All right, we'll get started. Thanks very much everybody for coming. Welcome. Welcome to The Lottery Corporation's Second Investor Day. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people present today in the room and also online. I'm fortunate to know many of you. For those that don't know me, my name is Chris Richardson, and I'm the General Manager for Investor Relations and Treasury at The Lottery Corporation. We're very excited to have you here today. This is an amazing business with a great and unique investment proposition and a very bright future. Today, we'll unpack our strategy for you, highlighting our strong foundations and our growth runway.
You'll hear from Wayne, the CEO, and the COOs of our three verticals, Callum, Loren, and Antony, and Adam, our CFO, who most of you know. Rounding out the senior leadership team and that are here today are, and I'll ask them to stand up just so you can see who they are, Rob Ure, who's our Chief Strategy Officer, and Michelle Williams, our Chief People and Brand Officer. I'll just cover a couple of quick housekeeping matters. For those here, bathrooms are located to the right of the elevators. In the event of an emergency, very unlikely, thankfully, please listen for further instructions from the dedicated fire wardens. Fire exits are also located to the right of the lifts, and they'll lead you to the assembly point, which ultimately takes you down to Bond Street.
Finally, and importantly, I'll ask you to please turn off your phones or put them onto silent. Before I hand over to Wayne, let me just go through the running order for the day. We expect the formal side of things to take around two and a half hours. We've got two rounds of Q&A and a 15-minute break at 11:00 A.M. Our final Q&A should finish around 12:00 P.M., at which time there will be a light lunch and refreshments and a further chance to mix with the leadership team. Again, welcome. With that, I'll hand you over to Wayne.
Thanks, Chris. Well, thanks, Chris and good morning, everyone. It's great to have you all here. We're thrilled, actually. We're really excited to be able to present our strategy to you all, and welcome to those online. We're also thrilled to actually get back to the office and do some work. I think at the end of this week, we're looking to sort of put a pin in the end of the strategic planning process and get to work and start to walk the talk. There are three things we will demonstrate today. Firstly, the franchise is strong. It's very strong. Secondly, this strategy renews and will accelerate customer and earnings growth, and we are building the team and discipline to deliver over the long term. That's the case we'll be making as we move forward from strategy into execution.
I think I've met most of you in the room. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a Kiwi, to begin with. Get the important things out of the way first. I've spent 25 years in the global lottery business in Asia- Pacific, Europe, most recently , in North America. Just got back from, six months ago, I got back from spending eight years in Chicago, where I was the CEO of a company called Allwyn North America, running their U.S. and North American business. I've spent three years in Sydney previously, when I was the General Manager for Australasia for a company at the time called GTECH, then IGT, now Brightstar. I know the Australian market as well, and I know Matt and others I know from my time when I was back in Sydney. I took this job because there's an opportunity. There is real opportunity at TLC.
Customer expectations are changing, and not every opportunity has been captured by TLC. This strategy is about turning our licenses, our brands, our reach into disciplined, customer-led growth. The first section, I'm going to sort of lay the bricks, if you will, the cornerstones from which we will build from as we go forward. Three things give us the right to invest. Long- duration licenses, national reach, and reliable cash generation. If we look at the company at a glance, we have turnover of about AUD 8.5 billion, EBITDA of about AUD 0.75 billion, and that translates to an NPAT of AUD 360-odd million. [audio distortion] That'll only make us faster and sharper as we go forward. Putting this together, we have a long- duration, license-backed business with infrastructure-like characteristics and embedded growth levers, which have been underutilized.
Historically, turnover has grown at around 4% per annum on a normalized basis, roughly in line with population growth plus inflation. We will talk to you today about the structural levers we believe we can pull to accelerate that rate of growth over the medium to long term. Let's start with the biggest thing that's happened to this business this year, Victoria. 40-year extension of the Victorian lottery license. Victoria was the last major near-term renewal this company had, and it's now done through to 2068. The next is New South Wales, 2050. Our weighted average remaining license life for lotteries has moved from 22 years to 34 years. 40 years of certainty is categorically different to a rolling 10-year engagement. It allows us to invest for the long term and de-risks the business significantly. This is what an infrastructure asset looks like, long-dated , regulated, materially de-risked on duration.
This slide depicts our moats for the business. In the center, we have our licenses, long-dated, regulated, government- issued, cash flow stabled through the jackpot cycle, which I'm sure we'll get some questions about. Reform sits on top of that. The regulatory environment here and globally is tightening to focus on unlicensed and non-compliant activity. As a licensed taxpaying operator, we are very well- positioned to benefit from these shifts. We consider this a tailwind for the company. Trust is the outer ring. Trust is what gives us permission to operate, to modernize, and to grow. It has been built up over decades with millions and millions of customer interactions over that time. These aren't just marketing assets, these are our brands. I think of them as permission assets. Permission assets. They are household names throughout Australia. Powerball, Oz Lotto, Saturday Lotto, Keno, Instant Scratch-Its.
New entrants cannot buy this. It has been built up over generations. These brands, these permission assets, also give us the ability and the permission to modernize without diluting what is already there. Excuse me. Scale distribution. As I said earlier, we have over 7,200 outlets across the country, a pproximately 3,900 lottery outlets, 3,300 Keno venues. Every state and territory is covered with the exception of Western Australia. Again, pure digital operators cannot replicate this scale. As you'll hear from Callum shortly, it is our intention to evolve from a distribution channel into one that is more representative of customer acquisition and a brand engine for the company. A favorite slide of the company's over the years. 20 years of turnover for the business. Lotteries and Keno combined from just a little over AUD 4 billion in 2005 through to AUD 8.5 billion last year.
3.6% per annum across the full period, 4.6% per annum since FY 2020. Through the GFC, through the COVID pandemic, through every cycle. This is what a category with infrastructure-like characteristics looks like, l ong- duration, resilient, compounding reliably across decades. TLC has delivered strong and resilient revenue growth, and the strategy you will hear about today aims to accelerate that going forward. This is one of the most reliable and cash-generative businesses you can own. About 90% of our costs move directly with turnover. Taxes, prizes, commissions. There are no stranded fixed costs in this company. We're capital light, no major fixed assets to maintain, no big CapEx cycles outside of license renewals, which we've just finished, completed. And demand is underpinned by exclusive long-dated license positions in a category that has grown for decades. The result, free cash that funds growth and a consistent and reliable dividend.
Most businesses pick one or the other. We don't have to. The credit market sees the same thing. S&P reaffirmed BBB+ and upgraded our business risk profile to excellent. Reliable, efficient, cash generative. The foundation for everything else that we will now build from. Let's get into the runway. Where will growth come from? That was the foundations, the cornerstones. Move forward into the way we see the business moving forward. We will move from a traditional lottery operator to a digitally led entertainment company. I want to stress this, and I've said this before, and I'll say it again, this is evolution, not revolution. We're not turning away from the things that Australians love about us, the things that we've done well, but we will evolve. We will preserve the license-led, trust-based model, but we will modernize for how Australians play today.
The Lottery Corporation, where Australians come to play. Three ways we get there. Product renewal, digital experience uplift, data, and AI. What is the strategy? Rather than reading this out, and you can do that yourselves later, and there'll be more detail as we go through the presentation, l et's just go through the questions these three pillars attempt to answer. Pillar one, how do we strengthen what we already have? The license-backed core lottery Keno brands distribution, we renew and grow what we own. We will extend into adjacent demand selectively, only where our licenses and brands can compete. We will not chase markets where licenses, brands, and trust don't give us an edge or that are not sustainable for the long term. Pillar two answers where does new growth come from? Digital. Higher margin, where younger adult Australians play, and where we have the most headroom.
Products that existing customers want to return to play, not just transact with once a week. Products that attract new customers who may not traditionally have been seeing themselves as lottery players. Pillar three, how do we deliver the first two? We modernize the business. We continue to manage capital and costs with the utmost discipline, and w e build on the social licenses that this company has built over decades. Underneath the four enablers, these are not the strategy, but they certainly make the strategy executable. Our people, our brands, our licenses, our technology. From the 1st of July, this is how we will operate. I think for all intents and purposes, we're operating like this today, Loren, I think. Three business verticals. You'll hear from each of the COOs of the business verticals today, supported by three enterprise service leaders.
A very simple, a very focused, a very efficient structure. This operating model was intentional. It is designed to foster clear ownership, sharp accountability, faster decisions, much faster decisions, and a disciplined execution. We will also be strengthening the TLC team in the months and years ahead with the right talent at the right time. Certainly, in areas of brand, product, technology, digital, so forth. Our AI philosophy is simple, it is not a buzzword. It will be practical, governed, and value-led. We will build proprietary AI assets where there is a clear customer P&L or risk management benefit. Not because it is fashionable, but because it makes sense. Initially, it will be applied across four primary areas. Product and game optimization, Callum will touch on this, m arketing efficiencies, personalization, and customer lifecycle management, which Loren will touch on. Engineering and operations, which Loren will also probably touch on.
It will be embedded in how teams work. It will not be confined to specialists in the business. We see AI as an enabler of the levers you will hear about today. It is not a separate bet. To wrap up my intro before I hand over, what would I like you to take away from this opening? First and foremost, the foundations are strong. They are very strong. Long- duration licenses, trusted brands, national distribution, high quality cash flow. Two, the license base is materially de-risked. The Victorian extension lengthens duration and removes a key uncertainty for the business. Three, the growth levers are clear. You'll hear more about that. Product renewal, digital, data, and AI. They will become our mantra. Four, we will only grow where we have an advantage. Lottery style products where licenses, brands, data, and reach create an edge.
Five, the operating model focuses on accountability. Three verticals, disciplined capital allocation. Six, we will be accountable for progress, and it will be tracked with clear operating indicators. We know you want evidence of execution. Show me, not just tell me. Internally, we are disciplined. Every initiative has an owner, a milestone, and a measure we actively track. Externally today, you will see directional indicators, not firm targets. We will earn the right to commit to firm external targets, not announce them ahead of evidence. With that, I will hand over to Callum Mulvihill, who will take you through the lotteries vertical. Thank you.
