Good day, and welcome to the Serko, excuse me, Serko Interim Results Announcement Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Darrin Grafton, Chief Executive Officer of Serko. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for joining this morning. I'm Darrin Grafton, the CEO of Serko, and 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. At our annual meeting at the end of June, we affirmed that we are relentlessly focused on our aspirational FY 25 revenue and cash flow positive goals, which will be achieved through winning in our chosen markets, achieving global scale and operational leverage, and building a globally competitive business. We've continued to grow in both our key revenue areas of managed and unmanaged travel. There's been significant growth and progress under the Booking.com for Business partnership, and we have successfully delivered with Booking.com, our hotel chain content and servicing with Booking and Serko's partner, CWT. There's also been an increased transaction volume uplift of 14% in Australasia to 2 million bookings.
As part of a deepening of our expertise across the entire organization, I'm delighted to have further strengthened the executive team with two new appointments, Joydip Das as Chief Product Officer and Liz Fraser as Chief Revenue Officer. We are particularly pleased with the increasing benefits from our focus on cost discipline, our lowering rates of cash burn, and the significant improvement in EBITDA and net loss after tax. Our financial highlights on slide six show Serko's continued strong performance with reference to the first half of FY 2023, unless otherwise stated. In particular, total income was up 87% to NZD 36.3 million. Operating expenses was up 7%, with total spend up just 3%. Revenue growth and cost discipline led to a 64% improvement in net loss after tax and a 96% improvement in EBITDA loss.
We remain well-capitalized with NZD 84.3 million of cash on hand and no debt. We've materially reduced our cash burn to a monthly average of NZD 600,000. Turning to Slide seven. As mentioned, total income was NZD 36.3 million, with a strong revenue growth across managed and unmanaged travel. Our strong result for the first half reflects increased conversions on Booking for Business, the travel recovery, and new customer additions. The first half result also benefited from a higher average revenue per booking, favorable exchange rates, and higher than expected business travel volumes in Australasia. The 87% growth in income on the first half of 2023 largely reflected the growth in the second half of FY 2023, and growth into the first half of FY 2024 over the second half of 2023 was 27%.
The graphs on Slide eight show the half-on-half progress since the beginning of the FY 2022 year. The middle graph shows online bookings were up 26% to 2.5 million on the first half of FY 2023. The graph on the right shows completed room nights, comprising of the Booking.com for Business, rose 192% to 1.3 million. Slide nine. I'm now on slide nine. In addition to revenue growth, we have been very focused on cost discipline, balanced with target investments for growth opportunities. Shane will provide additional commentary in his section. Slide 10 shows a continued revenue trajectory that has consistently risen faster than cost growth in recent periods. We continue to make appropriate levels of investment to support sustainable growth. On Slide 11 shows our total underlying average monthly cash burn for each period.
Since the start of FY 2022, we recorded total cash burn of NZD 3.4 million across the six months to September 30, equating to an average of NZD 600,000 per month. This was ahead of our expectations and was helped by continued recovery of travel along with stronger than projected foreign currency rates. During FY 2024, we focused on the delivery of technology needed for the growth in both our managed and unmanaged business. We saw the go live of hotel chain loyalty rate content with Booking.com for Business, along with servicing provided by managed travel provider, CWT. In Australasia, we have continued to see strong transactional growth, with record monthly transactions occurring in the first half. We continue to invest in our key revenue areas and are focused on continuing to build team capability as we move Serko to the next phase of its growth journey.
We've also continued our investment in evolving our platform to ensure it is well-positioned for the changing travel demands, in particular, our investment into our cloud-native and independent high-scale platform. This investment is designed for Serko to stay ahead of the global demand. We're continuing our investment in the openization of the platform frameworks and systems to enable future partnerships to both connect and build on our platform. Before I comment on our unmanaged and managed travel performance, a few comments on our leadership on Slide 14. Recent appointments further strengthen the depth of experience of Serko's leaders as we increase our focus on building capability and scale across the organization. In particular, the changes reflect the critical importance of data to our strategy, technology, and products, and how we work and measure the impact.
