Camplify Holdings Limited (CHL.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome on board, everyone, to another Sharewise webinar. I hope this summer has been treating you very well. And today, we are very fortunate to be welcomed by Justin. Justin, of course, he is the CEO of CHL, and we're going to be working with him for the next 20 minutes, learning all about his business. And of course, any questions, leave them in the chat below. Otherwise, Justin, how has the morning been treating you so far? I know we had a brief chat about it a couple of minutes ago.

Yes, very well. Thanks, James. Thanks for having me coming into the busy season for caravans and campervan rentals in the Southern Hemisphere. So we're full on getting ready for the upcoming Christmas period. Our busiest day of the year for bookings traditionally in Australia and New Zealand has been the 26th of December. So all ready to go for lots of vehicles on the road and lots of bookings coming.

Excellent. Well, that's great timing. Well, Justin, I know you had a webinar to share. And any questions from anyone in the group, feel free to ask. And at the end, we'll have a Q&A. Otherwise, sit back, relax and enjoy. And Justin, take it away when you're ready.

Thanks, James. So today, I'm just going to run you through a bit of a background into CHL, what it is that we do, how we do it and kind of where we've been and going to at the moment. So we're really -- we think of ourselves as a platform to connect owners of vehicles with hirers of vehicles and provide everything that those 2 parties need to be able to connect together and enable a rental. So we're really the glue that holds all that transaction together. So we provide the full service from management of the rental insurances, manage payments, provide contracts and obviously provide the platform that goes along with that. So without us, those 2 parties really can't connect together and enable that transaction to occur. So we're on a mission to create the world's best platform, connecting hirers and owners and to enable thousands and thousands, if not millions of hirers to be able to experience the joys of the caravan camping lifestyle without the need to own one and for owners of vehicles, who traditionally only use their vehicles for around 4 weeks of the year to be able to leverage them more effectively to get a return from that vehicle. So we have a number of brands that we operate. Our first brand was Camplify, obviously, we started that here in Australia. We've expanded that brand into Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K. We then acquired a business called PaulCamper, which operates in Germany, Australia and Netherlands. So through all those countries still primary country is Australia, second biggest market, Germany, followed by New Zealand and U.K. We also have a company called Rent a Tent. Rent a Tent operates just in Australia. It's the largest owner of our own fleet of tents that we provide in a business-to-business environment to customers predominantly for festivals. So we've got thousands of tents going out to festivals over the next couple of weeks as we roll those into events like Beyond The Valley and numerous other ones that occur over the Christmas and New Year period. So just sort of stepping through, I guess, what are these kind of that we do versus what our customers do. So if we talk -- just talk through, I guess, our owners of vehicles, and we've referred to them as owners on the vehicle side. So they provide their vehicle for rent. So they provide their vehicle for rent. They set whatever pricing they want. They set whatever rental type they want. So that could be self-drive. So if you've got a motorhome, for example, could be self tow. So if someone wants to pick up a caravan and drive it away or could be drop off. So we also do lots and lots of drop off through the platform, particularly in Australia, where owners of vehicles will take that vehicle to site and serve it all up for that higher, I was just talking another day to 1 of our customers who has 21 caravans on our platform, and they do 70% drop off. At the moment, this time of year, constantly ferrying vehicles to caravan parks within sort of about 50 to 100 kilometers of their location and setting those up for customers to be able to rent through the platform. So they utilize the Camplify PaulCamper services to be able to enable that, the purchase insurance through us to provide protection for that transaction and then they purchase additional goods and services that they need. So we do sell some products to those customers to enable that process to occur. On the hirer side, they obviously pay for their rental through the platform. They also chose a rental protection so that could include travel insurance, reduction in liability. So to take their liability, for example, down from $3,000 to $500 on a daily basis. We provide some goods and services to those products -- to those customers as well. We provide roadside assistance, customer support and that rental protection. So on both sides of the marketplace, we're trying to make sure that all parties are taken care of. So if we sort of step through what that means in terms of our revenue. So we take a commission on every rental that occurs through the platform, and we do that on both sides of the marketplace, both the hires and the owners pay us a commission. And those commission rates vary based on market, based on vehicle types, rental types and also the type of membership that an owner has through our platform. We then also provide that liability waiver, we refer to it as accident -- excess reduction, from a hirer perspective. So they will choose a product that suits them those prices start at around about $15 a day, go all the way up to about $65, $75 per day depending on the market and the vehicle type. In Australia and New Zealand, we have 55% of our customers choose a product upgrade to be able to include in that product. In Europe, it's around sort of 40% that choose one of those products. as an additional product or service. We then provide the owner with some protection products as well. So that could include just a daily cover, so they may pay somewhere in the vicinity of $20 to $65 a day to have their vehicle protected from a rental perspective, so that would include damage, theft, et cetera. but a lot of our customers choose to take what we call premium membership. So premium membership is more of an all-inclusive product, which provides for them unlimited rental, public liability and also a personal cover so that they actually can have a comprehensive product that provides them with full cover for both personal usage and as well. So in Australia and New Zealand, we have, in total, around about 6,000 customers in that pool, premium membership, and that's growing, and I'll talk a little bit more about that and what we've done to make some changes to that product. a little bit later. So our platform is fully built in-house. It's a proprietary tech stack. It provides a full solution for both sides of the party to engage connect. We verified payments processing, insurance management, damage cover, et cetera. That's all built in Australia in our offices in Newcastle and is continually evolving to provide that best-in-class product performance. So from some changes that we've made recently, we now have 1 single global platform. So every single site on the same platform. We've created standardized approach for that with a global experience with multiple front ends that we have in different locations and that allows us to provide centralized data system and insights around that. We've reduced a lot of our complexity in the last couple of years to have that simplification of system, which allows us to create single teams as well, and really structured our ability to have flexible streamline approaches to scale and grow through the platform. We've invested quite significantly into AI over the last couple of years. So we're now using AI to recognize patterns in behavior for customers on the platform, both owners and hirers, using AI quite heavily to actually develop new systems and approaches for us as well, but probably the most important thing that we are doing right now with AI is how we can enhance the customer's performance with us. So actually solving tickets for customers through AI, which allows us to, as we grow in the future to maintain a lower customer service