Good day, and welcome to the 2024 Serko Full Year Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Darren Grafton, Chief Executive Officer of Serko. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for joining this morning. I'm Darren Grafton, the CEO of Serko, and I'm with Shane Sampson, our CFO. Before we get underway, I draw your attention to the important information on slide three. We're going to give a short presentation on the results, and then we're happy to take questions. I'll begin on slide five. At Serko, we've had an increased focus on the successful execution, and in FY 2024, this delivered material progress on our priorities and, in turn, strong financial outcomes. This took place in an often complex and uncertain external environment. In FY 2024, we continued to realize the growth opportunity. Our renewed partnership with Booking.com for a further five years, as we announced on the April 13th, is a major milestone, providing a strong foundation for future global growth and scale.
We've already commenced the plans in place for the next phase of our growth under the partnership, and I'll provide more detail on this in later in the presentation. We've also seen new growth in Australasia and have strengthened our market position. Underpinning Serko's progress has been a deliberate and sustained shift in how we operate. We are seeing benefits from a strengthened leadership and expertise, a scalable operating model, and targeted investment to support innovation and growth. Today, Serko is a more robust and dynamic business as we pursue the next phase of our strategy. Turning to slide six. With the financial outcomes from our FY 2024 delivery, total income was NZD 71.2 million, the same as the unaudited result released on the April 13th. This was up 48% on FY 2023.
There were small percentage increases in operating expenses and total spend, reflecting work in the early periods in forming a more scaled cost base. Total spend was NZD 83.9 million, below the 2024 guidance range of NZD 86 million-NZD 90 million, with total spend continuing to significantly decrease as a percentage of total income. Increased operational leverage has delivered significant improvements in both our net loss after tax and EBITDA. We're on track to be cash flow positive for the FY 2025. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we have no debt. Finally, our average underlying monthly cash burn has fallen to 600,000. I'm now on slide seven. We disclosed total income and total online bookings and completed room nights as part of our trading update at the end of April.
The growth in total income is driven by the increases in online bookings and completed room nights, which were up 19% and 65%, respectively. Over a three-year period, we have seen strong growth, as illustrated in all three graphs. Now on slide eight. In FY 2024, annual growth was supported by a stronger-than-expected first half. The first half benefited from higher average revenue per booking, favorable foreign exchange rates, and higher-than-expected business travel volumes in Australasia. Second half revenue was lower than expected, mainly driven by slower growth in completed room nights than projected, unanticipated seasonality in the ARPCRN, and a decline in the euro-NZD exchange rate since guidance was updated in November 2023. Half-on-half growth rates are not neatly upwards moving, and we have experienced these half-on-half shifts in many prior periods. Looking now at slide nine.
We are seeing the ongoing benefits of operational leverage in the business. The total income growth of 48% has been delivered on total spend, which was just 1%, up just 1%. The operational leverage has been the result of significant work over many periods to ensure we have both a high-performing team and the right cost base in place for scale. Sustainable and efficient growth remains a critical focus. This includes continuing to optimize and fine-tune our teams to ensure we are driving the best outcome for our people, our partners, and our business. For example, in recent weeks, we've put in place new ways of working across our product, design, and technology teams. This has been part of enabling a high-performance team setup to deliver on our goals, including growth and scale.
We've looked carefully at the levels of operating complexity within teams, along with the workflows, layers, and spans of control. Changes made have led to better clarity on accountabilities and alignment to customer value. Slide 10. Looking at the graphs on slide 10, over the past three years, we have materially improved our cash flow position from NZD 39.6 million of cash burn in FY 2022 to NZD 7.1 million in FY 2024. Turning to slide 12. We've built strong foundations with our current strategy, which covers FY 2023 to FY 2025.... We're now turning our minds to our plans beyond FY 2025. We anticipate sharing this work with you as part of our Investor Day, most likely in the first quarter - the final quarter, sorry, of the calendar year. Looking at the first highlight, experimentation.
Delivering products through experimentation is very normal for technology companies, enabling us to test new features to optimize our product for revenue maximization based on our customer response. We've advanced our practices with our deep working partnership with Booking.com and are seeing the benefits. We've been tracking the value of this experimentation work, and have seen direct positive impact of NZD 4.3 million in annualized net revenue following successful product experimentations. The benefit from experimentation work is not only in the upside of high-quality feature development, but in avoiding the downside of time invested into features that do not receive the level of desired take-up. We expect the value of this work to increase in the coming periods, especially as we drive our new ways of working and expand our data team.