Thanks, Wayne and good morning, everyone. I have the privilege of being the custodian of the assets that underpin the lottery business, and I'm excited by the next era and next level of growth. My story today is simple. I'm going to tell a bit of a product story and a retail story. There's a fact I've always found interesting in the context of our business. There are more people alive today than at any point in our history. I think Australia just ticked over to 28 million people as of yesterday. We have games that appeal to half the population, we have huge distribution reach, as Wayne's touched on, and w e have high social acceptance. We have the highest population at any time in our history, and w e have games that appeal to half of the population. A few categories in Australia operate and capture the imagination at scale, quite like lottery.
Every week, millions of Australians participate, not in isolation, but in shared and often national moments, like the big AUD 100 million draws. That would have had so much more impact if we'd jackpotted last week from AUD 60 million. When I talk about the opportunity in lottery, it's not about creating the demand, it's about shaping the demand and making it more consistent over time. This shows up in three clear levers. First, in product. We're looking to optimize and refresh the portfolio and broaden our participation beyond jackpot peaks. Second, in retail. We're now looking to evolve the retail from a distribution channel to a true acquisition engine, maximizing sales, but importantly, converting anonymous play into known customers. Third, our license value, using our privileged assets and stakeholder support and trust that accompanies these to drive disciplined growth and value.
Wayne's highlighted our empowering licenses, so I'm going to focus on our product renewal approach and our retail partnerships. This is my only look back slide, but I think it's contextually relevant because it simply demonstrates how the disciplined use of price, prize, matrix, and frequency continues to compound value in this business over time. An eight-year journey with eight successful game changes with a cumulative annual growth rate of 6.1% tells a pretty compelling story. Equally, on the right-hand side of this, there's two important points to highlight. The dark blue bars on this chart really cement the importance of retail. Retail remains resilient and a material financial contributor. Even more importantly, it's our presence in the community and our players' path to purchase. We understand that jackpot games are episodic, but structurally, they perform over time.
When they fire, they drive the big national events that accelerate digital adoption, like in FY 2024. Our opportunity is in between those events, and we need to do more. I'll spend the next few slides talking about our approach to product and our opportunity ahead. The first one highlights the demographic strength but also the opportunity. We have a broad consumer base activated through a variety of life cycle triggers. Our opportunity is to remain relevant to the entire population as consistently as possible. Our strength is our customer breadth, but our opportunity is capturing younger audiences as they approach these life cycle triggers. The opportunity, as you see from the bottom section of this chart, the opportunity is in convincing younger adults to play games of chance. They already do. 48% of 18–34-year-olds already play these games. 40% of them just haven't found the lottery formats that fit their usage, and that's our opportunity.
It's not a demand challenge, i t's an opportunity to strengthen our relevance. This is why we run a two-track approach. A broad consumer base, we double down on what works for our core cohorts, and we build more relevant, faster outcome propositions for younger audiences. From the market opportunity, this page outlines what's really in our control, and we have many levers to help shape the demand in the short, medium, and long term. At its core, this is a scaled national system. 50% of Australians playing our products in any given year. AUD 7 billion of annual liquidity from which to optimize and build. All the levers on this page really ladder up to one critical ingredient for our business. Our portfolio creates the iconic watercooler moment. What would you do if you won AUD 100 million?
TLC owns that moment, and our job is to keep it relevant and optimize the levers to manage growth over the short, medium, and long term. This slide is really about how we show up in market with a clear, simplified portfolio of 10 games, each designed around a different player motivation. Our players want different things. Some want a quick moment of fun today, and others want the regular ritual and a decent chance of a meaningful win. Some are dreaming of the life-changing moment. That's the logic behind our three categories: Everyday Fun, Core Play, and Big Moments. Each one aligned to a distinct player motivation, and each one giving us a clearer way to promote and develop our products. Our Everyday Fun category provides opportunity, particularly in the Instant Scratch-Its category, to have some fun and reinvigorate with some entertainment appeal.
Our directional example down the bottom of the page is a category that's played out really well in the U.S. and in the Canadian markets. It's an extendable instant scratch product that we can have a bit more fun with. A consumer has three ways to play. They play the original instant scratch product that can be developed out onto a terminal and interactive screen, and then ultimately that ends up in a major prize, prize redemption, big chocolate wheel spin, where you can create entertainment, an entertainment piece. Again, they're a category build and just it's illustrative, it's an example, and there's many more like this that we're prepared to innovate and innovate at pace. Our Core Play games are super important to this portfolio. They are the traditional lotto games anchored in regular, repeatable customer routines.
We will follow our proven formula and continue to use price, prize structure, and we'll evolve this category. In the near term, we announced the Set for Life game changes coming up in September. They're still on track for a September launch. We provided details at the half. The price of that product will increase from AUD 0.60 to AUD 0.70, and we're inserting an upfront prize of AUD 200,000 and AUD 20,000 over those first two prize divisions to supplement the annuity prize structure of that product. It's tested well both in research and also in real promotional activations in certain states, so w e're really confident that that product's going to hit the market and land well. The product has a younger skew, so it does talk to a younger audience, and a really important segment of that Core Play.
In our Big Moments, the unmissable events that create national attention, a fter repositioning Powerball's price in November, we are assessing Oz Lotto. The two games offer a fantastic opportunity and a unique combination of liquidity and game matrix options, and all options are on the table, but that is our next focus beyond the Set for Life game change. Across all three, the strategy is to simplify, refresh the core, and selectively add reasons to play. As Wayne touched on, we're immersing ourselves in the opportunity of AI and using the data that we have. With millions of customers and billions of permutations, this is exactly the environment where AI adds value. In the short term, we're looking to optimize our modeling, and optimize the offers in market and our prize reserve fund utilization.
We're running it simultaneously with our actual models, and ingesting more data to allow us more precision and to optimize offers in market. Later, I think where the real opportunity lies, is with the enormous amount of combinations and permutations that are available to us. It just gives us the horsepower to do product development at scale and at pace, and with greater precision, ingesting customer research, our own data, and the enormous range of possibilities that are available when we talk about product design. Shifting gears from product to distribution. Retail is a strategic asset at national scale, but more outlets doesn't automatically translate to more value. We're sharing this slide today as an example of our own network across our various markets, and profiling that versus the New Zealand market and the WA market.
The WA market, as some of you will know, will be an outlier in the context of its gambling market, so it has a higher per capita penetration. But then, as we profile that against more mass market physical distribution environments like the U.K. and Ontario, we can see that more outlets doesn't necessarily translate to higher per capita sales, and particularly, when you overlay each digital footprint. From here, and with that context, our focus shifts from footprint to productivity. We're looking to lift productivity. We're looking to digitize environments for sales conversion in our retail outlets. Importantly, we're looking to convert unknown play to registered. Seamless player experiences across our channels are super important, and we'll profile some digital innovations helping our retailers and our players in a minute. We also need to be disciplined about expansion, and we're reviewing our in-flight outlet expansion in low-yield subchannels.
Our job is to provide compelling reasons to register with us, and we are giving retailers the technology and the tools to convert sales and increase registered play. This is a phenomenal opportunity at scale. Wayne illustrated 4.5 m illion registered players, 4.5 m illion unregistered players. We have 4.3 million customers walking through retail doors unregistered. We know our registered customers are worth 2x our unregistered ones, so y ou don't need a large conversion rate to adapt and bring those people into our registered ecosystem and communicate better and convert. On the right-hand side of this slide, this is showing how we're investing to convert. In the green boxes, these are near-term digital deliverables allowing our customers to interact with our retail environments in a more seamless way. In February, we allowed the scanning of instant scratch tickets for prize awareness.
In April, we then moved to taking our draw game tickets and scanning and redeeming prizes inside the app and inside their accounts, and encouraging activation and registration. Only last week, QR codes went on all draw game tickets for ease of registration into retail memberships. On the extreme right-hand side here, Loren will take you through the evolution of our syndicate program. There's some exciting initiatives there. In a minute, I'll take you through our approach to retailer remuneration, which is an important next step. This slide gives a little more color to the more recent deliverables on the left-hand side. Again, this is about providing customers and retailers with the digital tools inside a retail environment to check their tickets, to register, and convert prize payments.
They're all delivered, and as we progress and as we evolve the business, we'll use those at scale. The important next steps in this journey with our retail partners is having true alignment in the retailer remuneration model. This is work ahead of us, and we will work with our retailer association bodies and our retailer consultative groups. They have a commission structure and they have a remuneration model in place today, but a s we move from sales conversion into a true acquisition engine, that model needs to change. Finally, there's an example of a near-term trial on the right-hand side here of some more digital activation in retail. This is about activating sales and converting sales. The three games that are highlighted on those big red jackpot illuminated boards, they comprise 75% of our turnover.
When our players approach a retail environment, we need to convert and convert with clarity. We have a really rich digitized environment already, but we need to declutter those environments and provide retailers and players with the tools to convert quickly. We look forward to that trial in the first half of next year. Stepping back, lottery remains TLC's license-backed core business with privileged assets. Our growth is actively managed through numerous and proven levers: price, prize, matrix, draw settings, and portfolio discipline. We want a simpler customer portfolio proposition, creating more reasons to engage beyond the jackpot peaks. We are going to use data and AI to strengthen the product engine over time, faster innovation, and deeper learning. Retail is being repositioned from reach to value, converting anonymous play into known higher- value customer relationships.
This is a durable core business being actively renewed for growth with clear metrics to track progress. The lottery engine creates the demand and the water cooler moments that drive customers to our retailers and to our digital channels to convert, register, and support enduring direct relationships with our players. Thank you, and I'll now hand over to Loren to take you through the digital journey. Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you, Callum, for that. What you've just heard is TLC's core, a license-backed, long-duration lottery business with national reach and a portfolio of trusted brands. Digital owns customer experience on top of that. It's our primary growth engine, and from FY 2027, it stands as its own business vertical with dedicated focus and a growth agenda. Over the next 20 minutes, I'm going to cover three things: why digital is where most of the growth comes from, where the customer experience is going, and how we're going to be operating as an AI-native business within a business to get there faster and more efficiently than we could before. Digital is a key differentiator for TLC. It's a part of the business that's going to convert trusted brands and national reach into a deeper and more frequent, more valuable relationship with our customer.
