Okay, welcome and thank you everybody for your attendance today. I do apologize, obviously, for the weather. For those from Australia, this is not normal New Zealand. For those that have been trapped in this weather before from Australia, it's still not normal New Zealand. Look, we'll launch into it. The presenters that we're gonna have today, lined up along here, they can introduce themselves. We've got Scott, Nick, Stacey, Nick, Gordon. Luke's around for all sorts of questions as well, and we'll jump through some bits and pieces as we go. The presentation is as per what has been loaded onto the stock exchanges in New Zealand and Australia. It's nothing new, but we'll give the commentary to it, and we'll get into some Q&A towards the end as well. You know the agenda for today.
We may slightly change it depending on what happens with the weather conditions. There are some motorway closures in Auckland at the moment, we're keeping an eye on that. At this stage, right as we stand today, we will still continue from here to the Auckland Depot, and we've moved everything that we're gonna do there inside, we should be able to still do that and have a drink and so forth. We'll make a final call on that in about an hour's time on the catering and then what we'll do. We'll just make sure that it all sort of works to keep everybody safe and to keep everybody getting to where they need to get to. All right, just some general trend comments. This is around the broader tourism industry, not necessarily THL.
Based on what we've seen in global trade shows, what we've picked up from airline capacity data, national tourism organizations, our own forward bookings, and general commentary with industry players, both in our segment and other segments as well. As with the last three years, there's no really clear trends right at the moment anywhere. The things are still changing in terms of booking times, in terms of markets and market growth rates, and so forth. It's all moving around generally. The tourism industry is strong, and we see it as very positive. We've talked before about the fact that tourism through COVID was on the floor and it's standing up. We still really feel that as an organization. We're still in the process of standing up.
We still see that there's room to move and room to stand up, that there's still significant growth in front of us. We do see that the macroeconomic conditions that are plaguing some industries around the world are still a fair way ahead of us in terms of the tourism industry. Everything still remains positive. Just wanna quickly talk about RV rental yields. We've spoken to investors across the board at the half year, the big question overall was: What is happening with yields? What's the decline going to be? We understand that it's peaking in the tourism industry in general at the moment, where things are gonna end up. Well, look, right here today, we stand here saying that our yield story is more positive than what it was at the half year.
We're providing you with our latest views here in this presentation. The H2 comparative numbers are obviously against a different period, so it's not exactly accurate to look at H1 versus H2. For Australia, as an example, we were saying 70%, we're saying 100%. They are measuring against different periods, but the trend point is the key message that we see here. We do see yields as staying up higher. We see them staying up higher for longer, and we have more confidence around where things are moving. From a New Zealand perspective, we need to note that we are, and why we still have some growth in New Zealand, is that we are lapping a period where we were still in significant uncertainty.
Remember, it's only just over 12 months ago that New Zealand announced the opening of the borders, and New Zealand was the last of the main destinations that we had to open, and subsequently, it was a much slower start. That demand and supply mix wasn't in the same place. Where we are today, we are lapping that, so we are still seeing good growth in the New Zealand market. The way we've tried to portray it in this graph, and obviously it's not an exact figure 'cause we're using different currencies, different jurisdictions, is to have a look at those different phases that we've had throughout this yield journey. What we're clearly trying to indicate here is that we still have that growth path for New Zealand. We still see further growth in yield in New Zealand at this point in time.
We do see some of those other markets still in some growth, but starting to flatten, and we're not yet seeing any real decline in rental yields. In the U.S. domestic market, we'll just need to see what happens over the high season because that's late. That's somewhat more competitive and price sensitive. At this point in time, we're still seeing yield growth. Ultimately, the crystal ball question that you've all asked at some time or another is: What will yields end up being in the long term relative to pre-COVID, and when will that occur? The reality is, we can't answer that today. We would be silly to answer that today.
We want to be clear about the fact that it is a more positive story than what we were seeing, and we see that yields are going to hold up for longer and at a higher rate than what we previously anticipated. Vehicle sales margins are coming off peak. We need to be very clear that this is a point that we have been very clear will occur at an appropriate period of time, and we're hitting that period of time. We're just moving into that normalization phase, the phase where some of the higher priced vehicles that were purchased are flowing through and are being sold through, and we're seeing some of that excess demand over supply premium just coming back a little bit. Nothing that we hadn't planned.
We've been very clear that we've actually been able to extend margins for longer, at a higher rate, for longer than what we'd anticipated. Nothing that we're concerned about, nothing that we hadn't already sort of planned for a period of time. We're seeing in the U.S. it coming back a little bit quicker than the most recent view that we had, but that's still much longer than our view that we had 12, 18 months ago. Again, vehicle sales margins are in a good place. The North American high season for sales is the key commentary and key questions that we've had already this morning based on some of the commentary that we've given. To be clear, it has been a slower start in the North American market.
A rationale and a reason that we don't like to use very often at all, nobody does, but the winter weather did continue through North America for a much longer period. In the Canadian market, in particular, still heavy snow on the ground right through in April. What we saw as well, and you can read all the information, that the towable market did come down. We've had people on the ground through the dealers, and we saw that they were looking for our product. They were short of motorized product. They were just hesitant at that point because there's still snow on the ground, a lack of customers coming demanding right then and there, but really strong general interest, really strong website interest, and the activity was sort of green light, green light, green light. They needed our stock.
