I'd now like to hand the conference over to CEO, Grant Webster. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Brilliant. Thank you, Kara. Welcome everybody. Thank you for attending. I have with me here today, Nick Judd, that everyone knows, the CFO. We've got Nick Voss, who's deputy CFO, while Steven Hall is away on parental leave. Congratulations to Steve. Amir Ansari, that everyone knows, is here as well. Thank you very much, as I said, for attending, and thank you very much, Nick and Nick, for completing the results. Nick Voss with our GSS team, depleted for parental leave, with a couple of people away for that over the half year, have delivered the results very, very effectively and in a timely manner. We really appreciate that.
The call today, we think, we doubt we'll use the whole time, given that, we think the results probably are pretty well in line with expectations. Pleasingly, the result hasn't changed since we gave the numbers two days ago. The outlook for the business does remain obviously somewhat uncertain, but we're very positive about the general outlook. Today, we'll cover the ATL update, and there'll be a few questions around that. We'll just give a headline overview of the results, balance sheet position, a bit of an update by each business and a couple of other things going on in the business, that outlook summary, and then open up for questions. Diving into it, we'll talk about the Apollo situation first.
The key questions that you're probably thinking about asking are about the regulatory approvals and perhaps in particular the antitrust or ACCC and NZCC situations. Now, the reality is, we've provided all the relevant information that we can to the market. Those are both going through their processes. We have had some Q&A sessions with them, which has been very useful. They've asked for different sets of information that we've provided in a timely manner. We'll just have to wait and see where they end up. The NZCC original date is fifth of March. They've got every right to extend that, and we don't know what they're going to do. They'll release something next week or extend. The ACCC is looking at early April. That's the broad update there.
You've seen in the information that we've disclosed that the, from a shareholder perspective, the scheme booklet is out and available to Apollo shareholders now. Clearly, with the Trouchet family and their shareholding over 50%, are clearly supportive in endorsing the transaction. The directors have unanimously supported the transaction subject to any other offers coming through. The independent expert report was also noting that the valuation range was either within or above the standalone valuation. The independent expert will also just be taking these half year numbers from THL and Apollo and just making sure that there's nothing that changes their view or recommendation. We don't expect that it will obviously, and expect a response from that, probably early next week. A reminder that that transaction is strategically, obviously really important to us.
We see that the cost synergies and that value range of NZD 17 million-NZD 19 million being very realizable, and in this kind of market, very appropriate and very strategically sound. It assists us regardless of what happens in the next stages of COVID. We're buying good assets that we're very supportive of the value of and have good value in this market. It supports our geographical diversification and gets us that entry into Canada, which is something that we've been interested in for quite some time. Clearly, as a joint entity, that gives a total asset value that's hitting around that NZD 1 billion mark. Depending on what day you look at it, that combined market cap obviously going up quite a bit from where we stand today.
The key dates that are there, the shareholder meeting on April 20 is obviously a key date and then just working through the regulatory process from there. The only thing that there's a couple things obviously that we don't have any control over. One of the things there is just FIRB approval in Australia. With the election in Australia, there is a possibility that they go into caretaker mode, but we've got no idea when that would be or when that fits alongside our dates. Otherwise, we're running along this timeline that we've indicated here, which I think is very achievable. From a CPs perspective, we remain very confident that all CPs will be achieved and will be achieved by the appropriate dates. We've got no concerns from that perspective. I'll pass over to Nick to just give an update on the funding arrangements for the merged entity.
Thanks, Grant, and good afternoon, all. As detailed in the scheme booklet and in our release earlier this week, we continue to work through the funding arrangements. It's expected that the merged entity will utilize both corporate lending, as we do in THL today, and domestic financing, which includes floor plan financing as well, that Apollo also use today. We're progressing discussions with both existing and some new lenders. Those discussions are progressing well. We're on track in terms of the timeline, as Grant mentioned, to satisfy the CP that sits in the agreement with that. Back to you, Grant.
Brilliant. Thanks, Nick. I'll just give a quick overview without just repeating the bullet points that exist there, and then we'll hand over to Nick to go into a little bit more detail. Clearly, for the half that's just been, taking the transaction costs into account, we've indicated before no business operator or not many like being in a loss situation. From that perspective, clearly we're unhappy with the fact that we're in a loss. However, the reality is we think that we've minimized that loss very effectively in the business. We've continued to watch very carefully where the balance sheet is, making sure that we are maximizing the opportunity in terms of vehicle sales.
