Great. Thank you, operator, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining IDP Education's FY 2021 financial results presentation. I'm joined today by Murray Walton, our CFO, and Craig Mackey, Head of Business Development and Investor Relations. I will take you through the presentation, and then we'll open up for your questions. Firstly, the business update. Despite the challenges of a pandemic-impacted year, IDP's diverse business model, our exceptional people, and long-term strategy enabled us to decisively navigate the disruptions and deliver a solid result. Customer intent and demand to study, work, and migrate abroad remains resilient. Strategically, IDP is now focused on rebounding and accelerating our leadership position in the year ahead. If we move to Page four and just go through some of the key performance indicators. Revenue at AUD 529 million was down 10%, down 5% on a constant currency basis.
Within that, we saw IELTS revenue up 8% on a constant currency basis. EBIT came in at AUD 71.8 million, down 35%, NPAT at AUD 45 million, down 36%. Our cash balance of AUD 307 million remains essentially unchanged over the prior year. In student placement, our APFs came in at 38,100. That was down 25%. Within that number, we saw growth in the U.K., up 4%. Canada was down 12%, primarily due to some of the supply chain challenges customers faced in getting their visas approved and getting into the market through the year. Australia was hardest hit, down 40%, and that really reflects the closed borders that we have in Australia at the moment. From an English language testing perspective, our tests came in at 1.15 million. That was up 5% on the prior year.
Some great results in the top five contributing markets, with Canada up 64% and Nigeria up 37%. India was flat year-on-year, primarily due to the impact of the second wave of the pandemic that hit us primarily in the fourth quarter of the year. English language teaching at 74,000 was down 22%, reflecting primarily that most of the courses delivered both in Vietnam and Cambodia were delivered online during the year and the impact then of that. Digital marketing at AUD 30 million revenue is up 8%, 13% on a constant currency basis. Increasingly, our university college clients are reliant on IDP for data insights to really replan and set their strategies for rebound. In fact, we had 168 clients signed up through the year to our new IQ data subscription services. Moving to Page five. Clearly, the recovery is underway.
IDP is emerging from FY 2021 with strong balance sheets, financial position, and we are seeing rising demand, in particular for the northern hemisphere. The business clearly has shown its resilience through this period, and I think most importantly, customers, as you will see in the presentation, are still keen to reconnect with their study and migration ambitions and are only challenged really by the restrictions in place and some of the difficulties in being able to connect to that opportunity. IELTS being a great leading indicator of study and migration demand, being up 5% year-on-year in terms of volume suggests that our customers are preparing to go as soon as they can. From an industry leadership perspective through the year, we continued on our transformational programs, focused very much on improving customer experience.
You can see noted there is our NPS score of 58, an extremely high score with 9 out of 10 students recommending IDP to their peers. Moving to Slide six. IDP is strategically positioned to grow IELTS market share. Throughout the year, we completed our rollout of new computer-delivered test centers, and we completed that target that we mentioned previously of 100 new centers. We rolled out 50 new multi-language websites and a preparation hub to support our test takers. Recently, we announced a highly strategic acquisition where we acquired the sole distribution rights for the Indian market from BC. As you may recall, this market from a BC or from a volume perspective, has had very strong growth, 21% compound annual growth from calendar year 2010 to calendar year 2019.
There's clearly scope for material synergies here. With our partners, we continue to innovate the underlying architecture around IELTS to ensure that we can bring new products in an expedient way to market in the coming period. I think, importantly, again, IELTS reflected in the result of now having 11,000 accepting organizations, shows clearly that it is the world's leading high-stakes English language test, founded on integrity and trust. Moving to Slide seven in the pack. Again, here's a great indication really of the real resilience of demand across our markets in the face of significant disruption caused by COVID. IELTS volumes are continuing their upward trend, in particular as test centers open. If we look at the paper-based chart on this slide, you can see there the dip on the right-hand side, and that primarily reflects the second wave impact of closures within India.
Very quickly, as things started to improve and again, restrictions ease, the rebound. Indeed, that rebound has continued through July and into early August. The smaller computer-delivered test centers, as you can see, are somewhat less impacted by the restrictions imposed by various governments, and we are therefore able to continue to test through some of those lockdown periods in those test centers. That's giving us further resilience in our testing model. We now have over 284 centers, computer-delivered centers around the world. Moving to Slide eight. I think critically, through this disrupted period, student intentions have remained very strong, and this just reflects the stage of life students are at and their ambition to connect to an international education and international experience. We still see across our surveyed student cohort that 79% of students with current offers are holding onto their plans.
