Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us on the conference call today for Viva Leisure's financial results for the first half of financial year ended 31 December 2020. I'm joined today by our CFO, Mr. Kym Gallagher. Earlier today, various documents, including an investor presentation, were uploaded to the ASX. We will be referring to these today during our presentation. The agenda for today's presentation is that I will provide an overview of the performance highlights and operational achievements of the half year. I will pass on to our CFO, Mr. Kym Gallagher, who will run through the financial results, including member snapshot. I will provide a summary of the impacts of COVID-19 and the great work of our team to navigate through COVID during the first half of FY 2021.
Finally, I will provide an update on the outlook and what our focus will be moving forward, including our current revenue run rate. We will also have the opportunity to ask any questions at the end of the presentation. At the back of the results presentation, starting at page 25, is a reconciliation of the accounts against AASB 16. We will not be going through these today. However, if you have any questions, please reach out directly or feel free to ask questions at the end of the presentation. COVID-19 has affected the health club industry significantly and continues to affect the industry right up until December 2020, which was our first full month of operation, where we had all locations within our network open and trading. This effectively meant that we only really enjoyed one full month from the first half of the year in full trade.
As we did when COVID first arrived and the shutdowns began, my team and I have worked diligently to return and grow the business past the pre-COVID levels. The first half of FY 2021 half-year result is an outstanding result. During, as I'm sure you have heard before, an unprecedented period where we did not have the full ability to trade. I believe the business continues to be in an excellent position to capitalize on the foundations we have established over the past year and to continue to grow from here. Our previously advised target of achieving 400 corporate-owned locations by 2025 remains our primary goal, and we continue to work towards that. Moving to slide seven of the presentation, performance highlights. Revenue for the first half of FY 2021 was AUD 35.9 million, an increase of 56.4% over the previous corresponding period.
Australian Fitness Management, which I will refer to throughout my presentation as AFM, is the Viva subsidiary that manages the Plus Fitness network, and it contributed AUD 3.6 million of revenue after it was acquired in August 2020. EBITDA achieved was AUD 5.6 million ex AASB 16. This represents a 0.5% decrease from the first half of FY 2020. Considering the fact that all our locations were not permitted to reopen until December 2020, to achieve essentially the same EBITDA as the first half of the previous financial year is an excellent achievement. I will provide some further comments on the COVID impacts later in the presentation. The other key performance highlight I wish to bring to your attention is the EBITDA margin.
While there was an obvious decline due to costs such as rent that needed to be paid once we were no longer eligible for JobKeeper from September 2020, the achievement of a 15.5% EBITDA margin for the half year is an increase on the full year FY 2020 margin of 14.8%. The marginal contribution and fixed cost nature of this business also means that the EBITDA margin starts to return to normal levels as revenue returns. While not part of these results, what we did see in January 2021 was an increase of approximately AUD 300,000 in revenue over December 2020. All of which fell directly as a contribution and increased EBITDA in January 2021. I won't steal Kym's thunder anymore, so I'll let him expand on this. The other statistics on the page are self-explanatory. Moving to slide eight, operational achievements.
There were 95 open locations as at 31st of December 2020. Today, we have 102 open locations with a further five locations currently in fit-out and a further 15 locations in the planning or development application stage with councils. Our current forecasting is showing we will have 115 locations open at the end of the current financial year. This excludes the 215 forecasted locations operating under the Plus Fitness franchise network. These numbers do not include any acquisitions currently under review. I will now pass on to our CFO to present the financial results commencing at page 10 of the results presentation.
Thank you, Harry. Good morning all. As Harry mentioned, I'm on slide 10. Firstly, the half year results presented throughout are predominantly based on an ex AASB 16 basis, which is also consistent with the prior year. Looking at the profit and loss. Despite the impacts of COVID, we achieved revenue growth of 56.4% over the prior corresponding period. This includes the results of Australian Fitness Management, the Plus Fitness master franchisor, or AFM, for the first time. The revenue growth excluding AFM, which contributed AUD 3.6 million of the AUD 35.9 million total revenue, was 40.9%, which is a great top-line result. However, during this period, the imposition of mandated restrictions on our clubs and members has hampered the group's overall results. The effect of these restrictions led to a significant reduction in the rate of new members joining and an increase of voluntary suspension by existing members.
