Good day and welcome to the Serko Results Announcement Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Darrin Grafton. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you.
Good morning, and welcome to today's results presentation for the year ending March 31st, 2022. My name is Darrin Grafton. I'm Serko Chief Executive Officer, and I'm here with Shane Sampson, Serko Chief Financial Officer. We'll give you a short presentation focusing on the highlights, then we'll turn to our strategic priorities. Shane will give us an update on the financials and then finally to the outlook. Slide five, operating highlights. Starting with the highlights, it has been both a significant and challenging year for Serko. The waves of Delta and Omicron and the lockdowns that followed each outbreak made for a very complex operating environment for the business travel industry and Serko. However, we focused on what we could control and consequently we have made significant progress, especially when considered against the backdrop of the adverse environment.
From a near standing start, we delivered our partner, Booking.com, a global platform for small and medium-sized businesses, and onboarded over 420,000 customers to the new Booking.com for Business platform through the year. Bookings on the platforms are rising steadily, and in the month of March, monthly room nights booked reached 39,000, which represented a 42% increase on October when we completed the migration phase. We continue to work together with Booking.com in driving both customer acquisition and conversion. In our core Australasian market, the effects of the COVID lockdowns hit travel transactions, especially within our home market of New Zealand. However, during the year we continued to grow our market share, retained key clients, and in the last quarter, saw evidence of a recovery with improving transactions across our travel platforms.
We are pleased to also see the recovery trend continue into both April and May. In North America, we are seeing the validation of the investment we have made during the COVID pandemic period. With Visa going live on Zeno as their corporate booking tool and the announcement today of CWT selecting our Zeno travel and expense product to be one of their globally preferred booking platforms for their customers. Finally, we have continued to build capability and capacity in a COVID constrained environment. We raised NZD 83 million in a successful capital raising last year, guaranteeing our funding and allowing us to look beyond the pandemic turmoil to the recovery. We've managed that cash prudently within the guidance we gave investors. We have successfully worked to retain and recruit talent in what has been a highly competitive market. Moving through to slide six, financial highlights.
Our financial results have improved over the prior year, but they still tell a story of a company operating in a highly constrained market. Segment revenue or total income before it is reduced to reflect Serko's share of jointly agreed marketing expenses was NZD 19.8 million, a 17% increase on the prior year and above the midpoint of our revenue guidance. Total income increased 12% to NZD 18.9 million, following a 44% increase in revenue from customers to NZD 17.9 million. Revenue growth was driven by a partial business travel recovery over the previous financial year, a strong contribution from Booking.com for Business, and a modest increase in revenue from the North American market. These gains were, however, diluted by the lockdowns and travel restrictions in Australia and New Zealand through the third and fourth quarters of the financial year.
EBITDA losses increased 28% to NZD 28.1 million from NZD 22.3 million in the same period a year ago, with the rise reflecting an increase in operating expenses as we scaled up and invested in the execution of our strategy. Net losses after tax increased 21% to NZD 35.6 million from NZD 29.4 million, and costs and full-time employees have continued to increase, reflecting the ongoing investment we are making in the growth into new markets. Moving to slide seven, our strategic priorities. Serko is heavily focused on execution to deliver on the opportunities that we see before us. We have identified 5 key areas of focus as we scale. One, each focused on our three fundamentals of customer experience, our long-term strategy of building the marketplace, and our people.
Our two revenue-based goals are unmanaged travel, our partnership with Booking.com, and managed travel, which includes our core businesses in Australasia and the emergent business in North America. Each of these strategic goals has a 12-month objective that our teams can align to with supporting key results that hold ourselves accountable. I'm going to spend the next few slides looking at each of these goals and how we have performed against these and our focus for the year ahead. Slide eight. Customer experience. Serko's product teams are focused on driving customer satisfaction by continuing to enhance the performance and usability of our products. These efforts are being assisted by Booking.com, which has given us access to insights it has gained as it has grown to become one of the world's largest online travel retailers.
With the support of Booking.com, we are now transitioning to an experiment-led development approach built on data-driven decision-making. We've scored some early wins with enhancements to the platform such as multi-room bookings and express search that are helping to increase customer satisfaction. Development continues apace, and our determination to deliver an excellent customer experience will be an important focus of both our investments and our key driver of growth going forward. Turning now to our progress with Booking.com for Business. We're immensely proud of what we have achieved, especially when it's considered against the unprecedented disruption in global travel and the tremendous volatility brought about by the waves of first the Delta and then the Omicron variants of the virus. The past year was not an environment conducive to confidence, but we pushed ahead with our plans because we saw we had been handed a unique and significant opportunity.
Let's look at those achievements. We migrated 390,000 Booking.com for Business customers onto the platform. Since completing the migration, we have added an additional 54,000 companies to the platform and now have more than 420,000 registered customers, companies on the platform. We think zero to more than 420,000 companies is a significant achievement for the year. Assisted by the travel market recovery, we have seen an increase in monthly room nights booked. As indicated in the highlights, we saw more than 39,000 rooms were booked on Booking.com for Business in March, up 42% from October 2021, and have seen a continuation of that trend through into April.
