Webjet Group Ltd

Well, thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for your time today. Joining me is Leighton Shanoff, our group CFO, and today we're delighted to be able to talk you through our FY25 results for the Webjet Group. Firstly, as while many of you are aware of our demerger last year, I just want to take a moment to reinforce the key details. So Webjet Group emerged from the larger listed entity, Webjet Limited, now known today as Web Travel Group, on the 30th of September last year. And Webjet Group, that's us, became a separately listed entity in its own right on the 1st of October, 2024. And today we're about to present our first full year results as a standalone company. But before that, I'd like to address the recent corporate activity and lots of conversations surrounding the company. We've engaged with all our substantial shareholders on this matter and have responded to the ASX accordingly. And while I have no further comment on this matter, I would like to reinforce this. We have a very high conviction in our new strategy and our five-year growth plan. And our focus as a business remains firmly on that, on executing that strategy to deliver long-term value for both our customers and our shareholders. So with that said, let's get to the numbers. So I'm on page four. We are very pleased to deliver a solid result in line with our FY24 expectations, and this despite a very challenging consumer environment. We think this is a very good outcome in this market, and I think it reflects the dedication of our team and our ability to stay focused while navigating significant change, including the recent demerger. The key numbers are laid out here for you. So on the left-hand side, EBITDA of $39.4 million, cash of $118 million, and this is a significant amount to support our growth ambitions. Capital management has been a core focus, and we will talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation. Breaking it up into our two divisions, Webjet OTA, reported an EBITDA of $51.6 million. And our cars and motorhome business, for long-time listeners, that's formerly the GoSee business, which consists of our consumer and affiliate brands, Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic. So that division reported EBITDA of $1.6 million. Let's get into some details. On page five are all the key metrics that you'll be wanting to look at. As you'll be aware, look, the ongoing cost of living pressures is still weighing heavily on the travel industry and particularly on consumer demand, particularly for domestic flights, which is a core part of our business. And this has naturally flowed through to lower demand for our flights and also our other products like car rentals. On top of that, Webjet OTA bookings took a further hit during this period with Rex Airlines and their involuntary administration. That means that they cancel their flights to all capital cities, and given that focus on the leisure market, we over-index with their sales on that. But despite these significant headwinds, we have been able to deliver an EBITDA result commensurate with the prior year, and exactly what we telegraphed both at our half-year results and at our strategy day. So the key numbers here for you, for the group, FY25 bookings were 1.5 million. That's 1% lower than FY24. TTV was 1.5 billion, revenue was 139.7 million, and underlying EBITDA was 39.4 million. That's pleasingly up 1% on FY24. The key thing there, you can see that margins are up, holding really lightly at 9.3 on a revenue basis, and the EBITDA margin at 28.2%. So very strong results. Turning now to page six, this is what we call our strategy on a page that we outlined for all stakeholders in August last year as we prepared for the demerger. This shows you all our strategic priorities for all our stakeholders that we've been working on over the last nine months. Now, I'm not going to go into detail on each of these pillars now, and I'll do so in the following pages. But suffice to say, I think you can see here a significant amount has been achieved in the last nine months. and then the full financial calendar year. But I think it's suffice to say we've been busy. So I'm going to cover that a little bit later in the presentation, along with our new FY30 strategic priorities. So let's get into some detail. I'm first going to look at Webjet OTA on page eight. So this is the core results for the OTA, the standalone business. And I think what you're seeing here is that our higher margin products and our focus on that is helping offset that softer domestic demand I just spoke about. So the key figures for you, 1.3 million bookings, and that flows through to a slightly lower PTV compared with FY24 at 1.3 billion. I think the key takeaway for OTA and the core business in that is that That revenue optimization issue that we've spoken about, focusing on our international flight bookings, focusing on higher margin products, and selling our ancillaries, is helping offset that subdued environment, as I said. So this delivered us a revenue of $119.9 million, with our revenue margin up at 9.1%. That's up on 8.8% from FY24, so pleasing. And EBITDA is 51.6 million, again with an incredible margin at above 40%. All right, moving on to the next page. This has got all the details for you here, a favorite page. And this breaks down everything for you comparing from FY24 to FY25, and all nicely laid out there for you. A couple of comments from me. FY25 bookings are down for OTA, compared to FY24, and I've spoken about that's really due to the softening of the domestic flights market, and I don't think we're in a club of one on that one. However, what is pleasing is our focus on international bookings has delivered. International bookings are up 11% compared to FY24, Domestic bookings, as I said, are down. And I think the key thing to think about here is not only, obviously, the macro environment, but as I mentioned before, with Rex entering voluntary administration in the first half of FY25, Rex accounted for about 5% of Australian domestic capacity at June last year. But because of the nature of their business, Webjet OTA was a key seller of that inventory. We over-indexed with them, and so they'll be looping through for us till about July. Okay, moving on to revenue. FY25 revenue is down 1%. Now, compare that to the bookings. That's given the focus we've been putting on the higher margin ancillary products and selling those. That's our with-fry strategy, if you will. How do we add on to the flight? But also the international flight bookings I've mentioned. There's been a core focus for the business. And I think this proves that the business, you know, in a tough domestic environment, has the ability to pivot and has the ability to focus on where there is growth, and there has been that growth in the international flight bookings. FY25 expenses are marginally up at 2%. This accounts for the