I would now like to hand the conference over to Malcolm McNab, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. I am Malcolm McNab, our Head of Investor Relations, and I am pleased to be joined today by Tennealle O'Shannessy, our CEO, and Kate Koch, our CFO. I will hand you over to Tennealle to get us started.
Thanks, Malcolm, and good morning, all. Thanks for joining us today. I am going to start by covering our FY 2026 highlights and transformation outcomes before handing over to Kate to take us through the financials in more detail. I will then cover an operating review of student placement and language testing before providing an update on the transformation, the changing market dynamics, and how IDP is positioned to win longer term. I will close with our FY 2027 outlook and priorities before we open the call to questions. I will turn now to the highlights for the year. FY 2026 was really a year of disciplined execution in a very dynamic market. We delivered what we said we would and managed financial performance for the volume environment. We strengthened the balance sheet and made excellent progress on the transformation. Revenue held up well given the level of volume pressure across the sector.
Yield was strong, up 11% in student placement and 7% in language testing, reflecting our continued commitment to quality and focus on the higher value segments of the market. We exceeded our cost reduction target, delivering a AUD 32 million net reduction in the cost base while continuing to invest in technology, AI, and future growth. Adjusted EBIT was AUD 123 million, within our guidance range and reflecting the benefits of the actions we have taken. The balance sheet is in very good shape, with net leverage at 1x and contract assets materially lower, reflecting faster billing, stronger cash collection, and improved working capital. Kate and team have done an excellent job, and strong cash generation and working capital discipline has supported active capital management with a AUD 50 million share buyback announced in June.
We delivered this whilst maintaining our commitment to quality and trust, with above-market visa approval rates and securing more than 30 new university partners and delivering more than 60 contract expansions. We have made excellent progress on our strategic agenda, with technology investments improving outcomes and reducing cost to serve, as well as revenue expansion and diversification through new market entries. Our transformation agenda is also progressing well, which I will cover on the next slide. As a reminder, in phase one, we set out to right-size the cost base, to simplify the organization, and to keep building for future growth. We are pleased with the progress we have made. The AUD 32 million net cost reduction was well ahead of the AUD 25 million target set at the start of the year. We reduced headcount by 20%, or 1,250 roles. We strengthened procurement and streamlined platforms and operations.
We are bringing increased discipline to our operating footprint, consolidating IELTS locations from around 1,500 to less than 600 and transitioning to third-party models where this delivers a better returns profile. Our investment in technology and AI to improve advice quality and confidence in receiving an offer is already improving student experience, conversion, and productivity. We also diversified within our core businesses with new student placement destinations in Malaysia and the UAE and the launch of IELTS in China. All of this work will provide ongoing benefits and support the next phases of the transformation and future performance. I will hand over now to Kate to cover the financials.
Thanks, Tennealle. Hi, everyone. I'm starting on slide seven. As Tennealle mentioned, our revenue in the year was down 9%. I will talk more about that one on the next slide. Our gross profit held at 60%, and we are really pleased with this outcome given the volume environment. We are able to fully offset the impacts of lower volume, source country mix, and a lower proportion of higher-margin student placement revenue with strong yield performance and a significant reduction in direct costs. Adjusted overhead costs were down 11% as cost savings in the period more than offset the natural inflation in our business and depreciation and amortization was relatively flat this year. As a result, adjusted EBIT was down AUD 3.5 million or 7% year-on-year on a revenue decline of 9%. I will now turn to revenue performance on slide eight.
Our focus remains on profitable growth, increasing yield through value-added services for both clients and students. Student placement revenue was down 16% on volumes down 27%, including a strong yield performance. Volumes fell 27%, reflecting continued policy challenges across our key destination markets. While IDP visa approval rates were above market, volumes were impacted by late-stage visa rejections, which stepped up in the second half in Australia. Yield increased 11%, driven by higher tuition fees, improved commercial terms, favorable destination mix, growth in value-added services such as Student Essentials, and a one-time benefit from improved global billing processes. English language testing revenue was down 1% on volumes down 8%, again, reflecting a strong yield performance. Outside India, IELTS volumes were down 3%, with growth in Australia and several emerging markets, largely offsetting softer demand elsewhere. Our launch in China also contributed volume in the second half.