I'll speak to the next three highlights as part of the following slides. And finally, on this, this slide, we are pleased with the increase in employee engagement, which has risen from 72%- 78%. Two of the key metrics determining the employee engagement score were 84% of employees were proud to work for Serko, and 81% would recommend Serko as a great place to work. Turning to slide 13. We've continued to see overall growth in Booking.com for Business partnership, underpinned by completed room nights rising 65%. This reflects the successful execution of the partnership to date and the strength of the opportunities ahead.
Completed room nights on Booking.com for Business grew 65% to 2.5 million from 1.5 million in FY 2023, reflecting strong first half growth, combined with higher average revenue per completed room night, room nights, and a favorable FX rate. Active customers using the Booking.com for Business platform increased 10% across the year to approximately 172,000, and average revenue per completed room night was up 4% on FY 2023. The number of registered companies increased to just under 650,000. Slide 14. During the year, we supported a number of feature releases for Booking.com for Business, including completing 150 experiments. Improvements delivered increased usability and enhanced the performance of the platform in both acquiring and converting customers and driving repeat bookings.
We had some major releases during the financial year, and some highlights included the servicing and content provided by CWT and the loyalty rates from the hotel chains. We also delivered the first of our policy features from our Zeno platform into B4B, with the hotel budgets functionality going live in December, allowing the easy creation and communication of any spending limits. As previously noted, we'll be continuing both our experimentation and feature delivery through FY 25 and expect this to assist in directly driving revenue growth. Turning to slide 15. Now the foundation is built, the priority for the next 12 months is to expand the feature set, to service the needs of a wider target market, and to increase activation and usage in registered companies. The three key areas Serko is focused on are: scaling customer acquisition, increasing activation, and supporting larger customers and companies.
Firstly, the features we develop over the next year will be directly related to how we can acquire more customers. We'll also be looking on the strategic partnerships that have customer bases relevant to Booking.com for Business, and our platform is being designed to support this at scale. Secondly, we are working to maximize usage within the platform with simplified administration features to support the expansion of use within customers to support this. Customer activation growth will be driven through a combination of experimentally developed improvements to the B4B user interface and development of new features that help business efficiently administer their travel spend and safeguard their travelers. Thirdly, we are scaling the platform for larger customers with more complex needs by activating features from our Zeno Enterprise platform in the Booking.com for Business platform and tailoring to them, to this type of customer and size of company.
Key milestones will come from the progressive delivery of new services, including a Booking.com for Business dashboard, a hotel checkout page, and customer onboarding, which we believe will bring material gains to the key metrics like customer rate, customer active rate, and help accelerate delivery velocity going forward. The team at both Serko and Booking meet regularly to decide on the next feature set needed to drive customer growth. It is a truly collaborative approach, using the data and insights to inform the best way to build the platform and generate the best possible experience for businesses... Moving to slide 16. Online bookings increased 13% in Australasia from 3.4 million-3.9 million, the result of continued strong growth from existing and new customers.
Rio Tinto, one of the largest corporate travel accounts in Australia, went live on Zeno during the first half via American Express Global Business Travel. We continue to see future growth in Australasia, underpinned by high rates of customer retention and new growth. We've continued to deliver strong product improvements to our partners in the past year through a strengthened Zeno offering. Serko is repositioning its pricing to reflect the value it brings to its managed customers, including introducing value-based prices, plus pricing for new features such as complex online changes. In North America, we continue to see strategic opportunity in this market. While we are making progress, this has been slower than we desired. We've been investing appropriately in our platform alongside our key customers in this market, balancing the opportunity in front of us with the focus on other growth priorities.
Slide 17 sets out our continued investment in Zeno to meet the needs of our current and future partners. In FY 2024 year, we introduced a breadth of functionality from specific functionality for industry verticals, through to integrations to deliver content more efficiently to the end user. Examples from what is on the slide is we have extended our NDC support with new aggregators and recently launched the capability of NDC on the Sabre Global Distribution System. Slide 18. Looking now at slide 18, we are pleased to have released our 2024 ESG report and climate-related disclosures today. We are committed to doing what is right for our business, our people, customers, and communities. Ultimately, we believe robust ESG practices create long-term value for our business. We are committed to continually improving our practices and reporting.
