Yeah, thanks, operator, good morning and welcome everyone to IDP's FY 2020 financial results. Today I'm joined by Murray Walton, our CFO, and Craig Mackey, our Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. I'm going to be walking through with Murray the pack that was published this morning, and we'll begin with the business update. IDP's results for the year reflect strong momentum of the business, in particular through the first eight months of the year. This was followed by a decisive pivot to discipline capital management, expense control, and digital product innovation through the remainder of the year. If we move to page four and review the performance highlights, certainly a solid performance, I believe, despite the COVID-19 headwinds in Q4. If we look at revenue was AUD 587 million, down 2%. Some highlights in that number were our multi-destination revenue up 52% for the full year.
At the end of Q3, across all lines of the business, we were up 19.2%. The impacts of COVID-19 lockdown, social distancing, and travel restrictions meant that Q4 was a challenge with revenue down in that quarter, down 64%. EBIT at AUD 107.8 million was up 11%. Really a combination of the momentum we had through the first eight months, and then a disciplined and prudent cost control through the following four months. In fact, when we look at the average operational overhead run rate for the first half, we were running at around AUD 21 million per month. Through the second half, that average is out at AUD 15 million. You can see the actions taken delivered significant cost savings through the last four months of the year. NPATA at AUD 70.5 million, up 3%. Strong cash balance at AUD 307 million as of June 30th, 2020.
Since the equity raise towards that end of February period, we've only seen a reduction of AUD 27 million in cash in that time. Our working capital facility at AUD 175 million remains undrawn. If I touch on a couple of the highlights as they relate to volume metrics. Student placement at 51,000 students placed or APFs, was up 3%. The U.K. up 22% in that number, Canada up 29%, Australia down 15%, this primarily reflects some of those restrictions which impacted intakes through the second half of the year. IELTS testing at 1,095,000 is down 15%. The first half, as some of you may recall, was up 11%, through the second half, basically across the globe through April with almost a full shutdown impacting second half volumes being down, 41%.
English language teaching at 94,400 courses reflects a 0.2% growth on the year, even though we had lockdowns of schools in both Vietnam and Cambodia for extended periods in the second half. Digital marketing at AUD 27.3 million. Revenue up 11%, and pleasingly inside that number, our international digital marketing orders, which are supporting our clients in engaging with international students using our digital technology, were up 25% in the year. If I move to slide five, just to really summarize to everyone how we responded as we entered into this challenging period. The first thing we did was not take our foot off the transformation accelerator. We made a commitment and have continued to double down on those transformational initiatives which we believe position IDP for the long term, and equally, position us to effectively engage with our customers and our markets through this difficult time.
Very rapid innovation enabled us to stand up new capabilities literally within weeks. We had 60,000 students attend more than 660 virtual events through the four-month period from March. We introduced IELTS Indicator, an online English proficiency test in 70 countries across and during the peak of restrictions. We quickly moved to virtual counseling with over 35,000 virtual counseling sessions delivered. The business really did pivot quickly and thankfully to the investments that we'd made over the last few years, we were able to stand up strong engagement channels with our customers. We took prudent and decisive capital management actions. The AUD 254 million equity raise and the AUD 175 million working capital facility has really enhanced our balance sheet strength. Clearly when you look at our current cash balance and cash burn, we're very well positioned to ride out the challenges that we see ahead of us.
Disciplined cost control measures delivered over AUD 35 million of overhead savings in H2 versus H1. We also quickly reprioritized our capital expenditure profile to ensure that those strategic programs, in particular aligned to Student Placement and IELTS transformation, continued to be resourced through the period. We've been able to develop and continue to grow a strong pipeline, and with our technology, continue to nurture our customers. We've really established ourselves as the authoritative content in the industry, and SEO is driving strong organic web inquiries. Organic web inquiries are up 25% over the same period last year. Our IDP Connect business, which is serving our clients directly with data and digital marketing services, continues to perform strongly and remained completely operational through the period.
