Thanks operator. Good morning. For those of you I haven't met, my name is Tennealle O'Shannessy. I started as IDP's Chief Executive Officer last week. I'd like to thank all of those shareholders that have reached out to me. Importantly, I'd like to express my thanks to the board for giving me this opportunity. I'm very pleased to be returning to this growing, exciting industry and to an Australian success story like IDP. I believe my experience in the global education industry and in strategy, M&A, and technology gives me the platform I need to be able to build on this success of IDP's strategy over the coming years. It's an honor to be with you today to present the results the team has delivered for the first half of financial year 2023.
Joining me today are Murray Walton, our Chief Financial Officer, and Craig Mackie, our Director of Corporate Development. I'm especially pleased today as we present such strong results for the first half. During this period, IDP once again demonstrated its unwavering commitment to its ambitious long-term strategy, its sector leadership, and the depth of its experienced and talented global teams. The business has delivered record results this half, with strong growth reflecting IDP's industry leadership and commitment to a strategy that builds on our competitive advantages and leadership position. We continue to see a positive global landscape and strong macro conditions, with resurgent demand for international study and migration and a highly supportive policy environment. Along with our financial statements for the first half, this morning we lodged with the ASX our investor presentation, which we would like to take you through now.
In doing so, we will review our financial performance for the six months ended 31st of December, 2022. We will provide an update on the state of the industry and the positive macro settings that are underpinning through-the-cycle growth for IDP. We will summarize our strategic areas of focus and the key developments on those during the period. At the end of the call, we will be very happy to take questions. Moving to the presentation, I'll start off on slide four for those following along with a summary of the key operational and financial statistics for the half. The business delivered a record half year performance that reflects IDP's leadership position and innovation in a rebounding industry.
We delivered revenue at AUD 502 million, up 26% on the prior period, driven by double-digit revenue growth across all product lines and a 63% increase in student placement revenue to highlight. Adjusted EBIT at AUD 123 million, up 53% versus the prior period. Margin expansion, which has been a theme of recent results, was obviously a key driver of this great outcome. Adjusted NPAT at AUD 84.4 million was up a very strong 59%. We have also announced a 56% increase in dividends for the period, with the AUD 0.21 per share payment a reflection of the unique characteristics of IDP, a growth company with a strong balance sheet that generates free cash flow. Looking now at some of the highlights from an operational perspective.
Student placement volumes came in at 43,000, up a very strong 53% versus the prior period. All destination markets performed strongly, with Australian placements up 128% to 15,200, which is above the levels recorded in the first half of FY 2020 before the pandemic commenced. Our Northern Hemisphere destinations also continued to post impressive results, with volumes to the U.K. up 31%, Canada up 22%, and the U.S.A. up 32%. IELTS volumes were up 5%, with growth consolidating on a very strong FY 2022. Finally, enrollment volumes in our English language courses were up 40%, with our Cambodian operations able to return to a normal cadence following the removal of COVID control measures. If I move now to slide five. From a macro perspective, IDP's operating in an industry that has strong structural tailwinds.
Demand for international education and migration has rebounded very strongly, with our customers' aspirations aligning with the desire of governments to attract young talent and skilled workers to support longer-term economic growth. Across all of our key destination markets, Australia, Canada and the U.K., we are seeing very supportive industry conditions in terms of policy settings relating to post-study work rights. We can clearly observe the strong through-the-cycle industry structural growth that IDP is aligned to with our global network. Importantly here, growth is from all markets, with IDP's diversified exposure to a large number of both source and destination markets a key feature of our business model. During the period, we also looked to further strengthen our diversification and our longer-term growth profile by acquiring Intake Education, which has a very strong operation in Africa, a market which has attractive demographics and is expected to see strong long-term growth.
Moving now to slide six. Slide six demonstrates the broad-based rebound occurring across the global system as international mobility returns. This chart shows the aggregate student visa data for each of our major destination markets. Due to the strong demand growth and the positive structural tailwinds we've called out, all of our major destination markets are now back above pre-COVID levels in terms of total student visa issuance from our source countries. The reopening of Australia's borders in mid-December 2021 has triggered a strong recovery. With the underlying attractiveness of Australia as a study destination overcoming the negative sentiment during the pandemic. The key constraint on growth at the moment relates to the supply chain, with ongoing visa processing delays and higher rejection rates impacting sentiment and demand for Canada.
Shifting gears now on slide eight, I'd like to spend some time outlining our strategic areas of focus and the key developments during the period. We're continuing to execute a well-established strategy that is delivering results. To put it simply, our strategy is focused on delivering a compelling proposition to our customers that's best described as intimacy at scale. After several years of investment to build our digital capabilities alongside our world-leading physical network, we now offer an unmatched combination of global scale and trusted expertise. The seamless omnichannel service we now offer brings a very tailored, personalized digital experience to our customers. This is made possible by the world's most comprehensive international student dataset and is incredibly difficult for our fragmented competitors to replicate.