We're leaning very heavily into the areas that aren't affected by the border areas, or the border closures, and we'll talk about that as we go through the business-by-business unit results. We've set ourselves up very nicely for the recovery options moving ahead. Good cost control, a very energetic team that clearly have been doing a lot of things, as well as managing the P&L very effectively. Around the transaction costs in THL terms, those are quite high for a transaction, and you'll see that NZD 2.1 million and NZD 0.5 million, and our expectation if the transaction proceeds through to conclusion is that they'll be around NZD 6 million in total for the full financial year. The reality is that reflects a New Zealand and Australia publicly listed situation.
We understand it's one of the first times or the first time that a New Zealand PLC has completed a scheme of arrangement of an Australian publicly listed entity. That's created a whole lot of additional work along the way, and clearly it's global, so new jurisdictions and all the costs associated with that. Coming back to THL perspective, the sales are clearly the highlight in the way that we've been managing that balance of quantity and margin, maximizing the demand that exists in sales whilst obviously protecting the rental fleet requirements and those pressures that are coming from the supply chain perspective. In regards to the supply chain, we are managing that on a weekly basis by jurisdiction. Within those sessions, we're looking both at a week ahead right through to 80 weeks ahead.
While things change on us, we are creating optionality between having different suppliers, between what we're selling at what periods of time, and the assessment of value of each of those along the way. The growth in non-tourism that we've talked about, whether that be Action's growth on its own or Action looking to acquire MaxiTRANS, whether it be the retail side of things in New Zealand, we see all of those as strong benefits for the business. Not a distraction from the core rentals business, but growing opportunities, a new leg to the stool for THL moving forward. Clearly beneficial to the P&L today, but also providing another business opportunity into the future as well.
Important to note, probably no surprise that we're declaring no dividend for the half, and we expect that will be the case through to the full year as well. The outlook for the half that's about to come, we'll cover again in the outlook statement more broadly. I'll pass over to Nick to give a little bit more detail on balance sheet and those financial numbers.
Yeah. Just on the half year and review slide, there are a couple of numbers there to back up sort of Grant's summary comments. Debt continues to reduce from the annual result number by around NZD 30 million, down to just under NZD 19 million at the half. That was as a result of those strong sales margins that Grant talked about. That actually held up the sale of goods number fairly well, considering that the year-on-year number of vehicles sold was much reduced, as Grant mentioned, as we made sure that we maintained the rental fleet to go forward.
The other number that I'd highlight is the EBIT number at a NZD 1.1 million loss, but that's obviously included NZD 2.1 million worth of transaction costs to do with the Apollo merger as well. Obviously, these numbers we'll unpack in a little bit more detail as we go through some of the business units. Turning to the financial summary, there's a couple of things that I think are worthy of noting here. Obviously, it was a tough half for the New Zealand and Australian businesses with the impact of both Omicron and closed borders or lockdowns in New Zealand. Yet in spite of that, they still managed to improve their performance year-on-year, which I think is a really good achievement.
Obviously, some of that was down to the vehicle sales that we talked about, but also some really good cost control in there to improve performance year-on-year. Action Manufacturing, you know, doing a great job. The team down there, and Grant will go into this in a little bit more detail, but the team down there in Hamilton and at Albany and our Fairfax site, really firing. Strong order book as they look forward, and they're managing some of those supply chain challenges extremely well as we go through it. The U.S., we signaled that at our annual results that they had a tougher quarter one than what we expected as domestic demand was down year-on-year.
That was as a result of obviously more options for travel and RVs being not the only game in town anymore. That impacted quarter one and we gave, you know, quite a bit of detail at that time at the annual results. Turning to the balance sheet, we mentioned the debt number. This will be as low as it goes and we are now starting to refleet. That'll begin with our U.S. business in particular, which are obviously now starting to take orders for the northern summer peak season. That number will start to increase. Obviously, we expect to start eating into that headroom that we have there, which is still significant at around just over NZD 230 million.
That reduction did obviously lead to a strengthening of the equity ratio as well, in that period. Plenty of headroom and strong support from our banking partners continues, which we think reinforces Grant and Prospect, over to you to talk through some of the divisional reviews then.