Importantly, average revenues per booking according to Serko through Booking.com for Business continues to be ahead of the $20 we reported at our interim results in November. Slide 10. Continuing to build the Connected Trip. Given the scale of the Booking.com opportunity, we're investing heavily to deliver our vision of making business travel as frictionless as possible. We are collaborating with Booking.com through a newly resourced, dedicated team from their side to maximize conversion of registered users into transacting customers. Together, we are focusing our resources on driving customer conversion through an investment in usability enhancements and the introduction of new content to build out our shared vision of the Connected Trip. This new content includes Booking.com brands such as Rentalcars.com, airlines, and partnership offerings with third-party business tools.
Air travel is now able to be booked through the Booking.com for Business platform in 31 countries, including Australia, and in the coming weeks, New Zealand as well. We're also co-investing with Booking.com in targeted digital marketing to drive customer acquisition. Moving to Slide 11, Managed Travel. Returning to Managed Travel, our core Australasian business is at the start of what appears to be a solid recovery after a year of immense volatility. With COVID becoming endemic in both New Zealand and Australia, we are now seeing a steady recovery, with bookings across the region ending the year at 78% of pre-COVID levels. We have seen this recovery continue into April 2022, with Australasia volumes back up to 83% of 2019 levels.
More specifically, New Zealand volumes in April were 114% of 2019 on a path back towards the high we experienced during 2021. The business has performed well through the pandemic-affected period. We've retained key customers, including the top two accounts in Australia, and won new enterprise accounts to grow our market share of the S&P/ASX 50 Index to 62%. Our nascent North American business is benefiting from a recovery in travel activity. Importantly, we continue to see signs that validate our approach. Fortune 500 company Visa selected Zeno by Serko as its corporate booking tool and has now rolled out the platform in North and South America and the Asia Pacific region.
Today, Zeno was also named Global Preferred Supplier by CWT, one of the largest travel management companies in the world, and it is an endorsement that makes Zeno one of the limited number of platforms they will support. This is further proof point of the investment we have made into one of the largest business travel markets in the world. Moving through to Slide 12. We continue to invest in the foundations of our marketplace vision to create an open platform with a content hub that enables third-party suppliers and partners to connect at scale. In the 2022 financial year, we progressively expanded the content offering across multiple markets, including flight, selected rail offerings into Booking.com for Business. We rolled out product innovations through specialist provider integrations, including destination, health and safety and arrival requirements.
In alignment with Serko's focus on integrating material, environmental, social and governance factors into our strategy, we launched an environmental impact and carbon offset functionality for clients. Again, as we add content and capability to the platform, we benefit from a network effect, becoming more compelling to both buyers and suppliers, and helping to realize our goal of becoming the destination of choice for business travel management. Moving to Slide 13. Finally, we are continuing to develop a culture of engaged Serkoians who uphold our corporate values and enhance our reputation as an employer of choice. Their approach recognizes the pivotal role culture plays in attracting and retaining talent. Key initiatives over the last year have included the development of strong diversity goals, careful attention to bias, and a refresh of our reward and recognition programs.
We've also made efforts to accommodate the challenges of being a parent by enhancing our paid parental leave program. We regularly rigorously survey employees' sentiments. We have a rigorous health and safety management system, and we carefully monitored the health of our employees through the pandemic. The response of our team through the pandemic has been impressive, and it's reinforced our approach. On behalf of shareholders, we thank the team for their continuing commitment and efforts. Our work on culture is also at the heart of our evolving program to ensure material, environmental, social and governance and ESG matters are integrated into our strategy. We are proud this year to play a part in a program to help alleviate the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe.
Following the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, alongside Booking.com and the United Nations Refugee Agency, we supported NGOs with a platform to provide accommodation to refugees displaced by the war. Finally, we have strengthened the team with the appointment of Shane as Chief Financial Officer, and I'd like to now hand over to you, Shane, to cover the financials in detail.
Thanks, Darrin, and good morning, everyone. Darrin has already called out some of the highlights for the year. I will go into a little more detail on the financials, and for those of you who want even more detail, I recommend the management commentary at Page 16 of our annual report. Unless otherwise stated, all references are for financial year March 31st, 2022, and comparisons are against the year to March 31st, 2021. Turning to Slide 15. Our total income increased by 12% to NZD 18.9 million. However, there was a significant change in composition, with revenue from customers up 44% to NZD 17.9 million, while government grants dropped by 77% to NZD 1 million.
This reflects the partial recovery in travel volumes we saw during the financial year and the associated decline in COVID subsidies, and also the end of the Callaghan Innovation grant in the prior financial year. We have also deferred NZD 1.4 million of the research development tax incentives or RDTI for short, and COVID-19 subsidy grants claimed during the year into future years. Operating expenses increased 23% to NZD 55.1 million as we continue to invest for future growth. The net loss after tax increased 23% to NZD 35.6 million, with higher income partially offsetting the higher operating expenses. The EBITDAF loss increased 26% to NZD 28.1 million, consistent with the higher net loss.
Looking at revenue in more detail, you'll see that we are showing segment revenue of NZD 19.8 million, an increase of 17%, which places us above the midpoint of guidance of NZD 18.5 million-NZD 20.5 million. We have explicitly called out segment revenue as a Non-GAAP measure as we believe it provides the best view of the performance of the business. IFRS 15 requires that any consideration payable to customers is treated as a reduction in revenue. Under our agreement with Booking.com, we share the marketing costs as well as the commission revenues for the Booking.com for Business platform. We agree to budget for marketing expenditure, and marketing expenditure is not directly linked to revenues. Nonetheless, the accounting standards require us to net down revenue and marketing expenses.
