Before we begin, please direct your attention to slide two, which contains an important notice regarding this presentation. We'll be presenting a series of slides that were released on the NZX, ASX, and our investor hub this morning, along with our audited financial reports. Moving to slide three, I'll start with an overview of our financial results, most of which was covered in the quarter four investor update. Dewald, TradeWindow's acting CEO, will provide an update on products and customers. Deidre will provide more detailed information on the financials before Dewald finishes with our outlook. There'll be time for questions at the end. We encourage participants to ask questions using the chat function on the platform. I'm on slide four. FY 2026, built on foundations of FY 2025, the momentum is clear. Trading revenue rose 20% to NZD 9.6 million, up NZD 8 million on last year. Are we live?
I don't think we're live. I can start from the top. Okay. Start again, Richard.
Good morning. Welcome to TradeWindow's FY 2026 results presentation. I'd now like to hand you over to Andrew Balgarnie, TradeWindow Chief Strategy Officer.
Thank you, Richard. Today we're presenting our financial results for the year ended March 2026. Before we begin, please direct your attention to slide two, which contains an important notice regarding this presentation. We'll be presenting a series of slides that were released on the NZX, ASX, and our investor hub this morning, along with our audited financial reports. Moving to slide three, I'll start with an overview of our financial results, most of which was covered in the quarter four FY 2026 investor update. Dewald, TradeWindow's acting CEO, will provide an update on products and customers. Deidre will provide more detailed information on the financials before Dewald will finish with our outlook. There'll be time for questions at the end. We encourage participants to ask questions using the chat function on the platform. I'm on slide four.
FY 2026 was built on solid foundations of FY 2025. The momentum is clear. Trading revenue rose 20% to NZD 9.6 million, up by NZD 8 million on last year. Our EBITDA loss narrowed by 19% to NZD 1.2 million, reflecting both top-line growth and tight cost discipline, even after absorbing our ASX Foreign Exempt Listing expenses. Net loss after tax improved by 26%, from NZD 3.5 million to NZD 2.6 million. We've closed the year with NZD 4.2 million in cash. Monthly cash consumption held steady at NZD 200,000, unchanged from FY 2025. We're confident we have sufficient cash to sustain the current business operations and take the business through to profitability. I'm now on slide five. As we presented on the 5th of May, the underlying metrics reinforced that momentum. ARR crossed the NZD 10 million threshold for the first time, up 17% on FY 2025.
ARPC grew strongly across both shippers and freight forwarder segments, driven by usage rather than price increases to an extent. Australia accelerated, now representing 43% of group revenue. Gross margin is improving and Freight AI development is advancing towards September 2027 rollout. The direction of travel is consistent and clearly positive, which I'll cover in more detail in the following slides. Moving on to slide six. When we win customers, they stay. Annual recurring revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 28% since FY 2023. Organic acquisition three growth that reflects the durability of our customer relationships. Gross margins are improving, driven by operational efficiencies in onboarding and support, and by the near-term completion of our cloud migration. The full year margin of 60% reflects a temporary drag from carrying both legacy and new cloud infrastructure simultaneously.
It's a transitional cost, not a structural one, and the Q4 margin reached 63%, and we expect the recovery to continue into FY 2027. As revenue has grown, we've held our cost base steady. Cash burn has stabilized, and we're approaching EBITDA breakeven. Moving to slide seven. This slide tells a story of consistent compounding growth. Shipper ARPC has grown at 21% compound annual growth rate since FY 2023, reaching NZD 30,352 in FY 2026. Freight forwarder ARPC has grown at 24% over the same period.
Sorry, 27%, reaching NZD 13,907. Both are being driven by customers using our platform more, broader adoption, higher transactional volumes, and a deliberate focus on larger customers. Customer count sits at 547, down slightly on the prior year, largely due to the rationalization of micro freight customers in favor of more lucrative mid-market freight forwarder segment. The retention has recovered to 89%, reflecting stronger, more engaged customer base.