It also led to significantly lower than anticipated revenues over the period of July to December, particularly with the continued closure of our Victorian clubs until late November. It slowed the average time to profitability of our roll-outs considerably, putting pressure on our margins. It required the group staff to staff each club with COVID marshals for a period which increased wages, and it resulted with a considerable increase in cleaning costs, some of which are now ongoing. In addition, it slowed our acquisition strategy to only one acquisition in the six-month period. What this has meant for our margin and EBITDA result is that while revenues are showing good growth versus 12 months ago, the new rolled-out sites, which would ordinarily come to profitability much quicker, have lagged in member take-up, and therefore revenues, due to the uncertainty surrounding COVID.
At the same time, these sites were carrying full rent and full wage costs, and this has ultimately put some short-term pressure on our margin. Having opened or acquired 35 sites during the full calendar year of 2020 has put additional depreciation and interest costs into the P&L, which has in turn impacted the bottom line. We do see this as short-term as we turn around into the second half of FY 2021. The good news is, during the period 1 July to 31st of December, we completed the acquisition of AFM, and it has performed in line with expectations for the period of ownership on both the revenue and EBITDA lines. We've now rolled out an additional 15 clubs since 30 June and acquired one.
After balance date, we completed the Pinnacle acquisition on 3rd of February, comprising six health clubs in Victoria. Obviously none of their results are reflected here. I'm on slide 11. Looking at the revenue, and to the half, it has not only grown against the prior corresponding period by 56.4%, but it has also eclipsed the full year FY 2019 revenue and was not far away from last year's full-year revenue result. The EBITDA result was very close to the prior corresponding period, despite the COVID issues as discussed. As mentioned, AFM contributed approximately AUD 3.6 million to total revenue and AUD 943,000 to EBITDA. While the EBITDA margin was less than the prior corresponding period, it was significantly higher than the second half of FY 2020, demonstrating that the business is recovering well.
To put this in perspective, December was the group's first-ever month above AUD 7 million in revenue at AUD 7.2 million. In January, we achieved AUD 7.5 million, making an annualized run rate of AUD 90 million in revenue at the end of January. What was also encouraging was that nearly all of the revenue growth in January over December fell straight to the EBITDA line. We're now starting to see good marginal contribution post the COVID period. I'm on slide 12. We had strong growth in member numbers of approximately 8,700 for the Viva clubs, particularly in the second quarter of the financial year as member confidence started to return. We were pleased to see some good organic growth as well as a late pickup in numbers across our greenfield sites. This was particularly encouraging after the extended period of club closures and lengthy voluntary suspensions of members.
The acquisition of AFM added a further franchisee-owned membership base of 172,364, taking total members at 31 December to over 275,000. During the month of January 2021, the group increased total members by an additional 6,000 from both the Viva and AFM franchise sites. Members by state continue to diversify as we consolidate our position outside of the ACT. The numbers in the top pie chart are excluding the AFM members. For members by brand, when we do include the Plus Fitness numbers, you can see that Plus Fitness has skewed the results. For some perspective, if the Plus result is removed, our HIIT Republic brand now accounts for approximately 5% of our own club's membership base. Moving on to slide 13.
As mentioned on the previous slide, the growth in members was driven by organic and new site openings, with the organic growth of 2,878 members coming from clubs that were owned pre-COVID shutdown, and 3,958 members coming from new sites. With the new rolled-out sites, these comprised seven HIIT Republics and two of the clubs were Victorian and closed until late November. Despite this, the total member growth here was solid and creates a good springboard into the second half. We had one acquisition being the FIT HQ in Campbelltown, and it contributed 1,876 members. Two months later, where we are today, we've had net member growth of over 6,000 with the completion of the Pinnacle transaction and the corporatization of our first Plus site in Morayfield, Queensland. Our total member number now sits around 117,000.
I'm on slide 14. Successful AUD 30 million cap raise in December has provided a strong cash position for future rollouts and acquisitions. During the period, we completed the Plus acquisition for AUD 18 million. Now post half year end, we've completed the Pinnacle acquisition for AUD 6.2 million. We're in discussions with several more acquisitions and the rollout program is accelerating. We have a targeted plan to deploy this capital. Debt has remained under control with a total of AUD 25.4 million in debt, up slightly from June. It includes AUD 17.8 million in equipment lease finance and AUD 7.6 million in the CBA senior facility. In addition, that senior CBA facility now has capacity of up to AUD 25 million for acquisitions, leaving approximately AUD 17.5 million available to draw. I'm on slide 15. Similar comments to the balance sheet with capital raised funds now leaving us with a very strong cash balance.