We use segment revenue to internal reporting to provide visibility of both the commission end and the marketing expenditure on a gross basis, and we wanted to provide the same visibility to investors. Travel platform revenue increased 42% to NZD 9 million, reflecting the rebound in travel markets that Darrin has talked about. Supplier commission revenue increased primarily driven by the Booking.com for Business platform, where the main migration was completed in September 2021. As already noted, other income declined by 77% to NZD 1 million. Consideration payable to customers was NZD 0.9 million, up from nil in the prior year. If you net off the consideration payable to customers, supply commissions increased 541% to NZD 3.5 million. After deducting consideration payable to customers, total income was NZD 18.9 million, an increase of 12%.
By geographic region, Australian revenue grew 42% to NZD 10.7 million, while New Zealand declined by 29% to NZD 1.5 million, reflecting the travel restrictions in place in New Zealand over most of the second half of the financial year. North American revenue increased by 10% to NZD 2.6 million. Europe and other, which includes Booking.com for Business, grew by 705% to NZD 3 million. Online bookings increased by 67% to 2.2 million. Average revenue per booking for travel-related revenue increased by 8% to NZD 5.80, primarily reflecting the higher average revenue per booking for Booking.com for Business transactions. Looking at the transaction analysis slide, Darrin has talked to the booking trends in Australia and New Zealand earlier in the presentation.
The key call-outs is that it was a year of highs and lows as COVID restrictions impacted periodically. However, we finished the year with Australasian volumes trending up strongly, with March at 78% of 2019 booking volumes as travel restrictions lifted. Operating expenses increased 23% to NZD 55.1 million, primarily reflecting our continued investment for future growth. Selling and marketing expenses increased by 50% to NZD 3.1 million. Third-party connection costs increased by 67%, consistent with the growth in online booking volumes. As travel recovered, we also increased marketing expenditure to support future growth. Note that marketing expenditure on this slide does not include the contributions payable to customers, which are instead netted off revenue for accounting purposes, as discussed earlier.
Hosting expenses grew by 82% to NZD 4.9 million, slightly ahead of the growth in online booking volumes of 67%. We maintained elevated levels of hosting capacity to ensure resiliency as we undertook the successful migration of Booking.com for Business customers, and also to ensure there was capacity on the platform as Australasian business travel volumes recovered. We expect to see the hosting cost per booking decline in the upcoming year. Remuneration and benefits remains our largest operating expense and increased by 9% to NZD 32.1 million. Administration expenses grew 41% to NZD 6.9 million. Within administration expenses, professional fees increased by 90% to NZD 1.6 million, with the increase primarily driven by costs related to potential acquisitions and by consulting services.
Amortization and depreciation grew by 43% to NZD 8 million, reflecting the investment in our platform over the past few years and the associated increase in the value of our intangible software development assets. Employee headcount grew by 9% to 312, with the growth concentrated in the latter part of the year. Given the challenges of the current employment market, we also increased the number of contractors, which are not included in employee count. Product design and development, on Slide 19, is a Non-GAAP measure. It represents the internal and external costs related to product design and development that have been included in operating expenses or capitalized as computer software development during the period. Our total product design and development costs increased by 33% to NZD 25.5 million as we invested in our platforms to support our growth strategy.
Capitalized product design and development costs increased by 112% to NZD 15.3 million. This reflected the growth in product design and development costs, but also an increase in proportion capitalized to 60%. Our balance sheet remains strong, with no net debt and cash and short-term investments increasing 56% to NZD 124.5 million as at 31 March 2022. As you'll see on Slide 20, there has been an increase in liabilities. These primarily reflect additional payments from customers which we expect to reverse in the upcoming financial year. The signing of new leases for some of our offshore offices and the deferral of income, primarily reflecting the deferred grant in research and development tax incentive deferrals mentioned earlier.
Of these items, only the additional payments from customers are expected to lead to increased cash outflows in future periods. I'll now hand you back to Darrin to discuss the outlook.
Thanks, Shane. Two years on from the first imposition of global travel restrictions, we are gratified to see the gradual recovery of both in Australasia and the new markets we are pursuing. Transaction volumes through April and May are showing the recovery has been sustained into the new financial year. However, we are not complacent about the ongoing risks, including uncertainty of geopolitical events, the potential resurgence of COVID, and additionally, the structural changes to the travel market that have occurred through the pandemic. Nevertheless, the proof points of the current market continue to give us confidence about our prospects, and we now expect revenue for the year ending thirty-first of March 2023 to be approximately double what we've achieved in 2022 financial year. We continue to be confident about our prospects.
The disruption of the last two years has sharpened our focus on building on the strengths of our technology. And indeed how we progress towards our aspiration of NZD 100 million of revenue. We are tightly focused on execution and using our capital to directly drive the outcomes related to both our strategy and shareholder return. We thank shareholders for their continuing support. That completes our presentation, but before we turn to Q&A, I draw your attention to the appendix slides. We would now be delighted to take your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, please press star one to ask a question. We will take our questions. The first question. The line is open now from line two. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. It's Guy here. I guess to start, congratulations on signing up Visa. If I could just ask a few questions around, I guess, a little bit more detail. I noticed that there's a comment at the bottom of the slide that the CWT deal isn't expected to be material this year. Is that to do with like onboarding time frames, or is there something else?