In addition, AI holds many opportunities for the travel industry and Serko, and we've been actively building capability and experimenting with AI. Joydip joined in October and is already helping reshape our product delivery function. Our VP of Engineering, Simon Young, has also recently joined Serko, bringing a wealth of experience from notable New Zealand companies, Trade Me and more recently, tech startup Halter. Another key hire for the executive is Liz Fraser, who has previously held senior roles with TV New Zealand and Air New Zealand, and most recently, Commercial Director with MediaWorks. Liz will be helping the Serko team drive focus and sustainable high growth across the two key revenue focus areas of managed and unmanaged travel. Liz starts in early January. Turning to Slide 15.
The results being delivered under Booking.com for Business partnership reflects the continued focus of Serko and Booking.com teams and encouraging levels of customer demand. Completed room nights on Booking.com for Business rose 192% on the first half of 2023, from 454,000 to 1.3 million. For the second half of FY 2023, completed room nights for business rose 22%. Average revenue per completed room night was in line with the first half of 2023, FY 2023, and increased 12% over the second half of FY 2023. Active customers using Booking.com for Business have continued to increase, up 61% to 176,000. I'm now on slide 16. We're now focused on implementing our scaling strategies with Booking.com, alongside the delivery of new features found on our Zeno platform.
Scaling initiatives include bringing more of the features found in our Zeno platform, along with the new product offerings. This includes the introduction of Traxo, which provides real-time corporate travel data capture. Further product enhancements are scheduled to be released continually in the second half. We're in a position to add new incremental feetures to support retention, activation, and growth of customers as a result of the investments made in the Booking.com for Business platform. We've been learning from the team at Booking.com, adopting new ways of working as part of the evolving our product and development culture and delivery approach. This includes increasing the number of experiments we undertake, improving how we build and test, and impact on innovation. During the half, content and servicing from CWT within the Zeno technology platform went live in the Booking.com for Business offering.
A comment on our contract with Booking Holdings, we entered into a five-year agreement in October 2019, and we'll undertake formal renewal discussions at the appropriate time. We keep and we will keep the market appropriately informed. Slide 17, our managed revenue strategy. Online bookings were up 14% in Australia and New Zealand to just under 2 million, the result of continued strong growth and increased market share. We continue to win new business. Rio Tinto, one of the largest corporate travel accounts in Australia, went live on Zeno during the half via American Express Global Business Travel. We continue to see future growth in Australasia, underpinned by high rates of customer retention. This growth will be primarily through increased revenue per booking, reflecting our strong market share, the additional value from new features.
In North America, we continue to invest to develop the market and deliver to our partners. We continue to refine our market strategy and work with our partners to identify and strengthen our offer. We're executing on our plans, including taking tech steps to activate additional customers via our travel management partners, increasing the depth of capability, undertaking targeted product development. Our focus for the first half of this year for managed travel and our markets has been around features that remove the friction for both our reseller partners and their customers. The first of these features that launched this half is the advanced airline changes. Since COVID, changes to airline schedules, along with the resourcing needed to service these impacts, has been a key pain point.
Serko is pleased to be able to launch this new technology to start to alleviate some of the ongoing impacts of disruptive flights. The second initiative is on NDC. NDC is one of the many technologies that we continue to work on to support our partners and customers, and to ensure we remain at the forefront as travel evolves. Our focus has, again, been around the operational friction caused by this market change. With high usage of the Sabre GDS or Global Distribution System by our key resellers and partners, we have focused our development efforts to improve operational efficiency by aiming to bring NDC on Sabre into the second half. Thank you, and I'll now hand to Shane to talk about our financial update in more detail.
Thanks, Darrin, and good morning, everyone. Darrin has already called out the highlights for the half year. I will go into a little more detail. I note that unless explicitly stated otherwise, all comparisons are against the prior comparable period, being the six months to 30 September 2022. Turning to Slide 19 for the high-level profit and loss. Total income grew by 87%, or NZD 16.9 million - NZD 36.3 million. I will talk about revenue in more detail on the next slide. Operating expenses increased by 7% or NZD 3 million. I will talk to operating expenses in more detail on a later slide, but note that we consider the more useful measure to be total spend, which I will also talk to on a subsequent slide.