I think what's interesting as we look to the right-hand side of the slide under the heading Preference of Delivery Mode, you can see an increasing acceptance of online and the transition to face-to-face. I think this just is a pragmatic view that students and families are taking, that they may indeed need to begin their study journey online, but clearly have ultimately a desire to go to face-to-face learning. Looking at the middle component of that chart, I think it's equally interesting to see that students are less likely to defer to study face-to-face. Again, pragmatically, they're looking to begin their journey. They're leaning in to start their study, whether that means they have to start online with the expectation to ultimately travel to the market when they can. The number of undecided students has reduced significantly. Moving on to Slide nine.
As I said, desire for study abroad remains very strong. The structural growth drivers, we can see, as I mentioned in the IELTS numbers in particular. Here we're having a look at a number of different components. I mean, firstly, organic traffic, which is reflecting the interest on our websites to study abroad. You can see that continues to be strong with organic traffic up 45% versus FY 2020. Interestingly, you can see the blip in and around April, and that reflects the Canadian government's announcements of over 90,000 opportunities for students and visa holders to begin their path to permanent residency. It has a big swing factor in terms of the interest in Canada. I think, on summary on this slide, as we look to the chart on the right, you can see strong preference at the moment for the Northern Hemisphere.
I think that's a reflection clearly of the openness of the borders and the opportunity to begin studying back in classroom. Moving on to Slide 10. This is providing you with an insight into our qualified student placement pipeline. We're looking at not just the top of the funnel in terms of total inquiries or website searches, but we're looking at qualified hot and warm leads here. I think clearly on the right-hand side, you can see that preference for the Northern Hemisphere is very strong. In fact, the volume of qualified leads within our funnel at the moment has now surpassed where it was pre-COVID. Again, reflecting a strong rebound in the desire for students to begin their studies in the Northern Hemisphere.
On the left-hand side, you can see Australia, whilst down certainly since pre-COVID, has somewhat stabilized. I think we will continue to see that being the case. We've seen high acceptance of online learning into Australia. At this point, one that's fairly stable, and I think it will remain that way until we get real clarity as to when borders will open up for international students to return to Australia. Moving on to Slide 11. I've really summarized in all respects, the way that we've transformed our business and built a digital platform to complement trusted human connections with our people, our customers, and our institutions now on one platform. We really are in a stronger position to deliver great customer experiences across all stages of our customer journey.
This does reflect, in many respects, the unique and the significant position we hold in our market, being able to leverage a leading technology set of innovation, community platforms, and most importantly, the human connections that are required to assist our customers in these most important decisions. Moving to Slide 12 and our innovation agenda. We've had an extensive amount of transformational work delivered through FY 2021, and we have and maintain strong ambition and investments to be made in FY 2022. From a student's perspective, we began our journey with IDP Live, and we'll launch that much more formally in the October timeframe. Through the year, as we integrated all touch points across our platforms and launched a student app which has over 300,000 downloads. We also integrated in very sophisticated, unique matching tools to provide our students with real-time guidance in support or with support of the counselors.
In FY 2022, we're very focused on an innovative new model which will combine data and our human-centered expertise, and I do believe differentiate us from all competitors in the marketplace. From a client perspective and the IDP Connect team that support them, we've expanded our digital offerings. As I mentioned, we now have a significant uptake, 168 clients uptaking our IQ data services. The majority of the Go8 are customers, and a large proportion of the Russell Group clients are now on subscription services to our data insights and using those, as I said, to assist in their own rebound strategies. Moving forward, we will be providing our clients greater access to early-stage connections within our high-quality funnel of students to drive not just their volume objectives but also their diversity objectives.
From an IELTS perspective, we completed the delivery mechanisms across CD IELTS with, as I said, 100 new centers in the year. We released and delivered IELTS Indicator, an online test during the year to assist in markets where physical testing was unavailable. We integrated in video call speaking to enable our examiners to participate in an online way to give us better scalability across our IELTS distribution network. We have some clear priorities for FY 2022 to deliver more test types and delivery mechanisms on the platform that Cambridge and IDP and BC will be delivering on in the year ahead, putting us really in a unique competitive position to accelerate our market share. I'm now going to hand over to Murray to take you through our financial results. Murray?