Yeah.
we should be aware of?
No. That's yeah. You're correct. That's just the time frames, Guy, as we start to set that up and start to roll out in the travel recovery. You know, you're looking at how that sort of takes effect.
I guess following up on then, like under the current agreement with CWT and/or just under the agreement with Visa, I mean, how material is it expected to be beyond the next 12 months?
That's where we, I mean, we're one of a few globally preferred platforms, which means as they start to win or retain business, our platforms start to be used more widely across the globe, as well as in our local markets here and in North America as well. Which means we, you know, can take on the likes of those Fortune 500 companies like Visa, and start to secure some more around that area. They take time to go through RFP process as we know, and so we know that it sort of has more of a mid sort of long-term impact into that top end of town as well.
It's a great endorsement of where we've actually got to from that investment during the last two years to get to that point. We're pleased to be able to finally name one of those Fortune 500 companies as well.
All right. Thank you. I guess on the Booking.com bookings, are you able to give us a little bit of color around cohorts? I mean, like how many of the 420,000 customers are actively booking and what sort of repeat bookings are you seeing?
Hi, Guy. Yeah, I mean, at the moment, as you can tell by the total transaction volume, it's a smaller proportion of those customers that are currently active. That I guess is a combination of the impacts of COVID on the travel market and also for small businesses, the frequency of travel can be lower. You have a range from customers in there who would only be expected in a non-COVID affected time period to once or twice a year through to those who are regular bookers.
I think at this point, probably still a bit too soon to drill into that other than the call that obviously with 38,000 bookings and 420,000 registered users, that the proportion that are booking in each month is a small percentage currently.
Okay. Maybe if I ask it a slightly different way, look, can you give us a bit of detail on conversion rates? I mean, like, how does the customer sign-ups compare to, I guess, website traffic? And then maybe a little bit of just around attachment rates, given the content rollout.
Yeah. I mean, certainly at this point, the attachment rates are still relatively low. They're higher for new sign-ups. But for existing customers, I guess a lot of people are using that platform as their hotel booking platform, so it's taking a little bit longer to, I guess, get those people aware that they can also book their flights through it. We're seeing higher uptake in amongst the new sign-ups, but the migrated customers are still relatively low.
Yeah. They come in with an intent of only ever booking, you know, via Booking.com for the hotel. It's actually education and that about what can actually be done through there. As Shane indicated, the new clients are coming in going, "Oh, you know, we'll have a look at this new platform that does the Connected Trip and the likes.
Okay. I think last time we talked content-wise, you had rail out in Germany, perhaps it's in more regions now. Can you give us a little bit of color as to what you need to see before, like for each step at which you expand your content? Whether that's
Yeah.
Sort of new content reached out. Sorry.
We are very much linked to the Booking.com brand. As they get their licenses and everything to trade in each market, then it just opens up at the same time. As they open up air content into a specific market like Australia, then we activate at the same time. A lot of it is around establishing the commercials between the suppliers and the different market regulations and the market conditions, and then we follow that. You know, we're sitting on top of the overall commercial aspect of how Booking.com operates. We run it at that pace, is the easiest way to explain it. Like, I think we saw about four weeks ago, the Australasian market activate flights. Then, you know, it just follows that sort of cycle.
The Rentalcars.com will be next, and that will activate across the markets, as it's following what's available up there as well.
Thanks for taking my questions. I'm off. I'll leave it there and jump back in the queue. Thank you.
No worries.
All good.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Joshua Dale from Craigs Investment Partners. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Good morning, Darrin and Shane, or should I say afternoon. Just first question, you're looking for revenues to approximately double in T5 2023. What are you assuming in terms of the split between Booking.com and the managed travel business? Is there a steer you can give us?
I mean, I think as we've given that relatively generic guidance rather than a tight range. That partly reflects our view that there is a regional distribution of potential outcomes in the, you know, Australia, New Zealand, and North America that's mainly going to be driven by where COVID sits. We're effectively assuming similar levels to what we saw in April of those kind of mid-80% for Australia, New Zealand. On a sort of pre-COVID basis, Australia, New Zealand is probably about NZD 24 million of revenue. That number is tighter, and will be impacted predominantly by changes in COVID-19. We continue to have really strong customer retention, and we may get some more wins.
In the scheme of things where the Australian-New Zealand revenue sits will predominantly be a vector of whether there are any further COVID impacts. We continue to see growth there, but off a low base. Booking.com is really the piece with the greatest potential for variance, both upward or downward, just because we're still at a very low percentage of the opportunity. You would have seen in the graphs that we've got a good trajectory. At this point, we don't expect it to give a detailed view of where we see that sitting over the year.
Sure. Thank you for that. Just touching on volumes for Booking.com for Business. You know, they're improving, but there's clearly some way to go in terms of engagement, which is something you're focused on. What are the biggest pain points for your Booking.com for Business customers at the moment? Is it the lack of that or the support function or something else? Is there anything that you're really quite focused on?
We're always focused on conversion. I guess the big part is actually looking at making sure that they're getting the right experience and the right rates and the right ability to look for what they're actually needing through there. Through the funnel, it's pretty good in there. It's about making sure that we're attracting the right type of business that's ready to book for business and not just personal, and making sure that we're actually driving that message right the way through and adapting it. We've done quite a few changes to the dashboard and search ability to. We've actually taken a you know, we've added a little bit more of a leisure approach to some of those sort of areas to also assist the users in there.