Our data insights orders for our information or insight data products was actually up 89% over the previous year, reflecting our clients' desire to get greater insights into how student perceptions are shifting. If I move on to the next page six, just covering off really a current operational status for everybody on the call. We're seeing a progressive reopening of offices and IELTS test centers after a near global shutdown in April. As of the 18th of August, at a student placement level, 109 of our 127 student placement offices are open and we've established virtual offices, in fact, across a number of countries. In India to specifically supplement in some of the other states where we've been unable to open our physical offices, but 31 of our 40 offices have now opened in that market.
In English language testing, IELTS has now resumed testing in 53 of the 55 countries in the IDP network. There's still some restrictions in a number of markets due to social distancing and the amount of people who can come together as a group that is impacting the capacity. Nevertheless, as of the 18th of August, 55% of IDP's network capacity has been reinstated. From an English language teaching perspective, schools reopen quickly in Vietnam as they really overcome some of the challenges of COVID-19 quickly. Our schools in Cambodia remain closed for the moment, and we expect those, hopefully, to be opening or reopening in the October timeframe. From an IDP Connect perspective, really little impact on our teams and our ability to continue to sell our digital marketing and data products to clients.
In fact, again, as I've noted earlier, a greater demand for those services through this period. Moving to page seven. Again, just reinforcing how we were able to leverage the investment, not just in technology, but really capability that we've built in the business through the last couple of years. We launched very quickly a number of new products and services to ensure that we remain connected and really became the authoritative voice and platform for the industry through this difficult time. I touched on virtual events. We established a bespoke virtual events platform literally within three or four weeks of countries going into lockdown. This really enabled us to stay connected with students and the continued opportunity there and desire for international students to connect and travel ultimately for an international education.
We have 60,000 students, I think most pleasingly as well, over 7,000 clients attended 660 virtual events by the end of the financial year. IELTS Indicator, which we stood up in particular for those markets where we're unable to provide a physical test, whether that be paper or computer delivered, was stood up in a very short period of time. We managed to get it accepted literally in weeks by more than 900 institutions around the world. It was delivered in 70 countries at the peak of the shutdown. Virtual counseling. The technology that we had put in place pre-COVID-19 enabled virtual counseling, so we were very quickly able to ensure our counselors were productive regardless of the fact that they were working from home and around the world.
At one point in time, all of our counselors were working from an at-home environment, and they've continued to be productive and we've continued to hold on to that resource because we see that critical to position ourselves for the rebound as it occurs. If I move to page eight, just touching on the pipeline. Clearly, the virtual events and lead nurturing programs has enabled us to continue to build a strong pipeline of customers. As you can see by that pie chart on the right-hand side, our applied volumes through the full year have grown by 31%, and there you can see a breakdown by market. If we look at the chart on the left, you can see that our physical events engagement, in terms of attendance, grew by 10%.
Overall, having implemented our virtual events platform, we were able to grow attendance by 58% through the full year. In that lighter blue chart, you can see really the pure growth in attendance on that virtual platform. We significantly reduced our cost per lead as we pulled back on paid marketing spend and put our efforts into SEO and content development. Really, I think we also benefited in that context from the aura around our digital events which led to continued growth in pipeline. In fact, if we look within our pipeline, in that period from September coming up just ahead of us to March of next year, we have over 82,000 unique applicants in our pipeline that we are engaged with who are preparing to study overseas in the coming period.
We were equally able to continue to engage and ensure our customers were serviced well, with nine out of 10 students saying that they would recommend IDP. If I move to page nine now. Through the year, we built out and executed what I think is the definitive insight into student intentions through our Crossroads surveys, and we've run a number of those through this period. They've been provided to and have provided policymakers in governments in our destinations, as well as our universities, unique insights into the changing intentions of international students through this disruptive period. Our research shows that students are still holding on to their study intentions, with 74% of students with current offers holding on their plans to take up courses, whether that be a combination of online or should they be able to travel into the destination market.
I think interestingly, since we did the first study in April, the second study has shown, I guess, a transition of preference from face-to-face to online. Maybe it's not so much preference, it's probably more acceptance that students are realizing that they may need to, should they want to begin their courses online and then transition to face-to-face as face-to-face delivery becomes available. If I move to page 10. This provides a really, I think, a very strong and clear insight into the challenges that we had in April as the world went into a lockdown almost in unison. Clearly, we're seeing the recovery begin. In particular, this is reflecting the IELTS numbers, and you can see the recovery through the May, June, and right up to the end of July period.