They have started taking our stock at the rates that we wanted, and they've started taking that in volume, but it has been later. There may be some push into July is the point that we're saying. The overall message that I'd be really key for people to take out is there's any risk there, it's a risk on some timing on vehicle sales. In fact, our overall outlook when you balance those yield to margin equations is overall into time. It's actually more positive than where we have been at the half year. Supply challenges are pretty much as we've indicated and as noted on the screen. You see here, chassis supply in New Zealand will likely normalize late next year. Normalize for us in this instance is saying what we order on the timeframe that we want will arrive on time.
None of the scaling back that we've seen in the industry, none of the delays that we've seen in the industry, and none of the alternative product options that have been supplied by customers, by suppliers along the way. That's what we see a sort of normalization. We're saying that to get to that point, it's still some time away, and you can pick the other points there for the other jurisdictions. From a profit guidance perspective, I delivered the message two slides ago, so I won't reiterate it, but that is the key point. We have not changed our market guidance. We've noted that there may be a timing risk, and indeed, when we look out more broadly for the business, our guidance remains unchanged, and we remain more positive about the future.
For those of you, 'cause remember, this is being recorded, so there'll be people watching for the first time. For those of you who got to see Action Manufacturing this morning, you're seeing that today is about demonstrating our business model. Talking about build, we'll be at rentals, and we'll be talking about sales, seeing the capability that sits in behind all of that. To kick that off, I'm keen to talk about these four boxes. These are what we see as the core growth levers for THL at this point in time. The first box, and we'll talk through this, is that build rent sell model.
We do still see a much greater opportunity to continue to evolve that circle, to continuing to evolve the benefit that we get from reducing cost on build and the advantage that we get on a supply chain basis, benefiting that ROFE model into rentals, benefiting what we achieve on a sales basis from a price and timing perspective. We see that there are still opportunities in expanding that model in all jurisdictions that we operate. From an organic fleet growth perspective, we are heading into the largest organic fleet growth period in the history of the organization and possibly in all time. We've got that COVID recovery fleet growth as an overall business. Nick is gonna talk more about how we're managing that very effectively from a balance sheet perspective and our broader expectations.
Beyond point 1 build rent sell, we have a significant organic fleet growth opportunity. You've all been focused on the third box of synergies, and from a synergy perspective, Luke talks about this in the business, and I think it's dead right. It's like we've bought a third business through this merger. It's a business that as you keep looking at it and unlayering it, you're seeing different opportunities and mixing those opportunities and building them out. We have real confidence around the delivery of those synergies. We continue to stick by our numbers around those synergies. There's been some commentary about are we conservative on them because we haven't included North America, we haven't included UK, Ireland, Europe, and we'll talk about that a little bit as we get through the presentations. We're finding those synergies very real.
We're executing them generally on time, and we'll talk about that a little bit further in the presentation. Acquisitions and partnerships. Across the network that we have on a global basis, it does very clearly appear to us that we have one of the deepest and broadest networks and partnerships in this industry on a global basis. The ins that we have in a whole lot of different areas, whether they be industry, associations, OEMs, manufacturers within products, retailing, we are very, very well connected on a global basis, and that provides us opportunities moving forward. We still remain focused on acquisitions as well, which we'll talk about later on. When we're asked what we do, people often will say, and Luke's talked about this really nicely as well, "Are you in manufacturing?
Are you in tourism or are you in automotive?" The response to that for us is we're in RV, and we're specialists in RV. There is no other operator that we can see in the world that has the leverage point that we have. If you take the combined merged business and look pre-COVID at what the customer numbers were in rentals, they were around 445,000 customers. That's 445,000 connection points for repeat rentals. It's 445,000 opportunities for sale and 445 opportunities to build more product for the future. If you take someone like Thor Industries, the largest manufacturer of motorhomes in the world, that's somewhere like half that kind of a number. If you take someone like Camping World, the largest retailer, that's somewhere like a quarter of that number.
When you think about the leverage and the opportunity we have in the build, rent, sell connectivity, it is significant on a global basis. That's a key part of our model that we can continue to leverage in a smart way, knowing what our core competencies are and making sure that we deliver them across all three aspects. I'm not gonna dwell on the design-led approach because I think we had a lot of time focused on that this morning from Chris in particular.
You saw the manner in which manufacturing can be different with that human-centered design approach that we have, how that flows through to a better longer life product, a better quality product, a product that is cheaper in a lot of ways to the comparators, and a product that actually suits the customer needs, both in the motor home space, RV space, and in the non-tourism space as well. For those of you looking online, this is what Action Manufacturing looks like. This is what Brisbane manufacturing looks like. Collectively, we see some real opportunities to be aligning those businesses and the different ways that we work in across both. I said in one of the groups this morning, our approach with this is the same as what it has been historically.
It is not a THL stamp saying, "This is the way you do things." It is a genuine, again, design-led exploration to say, "What works well here? What works well there? How do we combine these things and pull them together most effectively?" From a market share perspective, we have provided management estimates of our market share in the different markets, and we will leave this for you to digest. It's a question that we get often. You can see our global market-leading position from a rentals perspective. These share numbers we would note as well do include all aspects of the market. They include the camper van market at the bottom end, and they include an estimate of peer-to-peer and where that sits as well.