A lot of that is just working very tightly with Booking.com to take their insights that they're gaining as well from that data to work out which pieces that we can control to influence behavior. That's something they've been specialists in, of course, over the last 25 years. We're learning from that, adapting the technology, releasing, checking the metrics, how it's changing conversion. The biggest part is sentiment. Waiting for that overall sentiment to actually grow in travel, which, you know, some of those markets are still affected by what's going on in the geopolitical regions and stuff like that at the moment. Just looking at how those sort of things flow through.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Siraj Ahmed from Citigroup.
Thanks. Dan or Shane, just building that effort into guidance, unpacking it. Shane, I just missed it. Did you sort of imply that you expect your revenue to be back to pre-COVID levels in the guidance for 2023 million?
Oh, no. Sorry.
You mentioned.
I was saying that I was communicating what we think, if you like, a non-COVID level is, which will be up around 2019 because we have gained some market share in the meantime. We think that base is probably about NZD 24 million, and we're sort of expecting to be in the kind of mid-80%. You know, similar levels to where we were actually tracking out of April would kind of be our midpoint. There's obviously a lot of varying views of how long it will take to get back to 100%, but we're certainly not anticipating that occur this year.
Okay. Yeah, the guidance assuming that you get back to a year on maybe 80% in the end of business.
Correct.
Okay. That's quite clear. Secondly, in terms of Booking.com, maybe one for Glenn. Are you a bit surprised that the take-up has not been as fast, even faster? In terms of conversions, what can you actually do to improve conversions?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's you know, if we look at where Booking had us, we track ahead of where they expected us to be. It's not unexpected, I guess. I guess from that sort of side of that, there's a curve of what we're actually building to from a technology point of view. You know, the first part was you know, getting across 100 countries as the base technology and what we needed to get done sets your kind of base level, and then you're iterating on that to get to where you wanted to be when you would normally had a plan to roll it country by country.
You're actually now building that out, building out the Connected Trip, doing all of these sort of things, and then looking at how our business travel recovers. We're mapping how SMEs buy and the different sizes of businesses and how those sort of impacts in there. As we work very, very closely with Booking around which features, which usability changes will make the biggest conversion difference, in tracking the number of companies coming in, to see how we can actually, you know, make sure that they're buying from Booking.com and not going elsewhere as well. It's all, you know, really focused around those types of things and making sure that the buy occurs inside the platform as well. It's, yeah, it's a very interesting sort of cycle.
It's not unexpected for us. We always knew that we were gonna be into this sort of cycle and focused on conversion and filling the funnel through that sort of model, and it's the stuff that we can keep building to. You know, Booking.com applies more customers, more advertising, more people coming back through into the top of the funnel, and then our job is once they click search, to make sure they get the property and out the other door, out the other side and make the money. We're seeing every time we release stuff, we're seeing that steadily increase, and we've seen that flow through from March into April as well. Yeah, a steady progress, I guess, is what I'm saying on that.
Got it. Just on that, on the ARPB, I think you've given disclosure on the room revenue per room night, I think EUR 6.9 or something. That sort of implies that you're running a few room nights for Booking. Is that still constrained?
Yes. It's still around about that level.
Yeah. We should see that increase as people start to stay longer. As we start to see the way of the safe travel cycles going with COVID, we'll start to see that shift.
Is that the assumption? Just within the guidance assumed the midpoint or the base case for you, is this assumed that the ARPB stays at $20?
It's probably reasonable to conserve the assumption. I think the other issue and one of the reasons why we gave the average revenue per room night stay in euros is the currency has bounced a little bit around, you know, thanks to geopolitical issues. That would be. That's probably the main risk to the downside. As we talked about previously, we see some potential upside as hotel room prices recover post-COVID and as average nights per trip potentially extend a little.
Got it. Just last one. In terms of cash burn, Shane, that you've given guidance to, just clarifying, so you said stepping up, so should we assume that the cash burn for first half is gonna be more than NZD 3 million per half? Is that kind of where the way we should read into that?
Yes. I think if you adjust for the additional payments that we received from customers during the second half, we were probably more running around about NZD 3.5 million of cash burn. I feel like that's kind of the starting point. We're obviously seeing revenues rise, but we're looking to invest ahead of those. We would expect to see a bit of an uplift in the first half. We'll essentially reassess where we're tracking as we go through the year, and then make calls from there about where we go. In the first half year, expect to see the cash burn go a bit higher than that sort of underlying 3.5 in the second half of the financial year just completed.
Okay. Super helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We will take the next question. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me? It's John O'Shea from Ord Minnett. Go on.
Hey, John.
Just a couple of questions from me. Thanks for the presentation, et cetera, and the details in the guidance. I just wanted to, one, sort of unpick that medium-term target of NZD 100 million a little bit closer, first of all. Is it safe to assume that, you know, the bulk of that uptick is related to your improving conversion rates, and I'll come back to that in a minute, around the Booking.com deal and obviously the improving conditions post-COVID? Is that still the case, that is what the uptick is primarily expected to be driven by?