emergent synergies coming through, primarily from the second half. Our standard CPI increases for staff, but also a slight lift in our marketing costs. As telegraphed, this business has been under-marketed, and now we're starting to slowly lift down. In sum, FY25 EBITDA is down, but I draw your attention to our EBITDA margin, which remains very strong, as said, above 40%. I just wanted to take a moment to look at a little bit more detail on some of those key drivers behind our push for higher revenue per booking. So I'm looking at page 10 now. I think if you look at the bottom here, there's some great visuals here that show you our strong progress. So firstly, international flights continue to grow. So if you think about the market here and what we've talked about before, international supply has grown as capacity has re-entered the market. There's been some strong competition for international long-haul and short-haul coming into the market. And this has provided really good downward price pressure and we've been focused on capturing that. How? Well, first off, our member program, our Webjet member program, newly introduced in the last year, that has been delivering attractive member-only offers that's got us great engagement with our customers and helped grow sales. We're continuing to take a leadership role in the rollout of MDC. For those non-airline geeks like us, that is the new distribution capability, so the new way that airlines are distributing their content or their flight product, if you will, So we've taken a leadership role in that from very early on, and we're continuing to go hard on that this year. And that gives us a competitive edge. It gives us differentiated content, and it gives us pricing advantages. Lastly, our AI-driven Trip Ninja technology. I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But applying this across our multi-stop trip searches means that we can deliver great content, which continues to deliver great value for our customers. Cheaper flights. And we've only just begun utilizing that to our full advantage. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later. All right, the next piece there in the middle, let's look at air and non-air ancillaries and how this is helping us diversify our revenue streams. Okay, so I'll just explain that. So air ancillaries, that's beyond the ticket, if you will. This is about us selling bags and selling seats. In the breakdown of the Historical flight price is now broken down to pieces, and now we are helping airlines sell those bags and sell those seats to give the full experience for the customer. That's what we call an air ancillary. A non-air ancillary, as I said, this is our would-you-like-France-with-that strategy. We have 1.5 million people booking their flights with us adding on the hotel, the car, and the insurance. This is how we're diversifying our business and how we're mitigating risk of our historically only one revenue stream coming from airline ticket sales and a commission on that. So in the last year alone, I'm incredibly proud of the team and a shout out to all of those who are listening. We have launched paid seats for 18 airlines. It's a huge effort and that's up from zero a year ago. And we have more airlines under development. That's a huge tech effort. What that does, as I said, allows us to give that full service and that full experience to our customers. That creates an extra revenue stream for us, which we're handsomely paid for by the airlines. Our non-air ancillary, so that's the insurance, the cars, the hotels, that's up 5% on FY24. And as you can see from the chart here at the bottom, that now makes up 34% of our total revenue. That's significant. And we expect this to grow, and our plan is to grow it, as we focus on hotels and packages and our other ancillaries, as outlined in March in our five-year strategic plan. So this all results in our list in revenue per booking. Look at that chart, it's impressive. 7% up over FY24. And the market is soft, yes, but this list in revenue per booking is a key metric that we track, reflects our focus on optimizing revenue and on driving high-margin products to ensure that we serve the customer in full, but most importantly, capture the whole of the travel wallet. Lastly, on page 11, I just really wanted to touch on our exceptional results in customer service, because at the end of the day, we're a customer-facing business. Look, we've been on a transformation journey in this area probably a little bit longer than the rest of the business, and we've really focused on this in the last two years. And we had some work to do post-COVID. And for FY25, we've really built on some strong outcomes achieved last year. We've optimized our platform capabilities with implementation of AWS and embedding that now. And we've really streamlined workflows. We've lifted the level of our talent and their capabilities. Most people have an outsourced core center or service center, and we have the same. But what we've done now is bring that in-house based in Manila, but they are web jetters, and we train them. That's really lifted the talent and their capabilities, and clearly the outcome for our customers. And we've done all of this with what I would call a back to basics focus on performance management, tighter cost control, and using AI to really help us get efficiencies. Plenty of awards that Webjet wins every year articulated there, awarded again, the leading online travel agency in Australia. But I think it's our customers who really give us the awards, and you can see that on the right-hand side. We've seen measurable results here across our cost to serve, our service and our experience. So if I look at the operational things and break that down for you, our enhancements around process and streamlining has reduced our contacts in to our call center by 24% over FY24. And that's because of better case resolution or reduced our repeat context by solving it the first time, a better user experience, and really focusing on improving the triage and how we talk to our customers. So that has resulted in our cost per call and our cost per chat down 10% and 15% respectively. I think that's pretty admirable and most companies would love to see those gains within a year. And all of this, I think the most important thing is our customers are really happy, and that's important. So we've seen incredible feedback from our customers across the year, and these percentage improvement points on each of our three key metrics and how we measure our customer satisfaction on a daily basis. So eight percentage points up on first contact resolution, five percentage points up on satisfaction with our agents, and a whopping 12% on our net promoter score. These are incredibly good scores and we're really proud of them and huge shout out to the team. So that's it for OTA. What I'd like to do now is move on to cars and motorhome. So you can see