The significant cash outflows for the period were the investment in plant and equipment for the rollouts at nearly AUD 14 million, and the acquisition of AFM, which was just over AUD 18 million in total. I'll now hand back to Harry.
Thanks, Kym. I will now provide a quick summary of the COVID impacts on the business over the first half of the year. I now refer to slide 17 of the presentation. As you can see, the business was unable to open and operate all locations until December 2020. This clearly has a significant impact on the half year results. As also previously mentioned, our eligibility for JobKeeper, which in turn provides eligibility for rent relief, ended in September 2020. This meant that full rentals at all locations, including those in Victoria, had to be paid, which provided a significant negative impact on the half year result. The good news is that apart from the snap five-day lockdown in Victoria this month, all our locations are today open, growing, and operating. Moving to slide 18. This was an important slide for us to provide.
During the half year, we opened 15 locations and acquired one location in Campbelltown, New South Wales. Those investors who have followed us know that we target a six-week period once a club opens to break even. We then recoup any losses incurred in the first six weeks over the next six weeks. This results in new locations providing an EBITDA benefit on a four-wall basis from around month three, after recovering any losses incurred. During the first half, we saw this four-wall EBITDA contribution being extended out through closer to five to six months for various locations. Of the three locations showing an accumulated negative contribution to EBITDA, two of the locations were in Victoria, being Ascot Vale and Nunawading. These two locations had opened for less than a week before being closed down due to the Victorian government-mandated closure.
With the eligibility for JobKeeper ending, the rental payments and payments to permanent staff had to continue at these locations, this is what contributed to the loss. We expect all locations that have not yet contributed to EBITDA on a four-wall basis to start contributing from the end of March based on current trending and growth. The combined EBITDA loss of those two Melbourne clubs alone contributed AUD 262,000 for the half year. Just for interest's sake, the high-performing club on the right-hand side of the chart is our Big Box club in Gungahlin, ACT, which continues to perform extraordinary, is working well with our previous Gungahlin club and our new HIIT Republic Gungahlin club in a hub and spoke configuration. Moving to slide 19. You can see that our revenues have returned an increase past the pre-COVID levels. In January 2021, revenues exceeded AUD 7.5 million, as previously mentioned.
The average revenue per month over the first half was just under AUD 6 million per month from a standing start of AUD 4.4 million in July. When you take into account January 2021, the average revenue for the first seven months of the financial year exceeded AUD 6 million per month. Member visits exceeded 600,000 for the first time in January 2021 also. This excludes the Plus Fitness member visits. When we include the Plus Fitness member visits, the Viva network of owned and franchised location averages nearly 60,000 visits per day on a 30-day rolling average. This information is published on our Viva Leisure website for those that are unaware. This equates to well over 20 million health club visits within the Viva network during the calendar year 2021. This is a significant number of member visits. Moving to slide 20.
Our aim with this slide is to show what a normalized EBITDA position would have looked like without the impacts of COVID for the half. What we start with here is the actual result. We remove from that the benefit of JobKeeper and the rent savings and benefits we received. We add the one-off COVID costs, which relate to cleaning supplies, and as Kym mentioned, COVID marshals, which were required during reopening and are no longer required. Finally, we provide revenue shortfall from the Victorian clubs predominantly, which were closed, and the other clubs closed over the various periods, as detailed on slide 17. To remind investors, the revenue loss from the Victorian clubs being closed equated to over AUD 350,000 per month over the five months they were closed for the half. This results in what we call a normalized EBITDA of approximately AUD 7.3 million.
This is purely provided for informational purposes. Moving to slide 22, Outlook. This is a slide we have previously provided in our presentations, only updated with the latest figures. We currently have 122 owned locations. One of these is a Plus Fitness corporate-owned location. We have agreed to terms to acquire another two Plus Fitness locations, and we have another seven locations in the Plus network, which we are currently negotiating to corporatize. The corporatization of the Plus Fitness locations by way of acquisition is one of the main drivers for purchasing the AFM network originally, as you would remember. We currently have 15 locations secured, five of which are currently in build. We expect most of these locations to open this financial year. In addition, we have a further 15 locations currently under negotiation for lease or agreed terms, however, leases not yet executed.