Net finance income grew by 98% to NZD 2 million from NZD 1 million, reflecting stronger interest rates, partially offset by lower cash balances. Our net loss after tax is reduced by NZD 12.6 million, or 64% to NZD 7.2 million, reflecting the operating leverage Serko has been able to achieve as revenue grew strongly and we've held cost growth. The EBITDAF loss reduced by 96% or NZD 16.1 million- NZD 0.8 million, and as a percentage of revenue, the EBITDAF loss fell to 2%. Looking at revenue in more detail on slide 20, the key highlights are that travel platform revenue grew by NZD 1.1 million or 13% to NZD 9.6 million, primarily reflecting increased travel volumes in Australia and New Zealand and some increase in market share.
Net of consideration payable to customers, supplier commissions revenue grew by NZD 15.5 million or 215%, primarily driven by increased Booking.com for Business completed room nights. Looking at revenue by geography, ANZ revenue grew by 14%, reflecting the partial recovery of travel, increased services revenue, and some increased market share. The strong growth in the Europe and other geography was driven by increased supplier commissions and Booking.com for Business. Average revenue per booking or ARPB for travel-related revenue increased by 64% to NZD 12.88. The growth in ARPB is primarily driven by the increase in the number of Booking.com for Business bookings as a proportion of total bookings, and by a stronger euro relative to the New Zealand dollar.
The ARPCRN or average revenue per completed room night in euro terms, was in line with the prior comparable period, reflecting similar hotel prices. Turning to Slide 21. Operating expenses grew by NZD 3 million or 7% to NZD 45.4 million. As a percentage of revenue, operating expenses fell to 127% from 225%, a decrease of 98 percentage points, reflecting significant operating leverage as revenue has grown. Remuneration and other benefits fell by nought point five million or 2%, reflecting a reduction in employee share scheme costs and planned reductions in contractors, partially offset by wage growth. Third-party direct costs are external costs driven by activity in our platforms and increased by 27% to NZD 6.4 million, in line with the 26% increase in online booking volumes.
Amortization and depreciation increased by NZD 2.3 million or 38% to NZD 8.3 million. The increase 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 22, this is a reconciliation of total spend to operating expenses. Total spend is a non-GAAP measure which Serko uses internally to measure spend before the impacts of capitalization and amortization. In software businesses, the nature of the projects being worked on can result in significant differences in the proportion of product design and delivery costs capitalized under accounting standards.
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 costs of the business, remuneration and benefits, and external spend. Note that total spend is not exactly the same as cash costs. In addition to timing differences in working capital, Serko's employee share scheme drove NZD 2.4 million of total spend in the half, but does not have any cash impact. Total spend grew by 3% to NZD 42.2 million, and as a percentage of revenue fell 101 percentage points to 118%. Growth in total spend was primarily driven by increased third-party costs as a result of the increase in online booking volumes. Looking at headcount.
Headcount declined to 345 from 364 at 31 March 2023. The reduction's primarily related to lower contractor numbers. In the prior financial year, we chose to add contractors to provide additional capacity for key projects, while giving ourselves the ability to scale resourcing back once those projects were completed. Turning to slide 24, product design and development has driven much of the growth in operating expenses, with expense after capitalization and amortization up NZD 3.7 million, or 19%. The growth reflects increased investment in staffing and higher amortization. Turning to slide 25, this is a reconciliation of underlying cash flow, a non-GAAP term used earlier in the presentation. Underlying cash flow is intended to provide a clearer view of the cash flow trajectory of the business. Underlying cash flow 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. However, from an economic perspective, those net movements are not part of the cash burn. Underlying cash flow improved by NZD 18.2 million to an underlying cash outflow of NZD 3.4 million. This was driven by operating cash flows improving from a cash outflow of NZD 17.4 million to a positive operating cash flow of NZD 1.7 million, an improvement of NZD 19.2 million, primarily as a result of operating leverage as revenues have increased. Finally, looking at the balance sheet on slide 26. Our balance sheet remains strong, with cash and short-term deposits of NZD 84.3 million and no debt.
Relative to 30 September 2022, other current assets grew by NZD 3.4 million, or 26%, reflecting revenue growth, while current liabilities fell by NZD 2.8 million, primarily reflecting the repayment in the second half of FY 2023 that was adjusted in the underlying cash flow for that period. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Darrin.