We're starting from a position of strength, m ore than 3 million active digital customers already, a retail- to- digital conversion runway, which Callum spoke about, a pproximately 4 million unregistered players, plus around 1 million registered retail players, and deep insights across that scaled player base. That helps us create a powerful platform to shape more personalized experiences, to unlock new growth opportunities, and for us to accelerate our innovation. We see digital as having three value levers. The first is growing digital revenue from our core lottery business: b etter acquisition, better retention, more personalized and more entertaining experiences for the customers that we already have and for the customers that we want to bring in. The second is reaching new customers, specifically the customer cohorts where we know we're under-indexed, the 18-34 audience. We're going to develop new digital products and experiences that attract these new segments.
Third, expand margin. Digital is structurally a higher margin channel. We know this. As digital mix grows, group margin grows with it, and we're going to operate the business in such a way that compounds that advantage by operating as an AI-first business with the agility of a challenger, but so that our revenue growth can outpace our costs. To be clear, we'll be pursuing this growth within the responsible play and license settings that underpin the trust that customers, regulators, and governments place in us. That's not a constraint in the strategy. Th at's just part of it. Digital does have a proven track record. The growth was delivered while digital was still a function within the enterprise.
The point of the timeline on the right is to show how the model has matured over time, from solely third-party resellers in the mid-2000s, to digital launched in-house in the early 2010s, and then to embed it as an enterprise service after the merger and then the de-merger too. Now from FY 2027, digital becomes its own focused vertical. Each shift has unlocked the next phase of growth, and now standalone ownership, dedicated focus is what's going to accelerate our next one. There is significant headroom for us, w ith digital penetration in several markets beyond where Australia sits today. At the same time, our participation data highlights a gap in younger audiences. Adults aged 18- 34 are significantly more engaged in faster outcome entertainment categories, so c losing that relevance gap is one of the largest unlocks we have in front of us.
Taken together, there's opportunity to deepen the digital participation within our existing customer base while also expanding relevance with the next generation of players. We are increasingly competing for attention in the same arena as the world's leading entertainment platforms. That is a fundamentally different dynamic from one that lotteries have historically operated within. The foundations of the experience are pretty much the same. Trust, simplicity, safety, those are non-negotiable. But the surrounding experience needs to evolve to feel more fun, more seamless, more connected, and more engaging over time. It's also important to be clear about what this is and what this isn't. We're not talking about building a casino, and we're not becoming a gaming platform. We're building the next generation of digital lottery and lottery-adjacent entertainment experiences right through our customer's home screen.
Those themes are helping shape our product roadmap and the signature moments that I'll walk you through shortly. The next generation of adults will play an important role in shaping our growth profile over the coming decade. While broader consumer expectations are already shifting towards more immediate and connected participation-led experiences, these expectations are even more pronounced amongst younger adults. This is not a story about persuading younger Australians to play traditional lottery. It's a story about meeting them where they are, with formats, with frequency, and with experiences that fit how they actually engage with entertainment today. Our roadmap is built specifically around what this cohort actually responds to without compromising the trust and responsible play standards that protects our broader customer base. This product roadmap highlights the key signature moments that define how these experiences are going to evolve over time.
This isn't a collection of standalone features, it's a connected journey. The first four signature moments are to be delivered within the current app. They progressively elevate the experience. Starting with our core gameplay, then enhancing the reveal experience, then introducing more ways to play with friends, and evolving our subscription model. Each step is deepening engagement within our existing ecosystem. The fifth moment is the step change, w hat we're calling the Greenfield App. It's expected to be in market in the next 12-18 months, and it's representing a new AI-powered entertainment destination. It's not an incremental feature, it's a new surface that expands where the product can be and how our customers interact with it.
Together, these moments are going to combine to create, to give our customers more reasons to open the app, more ways to play, more reasons to come back, and that's going to drive both engagement and commercial growth for us. Let's go through those moments. First, gameplay. Now, this is just conceptual. These are indicative, and we'll be developing those over time. Just a little bit about what that could look like. Picking your numbers is the core interaction of a lottery. Today, it's functional. Tomorrow, it's where the entertainment starts. Think about in retail. It was never just a transaction in retail. Think about what buying a ticket in a store actually is. It's a ritual.
That regular trip to the local newsagent, the person behind the counter recognizes your face, maybe knows the games that you like to play, filling in your slip, a bit of banter, walking out with your ticket, and that faint flicker of what if. It's warm, it's human, it's actually part of the fun. When we moved that onto the smartphone, in chasing convenience, we did strip some of that out. Today on the app, here's the experience. You look at a grid of numbers, you pick the ones that you want or a quick pick, and you pay. It's a transaction, a chore, maybe a task on that never-ending to-do list. But we don't want to be transactional, w e want to be part of our customers' entertainment universe, not their to-do list.
So, we're competing for attention, as I said, with streaming services, with social media, and with fun, exciting viral games. To do that, we're going to be stepping up the fun factor. The experience is being redesigned so that every interaction carries a sense of reward, surprise, anticipation, even a bit of nostalgia, l ight enough for the casual player who picks four lines on a Friday, and rich enough for the regular player who wants seasonal themes and streaks and exciting bonus mechanics. It's the same underlying flow. It's just with the warmth and the feeling and the fun put back in. Second moment is the reveal. Let me take you back for a second. When I was little, I remember the lottery draw being a big event. It was on the television at a set time. People actually stopped what they were doing to watch it.
You'd sit there with your ticket, you'd wait for the numbers, and in those few minutes before the draw, your whole future kind of opened up in front of you. What would you do if you won the house, the trip, the sorting out the family? You'd play the entire thing out in your mind before a single ball had even dropped. And the waiting wasn't the boring part; t he waiting was the fun part. The anticipation and moment of hope, it's one of the most joyful things about playing the lottery. That and winning. Winning's good. Somewhere along the way in our digital journey, we lost some of that. Today, a result arrives as an email notification. You find out you didn't win in the same way you find out a parcel's been delivered.
We've taken that one moment that made it special, and we just quietly skipped over it. The second move is our reveal. This is a shift from results being delivered as a passive notification to becoming a moment in its own right. We're reintroducing something that used to be core to the experience, the theater of the live televised draw, but we're reinterpreting it from an on-demand, asynchronous world. Instead of a fixed broadcast moment, we're recreating a personalized in-app reveal that preserves that same sense of suspense, pacing, emotional build, but it delivers it at the exact moment that our user actually engages. We're pausing, stretching that moment back out, and give people that feeling again. Every draw is going to become an immersive experience rather than just another transaction.
Users aren't just checking results, t hey're stepping into a reveal moment that feels intentional, engaging, and worth being there for. And for us, it's also a new engagement surface. The reveal becomes a canvas for seasonal themes, for sponsorships, shareable moments, and with every reveal flowing naturally into the next play. We're not just showing results differently, we're redefining what the draw actually feels like and making it a repeatable engagement loop rather than just a static endpoint. Our third moment is social play. Lottery's always been inherently social. Office syndicates, family groups at Christmas, but the digital experience has never truly been designed around that behavior. To understand what social means now, I just look at my 20-year-old daughter. Her whole social life runs on her phone. It looks nothing like mine did. She and her friends will have FaceTime on while they do their chores and their work.
They're not talking about anything in particular. They're just being in each other's company from three different homes. Everything about it is personalized. They put real care into how they show up, their avatars, their custom icons, the backgrounds that they choose. That's not decoration to them. It's identity. It's how you say, "This is me. This is my group." There's trending sounds and inside joke memes that come into fashion, and they disappear again before some of us, most of us possibly, even notice they existed. That speed is part of the fun because keeping up is how you signal that you belong, that you're in the same tribe. Much of it runs on giving, sharing a meme, sending an affiliate code, dropping a gift card. That's how they show they're connected.
For her generation, sharing is the relationship, which is why it's the most natural growth channel that we have. So, the question we started with wasn't how do we add sharing to the app. It was: how do you build this for someone who lives on her phone, expresses herself through it, and plays with her friends in it? Social play or multiplayer is mobile- first and social by design. Create a syndicate, invite players, contribute, play together, all seamlessly within the app, and g roups can make it their own. Name it, theme it, give it an identity, because for these players, a generic shared experience isn't really shared at all. Rich invites turn every syndicate into a natural acquisition channel. Milestones, live updates, and draw day moments are what keep groups engaged between the plays. And this is just the starting point.
Once that social layer's in place, it opens up a broader design space for new ways to play and interact with friends, for more flexible group play formats, for shared challenges, and for affinity-based moments and clubs that extend beyond the draw. Our fourth moment, Auto Play 2.0. Let me start with a feeling that every regular player knows. If you play the lottery properly, you have your numbers, the kids' birthdays, an anniversary, some same set that you've played for years. And t here's one fear that comes with that, that the week that you forget to buy your ticket is the week that your numbers finally come up. For someone who plays the same numbers every Saturday, that isn't a small worry. That is a nightmare. Missing the one draw that's finally yours, t hat fear is exactly why standing entry exists, and it sits right at the core of this.
Our data tells us that customers with a standing entry on a Saturday Lotto ticket are some of our most engaged. Once your numbers are locked in, you never miss and you play it every single week. This is the signature moment in our membership ladder, the step from registered to subscriber. Today, setting that up isn't as easy as it should be. Auto Play is functional but light. Set and forget, low prominence, minimal control and personalization. Auto Play 2.0 changes that on three fronts. It's easier to start, frictionless setup, turns a one-off play into a subscriber in just a few taps. It's richer, so you decide how it works for you. The numbers, the games, even the jackpot levels worth chasing, so you're only in it when it matters to you. And it gets smarter over time.
Personalized nudges, reminders, recommendations that keep subscribers engaged and quietly reduces that silent churn. We don't just take the subscription, we recognize the person. The same product that remembers your numbers can remember your birthday, your anniversary, and mark them with a surprise or a bonus draw. That's how a convenience feature becomes a relationship over time. The economics are simple. Every active subscriber even means higher lifetime value, lower churn, and a steadier funnel. The more of our base sitting in Auto Play, the more reliable and predictable our demand becomes. This is our recurring revenue engine. Which brings me to the fifth and biggest shift, and the one I'm most excited about. The first four moments all sit within the apps that customers use today.