In India, IELTS volumes were down 22%, performing ahead of the 28% decline in Indian study visa applications. Around 2/3 of the 7% English language testing yield increase was due to annual price increases, with the remaining increase from source country mix. Moving on to slide nine. As we've outlined throughout our recent results, we've taken decisive action on cost to right-size the cost base for the evolving environment. You can see on the slide examples of savings we've delivered in the current year. These led to adjusted overheads down 14% on a headline basis or 11% when we remove the FX tailwind, w ith cost savings delivered from the second quarter onwards, more than offsetting our natural cost inflation and delivering the AUD 32 million net reduction in the cost base versus our AUD 25 million market commitment.
This builds on the savings we've already delivered with our cost base down 19% over the past two years. Onto slide 10. Working capital discipline, faster billing, and stronger collections are creating financial flexibility for us. The bars show the progress we're making on our contract assets and receivables over the past two years, with the blue bars representing total amounts owing to IDP that we've recognized as an asset. These are down 56% year-on-year. Most of the benefit came from new technology and global processes to support faster reconciliation and billing of student placement revenue. This is also evident in our debtor days, reducing from 60 days to 33 days over the past two years. Turning to slide 11. The balance sheet remains in good shape. This strong working capital management and cash generation has enabled us to reduce leverage and fund active capital management.
We have good liquidity with cash of AUD 135 million, in line with the closing balance at 30 June 2025, and we've undrawn facilities of AUD 341 million with diversified tenor and the first maturity in April 2028. Borrower group net leverage of 1x is down from 1.4x last year, and we repaid AUD 35 million of borrowings. The board announced a share buyback of up to AUD 50 million in June. The board also declared a final unfranked dividend of AUD 0.06 per share, resulting in total of AUD 0.09 per share for the year. We're really pleased with the progress we've made on the balance sheet, and this remains an ongoing focus for us as we continue to execute the transformation. I'll now hand you back to Tennealle.
Thanks, Kate. I'll now cover the operating review and our progress across our core businesses. The key point here is that the business continued to perform while we made meaningful changes to how we work. Across the year, we focused on quality revenue, productivity, working capital discipline, and targeted investment in future growth. I'll move now to student placement on slide 13, where we continue to expand our reach and leverage technology to improve customer experience, increase conversion, and drive productivity. We've spoken about this before, but one advantage of IDP's scale is that we're able to have an early view of emerging demand beyond the traditional Big 4 destinations, and t his year, we diversified our revenues through expanding into two new destination markets. Malaysia's building well, and we're taking a measured approach in the U.A.E. so investment matches market readiness.
Now, these are attractive markets with established demand, strong economics, and pricing profiles that are comparable to our core destinations. We are also entering from a position of strength with existing university partnerships and established capabilities. Importantly, the investments we have made in our technology platform, digital capabilities, and AI tools make it easier to enter new markets, to scale efficiently, and to drive stronger returns as we grow. Our newly launched IDP Student Community proposition already has 42,000 students registered, providing highly valued peer advice that will further enhance trust as we build out our data depth. Investments in technology and AI-enabled tools like FastLane are improving conversion and counselor productivity, reducing cost to serve, and building our deep data assets. Student NPS remains over 70, and our unique data and insights are referenced extensively by destination market governments.
Student Essentials continues to perform strongly, and revenue per user has increased to 24%, with more than half of our students now taking advantage of practical setup services to help them settle into their new study destinations. These are just a few of the great examples of how we are expanding our reach and leveraging technology to power our business, and they form part of a broader roadmap that we are investing in as part of our transformation. I will turn now to language testing on slide 14. IELTS remains the world's most recognized English language test, trusted by test takers, institutions, and governments. We continue to invest in product, marketing, digital capability, and AI to strengthen the testing experience. During the year, we launched 13 IELTS test centers in China, the largest and most profitable English language testing market in the world.
Our test centers are located in the Yangtze River Delta region, which is home to a large proportion of China's student population. In the first two months of FY 2027, we have opened a further 12 centers, bringing the total to 25. We have improved the test-taker experience also through improving our booking experience to improve conversion by 3 percentage points, w ith more than 370,000 people using the enhanced self-assessment tool, helping support confidence and score awareness. We continue to innovate the product, with the launch this year of our IOC+P product, which essentially allows test-takers to complete the writing component of their test on paper in a computer-based format, giving test-takers more choice while maintaining quality, security, and trust. I am now going to highlight IDP's progress against our transformation on slide 16.