Brilliant. Thanks, Nick. Moving to New Zealand rentals and sales, as Nick covered the revenue situation. Quite scary how low the rental income was for the half. Not something that we're pleased with, and especially given that, you know, over 25% of that was non-tourism revenue. But again, really well balanced by the way that we've managed vehicle sales, and the margin improvement that you can see there, which we'll talk about in a second. Just a couple of the other bullet points that we've got there. Clearly what we're trying to achieve in terms of that non-tourism revenue is something for the long term, and we're very pleased with.
The bullet point there around responsible camping is just to provide some clarity there. Had a couple of questions this morning on that. Look, broadly the changes proposed there, we're very supportive of. The reality is we wanna make sure that responsible camping works well for communities and the environment. It's something that, broadly, the industry's been very supportive of for quite some time. We just wanna make sure that the technical requirements are heading in the right way for self-containment, and we're on the advisory group for that. And also just some of the issues around the way that fines are managed. We have retained operational capacity. We've got a really good leadership team that has stuck with us through the last couple of years and are looking forward to an exciting future.
Our facilities and infrastructure is well managed, and we are going to be looking at a new Auckland site following the fire that we had over a year ago. From a fleet perspective, again, those margins reflect a couple of different things going on. Some of the vehicles that I guess we've called sort of the gold of the fleet. The older vehicles that have been highly desirable, they've been depreciated to appropriate extent, and we've sold a large proportion of those. There's always been really good margin in those. And the differential in price to new, clearly the new pricing is representing some of those inflationary pressures on a global basis, both from a chassis perspective and a broader componentry perspective.
Clearly having existing stock, there's that arbitrage and margin opportunity that exists. That flows through all the different jurisdictions as well. We've also obviously had a swing, and we've seen this across all jurisdictions as well, a stronger swing to retail, which is obviously a higher margin. Within all of that, clearly, no discounts like we saw in the Great New Zealand Motorhome Sale, which were more for just get activity moving. We're content with where that fleet sale number and quantity down on prior year. But that's 100% with what our expectations were and where we desire to be. It's no indication that there's a drop in demand.
We have a slide in there about the retail sales, and we don't need to go into any detail about it, but given the fact that in the half it was NZD 3 million in revenue, when our rental revenue was NZD 6 million, it did deserve some attention. Look, it's a great example of the crew in this business taking the opportunity to explore our market further, use the broader group expertise, and create an opportunity not just for now, but for the future as well. You know, this retail business is low CapEx. It leverages our sites. It leverages our category buying power. It's an area that has category growth more broadly, and it deepens our customer engagement as well. An area of the business with an exciting future and performing really well.
Moving on to Action Manufacturing, worthy to have some more discussion time, not just from a perspective of how it's performed in the half, but with the future of Action Manufacturing in particular with that acquisition opportunity with MaxiTRANS, which is dependent on the New Zealand Commerce Commission approval. Important just a technical point, we've highlighted it very clearly that we continue to report internally on a non-eliminated basis so that we can really see how that business is performing as a standalone entity. We've decided to disclose in this presentation on that basis as well. Clearly, the financial statements have all the group eliminations included within it. I'll note that non-motorhome growth is an area that's becoming a larger and larger proportion of Action Manufacturing.
It represents the strong design center and the broad capability that we have in that business. Right now, they're managing very effectively the growth that they're seeing in revenue, the supplier shortages that they're seeing, the price changes. We're gonna have some location moves which they've been managing really well, and the recruitment of new people into the business, and managing all the changes that go along with that. So their productivity is excellent. Their stock takes and processes and new product development are all performing exceptionally well. So a business now that's got over 200 employees, you know, really skilled in specialist vehicle design in the broader heavy transport sector, with some good opportunities in front of it. Tourism, we don't need to dwell on to a large extent.
Look, the team are working really well in a challenging situation. They're managing the loss in an effective way. On a year-on-year basis, just a note that last year had the STAPP funding in it. Yes, a loss, but we've gotta remember as well that on a ROFE basis, pre-COVID, this group of businesses was our most successful on a ROFE basis. They delivered a lot of funds and with little capital requirement for the business. It's right and proper that we're supporting them and looking forward to the future for that business as things return from an international travel perspective. Australia, look again, similar sort of broader messages that we've seen that border impact.
