Welcome, everyone, to the Superloop Half-Year 2024 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Paul Tyler, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Welcome all to Superloop's first half FY24 results. I'm Paul Tyler, and with me I have Dean Tognella, our CFO. It was a very eventful half, and we've got a lot to cover, so I'll jump straight in. If we move to slide three, we'll start with some highlights for the half. So I'd remind everyone that FY24 represents the first year of our new three-year plan, which we creatively named our Double Down Strategy. Delighted to report that we've started with clear momentum in that first year. So that's greater than 32% year-on-year growth, our revenue growth remains well above market. Encouragingly, we saw that growth coming from all three segments. Also pleasing was the fact that this revenue growth was predominantly organic.
The revenue growth obviously stemmed from customer additions, with net customer numbers up 38%, with total customer numbers across all three segments just passing the 400,000 customer mark. Our investments in our Infrastructure on Demand platform, encompassing network and systems, is now showing strong operating leverage, which is evident in the significant growth of EBITDA at over 80% year-on-year. We also delivered another very strong result in operating cash flow, with greater than 100% conversion from underlying EBITDA. As we continue to grow, we maintain our view that this conversion rate will settle at around the 80%-90% conversion over the midterm. If we go to slide 4. Digging into these highlights a little further, obviously the momentum we are showing with the organic revenue growth across all three segments, together with the expanding margins, is very encouraging for the company's operating model.
In the consumer segment, we had a blockbuster half with record organic net adds of over 34,000 and revenue growth of over 50%. Our positioning as a high-performance yet value product is resonating with customers as cost of living pressures are felt ever greater. The business segment has added valuable, profitable, long-term contracted revenues, and pleasingly, this segment continues to maintain its 40% midterm gross margin ambition. In the wholesale segment, we had stellar results in sales, in fact, our best-ever half for new sales orders. A key wholesale client win being that of the five-year exclusive deal with AGL, adding in excess of AUD 31 million of TCV. We've discussed many times our expectation of the growth of the challenger segment, in particular that of the non-traditional brands, and our expectation that this challenger segment would expand to in the order of 30% collective market share.
In first half 2024, we saw this challenger segment continue to take share, which now collectively represents in the order of 17% of the market. Our progress in consumer, together with wins in business and wholesale, provide great proof points for our ambition to be the leading enabler of this challenger segment. Strong revenue growth is, of course, encouraging, but just as importantly, though, we've made good strides in reducing our cost to acquire and our cost to serve. Revenue growth, operating leverage, and disciplined cost control are all evident in our underlying EBITDA, which increased by 83% year-on-year. As mentioned, our strong focus on cash flow delivered a net operating cash flow of AUD 23.7 million in the first half. Pleasingly, we've been able to maintain our net free cash flow positive position for the half as well.
Our cash flow generation and our conservative debt levels leave us with ample capacity to continue growing the business in the future. Slide 5, please. So when putting the half's revenue and EBITDA performance in the context of multiple periods, a consistent and encouraging trend momentum is evident. As mentioned, in contrast to some previous periods where growth was supported through M&A, the momentum evident in today's result is predominantly organic. If we move to slide 6, please. That trend is also evident when broken into our three operating segments. Whilst consumer was particularly strong at greater than 50% versus the PCP, there has been consistent revenue growth across all segments. Perhaps even more importantly, though, is this growth has been delivered without sacrificing gross margins in any of the segments. Slide 7. Revenue growth was, of course, underpinned by customer growth.
In the first half, we added over 40,000 new customers, all organic and representing our best-ever quarter for organic growth. The consumer segment added 34,000 or more than 34,000 new customers, and our share of new NBN orders or our share of NBN new orders was 7.9% in the half, which results in a market share gain for the Superloop Group of around about 0.4%, taking us to 3.5% in total. Business also had a good half with a net increase of 6,800 customers, increasing the total to an excess of 95,000 customers for that segment. Slide 8. Sustained investment in our brand has been a key focus of the business in recent times. We're now starting to reap the rewards of that investment with growing awareness of the group in the market. That investment has seen the refreshed Superloop brand appearing in digital, print, radio, TV, and elsewhere.