Our areas of focus remain clear: simplifying the business, improving productivity, and investing where IDP can create more value for students, test-takers, university partners, and shareholders. In phase one this year, IDP delivered a AUD 32 million reduction in net costs, and Kate will cover the drivers of this in the next section. With phase one now well advanced, financial year 2027 and 2028 are all about converting those efficiency gains into a transformed operating model, driving revenue, productivity, and stronger returns. In student placement, we are using our data, advice, and AI capabilities to improve conversion, to increase counselor productivity, and to help more students reach the right outcomes. In language testing, we are optimizing our footprint, commercial models, and partnerships to strengthen margins whilst continuing to expand IELTS into key growth markets.
Across the group, ERP will modernize our core platforms, reducing our cost to serve and giving us greater flexibility and speed. By FY 2028, IDP will be a leaner, more agile organization with stronger earnings capacity and more opportunities to grow. Now, Kate will talk us through the specifics of the phase one transformation cost reduction on slide 17.
Thanks, Tennealle. We delivered a significant reduction in our cost base during 2026. On a reported basis, overhead costs reduced by AUD 50 million, from AUD 352 million in FY 2025 to AUD 302 million this year. This includes AUD 18 million of favorable FX movements and hedge gains. When I exclude these, we get to the AUD 32 million reduction in underlying overhead cost base, exceeding our original AUD 25 million target by AUD 7 million. These savings were attributed to a broad-based transformation program, including building a leaner organization, improved global procurement, streamlining IELTS operations, including reducing our test center footprint by around 60%, and continued technology platform consolidation. We incurred AUD 36 million of transformation costs during the year, and o f this, around 80% related to restructuring the business, including severance costs, with the balance invested in our ERP-led core platform modernization program.
In FY 2027, we will build on this progress by capturing the full-year benefit of our FY 2026 actions, further simplifying our ways of working and driving additional efficiencies across key cost categories. As a result, we expect these initiatives to more than offset normal cost inflation and deliver a further AUD 15 million net reduction in the cost base for FY 2027. We also expect transformation expenditure in FY 2027 to be around AUD 40 million. The mix of this spend will change, with around half the spend directed to the ERP program as we prepare for a planned go live in early FY 2028, with the benefits to be realized from FY 2028 onwards. I will now hand back to you, Tennealle.
Thanks, Kate. I would now like to shift gears and spend a bit of time talking about the market. We have all read the headlines about what is happening, but I want to go down a level of detail. So now, I want to talk about the market shift that is taking place in international student recruitment and how this creates genuine opportunity for IDP. To put it most simply, the matching process between students and university partners is becoming much more complex. Value has shifted from being primarily about delivering volume through the funnel to delivering quality, nuanced, dynamic matching outcomes. In this environment, those who are most trusted to drive the best outcomes for the universities and students will win. As shown on slide 19, what we are seeing is that universities are increasingly being measured on visa, enrollment, and completion outcomes with negative regulatory and commercial penalties.
In the U.K., under the BCA or Basic Compliance Assessment framework that came out of the White Paper recommendations, universities who do this poorly are penalized with reduced international student allocations. In Australia, we are seeing a similar trend towards linking student allocations to outcome performance. Universities are no longer competing simply for academically qualified students, but for those most likely to secure a visa, to enroll, and to successfully complete their studies. Visa assessment processes are now considering a much broader range of factors, including geographic region, source of funds, course rationale, employment pathways, study history, and they are also requiring much more supporting documentation. We are also seeing students are applying to more institutions using AI-assisted tools and taking longer to make decisions. Taken together, this is making traditional application data a weaker signal of student quality, intent, and readiness.
I would now like to move on to slide 20 to provide the student perspective. In response to all this uncertainty, students around the world are also changing their behavior, including how they make decisions. They are seeking more support to understand complex visa settings, visa likelihood, course fit, employment outcomes, and genuinely just the practical pathways involved in studying overseas. They are increasingly valuing visa certainty, employability, and return on investment over university rankings alone. They want to know not only that they are choosing the right course, but also that it is a realistic option for them individually. What we are seeing is that students are also applying to more institutions, and they are spending longer evaluating their options and delaying commitment.