The fifth is a step change because it isn't an improvement to that app, it's a new one. Our Greenfield App is a ground-up redesign of the UX or the experience, which we expect to market in the next 12- 18 months. Two things make it matter. The first is the experience itself, c leaner, a more modern, more engaging app that's a genuine pleasure to use and designed to feel more relevant and more personal to each customer. The second is what it lets us add, a set of new features that open up new ways to play, new ways to connect with the people that you play with, and new ways to be rewarded for playing. And it stays firmly within what we are, lottery and lottery-adjacent entertainment with the same trust and safety underneath.
Not a new kind of gambling, a better and broader way to experience what we already do. Everything that I've shown you so far, from gameplay right through to Greenfield, they all sit on top of a bigger founding decision. This isn't just a set of product ideas. Today, we're standing up digital as a distinct business unit, and we're choosing to run it, what we call AI-native from day one. Being AI-native changes two things at once: what we build for customers and how we build it. For customers, it means experiences that get smarter over time, interactions that understand context, support that reaches you before you've even had to ask, personalization that's generative and genuinely feels personal.
For how we build, it means rethinking our whole production line, from customer insight through to design, to the build and release cycle itself, and even to how we do our marketing. Our frontier squads and the new app are where we'll prove it, d edicated team using the new app as a proving ground for these new ways of working. The reason that this matters is that done right, it compounds like a flywheel. We build faster and for less, so we ship more. We ship more, so we learn faster. We learn faster, so the product gets better, and a better product drives more engagement, more frequency, more spend, and that allows us to invest in more build. When we talk about expanding margin, that's what it's designed to look like in practice.
We do more with the team that we have, we build for less, and we grow engagement and revenue at the same time. We have to do both at the same time, b uild a better business for our customers and a better way of building it. That's the choice we're making as we launch digital, and I believe it'll be our advantage and accelerator. So, my six takeaways. One, w e have a long growth runway ahead, significant market headroom, stronger relevance with younger adults, and structurally higher margins. Two, d igital broadens overall participation, and it's our gateway to younger adults. Three, t he app-driven UX transformation will underpin our core digital growth, giving customers more reasons to engage, more ways to play, and more moments to keep coming back for.
Fourth is Auto Play will build recurring revenue by converting registered players to subscribers and giving them an effortless way to stay in the game. Five, digital will operate as an AI-native challenger-like business, enabling us to deliver products faster, learn quicker, and continuously raise the bar for our customers. Lastly, progress will be tracked. Active registered customers, demographic shifts, average spend, and digital product cadence will be our key leading indicators of whether the digital strategy is translating into earnings momentum. That's our digital story, and I'm excited about reporting our progress to you in the periods ahead. Wayne will now bring us together for the Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Loren, Callum, and Wayne. We've now got roughly half an hour for Q&A for the three people up on stage. The screen has now disappeared. So, open to questions. We've got two roaming mics, I think. Adrian gets a prize for his hand up first, so w e might get a mic over here if we can, please.
Let's start with the layup.
Put your hand up again, Adrian, just to make sure we can see you.
Yep.
Thanks, mate. I'll ask people to keep their questions to one or two, just to give us a good rotation. We can always come back on and ask more. Fire away.
Thank you. Adrian Lemme from Citi. Really good detail on how you're going to target the younger customers, particularly through digital. Clearly, over time, you'll be losing more of those older players, those 65 and over where you over-index. Is the thinking here that on a long-term horizon, there's been 3.5% CAGR growth in lottery revenue, do you think you can maintain that, but you get better quality revenue as it comes through in digital, given those younger players are more, you know, higher digital penetration? Or do you think you can actually do better than that long-term 3.5% growth rate?
Yeah, I mean, I can take that. So, a couple of things. Well, one is obviously, yeah, digital's higher margin.
Right.
So, that's obvious. Whilst we're not going to be giving hard financial targets today, I've got my CFO, he's giving me the death stare right now, i t's certainly our intention to accelerate growth from where it's been. In the second part, we'll unpack that a little bit more in a little bit more detail. In a broader sense, one of the things from a brand perspective, one of the things we're certainly conscientious of is we just don't want to be foreign to people as they move up that ladder. The brand, the products, the channels in which they interact with, and a s Loren puts it eloquently with her 20-year-old daughter's rituals, they will take those rituals forward. The intention here is to modernize the business. I think we've got a great business, because in modernizing that business, there's the ability to compound earnings.
Thank you. If I can just sneak in one more, sorry. The news agents and the retail partners, if there's incentives given to them to have customers sign up for the digital app, clearly, they'll be fearing that they're going to lose some revenue as maybe those people transition to just buying on the app. Is there thinking you might have to give some margin up from that high digital margin to compensate them, please? Thanks.
Look, it's really early days in that cycle. We've flagged our intention. We've already started having some of that dialogue with the retailers and retail associations. We have quite a complex remuneration model as it stands. It's got some elements that work and some elements that in a newer world we may look to adjust. But we have to do the work, and that's probably the next 6-12 months in working really closely with them. Again, we need to make sure that that model supports the behavior and aligns not only the retailer, but the person at the frontline serving our customer as well.
Matt.
Thank you. I think it's working. It's Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey. Callum, I think you talked about increasing participation between jackpot peaks, and then Loren, I think one of the slides that you had around digital penetration probably showed the same story, that digital penetration's quite tied to jackpot peaks as well. There's a lot of really useful information in regards to the strategy, but I was just hoping whether either of you or Wayne, can you talk specifically about which of those initiatives you think will have the biggest impact to, I guess, reduce that concentration of activity around jackpot peaks?
I'm happy to start, then if Loren and Wayne want to build off that. The jackpot peaks is an interesting one. We've gone from two acute periods in FY 2024 through to current day, as we know. We have a sort of outline there. We've got this unique proposition with two significant jackpot games. It'd be great if they sort of worked in tandem with each other and if they filled their own troughs, but we can't control that, obviously. We just need to work really hard in our core proposition in between those peaks to convert people and keep them engaged. I think there's a core discipline that runs through all of our product engine.
We do have a unique opportunity as we look now at Oz Lotto and Powerball and what's the next move in that jackpot portfolio from a volatility point of view and a liquidity that's moving through those products. I'm not sure that entirely covers it off. They can be big peaks and troughs, and we'll work tirelessly at our core base product proposition to try and fill those voids.
Yeah. I guess the message I think that we're all getting is that engagement and more frequent touchpoint with the customers seems like it's going to be a bigger focus. Is that part of that story in?
Correct.
In getting people engaged?
Yeah. Both through product and through UX. A lot of what Loren touched on was, I sort of think of it as product too, but it's just like, taking what we have and just making it more engaging and giving people more reasons to interact. And, you know, we've got, what you would've seen from Callum is that we're, I think you landed the term, nothing's off the table. There is this rich portfolio that we already have. I think we can make it work harder. We'll also look at, and as I've said to most of you in the room, we'll look at NPD as well, new games down the track. Those also require regulatory hurdles. There'll be elements that've been more innovative in terms of how we use the current product, the portfolio we have.
Certainly, digital allows us to build on what we have and just create sort of different unique moments. But more touch points, not just this sort of drop in, drop out, check an email, m oving from transactional to more experiential.
David.
Hi, it's David Fabris from Macquarie. Just thinking about the lottery portfolio, you've got those brands you talk about. Is there a lot of runways to play with the matrix of those games, like Oz Lotto next? Then, just thinking about comments of launching new products, which one's going to give you the most tangible revenue drivers? Is it the core portfolio, or is it?
Oh, leading the witness, David. Look, I'll start, David. I've been around our product portfolio for nearly 20 years, and we've never found a ceiling. There's always options. We've got a rich range of opportunity within the existing portfolio. It's always a challenge between creating new from scratch or building with what you've got. Wayne highlighted the power of the brands that we have, the high recall, the high trust. It's sometimes better from a simplicity of portfolio point of view to drive that existing momentum in your existing product and just to refresh and renew. A great example is the Saturday Lotto refresh we did 12 months ago. It's landed. We've evolved that from a AUD 5 million base offer to a AUD 6 million base offer, lifted the price, and it's the best pricing retention we've seen in that product.
To be able to renew a product like that, which is the regular routine, ritualistic sort of type purchase, is amazing that we can do that after that product's been in market for so long. So, we have a lot of options. I think touching on the AI examples, that just gives us horsepower to process these options as well. We're always excited by the different options we've got within our portfolio.
Got it. Any new products you can lean into? I mean, a Sunday game or having two Powerball draws or anything like that?
All options are on the table. We're reviewing everything. Look, it's a simple portfolio with 10 products and product categories, but there's a rich range of offers to deal with most player motivations, but w e're always looking for gaps.
I just wanted to sneak one more in. Just on the new app launch or the Greenfield App, can you walk through why it takes 12- 18 months to launch that app?
I think when you talk about AI- powered, you sort of hear all these stories about people launching, y ou can write an app in a couple of weeks, in a few weeks if you vibe code it, w e've all sort of tried that, I'm sure. But as.
Maybe not this audience.
Maybe not everybody. But we have a lot of revenue running through this app. We have a lot of customers' trust. Our regulators, our actual tech is regulated. They actually look very carefully at every release that we make, which does add a level of complexity to that. Look, the overall getting to market with an app is a longer runway in our industry. We're also giving ourselves some time to learn along the way. It's not about just throwing out an app out there. We are releasing features. We're sort of running what I'm calling a two-stream economy, where we have one stream that is continually going to innovate within our current app, so w e're not putting tools down while we're setting this up.
We're just keeping a very close eye on what that customer feedback is giving us and how we tie that into developing our new app. We'll just be very thoughtful and considered with how we make that switch over. It's not going to be a big bang. It's going to be introducing these features one at a time until there's that sort of natural flip over to the new UX.
Justin.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Justin Barrett from CLSA. I guess one of the things that you guys have struggled with as a standalone stock is sort of the volatility in earnings as it relates to jackpot runs over time. I guess the opportunities that you're sort of discussing today, do you expect them to support, I guess, moderate that volatility, going forward? Is that a focus of what you're trying to do at all? Or is it just more about just growing through the cycle?