What we did see in the last half was a much better understanding by us of what to do when borders were closed versus when borders were open on a state-by-state basis. We saw very strong yield improvement in Australia versus the prior corresponding period, and that reflected our ability to know and see that if borders were sort of closed, there's no real need or chance to discount to try and generate business. You just basically reacted to that and moved vehicles to states that were open. When states were open and things were happening, you knew that there was the appropriate demand. That good yield lift on the prior corresponding period gives us some confidence that yields in that market can return to historical levels and as borders reopen in general.
Pleasingly, from a fleet perspective, we saw the same margin kind of impacts that we've seen elsewhere, but we also had enough fleet to be able to see fleet sales grow as well. On top of that, we've got a real opportunity moving forward to further push new vehicle sales in the Australian business. We have our own RV Sales Centre site in Melbourne that opened in Brisbane in December as well, so some good opportunities moving forward there. The U.S., to be honest, is actually much more about the first quarter story, which we described in quite a bit of detail back in both the annual results and with the annual meeting, so I don't think we need to go into that in huge detail.
The margin on vehicle sales, again, hitting the same theme in the same way that we're managing and picking up the signals in the market with the same drivers that we talked about before, a greater shift to retail, that price differential from new to used, and that general shortage in the market as well and maximizing that opportunity. I'll pass over to Nick now to talk through the equity investment GSS, some other initiatives in the business, before discussing the outlook later on.
Thanks, Grant. Turning to the equity investments, you know, standout results from Just Go as restrictions relaxed in the U.K. That result's actually, you know, well above pre-COVID result levels as well. Bounced back very strongly over there. As we've announced also earlier this week, we have a desire to purchase the remaining 51%, and Nick Roach, who's the owner of that 51%, is aware of that intention. Additionally, we've also had an indication from Thor regarding the preference shares related to what used to be called Togo and is now called Roadpass Digital. They have sent through an indication of a buyout at a discount.
It is likely that we'll enter into discussions around that, but no certainty, obviously, that there'll be a conclusion to that at this point in time. Turning to Group Support Services, just, it's up obviously because of the transaction costs, but also actually one point to note because this impacts the Rentals New Zealand and Rentals Australia business units that we're outlining now, obviously internally recharging for the Cosmos and Telematics platforms that have gone live as well. They no longer sit as a cost structure within the GSS. They sit as part of the rentals business units. Non-tourism revenue Grant has touched on, and, you know, a really solid performer both in New Zealand and Australia, in the context of obviously severely impacted rental revenue results.
We expect that some of that will continue on obviously for the remainder of the year in some of the uses that we have. The team have done a really good job on that in turning our hand and our vehicles to some unique uses that we haven't done before. The next couple of slides touch on Future-F it, and I won't spend any time on the first one 'cause it should be very familiar to you. It's our, you know, our benchmarks, like, and what our prioritization of our goals are. By way of update on the second slide, we are making some good progress against some of the break-even goals.
It's no secret that the one that we would love to move further on and are most challenged on is sort of our future fleet program and having viable options to replace the ICE engines and the fossil fuels and the carbon that we burn. We are initiating some new initiatives in this and certainly from a technical perspective, we've passed the leadership of that over to Chris Devoy and the Action Manufacturing team, so that they can engage with that with the manufacturers while we will also continue to lead some key sort of stakeholder engagement pieces to help try and accelerate that. We're not happy with where that sits at the moment, and we would like to make more progress in that space. We'll be putting some extra effort into that obviously as we go ahead.
We have initiated a supplier code of conduct, and we have a global procurement team that are set up to look at how we procure and make sure that we're doing that on a sustainable basis. There's some really good initiatives coming out of it. We'll be rolling that out on a global sense in the task. On the branch side of things, all of our branches now have future fit action plans, and there's five areas that they're all looking to improve on, which are energy, water, waste, operational emissions and a community aspect as well. They are tracking and measuring individual action plans and how they're achieving against those. Still looking to do more in that space and continuing to push hard on our goal of sort of getting to break even across those 23 goals. Grant, I'll pass back to you to provide the outlook and wrap up.
Great. Thanks, Nick. Those Future-F it goals and performance is critical to the way that THL operates and the way that we wanna operate into the future as well. From an outlook perspective, we've given that indication, which we think is the best indication that we can at this point in time, that we expect this second half to still be a net loss after tax, but improved on the prior corresponding period, which would mean that the full year, we're obviously still expecting a loss at this point in time. Just a note on the transaction costs within that as well. We are expecting some improvement taking the transaction costs out, but clearly we still remain in an uncertain period.