Now on slide eight, New Zealand remains our largest market by revenue, with the revenue growing at a 22% compound annual growth rate since FY 2023, reaching NZD 5.2 million in FY26. That's a solid maturing base. The standout is Australia. Revenue has grown at a 30% compound annual growth rate since FY 2023, reaching NZD 4.1 million, and this market now represents 43% of total group revenue. Australia is closing the gap on New Zealand fast, and it's our top commercial priority in FY 2027. The rest of the world, which is comprised of Singapore, Philippines, and the Pacific Islands, makes a modest contribution at NZD 300,000. I will now hand over to Dewald, who will provide an update on customers and product.
Thank you, Andrew. We are now on slide 10. Slide 10 speaks for itself. Let me give you some context behind the logos. Our shipper customers span dairy, meat, seafood, horticulture, timber, and more. Collectively, our New Zealand shipper customers are responsible for over 50% of New Zealand's primary industry exports by volume. That's not a minor footprint. That's a significant share of what this country sends to the world every year. Names like Silver Fern Farms, ANZCO Foods, Synlait, Sealord, Zespri, Whittaker's. These are household names and pillars of the New Zealand economy. In Australia, we've been making good progress too, adding Tassal and Huon, both well-known and sizable seafood exporters to our customer base. When you look at our top five customers, three are large meat exporters from New Zealand, and two are large freight forwarders clients from Australia.
That's a healthy mix across both segments and both sides of the Tasman. On the freight forwarder side, we work with some significant global and regional operators. DHL uses our origin service. That's one of the world's most recognized logistic brands choosing TradeWindow. Alongside them you'll see Crane Worldwide, DSV, Zaphon, and a range of strong regional players. The breadth and caliber of the customer base gives us confidence. These are not customers on a trial with a new product. These are serious businesses that depends on our software to keep the operations running every day. That's the definition of mission-critical, and it's a foundation that we are proud of. We are now moving to slide 11. This slide gives you a clear picture of where our revenue and customers are coming from geographically, and I think it tells an interesting story about how the business is evolving.
New Zealand remains our largest market, contributing 54% of total trading revenue. That's NZD 5.1 million for the year, generated by 247 customers who are primarily shippers. This is our established home market, the foundation of the business, and it remains strong. Australia now contributes 43% of revenue, NZD 4.1 million from 284 customers who are primarily freight forwarders. What's striking about this is that Australia actually has more customers than New Zealand, yet generates a smaller share of revenue.
That's not a concern, it reflects the state of the Australian relationship. Freight forwarder ARPC grew 27% this year as we recontract customers onto our new pricing plans. As that base matures, we would expect the revenue contribution from Australia to grow proportionately. The remaining 3%, NZD 338,000, comes from 16 customers located in Asia and the Pacific Islands. A small but interesting signal of demand beyond our two core markets.
The geographic balance of this business is shifting, and it's shifting in the right direction. A year ago, Australia represented a smaller share of revenue. Today, it's 43%. Our goal is to keep growing that contribution, and the customer numbers suggest the foundations are there to do exactly that. We are now on slide 12. The two charts here are worth spending a moment on because they speak directly to the quality of our revenue base. On the left, customer retention. 89% of our customers retained for the full year to 31 March 2026. The vast majority of customers who join TradeWindow stays with TradeWindow. In a SaaS business, retention is everything. It's the foundation that compounding growth is built on. On the right, customer concentration. This is an important one for investors to understand. Our single largest customer represents just 4.7% of revenue.
Customers two to five together account for 7%, and customers six to 10 account for 11.3%, which means 77% of our revenue comes from broad base of customers beyond our top 10. What that means in practice is that we are not dependent on a single customer or small group of customers to sustain our business. If we were to lose our largest customer tomorrow, which we have no reason to expect, it would represent less than 5% of revenue. That is generally a resilient revenue profile, and it's one that de-risks the investment case considerably. There are further dimension to this diversification story. With the majority of our growth now coming from Australia, which represented 43% of group revenue in FY 2026, we are progressively reducing our dependence on any singular geography. That matters more than people may think.