Computer-delivered testing has really assisted us in taking advantage of that recovery opportunity, as it enables us to stand up and configure environments that can fulfill social distancing and group size restrictions in a very agile way. We currently have available IELTS in 196 computer-delivered centers, with 29 new centers added since January 1st. We're planning on adding another 52 to be scheduled and open before the end of the financial year. If I move to page 11. I wanted to just represent and reinforce the fact that we continue to pursue our objective as being the industry transformer through bringing our platform, technology, capability, and data insights to market. Those investments continue. Our digital campus in Chennai has grown in number through this difficult period as we've continued to prioritize and, in some cases, expand on the work we're doing.
In particular, in areas like propensity modeling and matching for students and for institutions. We've completed building our data science team, and they are engaged in driving data science initiatives, which we believe will unlock operational product and new insight opportunities. Let me pause there, and we'll move into the financial results update, and I'll hand over to Murray Walton to take us through the next few slides. Murray?
Thanks, Andrew. I'm going to start on page 13, covering the FY 2020 overview. Revenue was AUD 587 million, 5% below last year on a constant currency basis. We were showing strong growth through the end of the third quarter, with growth of 19% versus the same period last year. COVID-19 had a significant impact on the fourth quarter with a reduction in revenue, as Andrew mentioned, of 64% compared to the same period in FY 2019. A couple of highlights for the year, however, were the strong growth in multi-destination student placement, which was up 48% on a constant currency basis, and our digital marketing business, excluding discontinued revenue lines, was up 11%. EBIT was AUD 107.8 million, up 7% on last year on a constant currency basis.
The EBIT margin increase from 16% - 18% was a result of improved gross profit margin and the effective control of costs as we delivered savings of AUD 35 million from the run rate when we started taking action to reduce overheads in March. Overheads on a pre-AASB 16 basis at a constant currency was 6% lower than last year. Depreciation and amortization of AUD 38 million includes AUD 21 million of depreciation of leases capitalized under AASB 16, with normal depreciation of AUD 17 million, which increased by 11%. Net profit after tax is AUD 67.8 million, and it's 2% below last year on a constant currency basis. I'm going to move to page 14 on disciplined cost reduction.
In March, as we started to see the impact of COVID-19 on our revenues, Andrew set up a team to develop the plans and report on the execution of cost reduction initiatives across the business. In the first half and through to the end of February, our monthly run rate of overheads pre-AASB 16, so including the rental of our offices, was AUD 21 million per month. In the last four months, we reduced our monthly run rate to AUD 12.5 million and delivered overall savings of AUD 35 million. The actions we took included all staff agreeing to a 20% salary reduction to the end of September, a hiring freeze on both replacements and new positions, reduction in bonuses, negotiated reductions in rent, and reducing marketing and travel spends.
We also participated in government wage subsidies in a number of countries where that was available, and this totaled AUD 3.7 million of the savings and overhead of AUD 35 million. I'm now going to move to page 15, our key operating metrics. The key operating metrics highlights the importance of our multi-destination strategy. Student placement volumes increased to 51,000, up 3% on last year, with multi-destination volumes up 28% to 26,800 and making up 53% of our total volume. Strong growth to Canada, U.K., and the U.S.A. to the end of March ensured strong full-year growth despite the second half declining 7%. The Australian student placement volume of 24,200 was a decline of 15%, with a small number of Chinese students unable to commence in semester one. Semester two for all of our source markets was effectively canceled.
IELTS volumes were 1,095,000, a decline of 15% on last year, as a large proportion of our test centers were unable to operate in the last quarter. We did see, however, Nigeria, Japan, and Uzbekistan had some solid growth year on year, but the majority of our markets declined versus the PCP. Moving on to average price performance. The average test fee for IELTS increased by 6%, and on a constant currency basis, the increase was 1%. Price increases were applied in many markets, including India and Australia, adding 1.5% on a constant currency basis, but the loss of the BC, the British Council China license fee for five months, was a negative impact of 2% on our average price for the year. The average student placement application processing fee has increased to AUD 3,740, an 8% increase on the same period last year on a constant currency basis.