there on the title slide on page 12, there are logos of Airport Rentals and Motorhome Republic in the bottom left-hand corner. These are our global car and motorhome rental marketplaces or e-commerce sites. So let's look at the key figures for the business. So bookings, 278,000. TTV at 191 million. Revenue in line with TTV at 19.5 million, with really stable margins there at 10.2%. And our EBITDA are 1.6 million. Now that's worth taking a moment to reflect on. We reported in our first half last November that our EBITDA for this business unit was $200,000. So to hit $1.6 million for the full year is a large gain, and that's reflecting the focus of that business and the big moves made by down there in terms of restructuring, simplification, and automation. So really pleasing to see that come through. Nicely, a lift in EBITDA margin there too that I think is helpful for this business. Moving on, page 14 I'm on now, and this is the full details on all the statistics for cars and motorhome, and you can see FY24 and FY25 there. But as I just mentioned, I think the key thing to note here is the restructure of this business. It was huge focus for the first half of FY25, and this is now complete. and the cost reductions are starting to show through. Tough calls, but we made them, and we made them fast. So we took that deep dive, and the team worked really hard to identify opportunities to streamline, to simplify, and to automate, as I said, all of the sharpening our focus on customers that matter most. So it's a journey, but the cost out is now flowing through, and it's resulted in lowering expenses and making this business far more sustainable. So in detail here, I guess a few more comments to pull out the highlights for you. Bookings are down 7% compared to FY24. The cars is very much following flights and highly correlated if domestic demand is down, so it's cars. And motorhomes remains slightly impacted by that lack of inbound long-haul tourism down to New Zealand and Australia, not still quite at the same levels. and also the high pricing of a motorhome still remains. I think expenses down, reflecting 10%, reflecting that restructuring I spoke about. If we just take a bit of a deeper dive on that business and what's going on, the business for this year, as I said, the core focus was on that restructuring, but they've also been able to, this incredible team's been able to achieve other gains as well. So we've refreshed the airport rentals and Motorhome Republic brands, and the results are starting to come through. So prompted brand awareness for our Motorhome Republic, that's up 1%. Now, that may seem tiny to you, but any brand market is going to love that, particularly when their independent monitoring shows that competitors are down 6% over the period. So that's a gain. Strong growth of our affiliate and supplier networks. Just to reinforce, around 50% of revenue for these two businesses comes from affiliates. So we're a white label, if you will, for third parties. So that's a key source of revenue that we're focused on, good scale and leverage. So in the year, we onboarded 25 new cars and motorhome affiliate partners. And as you can see, the map there of my good old homeland in New Zealand, we now cover 75% of New Zealand's air passenger traffic. So that's us serving all the major airports with our airport rentals technology. There's obviously lots of product enhancements that have occurred throughout the year too, and also improving our range of payments to make sure we're leading there. So really pleased with how that business unit is coming along. All right, we'll turn to TripNinja now. So for those of you, I always get asked lots of questions about TripNinja, and what is it again? So how we think about TripNinja is in two ways. One is its own tech startup that WebJet purchased. It's its own standalone business that builds machine learning-driven technology that solves complex flight-related problems. Can we purchase this business? The second is, I think about it as an arm's length supplier who is a core supplier into our OTA business because their tech is integrated into our OTA business to help us solve complex fight related problems. So if I look at TripNinja as a standalone business, firstly, it's grown and continues to grow its pipeline across other travel intermediaries globally. And what I mean by that is servicing other travel intermediaries. The key thing done here was the team rebuilt their sales and marketing strategy, rolled out new digital assets, updated their product positioning and their sales collateral. And that's resulted in the signing of three new customers, or third parties if you will, who will now use the TripNinja technology and integrate it into their flight pathways. So now we've got a total of six customers, of which Webjet OTA is one. And once technical implementation is complete, we look forward to seeing more revenue coming in from those customers. In addition, the team is continuing to develop tech to solve those flight-related challenges. And with AI and analytics, it's a whole new world, and we're delighted to be on that journey in terms of uncovering what I call hidden opportunities in flight retailing. But lastly, as I said, this is a core supplier to Webjet, and it's continuing to deliver us better prices and more unique content for Webjet OTA. So to explain this further and to explain our beautiful picture there on the right, our TripNinja technology is already applied across our multi-stop trip searches. So that's about 10% of our international flight searches. Now, our customers can already mix and match on our short haul for most of our Asia flight routes, but what we're really excited about for the next year is that TripNinja will soon, in June, be integrated on all our long-haul international return searches. That's delivering unique content that is not easily comparable and gives our customers a great price. So that's a substantially amount, a lot more of our international searches, about four times what it's applied to now. So you can see here on this little snapshot of our WebJet search page, You can look here, we're looking at a Melbourne to London return here, and you can see that your best alternative there is with Air India at $2,524. What Trip Ninja is going to allow the customer to see is a mix and match of those two. Two airlines that wouldn't naturally fit together, and they're going to save $152 Australian, or 6%, by combining one leg up on Thai and one leg back on Air India. Now, that's a significant saving. and what we're pleased about is that we've learned with the 10% of our multi-stocks, now we're rolling it out to a larger portion of our international searches. So we're pretty excited about the potential of that too. So in sum, I think extraordinary effort by the team and really solid results for FY25. To get us into a bit more detail on that, I'm now gonna hand over to Leighton.

