Good day, welcome to the Serko FY 20 23 full year results announcement conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to CEO, Mr. Darrin Grafton. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for joining this morning. I'm Darrin Grafton, the CEO of Serko. I'm joined today by our CFO, Shane Sampson. There'll be an opportunity for Q&A following our comments. I'll start on slide five. First, this strong result reflects focused execution on our growth plans and prior investments. In particular, we have successfully ridden the business travel recovery waves in our home markets of Australia and New Zealand. There has been significant growth under the Booking.com for Business partnership. Second, the investments made in FY 2023 and previously have been targeted and disciplined. We have invested in the right capability and technology to increase scale and operational efficiency. We can see the benefits of these investments in these results, and an example is the growth in unmanaged revenue. Revenue growth is significantly higher than cost growth.
Third, we are on track for our FY 2025 financial goals, both our NZD 100 million aspirational revenue target and being cash flow positive. Our FY 2023 achievements are the result of decisions and execution across several years, often in a complex and uncertain external environment. We have a strong sense of accomplishment in this and are more focused than ever on building a globally competitive business. Slide six. Our key financial outcomes are on slide six. I will provide more insights to these in the coming slides. Please note that on slide 32, we have also set out our key financial and operational metrics by half for the FY 2022 and FY 2023 years. Turning to slide seven. Total income increased 154% to NZD 48 million.
Growth was underpinned by a significant increase in completed room nights of 381% and a maximization of the business travel recovery. Online bookings rose 93% to 4.1 million from 2.2 million. Total income was just ahead of the revised FY 2023 guidance range of NZD 42 million-NZD 47 million, this was also well ahead of the guidance provided at the start of FY 2023 of approximately doubling revenue of the FY 2022 year. I'm now on slide eight. We've been very focused on cost discipline balanced with target investments for scale and growth opportunities. Total spend increased 34% for the period, largely reflecting the scaling operations in the first half to accommodate revenue growth.
We remain well capitalized with underlying monthly average cash burn reduced from NZD 3.3 to NZD 2.7, underlying monthly cash burn in the second half was down to NZD 1.8 million. Turning to slide nine. The graph on the left-hand side shows our total income from FY 2019 - FY 2023. This has increased by 95% over the same period. Since FY 2020, the period immediately prior to the pandemic and Serko's previously highest year for revenue, total income has increased 79%. The middle graph shows online bookings have increased 93% year-on-year, on the right-hand side, completed room nights were up 381%. This incorporates Booking.com for Business and was driven by strong growth in the second half. On to slide 10.
The graph on slide 10 shows how we have accelerated revenue growth in the past two periods at an overall faster rate than cost. Total spend as a percentage of revenue decreased from 330% in FY 2022 to 174% in FY 2023, and total spend growth reduced to 3% in the second half. We expect to drive further operating leverage as we move towards cash flow breakeven in FY 2025. Both EBITDA losses and net losses after tax improved in the FY 2023 year. EBITDA losses were NZD 21.8 million, an improvement of 23%, and net losses after tax were NZD 30.5 million, an improvement of 15%. We are focused on improving our operational leverage, and this is taking place through a number of initiatives.
Examples of these include fine-tuning how we allocate our resources across multiple markets to achieve the right cost to benefit balance. We restructured our expense division to materially increase efficiency while also innovating our expense product to drive further revenue and customer growth, expanding our China offices to access additional talent to complement the other locations. We continue to assess our costs in an inflationary environment, and where necessary, we'll make the appropriate adjustments on the pricing. On slide 11. We've provided our underlying cash flow and our underlying average cash burn, demonstrating higher revenue from targeted and disciplined investments. Based on both our revenue and cost expectations, we expect cash burn to continue to decrease. Straight to slide 13. During FY 2023, we defined how we could achieve the outcome we believed was possible as the market recovered. We broke these objectives down into five areas.
Two of these are the revenue generation areas, two and three, and the other three are the underlying frameworks to drive revenue and Serko's long-term success. I'll go into more detail on the revenue objectives and culture on subsequent slides, but we'll briefly touch on the other two now. The first of these being product house foundations. Part of customer success and focused on our ability to measure the impact our technology has on the customer. We experimented with new ways to produce better conversion of booking, stability, and performance of our platforms and features needed to truly make a difference as the travel industry recovered. We implemented A/B testing with the help of our partner, Booking.com, which saw us run key experiments for Booking.com for Business that have changed the trajectory of our revenue profile.
The second of these objectives is platform foundations, as we drive towards higher scale global transactions. We needed to make sure our technology would stay ahead of this demand and have undertaken a number of initiatives to support this. These are already changing how we build, measure, and drive Serko, as well as strengthening our position for the future. We invested in building a new foundational high-scale e-commerce-centric cloud platform based around the work required for the new hotel shop experience for Booking.com for Business customers. The new platform gives us material improvements on the previous Zeno hotel shop experience. We're now approaching the final phase of this new hotel shop experience, and the progress to date has been successful, which is a testament to the collaborative partnership between the teams at both Serko and Booking.com.