The Australian average fee increased 2% on a constant currency basis with favorable study mix, increase in commission from clients, and a small amount of client incentives offset by a 4.6% increase in our credit provisions. The multi-destination average fee increased 16% on a constant currency basis with a favorable study sector mix, an increase in client commissions negotiated by client teams, offset a little by a decline in student pays revenue from China, which was down. I'm going to move to page 16, looking at our strong margin performance. We've continued to expand our gross profit margin, increasing our FY 2020 GP margin by 2.9 percentage points to 58.8%.
IELTS margin increased by 1.8 percentage points to 44.8%, coming from a combination of lower costs for test day activity in India and price increases in key markets, more than offsetting the reduction of the British Council China license fee in the second half. Student placement gross profit margin held steady at 81.4% as increases in both volume and average price of multi-destination student placement covered the increase in investment in the support of our student placement platform in Chennai. Lower sub-agent commissions from China also supported the holding of the student placement gross profit margin. With the student placement margin holding steady, it contributed to the 2.9% GP margin improvement due to a higher mix of student placement revenue.
The move to virtual events in the second half also made a positive contribution to margin improvement, as the cost of running virtual events was significantly lower than physical events. Going to move to page 16, the balance sheet. The balance sheet remains strong with a cash balance at the close of AUD 307 million. Our cash burn for the last four months was limited to AUD 27 million relative to the pro forma balance sheet we presented for the equity raise in March. Given our current cash burn rate and our current cash balance, we're in a strong position to get to the other side of the pandemic. I'm going to hand back to Andrew now.
Thanks, Murray. I'll move on to the summary, which is on page 19. I think, again, I'll probably just reinforce a couple of things that I've already said. For us, through this period, we saw an opportunity to accelerate our digital transformation, and we saw, of course, a need given the physical lockdowns that were impacting the business. That investment in our ability to pivot using the technologies available to us and the capabilities, has enabled us to rapidly change and address opportunity and again, to reposition ourselves as the leader in the international education marketplace. Virtual events and virtual counseling enabled us to remain in a position where we could nurture not just new prospects, but those prospects sitting in our pipeline for future intakes.
The investment in our data science capabilities, now complete, is putting us in a good position to continue with new transformational services into the coming period. I think, just as Murray quickly noted, another highlight is our disciplined capital management and cost control. Clearly, that contributed significantly to our EBIT performance without requiring us to cut muscle out of the environment. We remain strongly focused on ensuring that we take our strong global talent to the other side and actually position them to take advantage of the opportunities we see as we do that. I think finally, and most importantly, the structural demand drivers of our industry remain unchanged. I think that's clearly reflected in the feedback and the intentions of students through our surveys.
Firstly, clients are relying more and more on us and our IDP Connect business for trusted insights on those student behaviors and student intentions. You can see the industry coming back to life and its preparations to travel abroad through the reopening of the IELTS test centers and the increasing curve of volume as test takers come back into market to take tests. We believe students are holding on to their global study aspirations. As I said, 74% of those surveyed with applications intend to continue with their objective to travel and study overseas. I believe the company is poised and well-positioned to take advantage of these opportunities as restrictions slowly ease into the forward period. Let me stop there. What I'd like to do, operator, is open up the call to questions at this point. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, would you please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you need to cancel that request, please press the pound or hash key. Our first question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. How are you doing?
Good, Tim.
Good. Just two questions from me, if that's all right, Andrew. I'm looking at that slide that shows the IELTS recovery test, it looks like you guys are kind of back to a monthly run rate of about 62,000 odd, which, if I apply the price, just around AUD 18 million of revenue and kind of AUD 14 mil of GP. Am I thinking about that the right way in terms of July?
I think certainly from a volume perspective, you're thinking about it in the right way. Yeah, volumes are continuing to increase. I think, Murray, did you want to make a comment on the margin component of that question?
Well, what was your revenue number, Tim?
About AUD 18 million of revenue, about AUD 14 million of GP.
Our GP for IELTS is around 43%, 44%. If you're AUD 18 million at 44%, about AUD 8 million of GP.
Sorry, yes, eight. Are you able to make any comments in terms of overall beginning run rate revenues for July for the group?