Thanks Katrina, and good morning to everyone on the call. All right, turning now to slide 19, which lays out the FY25 financial summary. And starting with the statutory results, Now, just like in the first half, there's a number of items in the FY24 comparative period that are purely accounting-related and stem from the demerger. So, again, we've adjusted for these in underlying operations to provide a clear, like-for-like comparison of financial performance. And this aligns with what was presented in the demerger booklet and, importantly, is the last time you'll see adjustments of this nature as we move beyond that FY24 comparative period. So again, I think the simplest way to think about these adjustments is like wrong pocket items. So what would have previously eliminated on group consolidation before the demerger now has the corresponding amount or impact sitting in web travel group. So once we adjust for these items, along with share-based payment expense and a few one-off non-operating expenses, which I'll cover off on the next slide, that gives us underlying EBITDA for FY25 of 39.4 million. And we've included the reconciliation from statutory to underlying EBITDA again for you there, and that's in the bottom right-hand corner of the slide there. Moving down the page to depreciation and amortization, similar to the first half, the FY24 comparative here doesn't include 3.9 million of amortization expense, which is specific to the WebJet OTA business. So to keep things consistent with FY25 and future periods, we've added this back into underlying operations again. FY24 also included a goodwill impairment expense, and that related to the cars and motorhomes business, so formerly known as GOC. Moving down the page again and taking a look now at net interest and finance costs. Now, both the FY24 comparative and first half of FY25 included related party interest expense, which has since ceased to apply post the demerger. And so as a result, net interest income was positive in the second half of FY25, and will continue to be so moving forward given our strong cash balance and no debt. In terms of tax, as communicated at the half, we expect an effective tax rate of around 30% moving forward. And this is aligned with our predominantly Australian-based earnings profile. And lastly, their underlying net profit after tax for FY25 increased to $20.9 million. Let's move on now to the next slide and take a look at technology and corporate overheads and non-operating expenses. Starting with technology and Trip Ninja, The $2.8 million loss for FY25 is in line with what we telegraphed at the half and really reflects the higher headcount costs within that business as we continue to build out the technology there and expand its capabilities. In terms of corporate overheads, these came in at $11 million for FY25, which is actually a bit lower than what we originally anticipated and communicated at the half. That's primarily due to the absence of short-term incentives for FY25, plus the fact that not all of the demerger-related dissynergies have fully materialized just yet. As Katrina touched on earlier, there's also a portion of those dissynergies that have been allocated out to the business units for their respective share. And again, look for consistency and ease of comparison here with what was outlined in the demerger booklet. The FY24 comparative has been adjusted to include those 2.6 million of demerger related to synergies, which reflects the additional costs required to support Webjet Group as a standalone listed business. Looking ahead, we expect corporate overhead to increase to circa $13 million in FY26 as those demerger-related synergies continue to materialize over the course of the year. There's also some additional headcount costs there relating to key hires that were brought on to support our growth initiatives. Finally on this slide, just touching on non-operating expenses and noting these are all one-off in nature. The most material item here is the accrual we've taken up in FY25 for the proposed ACCC penalty, along with our own legal costs associated with those proceedings. And the remainder there relates to one-off consulting fees, redundancy costs from the restructure that was recently completed over in New Zealand, and some one-off staff payments specifically linked to the demerger. Okay, turning now to the balance sheet, that's on slide 21. And look, the theme here is very consistent with the half, the standout being our cash balance, which strengthened further in the second half of FY25, thanks to trading performance. And that's also coupled with the demerger cash allocation we received in the first half. The increase in trade payables and other liabilities. Now, that mainly reflects that accrual we've taken up for the ACCC penalty I mentioned on the previous slide. Other current liabilities have also increased, and that simply relates to our tax obligations now as a standalone group. And finally, non-current liabilities are similar to the first half, That reduction you see from March 24, simply reflecting the transfer of related party balances as part of the demerger process. So, no debt, net cash of 118 million as at 31 March 25, and just a reminder that net cash figure excludes 31 million of restricted cash. For us, this strong cash position really allows us to both continue to invest in our strategic growth initiatives as well as retain the flexibility to pursue any potential M&A opportunities that may arise. Moving on to cash flow now, I won't spend too much time here. Similar to the half, FY25 working capital and cash conversion were both impacted by the demerger-related accounting adjustments that I've touched on. But looking ahead, we expect cash conversion to normalize at around that 100% mark in FY26 onwards. And as previously communicated, no dividends have been declared for FY25, and that's simply due to a lack of available franking credits in the newly emerged Webjet Group. That said, we plan to commence dividends from FY26, and I'll speak a little bit more about that and capital management shortly. Turning to CAPEX now, CAPEX for FY25 was $13.3 million, which is in line with the run rate from the first half and reflects the continued investment we're making in our key focus areas. And looking ahead to FY26, we're expecting underlying capex to grow broadly in line with inflation. And plus there's the additional circa 5 million of incremental investment for FY26 that's tied to our strategic growth initiatives, which we outlined back in March at our strategy day. And finally now, turning to capital management. Look, initially we had intended to announce an on-market buyback alongside these results. However, given the recent receipt and subsequent rejection of the non-binding indication of interest from BGH Capital, the Board has determined it's appropriate to defer implementing any such initiatives at this time. But that said, we remain absolutely fully committed to returning surplus capital to our shareholders, and we intend to do an on-market buyback when the circumstances permit. Looking a bit more broadly now, our continued approach and commitment to disciplined capital management, look, it's one that's really focused on long-term value creation whilst maintaining our financial strength and flexibility. So to briefly outline the key pillars of our capital management strategy, the first pillar here is ensuring we maintain our financial resilience and flexibility. We really want to make sure we're in a position to be able to quickly respond to any dynamic market and operating conditions as they evolve, and we'll continue to assess how best to allocate capital across both our strategic investment opportunities and returns to shareholders. The second pillar here is centered around growth-focused investment in M&A. We remain committed to investing in the core business and progressing our strategic growth agenda, but also where it makes sense, we'll absolutely consider disciplined M&A opportunities. ones that strengthen or expand our capabilities or increase scale and really align with our long-term priorities. And the final pillar here is all about shareholder returns. We're committed to commencing sustainable ordinary dividends from November this year with a target payout ratio of 40% to 60% of underlying empaths. We'll continue to monitor and actively assess options to return any additional surplus capital to shareholders as appropriate. In summary, we will continue to take a considered and disciplined approach, and with a clear focus on delivering sustainable long-term value to shareholders. With that, thank you, and I'll hand back to Katrina.