base. And we've seen that that's actually worked very well for customers and that they're quite happy with the way that those AI agents are performing both voice bots and also chat bots as well. And really solving the customer's problems quite quickly. So looking at our customers from an owner perspective, our topline is on average $40,000 per vehicle gross and the average earning around $12,000. So we have some customers that will be using it more as a really active fleet management. So like that customer mentioned that has around 40 of the vehicles and some that will just use it every now and again to rent out. So they might just rent out their vehicle at Easter and Christmas, for example. So we have a little range of different types of customers, that provide the vehicle to us. We have those small fleets. We have around about -- probably around 200 to 300 of those customers that have multiple vehicles for the platforms. And I think the largest on there might have 50. So fleet management at that larger end is real change for us to being able to provide the ability for them to grow and service their customers and provide that real super host experience through the platform. Our customers have high distribution. So one of the reasons I started the business is because I couldn't find an RV to rent myself in the Newcastle region. So living regionally and that most of the RV rental companies were centered around airport pickup. And so now we've been able to create this distribution of all different types in a highly distributed environment so that people can find something in their local neighborhood and look at the exact vehicle that they want to rent and create that transaction through the platform. So we do provide a very safe and secure environment. We provide verifications of vehicles and of hirers. We provide all the protection products in place so that both sides of the party are as protected as we can be through that. We provide a very cost-effective vehicle compared to the traditional rental environment. So for example, coming into the busy season in New Zealand right now, we would see that some of the top vehicles that are owned and run by rental agencies such as Tourism Holdings Limited would be upwards of $600-plus per day to rent, whereas our vehicles are probably averaging sort of more $350 to $450 per day. So we are a lot more cost-effective solution for hirers. In total on the platform, so in Australia, we have around 14,000 vehicles. In total, we have around 34,000, 35,000 vehicles for rent globally. We really provide lots of different options for hirers. So looking at our Board, we have a really great mix of experience in the Board. So myself is the founder, our Chair, Andrew McEvoy, is also the Chair of Luxury Escapes is a former CEO, Managing Director of Tourism Australia. So a lot of tourism experience. Karl Trouchet was the founder of Apollo, who was one of the largest providers of rental fleet globally. We've now merged with CHL. John Myler is our insurance expert. So he was former CEO of Auto & General, RACQ Insurance, Allianz Global Partners. Mike Rosenbaum is our marketplace expert. So he was the Board of Directors for [indiscernible]. He was a former founder of DealsDirect of car parking marketplaces and the new name. So he has a huge amount of digital marketplace experience. So we've got a very good solid mix on the Board of all the skill sets that we're looking for. Our executive team, experienced executive team, Brett Edwards, our CFO. He has around about 15 years listed company CFO experience. He was in Kip McGrath before joining us. Jeremy Gupta, the CTO of car sales classifieds platform before joining us. Sato Howard has a huge experience in tourism and digital products and platform. So really good leadership team in executive. Looking at FY'25, we really structured the business with the ability to scale and grow. So we completed the rollout of our ANZ MyWay Mutual and I'll go into a little bit more detail about that in a second. So that launched on the 1st of May. So we're still pretty much in the infancy of that product right now. But developing that quite significantly to really power the business to be able to grow. We improved our marketing efficiencies quite significantly. So we've seen a huge increase in owner engagement, booking conversion rates from top of funnel right through to pay bookings. And we have been able to dramatically reduce our marketing expenses. So in many cases, reducing that expenses by around 50% of cost, but still maintaining momentum and seeing that continue. We've really invested in AI systems as I mentioned before. We've reconstructed our leadership team as well. We felt as though we're a little bit underpowered in that and we actually had a new structure in the Board and the leadership team to be able to position the business very well. We've launched our Club Camplify and I'll get into that in a second. And we've really focused on finance improvements and reporting. From a systems perspective, we've integrated central management of our entire system, including CMS, Global Finance systems, new CRM implemented new payment gateway systems. So we've really structured the business very well to take advantage of the next period. From a key metrics perspective, we were a little bit down on PCP basis from the previous year. That really was a result of a completion of government contracts that we had for temporary accommodation as well as some business lines that we turned off that really were profitable, so we've really focused in on profitability and making sure that everything we do from a core operation perspective is profitable moving forward and that we're not just looking at transaction growth for the sake of it that we are actually very structured in terms of profitability moving into FY '26 and seeing that from there that we've been in a position to relook at growth and look at how we can improve those systems and processes there. From a fleet perspective, as I mentioned, our 35,000, we closed the year with. From a membership perspective, we closed the year around sort of 53,000. So we're really looking at growing that core membership base and looking at more fleet on the platform being a paid member that we provide that full membership to which includes those protection products as the [indiscernible] through Mutual. We closed the year up on future bookings. So future bookings for us is the pipeline of the coming year. So how are we going to actually look at the bookings that were transacted, but not taking place yet. So we're always looking at building that future bookings pipeline as we go in, that's really a key health metric for us. From a priorities perspective for FY '26, it was really around, as I mentioned, profitability, being cash flow positive, continuing to build fleet and maintain our core cost control, particularly through employee benefits, marketing, insurance, et cetera. So we've really done some great work around that, cut our employee benefits quite significantly, cut our marketing costs quite significantly, and cut some of the insurance costs as well. So overall, we've done some stellar work on cost controls, management and then enabling the business to be set up for future growth. Just moving on to our most recent news, which is our JB Group strategic partnership. So the JB group has come on as a strategic shareholder, they bought into business, and we do a placement with them to become a key shareholder. So they're one of the largest, if not the largest manufacturer of vehicles in the Australian market. They own brands such as JB, New Age, Paradise, Traveller, [indiscernible]. So lots and lots of different brands. They also have their own dealerships. So they own around 13 dealerships themselves, last have a network of around another 30% on top of that. And that's spread out through Australia and New Zealand. So we're in the process at the moment of rolling out our Club Camplify products. So that's our membership product to all of their locations as well as launching our managed services to their locations as well. So that will mean that from an owner perspective, you no longer have to do everything yourself. You can give the vehicle over to us. We can place that one of the depots -- and then it's a hands-off approach that we'll actually do the management with the customers through the platform and the new vehicle we looked after for you at 1 of those JB locations.