In a traditionally analog industry, technology very much acts as an enabler that enhances our customers' experience, an experience that is centered on human connection and trust. Our highly trusted brand, which has been built over decades through local human connections, is now powered by our global digital capabilities to deliver an experience that is quite simply life-changing for our customers. Just to go a little bit deeper on this slide, what do we mean when we say trusted experts? To bring some color here, we have trusted brands such as IELTS that are relied upon by universities and governments to provide reliable and consistent assessment of language ability. We have over 1,800 counselors that provide independent and personalized advice, offering both in-person and virtual support.
We have deep client relationships with over 800 universities who rely on IDP to provide insights, advice, and quality well-matched students. When it comes to human connections, we continue to innovate and invest to enhance our global scale and footprint. I'd like to share some examples of this from the first half. We built out our physical network through the period, adding 34 new student placement offices across the network, bringing the total to more than 190, with an additional 24 offices planned for the second half. We're also very proud of our IELTS network that spans over 50 countries with more than 230 computer-delivered centers. We're also growing our digital scale with more than 600 employees at our digital campus and with an extensive portfolio of local language websites that generate over 100 million visits annually.
A call-out here, these are some of the most popular and heavily trafficked websites in the industry globally. This half, we've accelerated the uptake of our recently launched IDP Live student placement app and the IELTS app. I'll talk a little bit more on both of these a little later on in the presentation. Moving now to slide nine, going a little deeper on each of our major business lines, starting with our student placement business. Now, just as a reminder, our aim with the student placement business is to reimagine the student placement model through enhancing our human expertise with global technology and data. Earlier, I spoke to student placement volumes being up 53% versus the prior period. I'd now like to talk through how we're continuing to drive this growth.
We're combining our trusted and personalized advice with data and insights and systems to deliver what is a highly innovative model for the industry. As part of this, we've begun to deliver what are transformative services for our students and clients. An example of this innovation is the digital functionality we've incorporated within our student placement app, IDP Live. With IDP Live, we've built out the core functionality, and some of the aspects that are already available are things like a comprehensive course database and search functionality, a highly sophisticated recommendation engine that helps students shortlist the courses that are right for them, and the ability to apply directly to unis and to manage the documentation process all through their phones. In addition, the IDP Live app provides access to FastLane, another key strategic initiative we're focused on.
Just as a reminder, FastLane is a new service that harnesses IDP's unrivaled global dataset and client relationships to enable students to receive real-time, in-principle offers from leading institutions. We've been very pleased with the progress and the adoption by our customers with 1.4 million app downloads. We've also had 75 clients onboarded or signed up to FastLane and over 7,000 formal offers completed, and we're well on track to deliver our stated target of 9,000 this financial year. We're just getting started here, with a future pipeline of functionality planned as we build out the student placement marketplace experience. Moving to slide 10 with a focus on IELTS.
As a reminder, IELTS is the world's leading English language test for study and migration. The IELTS value proposition is compelling, offering both choice and flexibility in the way candidates can take a test, and a dramatically enhanced customer experience through product innovation and improved support. Our aim with IELTS is to be at the forefront of innovation in English language testing, and we've got a strong track record of delivering this, introducing computer-based testing and more recently, online testing. This year, IELTS has continued to strengthen its position as the world's most trusted high-stakes English language test, enhancing our trusted human expertise through global technology. Together with our partners, British Council and Cambridge, we have undertaken a complete modernization of the underlying technology infrastructure that supports test creation and delivery.
The new platform, among other things, will enable us to drive product innovation and to deliver significant enhancements to our customer experience. It's already allowed us to launch multiple new products, the first of which was IELTS Online. During the first half, we accelerated the rollout of IELTS Online to more than 40 countries, and we're well on target for 50+ countries by FY 2024. A big call-out here. One of the advantages with IELTS Online is it gives us the opportunity to offer the IELTS test in countries where we do not currently have a presence. Really aids in the geographical expansion piece. Another proof point on this product innovation roadmap is the IELTS One Skill Retake, or OSR.
As a reminder, OSR is a new product that allows a candidate to retake just one of the four skills, where improvement is needed in just one area. This is based on student feedback that we've had that this is something that is a, I guess, a key piece of functionality students are looking for. This changes the test taker experience dramatically. It represents a strong value proposition for candidates as they're able to retake just a component of the test without jeopardizing their scores in the other three skills. We have very high ambitions for this product as we believe it will be a unique and highly differentiating feature of IELTS. First tests were completed successfully in December. It is now being rolled out across Australian cities.