In tracking the outcomes from that investment, we've seen that we've doubled our brand awareness over the last 12 months. We're seeing a strong conversion of brand awareness to consideration and then onto preference. And finally, we're getting cut through in the market as an ISP that is different to other internet providers, has competitive rates, and is value for money. Slide 9. As I said, FY 2024 represents the first year of our new three-year Double Down Strategy. That's the strategy where we have the ambition to double our revenue to over AUD 700 million with a balanced contribution from all three segments. The three pillars of this strategy are centered on organic growth, cost leadership, and disciplined M&A. This slide represents a bit of a scorecard on how we're performing against that plan or how we performed against that plan in the first half of 2024.
As you can see, we're happy the plan is tracking to or even slightly ahead of expectation. Slide 10. This slide's not new. It does, however, serve as a reminder of our portfolio and our operating model. We have three distinct operating segments, and underpinning that is our great infrastructure, which remains significantly underutilized. We've been able to profitably extend our offerings across all three segments through the extensive use of digitization and automation, delivering one of the most compelling product sets in the industry for our chosen market segments. And looking at slide 11, again, at the risk of repetition, one of our major points of difference remains our extensive investment in the underlying infrastructure that supports all three of our segments. Connectivity and bandwidth requirements continue to grow, and we're very well placed to deliver high-quality, value-for-money services for our customers.
With that, I'll hand to Dean to dig a bit more into the financial performance.
Thank you, Paul. Slide 13. It's great to be presenting Superloop's financial results for the first time. I will step you through our high-level results before going into more detail. As previously noted by Paul, the Superloop Group revenue and EBITDA results demonstrate we are progressing well on our three-year strategy. Revenue growth has been strong with 32.7% growth. This revenue growth was achieved with contributions across all segments. However, consumer is worth highlighting. The organic revenue growth in the consumer segment contributed significantly to the group revenue growth. Overall, the group delivered gross margin of AUD 68.7 million. This represents an increase of AUD 19.2 million or 38.9%. The group GM percentage increased by 1.9% to 35.3%. The pleasing group revenue and margin expansion demonstrates we are successfully scaling our business. Operating expenses increased by 21.7%, including a 31.4% increase in marketing.
This increase of 21.7% being below the 32.7% increase in revenue and other income. Operating expenses, excluding marketing and doubtful debts, have declined as a percentage of revenue, which is pleasing and highlights our increasing efficiency. Underlying EBITDA increased by AUD 10.5 million to AUD 23 million, an 83.3% increase. The EBITDA margin also increased to 11.8%. Our ambition for group EBITDA margin is to achieve mid to high teens within the three-year strategy, and we are progressing well. Before we move from EBITDA, I would like to confirm there's a detailed explanation between underlying and statutory EBITDA at page 26 in the group income statement. Notably, the underlying EBITDA excludes Symbio transaction costs of AUD 1.8 million and non-cash expense associated with the accounting treatment of the VostroNet acquisition of AUD 5.6 million. The VostroNet adjustment was also disclosed in the second half 2023 results.
I would also like to highlight the positive NPATA in the half of AUD 1.2 million. The company has been NPATA positive in the last two half-year results. Further details are provided in the appendix. At the bottom line level, the net loss after income tax reduced by AUD 3 million to AUD 18.7 million, reflecting the improving company results. Lastly, I'd like to highlight the AUD 9.1 million improvement in free cash flow. In the half, Superloop generated free cash flow of AUD 12.5 million. I'll now move to the next slide and provide some further commentary around gross margin. Overall, the group delivered gross margin of AUD 68.7 million, and this represents an increase of AUD 19.2 million or 38.7%. The group GM percentage increased by 1.9% to 35.3%. The pleasing thing is that the group continues to enjoy a well-diversified split of gross margin across the three customer segments.
The overall increase reflects good profit growth in the consumer and business segments. The wholesale margin growth has been more subdued, but we expect this to be a timing issue as the first half exceptional new order performance begins to deliver revenue contribution in the second half and beyond. Turning to slide 15. In the left graph, you will see that OpEx, excluding doubtful debts and marketing, as a percentage of revenue, has dropped from 21%-18.2%. In achieving this, you can now see we have more than 50% of the Superloop team offshore. We have been able to meet market conditions for Australian-based staff and blend our average cost per employee down through increased utilization of our offshore teams. But it's not simply about offshoring.
We are continuing to focus on a number of initiatives that are designed to press home our competitive advantage as a low-cost provider, not least of which is the digital transformation program that continues to improve our buying journeys and reduce inbound call volumes. We have an operating model that can enable our growth and which is delivering operating cost leverage. Turning to slide 16. In the half, cash flow from operations was AUD 23.7 million, and Superloop was free cash flow positive with AUD 12.5 million of free cash flow. I know that underlying EBITDA to operating cash conversion has been a key focus for many investors. During the half, our conversion was strong, just over 100%. In the past, we have commented that we would expect operating cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate to be in the 80%-90% range moving forward. This remains our view.