This year, we undertook a materiality assessment to enable us to better understand and prioritize the environmental, social, governance, and commercial areas that matter most to our stakeholders and the business. I encourage you to review the report. Thank you. That concludes my overview, and I'll hand to Shane for some details on the financials.
Thanks, Darren, and good morning, everyone. Darren has already called out the highlights for the year. I will go into a little more detail. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all comparisons are against the prior comparable period, being the year to 31 March 2023. Turning to slide 20 for the high level profit and loss. Total income grew by 48% or NZD 23.2 million to NZD 71.2 million. I'll talk about revenue in more detail on the next slide. Operating expenses increased by 8% or NZD 6.9 million. I will talk to operating expenses in more detail on a later slide, but note that we consider the more useful measure to be total spend, which I will also talk to on a subsequent slide.
Net finance income grew by 52% to NZD 3.9 million from NZD 2.6 million, reflecting stronger interest rates, partially offset by lower cash balances. We incurred a foreign exchange loss of NZD 1.1 million, a change from a NZD 1.7 million gain in the prior year, primarily reflecting losses on forward exchange contracts as the New Zealand dollar weakened. The forward exchange contracts are used as an economic hedge against the risk of FX rates impacting our cash receipts from sales. We do not undertake hedge accounting, so the weaker New Zealand dollar drove higher revenues, as mentioned earlier in the presentation. Our net loss after tax reduced by NZD 14.7 million or 48% to NZD 15.9 million, reflecting the operating leverage Serko has achieved as revenue grew strongly against a much lower growth in operating expenses.
The EBITDAF loss reduced by 93% or NZD 20.2 million to NZD 1.6 million, and as a percentage of revenue, the EBITDAF loss fell to 2%. Looking at revenue in more detail on slide 21. The key highlights are travel platform revenue, which grew by NZD 2.9 million or 18% to NZD 19.2 million, primarily reflecting increased travel volumes in ANZ and net of consideration payable to customers. Supply commissions revenue grew by NZD 19.6 million or 84%, primarily driven by increased Booking.com for Business completed room nights. Looking at revenue by geography, ANZ revenue grew by 14%, reflecting the partial recovery of travel and increased services revenue. The strong growth in Europe and other geography was driven by increased supply commissions and Booking.com for Business.
Average revenue per booking or ARPB for travel-related, that's travel platform and supply commissions, increased by 33% to NZD 12.71. The growth in the ARPB is driven by the increase in the number of Booking.com for business bookings as a proportion of total bookings and by a stronger euro relative to the New Zealand dollar. The average revenue per completed room night or ARPCRN, in euro terms, was up by 4%, reflecting slightly higher hotel prices. Turning to slide 22. Operating expenses grew by NZD 6.9 million or 8% to NZD 89.7 million. As a percentage of revenue, operating expenses fell to 130% from 178%, a decrease of 48% points, reflecting operating leverage as revenue has grown... partially offset by lower capitalization of product design and development costs.
Remuneration and other benefits were essentially flat at NZD 49.4 million. This reflected a one million dollar reduction in employee share scheme costs and planned reductions in contractors, being partially offset by wage growth and capitalization of internally to develop software being NZD 2 million lower. Third-party direct costs are external costs driven by activity in our platforms, and these increased by 17% to NZD 12.2 million, broadly in line with a 19% increase in online booking volumes. Amortization and depreciation increased by NZD 3.9 million, or 30% to NZD 17 million. The increase relates to higher amortization as the value of capitalized software has grown, and as most new assets capitalized since early 2022 have been depreciated over three years rather than five years. Looking at slide 23, this is a reconciliation of Total Spend to operating expenses.
Total spend is a non-GAAP measure which Serko uses internally to measure spend before the impacts of capitalization and amortization. In software businesses, the nature of the projects being worked on can result in significant differences in the proportion of product design and delivery costs capitalized. We consider that total spend is a more useful measure of the cost base of the business, as it removes the volatility, volatility which can occur as a result of capitalization decisions driven by international financial reporting standards, and focuses management on managing the real costs of the business, remuneration and benefits, and external spend. Note, total spend is not exactly the same as cash costs. In addition to timing differences in working capital, Serko's employees share scheme drove NZD 5 million of total spend, but does not have any cash impact.