As part of our plans to open our content frameworks to enable third parties to build into the Zeno platform, we produced a new Zeno integration API that will eventually enable partners to build content connections into Serko, truly enabling a wider scale of our platforms in multiple markets. We are well advanced in a major data transformation, putting data into the heart of how we measure the impact of our technology. Turning to the unmanaged revenue strategy now on slide 14. The significant growth in unmanaged travel is the result of the dedication and hard work by many teams. We are now entering the scaling phase of the partnership between Serko and Booking. Completed room nights increased 381% to 1.5 million, with over 1 million completed room nights in the second half.
Average revenue completed room night, or ARPCRN, for the service was EUR 9.34, up 36% from EUR 6.88. This was down slightly half on half from the EUR 10.10 to EUR 9.03. Shifts in the average revenue have largely been the result of movements in the hotel room rates and euro exchange rates for completed rooms outside the Euro zone. We have seen a significant increase in the number of businesses both registered and using the platform. At the end of this period, the number of registered companies was just under 600,000, with 157,000 of those being active in the past 12 months. The number of active customers was up 144% on the prior year. I'm now on slide 15.
During early FY 2023, Serko and Booking set the approach for success based on some foundational work needed for conversion, scale, and experimentation. Booking shared key resources to enable Serko to build out our data platform and experimentation technology that has now changed the way we build our products. In July 2022, Booking.com and Serko looked at how we could fast-track conversion through experimentation. The success of this experiment set Serko on a path to build out a new hotel shop experience based on the user experience of the Booking.com leisure process. This new technology set a foundation that we can then add corporate specific functions and usability needed in the future. The first phase of this technology went live in January 2023 and was successful. With the final phase of this work scheduled to go live as we bring the new CWT content online.
This new technology will be used for the recently announced CWT partnership to bring both hotel loyalty rates and Booking.com content together in a common user experience familiar to Booking.com users. This will also combine a next-generation shopping experience with existing Zeno functionality to deliver additional content for hotel, flight, and rental car to Booking.com for Business customers. This overall work together as partners have enabled Serko's strong revenue growth and our confidence in our outlook statements that we are making today. We would like to thank the teams of both Serko and Booking.com for the massive effort they have put in together face-to-face to build the technology needed. It truly represents our purpose of bringing people together, and when this happens, it can create remarkable outcomes.
The CWT partnership deepens the Booking.com for Business offering and creates, in our view, a wider appeal to business customers that buy specifically based on these offerings. It also brings two of our key partners together while delivering new and exciting content for business customers across the world. The addition of CWT content is a significant step in delivering on our strategy of bringing the best of business travel to Booking.com for Business, and is the culmination of many months of planning by Serko, CWT, and Booking.com. We expect the offering will go live towards the end of the second quarter of the current calendar year. As outlined in our market announcement last week, Serko expects to benefit from the expanded offering through increased customer acquisition.
At this stage, Serko is unable to quantify the size of those benefits and any net positive impact to the future revenue just yet. Slide 16. On to our managed revenue strategy. The recovery in business travel in Australia and New Zealand has been strong, with online bookings up 77% in Australasia and average online bookings for the year were 89% of pre-pandemic levels. In New Zealand, volumes were 136% of pre-pandemic levels, and in Australia was 82%. This is the last period we'll provide measurements against pre-pandemic levels. Average revenue per booking in ANZ declined fractionally as a result of customer changes, which reduced supplier commissions, partly offset by a slightly stronger AUD.
Serko has continued to gain market share. Through its channel, retailers have secured one of the largest travel accounts in Australia, which is scheduled to go live in the second half of this calendar year. In North America, we have continued to build our strategic position in this market and sign new reseller agreements. As mentioned on the previous slide, in North America, the team have been working with the wider executive team at CWT to bring about the addition of CWT content. We see this as an example of the opportunities that are available to us in North America. We have launched new updates to our spend technology within the market and are piloting new innovations in this space with key customers. We have continued to develop technology to support NDC, a data standard that allows airlines to evolve how they personalize and sell inventory.
Serko has already successfully collaborated with Visa, CWT, United Airlines to deliver a significant NDC project. Serko has continued to work with NDC connections with airlines in our home markets and the USA, including Qantas, United, and American Airlines. Serko is also committing to work closer with Sabre to assist the progress of NDC and other initiatives needed for the global marketplace. Slide 17. Looking at our culture. On this slide, we have published total headcount data by half for the past two years for both employees and contractors, as well as by location. Serko has continued to grow our headcount over the years to support the revenue opportunities we see in front of us. While many tech companies have seen a slowing growth and have undertaken broad headcount cuts, Serko has a very strong revenue growth.
We did carry out some targeted efficiency initiatives in FY 2023 and expect to continue to do so in FY 2024. Serko was able to continue to grow strongly in the second half with essentially flat headcount of only a 3% increase in total spend. We indicated during the financial year our desire to set up additional lower cost development hubs. In FY 2023, we scaled up our China operation by 36%. This hub is allowing us to achieve a number of objectives, including cost efficiencies and access to larger pools of talent and expertise to complement the expertise we have in other locations. Our investments in people have been beyond targeted new roles to support scale and growth. We have invested in establishing the pathways and tools for our people to advance within Serko, ensuring we retain and grow our people.