In the half, our cash outflow from investing activities was AUD 11.2 million. For the full year, our CapEx remains on track for between AUD 20 million-AUD 22 million for the financial year 2024. From a debt perspective, the business is very conservatively geared. Our current leverage ratio is 0.2 times, and we will continue to operate at disciplined debt levels. We have a net debt of AUD 8.1 million and have sufficient debt capacity to continue our impressive disciplined growth strategy. I'll now hand back to Paul to provide more details on our segment performance.
Thanks, Dean. So we're on slide 18. So if I just touch on some of the segment highlights. As we've mentioned already, we had a cracking result in consumer in both subscribers and in revenue. Consumer revenue was up 50% or greater than 50% to AUD 119 million as we continued to grow our NBN market share, which now is 3.5% and increasing. Gross margin was 28.4%, comfortably above our mid-term 25% target for the segment. We're getting great results with the high-speed, greater than or 100 megs and above market, which drives up our ARPU and increases our margins. Our overall share of new NBN orders for the half was 7.9%, which helped drive our market share increase from 3.1%-3.5% by the end of the half. And we expect these market share gains to continue into the second half. Slide 19.
So highlighting three particular trends in consumer, we saw 58% of our new activations were on those high-speed plans, that being 100 megs and above, which far exceeds the mix in our base of 44% and obviously well above the broader NBN market of just 28%. This is driving increased revenue and gross margin per user. So we're not just adding customers. We're successfully adding the high-value customers. Marketing investment is delivering volume growth and improved unit costs to acquire, which was about one-third lower than in the prior comparable period. And finally, we've been talking for several years about the trend of challengers taking market share. As I said, this is now currently sitting around a collective 17%, but we maintain our vision of this challengers segment continuing to grow towards the 30% vision that we believe is its natural share. Slide 20.
While perhaps a bit overshadowed by the consumer segment, the performance of the business segment was also very credible for the half. Revenue was up 9.2%, and gross margins maintained above the 40% target for the second consecutive quarter. We saw some marquee customer wins, particularly a particular call-out to our Smart Communities team where we've established ourselves as a leading provider, perhaps the leading provider in the build-to-rent space, having won large opportunities with Mirvac and Investa. This area continues to build strongly, and our growing pipeline will support growth in future years. Slide 21. Wholesale also had a record sales half with new sales orders worth greater than AUD 9 million of recurring revenue annually, which is all expected to be live by the start of FY25. The half included Superloop's largest-ever win, that being AGL.
We're thrilled to be working with AGL as they deliver broadband to their large and growing customer base. Revenue for the half was up 5% or 5.3% and margins just slightly below our 60% mid-term target. We're really at an inflection point in wholesale, with the H1 sales performance setting us up strongly for growth in FY25 and beyond. Slide 22. I just want to highlight the AGL deal specifically. It was truly a fantastic win, the largest-ever sales win for Superloop. We estimate it will contribute between AUD 4 million and AUD 5 million of revenue in FY25 at our typical wholesale gross margins, with volumes growing over the five-year term. There's limited additional CapEx or OpEx required to deliver the deal, and it should positively impact overall margins for the segment. That's all I was going to say on the segment.
So if I move to slide 24, we'll touch on the outlook. So building on a great first half, we're encouraged to see those strong trading conditions continuing as we move into the second half of FY 2024. The company added around 9,000 net additions in consumer in January alone. We're seeing a strong pipeline of opportunities across business and wholesale as well. With that, we're affirming our FY 2024 guidance for our underlying EBITDA of between AUD 49 million and AUD 53 million. We're affirming our CapEx range of between AUD 20 million and AUD 22 million, including NBN spend on the ongoing realizing AGL deal. We are continuing to also take an active but disciplined approach to exploring M&A opportunities. So with that, we will hand over to questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. And your first question comes from the line of Nick Harris from Morgans. Your line is open.
Hi, Nick.