Total Spend grew by 1% to NZD 83.9 million, and as a percentage of revenue, fell 57% points to 122%. Growth in Total Spend was primarily driven by increased third-party costs as a result of the increase in online booking volumes and an increase in other operating expenses, partially offset by lower remuneration and benefits before capitalization. Headcount declined to 347 from 364 at 31 March 2023. The reductions primarily related to lower contractor numbers. In the prior financial year, we chose to add contractors to provide additional capacity for key projects, while giving ourselves the ability to scale resourcing back once those projects finished. Turning to slide 25. Total product design and development spend decreased by 2% to NZD 40.7 million, primarily reflecting lower contractors.
Capitalization of product design and development costs reduced by 17% to NZD 11.2 million, reflecting the nature of the projects worked on in the period and Serko's conservative approach to capitalization. Amortization of capitalized development costs was 37% higher at NZD 15.3 million, NZD 4.2 million below the amount capitalized in the previous period. Product design costs, net of capitalization and inclusive of amortization increased by 14% to NZD 44.8 million. Slide 26 is a reconciliation of underlying cash flow. A non-GAAP term used earlier in the presentation. Underlying cash flow is intended to provide a clearer view of the business's cash flow trajectory. Underlying cash flow adjusts out some of the noise in the GAAP cash flow statement. In particular, net movement in short-term investments is shown as a cash inflow or cash outflow in the GAAP cash flow statement.
However, from an economic perspective, those net movements should not be seen as part of the cash burn. Underlying cash flow improved by 78% or NZD 25.5 million to an underlying cash outflow of NZD 7.1 million. This was driven by operating cash flows, improving from a cash outflow of NZD 19.2 million to a positive operating cash flow of NZD 4.7 million. An improvement of NZD 23.9 million, primarily driven by operating leverage being achieved as revenues increased. Our balance sheet remains strong, with cash and short-term deposits of NZD 80.6 million and no debt. Intangibles declined by 11% to NZD 31.1 million, reflecting the lower capitalization and higher amortization discussed earlier in the presentation. Thank you. I'll hand back to Darren for the outlook.
Thanks, Shane. Serko anticipates demand for business travel in its key markets to remain strong. Serko expects new unmanaged customer acquisition and activation initiatives to drive increased volumes and total income during the FY 25 year, weighted to the second half. Serko also anticipates growth at FY 24 levels in its Australasia businesses. For the FY 25 year, Serko anticipates total income in the range of NZD 85 million-NZD 92 million. In line with previous statements, Serko expects to be cash flow positive for FY 25, with NZD 80.6 million of cash on hand as of the thirty-first of March 2024, and no debt. Serko is well positioned to consider organic and inorganic investments, where these would advance strategic objectives. Risks to the achievement of Serko's FY 25 goals include the precise timing of delivery of initiatives and subsequent benefits.
Currently, currency and average revenue per completed room night movements and geopolitical and macroeconomic factors. Thanks, everyone. Shane and I are now happy to take some questions, and I'll hand back to the moderator to facilitate this.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure the mute function is turned off to allow the signal to reach our equipment. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone the opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question from Guy Hooper with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, team. Can I maybe just start asking about the review guidance? Can you talk a little bit about what sort of product milestones you expect to reach, and what is required in order to, I guess, meet those comments around the second half upweight and expected growth?
Hi, Guy, Darren here. Yeah, look, it's a continual process of bringing out a lot of the features that we discuss with the booking, and we kind of bring out both new product features that are targeting larger customers, you know, so going upscale in the customer size, as we indicated. A lot of the concentration is around filling the funnel, which is the companies registering and activating into the platform, and then through that, the conversion funnel work. A lot of the features we're building, which we kind of indicated, is really bringing a lot more of that consumer experience into kind of like the checkout process, the dashboard.
The dashboard will enable us to link those strategic partnerships together with their own platforms to create that tie up, and that's how we're looking at that. So we've worked with Booking to kind of stage those out across the different quarters, and into our halves, and then the appropriate revenue in that. And, of course, the increase in marketing spend that Booking will do to actually drive some of those call to actions as well.