Great. Thanks, Leighton. All right, so we just might take a few moments now to cover forward-looking. And I'll first touch on our FY30 strategic plan. So in March, we announced our new plan for the next five years. And it's a bold new chapter for Webjet Group, and we're pretty excited about it. So turning to page 26, just to summarize up how we're thinking about this, that, you know, in the last sort of 10 months, we've been really focused on realising the opportunity that this demerger has brought us and that's to take a good business which consistently delivers and give it the investment it deserves to make it great. We've now got our dedicated board and our dedicated balance sheet as previously spoken about but most importantly a singularly focused team on a mission to grow. So last year You know, we did a rigorous, substantive deep dive on this business. We have done the work, a lot of it. And we confirmed in a really robust way that there is more opportunity for this business than we believed. And we think we can deliver well above average growth by FY30. As you can see here, $103 billion total addressable market. That's huge, and it remains highly compelling to us. And we are well positioned to capture it with our brand. In addition, we undertook brand research with 3,500 people and looked in detail at every single one of their last three travels or trips. For those of you who don't live and breathe from market research, that's statistically significant and robust. It's the first time we've done it in years, and we analyzed with that every element of data in our business. So we now have a very clear and robust strategic plan to double our TTV by FY30. And we think this sets the stage to propel this business to new heights over the next five years. And we have some very clear strategic priorities to deliver that. That said, as Leighton mentioned, we're respectful of our capital position and we do have substantial cash reserves. But we do have a robust balance sheet to pursue this growth. So in terms of our strategic priorities, and I might just colour this more a bit on page 27, about where we're going from to. A core focus, and I've spoken multiple times, is about revitalising the iconic Webjet brand. We've done that with airport rentals, we've done that with Motorhome Republic, and now we're doing it with the Webjet brand. And so what does that look like? That means our move into international flights. We've been known for domestic, and we've been known for flights. Now we're going to be known for travel. For international flights, We currently have about 20% of our bookings are on international. That's growing. I've already shown you that. And we have strong ambitions to grow that even further, up to 25% to 30% of our bookings. We're going to be expanding our hotel and packages offering. We're being flight-led. That's cool. But now we're going to be offering more strongly hotels and packages to serve the whole customer need. We are, by default, a service provider for business travel, and we do it so in an unstructured capacity. But now we're going to be focusing on this for a standalone offering to address what we see as a market gap, where it's purely digitally led and seamless experience for a small to medium-sized business market. Lastly, as I said, the brand, but underpinning all of this, is Loyalty. This is an iconic Aussie brand with 73% of Aussies and Kiwis know who we are, and that is an incredible asset, but we are going to revitalize it, and underpinning all of that is a drive to drive loyalty with those customers. So if that's the big move, on page 28 is what we call our strategy on the page. This is the plan for our next horizon, and it articulates, you know, our vision is really to become that first choice for Australasians to book travel. You should be able to sit on your couch and do it all with your fingertips on your phone or on your iPad, and it should all be there for you, and that is our vision. And we're here to make that experience great. We're here to give you joy while you're doing it and joy while you have your trip. So I'm going to keep coming back to this slide because this has got our strategic priorities and the key leaders that we're seeking to pull. And what you can expect from us at the half and again in another fall is reporting back on these initiatives and how we're going. So if that's the context, let's have a look forward to what FY26 is actually starting to look like. So I'm on page 30 now. And I think strong progress is being made. Look, let's be real. We only spoke to you about this two months ago. But we are pretty focused. And the business is benefiting from that focus on these new growth initiatives. So in terms of being the leading brands, we've onboarded our inaugural CMO. The brand track, the brand relaunch is on track. And the market's really responsive right now to our tests and learns and marketing. So a good example of that is, you know, we're regularly doing campaigns. But one we did recently was, you know, very much around flights and packages to Europe and Asia. And we saw, you know, over 40% uplift in our flight bookings and about 20% uplift in TTV coming from that. And again, the same in packages, up 18% in our package bookings with an increase of 8% in TTV. And that was from just a short targeted campaign. But we're doing these things to learn for when we relaunch the brand. And that gives us strong confidence in how we're going to be able to deliver on that. Capturing more of the travel wallet, we've spoken about this. Our direct channels are up 9% for both cars and motorhome. That means that we're starting to own those customers more. We're progressing ahead with our loyalty strategy and development of that. And as I said, the business is really benefiting from focus. So our hotels and packages, you know, we're strongly up on member sign-ups for hotel deals. And 28% of our package bookings are coming from first-time customers. That's new to brand customers. It's incredibly valuable. Our international flights are doing really well. 23% of our flight bookings thus far. Bear in mind, we're only a little bit into the new year. And as I mentioned before, we're really excited about the price differential we're going to be able to offer our customers when we integrate TripNinja across all our long-haul international return flights. Aligning with our brand relaunch in the second half of FY26, we will be launching our new holiday packages and tours, and we're partnering with some incredible external providers at the same time as our brand launch. Really pleased to announce Intrepid's going to be one of our partners in that. And lastly, in terms of operational excellence, the restructuring benefits are on track in cars and motorhomes, and that was one of the key moves for that business. So look, as I said, we're really pleased about progress being made. So in terms of outlook, I'm turning now to page 31. For WebJet OTA, the first six weeks has been a bit soft, but the timing of Easter and Anzac Day on a year-on-year basis means that A year-on-year comparison is not like-for-like. So bear that in mind. That said, domestic bookings are down 11%. As I said, the wrecks, the loss of those capital city flights will continue to loop until the end of July. But most importantly, even though the market's a bit soft, international bookings are 5% up. So that's really pleasing. It's doing exactly what we want it to do by focusing on it. Cars and Motorhome, I can share that the training for the first six weeks of FY26 is in line with the expectations. And if I take a step back and look at it for an overall group, you know, this really is a transition year. This is an investment year. And we are planning to make, you know, investment, about $15 million this year to support our strategic plan. And it's well overdue. As mentioned at our strategy day, based on that, our FY26 underlying EBITDA is expected to be broadly in line with FY25. There's a weighting on that to the second half, given the investment and growth, and that assumes no further deterioration in trading, given it's so early on in this period. But given the world's a bit of a crazy place right now, we remain cautious, I think like everybody in the industry, and mindful and awake on listening to what's happening in the macroeconomic environment and particularly in the US. As Leighton mentioned, dividends are anticipated for FY26, in line now with our now formally announced dividend policy, and a share buyback is in consideration when our circumstances permit. So that's, I think I can probably wrap now, but I'd like to say just a couple of things. I'd like to say thank you to our shareholders, those who have been with us for a while, and to those who are newly joining us on this journey. Look, as a team, we have high conviction in our new strategy, and we're really excited about our growth agenda, and we're grateful for your continued engagement. We've delivered a solid result here this year, and we have the iconic brand here in Australia and New Zealand that Kiwis and Aussies know, and trust, and we're just getting started. Lastly, I just want to say a huge thank you to our team. We may be a tech business, but we are driven by our people, and none of the results or achievements that I've spoken about here today would be possible without them. So a big thank you, guys. I know you're all listening. So thank you to everybody on the line, and with that, operator, I'll hand over to you for questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Damon Klockner with CLSA.