We're also very focused on improving the test taker experience. We launched our IELTS by IDP app in May 2022. Just want to talk you through our vision for the IELTS app. Our view is that it will be a game changer. Not only will it improve the test taker experience, but success here is a candidate is able to be successful, not just enabled to take a test. We are early days here, but we've already been very pleased with the strong take-up in the last six months. I'm really happy to share we've reached more than 500,000 downloads since launch. I'm going to pause there. I'd now like to hand over to Murray to take you through the financial results.
Thanks, Tennealle. Turning to the financial results for the period, we have delivered a record half-year performance. Revenue was AUD 502 million, up 26% versus the PCP, with growth across all divisions. Student placement revenue was up 63%, underpinned by the strong rebound in Australian revenue. Multi-destination revenue was up 36%, with volumes to the U.K., Canada, and the U.S.A. all growing strongly to record levels for the half. IELTS revenue was up 11% versus the PCP, with volume and price contributing equally to the growth. Digital marketing and events revenue grew by 11% as we return to physical events and clients invested in meeting potential students and partners in their home countries, but reduced their spend in digital marketing for international students.
English language teaching revenue rebounded strongly, up 80% versus the PCP, as classes were back on campus in Cambodia with a higher average price. Adjusted EBIT is at AUD 123 million and 53% higher versus the PCP. Adjusted net profit after tax is at AUD 84 million, which is 59% higher than the PCP. Moving on to slide 13, the key operating metrics highlight the strong growth and rebound we've seen in student placement, underpinned by the 128% volume growth in Australia. IELTS volumes were 1,019,000, with growth of 5% versus the PCP. A consolidation after the strong growth in FY 2022. Student placement volumes were 43,000, 53% above the PCP, with Australia rebounding to 15,200 in line with the first half FY 2020 volumes.
For Australia, we saw strong growth from Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. With India, Sri Lanka and Nepal the strongest contributors to growth in South Asia. North Asia, particularly China and Hong Kong, lagged the market while we saw a doubling of volumes from Taiwan versus the PCP. U.K. volumes were up 31%, with strong growth from India and Pakistan, while Canada was up 22% despite delays in visa processing and capacity constraints in some popular colleges. I'll move on to the average fee performance. The average test fee for IELTS was AUD 280, a 5% increase, with price increases taken across a majority of our countries.
The average student placement application processing fee has increased to AUD 4,018, a 7% increase versus the PCP, with the majority of the increase coming from higher commission rates and higher tuition fees. I'll move on to slide 14. The student placement pipeline highlights the rebound of the Australian business, with qualified leads for the half up 67% versus the PCP and applicants up 71%, close to the record levels recorded in the first half of FY 2020. The pipeline for our Northern Hemisphere destination continues to show good growth with each of the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. expanding at similar rates. It's important to note that we see a significant opportunity for efficiencies and improved conversion rates in our student placement funnel.
Over the last 12 months, we've deployed a sophisticated lead scoring and prioritization model that is helping us deliver the likely app-applicants to counselors in a more timely fashion. This is starting to deliver outcomes which will help us drive efficiencies and scalability. Moving on to slide 15, margins. Our operating leverage in the student placement business is driving the margin expansion, even with the continuing investments we're making for future growth. There was strong Gross Profit growth across the key business lines, with IELTS Gross Profit up 26%, student placement up 69%, and teaching up 99%. Group Gross Profit margin increased to 62%, primarily due to the high contribution from student placement.
IELTS gross profit margins increased to 48%, with the expansion largely due to price increases taken and cost synergies relative to the PCP from the acquisition of the India testing business. The EBIT margin expansion to 24.6% was driven by the gross profit improvement. All overhead costs for the half of AUD 167 million included AUD 2.7 million of M&A costs and AUD 5.4 million of unrealized FX losses related to the restatement of foreign currency receivables, contract assets, and intercompany balances. The overheads per month run rate, excluding those items on a pre- AASB 16 basis, were AUD 28.6 million. Move on to slide 16, the balance sheet. Our balance sheet remains strong with cash of AUD 135 million at the 31st of December.
The acquisition of Intake was completed in November, with the major movements an increase in debt of AUD 52 million, an increase in intangible assets, and an increase in contract assets from Intake student placements yet to be invoiced. Contract assets overall has increased by AUD 93 million, reflecting the strong growth in student placement revenue during the period. A later billing cycle agreed with Canadian and UK clients and the addition of Intake Education contract assets were included. Contract assets, as they have in the past, are expected to be invoiced and the majority of the cash collected in the second half. I'm gonna hand back to Tennealle now.
Thanks, Murray. I'll now move on to the summary slide 18. The business has delivered record results this half, with revenue up 26% and adjusted EBIT up 53%. Strong volume growth clearly reinforces the strong through the cycle structural demand for global education and migration. These record results demonstrate IDP's industry leadership and its commitment to a strategy that continues to build on our competitive advantages. We continue to see a positive global landscape and strong macro conditions, with resurgent demand for international study and migration and a highly supportive policy environment. IDP is executing on a compelling strategy that is creating a unique combination of both digital and physical services for our customers through ongoing innovation and disciplined investment.