Yeah, great. Yeah, I guess, trying to... I've just trying to understand how that funnel builds, and I think you sort of maybe alluded to a little bit of that last one around the marketing spend. Like, are you expecting-
Yeah
... to go and, I guess, acquire net, net new customers? And can you talk a little bit about the kind of customer break out, breakdown? I mean, in the past there's been-
Yes
... I guess, mentions of a greater focus on North America. Can you talk a little bit about what, what you see that core customer, that you're acquiring is?
Yeah, there's definitely a focus on the U.S. as part of Booking's objective to, as well, and to those markets as well, of course, the home market in Europe. And I guess it's broken down into two core areas. There's a lot of customers in that customer base, you know, 650,000 customers that are registered into that base. So there's what's called an activation strategy or reactivation strategy, is to make sure that those customers, when they come to purchase, come back to Booking.com and actually come into the business platform and purchase their hotel or flights or other components inside there, so it's awareness, and it's driving that. So there's a section of the business on both sides that are focused on what we call the reactivation of customers and keeping that base more active.
And then we have the second part, which is that Serko is kind of taking the insights from the data and the insights that Booking are gathering through those customers, and we're building the right features to attract the customers that drive the appeal into the platform. And then the second part is when we have the customer on the platform, if we've got one user in that company, what administration features are we bringing together to enable them to bring on all 20 or 50 people inside that company? And how do we create offers, purchasing processes, and everything around that, that enable that customer to really bring their business all of business to this platform?
We kind of look at it across those different areas, and then our growth teams focus on when someone comes in via one of those, they get a great experience, and they convert from that search to purchase. Those are the ways that we're looking at the features, and they do change. So as we pick up that we can if we do a new change that we're picking up in market could drive through a partnership another section of customer growth, say in North America or in Europe or in Asia, we'll do that feature, activate that, and then Booking will then kick in the marketing, the reactivation messaging, and all of those types of things as well.
So it's a, it's a true collaboration, and the teams are pretty much in a meeting every week, month, process to go through and work that through, and look at the data all the time on that.
Great. Thanks, guys. I'll stop there.
That's okay.
We will take our next question from Joshua Dale with Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Darren and Shane. Per slide 13, Completed Room Nights declined half on half from 1.3 million- 1.2 million, but then FY 2025 guidance implies growth resumes pretty strongly. Can you just explain the growth hiccup in that second half of 2024?
Hi, Josh, Darren here again. Yeah, look, it's—we see that as a combination of seasonality, but we also think that, you know, in Europe, some of those key large markets that we have were impacted by the cost of living. And so the best kind of insight that we can probably gain from the data is that I think, we think it was just the cost of living, the inflationary, along with some different seasonality patterns. And the seasonality pattern almost fitted a similar model to our managed travel business curve, I guess, and, and we're kind of learning that data from the 20, you know, kind of different from a COVID recovery. So yeah, it's—and as you kind of indicated, we are seeing, and we wouldn't have guided up unless we've actually seen that.
So, yeah, so that's our best insight into that.
Okay, thanks. Just last question: You're sitting on NZD 80 million of cash. I appreciate you agree, marketing costs or marketing spend, rather, in advance with Booking.com. Would deploying-
Yep
-some of that cash toward Booking.com for Business marketing, if it makes sense in terms of returns on that spend, or, or is that not the right way to be thinking about it?
Look, we're always open with Booking around the approach to that, Shane. I don't know if you've got anything to add.
Yeah, and certainly, so we did have a big slowdown in marketing spend in the December quarter, but we're ramping that back up again, and the goal is to have that more than double this year. So certainly looking to increase marketing in that area. And then as Darren said, obviously, if we see great returns, then we can push that higher. But yeah, the base plan assumes about a doubling of that marketing spend in the upcoming year.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
So it doesn't make much of a dent in our NZD 80 million.
Yeah.
We'll take our next question from John O'Shea with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, Darren and Shane, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can, John.
Hi, John.
Yeah, great. Thanks very much. Good outcome on 2024, guys. Now, I guess as we look into 2025, obviously the revenue a bit lower than where the market was at. As we look at that, and I think you partly answered some of that before, Shane, obviously we're looking here at the total cash spend in terms of operating expenses less the development cost spend. This year it was obviously NZD 83.9. Can you give us some sense as to how you'd expect that NZD 83.9 to move in FY 2025? And a sort of a breakup of the different components of that, the cash operating expenses bit and the CapEx capitalized development spend. That's obviously critical to where you're going to end up next year. This year, sorry.