Thanks, Andrew. I'm going to start on Slide 14, the FY 2021 overview. Revenue for the year was AUD 529 million, 5% below last year on a constant currency basis. Our IELTS testing revenue was flat year- on- year at actual FX, but it's 8% higher on a constant currency basis. We had good momentum in testing volume through the middle of April, but COVID-19 lockdowns, particularly in India in May and June, had a significant impact on the fourth quarter volumes, limiting our year-on-year growth to 5%. Student placement revenue was down 22% on a constant currency basis, with our multi-destination student placement revenue down 11%. U.K. student placement was the highlight, with revenue up 3% on a constant currency basis, while New Zealand was down 84% and the U.S.A. down 45%, contributing the majority of the decline in multi-destination revenue.
Canada student placement revenue was down 9% on a constant currency basis. Australian student placement revenue was down 34%, with most students commencing their courses online due to the border closure. Our digital marketing business was another highlight, with revenue up 13% on a constant currency basis. EBIT is AUD 64.1 million, down 36% on a constant currency basis. If we add back the M&A cost of AUD 6 million related to the acquisition of the British Council's IELTS business in India and the AUD 1.8 million related to the amortization of acquired intangibles, adjusted EBIT is AUD 71.8 million, down 31% versus pcp on a constant currency basis. Net profit after tax, adjusted for M&A costs and amortization of acquired intangibles is AUD 45 million, and is also 31% below last year on a constant currency basis. I'll move on to Slide 15, the operating metrics.
The key operating metrics show a strong rebound in IELTS volumes in the second half versus FY 2020. IELTS volumes were 1,149,000 and were at pre-pandemic levels for Q3, heading towards 10% year-on-year growth before the second wave of infection, particularly in India, hit. The impact in Q4 was material, limiting our full-year growth to 5%. Student placement volumes declined to 38,100, down 25% versus pcp, with multi-destination volumes down 12% to 23,600 and now making up 62% of our total volume. The U.K. was up by 4% as the borders remained open, and students were able to travel to commence their courses, even though classes were mostly online. Canada was down by 12%, the U.S.A. down by 43%, and New Zealand down by 80%, and they contributed similar declines in volume.
Australian student placement volume of 14,500 was a decline of 40%, with India contributing 41% of the total decline. Most students commenced their courses online, and students from China were more willing to do that with our decline from China well below our average at 16%. Moving on to average fee performance. The average test fee for IELTS increased by 3% on a constant currency, with the stronger Australian dollar having a 7% unfavorable impact. Price increases were applied in many markets, including India and Australia, and the British Council China license fee was 27% higher than last year, improving our average price for the year on a constant currency basis. The average student placement application processing fee has increased to AUD 3,760, a 4% increase versus pcp on a constant currency basis.
The Australian average fee increased 10%, with a favorable study mix, an increase in commissions from clients, a reduction in credit note provision, and an increase in client bonuses contributing. The multi-destination average fee increased 1% on a constant currency basis, with a favorable study sector mix and a favorable destination mix offsetting a higher credit note provision, lower client bonuses, and lower student pays revenue from China. I'm going to move on to Slide 16, and cover the overheads. Our increase in overheads in the second half reflected the investments being made following two periods of disciplined cost control. Our cost control measures were wound back in the second half as salary sacrificing ended in December, and increases in marketing spend were made with a focus on building a student placement pipeline for future intakes.
Broad-based hiring for frontline staff was recommenced to ensure we filled vacancies and added new positions early enough in the year to build the student pipeline. In April, we commenced the repayment of voluntary wage reductions that commenced in Q4 FY 2020, with 50% of the voluntary wage reductions paid to all staff, excluding senior management, and our teams in India in May receiving the balance of their repayment during the second wave of infections. Our run rate for overheads on a pre-AASB 16 basis and excluding the M&A costs to ensure like-for-like comparison is at AUD 18 million per month in the second half of FY 2021, up from the AUD 16 million per month in the first half of FY 2021 and AUD 15 million per month in the second half of FY 2020. I'll move on to Slide 17 and the balance sheet.