Thanks, Shane, and looking at the outlook now on slide 28. Considering the growth in the first half and the second half seasonality, Serko revised its anticipated total income for FY 2024 upwards from NZD 63 million-NZD 70 million to NZD 67 million-NZD 74 million. Serko affirms its total spend guidance of NZD 86 million-NZD 90 million for the FY 2024 and anticipates tracking towards the lower end of the spend range. As Shane mentioned, Serko is well capitalized, with cash on hand of NZD 84.3 million as at 30 September, despite declining cash burn and no debt. Serko continues to be open to organic and inorganic investments and will consider opportunities that would advance our strategic objectives. Macroeconomic and geopolitical factors continue to be uncertain, which may impact future performance, including in the short term.
Factors that could impact results include currency fluctuations, the impact of regional conflicts, and changes in hotel room rates. Serko retains its aspiration of NZD 100 million in total income in FY 2025, and Serko remains committed to achieving positive cash flow for the FY 2025 financial year, with the appropriate cash reserves on hand at the end, at the point of break even. We now welcome your questions, and if you could keep them to two per person, please.
If you would like to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow the signal to reach our equipment. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open. Please state your name and your company name before posing your question. Again, press star one to ask a question, and we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone the opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question. Caller, please go ahead.
Good morning, Shane, Darrin. Can you hear me okay?
I can.
We can. Hi, John.
Hi, guys. Yeah, good work in the first half. Terrific. Look, just for me, a couple of questions. Clearly, you can see the leverage coming through here with the revenue over, as you've mentioned. Just about around the costs, is there anything that we should be aware of as we look at the second half 2024 and into FY 2025, that we should be aware of, that sort of changes the profile of those costs? Obviously, I know, Shane, you alluded to the amortization there being over a shorter timeframe. So assuming that means that that starts to increase, is there any other areas that we should be mindful of when we look through those numbers?
Obviously, with a view to looking at, you know, where the EBITDA settles and so forth, given the revenue guidance you've given. Do you understand my question?
Yeah, I think... We've kept the same guidance range for total spend for the full year, but we've signaled that we're currently tracking to the lower end of the range.
Yes.
In terms of things to watch out for, I guess we kept the range despite where we're tracking to, because, you know, we continue. If we see opportunities to invest to go faster, we're sort of, if you like, keeping up our sleeve the ability to do that rather than, yeah, rather than guaranteeing that we're banking that. So you could see some additional spend in the second half, in the event that we see, you know, clear opportunities for that to add value heading into FY 2025.
Mm-hmm.
... there. And in terms of, and probably the other element, if you think about EBITDA is, yeah, we had a reasonably low level of capitalization in the period. Obviously, if that had been kind of in line with the second half of last year, we would have had a positive EBITDA. That's partly around we've got a big focus on experimentation through the Booking things. We're adding a bunch of new features, and we're trialing different things, and we've taken the view that for the most part, that doesn't get capitalized. So probably say in terms of capitalization, we are less focused on where that lands, so why we give guidance on total spend and not OpEx. But I, you know, starting point, you could probably assume something similar to the first half. The capitalization might be a touch higher.
Okay. So if I take that one step further for my second question, then, in broad terms, you know, the—obviously, you've guided to, you know, a stronger second half in terms of the seasonality. In broad terms, so we—Should we, should that mean we should be expecting an, an EBITDA, number in broad terms better than the first half, other things being equal?
I guess probably what I'd say is we aren't sort of guiding on EBITDA just because that capitalization kind of can be somewhat randomizing. And also, if we do choose to invest a little bit more, then that would, you know, that potentially could push EBITDA backwards. So yeah, I guess at the moment, I'd say we're not focused on the EBITDA line as a line that we're mentioning to. We're focused on delivering growth and sort of underlying profitability through that total income, total spend area, and we are still willing to spend a little bit more. So, it's certainly possible EBITDA will be better, but, you know, we'd be comfortable if it was slightly weaker. But we're generating really strong results into FY 25.
Sure. Yeah, that's it, guys. Thanks very much for taking my questions.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
As a reminder, please state your name and your company name before posing your question, and we will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead. To the participant who just heard the voice prompt through your phone line, your line is now open. Please check your mute button. I am not getting a response from that line. We will move to our next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Hi, it's Suraj from Citi. Hi, Darrin. Hi, Shane. Just the first question-
Hi, Suraj.