On peer-to-peer, we've used a management estimate of the activity days to get a relative market share. Market share is something that we are obviously focused on, all businesses are. We have plans to grow organically in all markets, but it's not something we're gonna talk about an enormous amount moving forward. Within that competitive advantage and that build, rent, sell model is the distribution of brands that we have and the house of brands that we have on a global basis. We do find the house of brand strategy for this business today in the segments that we operate works. We find that when we've changed brands and played around with brands, that the portfolio range that we have actually works.
The ability to target different market segments, the ability to age product appropriately and price appropriately and stratify the market and use that through our search engine marketing and our different marketing tools to gain an advantage in yield and volume does genuinely work. We've provided some more information on that as well. That's just a brief overview. I'll be back to talk about some synergies and where we're at with the merger a little bit later, but I'm gonna pass over to Scott Fahey to talk about vehicle sales. Thanks, Scott.
Thanks, Scott. Excuse me if I do look out the window. Last time I was in Auckland, I got caught in the flood. I am watching the rain. Good afternoon. My name's Scott Fahey. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer. I've got 20 years in the industry. I started with THL in 2000, and I'm a passionate RVer. I thought I'd just talk, what is a passionate RVer? I don't know if any of you got teenage kids, but we've all got problems with teenage kids and looking on their phone. On Friday afternoon, I picked up one of my teenagers, and we drove an RV down to Waitomo.
He jumped in the RV, straight on his phone. Then we got out of town a bit, and the cell went down. He put the phone down, and he started looking around. Then we started talking, and we started connecting. That's what, to me, RVing is all about, to get out on the open road and connect with the ones you love. We had a great trip. I dropped him back at the airport. To me, that's all. That's what I love, and that's why I'm passionate about this industry, and that's why I love RV. I'm also passionate about vehicle sales. It's a very important part of the build, buy, rent, sell model. Let me talk about the Australian New Zealand dealership model. We build and buy. Really we aim to manufacture and buy the best brands.
Our rental experience, we give our customers an excellent rental experience. That has changed a lot over the years. It went from basically giving someone a key ring to now we're focusing on the needs of the customer. We've got customer lounges and things like this. Also service and support. Continued support is a big selling point. Continued support of a customer on their RV journey makes it so they'll purchase again and also tell their friends. Australian, New Zealand dealerships sell both new RVs and ex-rental fleet. Our larger dealers are around 20,000 square meters and can have up to 200 RVs on display across many brands. You can see George Day Caravans in the West and Kratzmann Caravan in Queensland there on the screen. Vehicle sales in New Zealand, U.S., Canada, and the U.K. sell predominantly ex-rental fleet.
The suite of rental brands in our Australian dealerships, we have the core brands of Winnebago, a leading RV brand, Adria, our lightweight European brand, Windsor and Coromal, household Australian caravan brands, and also Action, Kia, and Talvor. Brands purchased from other manufacturers like Lotus, Essential, Supreme, to name a few. These are very important to our dealerships, they provide a more complete range of RVs, and they cover all segments. Ancillary opportunities. Similar to McDonald's "Do you want fries with that?" Our dealerships offer a range of ancillary products. In wrapping up, THL offers a one-stop-shop with many brands and offerings across the RV segment. Thank you. I'll now hand over to Nick Judd, CFO.
Thanks, Scott. Kia ora koutou, good afternoon, everybody. I think I've pretty much met everybody so far, but if I haven't met you, Nick Judd, CFO, been here since around August 2020, so around two and a half years. Two questions that we often receive are, how quickly will you refleet? What is the size of your fleet that you expect to get to by when? Across the next few slides, just wanna take a little bit of time to talk through sort of some answers in relation to those questions and how we are thinking about the refleeting process, sorry.
I do wanna start by saying that we're really, really strongly focused on making sure that we grow the fleet back in a manner that both delivers short, medium, and long-term returns and in the best capacity possible. In an ongoing environment that's constantly changing, we have to continue, and we do continue to hold weekly fleet meetings in many regions and regular fleet meetings in other regions. This is where we make constant trade-off discussions about when the optimum time to sell the vehicle is, keep the vehicle, et cetera, and we'll talk a little bit about that later.
An imperative of this fleet reviews is to make sure that we grow the fleet back in a really smart way, making sure that we optimize returns while we balance factors such as market share, category growth, and maintaining our balance sheet in a healthy manner, in a healthy state. In the current dynamic market, we will continue to review fleet growth over multiple horizons and time frames, and that's quite important, and we will make those appropriate trade-off discussions amongst regions where necessary. It was a feature of COVID that we were running multiple scenarios at any one time. It was really important for how we managed our way through that business, and this is definitely a skill that we'll take forward as we grow. You would've heard Grant and me or myself speak often about Return on Funds Employed.
We have a very strong focus in our business on ROFE. Embedding this discipline across the merged entity has been a key focus over the last five months as we've come together. We need to make sure that we have the right structure and disciplines in place for our CapEx decisions, particularly given the quantity of spend as we go forward. Every rental fleet purchase is assessed against the standard framework, which considers rental yields, sales, and cost trends based on the vehicle type across the lifetime of that vehicle. While post-purchase reviews of this analysis has been somewhat irrelevant over the last few years, this is something that we will bring back into the business as we head back to, hopefully, more stable times in the coming years. If the financial assessment doesn't meet the 15% ROFE target, then generally they're not approved.