Yeah, look, I'll take that. The focus is to grow the customer base fundamentally. I think there's two things. On the volatility, I think there's a couple of things on that. We've got to own that volatility. It is part of the product, right? So, we don't want to sort of engineer products that aren't volatile because frankly, part of the lottery appeal is that volatility, and w e sure as hell would like a lot more volatility at the moment on the upside.
So, we have to own that. I think we've got to do a better job of educating the market. I've been in the role now six months. I found it unusual that we kept sort of traded on the jackpot volatility. The term I've used with many of you when I engage is, when you bookend this business and over a six-month period, it's always going to look a little bit volatile. I think we've got to do a better job of going, as Callum and I talk about, the liquidity these games bring in, and then how we design a game, w e're not thinking about it over a six-month period. We're looking at a, like three, four years and how this, with tens of thousands of Monte Carlo simulations and things like that. Yeah, we've got to do that.
At the same time, if we execute this, I would expect some of the volatility to be, if we get more people in more often, all boats rise. That was a bit of a word salad answer, but it's certainly not, we're not engineering a portfolio to remove volatility. I think what we've got to do is actually educate the market in terms of volatility is good in certain products that we have.
Yeah, understood. Okay, then. I guess another one, you chatted a couple of times today about, I guess, lottery-adjacent opportunities. Can you just contextualize that for us or provide some examples?
Yeah, look.
What those kind of opportunities look like?
Well, I think most of you, I mean, t here's this reform going through at the moment. We'll see what that looks like at the end of that, but it's not, t he point we're making is we're open to lottery adjacencies, where we can compete, where it's regulated, where we have permission. I think we've got a lot of work to do without worrying. We're not worried too much about adjacencies over the next six months. We're certainly open-minded in terms of what that could look like. Let's see what this federal reform passes through and what, if any, opportunities emerge from that as well. We're not going to sort of jump the gun, and yeah.
Andre?
Thanks. Andre Fromyhr from UBS.
Okay.
Wayne, when you were referring to the historical long-term growth of 3.6%, you made a comparison with population growth plus inflation. I am curious to hear your view on how you would attribute the role of historical game innovation in the portfolio having contributed to growth, or is that something you just have to do all the time?
Oh.
To keep up with.
Yeah.
Macro demand.
Yeah. I think it's the latter, Andre. I think it's just something that you need to do. I'm excited to work with Callum on the portfolio. We've got people coming in with some fresh ideas on the portfolio. Certainly, one of the things we'd want to do is, I think we can sort of dial up that level of the sort of cadence of change within the portfolio as well. I think there's been a very steady, sensible evolution of the portfolio. You have to do, any lottery in the world does that. Certainly, pricing is a lever in Australia that has been used prudently over time and will continue to be.
I guess the extension of that is looking forward, then, how difficult is it to break above that sort of underlying macro trend with the sorts of things that you're trying to do to grow revenue faster?
Time will tell, won't it? That's the intention. I think that's certainly, that's what the strategy has been designed to do, and w e will continue, w e'll be more, I guess, bolder, more creative, certainly more creative in terms of what that could look like. Part of the, when you look at these sorts of portfolios of lottery products, and you made a good point in your presentation, I look at it like this, you just look at the liquidity that's coming into these games, and then you take a step back and, are we designing the games appropriately for that level of liquidity that's coming into them? I'm not going to give you a mathematical answer up here, but we, the intention, and I'll repeat, the intention is to accelerate growth from what it has been in the past.
Just a final question from me. How would you describe the scope of change that you can achieve without having to go through the regulator versus the things where you would otherwise require permission? Am I right that [crosstalk]?
Yeah.
[crosstalk]
I mean, some stuff, a lot of the stuff that Loren went through doesn't require any regulatory, well, f irst of all, let's ground up. We've got great relationships with the regulator. The company has and will remain, it will retain having tremendous relationships with the regulators. Once I've finished with you all here, then over the next month, I'm out visiting regulators and governments and taking them through, so t here won't be any surprises in terms of what we're doing. Some of the items that Loren, well, most of them, I think, don't require regulatory approvals. There's an oversight in terms of code and things like that in certain jurisdictions. There's the zero to light touch, the medium touch, which could be a price change or even a matrix type, sort of a tweak or up to the extreme of a new game.
But those, we'll engage early. We've got a great regulatory team that sit in the back row here and just watch what we say. And a lot of the, everyone turns around, a lot of the work and the innovation actually gets done through the regulatory team. It's easier to come up with ideas. It's harder to get it through. But we proactively manage. We retain very, very good working relationships. There's no surprises policy. There's, yeah, sort of, as you would expect, a spectrum, to very small to very high engagement that's required.
Mark.
Thanks very much. Mark Wilson from RBC. Wayne, just looking at this from a federal government perspective, the proposed regulatory reforms, j ust sort of wondering what the real focus and intent was, firstly from a lotteries' perspective and then in Keno and how online Keno actually sort of became involved as part of that process. What do you think they are actually trying to achieve?
I make it a habit of not commenting on government's intentions. Sorry. All I'll say is that we're monitoring. We're in favor of them. I think they might, as the CEO of TLC and also as the father of teenage kids, I think they make a lot of sense, what they're looking to do, so w e're supportive. We'll continue to monitor and we'll adapt. On online Keno, small part of the business. Frankly, there were some actors in the Australian market that were operating in a way that we wouldn't operate in and we're not losing any sleep over online Keno. You're going to hear more about online Keno, oh, sorry, not online Keno, Keno, after the break.
Thanks.
Adrian again.
Thanks. I might as well take my shot here. The price changes, sporadic, like a Powerball 17% price increase, that's a big sticker shock. Is there any thought given to doing just annual CPI-like price increases across the portfolio, kind of like a Telstra or something? That would obviously somewhat reduce the volatility in your earnings, right?
Short answer, yes, we have thought about those sort of pricing structures and strategies. I think the way we've deployed pricing in our market over a long time has proven to work, and we stagger it amongst all of the games. What we try and do with every one of those price changes is deliver feature and benefit with them. It always lands better with customers. I mentioned the Saturday Lotto change. When you graduate the offer and you enhance the price structure, you give consumers a reason. The way we package our pricing within our digital environments and in retail, we can package them nicely. If you just did smaller, more granular CPI increases, it's harder to deliver those benefits, and then it's just another price increase for the consumer. So, we find, we follow the maturity curve of the products. We assess when they land in market.
They all have a maturity curve, and they settle over time, as you would have all seen with our games. Then you go again, and you step them up. We just find interplaying between the products, it just works. I think I said it in my presentation, it's just a formula that's proven to work over a long period of time. You don't see that in a lot of markets around the world based on the pricing structures they have with their lottery games. They've got to go from AUD 1 to AUD 2 to AUD 5. The way we've approached pricing is a little more granular than that. Probably, the important point, we really need to link it to consumer benefit to sell it in properly.
Rohan.
While the mic's in my neighborhood. Hi, it's Rohan Sundram from MST. Hi, guys. Maybe if you can just talk through the resilience of your customer base, how resilient are you finding them to be right now, and d o you ever go through periods where you feel like you have to work harder to engage them than previous? Is this one of those times or not? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Rohan. It's a good question. In the current environment, I think we all look at the Consumer Confidence Index and sort of go, it's at its lowest level for a long, long time, and even pre-GFC. I think that's why we really like the long-term profile charts, because it does illustrate the resilience. Do we feel we've got to work a little harder at times? Yes, sometimes we do, p articularly when you have these jackpot dearths, they're good to activate and build momentum in the portfolio. Again, I go back to my Saturday Lotto example. I mean, I just think, I called it out at the half year. I still think that's a call-out in a flattening consumer confidence market with a core ritualistic sort of purchase product.
To graduate that product to that level to really support an AUD 6 million prize offer and hold that price retention, I think it says a lot about the portfolio and the resilience of the product and the resilience of our consumer in another otherwise broadly softening consumer environment. Yes, we have to work a little bit harder sometimes tactically at a marketing level, but I think our products stand up really, really nicely.
Any further questions at this point? We will have another opportunity for Q&A after the next session, so y ou can mull over your questions over the coffee break. We'll pause there. Thank you. We're running a little bit ahead of time, so r ather than elongate the break, particularly for those online, we're running 10 minutes ahead, so we might start 10 minutes ahead. If we could try and be back and ready to go at 11:05 A.M., please. Then, we'll continue on from there. Thank you very much. In-house, sorry, an in-room draw. While I said the time I did, you might come back a few minutes earlier because we're going to draw big prizes, I mean, no, n ot big prizes, elevated prizes. I don't want to overstate. Under promise, over deliver, my boss tells me. So, come back a few minutes before that and we'll draw a few larger prizes.
All right, is it recording?
[Break]
Let's put these guys together.
All clear. Yep.
All good? All right, well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Keno. Super excited to be talking to you about Keno this morning. We'll start with talking about the mandate that we'll operate under. Historically, we haven't had a dedicated team focused on Keno end-to-end. Now, for the first time in a long time, our operating model will create a situation where we have a dedicated Keno focus, and that'll be supported by organizational capability. We'll have an end-to-end team that's focused just on Keno to make it simpler, more social, and more valuable across our licensed venue network. All right, I thought I'd talk about our growth model, l ong-standing venue relationships, social play occasions embedded in pubs and clubs across Australia.
Keno's being built around where TLC has a real advantage, and that is in licensed venues where we do have long-standing relationships, where we do deliver social play occasions, and where we do have regulatory trust. The proposed online Keno reform sharpens our focus, but the strategy is broader than that as a response. It's really about us making Keno a clearer, more valuable, venue-led earnings contributor to the business. Now, technology will be the enabler here. It'll strengthen our venue-led participation model. We're going to modernize Keno as a customer-focused, venue-led social play asset. We're going to reset our model around four pillars, and these four pillars will be: we'll modernize the platform, we'll be growing our known in-venue customer base, we'll be rebuilding the playability and brand appeal of Keno, and we'll be improving the network productivity.
This will position Keno as a venue-led earnings contributor with clear end-to-end responsibility and ownership, simpler social play, strong and known customer relationships, and improved venue economics. I thought before we talk too much more about where we're going, it's useful to ground us all in where Keno's history lies and the underlying strength of Keno's retail business. We have a strong and well-established Keno retail customer base, and this gives us a really strong foundation on which to build upon our venue-led model. Now, we've delivered approximately 10% CAGR in retail over the five years through to FY 2025. In fact, in FY 2025, while the business grew at 4.6% of Keno, the retail sector grew at 8.1%. Again, strong underlying base to work from. Keno's also playing an important part in balancing TLC's overall portfolio.