Sorry just interrupt Justin, That's a really exciting news with JB Group. And I certainly have this question coming on board, having a look at the presentations that you guys have on your website. Do you mind explaining, Justin why CHL decided to undertake their strategic partnership with JB Group.

Yes, for sure. So for a couple of reasons. Number one, we've built this mutual and this Club product, which now allows us to be able to effectively provide an insurance type solution to anyone who owns an RV in the Australian or New Zealand market, which means you no longer just have to be a rental customer. You can actually -- we can service any customer now through that. So this provides us with a distribution channel for that product, and we can actually provide that product as an option to any of those customers, who buy a vehicle through the JB Group. Overall, that network of dealerships makes up probably around sort of 30% to 40% of all sales of vehicles in the Australian market. So most customers who are looking at insurance do that at time of purchase. So this really is a key for us being able to get distribution of that product. We know that, that insurance is the biggest question that owners ask us and it is a blocker sometimes to listing on the platform. So we've built this product with the enablement that allows us to provide that to anyone and anyone who wants to come on to the marketplace and do that through that process. So it's a really strategic way for us to be able to really roll it out to a big customer group. Managed Services is another real key for us. So it's been something that we've also seen as a blocker to customers that lots of people who own RVs are interested in renting but they [indiscernible], they don't have the right location to do it. They're not interested in doing personal engagement with a hirer, so if you think about it, the same as if we asked anyone who owns a rental property that you had to manage it yourself, how many rentals would actually occur, I think it would be dramatically reduced. And so this provides a way for that real hands-off approach. And eventually, as we look to incorporate some of their dealer network as well as their locations, and we could end up with somewhere in the vicinity of 20 or 30 depots around Australia where customers can pick up and drop off vehicles too. And so that for us is a real strategic game changer in terms of distribution and growth of vehicles on platforms. So as well as a bunch of other things that they bring to the party around different assets they own and a real strategic backing the partnership that really enables us, we think, to have a real unlock in the Australian market.