Yeah. So, we tend to focus on the total spend because that capitalization can jump around. So I think-
Sure, sure.
If you picked the capitalization as being where we had it for FY 2024, it's got a number of other... assumptions to pick, but we could be higher or lower than that depending on the specific projects. In terms of Total Spend overall, so we haven't given formal guidance, but yeah, I think we've generally indicated, been indicating for some time that we expect more like CPI-type growth in terms of the business' usual activity. I think, you know, one of the reasons we haven't provided Total Spend guidance, one is you can imply some from the fact that we get to cash flow breakeven. So our, we've got that non-cash spend on the employee share scheme.
So you kind of reverse that off the revenue number, it gives you how much we can spend while still getting to cash flow breakeven. Obviously, if we're seeing strong revenue outcomes, then we'll probably look to make further investments. So yeah, base case, I would say, is effectively CPI-type cost growth over where we were in FY 2024, but we're keeping the option open to spend a bit more, should we see good options to do so. I think the other call-out would just be the doubling of marketing spend I mentioned, that gets netted off revenue. So if you like, it's additional spend, but the accounting standards annoyingly make us put it into the revenue number. That makes it a bit more complicated.
Yep. So if I understand exactly what you're saying, Shane, just to be clear, so you're saying that, you know, overall, in general terms, other things being equal, you would expect that 83.9 number to grow with CPI. And obviously the revenue is as per the guidance?
Yeah. Yeah.
Correct?
Yep.
No, that's fine. Thank you. I will put back in the queue.
We will take our next question from Will Twiss with Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys, and congrats on a good result. On slide 15 , you've talked a little bit about the customer acquisition growth. Can you elaborate at all on the role that Booking plays in that customer acquisition process, and specifically, how it works in terms of kind of converting some of that leisure base that they've got on their main platform over to your Booking.com for Business?
Hi, Darren here. Yeah, look, Booking, Booking drives that through their plan. Of course, we're back-to-back to them. They're also have an aspiration of what they want to achieve with Booking for Business, their side. So we're very linked in what we're trying to achieve through those growth strategies. And so Booking do control any marketing and any type of experiments that they run to bring customers into the platform from that perspective. And we work on the emails, the messaging, and the context of that. So it's a process that we're continually working on with them and the steps that they will go through. So we have plans that we work on during the year that we and with the year ahead, that we're working through with Booking on that.
Great. James Lindsay here. So just a, just to follow up on that, just with regards to the active customers presented on slide 13. Can you just talk through, you know, sort of the loss in the second half? Obviously, good growth from 157 to 172. Is there seasonality in that or, you know, just what has driven that small reduction second half?
Yeah, and that's what we - I kind of talked through that already. But the best thing we can put it down to is the impact into those major trading countries that have a lot of the volume, that were impacted by the cost of living crisis through that period, that seem to have started to create that recovery again. So we think it was kind of a cycle through that, later part of the calendar year, that flowed through and then into a recovery. And that's our best look at what that impact was and the seasonality curves, which are becoming more business related, and that. So that's the best understanding we have of that. As you can kind of see, the registered companies is up around 650,000 at the same time.
So yeah, it's just. That's kind of... It's pretty hard to determine that sort of side of it, so that's our best kind of indication.
Cool. Thanks, guys.
No worries.
We currently have no questions in the queue. Again, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star one. We will pause for just a moment. We will go next to Wei-Weng Chen with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks, guys. Sorry, I dropped out halfway through the Q&A, so I'm not sure if this has been asked. But, just in terms of your comment that it's gonna be second half weighted in FY 2025. So this year it was kind of a 51-49 split. Like, next year, like, what are, what are we thinking? Are we thinking like a reversal of that, so it's kind of a modest first second half skew, or is it gonna be a fair bit bigger than that?
Yeah. We're anticipating that in the upcoming year, the second half will be, you know, kind of, yeah, 10%-15% stronger than the first half. And that is around, if you like, less around the seasonality issue and more around stronger acquisition and activation in terms of the plans that Darren talked about through the presentation, driving growth into the second half.
Okay, thanks. And then, and then in terms of your cash positive sort of guidance, and maybe even beyond that, so cash positive, just want to confirm, it includes capitalized costs, yeah?