Hey, Damon, how are you?

Hi, guys. Good, thanks. Good morning. I just had a couple of questions. First one's a bit of a prickly one, so apologies. I just wanted to clarify, the decision to delay the buyback sounds like it relates to BGH's stipulation in their SOI of no distributions. That might not be the right way of reading it, but if so, can you confirm whether you continue to?

Amy, I'm sorry. I think you just broke out at the important part of that question. Can you try again?

Yeah, no problem. The decision to delay the buyback sounds like it relates to BGH's stipulation in their SOI of no distributions. If so, can you confirm whether you continue to engage with them over a possible takeover?

Look, the board engages with all our shareholders, but I can confirm there is no other engagement with BGH at this time, but we are in line with our market disclosures on that. With respect to the buyback, look, the board has considered, obviously, all the activity that's going on right now, and we deemed it appropriate at this point in time not to pursue a buyback. But as mentioned, it's definitely within our sights, and when the circumstances permit, we will be pursuing that.

Okay, thanks. And can I also just ask around Trip Ninja, are you able to provide any kind of forward expectations on the level of losses expected for FY26?

Look, not at this time. I think you can see there the FY24, you can see the FY25. Think about this as a tech startup, which is powering out in our innovation.

Sure. And then just last one from me. Can you just give us a little bit more color on how the member program, the NDC rollout, and Trip Ninja are driving the positive mix shift towards international and ancillary? And are there any other initiatives to this end that we should be aware of?