Oh, no, we're not in a position to do that. Tim?
Right. Just last question around the semester one for the Australian university. Just wondering how the discussions are going with the universities. How are they thinking about the semester? What's the appetite in terms of providing online, and is there any appetite to provide a discount or to contribute towards the quarantine costs required?
Yeah. I would say semester one seems a long way away at this juncture, being in primarily February of next year. There's a lot of movement in the industry. You would've seen Charles Darwin, so the NT industry looking to stand up their first pilot of bringing students back in, providing quarantine for them. Equally, in the South Australian pilot, which is aimed for September, to do a similar thing. I think those pilots will be used to inform the government, and I think equally balance out the local citizens' concerns around public health. It's very difficult to predict what will happen in the S1 intake in Australia at this point in time.
I think probably I would just expand on that and note that from IDP's perspective, clearly we're continuing to develop a large pipeline should that intake be something that students want to pursue. At the moment, we're very much focused really on the fall intakes into Canada and to the U.K. I think it's a bit difficult to predict exactly what will happen with the S1 intake and where universities will be. A number of them are looking clearly at being prepared to bring students back onto campus through quarantine measures, but equally have online learning available should that not be the case.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Tim.
Our next question comes from Philip Pepe from Blue Ocean Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Look, well done on a good result in very tough conditions. Just on when things can potentially get back to quote unquote normal. I guess we can only talk opinions at the moment, do you think as you look around the grounds in terms of where you operate, that governments are going to require a full reopening of the borders before students are allowed in? Do you think in some regions they'll be considered temporary residents and, as mentioned earlier, subject to lockdown, quarantine for a couple of weeks, come before the tourists come for the sake of various economies? Where are we around the world in terms of willingness to allow students in to help some of these economies recover?
Yeah. No, I think it's a good question. It's probably a question that we ask ourselves every day at the moment. We have a situation call with each of our destinations and source countries around the world. Things are changing very dramatically. I'll give you just an example if you like. Then maybe just we can do a quick trip around the world. In the course of the last week, British Airways started flying into India and out of India back into the U.K. The U.K. is working very hard to be open for their September intakes. In that context, changes are happening very rapidly. If someone had have said three weeks ago, is there an opportunity for students really to take up the opportunity in the U.K.? I would've been a little bit more conservative.
In the last week, flights have appeared, so now the logistics challenges of students getting there are no longer an issue. Now, for the U.K., of course, they don't have restrictions in being able to travel into the U.K., and they have a quarantine period required. It's different in different markets. Of course, Australia at the moment, international students can't get into the country. Canada, they can get into the country, but they have to have a clear reason for why they need to be there on campus to study in the fall. In the case of Canada, many institutions are providing letters to the students that they can provide to immigration upon their arrival.
I think just to point out, there's a lot of complexity given the amount of destination markets and the source markets we're talking about, and it's changing on a weekly basis at the moment. My view is from a near-term period, the U.K. is the most open, and we can see in terms of student interest, a real pull towards the U.K. because of that opportunity to travel. I think it's also worth noting that in many markets, and let's take the U.K., for example, they're also now looking at some universities having a November and a January intake. For Canada, of course, we have three intakes through the year. If people can't get in to study on campus in September, you'll see a lot of that pipeline probably defer to intakes in the second half. For Australia, it's still a little bit unknown, right?
Australia, I think, is still working through those challenges with what's been proposed by South Australia and Northern Territory, and would seem in South Australia's case to be supported by the federal government. Clearly, in that case, Scott Morrison has stepped away from his demands that all state borders be open and is enabling, in that case, one of the states to begin their pilots without that as a prerequisite.
If I can just sneak in one question about the operating cash flow. Obviously, creditors need to be paid and debtors or revenue down because of COVID. Do we just take the current balance sheet ratios as an abnormal, and we get back to normal operating cash flow levels, let's call it calendar 2021?
I'll just pass that question to Murray.
Yeah, look, I think that's reasonable. An example of the abnormal activity is the fee we pay Cambridge for the IELTS test. At year-end, this was AUD 16 million or 75% lower than the last year. For the year, the fee we paid Cambridge was actually only 20% below. Right at the end of the year, quite a significant movement in a number of those working capital items.