Yes, it's our measure of affiliates, our underlying cash measure, which includes any capitalized software as being cash outflow.
Yeah. Okay. So I guess, what's the plan, I guess, beyond, you know, being positive? Like, does surplus cash get reinvested into the business or, you know, are you gonna start paying dividends or, you know, or should we see... And if it is getting reinvested back into the business, should we see a re-acceleration of growth at this point?
I think initially it will probably be reinvested into the business, and then long term as that, that will change, as the EBITDA margins and increase appropriately. So I think in the short term, definitely wanting to invest for growth. And so then we'll hold that for, you know, potential other things like acquisitions and things like that. So, yeah, so that's probably, the, the comment that I would make. Not sure if you got any?
Yeah, I mean, I think we have talked about it before, where we... Definitely our goal is to be a growth company rather than a yield company. So, yeah, our goal would be to find additional sources of growth beyond kind of the core plan and invest in those. So if we're sort of trying to be a Rule of 40-type company, that we would be, you know, more biased towards the growth than towards the EBITDA yield as we invest in further growth. But definitely aiming to be positive.
Cool. Thanks. No, that's all for me.
We will take a follow-up question from Joshua Dale with Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Morning. Just a follow-up on your explanation for the second half of 2024 being weaker due to cost of living crisis and some of your, you know, the countries making up Booking.com for Business. Why do you think that would only affect a six-month period and not kind of affect FY 2025? And I guess a related question is, you know, what is the science behind actually coming up with a completed room night number when you guide? Just interested in sort of the math behind that.
Yep. I can talk to that a bit, Josh. So certainly in terms of the—if we assume that there was a headwind, I think we're probably more assuming that that remains about constant as opposed to that we see any increase of it. So we haven't banked a tailwind, which if you know if the German and UK economies were to rebound, that at some point that should give us a tailwind. Assuming that our sort of belief that it's macroeconomic related as part of the driver. In terms of our build of our... For a mathematical point of view, our build of our model is basically around that the number one thing is how many people are we bringing in at the top of the funnel as registrations?
What proportion of those can we convert into active customers? And then can we drive more revenue from those active customers? And so we're looking across all the various initiatives that we've got planned this year from, you know, marketing-led initiatives, you know, some element of booking, bringing some customers across, is down, so that's not directly within our control, but we've got some views about where that might be. And then into once those customers are landing on our platform, how do we improve the revenue that comes out of them? And then give some allowance to some level of churn sitting within that base. So that's sort of mathematically how we build our model.
Brilliant. Just when you talk about some element of booking, bringing some customers across, that's across from the leisure platform?
Yeah, and so I think one of the questions earlier was how, you know, can we talk some more about that? And I'd say probably the short answer is we're very limited in what we can say about that. As Darren said, it's not directly within our control. And so, you know, that's something that sits with Booking. You know, clearly, we've built the commercials that make it more attractive for them to do that to them. We're building the product that makes it more attractive for them to do that to them, but at the end of the day, those are decisions that sit within their remit. So not really, yeah, we don't want to talk to those too much.
Yep. Understood. That's helpful. Thanks very much, guys.
We will take our next question from Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, Darren. Hi, Shane. Can you hear me okay?
Yep, we can. That's right.
Yeah. Hi, just on, I guess, the key questions on that, visibility on Booking.com for Business revenue, right? So Darren, Shane, you sort of gave some color on this. Can you just break up, if possible, between—because I think there's bit of strategic partnerships that you're expecting, between that versus this Booking.com redirecting traffic, in terms of your guidance expectations, right? Because the key concern is, like you said, the booking traffic's not in your control, and the incentivization really only kicks in later, right? It's, you know, you're not reached at 4.3 or those thresholds for them to make it much more attractive for them. So if you just talk to your confidence in your visibility in terms of the Booking.com for Business build up, that'd be quite helpful.
Just on that as well, sounds like if, Shane, if you're saying it's 10%-15% higher in the second half, it sort of implies that by FY 2025 revenue for Booking.com for Business is actually much stronger than second half 2024 that you just billed. So what's driving that as well? Thanks.