The only exception to this in my time here has obviously been through the COVID period, where we needed to do a certain amount of refleeting to make sure that we continued to offer age proposition right through those ages as the fleet grows older. Pretty rigid process. Our board hold us to this. We have a very disciplined process around it as a finance team and work with the COOs in regards to that. Connected with that focus on ROFE is how we manage the returns on that vehicle and look to maximize that through the whole life cycle. This is another key imperative of those fleet reviews, as I touched on. When is the appropriate time to sell that vehicle to make sure we generate maximum returns back to us?
That becomes a trade-off, particularly in the last year, about do we take the sales margin that's available now, or do we hold that vehicle, potentially to still take some depreciation and R&M costs, and then sell that vehicle once we've generated better rental returns from it? What you see up here on the graph is an indicative line of how we consider and the key points when we consider the sales vehicle. You'll notice that there's sort of some step downs in the orange line as we go along. Those are key points where if we sell the vehicle at that time, we actually reduce the R&M costs that we're likely to face. They are age and stage, so they could be based on kilometers or miles, or they could be based on years, as you see along the bottom.
There's a pretty strong correlation between both kilometers and age just 'cause of the utilization we get in our fleet. Really key point for us in terms of how we manage our vehicles and how we make sure that we maximize the return. The other key point that I'd touch on is on the left-hand side, you'll notice that purchase or build cost sits below where the value is. There's basically an immediate unrecognized equity value that sits in our fleet as soon as that fleet's delivered. You saw Chris and the team and what they do down in Action Manufacturing, Josh in Brisbane, we absolutely are focused on making sure we get, one, a really durable vehicle, but two, the most cost-effective manufacturing that we can because that gives us what we call an embedded equity value in that vehicle from day one.
Our aim is to hold that through the life cycle of the vehicle and obviously maximize that when it comes time to sell. Historically, we've done a very good job of that because we've got a strong track record of all of our sales being above book value and where they sit. This is a table that many of you will be familiar with. It was obviously in our half-year presentation, I did wanna touch on funding the refleet, because again, it's a common set of questions that we get. We're incredibly lucky. We have a very strong and supportive lender base. In fact, as I've often said, we could fund this business multiple times over, that means we need to turn to equity as we refleet.
We are continuing to revise our debt facilities and looking to optimize those. We're not immune from the interest rate rises that are going on in the outside world. Where we do have an advantage is that obviously, we are continuing to generate earnings growth, which is obviously viewed strongly by the lenders themselves, and that enables us to have a bit more leverage in the discussions, and we're continuing to optimize that debt funding. You know, we had a huge number of lenders between the two groups. We're gradually rationalizing that down. We're obviously turning towards the funders that are offering better terms as we go forward. We're really confident that we will deliver that interest synergy number that exists out there, but obviously we will face some rising interest costs as we go forward.
As we previously advised, we do expect to confirm a revised dividend policy ahead of the FY23 annual results release or by the FY23 results release. Based on current expectations, we intend to return to paying dividends at this time as well. I won't spend a lot of time on this slide because I think we've talked to it well, but probably the key information that's sitting there is in the boxes. The first one is that we intend to refleet to under 10,000 units globally by the end of FY25. That's probably a slight step back from what we've previously said. We are flexible in this target. It's not set in stone, and the factors that we'll look at as we consider our regrowth pace are in that bottom right-hand box.
It's the cost of the fleet, it's the mix of the fleet, it's the yield trends that Grant's talked about. It's the supply availability in every market, which can be different, obviously, depending on whether we're manufacturing or building or buying. It's the demand environment as that plays out. There's obviously an optimal fleet size, and that's connected with yield trends, et cetera. Then it's that sales demand and sales margins which also Grant has touched on. We will weigh up all of those factors as we move through the next couple of years, we will be flexible in terms of how we approach our target for regrowth and the pace of that regrowth by country.
Last couple of slides from me, I did wanna touch on the fact that we've obviously got a really strong track record of flexibly managing the balance sheet. A lot of people say to us that you're in a cyclical industry. Maybe some people believe that. We believe we're in an industry that faces shocks. What we've shown through those shocks is that we've got the ability to ride through those shocks in incredibly good fashion as we've done through COVID. Through periods of growth, we use debt to invest in growing the fleet to generate earnings momentum and growth through that. When we're required and when we face these shock events, we've proven that the vehicles are mobile, liquid, and that we can keep our balance sheet in an incredibly good state, protecting both our balance sheet but our investors as well.
This is a graphical version, I guess, to talk to slightly what I was talking about on the previous slide. You can see the really strong correlation between bank borrowings and the funds employed, and how they have flexed up and down according to the macro environment and how that's played out. Thanks for your attention today. I'll pass back to Grant to talk about the synergies.
Brilliant.
Thank you.
'Cause I know that you wanna hear more from me. Look, on a, on a synergy basis, we've provided this information giving a good update on what's happening across the synergy. We've got a couple of amber boxes there, but as you look into the detail of that, what's really important is that's just a little bit of timing stuff. We're being really transparent that there's some stuff that's pushing slightly. We remain very confident on the synergies, and as I said earlier, we'll be talking about the Northern Hemisphere synergies within those presentations as well. When looking at the synergies, how do we give you confidence, how do we give the board confidence, and generally manage the business from a synergy perspective? That's this triangle. We're really focused on the synergy tracking itself.