The balance sheet remains strong with the cash balance at the close of AUD 307 million at the same level as the close in FY 2020. Significant movements during the year included the payment of the interim dividend of AUD 42 million that was deferred in March 2020 and the increase in trade payables of AUD 36 million as the volume of IELTS tests increased in the last quarter versus pcp and the corresponding increase in the quarterly fee we pay Cambridge is reflected. We put in place a new three-year debt facility in June 2021 with our banking syndicate to provide up to AUD 800 million for the acquisition of the BC IELTS business in India and reduce our working capital facility to AUD 75 million. I'm going to hand back to Andrew now. Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Murray. I'd just like to summarize the presentation, then we'll move into questions. Clearly, IDP is in a strong financial position, the FY 2020 results highlight the resilient nature of our diversified business model that, in my view, certainly has got us to the other side of the worst of the pandemic. Most importantly, we've held our talent together, our capability and our capacity remains in place. We've done this clearly to ensure that we take the opportunity of demand that's presented and the restrictions easing to drive market share in this period of rebound. The recovery is underway. Clearly, that's reflected in the IELTS data, albeit, as you can see, it can be disrupted from time to time.
It really responds very quickly to the easing of restrictions, and that reflects the strong kind of through-the-cycle demand that we have with our customers and their desire to reconnect with study, work, and migration. Very promising to see the growth in qualified leads, in particular for the northern hemisphere. We do believe, from speaking to our leadership across the network, that as we get clarity on Australia, we equally should see a strong rebound when students feel confident that they can get into the country to study their degrees. We're very strategically positioned to drive a very strong IELTS growth. The strategic insert or acquisition that we made with India, being the largest IELTS market in the world, will become a core engine of growth for the business.
From an industry leadership perspective, as I've mentioned, we've continued to drive innovation and transformation in our student placement area as we've brought data, AI, but primarily a focus on a greater customer experience and connection between our customer and our institutions together on our platform. In the year ahead, we'll be delivering on our modernization objectives and the platform to bring new, innovative tests and ways of delivering tests to market with IELTS. Let me pause there, and that completes the presentation. I'd now like to open up to Q&A, please.
Thank you. At this time if you would like to ask a question please press star one. Our first question is from Michael Peet of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrew, Murray, and Craig. Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one, could you just give us a sense of, from that Indian disruption on IELTS in May, June, maybe just how the first quarter this year started off and what sort of pent-up demand you're seeing in India coming through?
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. On the slide which reflects the IELTS volumes in the pack, and then we take it up to June 30th, of course. That rebound has continued through both July and August. We're seeing a strong, steep upswing in India testing. I think that's a reflection of two things. One, as we said before, just that through-the-cycle demand. Again, what happens when we have a lockdown or the inability to test, as soon as we stand up capacity, we have a backlog to get through. Clearly, that's reflected in the uptick on the chart there continuing into first quarter.
Just on student placements, Canada was down heavily in the first half. It seems to have been only more modestly down four years. It seems to have recovered second half. I am also interested in what was actually kicked into probably FY 2022 with issues of getting into the country or for the May intake. Is that the way to think about it? Maybe even Canada could have been a lot better and just interested in the momentum there coming into FY 2022.
No, look, there's plenty of demand for Canada. The issue for Canada through FY 2021, yes, you're right. Firstly, there are three intakes. The opportunity to continue to get volume into Canada was available to us in the second half. There were supply chain challenges, in particular, quarantine requirements and a lack of flights. We're now going into the fall intake where fully vaccinated student visa holders can get into Canada without quarantine. Only as recently as the last couple of weeks, the Middle East has opened up as a flight corridor for Canada. It's a significant easing of supply chain restrictions. In the second half of last year, the Canadian students out of India who did attempt to make it and take advantage of the opportunity, many of them were finding ways to fly through Eastern European countries.
It was almost the only option they had to get into Canada. I think as we continue to see those restrictions ease and the other channels open up, the Canadian throughput will be very strong.
Just a final one from me. Just on student placement with your cost base and your people. I guess pre-pandemic, you were more balanced with Southern Hemisphere, Northern Hemisphere expertise. I guess thinking about those student placement people that are focused on getting students into Australia. Have you been able to re-pivot your cost base? How have you actually managed those people, and have you re-pivoted to a Northern Hemisphere sort of allocation of resources?
Yeah
in the current environment?
Great question. Yeah, great question. We very quickly rolled out a set of training across our counselor base to ensure that all Australian-based counselors were certified in another destination, either Canada or the U.K. That we could do two things. One, hold onto our Australian expertise, but two, pivot that resource to be able to support the opportunity we could see opening up in the U.K. and Canada. I think that will hold us in good stead when Australia does open up, and it will open up. We won't be caught off guard like our competitors who have lost or retrenched most of their Australian counseling base.