Sure, okay, so I'll start with the member program. So this was newly introduced from about September last year. And the objective of this is, you know, for you to become a member of WebGen, and for you, it unlocks special deals or special privileges, etc. Now, because we're focused on, you know, growing our international flights, we've been using that channel, if you will, to focus on international flight offers and international flight deals. So that's when I say, you know, member engagement is up and member, you know, deals are really driving strong engagement and sale. We're very much focusing it on that international pace. You know, we own domestic, we're the largest OTA, owning domestic in Australia, but we don't own international, and that is the easiest place for us to begin to take a leadership position. So that's why we've really focused the member program on that. For Trip Ninja, as I said, think about it like this is a tech startup inside of Webjet, and the OTA is one of its primary customers. Now, what this does is uses AI to break up your query, go find airline segments that wouldn't normally be sold together and put it together on one ticket or one P&R. And what TripNinja does, we've only applied, I guess, level one of that today, which is on our multi-stop trips. So that's if you're flying from Melbourne to Singapore, stopping off for a couple of days and then going up to London, that's where we've applied it today. Now, I've called it Trip Ninja 2.0. The teams continue to laugh and say, that's not what it's called, Katrina. But the next level that we're rolling out now applies it to international long haul. So that Melbourne to London example. So straight through from Melbourne to London. So in June, we were waiting on a pace of technology that needed to drop in first before we could plug this now in for the next level of Trip Ninja, and now that's why we're excited. So if you think about it, Trip Ninja has only applied to 10% of our international searches today. From June, it's going to apply to another 44%. And that means that, you know, customers will be able to get those great prices. And about two-thirds of the case, it'll be up to about a third percent cheaper. And we'll be able to deliver that to customers from June. So that's why we're pretty excited about how that's driving international.

Thanks, Damon. Lovely to hear from you. Your next question comes from John O'Shea with Ord Minute.

Good morning, John.

Morning Katrina, just a couple of questions from me. Just sort of a follow on from what you're talking about Trip Ninja. Obviously 11% growth international bookings in FY25. Would it be reasonable to assume that given the penetration and the changes that you've articulated in relation to that product that you'd be expecting some sort of acceleration in that growth rate next year in terms of international growth and international bookings, other things being equal? That's my first question.

Yes, spot on, John. That is absolutely our aspiration. You know, if you think about it now, we've very deliberately started to focus on this within the last year, international. Then we've added the members. We're giving members special international deals. Now we've got Trip Ninja. We're taking that from just applying to 10% to now a total of 54% of our international long haul. So with those sort of key three drivers, we're anticipating an uplift in international.

Yep, thank you. That answers that one for me. Now, I also noted that you spoke about the guidance being weighted to the second half, and I think I heard you say given the level of OPEX required. So can you just perhaps clarify what you're talking about there? I'm assuming you're meaning that, you know, your 10 million of additional OPEX as part of your strategic plan, a lot of that will come in the first half as opposed to the second half.

Morning, John. It's Leighton here. Yeah, that's correct. The weighting to the second half is sort of consistent with both the phasing of our strategic initiatives and how we see the revenue building through the year. So many of the investments we're making early on, particularly in marketing, and they're really geared to unlocking that second half uplift. Sure.

Did I interpret what you say correctly, that you will be investing more of that OPEX in the first half than the second half? Correct. Okay. Thank you. That's it for me. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, John.

Your next question comes from Ben Wilson with Wilson's Advisory.

Hi, Ben. How are you?

Yeah, well thanks Katrina and morning guys. Just if we focus on domestic bookings just to start with, just interested in your thoughts on capacity. I think according to the latest biter figures, domestic capacity was down 6% in February versus PCP. Are you seeing any signs that we'll see an increase or I guess even a bottoming out in capacity sometime soon?

Look, good question, and I think there was an article on The Fin this morning that gives you some insight to that as well. Look, we are not seeing capacity rise, and I think you'll figure there around about 6% down is appropriate, and we're in close dialogue with obviously our mates at Qantas and Virgin on a regular basis, and I don't think that we're going to see any capacity uplift. that in the domestic market for a while. So what we are, you know, projecting and forecasting is that to remain flat.

Okay, great. Thanks, Katrina. Maybe just moving to capital management. Just wondering, can you give a sense for the quantum of the buyback you would be targeting when you're ready to kickstart that?

Morning, Ben. It's Leighton. Look, we're still working through all of that and we'll sort of update accordingly when we're ready to move on that. But at this stage, no specific guidance on the quantum.

Okay, no problem. And then maybe just finally on Trip Ninja for me, can you say what sort of revenue framework the third-party customers are on? Is it sort of SaaS or more transactional? And again, can you give some level of quantum you're expecting from that?

Look at the mix of both, both SaaS and transaction-based. And I won't give quantum in terms of that right now. We've signed three and it takes a while to do tech integration and then they come through. But I look forward to sort of, you know, talking about that in the future a bit more. But for now, I think the key takeaway is this is a tech starter. We were the first kind of real integration. You know, that happened about two years ago. We really learned a lot in the last year, and now we're rolling it out to its next level of capacity, and I think other customers will be on a journey like that as well.

Okay. Thanks very much, guys.

Your next question comes from Ben Gilbert at Jordan.

Hey, Ben. How are you?

Very well. Good morning, team. Busy few weeks for you guys. I appreciate the sensitivities around M&A and lots of stuff. I'm just a bit confused around the buyback view, not to execute. If you're not engaging with them anymore, you look at consensus valuations and the average is over a buck. And I think straight is probably 30% below your longer-term aspiration, so not factoring it in. If you've got that level of confidence in the strategy and there's obviously some positive signs coming through market notwithstanding, I don't understand why you wouldn't execute and either force their hand to come out and give a fuller offer or just give the market confidence in your confidence that the valuation or current share price is materially below what you think it's worth.