Yeah, I mean, certainly we, you know, when we look into the medium term, we'd expect to see a bigger contribution out of North America and, you know, a bit of additional recovery upside out of Australia and New Zealand. But clearly the Booking.com business is a pretty key growth opportunity for us.
Sure. Just wanted to make that clear. Lastly from me, I mean, obviously the conversion rate has been low at this particular point in time. Can you just outline for our benefit exactly the differences between the benefits of a customer booking on the Booking.com for Business platform as opposed to just booking on the Booking.com platform. In other words, question/comment, whatever you'd like to call it, is the lower conversion rate a reflection of the fact that there is just not enough incentive for them to book through the Booking.com for Business platform as a differentiator compared to booking on the Booking.com platform? Can you just give us some clarity around what the benefits of actually Booking.com for Business, registering-
Yeah.
booking for that is versus Booking.com?
Yeah, you definitely start at a different point as a business customer. You get almost a 10% discount coming in as a business customer. You start to get an immediate saving by booking via the business platform, and that process enables a closed user group to see some benefits in there. Long-term, that will get bigger and bigger as we start to introduce other sort of deals through into the platform of Booking.com. The part of a targeted platform is understanding where your travelers are.
There's a whole part of, you know, being able to have the payment models, the different virtual card systems set up, and the ability to really apply that to a true business sense is the power of what the business platform does across that. You've got this ability to start at a point as a business customer, with a level of, I guess, loyalty or level of discount that makes it quite attractive as well. It's not necessarily that, it's just the fact of making sure that the number of companies coming in isn't yet at the same number of 2019. As that intent changes, it's making sure we're capturing that via the conversion.
It's literally starting to see that actual recovery cycle of those 400,000 companies coming into the top of the funnel as well. We do see, as Shane indicated, a higher intent of more share of the wallet around the Connected Trip via new customers joining the platform because they're coming in via an advert or via a link that's actually explaining to them what they can actually do inside that system as well. It's a dual education process around that side.
Sure, Darrin. I guess one would say, "Okay, that all makes sense." In the context of a corporate travel market that's clearly improving, I mean, obviously we're talking about people sort of, you know, 70%-80%, corporate getting back to 70%-80%, and ordinarily SMEs would kind of lead the charge there in that recovery. Can you talk us through sort of how that you mentioned that the number of corporates are just not coming in at the same rate.
How does that sort of make sense in the sense of, if there's not, you know, corporates recovering at 70%-80% and SMEs are leading the charge, how does that make sense with the number of companies coming in not at the same point as 2019? Do you understand what I'm asking? What's the missing link there?
It's the main countries of volumes that have those different effects in there. You're seeing the European markets with different sort of sentiment based on what's actually happening over there at the moment. You might see a higher conversion on different countries that are less constrained locally or even down to what's actually happening as a cycle because it's not a peak travel month at the moment due to, say, European conditions and winter or whatever it is in there. We expect some of those sentiments will start to shift as we get into the summer travel cycles as well.
Cool. Okay. You're purely saying that it's a mixed impact of the different countries. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's definitely to do with, you know, we're just building out that sort of part and driving the different conversion factors across what we can control today. If we pick up something that user sentiment wants us to do something, such as a faster search process or a multi-room feature, we push it up.
We build that and push that out into the market. We just pick up on any of the user sentiments and make sure that we push those features out. Matching, you know, a lot of what's done on the consumer side, if they feel it's important, through that process.
does that mean the different countries, you know, obviously you said you've completed it, largely completed across certain countries. Does that mean that, you know, that most of the core countries have been done? Or do you understand what I'm asking? Like, how far along that journey are you in terms of the geographical side of getting the business kind of ready?
We've done nine languages. We haven't done the complex languages in some of the Asian countries and that. We've still got pieces that we're building out for those types of areas as well.
We can largely say that Europe and the USA is largely done, and Australia?
Correct. Correct.
Okay.
The English speaking and those main core nine languages that we've done, you know, probably sits around 60% of the potential market sort of side.
Sure. Okay, guys. Thanks very much for the questions, answering my questions.
No worry. Cool, cool.
Thank you. We will take the next call from the line. Tom Deakin from Macquarie.
Afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just one quick one from me, just on the labor side. How are you guys sort of finding labor market conditions in those key development hubs? And, you know, how should we be thinking around, you know, the uptick in headcount over the next sort of six months to 12 months, and how you guys might be further utilizing the contract development resources that you've been using the last 6 months?
Tom Deakling, I think a couple of bits to unpack would be definitely the, I think you'd find us facing the employment market for tech talent challenging globally. That's definitely something that we're leaning into with everyone else. We, you know, probably expecting a wage inflation in terms of just on a sort of year-on-year basis, if you like, to be kind of high single-digit %, which I think is still a lot better than a lot of other organizations are doing. I think the headcount growth, we're targeting to try and add sort of 30 people-50 people per quarter for the next couple of quarters. There's definitely, you know, challenges around doing that with a decent start in April.
We've still got more months to go through. In terms of contract resources, we've kind of used a little, but externally started adding some more contractors, particularly just in skill sets that are very hard to come by. You know, we've picked up some contractors to bring in those areas, but the key focus really for us over this year is getting to a new global operating model where we can get into another offshore center. We've obviously got the benefit of having our Chinese operation, but we'd like to give it another high quality, low cost location that we can get into. You know, even those locations, the prices are going up, but they're going up to a much lower base.