As a result, we have seen a significant shift in our monthly pulse survey score, for I have access to the learning and development I need to do my job well, which improved from 62% favorable in March 2022 to 85% favorable in March 2023. The pulse results for learning is a core employee happiness metric for high-performing technology staff. We see this as a significant improvement. We've also continued to strengthen up our approach to diversity, publicly producing our Mind the Gap report and holding ourselves accountable for striving towards our diversity and inclusion goals. On slide 18, we've released our 2023 ESG report today. We have steadily advanced on our sustainability journey over the past year and are pleased to report solid progress across environmental, social, and governance, with highlights on the screen.
We are committed to continuously improving what we focus on in ESG and how we measure, manage, and report on it. More detail on this is set out in our report, and I encourage you to read this. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Shane for more detail on the financials, and I'll rejoin the call for the outlook.
Thanks, Darrin. Good morning, everyone. I'm on slide 20. I note that comparisons are to the prior comparable period, being the year to 31 March 2022, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Looking at the profit and loss as a whole, total income grew by 154% to NZD 48 million. I will talk about revenue in more detail on the next slide. Operating expenses increased by 50%. I will also talk to these in more detail on a later slide. Note that the growth in operating expenses was partly driven by non-cash items, including increased amortization of capitalized software, lower capitalization of product design and development costs, and the employee share scheme. I note that we consider the more useful measure to be total spend, which I will talk to on a subsequent slide.
We reported a foreign exchange gain of NZD 1.7 million. This partly represents an accounting anomaly where intercompany balances can give rise to foreign currency exchange gains and losses. Although the weaker New Zealand dollar did result in economic gains on foreign currency cash and receivable balances over the year. The weaker New Zealand dollar was a positive for Serko as most of our revenue is received in Australian dollars and euros. Net finance income grew to NZD 2.6 million from NZD 0.6 million, reflecting both additional cash on hand as a result of the capital raise in late 2021 and increased term deposit rates. Our net loss after tax reduced by NZD 5.4 million or 15% to NZD 30.5 million, reflecting Serko starting to achieve operating leverage as revenue grew strongly with lower growth in operating expenses.
In particular, as Darrin noted earlier, revenue growth in the second half of the financial year remained strong, while growth in total spend fell to 3%. The EBITDAF loss reduced by NZD 6.4 million or 23% to NZD 21.8 million. As a percentage of revenue, the EBITDAF loss fell by 111 percentage points to 47%, reflecting operating leverage being achieved as revenue grows. Looking at the revenue in more detail on slide 21, the key highlights are travel platform revenue, which grew by NZD 7.2 million or 80% to NZD 16.3 million, primarily reflecting increased travel volumes in Australia and New Zealand.
Net of consideration payable to customers, supplier commissions revenue grew by NZD 19.9 million or 578%, driven by increased Booking.com for Business completed room nights and a higher average revenue per completed room night or ARPCRN. As Darrin noted earlier, online bookings increased by 93% to 4.1 million, with the bulk of that growth coming in the Australian and New Zealand markets, but also an increase in contribution from Booking.com for Business. As also mentioned by Darrin earlier, we conducted an experiment which resulted in us moving most traffic to Booking.com's hotel search experience. That change led to a doubling of the number of bookings being made, and the second half of the year benefited from a full 6 months of that change.
Looking at revenue by geography, Australian and New Zealand revenue grew 70% and 61% respectively, reflecting the partial recovery of business travel from COVID-19 travel restrictions. The strong growth in Europe and other geographies was driven by increased supplier commissions, particularly Booking.com for Business. Average revenue per booking, or ARPB, for travel-related revenue, that's travel platform and supplier commissions, increased by 65% to NZD 9.56. The growth in ARPB is driven by the increased average revenue per completed room night and the increase in the number of Booking.com for Business bookings as a proportion of total bookings. The ARPCRN in euro terms increased by 36%, reflecting higher hotel prices relative to the prior comparable period as travel rebounded strongly. Turning to slide 22, operating expenses grew by NZD 27.8 million or 50% to NZD 82.8 million.
As a percentage of revenue, operating expenses fell to 178% from 308%, a decrease of 130 percentage points, reflecting operating leverage as revenue grows. Remuneration and other benefits grew by NZD 17.3 million or 54%, reflecting the planned increase in average headcount, the higher average cost per staff member due to wage growth for tech staff in the year to 31 March 2023, and also the impact of non-cash items which increased relative to the prior year. The two most significant non-cash items were: Capitalization, which declined by NZD 1.7 million to NZD 13.6 million, reflecting the mix of software development work undertaken in the year. Secondly, the employee incentive share scheme costs, which are non-cash and grew by NZD 1.9 million to NZD 6 million.