And those depots sound really, really exciting, especially to increase market share for yourself. So I guess, ultimately, and you have touched on managed services and the key distribution through JB Group. What ultimately, Justin, does the partnership mean for CHL moving forward?

Yes. So I think from our perspective, we do look at them as they're a growing business. They're running lots of lots of brands. They've got a really fantastic leadership group and privately owned as well. So they've been really forthcoming in engagement with us seeing how we can really grow these products. And so that's we want to get back into the Australian market is growth of products like our Club product, see that as great [indiscernible] really bring more and more people onto the platform as well as when you go to -- most people in Australia [indiscernible] show, so you go to a caravan-camping show. At their shows, every single day they sell will have an offer for the Club. It will have a sticker on it, which tells you how much you can actually earn on Camplify. So that integrated sales process with one of the biggest dealer networks and manufacturers in Australia, we think is a really important part of how we can improve and grow the Australian business in New Zealand, but I saved a couple of dealers in New Zealand. And we can also partner with them on lots of other future opportunities through the businesses as well. So it's a really key milestone, we believe, in terms of our future inflection points.

That does seem like a key milestone for CHL, briefly just touching off the back of New Zealand as well as Australia. What does the wider membership offering look like for not just Australia but also New Zealand as well, Justin?

Yes. So we really designed this product to be appealing to anyone that owns RV. So we provide the basics of comprehensive cover for personal. It also includes rental protection. So collision with fire, theft or that kind of stuff, third-party property damage enabling you to be able to use it for rental as well. So in Australia, really, there's only 1 insurer that says other than the club product that says, yes, you can rent it. Most others, if you decide, well, I might just want to list it. I might not want to take rental, but I also want the flexibility to do that in some cases. Most insurers will just say no, offer that. So there's give flexibility to the customers to be able to look at that. We also then get discounts on fuel, camp grounds, RV sales, retail products. We get a membership to the largest RV community in Australia, which is the caravan motor and [indiscernible] Australia. And there's also lots of tax benefits to that as well. So it's a product that's really designed for the RV owner and we would like to see that, that really becomes a great alternative to other traditional insurance products such as the [indiscernible] or NRMA, et cetera. So we're excited about what we can do with that product in the next 12 months.

Sounds excellent and definitely sounds flexible for those using Club Camplify. Very excited to see what next year holds.

Yes, absolutely. I think really now that we've got that great distribution with JB, it really allows us to be able to look at how we can grow that product. It really creates a retail member offering, which is really key for us, and it creates a new revenue stream as well. So we've been doing a membership style product for quite some years, but it allows us to be able to create more products, create better distribution and create that recurring revenue in the business as well as the marketplace. So they're really a hand-in-glove approach and this process and getting to this point has probably been a couple of years and are making to get there. So we're excited about where it's currently at.

Excellent.

So look, that's probably my summary and happy to answer some questions. But really, in the last 12 months, our business underlying is an improved business. We've got a better team, better tech stack. We've got better systems and structure. We've got a better approach to marketing, and we've launched this member-led approach as well as now our key strategic shareholder that's come on to the register most recent times as well.

Very, very exciting, Justin. And there may be a few questions in the Q&A sector. And for those that are still watching, feel free to type in a question. Otherwise, I'll kick off with that. Justin, just having a look at your previous slide looking to integrate 1st of May, I believe it was.

Yes, correct. So we launched that product on the 1st of May. So we've been trading that product now for a few months. And the 12-month performance of that product is important to us. So we're really managing that product quite closely to make sure the claims approach is excellent, make sure that we've got the right pricing in place that our systems are really bulletproof. So that's an ongoing process, but doing well so far.