The net CapEx, we've narrowed the range there slightly, but have confidence about the fact that clearly we're purchasing a number of fleet into the U.S. and that's already accrued. So we'll definitely be a positive there. Same thing for Australia and New Zealand indeed has started to hit new fleet coming through over the coming months as well. We've given our general sort of indications there, so I don't need to read them out. But from a New Zealand perspective, we know it's changing on a daily basis. Just yesterday, obviously, there was an indication from the government that they are gonna take advice and review the self-isolation requirements.
We're very clear on our view, and I think the industry is more broadly, that those need to go shortly, and there at the very least needs to be a date set for those. Airlines need to basically now, today, be making their final plans about when they come to New Zealand, and they want to. Wholesalers want to be selling New Zealand. The rest of the world is open and we're getting left behind. That is the key to New Zealand. We certainly are more encouraged today than we were yesterday. Australia, look, it's very, very early days, so it's hard to say exactly what we're gonna see from a demand perspective.
In particular, obviously, we've got the horrific situation with Russia and the Ukraine as well, which we hope ends swiftly with the minimal impact on humanity in general. From that perspective, we just don't know what's gonna happen from a booking perspective with Australia. It started positively and it looks like Australians are certainly really keen to travel domestically again, to start with. That's very positive. We have been concerned, and we talked in the U.S. about the asymmetrical issue. Basically people going out before others start to come in doesn't seem to be the case here in Australia, which is positive. The U.S., nothing more really to add than the commentary that we've put in there. We don't really get clarity on the shoulder season.
That's the one that's not quite looking as close to previous levels. The summer season, while not there yet, is certainly heading towards a full utilization peak period around July. Supply chain interruptions, nothing that is significantly material at this point in time, but we have to keep watching and monitoring it in each jurisdiction. Broadly speaking, we've talked before about the fact that the RV category is one that we believe is a very positive one that's responded well from a vehicle sales perspective, and that will flow through to better rental activity. It's those experienced seekers that are keen to get out into the broader environment and travel for longer and stay longer in the countries that we're operating in.
We've got the regulatory approvals to get through from the Apollo perspective, and both parties are working very, very effectively together to make that happen. There's really good alignment in the broader discussions that we're having today, so that's all positive. We've got those core foundations that I think are gonna put us in a really positive place moving forward. Great energy in the business. We've said before, we've got a lot of activity going on. We're responding to situations, but remain really positive about what's next. That's Nick and Amir. Nick, any other points that you wanna hold up?
Just in some breaking news, we can confirm it's just been released that the independent expert has said that there is no change to his opinion.
Oh, very good. There is breaking news.
There we go. It's not often we get to break news in our investor call.
No.
We just have.
No. Nick and Amir were writing stuff to each other in front of me. I was going, "My God, what have I said wrong?" That's good breaking news. Kara, we'll pass back to you to open up for any questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you need to cancel your request, please press the pound or hash key. Our first question comes from John O'Shea at Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Grant and team, and thanks for taking my question. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Good. Yeah, absolutely.
No worries. Look, I think it's a couple from me and they primarily sort of delve into each other or link to each other. How confident are you to be able to restock the fleet when the time comes? Now, obviously, clearly, the recovery in the business is absolutely critically dependent on you being able to do that in the timeframe that you want to. Does the fact that you're in the southern hemisphere help or hinder that? Secondly, you know, you've benefited a lot on the retail sales side from the higher prices. On the flip side, when you go to actually restocking the fleet, you're gonna have to pay higher prices to pay for those vehicles.
Can you talk me through kinda how we should think about that unfolding in the next year or two as things start to open up, in particular in Australia and New Zealand, hopefully?
Yeah. As we indicated all the way through, we're managing sales to the degree that we see the risk profile on the purchases. U.S. is a good example. If you look at their half year year-end fleet number versus the prior year, we could have been at last or the prior year's number or lower. But we went, right, this is where we see the degree of risk. This is what we need to hold, and we've got the opportunity to sell those as we get more certainty around what vehicles are coming in. We are managing that profile and managing it to the broader stock volumes that we're seeing.