Third-party direct costs are external costs driven by activity in our platforms and increased by 61% to NZD 10.4 million, reflecting increased booking volumes, partially offset by scale and efficiency benefits. Amortization and depreciation increased by NZD 5 million or 62% to NZD 13 million. This relates to higher amortization as the value of capitalized software has grown and as most new assets capitalized since early 2022 are being depreciated over three years rather than five years. Looking at slide 23, this is a reconciliation of total 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 which are capitalized.
We consider that total spend is a more useful measure of the cost base of the business, as it removes the volatility which can occur as a result of capitalization decisions and focuses management on managing the real cost of the business, remuneration and benefits, and external spend. Note that total spend is not exactly the same as cash costs, as in addition to timing differences in working capital, Serko's employee share scheme drove NZD 6 million of total spend that does not have any cash impact. Looking at slide 24, product design and development has driven 2/3 of the growth in operating expenses, with expense after capitalization and amortization up NZD 18.1 million or 86%. The growth reflects increased investment in staffing, higher amortization, and lower levels of capitalization as we continue to invest in our platforms and services.
Slide 25 is a reconciliation of underlying cash flow to GAAP cash flow. We used the term underlying cash flow earlier in the presentation, and we also talked to it during the FY 2022 results call. Underlying cash flow reduced by NZD 6.5 million to NZD 33.1 million, and as Darrin noted earlier, underlying cash burn was significantly lower in the second half. In FY 2022, we noted that we'd received duplicate customer receipts and that the underlying cash burn was therefore higher in the second half of FY 2022 than on the face of the GAAP cash flow statement. In the current year, those amounts have been repaid, and we have made a matching adjustment.
Underlying cash flow also adjusts out some of the noise in the GAAP cash flow statement. In particular, the net movement in short-term investments is shown as a cash inflow or cash outflow in the GAAP cash flow statement. From an economic perspective, those net movements are not part of cash burn. We also had a capital raise in the prior financial year, which is also adjusted out. Looking at our balance sheet on slide 26, our balance sheet remains strong with cash and short-term deposits of NZD 87.7 million and no debt. Receivables grew strongly, reflecting increases in revenue, and payables declined due to the repayment I just mentioned, partially offset by growth in operating expenses in the March 2023 quarter relative to the March 2022 quarter. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Darrin for the outlook.
Thanks, Shane. Serko has made significant progress towards its goals as reported in FY 2023. Business travel demand is tracking strongly. Serko is well positioned to deliver increased scale and operational efficiency. Serko confirms its aspiration of NZD 100 million in total income for FY 2025. Serko is well capitalized with cash of NZD 88 million and no debt. Underlying monthly cash burn peaked in 1H 2023, and Serko is committed to achieving positive cash flow for the FY 2025 financial year, with appropriate cash reserves on hand at the point of breakeven. Serko anticipates full year total income of between NZD 63 million and NZD 70 million for FY 2024 based on current trends, including the continued business travel recovery, growth in active customers in Booking.com for Business, and a strong EUR to NZD exchange rate, and current average revenue per completed room night.
There are a number of initiatives which have the potential to drive further revenue growth. However, the timing and therefore the impact on FY 2024 revenues is uncertain. Serko anticipates total spend between NZD 86 million and NZD 90 million based on its current investment plans and anticipated efficiency gains, partially offset by higher volume-related costs. Guidance remains subject to ongoing risks, including geopolitical and macroeconomic risks. Thank you. Shane and I are now happy to answer questions you have.
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 that your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open, just state your name before posing your question. Again, it is star one to ask a question. Our first question is coming from Joshua Dale.
Good morning, guys. It's Josh from Craigs Investment Partners here. Well done on an exceptionally strong result. Just first question on Booking.com for Business, it feels like the hotel shop interface and improved support function through CWT get you most of the way there in terms of product development milestones. Is there anything major on the product development front that is still needed in your view?
There always will be looking at what we want to do as we're scaling up to look at other opportunities. It's a continual incremental of how we attract more customers into the platform. Yes, you know, you could say the ones that we have as the big significant points are the ones that we've kind of talked through or you've raised there. Like we indicated, we wanna make sure that we, you know, will take on all of these opportunities to where we both see that we can actually grow customer acquisition and grow the share of the wallet through the Connected Trip, and that's the focus. We'll be clear on those as we go through like we are now.
I think, you know, we've said that this phase is about scaling, and so those current two things are key contributors to that scaling. Definitely we wanna carry on looking at, where we can actually make those investments to get those capital returns. I think that's how we're looking at it.
Great. Just to follow up, it feels like perhaps the big thing you're missing is a mobile app. You've probably been asked this question hundreds of times, but it does feel like the missing component. Is that part of your plans?
It could be. Today, Booking.com has a mobile app, so the mobile app that's there can be used with the business travel as well. If you make your booking, you see it on that mobile app, you can change it on the mobile app. It's not that there isn't a mobile app, it's just it's a common app today. Now, that doesn't mean in the future we won't look at how we can actually make a specific functionality for Booking for Business customers, but it may still be in the core Booking for Business app. That's a strategy run in conjunction with Booking.com. Today, if you make your booking, you can actually see it, use it, and travel on it on the current mobile app.