Right. Thanks, Andrew.
Thanks, Michael.
Our next question is from James Bales of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. I'd like to just follow up on the question of IELTS and what you've seen in July and August, especially the relative performance in the bounce back from your own operations versus the acquired British Council volumes.
James, you're referring in particular to India in that respect?
Yes. That's correct.
Yeah. Well, firstly, from an India perspective, I think as you are aware, we were the majority shareholder in India. If anything, we've worked on ensuring that really the acquisition as it related to impact on volumes was seamless. We literally shifted all of the BC bookings through a two-week period and loaded up their backlog and their bookings into our system. We really haven't skipped a beat in terms of being able to service that demand for IELTS in aggregate in India. That now, that opportunity, if you like, that demand that we are seeing is now being harvested by us on a total India basis as of end of July or first week of August.
Got it. Maybe just on student placement into Australia. How do you see that run rate shaping up when obviously intent's shifting dramatically away from Australia on a relative basis, but you've seen stabilization in qualified leads and an intent to study more remotely?
I think we have seen a couple things. If we look at semester 2, which we have just been through, compared to semester 2 last year, we can see that it has stabilized. The volumes are stable, and that is fundamentally reflecting people's acceptance of online. We continue to run Australian events across the network. In fact, we are ramping up the Australian marketing and the Australian events in this first half of FY 2022, and we are doing that on the assumption that we will be beginning to place students back into Australia in the second half of our financial year. The assumption that I have built into, if you like, our own expectations is that we should not expect a semester 1. We should expect students to start coming back and then go into a strong semester 2.
All indications are from the network, this is in particular direct engagement and the ramp-up plans for markets like China and India, is that Australia will rebound quickly. Its preference as a study destination has dropped off, that's fundamentally because of the impact of closed borders, not a view that Australia is not a good place to study and does not have good institutions. We think it's really just a matter of getting clarity on when the border will open. We are prepared, and we're doing the work this half to ensure we build up that pipeline for readiness as we go into the second half.
Got it. The other sort of moving part on Australian SP was the commission rates that you mentioned had gone up. Can you give us some color on the quantum and how durable those increases are?
Murray can maybe touch on the quantum, but every year we work across, as you guys know, across the other client base to increase terms of trade where we can. In Australia, yes, commission rates, I guess, there's not downward pressure. There's continued upward pressure, and that's a reflection of the universities getting prepared, if you like, to position themselves for taking the largest amount of pie that they possibly can as the rebound opens up. But I think through the United and the Australian numbers, I know, in aggregate, we probably negotiated close to AUD 8 million annualized of commission increases across the client base. When I say annualized, once those commission increases are negotiated, they're generally into perpetuity unless they're a specific bonus on a volume target. We don't tend to focus on that.
We look to raise commission base rates, which are then contracted into perpetuity unless they're renegotiated. I mean, Murray, did you want to make a comment on that?
Yes, sure. Thanks, Andrew. James, the commission increases that we negotiated is 4.8% of the 10%. Study sector mix is favorable 1.4%, but obviously we've seen a big drop-off in pathway programs and English language programs. I think that'll come back once students start to travel again. I don't think that's long term. Incentives was almost 1%. I reduced our drop-off provision for Australia because our volume's dropped and I didn't need that much of a drop-off provision. I reduced our drop-off provision by 2.5%. That's the majority of the 10%.
Okay, got it. Maybe just one final one for you again, Murray, is that you sort of flagged that the cost base run rate was AUD 18 million per month through the second half. What sort of run rate should we be expecting in FY 2022?
Obviously all of the cost-saving initiatives are now behind us, we're investing. On the basis pre-AASB 16, for the first half, it should be around AUD 22.5 million a month. That sort of run rate. For the full- year, it'll be higher in the second half. For the full- year, it'll be certainly around AUD 23 million-23.5 million.
Great. Thanks so much for the help, guys. I appreciate it.
Thanks, James.
Our next question is from Philip Pepe of Blue Ocean Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I thought it's pretty a solid result in some challenging circumstances. Just a couple of quick ones. Obviously, U.K. benefited from keeping their borders open while others were shut. I did notice early that Canada has closed the borders to direct from India flights, although you can still get there indirectly. I'm just wondering, to what extent has some of the U.K. volume been switching from Australia? Does the U.K. go backwards at some stage when Australia and New Zealand reopens? Did you have a feel for that? That's the first question.