Hey, Paul and Dean. Congratulations. Very impressive free cash flow growth there, so I'll just call that out. Well done. I've got a few questions. I might just shoot them one at a time, if that's all right. Just the first one. There's some restructuring costs in the business. Could you just elaborate? I think it might relate to moving some staff offshore. But could you just talk about, you know, I guess what that relates to, and does that give us some cost savings in the second half, or just, just so we can unpack it a little bit? And then I'll ask the next one after you've answered that. It's probably easiest. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you for the question. Yeah, in November, December, we had a look at continuing to drive our efficiency. So there was a roundabout, oh, 20 or 25 heads left, in Q second quarter. And it was just continuing program at driving efficiency. It wasn't necessarily all those resources going offshore. Combination of that and just being more efficient in terms of spans and layers and driving a better performance.
Gotcha. So some of that system refresh that you did as well, helping do things more efficiently. Got it. Excellent. And just, the NBN net adds just keep getting better and better, so well done on that. Just a couple of questions. It, you know, is it mostly in the Superloop brand? I know you've called out the high-speed plans where you're clearly massively over-indexing, but just curious, are you seeing some growth in the Exetel brand as well? And then I guess the next two parts to the NBN side as well, just the churn, has that moved at all in the last 12 months? And then the final bit was just obviously, you've added 9,000 subs in January, which is another record. How are you thinking about your sales and marketing spend in the second half?
Like, if you can keep adding more customers at a lower cost to acquire, I would have thought you'd be a bit inclined to want to chase for more because it's clearly a good spend. So just your thoughts around that, please.
Well, I've got lots of thoughts around that, Nick. Firstly, the two brands. So we maintain a two-brand strategy deliberately, and both brands are growing. Of course, Superloop is growing faster, where we spend the, the vast bulk of our marketing investment in supporting the Superloop brand. But Exetel continues to perform in its particular segments. That was one part of the question. You asked about ongoing investment plans. Yeah. I mean, we're a growth business, and we generate cash, and we have a, you know, a very underlevered balance sheet. So we have the capacity to continue to invest for growth. You can see that our marketing investment is increasing year-on-year. And we, you know, while we get the return that we're currently getting, we will continue to invest.
So you can expect that our kind of elevated level of marketing investment that you saw in the first half will continue during the second half when we're, you know, whilst we're maintaining the return that we are, we're getting. I remind.
And the other question was churn. So we're happy with our churn levels. We continue to work on programs to reduce the churn, but we're happy with them. We also believe we're acquiring higher APU customers of the ones going on the higher-speed tiers. So we're, we're hopeful also we'll see better churn associated with those particular types of families that we're targeting.
Thanks very much, guys. Again, congratulations on that free cash flow. It's great to see.
Thanks, Nick.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Bob Chen from JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hey, Bob.
Morning, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. The build-to-rent opportunity, can you sort of give us a little bit more color on, you know, how big that opportunity could be and, you know, financially what that could potentially look like going forward?
Well, build-to-rent is part of our broader on-net access strategy. So within that space, we provide managed Wi-Fi historically for quite some time, as you know, into that sort of the tertiary accommodation sector. We've been moving more recently into the world of FTTP or fibre to the premises, and that can cover, you know, build-to-rent or build-for-sale. It can be MDUs, oh, sorry, multi-dwelling units or broader acre. So build-to-rent is just one part of that broader market opportunity that we see as significant. And we believe we really have a leading. I actually think the leading portfolio to address that opportunity in the future. In terms of the market size for build-to-rent specifically, I don't have that data to hand. We'll come back to you because I know we do have it in the business.
But it is a rapidly growing part of the market as Build-to-Rent becomes, you know, much more a vogue part of the real estate market as you know. I haven't given you a specific answer on that, Bob, but I will come back to you directly with that.
Yeah. No, that's fine. I mean, maybe just that whole segment, that FTTP sort of segment in general then. Any color on how that's sort of playing out? Because it's obviously a relatively sort of competitive space, I imagine as well.
Look, there it's competitive in that there are established players such as NBN and the Uniti Group, being the two largest. And there are some small players as well. We see ourselves as the clear number three in that space. We think we will be growing faster than pretty much anyone in that space. And again, I come back to the portfolio, the unique parts of our portfolio that are a result of internal development but also strategic M&A. As you remember, we purchased VostroNet, which gave us a great set of skills in FTTP in particular and some of the building management elements. But we also made acquisitions of Acurus, which gave us a very strong white-label capability, which is quite attractive to a number of build-to-rent operators particularly.
And we tie all that together with an approach around IoT and various other things. So it's hard to get that portfolio right, and we think we've built a bit of a moat around that portfolio.