Okay. That's helpful. On the CWT arrangement, how are they being compensated for providing access to their travel consultants? I assume it's some sort of clip of the content they're providing.
Hi, Josh. Yeah, I think probably the first point is because the agreement is between CWT and Booking.com, we can't talk to any of the commercial terms specifically, but we can talk a bit to our expectations. I think I might as well cover off some of the other questions that we'll get around the same topic proactively. The first one is, as we put in our release, it doesn't change, sorry, it doesn't change our relationship with Booking.com, so we continue to get half of whatever supply commission they receive gets shared with us. Similarly, we continue to contribute half of the cost of customer acquisition. We don't anticipate meaningful revenue from the additional CWT content. The key value for us is that it should enhance customer acquisition, particularly in the North American market.
In terms of the cost of servicing, effectively, there will be some contribution certainly included within the cost of acquisition that Serko makes, but that isn't expected to also be not meaningful. If you like, the primary impact of the CWT arrangement, it should help us to grow our customer acquisition rate, and it also just allows both, all three parties to effectively explore what the appetite for these services are, and therefore make decisions about what comes next.
Sure. That's really helpful. Thanks. Last question from me. Your implied cash burn forecast for FY 2024 appears to be around NZD 21 million based on the guidance you've issued for both revenue and total spend. That'll leave you with, you know, around NZD 67 million of cash, give or take, as you hit breakeven. What do you intend to do with that cash?
I mean, certainly from our point of view, it's helpful to have a solid cash buffer, obviously inorganic options become an option with the passage of time. From our point of view, probably speaking as CFO, always happy to have a solid cash buffer in the business, just gives us plenty of optionality. If, you know, any event hits the travel industry in the future, means we can continue to, you know, run the business as opposed to getting distracted by short-term impacts.
Sure. Okay. No, that's really helpful. Thanks very much, guys.
You're welcome.
Our next question is coming from Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.
Hi, Darrin. Hi, Shane.
Hey, Siraj.
Three questions from my end. Just in terms of, I mean, pretty strong performance from Booking.com for Business right in the second half. If you could just help us with how it trended through the course of the half? I mean, it looks like March may have had an impact from industry action, but just keen to understand how it went through in the second half? In terms of the guidance for FY 2024, if you could just help break down the drivers, right, between Booking.com and managed travel, that'd be helpful?
Hi, Siraj. I think in terms of the breakdown, our expectation is that most of the growth will come from the Bookings for Business supply commission side, and that particularly our expense and travel platform reviews will be relatively consistent. A little bit of growth, but most of that growth year-on-year comes out of Bookings for Business. I think one thing that has challenged a few investors is there were some tools that people have used to monitor the traffic to the Bookings for Business site. Those had provided quite good proxies, probably up to about June 2023, but have departed. What we're seeing is, I guess, people seeing those numbers indicating that we were not tracking well in Bookings for Business.
I think from our point of view, we're quite pleased with where it's tracking. Obviously still challenging for us to work out exactly how much of that is underlying trends versus, you know, perhaps some seasonality or recovery from kind of pre-COVID impacts on business travel. From our point of view, and obviously with the guidance we've given, we're pretty happy with where that bookings for business is tracking into FY 2024.
Got it. Thanks. Secondly, the managed travel segment was a bit weaker than what we expected. Seems like the recovery compared to pre-COVID was a bit down half on half. Just keen to understand, what's happening there? Did you lose some share with the customer? Also the ARPB-
No.
If you could help us with that. Thanks.
You remember the second half, we lose almost four weeks of trading, and it's a little bit different in Australia and New Zealand through the December period. From the middle of December to the middle of January, you actually lose four weeks of trading. That's normal if you look at the current trend lines and in those graphs that we've previously provided. When you take that into consideration, in fact, we've continued to grow customers as indicated. We've also won of the, you know, major new customers in that region. Yeah, we've had a, you know, a stellar retention rate in the last year.
Yep. Got it. Just the ARPB decline, Dan, you sort of mentioned supplier commissions. Could you just clarify what happened there in terms of the managed travel business?
Effectively within the managed travel business, we received some supplier commissions from certain hotel content, and effectively just with changes in the behaviors of our customers, we saw a reduction in consumption of some of that content and therefore lower commissions. Not sort of particularly material in the overall scheme of things, it did impact the Australia, New Zealand ARPB by a few cents. Also, effectively that content mainly related to a U.S. supplier, it's historically always been reported under North America for us from a geographic point of view 'cause it's where, if you like, where the money comes from. That also created a headwind for the North American business.
While it wasn't a big number in the scheme of our overall result, given that North American business is still in growth mode, that was a meaningful headwind for that business.