Yeah, I understand your perspective, Ben, and I hear you. Look, as we had fully intended to announce one alongside these results, But given the receipt of the NBIO and, you know, the subsequent rejection, there's various parts at play here, and the board has determined it's inappropriate to announce a buyback at this point in time. You know, that said, we remain fully committed to doing this in due course, and we'll kind of announce that when appropriate. But there's obviously lots of facts and consideration, and ultimately that's a board call.

Okay, so in terms of when appropriate, approach that sensitivity around it, when appropriate is when you've got clarity, if anything else is going to be happening from the M&A front or it's put to bed and you can run the business as usual without that thing happening in the background.

Yeah, I think those are different inputs and there's a few others as well. Clarity is always a gift, but we'll be clear with the market in due course, but it was a clear thing that we wanted to do today.

Okay, thank you. And just the revenue per booking chart, I like, it's a good one. It obviously really sort of goes to what you're trying to do in terms of driving ancillaries and the profitability. Just interested in, I appreciate it's been a challenging question given there's no direct comp, I suppose, globally, but how do you think is sort of best practice? So where's the aspiration when you look at those TTV aspirations and margin aspirations? Is it 120 bucks for booking or how are you thinking in terms of where they could get to?

Yeah, look, I mean, I love that chart too. But I think the key thing is it very much encapsulates our strategy, right? This business has been a domestic flight-led business. And now we are aiming to expand that and grow our international and our international Air ancillary, there are non-air ancillaries. Really, we have the people coming. They know who we are. They trust us. And our customers in the research told us that they want to buy everything in one place. So that gives us really strong conviction and that what we're doing is right. How we think about that in terms of where could that figure go, you know, I won't be drawn on terms of what we've got as an internal targets, et cetera, on that now, but it's safe to say booking per, you know, revenue per booking, it's a key metric that this business is motivated around, and we think there's significant upside into that, and that's why we have outlined that in terms of where we can get to in our FY30 strategy.

Just one final one if I could. Just in terms of overrides, I appreciate you've been a much more domestically skewed business where there's less propensity or opportunity around overrides, but obviously now you're pushing your international, presumably it's opened up a more profitable channel for flights. How far down that route are you? Is it an area that was a little bit underdeveloped in terms of maximising that previously? Just interested in how big an opportunity is driving more overrides on the flight side. Now you're getting a bigger international mix and probably ability to partner with a larger group of international airlines.

Yeah, spot on. There's been so much shift, I think, in overrides post-COVID. You know, and domestic, you know, really sort of reduced dramatically in terms of overrides. And there's an overall sort of shift, I think, in that market. You know, it's a known in the airline industry that overrides are still far more attractive for international. And we've spoken about before that an international booking to us is far more valuable, significantly so, than a domestic booking. So, you know, in terms of our focus on that piece, you know, we have a variety of methods of how we engage with the airlines and a variety of the revenue streams, and we're looking at each individual one of those and how we optimize those and work with our partners to optimize it.

Okay. Fantastic. Thank you.

I think I've got time. Yes, thanks, Operator. I think we've got time for one more. It turns out we're very popular right now and have a very full day of engagement, so I think we've got time for one more.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Wei-Ring Chen with RBC Capital Markets.

Hey, Wei-Ring, how are you? hey good good my team thanks for letting me be the last question um i guess um no one um i guess my questions around a third airline in australia no one i guess today has found a way to viably run one how does webjet win if um the domestic market remains a duopoly and does your fy30 sort of ambitions make any assumptions around um you know more competition re-entering the domestic market

Look, our FY30 plan does not make any assumptions around a third airline. But we welcome more competition. So we'd love to see that. But we haven't assumed that at all. I think you've got to come back to why do people continue to use Webjet. We have a distinct competitive advantage in offering choice and convenience. So, you know, the ability to fly up on one airline and fly back on another and have that on one ticket and do that really fast. you know, is highly convenient for customers and that's why they choose us. It's the easiest way to find the best value on any route. I think what, you know, we have added into our FY30 planning, you have to think about is loyalty. If we're honest with ourselves, this is an area that we need to play a bit of catch up on and that's why we're really investing in that strategy and how do we make our customers really sticky and stay with us. And the second piece to that that I think you can think about is the business travel. You know, those customers have a much higher frequency of booking, so a much higher lifetime value. And it turns out we do business travel. We just do it in a fairly unstructured manner. So we're moving there to a more structured capacity, and we think that'll give us considerable upside as well.

Cool, cool. And then just one more if I can.

Go on, wait, you can be cheeky. Go ahead, you have one more.

There was a reported merger offer in the media. So philosophically, does a merger make sense to you? Like, I guess, Hello World, their core is offline leisure travel, DMC, wholesaling. Does that have any synergies with Webjet?

Look, I think those are questions for Hello World. And I can tell you there's no proposal on the table from Hello World right now. But the board, we engage with all our shareholders and we consider any proposal that's put to us. Our job is to maximize value for shareholders, so that's always front of mind.

Thank you.

All right, back to you, operator. Lastly, thank you everybody so much for dialing in this morning. A solid result, and we look forward to talking with you in due course.