Yes. Terrific. And on the 1st of May, you're obviously getting ready for that time to come. How quickly do you anticipate this will accelerate the fleet growth for CHL and ultimately benefit the company's state of goal of margin expansion?

Yes. So we're already seeing some margin expansion through that product at the moment. Really for us, we need a full 12 months of portfolio performance of that to see how we go from a loss ratio perspective. but we do expect to see some improvement in terms of GP in this financial year. And then from there integrating with partners and actually starting to provide that through the sales process with some of our partners like JB Group is key to being able to see how we can then expand that product and get it in front of customers and introduce it to them. And then we will see -- we expect that a proportion of those will filter through to the listing process and actually become marketplace customers. But it also allows us to answer questions at the top of funnel for someone who's thinking about listening and introduce that product to them upfront as well as an alternative to a traditional insurer. So we think that it will improve our conversion rate of customers coming on to the platform overall as well as how we can improve the overall fleet.

Yes. And when it comes to the overall fleet, we just had a question come in. And Justin, what the viewer is asking is to we've talked a lot about what's being achieved here in Australia and New Zealand. Do you mind touching on what's happening with PaulCamper over in Europe just briefly?

Yes, for sure. So I think the key for our business is we are extremely seasonal. So we're basically opposite season. So Australia and New Zealand is a lot happens kind of mid-October through until Easter. And then in Europe, things start in Easter slowly and build into that summer period. And they have all of their transactions essentially happening in 3 months of that summer period. So when we first acquired that business, they were operating in an environment that really was in 3 stages. So planning, booking and travel and so we follow that same dynamic effectively. So we're in kind of the planning stages now for the booking period, which will start in sort of February, March for the upcoming season. So Australia is always sort of 6 to 12 months in front of year from a product perspective, so the club products, so we are looking to launch both club in Europe as well with then some tests in products over there for the last 12 months but now that we have a structure that we have we can actually start to look at how we can roll that into the Europeane Market and provide better products in the market for customers and we think that's the real [indiscernible] for them. We have been really focused on lifting owner engagement and booking conversion rates in those markets and we are seeing those results. So we have been able to see top of funnel in traffic through the paid bookings increase. And we've been able to show improvements in owner engagement scores as well as Trustpilot scores in those markets. So we're getting ready for that upcoming travel season that's going to occur in H2 with them.

Absolutely terrific, Justin, and those Trustpilot reviews and engagements, I'm sure will push the business forward. And we've actually just received another question from Varesh, one of our viewers. And Varesh asked, Justin, can you start showing advanced bookings for PaulCamper as well? However, if you can keep -- you can keep that figure separate if you don't want to consolidate?

Yes. So when we actually took over that business, they recognize revenue in a different way. So [indiscernible] the revenue recognized at the time of booking as opposed to time of travels, that's why we don't provide future bookings for PaulCamper because [indiscernible] revenue recognition. That is something that we are looking at in terms of when and how we changed that revenue recognition so that we can really focus on how we can provide more consolidated approach to similar figures in every region. [indiscernible]

Absolutely excellent. And then just lastly, another question that's come in. It just briefly asks, Justin, when can we see us [indiscernible] from both operations from that cash flow perspective. And of course, we want to make sure we've got enough on our books.

Yes, for sure. So I guess 2 things. We closed the quarter Q1 in positive cash flow, not a huge positive, but definitely positive cash flow environment. We obviously did the capital raise in placement in the following quarter. So that plus busy season for us we do expect to be in a cash flow positive environment as well. And really for the year, we're focused on how we can be cash flow positive for the full year and profitability for the full year. We are a very seasonal business. So if you look at last year, for example, H1 for us, I think we recorded a loss of about $6.5 million in H2, then that loss came in, I think on paper at about sort of $1.2 million. And there was actually some adjustments from previous year. So probably arguably in the second half, we will breakeven versus the loss in the first half. So for us, it's about how do we get as close to breakeven as possible in the first half and adjust that swing from $6.5 million loss through to as close to breakeven as possible and then look at how we can be then in profit for the second half, and that's really our objective.

It sounds like an excellent objective, and I'm sure everyone that's watching is really excited to see how the partnership with JB Group looks to blossom come next year on the 1st of May. Now if anyone has any other questions, feel free to put them in the chat. Otherwise, Justin, we really appreciate all your time here, not just on behalf of Sharewise, but for all those watching -- and everyone that's watching have an excellent Christmas, excellent summer. If there are no more questions to come in, we thank you for coming on board, Justin, and wish you the absolute best for the next year. Justin, take care, everyone, with CHL and a terrific rest of your day. Thank you for coming on board, Justin.

Thank you.