Just lastly, just clarifying. In terms of CWT, Shane, you sort of clarified. Thanks for the additional color. Just clarifying, when you say you're getting 50% of the share, is that net of what CWT would be taking or are you sort of implying that the CWT payment will go from Booking.com? Secondly, in terms of customer acquisition, can you help us as to how that'll work? It's because is essentially CWT going to market to get some of these SME customers? Is that how we should think about it?
I can probably talk to the marketing sort of side. The marketing story is that, you know, it has a wider appeal. If you, if you buy with hotel loyalty rates or if you wanna see specific corporate airfares or corporate side of things, you'll now be able to do that. You'll have a single point of contact if you wanna have your account managed with, you know, CWT servicing staff across all the content of the Connected Trip. It simplifies the offering in there. Of course, that is an option for people to be able to use along with all the current offerings that's there.
Is that in certain markets, where it may have a different appeal to different customers, so it increases the audience. Of course, that will be driven from, you know, standard marketing and customer acquisition processes that we, that we together use today.
Just on the first part of the question, I think as I said, we don't anticipate meaningful revenue on the CWT content. On the Booking.com hotel content, we'll continue to share 50/50, and that with Booking.com.
Okay. Just clarifying, just quick thing. In the guidance for next year, assuming CWT is not a big factor or this new partnership is not a big factor.
Like we've kind of said, we don't know. Until the acquisition and the customer and we see the impacts of that, we can't quantify that because it's one of these things that you're activating, and there's no fixed amount. It's based on the customers using and driving the content and the mix of content into there. That's why we've said we can't guide on it because it's, it has to go live, and then we have to actually see how the customers activate. That's why it's quite hard for us to predict right now. It's a scaling opportunity. The new customers acquisition, how that mix works out in these new markets or new customer ranges. In that way, we'll know what that actually means at that point. We can't predict that right now.
It's just literally impossible until we actually start to push that stuff through. It's an option of how to bring a wider breadth of content to business travelers that should increase the number of customers and the appeal to that key market.
Thank you.
Our next question is coming from Tom Deacon with Macquarie.
Morning. It's Tom Deacon with Macquarie here. Thanks for taking my question, guys. Just wondering, just in terms of the Booking.com and JV metrics, if we could dive into those a little bit more. What would you guys be expecting in terms of yield and the sort of growth in completed room nights in FY 2024?
Yes. In terms of yield, I think we're broadly expecting it to sit around about where it was at 31 March. Still seeing strong average revenue per completed room night rolling into FY 2024. I think Darrin was over at the Booking.com partner conference in Miami. All the experts there were still seeing strong hotel rates in Europe. Yeah, we'd expect those to sit there. I haven't actually got the number of completed room nights off the top of my head, but I can probably call that out. I could ask that you can reverse engineer that most of the growth is in the guidances of Booking.com and then reverse engineer the average revenue per completed room night, you'll be able to get the number of completed room nights.
Thanks, Shane. Yeah, no problem there. In terms of active customers, or the growth there, how much is the activation of existing customers versus new customers?
It's a mixture of,... We've definitely seen more of the existing customer base activating as well.
Okay. Okay, that's helpful. In terms of sort of organic customer acquisition and how that's sort of relating to what you're spending to acquire those customers in FY 2024, what would be your expectations there?
We're sort of broadly expecting similar customer acquisition, organic customer acquisition. We've built in a very modest assumption on what we might get out of this CWT number, out of the CWT initiative. In terms of return, Booking have a pretty strong focus on ensuring that there's an ROI of one on any dollar spent on customer acquisition, and that's measured over a 12-month period. If you assume that, so basically if we spend NZD 20 to acquire a customer, then we're expecting to get NZD 20 of commission within the first 12 months of that spend, and we've been outperforming that to date. Obviously in the business space, the assumption would be that you should be able to hold those customers over time.
From my point of view, if we can maintain a sort of one-year payback on marketing and those customers have a longer life, that makes some pretty good economics. I think the key challenges being at the new stage of it, obviously quite hard for us to work out what that lifetime value is, based on having really only been operating on Booking.com for Business for about 18 months to a meaningful degree.
Understood, Shane. I'm sure those retention rates will look reasonably good once they emerge. Maybe just the last one from me just on the CWT partnership. Obviously there's been a little bit of competitive movement in the space or some of your competitors providing TMC-like functionality. How much of this new partnership is a response to that to try and win a little bit of share and go up the value chain in SME versus, I guess, you know, wanting to, yeah, sort of, yeah, build the partnership with CWT and, sort of yeah, provide some growth on, you know, a sort of an existing partnership which you guys have, input, yeah, what, a couple of years ago, right?
You sort of looked to build out the business with them, but it hasn't, I guess, generated that much in the way of sort of North American bookings.
Yeah, I guess, I mean, it's great that CWT we're selected because working with the operational teams and getting this bedded in is it's gonna have a direct benefit of actually being able to scale out to the wider customer base within CWT. You can't do everything at once. You can't take on this opportunity and scale customers both sides. You've got to scale to be focused on where you can make your investments both sides. You have to make some choices around that. This was a, quite a strategic part to bring through into there. You know, Booking.com ran a process to select CWT into there.