Obviously that's going this particular synergy, what we're expecting, what are we getting? Now, the reality is, as time moves, the counterfactual that you're measuring against moves. That becomes a little bit harder in some circumstances over time. Interest cost is an interesting one, as Nick was talking about, right? Core interest rates are coming up, so the you're looking for the delta in the interest rate as opposed to the absolute dollars. We've still got that synergy tracking. Because of that counterfactual move, we're very focused on other P&L indicators as well. You take an R&M percentage of revenue as an example. We're saying, "Okay, so fleet growth might be higher or less against the counterfactual. What's happening with our R&M percentage to revenue? Are we moving that metric down?" Same with labor, so forth and so on.
We've got P&L metrics, by the same token, making sure that we've got the third measure against that. At the top of that triangle is saying, "Look, at the end of the day, what you're worried about, what we're worried about is the ultimate result improving and continuing to improve by the kind of quantum that you expected bringing this merger together." We've got the three different approaches. Underneath that, the assurance that we have for ourselves as well is there is a very clear set of actions. A property, for example, that property needs to be subleased and gone. Action done, tick, synergy delivered. There's a whole very long list of actions and a very clear roadmap that we're managing within that. It's a very rigid process that we're using to keep things going all the way through.
We get asked a lot, very understandably: How's the merger gone culturally? How do things feel? What's the level of alignment and, and are you making progress on these actions as a business? The reality is, the answer for us today is we are moving at pace. We're moving at a faster pace than what we thought in a number of areas, and we're seeing a very, very positive response from the teams. Last week, we had nearly 200 leaders from around the business together. The first time that we've come together, and the theme for the conference was moving forward together, and we talked about the fact that we are one.
I must say, incredibly well led by Luke, who didn't use the term Apollo at all through the conference, but was, "I'm Luke from THL, and this is who we are, and this is what we are." If you entered that conference, I would be absolutely confident that you would not have been able to work out who was Apollo, who was THL, or any kind of segregation of groups. In an investor presentation, it's not normal to sort of do a little bit of a video of people, but let's do that and just show you a quick 90-second clip of what our conference highlights were about. I can see that you're tingling with excitement of just how amazing that was. If anyone wants one of those orange shirts, we've got some spares.
Sorry?
Drums.
We haven't got the drums. I was way out of rhythm on that, by the way. I think it was really phenomenal for us as an executive leadership group to see people genuinely come together and make connections in a way that wasn't planned, wasn't anticipated. We had our health and safety leader from CanaDream on the first day at morning tea talking intensely with the GM of Waitomo. There's no way they had ever connected and really building out what it meant to be one THL. Across the board, from a fleet perspective, sales perspective, marketing perspective, operations perspective, there was just huge connection, huge sharing, and huge identification of the next level of opportunity for us within the group. People talking about things like, "What's your turnaround time for this?
How can we match that? What's the lesson that we can take?" It was very, very powerful and gives us real confidence about where we're heading. Quickly, just moving on. You know that we've got a history of acquisitions and partnerships. You know that we take our time to do that. From an M&A perspective, we know that right now, delivering the synergies from a merger perspective and delivering that organic growth is the primary focus of the business. We will continue to look at acquisition opportunities. We are looking at acquisition opportunities, and we believe in having that pipeline. We believe that that pipeline's important to make sure that we're looking at future growth and future opportunities.
It would be fair to say that one opportunity that's probably not gonna happen is rentals acquisitions in New Zealand and Australia, given the intense situation we have with NZCC and ACCC. There may be opportunities elsewhere in the world that we will continue to explore, and we'll keep you informed as we do that. Very quickly, just wanna close up, preparing for the transition to EV. Some of you heard this morning and saw this morning that even from a design perspective today, we're looking at aerodynamics. We're looking at what else is lightweight in the motor home. We're looking at what we trial with EVs. We do have EVs that we launched back in 2017/18. They didn't have a big enough range.
We're under NDAs with a number of different operators around the world today, and we are trialing some more products this year. Why is that important? We are investing but not over-investing. That's important because getting a competitive advantage from a design perspective today is critical. If you get those aerodynamics right, you get that weight distribution right, and you can add another 50, 80, 100 km to that battery life, you have a genuine competitive advantage. It means that you can go for a lower range battery and be saving significantly in cost. We are ahead of our competitors in the space we have been, and it's an appropriate investment that's gonna set us up in the right place for the future. From a sustainability perspective. Sorry, Tobias, one of the groups that are in here in the corner. Thanks, Andy.
From a sustainability perspective, we are a future-fit minded business. We are closely monitoring what we need to be doing to stay relevant from a societal perspective, communities, and the environment, whilst making sure that all those decisions have a clear payback for the businesses as well. It's an important point of the way that we focus. Right. I'm gonna hand over to Stacey, who's from Australia, COO of Australia, but also gonna represent New Zealand today in a bit of an update. Thanks, Stacey.
Thank you, Grant. Good afternoon, everyone. As Grant just mentioned, my name's Stacey Davis, and as he also said, I am the Chief Operating Officer for Australia. It is my great pleasure to be speaking with you today about our Trans-Tasman business. However, before we progress, I'd like to provide you with a brief summary of myself and my background. My time in the RV rental industry commenced over two decades ago as a front counter officer in the THL Brisbane branch. Roughly 12 months later, I found myself working for the Trouchet family while undertaking my undergraduate studies. For me, my career started from the ground up. I was a jack of all trades. That included reservations, front counter, scheduling, vehicle cleaning. I think you get the gist. This provided an invaluable launch pad for my career into this industry.