That's a key part of our strategy for the upcoming year is achieving that we're operating in a new location where we've got a broader pool of talent than we've got. Most of our development currently is in Auckland. Combination of better pool of talent and lower cost is one of the key things we're focused on across this year.
Thanks, Shane. That's really helpful. Just to get a sense, like how has that constraint on the labor side, I guess, constrained your ability to grow revenues or your expected ability to grow revenues in FY 2023?
It's certainly created challenges just in terms of we you know in the first half of last year we had a guidance target around cash burn and therefore when markets in Australia and New Zealand went backwards due to lockdowns we kind of constrained hiring. November we did the capital raise and said right I need to add more headcount. We've achieved growth in headcount but not the growth we wanted. You know the goal had been to try and catch up with some more limited investment we did last year and we're probably just a little bit slower in that process.
Yeah, tied to conversations like that, the conversation around lifting those conversion rates and Booking.com, obviously we'd love to have more teams in place helping make all the changes to drive that. That, you know, that's our goal is to get those in place over the next couple of quarters. Yeah, it's been a little bit slower to get there than we ideally would have liked.
Understood. Thanks, Shane. That's helpful. Then just one on the marketing spend for the Booking.com JV. You guys spent, what? Almost NZD 1 million in FY 2022. How are you guys expecting that to track in FY 2023, all going well?
Yes. Yes. We're typically expecting it to about double the, if you like, that sort of agreement that we've got around how much we'll spend. I'd probably say at the moment it's still been in the sort of experimentation phase rather than the heavy investment phase. Once we got to the point where we're getting fantastic returns on the marketing, we might look to take that up. Our base assumption would be about doubling that number to sort of NZD 1.8 million-NZD 1.9 million.
Cool. All right. That's helpful, Shane and Darrin, thank you very much.
All right, bye.
Thank you. We will take the next question. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Morning, Darrin and Shane. This is Vignesh Nair from UBS. Just sort of two quick questions from me this morning. First of all, you know, looking at the managed side of the business, trying to get a gauge of ARPB in that segment. Now you're talking to $20 for Booking.com for Business, but overall you've got, you know, $5.80. What are we sort of read through for the managed travel ARPB this year? So what kind of proportional increase are we seeing on 2021 numbers for that side?
Yeah. In terms of FY 2022, relative to FY 2021, in looking at travel related revenue, the average revenue per booking was fractionally down. And there would be around lower attach rates getting through COVID, getting flights through to Star Alliance, that kind of thing. You know, we have had seen a slight dip in the managed travel average revenue per booking.
Is that sort of, you know, scheduled to sort of continue into 2023? Or are you seeing some sort of reversion in your April numbers on those trips?
Yeah, I think at the moment we're not, you know, not expecting a dramatic change in that number. There are certainly some opportunities for us that could, you know, materially change those calculations. Sort of our base growth assumption that we kind of gave of approximately double doesn't build those in because requires some activity by partners that we don't have direct control over. We haven't incorporated those into our base assumptions.
Right. I think you guys had mentioned before that you were sort of looking at increasing the sort of base fee in the ANZ market, at least by about NZD 2 over the next couple of years. Is that sort of still part of the strategy or have you pivoted away from that?
No, no, it's definitely still part of the strategy.
Is that sort of set to come through in 2023 or 2024 or more long-term?
We've pushed out quite a few, you know, when we talk about those other features that we've been pushing out and as they start, you know, like such as, you know, environmental management, you know, the sustainability, we make money off those sort of things as well as what we're making out of hotel commissions. As we get back to people booking longer stays and things like that, we start to see that overall increase as well. We see a combination of what is, you know, of both, you know, the air, hotel, the different segments as well as the functionality. For this kind of FY 2023, it's...
Although we've got some tactics in there, it's quite early to see how those sort of play out as we're going through this recovery cycle and the stay cycles and then just actually starting to get that map forward. We've taken a slightly conservative view, as Shane indicated, into the FY 2023. As we start to see, the sentiment and everything change, we can start to map that better forward. We may be able to give better indications at the half and even during the Annual General Meeting.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. Just looking at the managed, you know, North American side, what's the sort of strategy there? Can you give us some color on what exactly, you know, you're doing to explore growth there? Is it more so increasing your, you know, TMC reseller footprint or, you know, getting more of a share of existing resellers as you've done with Visa?
Yeah. I mean, it's a combination of market awareness through, you know, RFPs and direct marketing via events that we attend in there, and then also activating those travel management companies in the northern hemisphere there in both Canada and North America. The travel recovery definitely helps with getting the volume back and getting that momentum because, you know, when there was a travel freeze and travel bans on a lot of these companies, you know, it takes, you know. You're trying to get customers live, but they're not able to transact. There's definitely momentum now as those resellers start to sell it, implement them, learn how it works, and then get the next ones on.
We've got teams that, you know, what we call optimization managers, which work with the travel management companies to get those customers all bedded in now that they're transacting, make sure that they're going through our Zeno Wins program, and they're learning how to sell it. Then at the same time, our sales team helping hunt with them and find that sort of path through. Those are those combinations of how we're sort of focusing. There'll be definitely a focus on the number of customers that we bring through in FY 2023 in the northern hemisphere there. Then leading through to transactions as well.