It's, you know, it's great that it means that the investment we made in operationalizing, connecting to all their systems, we get to kind of maximize that benefit as well. Over the COVID years of working and connecting into the different operational systems to get customers like Visa live, we can now use that benefit in the relationship with Booking.com and the Booking.com for Business partnership as well. It really maximizes the investment that we've previously made.
Thanks, Dion. Yeah, really interesting. I look forward to see what it brings in FY 2024. Thanks for taking the questions, guys.
Our next question comes from John O'Shea.
Morning, Darrin and Shane. Good work on the, on the outcome, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can. Thanks, John.
No worries. Mine's probably more of a specific question around obviously your total spend number there in 2023. Can you sort of give us a breakdown in broad terms as to what's the capital costs versus, you know, the capitalized software costs versus the operating costs? I noted this year the capitalized costs were about NZD 13, sort of let's call it NZD 14 million for argument's sake. What would you anticipate that to do in 2024? I guess that will kinda solve the question.
Yeah. Hi, John. I think I'd still anti- I my starting assumption would be a similar number to FY 2023, so like the NZD 14 million you gave. The reason we've tried to focus on total income and total spend rather than say EBITA is that number could move, which could, you know, push EBITA up or down, just so we wanna, you know, make sure we're able to hit the guidance that we give. That's something that's completely within our control versus accounting, kind of nuances around what gets capitalized. I think that's a pretty reasonable starting assumption in terms of where we'll sit.
We're sort of talking, okay, so NZD 14 million. We're talking kind of NZD 72 million-NZD 76 million of sort of operating costs. You know, I guess my question is, the sort of efficiencies we're talking about, the sort of things you're doing in terms of offshore cost centers and so forth, do you think that the way you've framed that number is that being dependent on your rate of growth with Booking.com as to... Do you know what I'm asking? I'm trying to get some sense as to whether that number is a conservative number. Is it an aggressive number? What are the variables there that we should be...
You know, 'cause we've you've spoken about for years that once you get into 2024, we should start to see that some efficiency's coming through in that cost number. You had to invest a lot to get the Booking.com thing up and running, now you're starting to see the revenue come through, some sort of moderation in those operating costs. Do you know what I'm asking? It's sort of a long-winded question, if you know what I mean.
Yeah. I think, no, it's good question, John. I think probably the couple things I'd point to is that growth, I think the midpoint equates to about 6% growth in total spend, which is basically broadly inflation in this environment.
Yeah.
We have done a couple of initiatives in FY 2023 that have, if you like, improved our cost efficiency. We've got a number more we'll do in FY 2024. Some of those initiatives require in-investment in themselves to drive them. Given the strong growth that we're experiencing on revenue, you're obviously slightly above our guidance even our revised guidance range, we've made the choice we wanna keep investing. You know, in real terms it'll be about the same cost year-over-year. That will include investing to both grow revenue, and then some direct sort of cost of sales involved in that, but also some investment in some cost efficiency initiatives over the year as well. You know, I guess the expectation would be we should be in a...
You know, ignoring any other big step-out growth things, that we should be in a healthy cost trajectory into FY 2025 where those cost efficiencies are starting to outweigh inflation and volume growth.
Yeah. Taking that a step further, would it be fair to say that while the revenue is coming along, you know, really well, we should just step out that kind of cost trajectory in terms of the cash flow bit into 2025? Do you know what I mean? As in the taking a little bit longer to get to that meaningful cash positive number. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, Well, I think in terms of getting to the cash flow.
Pre-cash flow positive, we're talking.
Yes. Yeah. We had signaled that at November that we expected that we're targeting that for FY 2025. We're still on track from that perspective.
Yeah.
I think certainly from our point of view, we're making conscious choices to keep, you know, keep the level of investment where it is.
Yeah
... while we drive through the revenue and cost initiatives.
Yeah
... versus just taking some of those cost benefits straight to the bottom line.
Yeah, that makes sense. That's it from me. Good outcome, guys. Well done.
Thanks, John.
Next question comes from Vignesh Nair with UBS.
Hi, Shane and Darrin. It's Vignesh from UBS. Can you hear me fine?
Yep, we can.
Hi, Vignesh.
All good.
Awesome. Just two quick and easy ones from me this morning. Firstly, on unmanaged travel, just wanted some more color on your observations around room nights per trip or per booking. I think at the previous half year result, you'd said it was around 2.2 nights per booking. Has that sort of, you know, increased or decreased since? Secondly, just on unmanaged travel as well, are the geographies still focused around Europe, or is that sort of being expanded further out?
Sorry, Vignesh. I think I'll probably let Darrin take the second point. In terms of the average room nights per room booking, I think that 2.2 is still about the right number. I mean, you can kind of to some extent kind of flow that through in the average revenue per booking type calculations as well. Yeah, broadly, that would be accurate in terms of, I guess as of today, the focus is still or the majority of revenue is still heavily weighted to Europe. Darrin, do you want to talk to the CWT thing and?