It means we are better positioned to weather macroeconomic disruptions, natural disasters, and other events that might affect one market but not the other. A more geographically diversified business is a more resilient one. Low churn, low concentration, high recurring revenue, and growing geographic diversification. These characteristics together are what gives us confidence in the predictability and durability of our business as we move into FY 2027. We're now moving to slide 13. One of the questions we get asked a lot is how predictable our revenue really is. This slide answers that directly. 95% of our revenue is recurring. Let me explain what sits behind that number. Our revenue has four components. Transactional revenue, earned each time a customer creates or shares a set of trade documents, makes up 53% of the total. Subscription revenue, which is monthly, quarterly, or annual fees to access our solution, makes up 42%.
Together, these two streams account for 95% of our revenue. We consider both to be recurring. Why? Because the nature of our customers' business means that they just don't stop. Exporters keep exporting and freight forwarders keep forwarding. The activity that drives our revenue is non-discretionary. It happens regardless of the economic climate because it's fundamental to how these businesses operate. The remaining 5% is made up of one-off installation fees and ad hoc services revenue from customization requests. We are actively working to standardize our products, which we expect will progressively convert that services revenue into recurring revenue over time. The picture here is one of a revenue base that is predictable, diversified, and growing in value per customer. Next, we will look at the product roadmap. I'm now on slide five. 15, sorry.
As we look at slide 15, you will see that Freight AI represents more than just a rebuild for TradeWindow Freight. It's the foundational platform architecture supporting TradeWindow's long-term intelligent trade ecosystem strategy. Customers are increasingly seeking greater workflow automation, interoperability, and operational efficiency across fragmented trade processes. Freight AI is intended to support those evolving operational requirements through scalable platform infrastructure and embedding intelligent automation. The first pillar is the foundation. This is about establishing a scalable and a unified platform architecture capable of supporting long-term platform convergence, shared services, and operational scalability. The second pillar is intelligent automation. Our focus is not AI for the sake of AI, but rather embedding practical automation directly into operational trade workflows to support productivity, workflow orchestration, and operational efficiency. The third pillar is operational productivity.
Freight AI is designed to progressively reduce manual effort, improve processing accuracy, and support greater operational throughput across the trade life cycle. The fourth pillar is platform convergence. Over time, this supports shared microservices, integrated workflows and interoperability, and more unified operating environment across the TradeWindow ecosystem. Finally, ecosystem expansion positions TradeWindow to progressively extend connectivity, transaction capability, and shared data intelligence across its broader platform environment. Importantly, Freight AI is intended to evolve progressively over time as additional workflows, services, and interoperability capabilities are introduced. FY 2027 revenue will be largely driven by maintaining a healthy pipeline for new features, workflow enhancements, and platform capability across our existing product suite, supporting both customer retention and future scalability. As we move to slide 16, you will note that it depicts our delivery approach, which is intentionally phased and structured around controlled platform evolution and disciplined execution.
As mentioned, phase 1 focused on establishing the foundational platform architecture, which was completed in April 2026. We are currently in phase 2, which is focused on operational capability and longer-term platform convergence. In parallel, we are progressing advanced platform modules including monetization, billing, interoperability, and shared data capability. Phase 4 focuses on validation and release readiness, including integration testing, operational preparation, and controlled deployment sequencing ahead of the initial rollout. This leads into a targeted initial rollout for September 2027. The phased delivery structure is intended to support controlled execution, progressive capability deployment, and disciplined capital allocation while maintaining focus on practical operational outcomes. I will now hand over to our CFO, Deidre Campbell, for the financial overview.
Thanks, Dewald. Most of the key points have been commented on already. I'll just recap and provide a little more detail here. Firstly, on slide 18, we're looking at our overall trading performance. Trading revenue increased 20% to NZD 9.6 million, with sales growth across all of our core products. Operational employee costs were steady year-on-year, which reflects disciplined cost management as we scale the business. Other costs increased 52%. This was driven by three main factors. The first is the high platform usage or the higher, rather, platform usage with broader adoption and as transactional volumes continue to grow, i.e., this cost is variable to revenue growth. Secondly, we had the transitional costs of our cloud migration project. This is the project that saw the migration of our on-premise TradeWindow Freight customers to our TradeWindow-managed cloud-hosted solution. Third were the costs associated with our ASX listing.