Very good. Thank you.
Thanks, Phil.
Our next question comes from Matt Johnston from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Andrew and Murray. Can you hear me?
Yes, I can, Matt. How are you?
Good. How are you?
Good, thanks.
I might just pick up where we left off, just around the student placements for multi-destination. Is there any sense you can give us or make any comments around the size of the intakes for U.K., Canada?
Not really. I can give you a little bit of commentary, but I'm not sure I can really give you any firm view on what the volumes will look like, because we just don't know at the moment. I would say that the fall intakes for both Canada and the U.K. will certainly be more subdued than they were last year in the first half. I think we'll see certainly how we're predicting it, a stronger second half with many of the U.K. universities for the first time standing up a January intake. Of course, with the two Canadian intakes in the second half, those will prove to be more attractive for the students.
The reason I say that is you have to recognize that for the past couple of months in markets like China and India, it's been very difficult to do your IELTS testing, and in many cases, the visa offices have been closed. A large proportion, and as I pointed out, we have a very large pipeline of students ready to go. Because through this last period, both IELTS and visa processing has been disrupted, there's a view that we have is that a number of students are deferring into those new intakes in terms of the U.K. and those available intakes in terms of Canada, just to provide them with the time to do their full preparation, have their visas ready to go, and a much higher chance of being able to go directly into an in-classroom environment.
We do certainly have demand for both Canada and the UK in autumn. We're seeing some interesting shifts, as I said, on a weekly basis. I mean, literally in the last week, if you look into some of our data, now students in India, there's 80% of the volume of students we have in India plan to travel. That was not the case three or four weeks ago into the UK in the coming fall intake. It's very difficult to predict how many may, when it gets down to the wire, may choose to defer because of current requirements for quarantine, and equally the ability potentially to defer to a January intake in some cases.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe just a quick one on the overhead cost per month. Is it fair to assume that going into first half FY 2021, that the AUD 12.5 million-AUD 15 million is a fair assumption?
Maybe I'll pass that one to Murray.
As the staff salary reductions roll off, because they will roll off at some point in the first half. For the first quarter, the run rate that we've had in the last quarter of last year, it'll tick up a little, but once those salary reductions come off, the expectation is that it will tick up again closer to the AUD 18 million-AUD 19 million over the longer period.
Okay, that's helpful. Then I might squeeze one quick one more in, just around, I guess the digital strategy and the platform. When you talk about shifts from students, Andrew, have you seen many changes from people indicating they wanted to go to Australia, but given the border closures, they then shift to U.K., Canada through the platform?
Yeah, I think that's a great question, and we had a similar question the other day asked from a geopolitical perspective. Most people from a behavior and an intentions perspective, based on the survey data, still intend to go to their destination of choice. For us, out of China, for example, our major placement locations are Australia and the U.K. They remain strong in terms of intentions. Interestingly, what we have seen, though, because of some of this geopolitical rhetoric, is many of the students out of China who had intended to go to the U.S. are now shifting their intentions to Australia or the U.K., which was an interesting insight from the data.
I think, clearly, if students intending to come to Australia start to get nervous about their ability to come in in that S1 intake, I believe we will see a number of those shift to the U.K., with the U.K. being a net beneficiary of that as they go into what looks like many of the universities having, for the first time, an intake that'll be competitive with Australia's S1 in that January-February period.
Okay, great. That's really helpful. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from James Bales from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate the color that you've given on the IELTS forward bookings trajectory. Can you talk maybe to or the current test taking, can you maybe talk to the forward bookings visibility that you've got and how that compares to the 55% capacity that you've outlined?
Yeah, I think, good question, James. Thank you. At the moment, what we're seeing from a capacity and a volume perspective, they're pretty much in sync. As the capacity is increasing, the test volume is increasing. That probably reflects that the demand for testing is robust. As we open up more centers, we are fulfilling the capacity of those centers with test takers. It's almost linear at the moment, to be quite frank. Whether that continues or not is another question, but right now it's running pretty much in sync.
That begs the question, what does that ramp-up profile look like? Roughly where do you expect to be by December or June?