Can you just talk to— Because looking at the guide, I know it's sort of, sort of déjà vu from last year, but your midpoint for full-year revenue guide implies that revenue is down half on half. Just keen to understand just the assumptions you've assumed for the features that impact that for us across managed and unmanaged, and where you're tracking to currently. That'd be pretty helpful.
Yeah, no, that... I'll talk to that one, Suraj. So I think there's a couple of things in there. One is that there's a seasonal headwind in the second half. It's stronger in AN Z, where there's effectively about 11% seasonal headwind as business travel must stop for that month over Christmas and New Year. And Booking for Business, the seasonality is smaller, but still probably somewhere in the 3%-5% range. The other part is that we had a really strong first half. Volumes exceeded the numbers we needed to get to the midpoint of our guidance. However, yield was also a key contributor, so the euro to New Zealand dollars at near five-year record rates and the average revenue per completed room night.
You know, while it was in line with the prior comparable period, it was higher than what we were anticipating. So when we were thinking about guidance, we took the view that there's a relatively low probability of those yield factors improving further, but there's potential for them to turn negative. So to some degree, you can think of the top end of the range as really reflecting the current trends, and the bottom end of the range as providing some provision for, you know, a decline in FX rates, hotel rates coming off a little bit and potentially a little bit of volume headwinds, in the event that any of those macroeconomic factors start impacting. So, you know, it's technically a really strong first half, good volumes, but with the yield factors really driving that outperformance.
For the second half, the top end of the range kind of assumes similar trends, and the bottom end assumes that some of those yield factors go against us.
Yeah. Thanks. And just, just clarifying, though, Shane, what are you seeing in terms of the ARPCR? And I, I guess the currency can change, but just ARPCR and what are you seeing currently?
So, we just in terms of our
Like in second half, just right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, effectively, we aren't able to talk past the period. I guess there's nothing particularly that's saying to us that that's coming down. But we also only have about sort of a 4- to 6-week ahead average booking, which is a little bit different to Booking.com Leisure, where people tend to book leisure bookings a lot further ahead. Business bookings are lower, so yeah, I guess we're just seeing the potential for that to fall as we head into the northern winter, as opposed to we've got concrete signs that that's happening.
Okay. Second question, just in terms of the customer adds and bookings per customer, that was down half-on-half. Just keen to hear what you're seeing on that, because you only added, like, 19k active customers. Surprising, given CWT went live in June, right? And as Darrin mentioned, there's loyalty rates. So, yeah, what are you seeing in terms of customer active customer growth and also bookings per customer? Thank you.
Yeah, so I think, in terms of from the external numbers, if you take the completed room nights and sort of average the active customers, I think there's a very small decline, versus the previous period. I think some of that is around, if you like, as we add more active customers, because an active customer, somebody books in the 12 months, you effectively do have a little bit of an impact of, you know, some customers who book very infrequently starting to delete that number. But it's, you know, that impact, I think, is relatively modest. The increase in active customers is sort of not, you know, was in line-ish with where we were expecting.
We were setting guidance at the start of the year, where we did sort of signal that the high rate of growth that we're seeing in the prior period was partly a factor of people coming back from COVID and also just that twelve-month active customer measure. So yeah, so from our point of view, we didn't necessarily see either of those things as being a surprise. We're certainly looking to grow the number of customers that we add, but we see that as being a, you know, an ongoing process as opposed to something that we're expecting to have a huge impact in the first half. And, you know, if you just look at CWT in particular, we launched in June.
You know, a number of the chains were not available at that point, so we've been steadily adding chains. The other part of that proposition is us bringing through some of the business features into the Booking.com for Business product. So if you like, during we launched solid tech foundation, now we're starting to roll new features. So, I think still early days with that proposition. We are seeing some increase in the number of registrations. Seen a material increase in the number of registrations we're getting. That's not fully flowing through to activations, but it's hard to tell, you know, is that where the market is, you know, to broader macroeconomic things, or is it something about the offerings? So we can continue to kind of monitor that.
But, you know, overall, from our perspective, the CWT thing is still early days, which was our expectation when we set it back in May. But yeah, we weren't expecting rapid results. We do think that will help give us some trajectory into FY 25, but we weren't expecting a big impact this year.
Super. Thanks. That's super helpful. Thank you. I'll just, I'll just go back to that again.
We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Morning, Darrin and Shane. It's Josh Dale from Craigs here. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Hi, Josh.