We are starting to see stock coming through from a chassis perspective now, that we were ordering in the midst of COVID, you know, 12+ months ago. We have diversified supply from that perspective as well. We feel that we've got a reasonable sort of risk profile on all of that now as well. As it happens, some of the shortages and so forth have all sort of worked out for the business in terms of, you know, an Omicron wave impacting manufacturing production at the time that has actually coincided with some stock shortages. It's actually sort of been a benefit that was coming regardless until you catch up and plan for that accordingly. Not too concerned. Being in the southern hemisphere, is it a plus or a minus?
Inherently, it's a minus because the majority of our product comes from the northern hemisphere. But as I say, we're managing that. It's challenging, but no big issue from that perspective. On a pricing basis, also yes, clearly it's higher capital and that we're having to outlay. But from a pricing perspective, we don't see that we're gonna be changing depreciation rates. And what we're seeing is clearly the market is paying those prices. So from a consumer elasticity perspective, we're quite happy and confident. One of the key metrics that sort of supports that again is the value of this category relative to holiday homes, relative to other accommodation in the housing market in general.
Clearly around all the markets that we're operating, you can be anywhere from 20%-30% increase in house values over the last 18 months, and we're nowhere near that kind of retail price increase for our products. The customers are clearly willing to pay. The pricing looks to be stable. Margins will return to historical levels, but we're reasonably confident that broader pricing will stay up. In any business when you've got inflationary pressures, whether it be labor cost or anything else, you've got to be watching your revenue line to make sure you're recovering that. That's a message well understood in the business.
Sure. Thanks, Grant. Look, where I was coming from with the southern hemisphere, as I said, when the time comes and everybody's looking more positive about restocking the fleet, it would seem to me that everyone's gonna be trying to do it at once. Where I was coming from there was the fact that you're a southern hemisphere buyer as opposed to a northern hemisphere buyer. Does that work in your favor at all or not?
You mean on the actual vehicle purchasing?
Yeah, absolutely. That's where I'm coming from there. I'm talking about-
Well, you're probably trying to serve up a ball for me to hit that I wasn't watching the ball closely enough. But where we do get an absolute benefit, this is where you're hitting the likes of Just Go and the other relationships that we have up there. Yes, they're counter-cyclical on a seasonal basis. We've always had a view that buying vehicles from there in basically September and arriving late October gets us that extra season. Yeah, as we get those vehicles through in the northern hemisphere, we'll be able to get those secondhand ones down here and be able to use those in New Zealand in particular. So that's where you were getting the-
I guess I was thinking more of the new ones. The new vehicles you're buying, I mean, clearly, obviously, our summer seasons are a totally different time of the year than their hemisphere. Does that help at all the fact that you're trying to buy then and the others are trying to buy at another period?
No, no. Well, there could be a little bit when manufacturers well pre-COVID would have been U.S. or Europe. Yes, you're right. We were prepared to buy off-season. U.S. in particular, we'd be saying to the manufacturers, "You can produce in December and January," and they'd be going, "Great. We never get orders in December, January." Yeah, we got those benefits. The same thing in Northern Hemisphere. As the market returns to normality from a supply perspective, we will still be in that beneficial position, yes.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from William Cunning at Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the color provided so far. I've got a couple of questions. I guess sort of reflecting on where you are now in each region on a domestic basis. Can you sort of give a bit more color about maybe the stickiness that you've seen on the domestic customer for each of the regions and whether there's or whether you foresee when international travel returns, whether there's any sort of mix shift towards domestic relative to international, and what that means for the management of the business in each of the regions.
The simple answer is we really don't know, because this is all completely new. We don't know how many domestic customers will obviously just go, "Well, no, I'm not traveling," or vice versa and so forth and so on and an asymmetrical issue that we're talking about that we saw in the U.S. last summer. What we do know is that we've got a much better understanding of some of the price elasticity by different times of the year in the domestic market and the sub-regions within there, certain states in the U.S. and Australia and so forth. We'll definitely we've got a number of those lessons that we carry forward, and we think we'll have a stronger domestic base. The same thing goes for the non-tourism revenue.
We've got some very good contacts, relationships, and business development that's occurred there. That'll be a stream of activity that is countercyclical to some of the tourism season stuff. From that perspective, there'll be shifts as well moving forward. The broader domestic dynamic, who really knows? Nick, you've got views on that as well.
