EVT Limited (EVT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the EVT Limited Half Year Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Jane Hastings, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. Before we get started, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I'm speaking to you from this morning, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I'd like to pay my respects to elders past and present, and I'd like to acknowledge any and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today. We'll start by looking at group performance for the first half. Group normalized revenue was $683.8 million, up 5.4% on prior year, driven by Hotels and Resorts, Entertainment Germany and Thredbo. Group normalized EBITDA was $105.1 million, up $5.5 million. The record performance of our Hotels division was achieved despite the impact of temporary works disruption at QT Gold Coast and QT Queenstown. And adjusting for these, underlying Hotels earnings were up 15.6%. We completed the acquisition of the Pro-Invest Hotels management company in December, which adds a third pillar to our hotel growth strategy with Connect Hospitality. Further to this, as part of our ongoing review of our owned property portfolio, we announced the acquisition of QT Auckland in December, recycling capital from the sale of Rydges Geelong into the strategic key city asset. We continue to progress our fewer better cinema strategy. In terms of fewer, we had 8 less cinemas in this half compared to prior year. In terms of better, we completed key premiumization projects, expanding our IMAX and ScreenX footprint at key locations, including Marion, Innaloo, Fountain Gate and Loganholme. Our premium offering is now at around 40% of our circuit. Our net debt at 31st of December, 2025 was $415.5 million. The group's debt facility matures in May '26, and the refinancing is well progressed. There remains significant capacity and debt headroom for the group to consider other opportunities as they arise. The balance sheet remains strong and we're well positioned for future growth. The continuing improvements in the earnings profile and the outlook for the future has resulted in the Board declaring a fully franked interim dividend of $0.18 per share, which will be paid in March. I'll comment further on the outlook at the end of the presentation. But in summary, we expect the second half to achieve EBITDA growth on prior year, subject to film performance, June weather at Thredbo and general market conditions. Turning now to the results overview. As mentioned, normalized EBITDA was up -- was $105.1 million, up 5.5%, driven by a record Hotels division of $56 million EBITDA. With more favorable winter conditions, Thredbo delivered EBITDA growth of 30.8%. Whilst the Entertainment Australia and New Zealand results were impacted by what we're terming a patchy Hollywood film lineup, the Entertainment Germany result was very strong, driven by local content with EBITDA up 54.1%. As expected, the property result fell $1.7 million following the successful sale of the group's investment property at 418 Adelaide Street, Brisbane. Group unallocated expenses were marginally above prior year, but despite continued market cost challenges and reinvestment into new areas remained below the prior year and FY '19 on an underlying basis. Reported net profit after tax was $37.8 million, up $6.7 million or 21.6%. Turning now to the Entertainment division. As said, the Hollywood film lineup for the first half was mixed. The German result was much stronger, thanks to local film content that's really appealing to local audiences. Therefore, overall admissions for the Entertainment Group were down 4.1% on the prior year. We continue to deploy strategies to maintain, and where possible, grow average admission price and spend per head. As mentioned, our fewer better strategy is progressing really well. We continue to right size our circuit with 8 fewer cinema locations compared to the prior half. To date, we've exited over 30 locations, saving the group more than $80 million of capital expenditure with very limited impact on market share and positive impact on earnings. Our targeted investment in premium experiences at the right locations continues to demonstrate the immediate positive impact of customers willing to spend more. To illustrate the performance of the film lineup, this is a new slide which compares the first half of the current year with the prior comparable first half. It's important to note that this is only a snapshot of blockbuster releases in the Australian market that have delivered more than $15 million at the Australian box office, and there are hundreds of other titles released every year. We had a strong start in July with key titles, including Jurassic World Rebirth, Superman and Apple's Formula One, all delivering