Some are withdrawing or not completing enrollment because of concerns about the high personal cost of a visa refusal, w ith the financial cost of visa applications increasing at the same time that the likelihood of visa success is decreasing. Importantly, while AI can make information easier to find and applications easier to generate, it does not make decisions easier to make. In fact, in many cases, it actually increases confusion and the need for trusted guidance. Students are looking for greater confidence that they are choosing the right course, institution, and destination before making a significant investment in their future. Moving now to slide 21. For both students and university partners, trust, quality signals, and dynamic matching are becoming more valuable. Here is where the opportunity lies. This creates an environment that increasingly plays to IDP's strengths. We have unmatched trusted reach through our market-leading brands, global counselor network, digital channels, and more than 1,000 established university partnerships.
This is incredibly difficult to replicate and places us firmly at the center of the student decision-making journey and uniquely positions us to help our university partners. Second, we have a significant data advantage. We have visibility across policy settings at a global scale on platform student behavior and applications and outcomes at an unmatched global scale. This creates a continuous feedback loop that helps us identify quality, readiness, and fit earlier. As applications become a weaker signal because of AI-generated content, increasing application volumes, and changing student behaviors, real outcome data becomes more valuable. Third, we are scaling these advantages and have established foundations to build on across AI, data, technology, and partnerships. I will now move on to slide 22. We are investing in building our data assets and improving our propensity tools and matching intelligence so IDP can deliver the best matching outcomes for students and university partners.
Better data capture and analysis will also enable us to respond to changing market opportunities dynamically through improved allocation of marketing and counselor resources. At the same time, modernizing platforms and streamlining operations will improve efficiency and support operating leverage. This will position us to win quality share, supporting market outperformance, and yield growth while deepening trust and quality positioning. I will now take you through our financial year 2027 outlook and priorities on slide 24. We expect that the challenging market conditions will continue into FY 2027, and we are taking the necessary steps to navigate this. We expect adjusted EBIT of AUD 95 million- AUD 115 million. This is based on a planning assumption that market volumes will be 20%-30% lower than last year.
Our planning assumption reflects the annualization of known policy changes, and what we are seeing in visa data, our pipelines, and deep country-level analysis. Within this context, we are confident in revenue outperformance driven by yield improvement. We expect student placement and English language testing yields to grow at mid-single-digit percentages, and we have plans to deliver a further AUD 15 million net cost saving. Cash generation and working capital discipline will continue to be a priority, and we expect net leverage to remain at or below 1.5x throughout the year. Our priorities for the year are clear. We will manage financial performance for the volume environment while maintaining our commitment to quality and trust. We will deliver the AUD 15 million net reduction in cost base. Across transformation, we will focus investment to drive productivity, conversion improvements, and revenue diversification.
In student placement, we will leverage proprietary data to deliver quality advice that drives confidence and conversion for students and delivers pre-qualified students to clients. We will invest in digital and AI-enabled tools and modernize our ERP to improve productivity, flexibility, and reduce cost to serve. On to slide 25 to finish up. We operate in a large global market, and we are well-positioned to grow share. We are deepening our reputation for quality and trust. We have a clear proprietary data advantage that we are leveraging into matching intelligence to deliver the best outcomes for students, test-takers, and university partners. We are well-placed to diversify revenue while increasing agility and reducing cost to serve. We have the cash generation capacity and balance sheet strength to support investment in the transformation and a strong track record of delivery. Thank you all for your time today.
Kate, Malcolm, and I will now take questions, and I will hand you back to the moderator for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Entcho Raykovski with E&P. Please go ahead.
Hi, Tennealle. Hi, Kate. Hi, Malcolm. My first question is around the volume guidance that you've provided. I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit more color around your thinking around the build-up to the 20%-30% volume decline by key destination market. I'm just conscious that Canada is now a negligible part of the mix, so I presume you're assuming weaker performance in Australia and the U.K. versus FY 2026. Maybe, I'll pause there. I've got a couple of others, but I'll wait for the answer to the first one.