The only thing I'd add, I think, is that we know that as a category, it's going through growth and so, proportionally, what does that mean? Time will tell. In a market the size of America, obviously you have a huge domestic market there, so could that change proportions over the long term? Absolutely it could, as Grant said, I guess it's pretty hard to put a prediction on what that means at the moment. That would be the only other thing I would add.
Yeah. Fair enough. I guess the other question is, I know that, you know, you've made comments about sort of the difficulty in forward-looking in terms of international tourism back into Australia and New Zealand, but is there any sort of extra color that you could provide just on maybe some leading indicators, and whether they're in line with maybe where you'd expect them to be, whether it's, you know, inquiries or you know, web searching or anything like that?
Yeah. Look, there's some good Google travel insight data on a global basis, which is clearly showing that Australia, once the announcements were made, really searches for Australia ramped up dramatically. We've seen that flow through to our web searches as well. The lead times between that dream, plan, and book are all out of whack with historical norms, so we've just got really no idea what it really means. Certainly those search indications are good and positive. What we've seen from a U.S. perspective is definitely a change in lead times, uncertainty on the shoulder, but real confidence about people wanting to travel in that core busy season, the summer season. Those are sort of probably the broad indicators.
TA, Tourism Australia, are going out hard with their campaigns, and we think that's really supportive. They're focusing on E.U., U.K., U.S. That's great for us and for our category and our core markets, and they're spending a lot of money. The airports and airlines are chucking a lot of money into it as well. I think Australia's gonna actually rebound really well. Again, New Zealand won't start really firing until you see that self-isolation requirement removed. What we do know as well is that preference indicators, that's the Tourism New Zealand, Tourism Australia indicators of those who are considering Australia and New Zealand, the preference has remained really strong and sticky. COVID hasn't changed that.
You've just gotta keep making sure that the number of people in that broader bucket, gets filled up. Australia seems to be doing that. Nick, anything else you'd add to that?
I think there's some pretty good indicators there around airline capacity, some graphs now about how that's growing back in different jurisdictions. Probably the only other thing you could say is that we're hearing anecdotally that obviously off the back of the announcement in Australia, that certainly travel agents and wholesalers have seen a dramatic increase, albeit it's off a low base. Anything looks pretty dramatic in that current environment, but certainly the level of inquiry has gone up significantly now that borders are open.
Yeah. That's great. Just for a bit of added context, just in looking at the New Zealand government website, I think they've flagged Australians back from around July. Not putting any forecast as to whether that occurs or anything like that, but if that did happen, is the reopening from New Zealand to Australians in July enough time to provide sort of meaningful trans-Tasman impact to the summer period?
There's still uncertainty within that around the isolation requirements. They need to guarantee and get clear about the isolation requirements. If it's no isolation from July, then that gives a real opportunity for a strong summer for Australia to New Zealand. There's probably a little bit of argument as well that short-haul it's gonna be a stronger market in the first summer. Certainly our view will be Tourism New Zealand is most likely to focus on Australia for just all those reasons. Nick, from an airline capacity that's where it'll be deployed.
Yeah.
First and easiest.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. Great.
The answer is yes, but there's still that self-isolation clarity.
Right. Great. All right. Well, that was all from me. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Will.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Andy Bowley at Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Afternoon, guys, group. Grant, Nick and co. Appreciate your time and the opportunity for questions. Now, just picking up on the lead times issue for New Zealand and Australia, particularly for long-haul customers. I recognize that there's a self-isolation issue and then that's kind of a key question for airlines in terms of their willingness to commit capacity, either in terms of optionality relative to other routes that they may put capacity on if they're not Air New Zealand, but if they're Air New Zealand, then they need to grab the slots. They talk about a timeframe being May and typically, you know, capacity being committed in this part of the world is, say, April.
For you guys in terms of lead times, and I recognize, Grant, you mentioned that lead times have been mucked up through COVID, and they're all over the place. But when do you think the window closes for you in terms of that first summer around long haul, if we don't get some kind of confirmation, you know, either one from government or two airlines committing capacity for long haul in time?
Andy, clearly, it's a graph with a line on it. You're asking what the curve of that is 'cause there'll be something that always comes late, without a doubt. I think relative to our expected sort of fleet size, and we're not sort of saying what that number is. I think, you know, we're not anticipating that the summer in New Zealand is pre-COVID kind of event, regardless if they said no self-isolation today. Nick, you're far closer to the airline situation and the core dates there. For us, you can still get some activity booking September to February. That's not unusual. Again, the key of that is that booking. We're very, very clear.