So I'll cover the first, cover the first part, Siraj. And I just want to highlight that what we do is we build in. So as we build the features that appeal to the types of customers and data, that's when Booking gets to make those decisions. And that's why it's very collaborative. So, our teams sit down, and Booking looks at the data, their side, and their objectives of what type of customers they want to attract onto the platform and, and retain into that platform. And that goes through different types of customer mixes and stuff like that, and, and those are the features that we build out together. And these are all planned together. So we're, we're directly, you know, so we build it, we do the work, and then they're doing their side at the same time.
And it is hard to explain, but it's directly linked, and it's kind of a partnership. So they've got the desire of which customers they're saying, "Can we bring this together with what you're doing on the platform?" And then they initiate their actions their side, because they've got an objective they're trying to hit for the revenue number and growth that they want on the platform as well. And so our part links into that. So we're trying to make sure that we're building and delivering to meet their objectives for their number, while guiding our number through that. And there is a slight difference as they work on a calendar year, and we work on a financial year, which is different to their calendar year.
So there is some minor timing discrepancies by a quarter for that, but predominantly that's how we look at it and how we approach it. And so we're kind of guided on what we can see right now, and that's why we've actually created the guidance in the way that we have. The second part of the question, Shane, I'll let Shane answer that.
Yeah. So in terms of sort of the main components, and not to give you the, you know, the detail numbers, but if you sort of think of the key blocks in terms of what drives that year-over-year is really, so there's an element of our run rate out of March, gives us some growth year-over-year. So that carries forward. We've kind of got probably relatively similar-sized blocks around, you know, in the pack, we talked about what we saw out of experimentation. So we've assumed that we see more value delivered out of experimentation in FY 25. We've got kind of a similar block around what are the impacts of the features we deliver.
The features tend to be more longer term acting, so, even though, if you like, probably more of the effort is going into those, but the impact in the current year is probably only similar to the experimentation as opposed to... And we'll see that, that value more longer term. And then a, you know, a block coming out of promoted and marketing. And so we're seeing in terms of those customers being promoted across from Booking.com, we're assuming some of those in there, but, but in terms of our guidance range, that, that is intended to cover the fact that we haven't got, you know, control over that lever. So those are really the, the core blocks, kind of just the run rate where we're at, versus where we were at the start of the prior year.
Features and experimentation, a smaller amount of marketing, net gains, which is partly challenged, just because we have to offer essentially the— If we spend NZD 1 and get NZD 2 worth of revenue at a growth level, the accounting makes us only recognize one, so that's a smaller block as a result of that accounting anomaly, and then kind of a similar sized block for those promoted customers. But giving ourselves some leeway on the downside if that doesn't come to pass.
So thanks for that. So, just clarifying, the strategic partnerships that you sort of kind of mentioned at the trading update, that's not really a big driver in 2025. Is that or am I getting that wrong?
You mean the strategic partnerships, the additional partnerships?
Yep.
Right, that we talked about.
Yeah, additional. I think he was talking about, yeah, some additional features or partners that you're trying to bring along.
Yeah
for customer acquisition as well, right?
Correct. They could create future upside, and they're yet to be worked through, you know, kind of, as we start to bring them on board and look at those. And so those will be things that we'll be working on together with Booking and assessing that impact as we start to go through that. So we don't wanna incorporate those types of things until we can actually see how they track and impact onto the platform as well.
Well, that's interesting. Okay.
Yeah, definitely. As Josh indicated on his video, you know, they are working on a couple of partnerships for the platform.
Can I just clarify one thing, Shane? In terms of ARPCRN, are you just assuming flat or is there some benefit from rental cars or something like that?
Sorry, couldn't quite hear that, Siraj.
In terms of ARPCRN, are you, are you assuming any benefit from, are you just assuming flat for next year, I guess?
So average revenue completed room nights, are you assuming that it's flat?
Yeah, so assuming sort of, again, more of a CPI type growth as opposed to a dramatic increase.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Grafton, I will turn the conference back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for your time. To close today, a few key points. FY 2024 was a strong year for us. We've delivered against our strategy and are seeing the financial benefits of this. Alongside revenue growth, we are on track to be cash flow positive for the FY 2025 year. It's an important milestone for us and for our investors. We have plans in place with Booking.com to accelerate growth over the next year. We are heads down, focused on execution of the opportunities in front of us. We're also turning our minds to the next phase of our strategy development, and we look forward to updating you on this. Thanks again.