Whilst it's a smaller earnings contributor, it does provide some balance, particularly in softer jackpot cycles in the lotteries part of the business. In terms of market, we don't need to grow into a new market, the audience is already in our venues. The Roy Morgan data shows that about 2.1 million players participate in retail wagering, about 4.2 million in EGMs, and by contrast, in Keno, 1.6 million for that same cohort. What that data demonstrates is that we've really got a cohort in the venues that are contributing and comfortable with play-based entertainment in a social setting, and that alone provides Keno with a great opportunity. All we need to do is we need to make Keno simpler to understand, simpler to play, and simpler to access, and we can leverage the players that are already in pubs and clubs as we speak.
In other words, our opportunity is to really double down and increase Keno's visibility, simplicity, and participation within the licensed venue network rather than relying on expanding our retail footprint. None of the commercial ambitions that we're talking about are achievable without getting our technology right. This starts with replacing our legacy Keno gaming system. The existing platform's been built for a terminal-led model, and it's reaching end-of-life. It slows our ability to change product. It makes it really slow to deliver modern in-venue experiences. A modernized platform will combine a back-end system with a modern front-end system, and that'll help us to deliver three things. First of all, it'll help us lower our cost to serve.
A scalable platform will reduce the operating complexity across the network. We'll be able to make faster product changes, move from ideation to delivery significantly more quickly, and importantly, we'll also be able to know our customers. At the moment, our in-venue plays are almost all anonymous, and we'll be able to move this using this foundation to enable things like BYOD, cashless, and registered play. This platform renewal is the technology foundation for everything that follows. Cashless is something that we're keen to get on with. It'll be an important element in growing our customer experience and revenue. We're rolling out our cashless functionality across the network, and we aim to be finished Queensland by the end of this calendar year. These next few slides will talk about where the rubber hits the road.
First, I'd like to just talk about BYOD or bring your own device. This will be how we convert anonymous in-venue play into known registered customer relationships. The customer journey in-venue will be simple. You build your entry on your own device, you tap in play in the venue to play, you watch the draw on the venue screen, and your payment stays in the venue. That's what makes Keno different from other online gambling products on mobile. BYOD will create a really genuine digitized customer experience in a venue setting for the first time. It'll enable functionality and personalized offers, and it'll make it easier for onboarding, particularly for new and infrequent players.
BYOD will be subject to the regulatory settings that you heard Wayne and Callum talking about earlier. Our design will follow that regulatory design once it's established and reflect the intent of the reform, sorry, including responsible player requirements. The strategic prize for us here is converting millions of currently anonymous venue transactions into strong, known customer relationships, and t hat's what is key to the next part of the journey. When we look about portfolio, our portfolio has grown complex over time, so w e're going to simplify it. As Loren touched on earlier, the next generations of players has more choice than ever now. They're engaging with formats that are really simple, social, frequent, and easy to access. That's going to be consistent with how we're going to look at our approach in venues with Keno.
We're going to make Keno easier to understand, more visible in the venue, social play as part of a night out, and more relevant to the way the younger demographic likes to participate already in the entertainment sector. Accordingly, we're going to rationalize the portfolio, and we'll get rid of a lot of our long-tail products as we bring our new gaming system online. Our product portfolio therefore becomes a lot more simple and easier to understand and navigate. At the same time, we'll refresh our brand and venue presence to make it more contemporary, make it easier to enter, particularly for the younger cohort. We'll be looking to test new formats, specifically for the younger kind of cohort in- venue, and they'll be simple and entertainment-led social formats that fit naturally into a night out.
If you think about it as fewer complex variants in games, more intuitive play, and stronger visual in-venue identity. We expect this will deliver strong repeat play, better in-venue visibility, and make clearer what the role Keno plays in a social occasion, rather than being a niche or hard-to-understand product. I just want to use lawn bowls as an example. Lawn bowls has traditionally been participated by the older demographic, and those players are starting to transition out, so l ots of lawn bowls clubs around the country have brought in barefoot bowls, and that attracts the younger cohort similar to where we're at. You'll notice in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture up there, you'll see heads or tails. There won't be too many people around that don't understand the concept of heads or tails.
Imagine a situation, barefoot bowls, younger cohort, team heads, teams' tails. Keno then becomes part of that entertainment experience rather than just something happens off to the side. You've heard us talk about discipline network growth, that's what we're going to do in Keno. We're going to be really disciplined with our growth. To be clear, we're not chasing venue count here. We're starting with improving the returns from the venues that we already have. It's really about improving our in-venue productivity, making our current capital work harder, lowering our cost to serve per venue, which then in turn increases the margin per venue. We'll have a tiered cost to serve venue, starting with bring your own device, BYOD, at the bottom end, terminals in the middle, and self-service terminals at the higher end.
BYOD unlocks a lot of value for us, not only in all of our current venues, but also where venues currently are uneconomical to go into because of our terminal-led model. Reducing the capital up front with a BYOD model will allow us to be faster and more flexible in our deployment. It'll be selective expansion which will follow productivity improvement. It won't precede it. We'll grow the network where the economics support it. As I wrap up the session, there's some key takeaways that I'd like to leave you with this morning. Keno remains a valuable licensed venue asset. Our long-term strong venue relationships, coupled with social play occasions, give us a clear and defensible role in TLC's portfolio. Reform sharpens the mandate. The proposed online Keno reform reinforces our focus on in-venue participation and disciplined execution. Known in-venue customers are our growth model.
BYOD and registered play will convert millions of anonymous transactions into visible, high-value customer relationships. Platform modernization is the foundation. Faster product change, simpler play, lower cost to serve, and betterment customer visibility. Economics will come before expansion. We'll improve venue productivity first and then selectively expand using a lower cost model where it makes sense. Finally, the Keno team will be accountable for its progress. Key metrics will be tracked, ensuring that we reposition Keno and our efforts translate into earnings momentum. That's it for me. I'll hand over to Adam.
Thanks, Antony. Excuse me. For those that don't know me, I'm Adam Newman. I'm the CFO of The Lottery Corporation. As the CFO, I'm focused on three main things. Firstly, preserving the value of our long-term licenses, funding the balance sheet with discipline, and delivering reliable returns to our shareholders. In my session today, I'm going to talk to you about how we generate cash, how we allocate it, and how we keep the balance sheet working hard for our shareholders. There we go, got that right. This slide here shows the overall composition of a typical lottery ticket, which underpins the margin growth part of our overall story. You can see there that 60% of the ticket price is returned to players in the forms of prizes, and that's set by regulation and doesn't move.
Over 30% goes to governments through taxes, contributing to community support and a sense of services, and that underpins our overall license to operate. The commission, which is around 12%, is paid on top of the ticket price. That's paid by our customers to our many retail partners, which is why the total doesn't add to over 100%, adds to over 100%, rather. What's left is our operator margin, and that's approximately 8% on a retail sale. While these sales are a typical breakdown, it is important to note that they do vary by jurisdiction. For most of our digital sales, TLC retains the overall commission. That's why our digital margins are more than double the retail margins, and as you can see there on the graph, is why our VC margin has been expanding over time. And it's structural. As digital penetration grows, the margin benefit compounds.
I've spoken in the past, previously, for each 1% increase in digital share equates to approximately AUD 6 million in overall EBITDA. All our stakeholders, and that's governments, retailers, and players, benefit from our long-term licenses, which enables us to take a longer-term investment horizon and reinforces the sustainability of our overall model. Our low capital intensity and stable cash flow is the key strengths of the business, and this digital mix shift and margin expansion is a core part of our overall investment quality. You might call me a bit of a nerd, but I like these two slides together because they do connect, I think, the regulated model that I just talked about there from a lottery license perspective with how it manifests itself in our profit and loss.
This is FY 2025 numbers with being our most recent financial results, and it also includes lotteries and Kenos, so some of the numbers are a little different to what I called out in just that previous slide. You can see a turnover of AUD 8.4 billion, 64% or about AUD 5.3 billion goes back to our players in the forms of prizes under the terms of our licenses. 32% of turnover or approximately AUD 2.7 billion is our variable cost base, t hat's state taxes, GST, and commissions. Critically, the overwhelming majority of our costs are linked to turnover. That variability we consider to be a structural strength, and it helps reduce earnings volatility. Operating expenditure, which is the largely fixed costs that we control, are about 4% of overall turnover. I'll talk a little bit more to that shortly.
As Wayne has outlined before, this is a very cash- generative business with high cash conversion given the negative working capital, which flows from the lag between payments in our prizes and taxes. We are CapEx light. No major license payment now required till New South Wales, and that's not until 2050. This is the financial profile of a business that supports an investment-grade credit rating and our dividend- paying capacity. If we turn now, we will just pivot to our operating costs. Our cost base does reflect the requirements of running a large and highly regulated business. We have got seven jurisdictions, state-by-state license regime, a franchised retail network of over 7,000 outlets, high transaction volumes. We own our core technology systems, and we have listed company costs. We have reduced our previous OpEx guidance for FY 2026 down AUD 10 million to between AUD 300 million and AUD 310 million pre-significant items.
Noting that in FY 2025, our OpEx was AUD 307 million. This reflects strong cost control and discipline, which to coin a phrase that Wayne often uses, is intended to be ongoing rather than episodic. We're not making any changes to our D&A or CapEx guidance. We've restructured our operating model, c lear ownership, fewer management layers, more direct accountability. We anticipate one-off costs associated with this restructure of approximately AUD 10 million to be incurred in FY 2026. Our net ongoing savings are anticipated from the restructure of approximately AUD 10 million per annum on a full- year run rate basis. The labor savings and cost discipline will enable us to create the capacity for reinvestment back into the business. We're planning to direct that into digital capability, AI, product development, and customer platforms in order to support and grow the top line.