All the tourism agencies talk about dream, book, plan. Dream, plan, book. Say that the right way. It really, you've gotta have confidence a couple of months before that at least. Yeah, I'd be saying if you have certainty in May, we'd still have some confidence of getting some activity late summer, and February's the key for us from an international perspective. Nick, you want to. Julian?
Yeah, no, I haven't got much to add to that. I think that's bang on. Andy knows the timing on it, so he's got it right, so.
If we go back then to, say, pre-COVID, and there is the, I imagine there's kind of a shallow bell curve in terms of your booking
Yeah.
That's for the upcoming, you know, summer. When's the peak of that booking cycle historically for, say, long haul?
You get a couple of waves. That's why I'm saying there's a wave in September. The end of January and February is your big month, and that gets you through October, November, December, some of January, and some of February. Then you get sort of reasonable bookings, and you get your last big spike for summer in September. Fortunately, those are sort of the biggest single months, February and September.
It's important to know what Grant said about that cycle.
Yeah.
People that are booking in September have started their research. Far before that. That certainty of border openings means you're either in the top of the funnel decision set or you're out right from the start.
Yeah.
That would've started months before.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's pretty clear. Great. Now, moving on to the Apollo transaction. Grant, you mentioned in the kinda opening remarks of the preso around Q&A that you've had with the New Zealand Commerce Commission and the ACCC. Can you get a sense of what are the key issues you think they're really digging down into in relation to the Q&A that you've had with them?
Why do you wanna know? Sorry. Look, I haven't been through the NZCC process like this before, so I haven't got anything to compare it against. Obviously, our legal representatives do. What I would say is there's no indication to us of issues per se. They are clearly assessing what you would naturally, I think, as an economist or analyst, look at this industry. They wanna know how different brands perform. They wanna know what the different categories are and the subcategories and the level of substitutability between categories and all those sorts of things. They wanna know who you see as your competitive set. They wanna check the way that you've been doing pricing and everything internally and all those sorts of things.
They're looking at the things that would help them define what the market is, what the degree of substitutability is, what the degree of price constraint is on us as a business more broadly. Interestingly, you know, one of the things that we haven't disclosed sort of publicly but we probably can now as part of all of this process is we do watch the broader markets and hotel market. In fact, if you look at the last 15-17 years, we've got about a 0.98 correlation to hotel pricing in New Zealand. You know, we are part of a very small subset of the broader tourism market in New Zealand.
Sure. No, thanks for that. Hey, lastly from me, just around tourism group. You talked, Grant, around the recovery opportunity, and the work that's been put in there. You know, I recognize that these businesses were for, or at least part of these businesses were for sale in pre-COVID, and you had the transaction lined up. The question being strategically, you know, how core is the tourism group assets now?
They were never for sale. What we always said was that, you know, any part of the business, if you have somebody approach you and it's the right thing. I think what we said pre-COVID is these businesses deliver an excellent return on funds. They don't require much in the way of capital for ongoing growth and development. They're not a significant distraction to the business, and they have a DCF valuation that works for us from a business perspective. Those are key things. Part of them don't apply well today because they're losing money, but the core principles still apply. They don't distract. The thing is, they've got that really strong operating leverage.
It doesn't take much for them to get up, and you've got a business that'll be operating at 45%-50% EBIT margin with a return on funds of 35%+. If somebody wants to approach us around those kind of assets and they recognize that value and the value that we see in them, then that's a discussion that you have. They are not non-core. You know, they don't go into a category that says, "Right, those are off for sale.
Good. Good answer. Thanks. Thanks, Grant. Appreciate it.
Just a final call. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Looks like we have no further questions, so I will hand back for closing comments. Thank you.
Just again, thank you to all of you that put the work into tracking THL and following us. We know that it's a difficult time to predict what's happening for the tourism industry. You know our core comments in terms of how we think that we've got ourselves in the right position and a positive outlook. Thank you for following us. Thank you for those that have contributed good questions. They're all really great. Nick, Amir, and your teams have done a great job in difficult circumstances to pull together all the information in the right way. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Kara, for hosting us.
Thank you very much. This does conclude the call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.