Yeah. Well, I wish I had the crystal ball for that one. Clearly, we're impacted by the continued social distancing and restrictions on venue numbers. I would say the team globally has done an awesome job of daily restructuring of venues based on shifting chief medical officer requirements on how many people you can have per session. Probably, one of the bigger things to watch, and it's not a prediction because I don't think I'm in a position to do that with so many unknowns, is India and the continued ability for us to start standing up paper testing, because that enables us to do larger volumes quickly. It's, again, step by step. India itself is opening up. I think people need to understand that occasionally, for one step, two steps forward, we take a little step back.
For example, the Philippines took a step back when it closed down a few weeks ago. Yeah, overall, I think it has a lot more right now to do with us being able to stand up the capacity, but that dependency is on the restrictions in place country by country. As restrictions ease, we will push forward with more and more capacity. I can't predict when those restrictions will ease with any accuracy.
Great. You've given a run rate for IELTS up until last week or something in that deck. There's nothing similar for student placement. You've talked about how things might unfold, could you maybe give us a sense of how applications are coming in as a percentage of last year? How do you sort of think about the willingness of the student to actually go ahead and study remotely if that's forced upon them versus deferrals.
Yeah. No, good question. Again, it's very difficult to do a run rate on student placement in this environment, given the structure of when intakes happen and the disruption that we're currently facing. Clearly in the pack I showed that applications are up 31% year-on-year. Over the last couple of months, they've probably stepped down a little bit into that low teen numbers. Nevertheless, the number of applicants we're holding in inventory is still growing. As I mentioned, we have 82,000 students, unique students with counselors, with applications in to go study between September and March, and that application number is continuing to grow, in that probably low teens number. The challenge now is just helping them navigate the restrictions and the opportunity to move ahead.
We have seen in the last month, in particular as it relates to the fall intakes, an increasing number of those students willing to start online. Now again, is that a clear predictor as to what will happen? We're not sure because we don't have historic data that gives us any confidence. What we can see is, compared to where we were last year as to where we are today, students are taking longer to really finalize and commit to their study. They're still watching. As I used that example before, literally in the last week, British Airways started flying in and out of India to the U.K. again. On my situation call last night, the Chinese airlines and BA now look like they're going to go into China. That's shifting people's views.
People are watching and at the last minute, I think we will see which path they choose to go. It is not clear to us at the moment. There are students who will go online. What proportion would only be a guesstimate at the moment.
Finally, you flagged a step-up in commission. Can you talk to the quantum of commission step-ups in SP and the permanence that you expect there?
Sure. I might get Murray to take that one. Thanks, James.
James, the negotiated increase in commission rate across all destinations is 6.4%. There's no effect, and that's purely increase in negotiated commissions. Then of course, there's a study sector mix. We've had a big step-up in postgrad volume. It's now 50% of our total volume. That has also added 3% to the average price.
Yeah.
All right. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, James.
Our next question comes from Will MacDiarmid from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew and Murray. The growth in applicants that you're currently getting is obviously very impressive in the environment. To what extent do you think you're sort of winning market share in that space? I guess, what are you seeing in the market with respect to other agents? Presumably there's a lot of pain, are you seeing a lot of smaller agents or even larger agents leave the market?
Yeah, I think, I kind of missed a little bit of the first part of that question, but I thought it related to market share. Was that correct?
That's right. Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, from a market share perspective, we continue to do very well. If we look at Australia through the full year, Australian numbers overall were probably down 24%. As I mentioned, we were down 15%. Obviously you're seeing the impact of a reduced S2 and S1 in that second half in those numbers. From a U.K. perspective, we know they're probably growing as a market sub 10%, and IDP was 22% up. Then Canada's growth was about 4.3%, and we were up 29%. I think, with where we sit right now with that inventory of international students and our ability to continue to engage and a full complement of counselors in place, as restrictions do ease and students do start to travel, one of our aims was to ensure that we would take, again, a step-up in market share from our competitors.
I think we're well poised to do that given our close connection to the clients and the inventory of international students we're engaged with, who are, as I said, ready to go and may choose online or may defer until they can do face-to-face, but they will be from our inventory. Then I think to the second part of your question, clearly, many of the smaller agents are under duress and having a difficult time through this period. The clients, I believe, will be more reliant on us to fulfill their seats and their demand as the market does come back.