Fantastic. Then just on the wholesale segment, you know, obviously, the AGL deal, that's a really good deal. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how long did it take to get one of these deals completed and signed, and what does the pipeline look like for, you know, maybe similar-sized deals as well?
Yeah. Look, these are, you know, large B2B deals, and you can, you know, imagine that they have the, the same sort of gestation time you would expect for any of those sort of large deals. They could be six months or it could even be longer, to go through the wholesale cycle. They're professional organizations that have a very sophisticated buying process. So, we're, we're good at that. You know, it's very much part of our DNA. It doesn't just apply to the wholesale segment. The exact same approach applies to our business segment, including things like the, the build-to-rent space that I, I just spoke for before. You know, it's a very different buy customer journey than the, the, the sort of the digitally-led, mass market business that we were having in the consumer space. So fairly long sales cycles. The pipeline is strong.
I won't give much more color than, you know, we are very encouraged by some of the opportunities that are in the pipe.
Thanks, David.
Okay. Cool. And then just the final one on that. I mean, in who, who would you typically sort of be coming up against, competition-wise for those deals? And, you know, what sort of led AGL, I guess, to choose Superloop over your competitors?
So that deal is a backhaul deal. Well, it's, there are some smart elements to the backhaul. It's not traditional backhaul. It's a new product we call hosted backhaul. It's a product that doesn't exist in the market by anyone else or offered by anyone else. It's a product that we really did build for AGL specifically, but it has broad application beyond AGL. The competitors in the space are all the traditional, you know, larger telcos. But one thing that's happened in this backhaul space or this NBN space in general is the onset of the new SAU from NBN. And that changes the way that backhaul is, you know, impacting things like the CVC going away and various other elements of that SAU change.
We've moved very quickly to build a product set, a wholesale product set, which is optimized for the new SAU from NBN. Again, I would, you know, with all due humbleness, say that we believe we have the best portfolio in the market to address that new need.
Great. Thanks, guys.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Line of Ross Barrows from Wilsons Advisory. Your line is open.
Hi, Ross.
Hey, good morning. Just two questions. The first one's just around the challenger segment. Look, that's collectively growing well, and you guys are a meaningful contributor to that. Can you just make any comments, I guess, on the competitive landscape in general and, maybe if you can make any, any consumer reference to industry price changes following the SAA, SAU outcomes from last year? And I do note, obviously, in the back of the pack, you do mention that you're seeing pricing opportunities in wholesale as a result of that, but maybe some consumer observations.
Yeah. Look, the SAU represented a suite of price changes. We saw the higher-speed plans, the wholesale pricing from the NBN for the higher-speed plans come down, and we saw the wholesale pricing for some of the lower-speed plans go up, and the market pricing moved accordingly. I think there was a pretty faithful change across the whole market, up and down, based on the different plan speeds. I don't think that's the question. If I read between the lines, I think that your question is sort of competitive intensity. What we're seeing in the NBN in from a competition perspective is a stabilization, maybe, of competition. You can see that in the fact that our cost to acquire has come down.
Maybe there's been a bit of a flight to value as well in terms of consumer sentiment, coming on the back of cost of living pressures, etc. Or maybe there's a broader realization that it is possible to get a, you know, a superbly performing product at a more value end of the price curve. Tie, tie that together with our increasing brand awareness, and there isn't, you know, a building appetite for the Superloop proposition. You asked about the backhaul conditions there. I wouldn't say that there's been a lot of price change. I mean, apart from the sort of faithful carry-through of the changes in NBN pricing, it's the that's more about functionality differences.
Our portfolio has evolved quite quickly in line with the changes in the NBN structure around the you know removal of CVC in the high-speed plans and all that sort of stuff. So I think the increasing competitiveness of our wholesale product is more around capability than it is around price levels.
Yeah. Got it. Thanks. And the second one's just on M&A. Look, you called out an ongoing active but disciplined approach. Can you share any more color around that in terms of how that, you know, organic strategy's progressing or developing?
Yep. Yeah. So look, we're always actively considering M&A. We are considering M&A right now, and we have been for the whole of the first half. Obviously, the Symbio process was the most active opportunity that we pursued during the first half. We withdrew from that process. We stand by why we withdrew from that process. We, you know, I won't comment on others' positions, but for our evaluation, we withdrew when we saw value parameters being exceeded. So, you know, but I think what that does show is we have an appetite for M&A and material M&A where we see the right buying conditions and the right asset. That's a, you know, long-winded, cryptic way of not giving you much information. I recognize that. But we don't have much more to say.