Overall, our EBITDA loss reduced 19% to NZD 1.2 million, supported by the strong revenue growth. On slide 19, we dive deeper into revenue. The 20% organic trading revenue growth was driven by our focus on higher-quality customer relationships, both those acquired in last financial year and this financial year. Recurring revenue increased strongly, with transactional and subscription revenue representing 95% of trading revenue. As already mentioned, Australia led the revenue growth across the Freight suite and Origin products. Australia revenue now comprises 43% of our total group revenue. On to slide 20. Total customers at 547 were down seven, reflecting our deliberate rationalization of lower-value accounts. Monthly average revenue per Freight customer increased 27%, reflecting our focus on mid-market operators and the recontracting of customers onto refreshed pricing plans.
Monthly average revenue for shipper customers or a shipper customer increased 22%, reflecting our focus on mid-market and large enterprise customers. We continue to see strong engagement from these customers, which are frequent high-volume users of the platforms. We managed to effectively pass on cost inflation in both segments as well. Slide 21 provides details on our operating expenses, in particular, our largest cost, which is staff, and the staff numbers associated with that. Total employee spend for the year was NZD 7.4 million, up NZD 0.5 million on the prior year, in line with the Freight AI development plans. Of the total spend, Freight AI development of NZD 661,000 was capitalized to the balance sheet. Our operational employee expense was NZD 6.8 million, which was steady year-on-year, reflecting our disciplined cost management as we scale the business.
As I mentioned previously, the other costs increased to NZD 4.1 million, was driven by the increased platform usage, our cloud migration project, and the ASX listing in December last year. Slide 19 shows our balance sheet. Current assets have increased, largely reflecting the increase in the cash on hand at balance date of NZD 4.2 million. Total assets were NZD 15.1 million, including the capitalized Freight AI development of NZD 661,000. TradeWindow has no bank debt, and we have sufficient cash on hand to fund the planned Freight AI development program. Finally, on slide 20, we're looking at cash flow, and our net operating cash outflow reduced, reflecting the revenue growth and the disciplined cost management. During the year, TradeWindow raised NZD 7 million in total, NZD 6.8 million via placements and NZD 200,000 through a share purchase plan.
Our average monthly cash burn across the year of NZD 184,000 was up slightly on the prior year, and this reflects the investment in Freight AI, which commenced partly during the year, as well as the ASX listing. I'd like to hand back to Dewald to take you through the outlook.
Thank you, Deidre. I will briefly take you through the FY 2027 outlook. The Australian market continues to present a significant long-term growth opportunity for TradeWindow. We remain focused on expanding operational capability and customer penetration across that market. At the same time, we continue to maintain a healthy pipeline for new features, workflow enhancements, and platform capability across our existing product suite, supporting both customer retention and future scalability. As highlighted, development of Freight AI remains on track with an initial commercial rollout targeted for September 2027. From a financial perspective, we expect FY 2027 revenue growth to be in a range of 13%-18%. We project that we have sufficient capital to maintain current business operations and expect to be close to EBITDA breakeven for FY 2027. Noting that forward-looking financial information should be read in conjunction with key assumptions as outlined in slide 29.
Finally, we believe that TradeWindow remains firmly on path towards becoming a Rule of 40 company over time. Overall, we are encouraged by the progress being made across both the core business and the Freight AI platform evolution, and we believe the company remains well-positioned for long-term scalable growth. That concludes the FY 2027 outlook. I will now open up for questions.
We have one question online, and the question is regard to notifications coming out about results or updates. The best way to get results and updates is to sign up to the investor hub, that will give you up-to-date information about what is happening in the business. We'll also be releasing market releases from time to time on the ASX and NZX as is required by the market rules, whether price sensitive or non-price sensitive. Any further questions in the chat?
If not, I just want to thank everyone for joining today. Should you have any further questions, please ask via our investor hub, which Andrew alluded to. We look forward to providing a further update on our first quarter trading in July, and we sincerely thank everyone who joined today's update. Thank you, everyone.