Our target remains to keep annual OpEx growth below normalized revenue growth over time. That's the discipline that drives operating leverage as revenue scales. I'll just pivot a little bit to talk in a bit more detail about the recent Victorian license extension, which has changed our risk profile and the balance sheet. I'll take you through that and what it means for our overall financial framework. Victoria is our second largest state. It contributes nearly 30% of lottery's turnover annually, and we've just secured a 40-year extension to 2068. As Wayne outlined before, the average remaining lottery license term across the portfolio on a weighted basis is now moved to 34 years. That's a material de-risking of the license portfolio. The license payment is significantly larger than the AUD 120 million that we paid in 2018.
That was for a 10-year license, and the profitability of the license has increased materially in that time. Standard & Poor's has reaffirmed our BBB rating following the extension, and significantly, they've upgraded our business risk assessment to excellent, and we're one of only three Australian companies rated at that level by Standard & Poor's. They also increased our downgrade threshold from 4x to 4.5x n et debt-to-EBITDA. I will take a second and pause and reflect on the key strengths that the rating agencies have called out as they relate to TLC: s trong market position, exclusive long-dated licenses, low capital intensity, stable cash flows, and a long record of EBITDA and margin stability through economic cycles. The payment itself is AUD 1.145 billion, and the AUD 250 million of that will be drawn on the 3rd of July from our existing bank facilities.
AUD 195 million is due on the 1st of October. The preferred source of funding for that payment will be long-term capital markets debt. However, we do have a committed AUD 1 billion bridge facility available as a backstop. I'll take the opportunity to thank our lending syndicate, some, if not all of them are here with us today, for the support that we've got through this very important transaction for TLC. We are expecting that leverage will peak at around about 4x by FY 2027, which is the top end of our target range of 3x-4x . However, we do expect to delever over time, and this will be supported by earnings growth and strong free cash flow generation. The capital allocation framework hasn't changed in construct. Operating cash flow is driven by revenue growth, operating efficiency, capital productivity, and game portfolio management.
That cash flow funds three things. First of all, the balance sheet, we target 3x net debt-to-EBITDA and hold a strong investment-grade credit rating. Second, BAU capital expenditure t hat is expected to be around AUD 90 million-AUD 100 million per annum from FY 2026 through to FY 2028. Thirdly, consistent and reliable dividends. From FY 2027, we are updating the dividend policy to 80%-100% of net profit after tax, but before significant items, and we will be adding back the license amortization after tax. The Victorian license extension did create a couple of impacts from the P&L perspective that would have otherwise distorted the dividend basis of our calculation. Firstly, interest costs will increase materially as a consequence of the license payment.
Second, Victorian license amortization will increase from AUD 12 million per annum to AUD 28 million per annum, and total FY 2027 license amortization is expected to be around AUD 44 million. If we add back that license amortization, we think it better reflects the underlying cash flow generation of the business. Our payout ratio remains unchanged, and as I mentioned before, intention is to continue to pay consistent and reliable dividends. Where there is remaining capital beyond that, and it sits on the spectrum of risk-adjusted return targets, consisting of return of capital, organic growth, or domestic licenses, and a ll of this combines to enable us to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. Okay. So, key takeaways. Firstly, core investment qualities remain intact: h igh barriers to entry, long- duration licenses, trusted brands, national scale, and strong cash generation. Two, the Victorian license materially de-risks the portfolio.
Three, high-quality economics underpin strong and consistent cash generation. Re gulated ticket returns, variable cost structures, growing digital mix, and a capital-light model. Four, the balance sheet is a strategic asset. Strong investment-grade credit rating, clear funding plan, and flexibility that's been preserved. We've got cost discipline, and that creates the capacity for reinvestment. We've adjusted our FY 2026 OpEx guidance. We've got a new operating model. We've got savings that are able to be reinvested to enable us to ensure that we grow the top line. Lastly, by no means least, shareholders remain a priority. We've revised our dividend payout policy in FY 2027 to be more aligned with the cash measure. To summarize, the financial engine of this business is working. With strong cash generation, a de-risked license portfolio, and a balance sheet with the capacity to fund the next phase of growth, we are well-positioned.
Thank you for your time, and I'm now going to hand back to Wayne.
All right, thanks everyone. I'll wrap it up now. Let me close by pulling the morning together. Strong foundations, clear growth levers, disciplined execution. That's the investment case. How does this strategy translate into shareholder value? First of all, more known customers, n ew digital customers, especially younger adults. Deeper engagement. New formats. Stronger game mechanics. AI-led personalization across the customer life cycle. Stronger economics. Margin from digital share growth, quality over quantity in retail, better Keno network productivity, and strong OpEx discipline, c ontinued strong OpEx discipline. We'll modernize Keno. New platform, bring your own device to venues. Brand and product rebuild for a 21st century social environment. Strengthen the license value. Continued active stewardship across every jurisdiction. The Victorian renewal has already been achieved. Simply, what we're targeting is accelerated revenue growth with margin expansion, with strong cash generation, which will equal compounding earnings on a stable license basis.
Finally, what I want you to take away from today. Why this strategy? We will now compete for customer attention, not simply transactions. TLC is a long-duration, license- backed business with structural growth levers. The strategy is intended to turn that into accelerated growth. Why now? Because we act from a position of strength, of scale, b rand permission, balance sheet strength. The Victorian renewal removes the duration question for this company. Why credible? Three verticals w ith real accountability, an in-flight roadmap, and operating indicators that we will continue to track and measure as we go forward. I'm going to wrap up now. We'll have a Q&A. Before I do that, I do want to thank my team that's put this together today, and the strategy process up until now. They've done a tremendous job.
We will move into the final round of Q&A, I believe, Chris, with Adam, Antony, and myself.
Thank you all. Again, we've got the two roaming mics, so please just pop your hands up and ask away. Adrian's gone for the quinella. His first cab off the rank, so we'll find an extra envelope of tickets for you, mate, to look after you. Ask away.
That working?
Yeah.
Okay. A question for Adam. Given the Victorian renewal, is there any consideration being given to lifting the target gearing range, given the S&P assessment, and where some infrastructure stocks have their gearing at?
Yeah, the answer to that is, we've talked about everything with regards to our capital allocation framework, so o ver time, that may well happen. But what I will say is that target range is set quite deliberately with reference to our existing capital structure, and that existing capital structure will evolve over time as certain maturities happen. So, there's some historical factors in play that mean that those sorts of changes can't happen imminently.
Thanks.
Hi, Peter Drew here from Carter Bar. Sorry about the voice. Just a question. You seem to be focused on growing that registered customer base. I'm just wondering, have you got any data you can share on the growth that you get from registered customers, after they become registered customers? I understand they spend twice as much, but what sort of growth do they achieve, say, maybe over a two-year timeframe, and where is that coming from? Are they playing the same game more? Are they playing more games? Just if you could provide a bit more color on that so we can get a bit of understanding about why you're so focused on growing that.
You want me to take that?
No. Yeah, I mean, I can take that. Just the, from a primary perspective, it allows us an opportunity to engage, put it simply, it allows us an opportunity to engage with them, communicate and evolve that one-to-one relationship over time. I mean, the metric we're flagging today is a registered customer typically spends twice as much as a non-registered customer. I think you could take from that, too, that they play more product than someone that's just sort of not as engaged with the product and the brand.
Just one other one, maybe one for you, Wayne. Just interested in your thoughts on the Jumbo relationship and how you view the value of Jumbo as a distribution partner sort of now and maybe beyond 2030?
Well, we've got a good relationship with Jumbo. They are a valuable distribution partner for us. It hasn't been a priority of mine in the short term. It works. I think it works for both parties, and as we draw closer to that contract end date, which is still out to 2030, so it's a while to run. We'll look at it more closely.
Okay.
Justin Barrett from CLSA. Adam, just wanted to come back to your update around the OpEx expectation going forward. Can you just give a bit more detail here? In terms of the redundancies, is it around the new operating model, the AUD 10 million in savings that you've got for FY 2026, what's the driver of that? In terms of the labor savings of AUD 10 million going forward, is that a result of the redundancies and are there other opportunities in that cost base to make significant headwinds, or is it just more about your usual commentary around driving OpEx growth lower than revenue growth going forward?
I'll add a couple, and then maybe Wayne might want to add. What I said, what I hope I said, was that for FY 2026, we'll book a charge of approximately AUD 10 million. Now, we've still got to go through our year-end processes and all the rest of it that relates to the op model changes that we've got. We expect that those savings will be somewhere in the vicinity of approximately AUD 10 million per annum on a full-year run rate basis. They're not in FY 2026 run rate. It'll be in the run rate going forward. Won't necessarily mean it manifests itself all in FY 2027, because people are coming and going at different times in the organization. That's why we reference the full-year run rate part of it.
The reduction in OpEx for this year from the guidance that we provided previously is not linked to the operating model. That was the first point. I think you said for FY 2026. They're different things altogether. Going forward, to parrot Wayne's phrase, it'll be ongoing focus from an OpEx perspective, not episodic, noting that our OpEx in, as I called out, in FY 2025 was AUD 307 million, and in FY 2024, I think it was roughly AUD 300 million.
Good. Andre.
Just a question on Keno. I think you put on the slide that you're in about 3,000 venues at the moment, and posing the opportunity for how many non-Keno venues there are out there. How would you describe that trend on participating venues in recent years? Then, what is the addressable market once you launch the BYOD? How many venues would be interested in doing that otherwise aren't interested in taking a full terminal?
I think I'll start with the current network. It's been performing well over time. As we said, we've got a really strong CAGR there. But we do have a long tail, and I think when we bring BYOD in and we get that cost to serve down, the addressable market in total is about 9,000 pubs and clubs. I don't see us being in anywhere near that because there might be a bridge club, something like that included in that. I think what we need to do is we really need to look at where the social play element will fit into the venues, lawn bowls is a good example, and where we can get the right experience that matches the game and the venue we go into. But we don't have a number in mind.
Maybe a broader question for Wayne and/or Adam. You obviously provided an update to the 2026 guidance assumptions today, but there's not much in terms of financial targets put further out. How much was that sort of internal discussion about whether or not you make whatever your internal targets are public for investors?