You know, we continue to explore opportunities. And should opportunities sort of pass those thresholds, we'll update the market, as we get there.
That's great. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star while on your telephone. Your next question comes from the line of Jonathon Higgins from Unified Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question today. Firstly, congratulations on the half but also just the last few halves. Got some great growth and some leverage coming through more broadly, so congratulations on that. I've got two questions today. Just firstly, just on the AGL the AGL deal, congratulations on that also. There seems to be sort of an intersection of multiple sort of RSP products happening across energy and broadband in Australia, similar to what we've seen elsewhere. Can you sort of comment on sort of the broader potential on that AGL deal for expansion and just where you're seeing that in terms of the industry?
Yeah. So I mean, I can't put words in AGL's mouth, specifically. They gave some color in their results around their aspirations for their telco product set and the value they saw in combining telco and energy products in terms of multi-product holdings and churn reduction and things like that. So I won't take liberties with their strategy. But I will say we see an increasing appetite for non-traditional brands, so brands that are coming into the telco space from, you know, other industries. And again, seeing the value in marrying a telco product or a recurring utility product like telco to their core activities and, you know, enjoying the benefit of an increasing depth of customer relationship that comes with that.
Now, those brands that come into the space don't want to be telcos typically, and so they need to work with an organization like ourselves who have a very complete suite of offerings from very simple capacity all the way up to a fully turnkey white-label proposition. So we saw this as a market trend. We forecast it a couple of years ago. We've made some M&A in the space to be ready for it. And I think the proof points are there, right? The collective share of the challenger segments is growing very quickly. It was, you know, sort of mid-single digits when we set these aspirations. Now, 17%. But I think it's only starting. There's a lot of opportunity to run from here.
Excellent. And just a second one from me, and there's just two parts to this one. Just going on from the SAU points that you made, it's great to see a little bit of CVC RSP relief on the CVC. Can you sort of tell me just two points in regards to this? One, is there any sort of benefit flowing through to you guys in this sort of coming half now that's been implemented in December? And secondly, just on the industry, did it applied equally by the industry and yourselves across your frontbook and your backbook? Does that start to come through this half? Thank you.
Yeah. So I think, the second question first, yes, it was pretty universally applied across both front and backbook, across the industry. There was a wave of repricing that sort of flowed through to most RSPs, including ourselves, towards the tail end of last calendar year. In terms of headwinds or tailwinds, it would really depend on the shape of the book for the different RSPs. Those RSPs that are more heavily weighted towards the higher-speed plans, such as ourselves, and I think we probably have the highest, if not, and I actually think it is the highest mix of the high-speed plans in the industry, they do get a bit of a disproportionate tailwind. And those that are much more dominated by the lower-speed plans would have a bit of a headwind.
If we look at the mix overall across our two brands, we see the SAU change as a slight positive for Superloop, not a dramatic tailwind, but you know, certainly not a headwind.
Sorry. Just on that, I was just talking less with regards to the SAU benefit for wholesale. But just on, on your pricing and others, did people apply their own pricing on both the frontbook and the backbook in a similar manner? Apologies.
Well, I mean, maybe I'm going too far by talking about the whole industry, but I can say that we did.
All right. Appreciate the context. Thank you, guys. Congratulations again.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Cameron Bell from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.
Hi, Cam.
So, 9,000 subs in January, and you've just had a record period. Are you comfortable with us now assuming that second-half subscriber additions are going to be above first half?
Look, I don't want to add much more than what I said. We're affirming our guidance for the year. We've had a great start. Trading conditions are favorable at the moment. Trading conditions can change. But right now, we have a lot of momentum. I, Cam, I don't really want to be putting any other data points out there, as you can understand.
No, that's fine. You're probably going to love my next question then. Symbio, obviously, that's gone now, but you do have that contract with them still. Can you give us an indication of how much that contract contributed revenue and gross margin in the half?
Yes.
When you think it'll conclude?
Yeah, sure. So I've been open about this. That deal runs until the end of this calendar year, but it represents less than AUD 2 million of gross margin annually for us.
Right. Thanks very much, guys. Well done.
Thanks, Cam.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time, so I'd like to hand back to our presenters.
Excellent. Thank you. Well, thanks, everyone, for their time. As I said, we believe it's been a great half, and the outlook from here is very strong. So thanks for making the time to listen to our performance for the half. And all the best.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all just connect.