Hi, Josh.
Brilliant. First question, you reported 1.3 million completed room nights by Booking.com, but there were some room nights going through CWT on which you did not share in the revenue. How many of those room nights were there over the half?
So, so we haven't disclosed that. What I would say is that it's minimal, and you'll, you'll notice we've just tweaked the definition of completed room night to only be revenue generating room night. So effectively, those CWT numbers are not counted in there. That the number was small in the period. We have seen the number, the proportion building, and so that may start becoming material in the second half, and we're, we're sort of looking at how we'll then report that. Obviously, we'll need permission from CWT and Booking in terms of anything we disclose around that, but in the first half, effectively not meaningful. Second half might start becoming material.
Got it. And, your active customer numbers, are you reporting those the same way? Do they exclude those booking the CWT content?
Yes.
Okay, that's helpful. Last question: Are there any comments you can make on the performance of North America? It feels like, you know, at one point you announced CWT was, you know, had included Serko as a globally preferred online booking tool. You'd won Visa, and it feels like progress has gone a bit quiet there. Are there any comments you can make?
Yeah, we've been adding other customers in there, and we've just been focused on, because of the size of those accounts, although the progress, you know, in that sort of market, we're focused on the customers that we have and adding in around there, like customers and really concentrating on the ones that we have and expanding out that part. We've played around with some additional technology offerings in that market, which you may have seen through some of the webinars we've been doing.
And we're just continually, you know, focused on making sure that we are delivering incredibly well to those resellers and customers that we have on board, and then finding like customers in that, and balancing that overall capital allocation with, you know, the opportunities that we've got ahead with both booking our home markets and the global markets as well. So it's steady.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.
No worry.
We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead. To the participant who just heard the voice prompt through your phone line, your line is now open. Please check your mute button. I am not hearing a response from that line. We will move to our next question. Caller, please go ahead. To the participant who just heard the voice prompt through your phone line, your line is now open. Please check your mute button. I'm not hearing a response from that line. We will move to our next question. Caller, please go ahead. To the participant who just heard the voice prompt through your phone line, your line is now open. Please check your mute button. I am not hearing a response. We will move to the next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Hi, Shane and Darrin, can you hear me?
We can.
We can.
Hi, it's Vignesh from UBS. How are you? Oh, well, sorry. Yeah, good, good.
Thank you.
A couple of questions this morning from me. Firstly, just on the core unmanaged, you know, travel side of the business. So the commentary from Corporate Traveller in, in Australia recently sort of suggested that, you know, the key reason behind a couple of their share gains was coming from using the Lightning online booking tool that they had. So are you sort of seeing any, you know, increase in churn out of the, you know, in the ANZ market? And do you see any risk sort of in the ANZ share that you have with more kind of TMCs pushing their kind of in-house online booking tool or potential, you know, value chain kind of consolidation at all?
No. And you will have seen that, you know, we've specifically called out that we've got a very high retention rate and a very strong win rate, which is on our target of what we're looking at, and also the onboarding of companies like Rio Tinto, which is, you know, one of the largest market, you know, corporate accounts in the region as well. So yeah, we continue to win in that market and also have a very high retention rate.
You sort of expect Australasia ARPV to kind of grow into the second half of 2024 year-on-year.
Yeah
... or is it still sort of?
Correct. We've indicated to the market that we're also reviewing our pricing structures in line with inflation, and we'll start to see some of that impact, mostly probably we expect into the FY 25 year.
Right. So you sort of can expect maybe flat year on year into the second half of this year.
No, we-
From there on.
I'll let Shane cover that.
Yeah, we're sort of moving customers steadily. So, in sort of an underlying Australian dollar terms, we should see a little bit of an uplift in the second half versus first half. There's still a little bit of risk that offsets that, but, if you like, a little bit of an impact this year, positive, and we'd expect that to be stronger in FY 2025.
Okay. That makes sense. Just turning to unmanaged travel, just want some help in breaking down the results a bit more. You know, looking at sort of the reported room nights, sort of 1.3 million, that's 18% growth versus the second half of 2023. Breaking that down a bit further, that's sort of 12% increase in active customers. That kind of implies the 6% is the delta there, which is kind of room nights booked per customer growth. So on that kind of 12% active customer growth, how much of that is new business add versus activation of the prior customer base?