With an unwavering focus on our customers and a clear strategy of combining our trusted brand and human expertise with unrivaled technology systems, I believe IDP is very well-positioned to strengthen its industry leadership throughout 2023 and beyond. I would like to acknowledge our Chief Financial Officer, Murray Walton, on the call, who acted as Interim CEO for the period, IDP's global leadership team, and its broader global staff. IDP is an exceptional business driven by extraordinary people. It's a privilege to be joining an organization that fundamentally changes the lives of its customers through access to global education and careers. I'm excited to be returning to this growing, exciting industry, and I believe my experience in the global education industry will enable me to accelerate and build upon the success of IDP's strategy over the coming years. Thank you all for your time today.
Murray, Craig, and I will now take questions. I'll hand you back to the operator to put them in the queue. Thanks, operator.
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Michael Peat from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Good morning, Tennealle, Murray, and Craig. Thanks for taking my questions. Look, just the first one on IELTS, the sort of 5% growth there versus PCP, obviously off a high base. Is that sort of a go-forward growth we should expect from IELTS now?
Thanks, Michael. I'll hand over to Murray to provide a little bit of color there. I guess lifting up a little bit, as you saw today, we saw global growth in the IELTS volumes at 5%. What we would say is looking forward, the long-term drivers of growth haven't changed, and we remain excited by the size of the opportunity and the demand drivers. Albeit we're seeing some short-term supply chain constraints in some of the markets. I think it's important, too, to call out that, yeah, excluding India, volume growth in IELTS was sitting at 15%. In terms of, you know, what we see moving forward, I'll ask Murray to cover off that part of the question.
Over the long term, Michael, we still believe that the IELTS business should continue at a growth trend of the 10% that we've seen certainly over the last 10 years. The short-term challenges around Canada, the in terms of student placement... sorry, in terms of the visa processing, and some of the challenges with the Canadian, sorry, the Canadian government migration settings. We certainly believe that the long-term growth over the next three to five years is certainly at 10%.
I guess India went backwards a bit, is that sort of, as you sort of start to cycle that acquisition or is competition? I imagine there's been a response there. Could you just sort of walk us through what's happened in India a bit more?
Yeah. Michael, it's Craig here. You know, we posted obviously 72% growth in Indian volumes last year, which was a rebound off the COVID Delta wave. We went into 2023 with relatively modest expectations for India, knowing that we would be consolidating off that period, which had pretty much strong pent-up demand. There were a few points below where our expectations were for the period, the main issue there relates to a softening of sentiment towards Canada, particularly for the immigration component. We've seen that evident through our general test, which is the one predominantly used for migration. The large backlog of Canadian visas is sitting at about 2 million tests, in fact, 1 million outside of their normal service levels.
Wait times are in the, you know, dozens of months for a migration visa in an economic class. What we've seen as a result is the sort of a pullback of sentiment towards Canada. People not willing to take their long journey, prepare for IELTS, take the test, and then sit in the queue without any certainty on that. We expect that to ease up. You know, the macro and thematic is strong. We've got the Canadian government still leaning into migration, but they're undoubtedly seeing challenges in their visa processing system at the moment, which is pretty well documented. Look, we view it as a temporary sort of supply chain bottleneck. Unclear when it will clear, but, you know, the macro is pretty strong and the Indian market is attractive.
Just finally, just on that point you raised there about the general test, the approval of a competing test. What sort of impact do you think that'll have in Canada on your IELTS volumes?
Look, Michael, as we've discussed, it's been well documented, you know, the competing test is only for the economic class category. It comes into play later this year. Impact yet to be known, the equivalencies haven't been set. The test is new and is not well understood or, you know, marketed in the market. It'll have a glide path of impact, which again, is yet to be determined. We're, you know, hopeful or indeed confident that the rising market environment, the demand for Canada provides ample room for two players.
Yeah. And just to add a little bit more color there, too, Michael. As Craig mentioned, it's new, so watching brief quite closely. However, what we understand is at this time the test will only be available on computer, which may impact popularity in markets like India, where paper-based remains very popular. What we look to as guiding is, you know, the most recent precedent for this style of event actually occurred back in 2020, where we saw the U.K. government accept three additional tests, Pearson being one of them for migration visa purposes. Prior to this, IELTS was the only test that was accepted.
If we take a look at recent data, which is instructive, we can see that IELTS continues to hold a 90% market share for U.K. visa purposes for candidates located outside the U.K. That's the current thinking. All of that aside, we will of course be responding competitively to ensure we maintain IELTS leadership position. This is where our innovation agenda becomes really important and is key. As we roll out unique functionality like One Skill Retake, we believe that will be an important element of our competitive response. Due to that, we're prioritizing India as a rollout market there.