Okay, great. If students do elect to study online or are required to study online, what impact might that have on your fee and I suppose the fee that they pay as well? Are they just going to be doing one or two modules, which means their first year is less? What are sort of dynamics around how that might play out?
No, we've been quite clear with our clients and our agreements. We've had, by the way, extremely good support from our clients in reconfirming how we propose to move forward and our position is that we will continue to receive full commission, regardless of whether it's online or they begin online or if it's in classroom. Regardless, generally, if it's for a smaller number of modules. In fact, we're being offered, in some cases, larger commissions to help them bring students into an online environment so that they can rely on us to increase conversion in that period where they may not be able to get students into market. Interestingly, some of the U.K. universities are also paying at an earlier point in the student onboarding process to try and keep their agents afloat through this difficult period.
There are institutions who are very aware that they need to keep the muscle in their agent networks to enable them to actually benefit from the rebound when it comes.
Okay. That's really interesting. Just finally, in terms of the recovery of IELTS volumes, has there been some markets in particular that have supported that? I guess what I'm getting to is India's had a tough time with COVID. Are you seeing a recovery there as well?
Yeah, interesting. In these numbers, India is probably muted a little bit relative to the upticks we're seeing across the rest of the world. I think we'll start to see India come into these numbers in the coming months. These numbers and this uptick is more reflective of the other markets opening up around the world. I'll give you one really positive data point. In Canada, which is one of our top three markets, we're seeing demand for IELTS 25% up on what it was in the same period last year. Again, those are markets that aren't even completely open. We don't have all of our test centers open in Canada yet. We've been able to, again, leverage the network of CD centers where we can operate three times a day, seven days a week, should we choose to start to service that demand.
India will start to come more online and impact this upswing through the coming months.
Terrific. Thanks very much.
Our final question will come from Aaron Yeoh from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrew and Murray. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a great result in tough times. Just the first one, thinking about your comments about growing inventory and the pipeline building. Can you just give us an idea about what you think a potential sort of super semester intake could look like relative to normal levels? Do you think it could be 50% higher than normal, twice as large? Any sort of sense around there. Just with regards to the operational capacity of your business, do you think you'd be able to handle these volumes and also any color around discussions with universities about larger intakes as well would be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. No, thanks, Aaron. We thought earlier in the piece, going really all the way back to probably the half-year result, some universities who could see the challenges were speaking to the potential for super intakes. I don't believe that's really the case now. I think the universities themselves are looking to having multiple intakes as opposed to super intakes. I think multiple intakes are more closely aligned to getting them back to on-trend with where they were COVID-19 through the course of 2021 and into 2022. It's very difficult for the universities really to have a super intake of any one particular cohort for any particular course. My view is what we're seeing is the universities respond by ensuring that they're much more flexible now with multiple intakes as they move towards bringing back international students to a similar degree as what they had them before.
I think IDP's position in that is that what we are seeking and are well-positioned to do is to take, again, a larger share of those intakes as they come back, as opposed to be reliant on what was referred to by the universities as potential super intakes.
Great. That's very helpful. I was just really interested in that slide you had just on the pickup in IELTS volumes and how it's much more computer-based testing. Just wondering if you think this is a bit of a catalyst to actually transition your networks to computer-based testing faster than what you would've originally expected and maybe perhaps more of an opportunity over the longer term?
Yeah. No, I think, Aaron, it's a great question, and you probably heard from some other companies along this regard. The new normal has accelerated, right? Our ability to do virtual counseling, virtual events, which Murray told me today are actually less expensive than physical events, which sounds interesting. Then, yeah, the shift to CD is accelerating. Partly it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because more people do it, and then they themselves communicate to more test takers about the convenience, the ease, and the experience. Yes, I think coming out through this forward period, and you can see how many CD centers we've got scheduled to open up between now and the end of the year, we see it as a bigger proportion of the overall testing volume relative to paper.
Great. No, that's good color. Thanks very much, Andrew and Murray.
Great
Congrats again and all the best for the year ahead.
Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us on the call today and look forward to speaking with many of you through the next couple of days. Cheers.