In terms of the U.K., there certainly has been some switching, in particular as we've come into the fall intakes. We've seen from some markets anecdotally as much as 20%+ of students switching from what were originally planning to come to Australia, to the U.K. I don't really have an answer to the second part of your question because I do think through the course of 17, 18 months as Australia opens up, we've got a whole new set of graduating students from high schools and those who have deferred who will come back into the mix when the borders open up. I don't believe necessarily we'll see a big impact in terms of one destination losing from another as we go forward, simply because of the amount of deferrals and then the increasing pool of international students that are waiting and holding on to their study ambition.
That makes sense. just secondly, on the outlook, given the pending sale, if it occurs from Universities Australia, would it be appropriate to give a more specific outlook statement for the next 12 months? Because they do sit on your board, putting everyone on the same page, or are you happy with where consensus was before today for FY 2022?
I think, as you're aware, we don't provide guidance and keen to always give transparency on the trends and on the leading indicators, but that's as far as we'll go.
I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for taking the question.
Thanks.
A reminder to ask a question, please press star then 1. Our next question is from Matt Johnston of Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Andrew, Murray and Craig. Can you hear me?
Yes, Matt.
Firstly, picking up from the supply chain issues, specifically around Canada and maybe some comments around U.K., can you provide any more color or detail around what the supply chain drag was versus IDP's demand for placements?
Only at a high level. From a demand perspective the source countries have had no demand issues. There's not been through all of this. I think if you go back to the trajectory Pre-COVID, the demand didn't go away, simply the restrictions and of course, some of the concerns around health came into the mix. That led to more of a deferral mentality until people can actually get into the markets and feel confident that the health environment was going to be positive. Of course, that's where we are now. As I mentioned most recently, in fact, I was only on the call with both the Middle East teams and India. In the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned, India went off the red list through the U.K. onto the amber list, which now means no quarantine for fully vaccinated people.
Just so people on the call are aware, the Indian government, as an example, prioritized international students for vaccinations with a view to their desire to study in the fall period. The supply chain challenges, if you like, for India going to the U.K. have significantly eased. Then with the opening up of the ability for those Indian students to fly through the Middle East, now the Middle East ratings were eased for the U.K. has also enabled the Middle East students that we had in pipeline, ready to go, the opportunity to go in now for the fall intake. Certainly, we're seeing things ease and the demand has remained and will remain strong, I believe.
Okay. That's helpful. Then just maybe follow up with the U.K. Can you provide any sort of detail around what the unis are thinking about a bigger intake in January or February?
Yes. I think we have a unique position this year in terms of first half, second half, and that is only last year was the first year that we saw the U.K. universities really open up for a second intake in that January timeframe. It looks like again this year, that will be in place. I think equally it's just worth noting that there's been a significant decline in EU students going to the U.K. as the Brexit rules have come into play. That means the U.K. universities have even a stronger focus and strategically in their policy and their approach, a stronger focus in particular to markets that we operate in, like South Asia. There's a desire for the U.K. universities not only to rebound and recover through multiple intakes.
They're equally motivated to bring more international students in because of the fall-off of their EU student volumes. I think in that respect, it's clearly a top priority market for us at the moment, along with Canada.
Okay. Great. Just last one from me. This is probably a bit more strategic. Could you provide any comments around, I guess, what you're seeing with universities in terms of what they're doing structurally as a response to COVID from recruitment and advertising budgets?
I think you can see in the results when we look at IDP Connect and the digital marketing piece in particular, that was up 13% on a constant currency basis. Clearly, the U.K. and the Canadian universities are back spending on marketing and recruitment. The Australian universities, I think primarily because of our position with them and the strategic nature of those relationships are beginning to spend as well. I think there will be a greater reliance on an organization like IDP to bring assistance to the table, because for some of them, it's going to take them some time to rebuild, if you like, their international marketing resource. Indeed, many of those staff who may or may not be there anymore would travel into the regions to assist in the marketing and pipeline build.
In this phase, as we kind of move out of or move into the living with COVID world, they're more reliant on us to fulfill both the provision of data insights and marketing to students in those source countries.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up. Can you see a positive growth trajectory, I guess, on advertising budgets from second half 2021 into FY 2022 in the Northern Hemisphere?