After my studies completed, I stepped into the operations manager's role for Australia and New Zealand. To sum up the next 23 years, the key roles that I headed up were training and development, people and culture, strategy and special projects, and most recently, I was the executive general manager of rentals and retail aftercare for Australia and New Zealand for Apollo. With regards to our Chief Operating Officer for New Zealand, Matt Harvey, you'll hopefully, as long as the weather gods are good to us, have an opportunity to meet him this afternoon at the RVSC. As highlighted earlier in the presentation, the Australian New Zealand business consists of a strong retail network in addition to rentals.
The Australian rental business operates out of 10 locations with a fleet of around 1,800 units, which consists of two-wheel and four-wheel drive product, with an average market share of approximately 30%-35% for motorized product. As touched on by Grant earlier in the presentation, there is a large portion of the total market that is comprised of camper vans. Traditional key rental operators in the market include JUCY, Cruisin', Let's Go, Wicked, Travellers Autobarn, and along with a host of other small operators. In terms of peer-to-peer operators, such as Camplify and Outdoorsy, they offer a range of towable and motorized RVs that predominantly provide back-to-base rentals.
Some recent data that has been released by Tourism Research Australia has indicated that international visitor arrivals will return to and exceed pre-pandemic numbers by 2025 and then continue to grow by a further 16% through to 2027, which is a very positive indicator, obviously, for our industry. The Australian retail network includes eight dealerships comprised of George Day in the West, Sydney RV, and Kratzmann Caravans in North Brisbane, along with the Apollo RV sales network in Adelaide, Brisbane, Geelong, Newcastle, and Melbourne. Unlike other automotive dealerships and brands, the RV industry is highly fragmented, other than a few larger, well-known brands, and consists mostly of small, independent operators, both in terms of manufacturers and dealers, with the largest manufacturer, as I'm sure you know, being Jayco RV.
Total annual RV production in Australia is close to 30,000 units, with the lion's share of production going to caravans at 18,000 units, with motorized sitting at roughly 1,200. The remaining production volume consists of products such as pop tops and camper trailers. THL leads the way in New Zealand in the rental space with a fleet of just under 1,500 units and market share of approximately 25%-30% of motorized product. Similar to the Australian market, competition resides with a few key players such as JUCY, Escape, Tui Rentals, with again, numerous smaller and often third-tier operators scattered throughout the country. The New Zealand retail market consists of only a few dealerships that boast more than one location.
This has allowed the RV Super Centre to quickly take market share and position themselves as the largest RV dealership network in the country, with opportunity for future expansion. Pre-COVID, European countries such as Germany, Switzerland, and the UK were the bread and butter markets for the Australian rental business, with approximately 65% of all bookings coming through the B2B channel. Since COVID, we have seen a shift from B2B to B2C, which is representative of increased domestic demand compared to pre-COVID. Australia as a destination is primed for RV rental given the vast geographic geography, contrasting seasons and diverse experiences. This results in both a summer and winter season, whereby fleet moves north and south with the corresponding season. This provides a relatively consistent annual utilization, which is also currently being partnered with strong yield growth.
From a fleet sales perspective, historically, 25% of THL's annual sales volume was sold through the corporate retail dealerships, with the remainder being sold through wholesale dealers. In March this year, the business finalized the transition of THL's ex-rental stock being sold exclusively through the Australian corporate dealer network. With New Zealand, in terms of a market, it has historically been heavily dependent on international visitors, with 90% of all rentals having an international origin, with key source markets including Australia, Germany, UK and Switzerland. Similar to Australia, we have seen a shift in bookings away from B2B towards B2C for the same reasons as outlined for Australia. Pre-COVID, utilization has averaged approximately 60%-65%. However, high utilization rates are currently being achieved through a smaller fleet.
One of the benefits which I'm sure you would have seen today during your tour, of having a corporate manufacturing facility both in Brisbane and Auckland, is that design, form, and function can be tailored to rental needs. Product durability in a rental unit has a wide reach and can assist in reducing R&M, improve guest satisfaction, maximize utilization, extend the rental life of the unit, and assist in the reduction of waste, helping to drive our future-fit goals and strategy. Approximately 80% of the New Zealand fleet consists of motorhomes and long-wheelbase product, with the smaller HiAce fleet comprising the rest.
Action Manufacturing almost exclusively builds the THL rental fleet in the New Zealand market, with the exception of some flex units imported from the UK, which are used for a season by Just go and sold after a subsequent high season in New Zealand. The Australian fleet differs slightly from New Zealand, with 60% of fleet consisting of motorhomes and long-wheelbase product, with the remaining fleet comprised of HiAces and 4x4s. There are 2 approaches employed in Australia with regards to 4x4s. These include production of a motorhome body, which is attached to a Hilux or Toyota Hilux chassis built by our Brisbane manufacturing facility, along with a flex fleet buyback arrangement THL employs, which is exercised at the end of each season.
Unit lifecycle changes from one brand to the next are typically triggered by age or kilometers, which is what Nick just touched on before. As mentioned, units are also pulled off fleet at all stages of the life cycle, which allows THL the opportunity to reduce fleet age, minimize R&M spend due to it being a younger fleet, maximize sale value and provide variety on our sales lots. This caps off the summary of our Australian/New Zealand businesses. Before I finish, I'd like to say we're very much, hopefully, looking forward to hosting you at the RVSC and the Auckland rental facility later this afternoon. I'll now pass you to Nick Roche, our Chief Operating Officer for UK and Europe.