Sure. Yeah, Entcho, thanks for the question. It is Tennealle here. Yeah. Just to go back to the FY 2027 market volumes down 20%-30%, just as I touched on, what we're looking at there is really looking closely at the annualized impact on our pipeline of the key policy changes that have been announced over the last 12 months. So, we're looking closely at that, the recent visa data, and just what we're seeing in terms of pipeline build. What I will do is provide a little bit of color on what we're seeing for FY 2027 so far in our two key destinations. As we're looking to FY 2027, as you know, the key destinations, the destinations that matter for us are the U.K. and Australia.
If I start with Australia, at this point, semester two is nearing completion, and what we're seeing is volume declines are trending towards the higher end of the FY 2027 assumed market decline, s o trending towards being down 20%. And really, what we're seeing there is a continuation of the trends we've spoken about with the late-stage visa rejections continuing in high volume source markets. So that's, I guess, the Australia side of the story. For the U.K. fall intake, we're a little bit less progressed in that pipeline. We're around halfway through the pipeline build. But what we're seeing there is volume declines are trending towards the bottom end of that FY 2027 assumed market growth, s o closer to the 30%. What we're seeing as the driver for that is both demand and conversion are being affected by the BCA requirements that I referred to.
What we are seeing in response to that is increased university caution and selectivity in the application process, as well as slower student decision-making. We are watching this one very closely in the build-up to that fall intake. What we might see there is delays may see a shift in some placements later or reduce overall conversion.
Okay. Thanks, Tennealle. That is good color. Just secondly, I guess for the avoidance of doubt, from a volume perspective, do you expect to outperform the market? I am conscious that you have referenced yield driving revenue outperformance. Is your thinking that your volumes will be better than underlying market volumes?
The focus that we have is on driving, I guess, quality growth, and so, w hat we are seeing as we are navigating this, Entcho, is that there is different impacts in different parts of the market. You will see us referencing extensively that focus on quality, and that will lead to revenue outperformance as we navigate these conditions.
Okay. It sounds like you are not necessarily committing to outperformance relative to market. It is just more question of how those quality volumes perform.
That's right. We will be very focused on how these changes in policy settings are impacting the different segments in the market. I think the deep visibility that we have and our ability to segment the market allows us to participate effectively in these market conditions. But our focus will be on driving quality growth, and that will underpin our revenue outperformance.
Okay. Got it. Thanks, Tennealle. Then, I have a cost, sorry, a question around the transformation program into FY 2027. You said you expect to incur transformation costs of AUD 40 million to deliver the AUD 15 million of cost base reductions.
Yeah. Essentially, you nailed it. What you will see is a larger proportion of our spend this year will not deliver the in-year benefits but will start to deliver it from FY 2028. As I said, about half of that AUD 40 million is on the ERP and more broad back-office modernization program. We are delivering some benefits from that in year, but the lion's share will start from once we go live, which we are expecting at the moment early Q1 FY 2028. The remainder of the spend relates to the other items around our continual look at the org structure. We have some cost categories and areas where we think we can be more efficient. That's how it's playing out for FY 2027. For FY 2028, we expect that spend to materially step down.
Okay. Should we take out of that AUD 15 million is not the full reduction, there is more coming in FY.
Yes.
2028? Okay. I mean.
Yeah.
Any sort of early color on quantum?
No, we haven't gone there yet. However, we are just going to have a continual focus on productivity efficiency going forward. I think it will become more BAU. If I'm looking at a planning assumption for FY 2028, the one-off cost, as I said, will be lower, because our restructuring charges are going to drop away and our ERP will go live. The 2026 and 2027 savings will be sustainable into 2028. There'll be annualization benefits from 2027 into 2028, and we'll say more about the incremental savings from that ERP-led platform modernization as we get closer to the time. Lastly, we are just continually looking for additional growth productivity benefits in the business, and it's becoming a bigger muscle for this business, which gives us confidence in the future.
Okay. Got it. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Miliatis with Macquarie. Please proceed.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. First one's just on Canada. Obviously, the Canada market's just been decimated. But in terms of the visa volumes that we're seeing in the last couple of months, it actually started to improve. Notably, those visa volumes are a capture of both onshore and offshore visa applications. Just curious what you're seeing from your side of things from Canada. Are you seeing any signs of life there or a bottoming of the market there? Can we ever sort of see that come back to maybe not where it was a few years ago, but at least give you some level of growth to offset some of the weakness elsewhere?