Certainly. I wouldn't say just simply advertising budgets, but recruitment overall, which is the acquisition of data services and insights. As I said, the majority or a large majority of a large proportion, sorry, of the Russell Group have now signed up to our IQ insights. The market with the highest growth in digital marketing orders for us in the prior period was Canada, with Canadian clients coming on and signing up for digital marketing. Yes, the expenditure in those markets is strong.
Okay, great. Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Tim Plumbe of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, how are you going?
Hey, Tim.
A couple of questions from me. Going back to the IELTS and thinking about that pipeline and what you're seeing in July and into August. How much of that is working through the backlog of pipeline, and are you seeing that pipeline continuing to be replenished?
I think, a couple of things to note there and maybe just begin by talking about the largest IELTS market in the world, India. Up to pre-pandemic times, so calendar year 2019, we had a 20-year compound annual growth rate for that market alone. I think you're aware that IELTS has probably a 10%-12%, through the cycle, annual compound growth rate for the last decade. I think at the moment, we're operating in a world which is a little bit disrupted in terms of restrictions coming in and restrictions coming off. In that context, directly to answer your question, yes, in July and August, we would be seeing part of the pent-up demand. Murray mentioned those 60,000 tests that were unable to be delivered in that May, mid-June period come back through.
They come back through in an environment where there's still strong through-the-cycle demand for IELTS in place.
Got it. Just in terms of any key geographies that are still laggards that can continue to drive that recovery?
Well, I think, as I said, last year, full-year India was pretty flat because of the beginning of the year, they were only coming out of the pandemic, and then they went back into the second wave, which was significant. I think in the year ahead, given it's difficult to predict, but we get more stability in that market. It's not only a strong foundation, but it's a market that we expect to realize strong growth from. As I mentioned, Canada and Nigeria were presenting very strong growth.
I think outside of that, probably at the moment where we've got small impacts probably through Southeast Asia, which are just beginning to come off. You would've noticed that Indonesia is reopening up. Vietnam is still struggling a little bit. Probably Vietnam as it comes back online after the most recent set of challenges presents a good opportunity for an IELTS rebound as well.
Got it. Just final question from me. Good developments in terms of the technology stack. Can you maybe talk about some of the potential opportunities, particularly on that technology front for the students that can open up some new revenue opportunities?
Yeah. I think one that I touched on, we're not going to be doing a full launch to market until October. In the slide, it's represented as IDP Live. We've spent a good year this year really investing in our AI and our matching architecture, which is built off the placement of over 600,000 students over many years. We've got quite a sophisticated, and I think industry-unique matching capability for students that's really unparalleled. Now, what we've been able to do, we've signed up our first two clients just before the end of the financial year, where clients are loading up their inventory on our platform. By that I mean the qualifications required by a student to get an application acceptance to their course.
We've got an aim to sign up 60 clients to this new model this year, and this will enable a student and the client, a university, to fulfill an offer, an application to offer basically in real time on our platform. Students provisioning up their data, and we've built the models to understand how to compare high school to high school in markets like India in terms of relativity. We're building that qualification set and working with the clients to load that into the platform. That will become a significant moat because clients, firstly, in many cases, don't even have that data written down today. Now it'll be stratified in our platform, and it will enable us to do immediate matching. That presents a huge opportunity. One, to increase and improve the experience for the student immensely.
They normally wait 4- 6 weeks and then maybe get a response from a client. Equally, it allows clients to reach out to the highest quality students in real time, leveraging data and software that's resident in their institution to leverage our platform. Now, at the moment, the drive for that is just simply getting as many clients on and their inventory up as we possibly can in the next 12 months. From that point on, that's going to give us the opportunity to think about a lot of new commercial models for that industry. If a client wants high quality and wants diversity, and wants to build a talent pool by course for a future intake, they can do that from sitting in their office leveraging our data and our customer connections and our personal verification of students on the platform.
That's great. Thanks.
Our next question is from Michael Peet of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Peet,
you are live. Sorry, Michael.
Yeah. Michael, we can't hear you.
We can't hear him. Mr. Barkla, there are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the call back to you for closing comments.
Okay. Great. No, thank you, and thank you everybody for joining the FY 2021 performance and earnings call. We look forward to talking to many of you over the coming days. Thank you very much. Cheers.