Thanks, Stace. Before I leap into the market update, just wanted to give you a bit of a background to myself. I grew up here in New Zealand, left here in my early 20s for my big OE, and then literally fell into a job in resort management. I managed resorts in Corsica, Sardinia, Greece and Turkey, and then in the off-season, in the winter, I managed resorts in France and the Austrian Alps. In 2003, I moved back to the UK and I established Just go with my wife. We grew the business constantly all the way through to COVID. In 2015, we entered into a JV with THL. October last year, THL acquired the remaining 51%.
I'm really proud to be a Kiwi leading the team up in the U.K., growing THL's footprint. In terms of the market up there, it's a little bit of a different market. It's very much in its infancy. Just go and Bunk now collectively, we are the largest commercial RV operator in that market. We expect a peak fleet this summer of 500 vehicles, giving us a market share of approximately 20%. We've also introduced two RV Super Centres, one down in Greater London and one up in Edinburgh, to help support our fleet, but also sell third-party after-sales and service. In terms of competition, we've got a handful of competitors that will have 50-plus vehicles and have maybe 1 or 2 locations, but the majority of our competition is made up of what I call mom and pop operators.
They typically have maximum of 10 units and operate from one location. In terms of peer-to-peer, it has been around since I started Just go, but it doesn't have a material impact on our source markets. In 2023, VisitBritain have forecast that inbound tourism will rebound back to 86% of pre-COVID levels, so we're almost back to normality. If any of you have been to the U.K. or Ireland during the spring or summer, you'll know it's a special place to be. It has loads of iconic festivals, loads of iconic locations to go and visit. Even last weekend, I think a few of you would have picked up on a low-key event they were running in London.
In terms of other things outside of royalty, we've got Glastonbury, which is 1 of 1,000 music festivals that are run in the U.K. throughout the summer. This is why we see the U.K. as a key market that we will be able to grow the fleet to 1,000 plus vehicles in the future. With Just go and Bunk both been organically grown businesses over the last 20 years, the vast majority of our client base is from the domestic markets. We estimate 65%-70% comes from the domestic market. We have got really good gateway entry points with Dublin and Edinburgh, which are really popular with the European market.
Having such a large domestic market, 65% of our bookings are coming in direct, either to our call centers or to our online websites. Average fleet utilization is sitting at around 60% and first half yields are 55% up on pre-COVID levels. We're very fortunate with our manufacturing partners, so we deal with the likes of Trigano and Hymer. They are the biggest manufacturers in Europe. They also operate, or their brands are produced in a beautiful area of Tuscany, so we run factory collections from Tuscany. Clients fly in from all over the world, come and pick up their vehicles, drive back through Europe as a one-way trip, returning them back to our depots in the UK. Once they arrive in the UK, they go onto our rental fleet.
We run them for the summer, the team start preparing those vehicles September, October time to be shipped down to New Zealand to come onto the Peak rental fleet down here in New Zealand. The idea is we get 2 summers in 1 year from these vehicles. 70% of the vehicles flow through that. The remaining 30%, we aim to sell them through our RVSC network in the UK. We only deal retail in the UK. We don't have a wholesale channel for the vehicles. Historical average margins on vehicle sales sits at around GBP 7,000. Here we have a picture of our Edinburgh site, which we took over in 2018.
The site's specifically designed around our requirements, so we have automatic truck washers, we have diesel, gas, AdBlue storage facilities, and we've just recently installed a drive-through paint booth to accommodate motor homes for the RVSC. The depot itself is only 15 minutes from Edinburgh International Airport. The team up there are very passionate about their vehicles. We love the fact that they are so new. Because we have this 2 summers in 1 year, we are replenishing the fleet every year. Through COVID, there has been some supply chain shortages, so we have had to hold on to some of those vehicles. As we move through 2023, the idea is to get back to having vehicles that are no older than 2 years. Okay. This is our Greater London depot.
It gives us great access to Luton Airport, London Heathrow, London Gatwick, and London Stansted, but also feeds that wide domestic audience of Greater London. Like all businesses in the group, the team up in the UK have embraced the year of the synergy, and they are working through as quickly as they can to cover off these synergies. We've identified opportunities across the three areas. The synergies are reasonably material to our business up in the UK, but not to the overall group. In saying that though, Grant has said that he is still holding my feet to the fire, and I have no doubt that we will deliver on those synergies to him. Thank you. I'll hand over to Gordon.
Thank you, Nick. Before I kick in, I'll introduce myself. I'm Gordon Hewston, the COO for the USA. I've been with THL now for 11 years. I've been in the USA for 5 years. Before that I was looking after the rentals New Zealand business for 2 years, and before that, the Whitcoulls Group, for 4 years. I'm also representing Kristen Evans, COO for Canada, who couldn't be here today, so I'll be introducing the Canada business to you. North America is the world's largest RV market. In the U.S. alone, there are 11.2 million households that own an RV. In Canada, that number is 2.1 million. For the U.S., that's 9% of all households, and for Canada, that's 14%.
In the calendar year for 2022, there were 493,000 RVs shipped, new ones. That's the third highest year on record. To give you some sense of the scale of growth of that number is up 124% since 1980 and 62% since 2001. Pandemic saw significant growth in the interest in RVing, especially amongst the younger segments. The median age of first time buyers dropped from 41 in 2020 to 32 in 2022. That provides real positive momentum for the long-term future of the industry. The RV Industry Association forecasts that calendar year 2023 shipments will be down to around 330,000. That's a drop of 32%. Now for us, the vast majority of our fleet is in Class C motorized RVs.