Thanks for the question, Liz. It's Tennealle here. Look, I'd start by saying, as you know, Canada, given the dislocation in that market over the last number of years, is a very small portion of our business today. What we've seen over the last 12 months is it continues to remain deeply impacted by the market collapse that we've seen through the successive policy changes that have come through. What we're navigating in Canada at the moment is no longer related to the supply side app. Rather, what we're navigating is weak student sentiment and demand. As you would well know, visa volumes are well undershooting the cap that's been set in Canada. But even with that backdrop and context, we continue to see elevated visa rejection rates.
I wouldn't have a crystal ball in terms of what would happen in Canada, but we have seen relative stabilization of policies but still seeing some challenge around student sentiment and visa rejection rates. But any changes that happen there moving forward, will happen off a very low base for us.
Yep. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Just in terms of your shifting to alternate markets, you touched on Malaysia and the Middle East, but in terms of trying to offset the big hole that Canada has now left for the business, are there any other markets that you are exploring, and is there enough out there that may actually fill up that hole?
Yeah. As I mentioned in the call, one of the great advantages of our scale is we are able to see that early demand signals emerging beyond the traditional Big 4 destinations. One of the behaviors we are seeing from students is they are very pragmatic, and behavior on platform with us is they are applying to multiple destinations. The other thing that I touched on is because of the work that we have done around our underlying platform and technology, our ability to launch and scale in markets efficiently is a capability that we have built. So, in the first instance, you will know several years ago, we have got a track record of going into new markets with New Zealand and Ireland. We have recently launched into Malaysia and more softly into the U.A.E. And yes, we do expect the opportunity set to broaden over time.
The things that attracted us to Malaysia and U.A.E. as essentially the next cabs off the rank, if you like, is what we were seeing in terms of student demand. These are very attractive markets. There is that well-established demand. There is strong economics, so you do see that there is a strong T&E focus in those markets, which means we have the global contracts in place with the quality providers to be able to start with strong scale there. They also have pricing profiles that are comparable to core destinations. We are seeing student flows going to other destinations too. I am sure you have seen the data too, and we will continue to be looking there to see if there is further opportunities for us to go into other destinations over time.
Okay, got it. Thank you. Can I just sneak in one more just on China, and the expansion there? How many locations are you planning to set up there and any additional color around the economics of how things will play out?
Yeah, certainly. I can talk a little bit about the opportunity, and then I will hand over to Kate to talk through the economics and how it works there. This is one we are incredibly excited about and seen really strong traction and progress this year, so a strong base build. Just to go back as to a reminder on the why for this one, because I do think it is important to set that context before we go in. China is the world's largest and most attractive testing market. In terms of our footprint and opportunities to diversify revenue into new segments, this is a very attractive opportunity for us. We finished FY 2026 with 13 test centers, concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region, and we are up to 25 test centers so far in FY 2027, with plans for further staged rollout.
What we are watching really closely, so I think the way we have spoken about our scaling into this market, it is a complex market, is we are taking a careful scaling approach. We are focused on quality, we are focused on security and partner confidence. What has been really pleasing is that the early performance has been very positive, encouraging customer feedback, really strong positive endorsement on socials, those types of things. We are not laying out, for commercial sensitivity reasons, what the scale-up looks like, but w hat we would say is we see that the profit opportunity is attractive over time, and we will keep building it in a disciplined way. Now, there are some unique aspects to the economics because we are working with a third-party established testing provider. I might just briefly hand over to Kate, and she can just provide some color on the economics.
Yeah. Hi, Liz. So, China for us is a third-party delivery model. What you will see is the gross margin is a bit lower than where we own delivery. But I think from our perspective, the opportunity is compelling because of the size, actually the price point and just generally long-term demand characteristics. Our financial objective here is clear. We are going to build a large gross profit dollar contribution over time, with that real focus on quality, execution, and discipline around it.
Okay, thank you. And just the number of locations you are planning on opening, we have heard 50, but just confirming, is that correct or something bigger or smaller?
We haven't announced that, as Tennealle said, because we think it's commercially confidential. But you can keep watching this space and see how we go.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sriharsh Singh with Bank of America. Please proceed.