Some of these locations may open in FY 2021. However, we expect most to open in early FY 2022. Finally, we have 14 locations we are currently considering acquiring. Of these 14 locations, five have agreed terms, we are just finalizing the sale of business agreements with the sellers. As indicated on the next slide, these five acquisitions will total approximately AUD 3 million and provide an additional 5,000 members approximately. Moving to slide 23, our final slide. As Kym mentioned, currently we have 117,000 members, of which approximately 4,000 remain on suspension, which is back to pre-COVID normal levels. With the five acquisitions expected to be completed in the next 60 days, we expect to have 122,000 members, excluding the Plus Fitness members shortly. Moving to revenue. January 2021 resulted in the business achieving AUD 7.5 million of revenue.
We have provided that as a run rate for the next 12 months. This indicates circa AUD 90 million in annualized revenue, purely based on the revenue achieved in January. Any additional acquisitions or greenfield locations should contribute to that. To be clear, this is not the FY 2021 expected revenue, but rather the calendar year 2021 annualized run rate revenue. We would now like to open up for any questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. Your first question comes from Jason Korchinski from Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Good morning, Harry and Kym. Thank you for running us through the results. My first question is just that you called out higher costs relating to COVID-19. What portion do you anticipate will remain going forward? Is it largely cleaning costs?
Hi, Jason. It's Kym here. What we're seeing here is we've taken an average of costs in the pre-COVID environment, particularly in relation to cleaning. Obviously, we don't have the requirement to have COVID marshals anymore. When we take the pre-COVID cleaning costs and normalize those and compare them to what we're currently running with, we're looking at about AUD 50-AUD 80 a month in additional cleaning supplies and contract cleaning.
Okay. That's across the whole network?
Yeah. That's across-
Cool
the entire network.
Okay. Thank you. I also just wanted to know if you could go through your suspended member base at the moment. Are these largely Victorians, or are they students returning to Canberra? Are you able to just provide some more color over this?
Yeah. It's across the whole network. You'll always find a percentage, generally 3%, of your membership that is on suspension. They might be taking a suspension for health reasons. They may be due to work. Because our approach is a no contract 28-day cancellation period. If they're not planning to return, they don't go on suspension. They just cancel. The members on suspension return at different times. Generally, unless it's a medical suspension for a reason, the maximum suspension period is eight weeks. It used to be 12 weeks, and we reduced that to eight weeks about a month ago. You'll find that approximately 1,500 of those return this month. 1,500 will return next month, but then another 1,500 will appear in the following month. You'll always find somewhere around that 3,000 to 5,000 members are on suspension.
You're right that some of them at our Australian National University site have not yet returned to campus, they remain on suspension. It's just part of general business, I guess, where members go on suspension for different reasons.
Okay. Final one from me. How have you found the market for acquisition? Have you seen more opportunities since rental waivers and JobKeeper have rolled off?
Yeah, we have seen more opportunities, but it's a planning stage for us. We've got 14 that we're in discussions with at the moment. Plus Fitness acquisitions are really, really easy to integrate because there's no back office to do. Essentially, we just contact the third-party debit provider and change the debits to be received by us. Staffing, signage, branding, equipment, it doesn't change. They're really easy to integrate and convert to our network. Other locations that we acquire obviously need rebranding, our systems to be put in, which we can generally put in same day of acquisition settlement. We still need to send a team up there to do that. It's about pacing ourselves with the acquisitions. We're still targeting seven locations a quarter moving forward, and 10 locations of greenfields a quarter. That's still our target, and that's what we're aiming for.
We are seeing more approaches. We're actually advertising on industry magazines now. If you wish to sell your club, please reach out to us. That's generated more interest as well. What you find, though, is that clubs that were doing well pre-COVID, sorry, are still doing well now. Clubs that weren't doing well pre-COVID have probably put the for sale sign up, and they're not necessarily the clubs we're looking at unless we think we can get an improvement on them.
Okay, thanks for that.
Jason?
Your next question. Your next question comes from Nick Basile from Petra Capital. Your line is open.
Hi, Harry. Hi, Kym. Just a quick question. I thought slide 18 was interesting, given it showed the difficulty of opening new clubs during a COVID-impacted period. If you were to kind of recast that chart for, say, January, February, how many clubs are close to breakeven or look like breakeven in the next couple of months, in line with your traditional ramp-up profile, I guess, with the plans to open a few more clubs this half than previously announced? What's giving you confidence around the return to a more normal ramp-up of breakeven?