Because of the supply chain issues that the industry has faced over the last 3 years, particularly around chassis, the RVIA forecasts that Class C segment will drop by 9% year-on-year to 2022. In terms of the tourism part of the business, arrivals into Canada in calendar year 2022 were 42% down on 2019. The U.S. was 36% down. Like Australia, though, forecast for both the Canada and the U.S. are that we will hit pre-pandemic 2019 levels of visitor arrivals in 2025. Significant growth expected in terms of visitor arrivals. Both the U.S. and the Canada businesses both focus heavily for rental customers on Germanic-speaking Europe. Also with the Netherlands, the U.K. and France. Both the U.S. and Canada share a very similar network of trade partners.
We also have very deep relationships with those trade partners that go back decades. COVID has provided us with the opportunity for us to grow our domestic direct rental segment in both Canada and the U.S. The U.S. continued to make a decent profit throughout the COVID period, reflecting the resilience and the adaptability of the multiple rental and vehicle sales channels that we have there through the two brands, El Monte and Road Bear. The U.S. has a particularly dynamic RV rental industry. We lost two international competitors during COVID, and we've recently gained two more with Indie Campers and roadsurfer entering the market. The domestic rentals industry is pretty fragmented. We have a number of reasonably sizable peer-to-peer competitors and a great number of smaller regional competitors.
We understand that recently, in terms of peer-to-peer competitors, there's a lot more pressure on them to become cash positive. So we've seen some reduction in their brand marketing as a result. Canada has a similar domestic market, with peer-to-peer competitors and regional competitors. In terms of international rentals, the major competitors are Fraserway and Cruise Canada. For vehicle sales, both the U.S. business and the Canadian business share a very similar network of wholesale dealers. Combined, we have a retail footprint that stretches right across the continent. Both businesses share a similar mix of suppliers for vehicle chassis and RV manufacturing. Again, an example where both businesses have deep relationships with those supply partners that go back decades. This is our LAX location in the U.S., so Los Angeles.
Reflecting the large market in the U.S., we have an extensive network of 22 branches across the country. 8 of those are licensees. That gives us a low overhead means of accessing local and regional markets. In particular, they play a good role for us in the larger city regions of Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. CanaDream has a network of 7 high-quality branches. These are custom designed and provide a very strong guest proposition. The U.S. fleet is made up of Class As, Class Cs, and Class B motor homes. The larger vehicles are generally more popular with domestic renter customers, and in particular, the Class A's are very popular for domestic events. There's a number of those, as Nick was talking about in the U.K., there's a number of those domestic events that provide high-yielding opportunities throughout the year.
Smaller vehicles are generally more popular with international renters. The Class Bs give us an opportunity in the shoulder seasons of the rental season with younger renters in particular. We found that these Class Bs are very popular with younger American domestic renters. CanaDream fleet model is made up as Class Bs, Cs, and truck campers. The trucks that they use are Ford F-150s. These are the most popular trucks in North America. Something like 600,000 sold each year. The trucks are sold at the end of each season, sometimes the second season, and the house component is stored and kept for a little longer.
In terms of synergies in North America, while pursuing the synergy opportunities wasn't a priority for the 2023 season, we will now take the opportunity to do some detailed planning for the 2024 season. Conceptually, there is significant opportunity in three things. First one is utilizing the combined purchasing experience and volume of CanaDream, El Monte and RoadBear. Second one, pursuing the market opportunities that exist in winter rentals in Florida and the Southwest of the U.S. to offset the low utilization of, in Canada across the winter. The third one is leveraging the combined retail wholesale vehicle sales network, which provides access to multiple regional markets right across the continent. Thank you. I'll hand over to Grant.
Brilliant. Thanks, Gordon. Look, one of the reasons why we haven't given a detailed number on those synergies is this one in particular is one that is gonna be really in the details. You can actually see, you know, we're talking about it at Action this morning, that there's a particular vehicle that CanaDream bought from a particular dealer, and you've got next to it one that we've bought in THL USA, and then you actually look at it and go, "Okay, well, where's that actually going? How long is it being rented for?
What's that winter utilization, and where is it being sold and for what? Making that comparison to the same one for the USA business and then saying, "Okay, so moving forward, if we actually bought that product fitting that, staying there for that long and then selling in this location, that's a better return model." Improving that utilization, particularly in the Canadian business over winter, where utilization's low single digit over that period. It really, that's the work that's happening. The decisions for this calendar year had already been made a long time ago, so there was no major opportunity there. Going into next year, that's the way that it builds out. We see a really good opportunity there. Hard to quantify until that work pretty much line by line is developed. Right.
Somebody, the click has disappeared, so we'll just move to the wrap-up and Q&A. Look, overall, the message that we're trying to really get across today for THL is that we are an integrated business on a global basis with an extremely strong market position and a very positive outlook in an industry that has a very positive outlook. We have synergies that we know that we can deliver with more synergies to back it up. We have a very positive management team with an enormous amount of experience, and we are uncovering more and more opportunities as we go. Beyond all of that, we know that there's further organic growth and there'll be some M&A opportunities that we're sure will come along the way given the pipeline that we have and the opportunities we're exploring.
A disciplined business that's delivered on our FE metrics, that has this real opportunity as a merged entity to create new heights and deliver to new success points. We remain extremely positive as a business about the outlook and where we're heading