Thanks, Tennealle, Murray, and Craig.
Your next question comes from the line of Piers Flanagan of Barrenjoey. Your line is open.
Morning, Tennealle, Murray, and Craig. Thanks for your time. Just a couple from me. Just firstly on the working capital and the late billing cycle, sort of in the Northern Hemisphere. Is that a new norm going forward or is that more specific to the first half?
The arrangements we've got with the U.K. and Canadian clients, this will be ongoing that we'll expect to see invoicing trigger normally in the January, February timeframe instead of what we have been used to in the November, December timeframe. Contract assets will be high. We've always had a bias to the second half, where our collections ramp up in the second half. That is as we would have expected.
Sure. Just thinking about the Canada issues over the first half, I mean, has there been any change sort of in the second half to date? I mean, you made the comment about sort of still an IELTS, an IELTS build or backlog, but anything around sort of the visa backlog unwinding?
I can talk a little to that one. Whilst we are seeing that reported processing times are coming down for student visas, I think the last data point was 10 weeks versus a 12-week average. I think it's fair to say that the sentiment towards Canadian visa processing times is still quite negative and impacting, you know, customer purchase decisions. I think a key issue that still remains is less around the processing times, but more the elevated rejection rates. Our current visa acceptance rate for Canada sits at 84% for IDP versus 94% pre-COVID, and the market average is currently sitting at around 50% acceptance versus 70% pre-COVID.
What we suspect is we suspect this step up in rejection rates is a side effect of the government's attempt to clear the backlog, which as Craig touched on, remains at almost 1 million applications. Having said that, I think that the thematic and the long-term structural settings for this market remain very strong. The Canadian government is leaning into migration and looking to, I guess, aggressively resolve this. It's just unclear how long this issue will remain.
Cool. Thanks for, thanks for that detail. Just a last one just on the IELTS gross profit margin. Supported by price synergies there in the first half. Looks like it's holding sort of a higher level looking at the second half FY 2022 as well. Can we expect sort of that 48% margin as sort of the go-forward new norm?
I'll let Murray take that one, thanks.
Okay. The first half, we had some benefits from some price. We got some additional synergies in the first half which, from our perspective, we've got a couple of issues in the cost base perhaps going forward, with inflation in the test day activity and with the manufacture and distribution of the test. I don't expect to see the margin expand. I think the second half will be slightly lower than the first half. Overall for the year it'll still be higher than the previous full year.
Great. Thank you. That's it for me.
The next question comes the line of Darren Leung of Macquarie. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for the opportunity. I might ask mine sequentially, please. On the charts on slide 14, obviously all the indicators look like they go in the right direction. I want to make sure we're interpreting correctly that the leading indicators of student placement in ANZ is largely back at 2019 levels, and that we haven't seen any level of pent-up demands.
Yeah. Darren, it's Craig here. We are certainly confident it's back at pre-pandemic levels. One thing to note in this, and it's in the detail, is that we're really yet to see the reemergence back to pre-pandemic levels of India and China. Within that, the composition is weighted to South East Asia and particularly other parts of South Asia. If you look at the underlying volumes, our volumes for China and India are below the levels of FY 2019 in a placement and lead percentage. What that's telling us is there's some good momentum to come. Clearly, China is a little unknown. We're early days there, but we're getting some strong momentum coming from India for Australia, and we'll see that in coming periods.
The two big engines, I suppose, if you like, for Australia are really yet to kick into gear. These are indicative forward-looking indicators. As Murray said, you'll find that the work we're doing in lead prioritization and scoring really will improve conversion through the funnel over time. These perhaps become somewhat less indicative as we improve that funnel conversion going forward.
Got it. Thank you. Maybe just the second question was really around the multi-destination student placement volumes. I suppose, you know, that the growth rate just looked a little bit slower than what I think we had originally anticipated. I guess the question is: Is there still enough confidence in the network or the IDP brand in terms of non-ANZ student placements?
Absolutely. You know, if there's a delta to your expectations, it would probably be a couple of thousand in Canada and, you know, we'd point squarely to, you know, higher rejection rates, which, you know, if you move your 94% acceptance rate down to 84%, as Tennealle indicated during the period, that drops away a few students that we would have otherwise had at normal acceptance rates. Yeah, the Canadian market is probably the slight difference, a couple of thousand students versus where we were expecting.
Got it. Thank you. Just the third one, apologies, I may have missed this on earlier, but is there an overhead cost guidance for second half 2023 or for the full year on an excluding M&A costs and that FX loss basis?
Sorry, is there. There's certainly a waiting for the second half in terms of expenses. Yes, we did have the M&A costs and the FX loss in the first half, but.