Yep. Hey there. Three questions from my side. First, touching on yield, there's a little bit of a slowdown in average placement fee into second half, and it seems that the second half placement fee growth for Australia is now below the inflation and tuition fee. So what's driving that? Could you talk a little bit about the Australia placement fee dynamic? I've heard that many universities are now moving from commission rights on gross tuition to commission rights on net tuition. Are you seeing that in your conversation with universities? And how should we think about, y ou've guided the placement fee growth, but any color would be great on that.
Hi, Sriharsh. It's Kate. Yes, you are right, w e did see it drop off. But you will remember in the first half, we did mention that the one-time yield benefit we got from the change in our global billing processes, and particularly favorable destination mix towards the U.K., was going to slow down in the second half and not repeat into FY 2027. If I look at that over the whole yield performance for FY 2026, it made up just over 1/3, so t hat probably helps you bridge the FY 2026 yield performance versus our guidance for next year. Then, in terms of your question around what we are seeing from university partners, I will hand to Tennealle on that one.
Yes, Sriharsh, happy to provide a little bit of color here. What we would say is we are not seeing any changes to commission structures or how that works. I think it is probably important to just go back and reflect on what is happening in the sector. As a reminder, our fee model, if you like, is a completely risk-free model for our university partners. They only pay for a successfully completed enrollment. That has proven to be something that is highly valuable for them as they are navigating a period where there is risk and uncertainty around evaluating genuine students, managing through a large number of applications, navigating the visa approval processes. I think as we called out in the results, IDP, through the quality of our processing, is able to stand out with visa approval rates well above market averages.
That proves the resilience of our commercial model as we are navigating this period and really underpins our confidence in continuing to expand yields into the future.
Okay, that is great. Second question on the new market initiatives like U.A.E. and Malaysia. If I just take a slightly longer view, two or three years, where do you think the volumes to these markets could scale up? Is it fair to assume that the average placement fee for these markets is AUD 3,000 or less?
Yes. Look, I mean, I think when we look at here, w e always go back to what we are seeing in terms of student behavior and drivers of student behavior. What we would say is the student demand for access to international education, that demand profile remains well intact, as we would expect it to. What we also said is the change in behavior we are seeing is students are navigating the complexity, which is the policy settings in the Big 4, and increasingly looking at opportunities outside the Big 4, looking at factors like visa certainty, but also looking more broadly at things like access to employment outcomes, and ROI, and cost of living, and things like that. So, we would expect that the role of the, we have heard it spoken about, the Big 4 transitioning to the Big 14. I think that that is probably right.
You would expect to see more diversification of students in terms of where they are traveling and the destinations they are considering. The great news, as we said, is the work that we have done on our platform means that we have both got the early visibility of those student flows. We have got the global contracts in place with university partners, meaning, we are able to scale quickly into new destinations. And because of the work we have done on our underlying technology and platform, we are able to launch, enter, and scale quickly and efficiently based on that work we have done. Then, Sriharsh, on yield, yeah, if for modeling purposes, I would model more like a Canadian yield outcome than a U.K. yield outcome.
Super clear. Last question on IELTS. Look, the volumes are stabilizing a little bit, so that is positive news. How are you thinking about positioning IELTS in a world where some governments are adopting at-home testing? So, IELTS had to pull out of the whole tender. I am not sure, but maybe, the security protocols are improving, and three, four years down the line, more governments would be looking at at-home testing. So, how should we think about, or how do you think about defending the IELTS market-leading position? Thanks.
Yeah. So happy to jump in there. So, I would start by saying IELTS remains the global benchmark in high-stakes English language testing. So, its brand, its recognition, its quality positioning is simply unmatched. So, we acknowledge the market is competitive, but you have seen the durable strengths playing through r ecognition, trust, security, scale, and government acceptance. You are seeing that, as you rightly point out, flow through into the performance of IELTS, that resilience that is coming through, in terms of the relative performance, looking at what is happening in market conditions. So, we continue to innovate the IELTS product. You will see innovations coming through in terms of product, marketing, booking conversion, test day experience.
We've spoken about the launches that came through this year with digital-based initiatives like IOC+P, which essentially takes the traditional IELTS product that was delivered wholly paper-based and transitions that into a computer-based delivery while still providing test takers with the flexibility to physically write on paper if that's what they prefer. The reason why that is so important is to provide them choice and flexibility, because quite often, test takers have completed a lot of their test preparation.