Yeah. Those figures on 18 are the accumulated losses. All of those have recovered, other than two. Nunawading and East Brisbane are two of the three. Ascot Vale is doing okay, which was one of the large ones. The other ones were all marginal. You're talking under AUD 20,000 accumulated EBITDA on a forward basis, which they've all recovered. It's only two left, and that's why I said in my presentation we'd expect them all to be positive and contributing from the end of March.
Great. I think it's pleasing to see that you are able to grow memberships organically through that half. I worked out roughly, I think it was on one of the slides you had the net increase in pre-FY 2021 clubs. It was about 3% over the half. What's continued to drive that? I know you're obviously rolling out new formats, but has there been any particular drivers of the organic membership growth that you'd like to call out?
Yeah. I think it's an understanding by people of the benefits of health post-COVID. The COVID lockdown, especially for our members in Victoria, really shone a light and understanding to them that they need to be active. We're seeing good growth in Victoria, but good growth nationally for us as well. That's the organic increase. People are starting to even better understand the correlation between health and health clubs and gyms, and that's what's contributing to us. Yeah, while we're opening more locations, we are getting good organic growth, as you said, on existing clubs. This is really evident on slide. I just got it here. On slide 19, which showed when the gyms reopened in July, unique member visits absolutely peaked. We're talking current levels.
People were busting to get back into the gyms, that's why you see a peak in the orange line on the right-hand side chart, then it sort of returned to normal levels. Now we're back at that 70,000- 80,000 unique member visits a month, and 650,000 visits in our network a month. Yeah, people don't like being locked down, I think the benefits of actually exercising are starting to ring true to a lot of people.
Okay, great. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thanks.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from James Casey from Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Oh, good morning, gentlemen. I wanted to refer to slide 11 of the pack, just the EBITDA margin that you've shown there for the last four and a half years. Is there any reason, given what we've experienced in the last 12 months, that your margins wouldn't get back to that 24%-25% level, say, in FY 2022?
No. That's why we sort of said in the notes that when we take into account January. January's revenue was AUD 300,000 above December's. All of that, I mean, 100% of that added to EBITDA. The pure marginal contribution and nature of this business with fixed costs means that it's just revenue. Once that revenue returns, which it has returned, it all falls and the margin then obviously increases with that.
Okay.
In addition to that, James, it's Kym here. We've had some margin pressure over the last, pretty much since March last year with the COVID shutdowns. Opening 15 clubs across the, I guess, the second half of 2020 calendar year, paying full rent and full wages has just put a bit of pressure on the cost base as well. As we pointed out on a couple of slides, that they're taking a little bit longer to come to profitability, and that's what's probably depressed that margin a bit. The four wall clubs tend to range somewhere between 40% and 50% EBITDA margin on their own once they're fully up and running and maturing.
They're nowhere near that stage at this point, and accordingly, we would see them contributing a lot more as we move forward into this second half and therefore we should see the margin start to increase. Obviously, again, this is going to be hampered somewhat depending on how many we roll out additionally to that, because there's always a short-term depression in the margin when you open up new clubs. Certainly in the long term, we would see going from mid to high 20s, and we're talking over the next couple of years.
Okay. Just as well, just with regards to things that have changed over the last 12 months, corporates running excess cash in many cases rather than debt at the moment, given uncertainty. Just with regards to your 400 target, would that be better described as an aspirational target now for FY 2025? Or is this a hard sort of number target you're sticking to?
It is aspirational, but it is what we're sticking to. It's achievable based on 10 greenfield locations a quarter and seven acquisitions. That's what we've been doing over the last couple of quarters and halves. That is our target. Obviously, we're keeping one eye on whether there's going to be further restrictions. We don't know. We're obviously hoping not. If there's no further restrictions, we will see revenue continue to increase, and we'll continue to roll out clubs like we have done.
Yeah. Okay.
We've all mapped it out. We've actually mapped it out to get to that. It's not just a pie-in-the-sky number. That's the number that we've actually mapped it out per quarter moving forward to 2025.
Yeah. Okay, many thanks.
Thanks.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time. Please continue, presenters.
Okay. That'll end our presentation here. We've got one-on-one meetings with anyone who wants one. Reach out if you'd like a one-on-one meeting. Thank you for listening in today. Thank you for your continued support of the business. Thanks again.