We've got the Intake acquisition that we took over in November. That's gonna add. We've got the overhead costs from that business in the second half of, you know, AUD 4 million-AUD 5 million. And we'll also invest in, you know, headcount and our frontline people to make sure that for FY 2024, we're ready to take advantage of the increase in demand in student placement. They'll be slightly weighted to the second half in terms of overheads.
Understood. Thank you, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of Tim Plumbe of UBS. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Just two questions from me, if possible, please. The first one, Craig, around FastLane. Maybe can you talk about the marketing and getting the word out? What has to happen to kind of get that network effect kicking in as students talking about it online? Then just the second part of the FastLane question, how are you guys tracking in terms of getting the 40%-50% of those courses for the 61 clients, online, please?
Yeah. Thanks, Tim. I can talk through that one. In terms of how we're thinking about FastLane, we're really pleased with how the rollout of the product is going. I think as I shared as part of the presentation, we've had more than 7,000 students who have received formal course offers. This is up from 3,000 in the full year for FY 2022, we're well on track to exceed the target of 9,000 for the year that we communicated. In terms of supply, we've had over 75 unis and colleges on FastLane, including 34 in Australia, 35 in the U.K., and six in Canada. To your specific question in terms of client adoption, our focus for now is on building inventory and increasing the volume of courses that are activated for FastLane.
I think getting that critical scale of courses is really what unlocks the customer virality piece that you were referring to. We've had over 1,700 courses activated in those high volume markets like India. If we look back, I think that the targets that we communicated and set for ourselves were, you know, we started the year with a target of having what we said was 50% of the courses for which students have applied from tier one countries in FY 2022 on FastLane. If we have a look at where we are currently, we're a little behind that target at the moment. It's currently tracking to about 33% in Australia and high 20s in the U.K. I think that, you know, we've got a couple of initiatives in place to increase that speed of adoption.
Where we're really focused is two things. Firstly, it's a simplification of the legal contracts to really aid the speed of review and onboarding with universities, and then also adding more resources to client onboarding from our side. I think it's also important to call out that what we're working with is a, I guess, a university client base that is experiencing very strong demand themselves and have constraints around their employee resources to work through this. I think overall, really pleased. Strategically it remains a key differentiator. The rollout's progressing really strongly, and we continue to be focused on the scale-up of university partners and courses.
Great. Thanks for that color, Tennealle. Just the other question for me, maybe a follow-on from the GP margins. Just thinking about IELTS in the second half, as China opens up, is it fair to assume that you guys will get a higher contribution from that historical BC China royalty, which should be coming through at a 100% margin? You know, how do we think about that impacting that second half IELTS GP margin, please?
The China volume is still not back to pre-pandemic levels by quite a way. We expect it to ramp up heading towards the last couple of months of the year. It'll have a small impact, you know, I don't know, AUD 1 million or AUD 2 million in the second half, but I don't think it's gonna change the GP margin significantly.
More of a GP margin improvement for the following year.
Yeah. If we get back to the pre-pandemic levels, absolutely. You know, yeah. This year we're certainly, you know, maybe at 60% of what it had been pre-pandemic for the full year.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Johnston from Jarden. Your line is open.
Good morning, Tennealle, Murray, and Craig. Just the first one from me, and apologies if you've answered this already. Could you give a sense or a gauge around what U.K. growth in multi-destination placements look like versus relative to Canada in the period?
Sure. I'll hand over to Murray for that one.
I think U.K. volumes, we had 31% growth in the first half versus the PCP. In Canada, we had 22% volume growth versus the PCP.
Okay, great. That's helpful. Then maybe thinking around the seasonality and second half skew of volumes, given the delays, how should we think about the second half volumes? Like, are we back to a pre-COVID skew of the multi-destination business?
We're certainly heading back to a pre-COVID skew. Remember that our student placement business for multi-destination is also much larger now. The U.K. expectation is it'll be 70% in the first half, 30% in the second half. For Canada, which is now quite a sizable volume, will be 40% in the first half and 60% in the second half because we have two intakes for Canada in the second half. The U.S., although smaller, is again very similar to the U.K., at 70-30. It's probably for multi-destination, it's probably a skew in favor of the first half, just a little.
Okay. That's really good color. Thanks, Murray. Maybe just in terms of the investment you've put down in that H1 period, a lot of extra employees and officers. Could you maybe give us a sense about how you think about, you know, the cost of that investment generating into returns into FY 2024/FY 2025?
It's a difficult... Yes.
Look, Matt, just in student placement, it is a long type of pipeline business where you need to be investing in your capability, in people and offices for future intakes. You know, the people that we are employing today are really active and delivering an economic return in the second half of 2024 effectively. There is a long inquiry and conversion period, and the teams are constantly looking at sort of, pipeline management and juggling the need for the right resources for future growth. Certainly the numbers that you're seeing, you know, the additions we've got in the teams are for future period growth. It's an inevitable feature of the long-dated pipeline business of student placement.