A multi-prong approach of assisting those travel management companies who spent a lot of time getting the technology ready during the COVID period, getting them onboarding those customers, learning how to sell it, support it, creating market awareness, which we've been doing a pretty good job. Of course, having, you know, one of the largest mega agencies now move us to globally preferred makes quite a large statement in the market. That helps both the brand and awareness as well. Some really good early signs in that market that we've got to build on, which is, you know, when you've made two years of investment in a no travel market, is a pretty good first sort of sign out of it. Most of that sort of occurred, I'd say, from mid to late January onwards.
It's been a really last quarter impact. That's been quite good for us in that market.
Yeah.
We're gonna keep building on that.
What sort of style of cut through for someone like CWT, you know, of say the next 10 new corporate adds, what proportion of that goes to Zeno, and what proportion goes to someone like SAP Concur? Like, what, you know, what's the style of share that you guys get of their wallet?
Predominantly where Serko kicks in is that, we're a different user experience and a different piece of technology, so most of the time we're gonna be winning off. You know, the incumbents being, you know, Concur and GetThere, and our competitors are. We're winning off them. These are people that have probably been using technology for a number of years that they're not satisfied or they're new wins. A company like CWT is trying to win them off another company, who the company's gone out for tender because they don't like the incumbent technology they're using and they wanna change both servicing and technology. We're the benefit of that.
We come in with a solution that's differentiated, that's, you know, supported across the different regions as you're seeing with Visa and stuff like that. We use those referenceable clients to actually help secure those sort of wins. In most times we're gonna be winning off the incumbent technology within that market.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.
That's what we've kinda done. We've kinda done that in Australasia if you look at what we've done, most of those competitors. It's kind of familiar territory for us, you know. Like sometimes the companies will already use us in Australasia. The competitors are also down here, so we've learned how to sell against them, and that's why we've been-
Yeah.
We're taking that same kinda sales cycle that we've been successful down under and now flipping that into the American market and the way we sell and drive that. I guess we've kinda learned a lot in being able to dominate the Australasian region against those players.
Okay, very helpful. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. We will take the next question from Ilan Jacob from Citi. Thank you.
Hi, Darrin. Hi, Shane. Just a couple of questions from me. How big is the Visa contract in terms of annualized revenue? I just wanted to confirm that the guidance for FY 2023 doesn't include Visa.
Right. Guidance for FY 2023 does include Visa, as we noted in the presentation. It's not material. It's definitely a very quantitative. From a qualitative point of view, it's quite a valuable brand to be able to point to in the American market. It's proof that CWT takes us into other clients. From a pure dollar point of view, the Visa contract, on its own, is material.
Great. Just my last question. Did you have to do lower pricing for the new CWT contract?
No. It's similar to what we've already had in play.
Okay, great.
We've got opportunities to give it, to make money, to give it differently. No, it's very similar. It's higher in some instances.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Stuart Williams from Nikko here, and thanks for the presentation. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Cool. Hey, just specifically on slide eight and the reference to experiment-led approach, maybe you could just help us by giving us an example of either a product feature or a country feature that's really worked well and sort of the assessment cycle for understanding that it has worked well. Thanks.
Yeah, no, that's a really good question. We, of course, doing corporate bookings, you have a different way of actually searching to get people to put in travelers up front. To a leisure traveler, that can be friction. They just wanna get in and do the search. We brought out a flexible search option where you could just put in the destination and the dates and the number of rooms that you wanted, and then you would fill the passenger stuff rather than at the front, at the very end of the booking. We A tested and B tested that against 50% of the traffic, and we got the results of that, and it tested higher in reducing friction of travel, so we pushed that part live.
Those are things that we take those sorta insights forward and then iterate different designs into the process that may be able to get people who want a quick search, and maybe not ready to book. 'Cause with a different pattern, we can kinda see people register and then three months later make a booking, or we can see them do a search and then come back and book, you know, three days later or a week later or even two weeks later. Mapping all of those patterns together. Some of the other sort of things is like as little as putting, say, a yellow border around the search box may increase conversion. We A and B test that. Those are the things that you sort of pick up.
Very similar learnings to what Booking.com, and so they teach us that through this experiment lead and of course, mapping all of the data to see and test it across different audience and that traffic that's coming in, to the systems as well. It's quite a—it's very interesting for us because, it's a different way of building and testing out the technology, and in some cases, you're testing something out that doesn't make an improvement, so you don't push it forward. Then in other cases, you're doing something and actually producing technology. It's very much customer driven in how the technology outcomes actually get into the product, which is really exciting. It's hugely exciting to learn how Booking.com have been successful in their space. We see that same kind of reflection into our managed travel.
Every investment we make in Booking.com for Business, you know, that kind of benefits our enterprise customers as well with a better usability and a better experience as well. It's really exciting. We're really focused on the customer. We've been like that through our partnerships, which is why we've had such a dominance in the Australasian region. Now we're getting into building really true consumer style ways of experimenting and building this technology, which will only benefit us further in our managed travel market as well, which is probably one of the most exciting cultural and shifts for Serko over, you know, especially the year ahead.
Thank you.
There's no further question. Thank you.
Thanks everybody for joining us on the call today. We look forward to talking with you over the next few days, and for those that are scheduled investor meetings. In the meantime, if you have any questions then please don't hesitate to come back to either Shane or myself. Thanks once again. Thank you very much, everyone.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.