesn't affect the sales of Mercedes. So I think that because we're a much more expensive and bigger buy for bigger advertisers, we're tending to get hit a little harder. And that's how I would explain it, I guess. We'd be really happy. I think if somebody is doing 25% down right now, they're doing pretty good.
Yes. Okay. And then your cash flow conversion was exceptionally strong. Is there anything in particular that is one off or temporary that will reverse into the next period?
I'll take that one. Hopefully, because really the whole cash flow conversion was the fact that we collected our AR. And so the fact is that that will start hopefully start to unwind as revenue increases. So there will probably be a working capital need if revenue starts to recover like we hope it will over the next 6 to 12 months. But I mean, but the actual conversion is what you exactly expect is basically we collected almost all of our AR from the period before the COVID.
And so that is a very positive thing.
Yes. That's the other benefit of having big orders with big companies is your receivables are usually in less stress than small order.
Right. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks, Mike.
Questions on the line. I would now like to hand the call back to Mr. Eddy for closing comments.
Thank you.
Despite the impact of COVID-nineteen, we are confident that we will survive the crisis and return to profitability. We have retained an excellent management team, maintained a strong balance sheet, implemented strategic cost cuts and these factors position us favorably to capitalize on the expected advertising recovery. We are confident that we have ample liquidity even if the recovery is slow to arrive. We look forward to speaking to you again after half year fiscal 2021 results. Thank you all for attending and we'll talk to you soon.
Bye now.