Yeah.
Okay, that's helpful. Just on the Intake business, I had a quick look. What's the seasonality in that business? Obviously, you probably didn't get that much of a contribution in the first half. Is that still, you know, 'cause it's U.K. biased, is it 70/30? Then we think that the real contribution is gonna be first half 2024.
Yeah. Again, I mean, 95% of the volume is for the U.K. from the Intake business. That will be It's the same customer set for IDP. It's gonna be 70% skewed to the first half from a revenue perspective. The cost base will be pretty consistent through the year. Yes, EBIT in the first half, will be much stronger.
Just to add-
Okay.
Sorry, Matt. Yeah, just the 70/30. Clearly, our completion of the acquisition on 1 November meant that the 70% Murray referred to was effectively not to our account. It was booked prior to the deal completing. Hence smaller contribution, very small contribution in the first half-
Yeah.
With the smaller numbers H2 coming into our account.
Okay. No, that's good color. Maybe just a quick one on that FX unrealized loss.
Yeah.
Could you maybe give a bit more detail about what the main moving currencies were there?
Canadian dollar and the GBP were the biggest portion. Obviously, our contract assets is a big part of the movement in unrealized FX loss. Most of the contract assets are U.K. and Canadian.
Okay. Thanks, Murray. Thanks for the questions.
Your next question comes the line of Melinda Baxter from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Okay. Good morning, team. Just a couple of questions for me. Firstly, just can you give us any indication in terms of the representation of the Chinese student in that student placement number today relative to what we were seeing, obviously pre-COVID, and any expectation you have in terms of tailwind from the China reopening? That's my first question.
Sure. I can talk a little to that. Our Chinese volumes to Australia in the first half were up 47%, so obviously lagged the rest of the market during that period. As an example, total Australian volumes are up 128%, as we mentioned. Now, I think it's, I think it's still early days, and we're hesitant to extrapolate too much from 1 month's activity. What we can say is we saw an acceleration of growth in the Chinese pipeline in January in terms of qualified leads and applied volumes, both up over 100% respectively in January versus PCP. Very early days, hesitant to extrapolate, but some nice early indicators.
I think in terms of our budgets for the year, we did assume a stronger second half for China with an assumed easing of the COVID-zero policies driving a rebound. The current activity we're seeing in January is supportive of that thesis, as I mentioned, just a little too early to tell on the rebound.
Okay, great. Thanks. Just secondly, in terms of the One Skill Retake exams, what's required to roll that out on a, I guess, a more global basis and move kind of beyond Australia? What type of, I guess, approvals do you require to introduce that new single retake of the exam?
Sure. I can talk a little bit about the rollout plan, but just on the first point that you asked around the approvals, I might ask Craig to provide some color there.
Yeah. Thanks, Melinda. You know that IELTS is accepted by 11,000 recognizing organizations. Clearly, a lot of work required to achieve broad-based adoption. The key components of that, though, are government recognition, for it to be accepted for visa purposes. You know, we're pleased to confirm that the Australian government, DOHA, have approved and are accepting and will accept that test feature going forward, that is in place. We're working closely with a couple of other government authorities. Seeing some positive, very positive responses from them. They see it obviously as being very test taker friendly and supporting visa activity. We're hopeful to confirm some more acceptance in the northern hemisphere in the second half of the year.
That's an ongoing piece of work, but early signs are very positive.
Just more broadly on the rollout and what it means for that, you know, just taking a step back on One Skill Retakers. As I touched on, we surveyed our test takers extensively, and this was a key piece of feedback of something that needed to come in as a key functionality, and really to drive, I guess, the preference of IELTS versus other competitive products. We're really excited about our ability to provide One Skill Retake. We've had some amazing feedback in the short time it's been tested in markets here in Australia. We're currently working through what the global rollout plan looks like, but our aim is very much to have it in key markets like India in the middle of the year.
In fact, we're prioritizing India, given some of the competitive dynamics that are shifting, as we spoke about with the launch of new tests in Canada. Rollout on track, still planning through it, but prioritizing those key markets for us.
Excellent. Thanks for that color. Just lastly, Murray, can I just confirm, just in terms of the overheads per month? I, yeah, understanding the point of the second half skew, are we still looking for that AUD 29 million per month kind of indication that we provided last year?
Yeah. The only thing is that we obviously need to add the Intake business now. The AUD 29 million per month was before we took on the Intake business. The second half is more likely at the AUD 30 million per month once you add the Intake business into it. That's on a AASB pre-AASB 15 basis. 16.
Yeah, understand. Thanks. Thanks very much.