Yeah. I mean, the CWT thing is definitely to probably drive a wider appeal across some of the other markets as well. Yeah, it's now looking at who and what we partner with and how we build out the technology to really get scale across new markets as well. The focus is definitely global and global scale.
Okay. Okay, that's helpful. Just secondly on managed travel, I think following on from a previous question. I think you'd mentioned ARPV weakness due to sort of a change in customer mix. Really the sort of the trend has been downwards for the last few halves. What's sort of inhibiting recontracting existing customers at higher prices, especially, you know, in this environment? I would have thought it'd be easier to approach customers and recontract at higher rates now, you know, more than ever.
Yeah. We've kind of indicated that that's definitely our plan. We kinda have said that, you know, as the contracts come up for renewal, through this period, we'll be looking to raise pricing in the home markets. That's definitely our intention, you know, both from an inflation point of view, but we also, as previously indicated through COVID, gave some assistance to a lot of the travel industry resellers that we had in market to create the benefit so that they recovered in there. We gave them a year coming out of COVID to do that. Definitely the focus forward is about recontracting appropriately moving forward is what I would say. That's a task our Australian team will be running through.
We tried to indicate that in the statements in there. Yeah, that's definitely a focus of ours.
Just to get a feel for the quantum of that, is that, do you think next half, is going to be north of NZD 5, for instance, for Australasia ARPV, or is it still, you're still sort of taking some headwind?
We are. We know that some of our resellers will have already contracted with customers, and we said we need to progressively probably bring on a pricing increase if and when we introduce that into the market. We'll be sensitive to that. With the still path that, you know, we've got a, we've got a set drive that we need to get to as well, that we'd also in some cases kind of indicated where we wanted to be at this time with those partners as partners pre-COVID. It's stuff that we'll just work on through the industry. We've made it clear where we want to actually get to as a business and what we need to do to run an efficient and scalable business as well, so.
Okay. That's very clear. That's all from me, guys. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Vignesh.
Our final question is coming from Wei-Weng Chen with RBC Capital Markets.
Hi, guys. Congratulations on the result. Just a couple of questions from me. The first thing was just on costs, NZD 86 million-NZD 90 million for the next year. Just wondering if you could speak to how much of the year-on-year growth is headcount and how much of that is volume-related costs.
Yeah. The, the bulk of it will be headcount related really just because headcount is the bulk of our cost base. Sort of nearly 70% of total spend is on people cost. You know, effectively, while definitely the market is rationalizing a lot, still meaningful pay rises occurring, effectively in the pay review that's just occurred with our staff. Volume-related costs definitely growing, but they're a much smaller portion of our cost base. We are seeing quite, if you like, our gross margins that we've been achieving on a new revenue this year have been quite strong. Predominantly out of the headcount and predominantly that headcount relates to building product to support future growth.
Yeah. Okay. I guess that's the next part of my question, I guess. If we think ahead to FY 2025, how should we think about your cost base to service $100 million of revenue? I guess, you know, headcount, you know, will that need to materially change if you're effectively doubling this year's revenue?
Yeah, I think, the way we've said is, you know, Serko, with support of investors, invested ahead of revenue to set itself up for growth and to be a $100 million business. We've got, if you like, we've got the headcount and other cost base, you know, largely in place that we need for $100 million. There'll be a little bit of volume-related costs, but not a lot. Really over the next kind of 18 months, our focus is being more efficient in what we do to effectively absorb that volume-related cost growth. I probably would say, you know, in terms of headcount, kind of flattish or possibly down a little bit into FY 2025.
I mean, I think the one thing we would call out is, you know, we continue to look for opportunities for growth. You know, if we see those, we won't be shy about taking them. In terms of supporting the $100 million revenue number, we think the cost base we indicated for FY 2024 would support that.
Okay. No, thanks. This one, just sorry if you were asked earlier and been on another sort of release as well. How does the CWT content agreement change the economics for Serko's agreement with Booking.com? Just on a micro maybe revenue per completed room night level.
It doesn't.
Yeah, sorry. I'll just clarify a little bit. It doesn't change our core economics. Our hope is that it will help us strengthen customer acquisition, probably both in terms of absolute volume and the economics of customer acquisition. I think, in terms of the impact on some of our core metrics, we're probably still just working through that in terms of how we'll communicate, you know, if it is the bookings on which we're getting revenue versus those in which we're not getting revenue. We're still just trying to work out how we will communicate those at the half year. We'll probably try and give you some more clarity ahead of half year.
Yeah. Okay. 'Cause there'll be some volume that will be non-revenue generating for you guys and some revenue which will be, you know, per the prior agreement, yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah. No, thanks.
Thank you. Yeah. It'll change the metric but not the underlying economics for us, and hopefully, some positive impact on customer acquisition.
Yeah. Thank you.
That concludes today's question- and- answer session. Mr. Grafton, at this time, I'll turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you for joining us today. Look forward to meeting some of you over the next few days as well. Thank you very much. That concludes the call for today.
This concludes today's call. Thank Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.