Yeah. So it's a mix of, we're still seeing, still seeing existing customers reactivating. Definitely what we have seen is a skew from, you know, more previously, a significant proportion of the newly activated customers were migrated customers that were going live for the first time versus now, the majority of the growth is coming from net new customers. Probably just on the completed room nights per active customer, I think the one thing there is you probably just need to look at the average of average number of active customers over the period. And I think you do that calculation, there's a slight decline in the completed room nights per active customer, but not meaningful. But...
That's partly just around the timing of the growth in the prior period, but the sort of endpoint had a-- Yeah, if you just use the endpoint, you get a slightly different answer that makes it look like the completed room nights per active user has gone up, but I think using the average is a better guide.
Okay. Okay, that's helpful. And then finally, just very quickly on the shared marketing cost, presumably that's still embedded in the revenue number. I think in the full year, you kind of guided to something in the mid-NZD 3 million. Has that changed at all with this result?
So, yeah. We have included that within the financial statements in the revenue note. And so digging that up, in the half, that was about NZD 1.7 million, effectively that was netted off the revenue line for marketing spend, which is, you know, roughly about double what we had the prior year.
And you're still guiding to NZD 3-NZD 3.5-ish for the full year?
Yeah, that may come back slightly in the full year, but yeah, broadly, that kind of number.
Okay. That's all for me. Thank you so much, guys.
Thank you.
... As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one. Please make sure your mute function is turned off. Again, a voice prompt will indicate when the line is open. Please state your name and your company name before posing your question. We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Can.
Mark from Forsyth Barr. Just a question from me with regards to both your full year guidance, FY 2024, and your aspirational revenue goal for FY 2025. How do you sort of marry the flat revenue growth in the second half of FY 2024, and then pretty strong growth to get to NZD 100 million in FY 2025? Can you talk about your expectations of revenue over the next sort of 18 months?
As Shane indicated, you know, we lose, you know, almost a good three to four weeks in our home markets and part of that in the European market as you go through. So it's quite common if you look at our previous growth models, where we have a, you know, prior, you know, you have a half on half, which is pretty equivalent, even though you're losing a part of that trading period due to seasonality. And the focus is now on, you know, of course, execution into that second half and the strategies that we're doing. So we're just getting into those scaling phases and new additional platform parts for our booking for business as well, and also, you know, the increases in ARPB across our home markets as well into FY 25.
So, you know, they, those will take time to get into place, and then you start to leverage them out. That doesn't, that doesn't, you know, say that we don't have work ahead of us, but, that's, you know, we've checked off our first checkpoint of where we needed to be. And we've been able to revise our guidance up accordingly, so we still feel pretty confident around our aspirations around that, both from our cost management structure and both from our revenue and strategies that we're implementing.
In terms of the no reduction in the range, there's still a 7 million range there. Does that speak to the uncertainty around where this yield might go on hotel rooms and demand, or what does that speak to?
Yeah, so it, it's basically both FX and the potential for hotel room rates to come back are the two main things. And we've also factored a little bit of potential for, you know, any kind of macroeconomic impacts on business travel in Europe. There's a lot of things going on in the world, so we put a little bit of provision in for that into the bottom end of the range as well. So as I indicated earlier, if you like, our current course and speed takes us towards the top end, but we tend to we see more, you know, more downside risks than obvious upside.
So it's rather than, if you like, rather than basing our guidance on here, here's a midpoint and then here's a bit either side of that, we're more focused on here's where we're tracking, but here's the potential risks that we see that could see us going lower.
Right. No, useful. And then I guess finally from me, just on the balance sheet, obviously, it looks like you guys are going to get to cash positive with quite a significant cash buffer, and you've alluded to the potential for M&A or inorganic measures of growth. Should those not arise, can you talk about what you might see yourselves doing with that cash balance?
Sorry, Mark, Darrin, and I just, just looking at each other. It's probably fair to say, you know, at the moment, we're more focused on how do we invest that money to drive greater shareholder returns. You know, traditionally, particularly, you know, ANZ companies have tended to run maybe leaner balance sheets and look to do buybacks or those kind of things. You know, if we aren't, if we don't see that we can do better things by holding that capital, then that's something we can look at. But, you know, first and foremost, our focus has been on how do we drive superior shareholder returns.