Next question comes the line of Sriharsh Singh, B of A Securities. Your line is open.
Good morning, all. Three questions from my side. One, on your IELTS exams, how long does it take students to get the test scores on IELTS? How does it compare versus some of the other tests on the market like TOEFL and Pearson at the moment?
Yeah. Hey, Sriharsh. As you know, the paper-based test, result delivery is in 10-12 days. The computer-delivered test is in four-five days. That's the main formats that we deliver. The second one, computer-delivered, is comparable to the main competitors. There might be, in some markets, a couple of day difference, but broadly comparable.
Is that driving your market share loss in India on the margin, because I've heard that some of your peers are delivering test results quicker than IELTS? Or is that not a consistent feedback per your checks?
Oh, look, We wouldn't point to it as a key reason why people would take one test or the other, no. Definitely wouldn't point to that as a key contributor.
Anything you're doing to get that 12-day turnaround time on paper-based down to, like, five or six or something even quicker?
There's a constant work and a program of activities with the British Council and, more importantly, with Cambridge to reduce that. You must remember, of course, we're the only player currently that provides paper-based testing at scale, and it does remain the most popular format in some markets. As I pointed to earlier, it's not currently a key sort of competitive advantage or disadvantage in any particular geography.
Understood. Second question, how would you respond if Pearson decides to compete on price, for the Canada PR testing? Any thoughts around whether Express E ntry will be open to competition or not?
Look, the long-dated pattern of behavior in this industry, as you know, oligopolistic in nature, players have always been rational on pricing. Pearson even, and TOEFL and others when they entered the Australian market as an example or the UKVI market, have always priced at or around the IELTS price. You know, our base case assumption is no, there's unlikely to be any element. We are obviously scenario planning and modeling different scenarios and looking at our strategies in that regard. No expectations currently around that, but we'll clearly watch closely.
Understood. Last question.
Yep.
Express Entry.
Go, Sriharsh. After you.
No, sorry. I was saying on the Express Entry, will that be open to competition? Any thoughts around that?
Look, you know, we plan for and expect ongoing competition in all markets. These processes at the government level are long-dated.
Mm.
-quite a lot of change at the legislative and administrative level. we're not expecting any change in the short term.
Understood. That's super clear. Last question. The latest visa data shows that India to Australia volume, student volumes are rebounding or making new highs post reopening. When I checked data, 35,000-40,000 students from India come into Australia every year offshore basis. My question is, if India begins to send, call it 70,000-80,000 students into Australia in two or three years, can you place 20,000 students from India into Australia? I'm assuming a 25% market share there.
I won't participate in the conversation for that long period of time. I think to our earlier comments, we're encouraged by the rebound that we're seeing in India. You know, the beautiful thing of our Indian model is we are very much capable to place students in all of the destination markets. Our offices there have multi-destination offerings. Our brand is ubiquitous and capable of guiding students to whichever outcome they look for. The Indian market, as you know, is also students are willing to consider other alternatives. You know, tightness in the Canadian market may see a sort of a switch back to Australia. We feel pretty confident that we're tapping into the system growth in India at that student placement level. You know, we've got a strong franchise.
We've got a very good brand for Australia. Yeah, look, we would take more than our share of volumes to Australia in the longer term.
What would be your market share in the Australia on the India to Australia route? Offshore.
I haven't had that data at hand. I would make one note of caution to those that are looking at visa data. It is incredibly noisy and can be misleading at the moment. The delays in visa processing, the return of Chinese students, the surge in volume from some lower quality markets that are driven by, say, post-study work rights, or indeed last year when we saw the removal of work caps for, in, Australian students. It is pretty noisy. We are focused on our business and driving quality students to our segment of the market being certainly the higher quality end of the university and college space. I would take a grain of salt with market share numbers at the moment. We're absolutely confident we're taking share in our core markets to our core destinations.
Understood. No, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan of JMP. Your line is open.
Hey, thank you. I just wanted to again ask on the contract assets and just the split of Intake and then the late billing. Will Intake fully unwind, and is this expected to mainly just be for the first half, or is this gonna be like a full year thing as well?
The contract assets is something that occurs all year from all business, including in Australia. We have contract assets with some of our Australian clients because we've moved a lot of clients to interstate billing. Now, what was the other part of the question?
It's just the split of that between the kind of the increased levels from Intake and whether they'll unwind or is most of it kind of.
So-
Canada and U.K.
Intake, those invoices will be triggered in the next three to four weeks, I would expect. It's about AUD 17 million of the total. I expect the cash for that to be received before the end of the financial year. Again, next financial year, the same profile will occur. Intake, contract assets will build up before the first half and then be collected in the second half.
Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand back to Tenille.
Thanks again everyone for joining us today. We look forward to connecting with many of you over the coming few days. Thanks for your support, and we'll now close the call.