Have we discussed that? We're working off the principle. I've been here just over six months, so this is the start of a journey. Part of today is to map out or to communicate with you all how I'm thinking about the business, how we, as a leadership team, are thinking about the business. I guess at a principal level, it is something we've discussed, Adam and I have discussed a lot with the board, we will, I think, c learly, internally, we're going through a process at the moment of implementing a system of objectives and key results so that the metric or the quantitative nature of the business is undergoing a culture shock, to say the least. But we will be evidence-based, and we won't be putting out sort of any more forward financial indicators than what we have to date.
I think some of these principles that Adam, I was going to defend you. Some of the comments about that line you always use, I mean, I think it's a very strong line about our OpEx will remain under. We are firm on some of these things. We're firm on we're targeting accelerated growth. We are firm on our operating expenses will remain below normalized revenue growth. Adam's right. The FY 2026 OpEx number, it's not connected to the restructuring savings on a forward run rate. I tell you what, they're symptomatic of a culture that just questions every single decision in terms of, does this make sense? What is the payback? I heard a very strong debate yesterday about whether we should be paying for the furniture moving or not. It's lovely. It's great. This is what I want to see. Just act like owners.
Would you do this yourself? There's certainly a cultural shift of what is the return on everything we spent. Return on labor, return on properties, certainly the return on advertising.
David?
Great. Thank you. Just with Keno, with the venues, are they as excited as you are with the outlook you're talking to? Can you share some common conversations? Then, can you just clarify, are they going to have to contribute any OpEx or CapEx as part of the modernization?
We've started a tour talking to the industry associations. The first ones we spoke to were super excited. We had a meeting with ministers that afternoon and wanted to know when they could start engaging, to which we had to say, "Sort of calm down." It's been very positive so far. For the existing network, we're not envisaging any change. Why I say that deliberately is when you look at BYOD, we still, first of all, we need to build the tech to deliver that, then we need to think about how we implement that in a venue, and what the infrastructure that looks like around that. So, I don't want to commit to what that may or may not look like at this stage.
But we're certainly not looking to flip our model on its head and start charging venues inordinate amounts of OpEx or change their terms, et cetera. In fact, we've just communicated with them to say, "Hey, we're here. We've got great relationships. We partner with you well. Let us know what you need. We've got your back."
Got it. If we think about Keno, if we adjust out those online volumes, we think it's about 10% of earnings now. Can you talk about whether there's any synergies with the lotteries business, be it through revenue drivers or cost drivers, that make sense for the two businesses to remain together?
I might throw that one to you, Wayne.
Well, yeah. I think maybe there's two or three questions in one there. We're not going to bring the two businesses together. We've just separated them, so I won't do that. There's no short-term cost drivers or synergies. If anything, the driving intention behind it is actually to get Antony and a team of about 90-odd people just to sleep, eat, drink Keno, and worry only about Keno. That's the synergy, if you like. Then, maybe, down the line, David, there may be some opportunities in those venues, for lottery-type product. There's certainly, some of the conversations that Callum and Antony are already having with some product ideas, is that it could go in either all channel or both channels with sort of new game concepts. Keno can sort of go, it's going to be a different brand. It already does, but it will be more distinctive.
It'll feel different to the lotteries brands. We quite like having that hedge and the ability to be able to pivot product from one channel to the other. Just last, what I would say is, and I think Antony sort of undercooked it a little bit, the clubs and pubs that I've, which is only a fraction of what you deal with, are very excited about what we're doing. Okay. They're feeling the pressure. There's obviously a lot of pressure on them and for Antony and his team to come in and go, "We want to work with you, build this Keno brand." As he sort of coined the phrase, "We've got your back." Where others may be falling down, we'll step in, and we're there to support you. It's going to be how the brand behaves, how it operates, how it feels going forward.
I'd like just to add that we do have quite a lot of existing shared cost in today's structure.
Yeah.
To the extent that you've got value of holding the businesses together, we've got the benefits of synergy and scale that exist today, that if you broke them apart, you'd miss.
Yeah, there is the shares, that's a good point.
Yeah.
Just quickly, Neil Murchie from Evidentia. Just a quick question on the Victorian Auditor General proposed review of the process around that license extension. Just interested in the scope of that review, whether it's government side only, are you required to make submission?
We won't.
Any redress or remediation?
All we'll say is we have a binding contract, and we're not surprised. A contract of this nature, we're not surprised that it's going to be reviewed. We expected it to be reviewed. We're comfortable with the way things stand.
Thanks.
Matt.
Thank you. It's Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey again. I had a question for Adam just on capital management. Obviously, you've revised the dividend policy. Just interested in the other options that you had available, buyback, perhaps progressive dividend policy or something like that. Maybe if you just talk about how much the gearing of the business influenced your decision, and also if you could just give some color around the ability to frank over the next few years, please.
Yeah. I'm not sure I quite followed the first part of the question. Can you just repeat the first part? Let me deal with the franking credit first. Yes, we continue to expect to be able to fully frank. We're tax-paying at the moment, so as a consequence of being tax-paying at those levels, I don't think our franking position is unlikely to change from what it is today. I'm not sure I quite followed the first question.
The first question, obviously, you would've had the discussion around the board around capital management.
Yeah.
You've revised your payout policy to be NPATA.
Yep.
You've got other options there. You could've done buybacks.
Right.
You could've introduced some form of new payout policy.
Yeah.
Maybe to smooth over the jackpot run, for example, if you just were to guarantee a set dividend that grows each year irrespective of the jackpot run, for example. I imagine you had all those discussions.
Yeah.
Can you just share any color on why you landed in the way that you did for your payout policy? Also just to talk about how much the balance sheet had to do with that because i f you assume that you're going to de-gear, then maybe these questions are going to come back over time.
Yeah. Look, I suppose we haven't even signed the license, w ell, paid for the license yet, extension, so it's all pretty freshly minted stuff. But all of those things got discussed, you're right, from a framework perspective. The discussions with the board, I understand from an investment thesis perspective, consistent, reliable dividends are important. We've kept that as one of the key pillars of the overall framework. It'll be a little bit of time before that leverage potentially opens back up again from the top end of our range. I think then all options, I know where you're going, is return of capital management, an option? I think very much so as we go down the path of what happens in the future and where we sit from that target range.
I think at the moment, we have to keep that down the track a little bit, I think. But yeah, the discussions would've covered all of those situations, and that's kind of where we landed and where we did.
Thank you. Maybe just a question for Wayne. Lots of new information today. I guess, how do you want us to think about the speed of which you're able to deliver on some of these things?
Well, we'll deliver intentionally. If we go back, I know you'll sweat through the deck, Matt, but I think we will be methodical and intentional in terms of the way we deliver. Digital is a priority. We're building that team. Again, we've indicated some timelines today, and you guys can sort of draw the dots. As we come back, and through results or investor meetings and things, it's certainly my intention to be able to start to sort of shift from tell me to show me.
Just with that, so the second part of the question was going to be, as we go through these six-monthly or 12-monthly check-ins with how you're going, would it be customer numbers or perhaps the cohort? How would you say that we should sort of look at, I guess, the progress? Because there is volatility.
Yeah.
In each period, so sometimes it can be hard. What would you look at it if you were us?
I'd look at the customer numbers.
Adrian?
Thank you. Adam, I'm just thinking about the right base for OpEx into next year. Obviously, it's been a pretty soft half for large jackpots, so I was just wondering w hether there's been any sort of lower advertising and promo spend that's influenced the lower OpEx guidance for FY 2026 please.
The answer to that is yes. That's been part of the reason why we've lowered the guidance, absolutely, but n ot the whole reason. Depending if you assume a mean reversion back to, mean reversion from a jackpot perspective, there might be some upward pressure on A&P. May not be, depending upon the circumstances at the time.
Thanks.
Hi, guys. Rohan Sundram from MST. Just on this question, given it's a very unique business that you run versus your gaming peers, but the elephant in the room is AUSTRAC. Can you take this opportunity, Wayne, just to give us confidence in the nature of the business, given it's such low price point, that we need not be too concerned, and that you are confident in your AML/CTF frameworks, that money launderers aren't into office syndicates and the like, and we can get confidence around your position. Thank you.
Yeah, we fall outside the AML guidelines to begin with. We have a range of measures and disciplines internally, that we monitor, and we have no evidence that we risk rubbing up against anything related to AML. It's something that we're cognizant of, clearly, with some of the recent news. It's obviously a discussion that the board, risk committees, and our internal risk teams are acutely aware of and monitor with vigilance. As the CEO, the answer is, I have confidence that we're not, that we're operating with complete integrity.
Thank you. Makes sense.
Umar?
Umar from Allan. You talked about redesigning the retailer REM model and driving better unit economics there. Can you give a bit more color on some of the changes you're planning to make and the timing?
Probably not much more than what Callum already gave, but the, w e're starting a process of engaging with retailers. The direction of travel is quality over quantity. We'll shift into a model where some of our retailers, for instance, on a high street or in a large mall, we want them to be brand ambassadors, so we may invest in some of those retailers proactively. We also want them to be affiliates for registrations. There'll be an ongoing discussion with the associations and sort of key retailer bodies. I don't know if you want to add anything to that. We don't have anything concrete today other than that's the direction of travel. The intention is to find a commercial model that supports that.
All right. The only thing I'd add, similar to what I said before, there's a journey to go on with this one. I think we've flagged our intent. There's a number of levers within the existing remuneration model that we can, that work our way through. But it's just about how do we align their remuneration beyond just commissions, to get the right behaviors in store. There's probably a 6-12-month period of consultation on this one, so it's a longer burn. We're interested to get that alignment; it'll take a little while.
David, we might have to make this just about the last one, I think. On top.
Yeah, just a bit of a curious question. You walked through a lot of revenue drivers today across both businesses. What held you back from providing a multiyear revenue guidance range for us to think about?
You won't let this go, will you? As I said, six months into the job, and we will be judged by evidence, not by talk. That's all I'm going to say on that. You can ask again. Matt can ask as well if he wants to.
All right.
Anything else?
I think we're all done. All done, all silent. Thank you very much for attending. As you can see, there's a clear plan going forward. There's an excitement and optimism, I have to say, internally, and we look forward to delivering on that, to moving to the show me phase over the coming reporting periods and months and years ahead. Thanks very much for your attendance today, and please reach out and engage with us with any further inquiries as needed. Thank you.