So if you like, we probably see that question as being one we might have to address down the track, but hopefully don't need to.
We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Hi, Darrin and Shane. It's Jacob from Citigroup. Can you hear me okay?
Yes. Yes, I can.
Yep. Yep. So just thanks for taking my questions. Just on cost guidance, for second half, you sort of implied a NZD 2 million-NZD 3 million increase in costs, but just given headcount is down, I appreciate that you also mentioned that you're keeping some optionality, but have you stepped up any investment so far? And, what areas would you like to invest in?
We have some core areas, of course. The three, the three core areas that we focus on is, one, our booking for business opportunities and, and can we do things slightly faster to bring some of those changes online? The second area being in our North America market and, you know, what we can actually be bringing about, from that sort of side of it. And the third being on the transformation of how we can actually invest more into our, in our overarching platform, which we kinda indicated. And the backbone of that is data. So we have invested into data and data capability, executive strengthening, with new hires into the key areas to help cement some of those frameworks for delivery of where we want to be into FY 2025 and the second half of FY 2024.
And so, you know, we're still continually. And that's why we said we're currently tracking towards the lower end of that spend range, but we wanna enable that flexibility as we go through the second half, that we may still want to pull some of those investment or capital item expenditures into some of these areas that we can actually see ahead of us as well. So although we're still tracking to that level, we still want to enable that flexibility of execution, where we need to be based on where we've got to so far.
Yep, got it. And just my second one on ARPB and ANZ. Could you talk to the quantum of the price increase that you indicated?
Yeah, I think that obviously, one issue there is there's some commercial sensitivity to be rather talk to sort of where we're at with individual customers. You know, we're probably seeing the second half on and sort of underlying Australian dollar terms; it's probably in the sort of 3%-5% uplift kind of range. We are expecting we'll get something more material next year. You know, Darrin talked about we're partly referencing inflation, which, you know, from our perspective, has been in the region of 20% over the last kind of 5 years. Our pricing in ANZ has been relatively consistent over that period. You know, with COVID, we didn't do price rises for a while.
So, between, you know, this year and next year, that's the kind of amount we're looking to get. Whether we get all of that in FY 2025 is probably a question mark, but that will be the target that we will be looking to exit FY 2025 with.
Thanks.
We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead.
Hi, Darrin and Shane. Just a couple of follow-ups. Just first one, I know you mentioned, it's a five-year contract with Booking.com. So just, when do you expect to start renegotiation for... Just keen to understand how we should think about timing.
Hi, Darrin here. Look, into the new year, we would hope, by the time through our full year earnings to be able to give a pretty good indication at that point.
Okay.
You know, that will enable us to guide appropriately and everything as well.
Got it. And secondly, Shane, just, just clarifying on your guide, right? I appreciate the 3% volume headwind in Booking.com, but, but shouldn't there be... Let's forget yield, but shouldn't there be room night completed growth because you're growing more customers? Or is that not the way to think about it?
So we're still seeing our sort of run rate does include continuing to add customers. So we are, if you like, on a sort of season-adjusted basis. I think even without adjusting for seasonality, we will still see growth and volume in the second half. It's just the seasonality just offsets a little bit of that. And you know, if we're at the top end of the guidance range, then we have a slightly stronger second half than first half. So as I noted that, we're less focused on a midpoint for the guidance range and more focused around current course and speeds, probably that the more sort of bullish position, and then there's more risk to the downside as we've set that guidance range.
Got it. Got it. Just clarifying, just on the price increase in ANZ, have you started talking to people about that sort of 20% increase? Just keen to understand whether there's been pushback, you know, on that.
Yes, we have started conversations with our customers on that.
You'd sort of assume that if you think about it, if you're a commercial person in any organization, you're always gonna start by pushing back on pricing. So yeah, we're having constructive conversations. You know, as I said, whether we get all of that in FY 25 is to be determined, but we'd expect to get a meaningful part of it.
Correct.
Okay, thanks.
We will take our next question. Caller, please go ahead. And Greg, your line is open, if you could please check your mute button. I am not getting a response from that line. And at this time, there are no further questions. Mr. Grafton, I will turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for joining, and I really do look forward to catching up with you, many of you in the next coming days. So thank you very much for your support, and, see you soon. Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.