results. August was tougher with the prior comparable period, including the outstanding performance of Deadpool & Wolverine, which was the #1 film in the prior year. And this was followed by one of the weakest October months on record. In Germany, we benefited from the local content Kanu des Manitu, which had great audience appeal and other local films. Avatar: Fire and Ash and Wicked: For Good assisted in a stronger finish to the year. Both titles underperformed their previous titles in the respective series. Whilst Avatar: Fire and Ash materially underperformed 22's Avatar: The Way of Water, it is still on track to be the 12th highest grossing film of all time with $56 million, noting the prior was $94 million. Still a huge hit by any standards. This was still the top-performing film, ranking third in the top 5 films for 2025 at the Australian box office, despite only 13 days of trading. Across the EVT Australian circuit, visitation relative to the previous film increased from under 24-year-old audiences, and families had the smallest decline in attendance. Unfortunately, it was the older audiences, and repeat visits were down 25.7% for that film. However, overall, the EVT team achieved an outstanding 48% market share for Avatar: Fire and Ash in Australian markets where we operate. Wicked: For Good has now grossed $34 million, around 30% below the prior film, but still a strong result and a top 3 film for the half, ranking 5th in the top 10 films for 2025. There was strong demand for this film, demonstrated by materially higher pre-sales and the first 3 days of opening saw a strong increase on the previous film. However, customer reviews post-opening then saw a sharper decline than expected. In contrast, Zootopia 2 is on track to double the box office of the first Zootopia and is the 6th biggest animated film of all time at the global box office. Family visitation across our circuit increased year-on-year. The prior half included Deadpool & Wolverine, which, due to its rating, did not attract families. As a result of the higher family mix of admissions, we had to apply effective strategies to mitigate the impact on food and beverage and spend per head. Looking by market, in Australia, whilst admissions decreased 9.4%, revenue is only down 3.7%. EBITDA fell 22.4%. Continued strong cost management mitigated most inflationary pressures, but the gaps in the release schedule impacted on admissions, resulting in the base operating models not being able to fully offset the costs. We also achieved the Australian result with 5 fewer locations. And during the half, we exited Morley in Perth and handed back 10 screens to the landlord at Marion in outer Adelaide. In Australia, based on the current circuit, the group expects to still deliver pre-COVID EBITDA on 70% of pre-COVID admissions. In New Zealand, admissions were down 5.2%, revenue fell by 9.7%. And whilst costs were really well controlled, EBITDA declined to a loss of $1.6 million. This included the partial closure of Event Cinemas Manukau, a top 5 New Zealand location, due to a leaking roof. We still expect the New Zealand market to be profitable when the film supply normalizes. Germany truly demonstrates the leverage we have when the film lineup appeals to audiences. Admissions were up 2.9%, and with yield growth, revenue is up 17.4%. Demonstrating our strong operating leverage, this drove an exceptional EBITDA growth of 54.1%. Our revenue strategies underpin the spend metrics we've achieved, as you can see here. As I mentioned earlier, we had a higher mix of family admissions in the half, and families tend to spend a little less on food and beverage with smaller sizes, so holding spend per head at record levels is a great result. I want to note that the New Zealand results were impacted more by the closure of Manukau, as I referenced earlier. Looking ahead, the second half started well with January delivering strong growth on the prior January, driven by the contribution from Avatar, The Housemaid and Zootopia 2. EVT's Entertainment group revenue for January was up 37.9% on the prior January and EBITDA grew 355% to $11.1 million. February is expected to be like or below the prior February with the only major title being the release of Wuthering Heights. We're optimistic that in March, the Ryan Gosling film Project Hail Mary, another solid Amazon release, can find a wide audience. The balance of the half looks stronger overall than the final quarter of the prior year with potential blockbusters including The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Toy Story 5, Minions & Monsters and Supergirl. Now turning to Thredbo. After 2 poor winters in '23 and '24, we enjoyed better winter conditions in 2025. We also benefited from the installation of an all-weather snow factory on Friday Flat, providing the ability to make snow at 20 degrees Celsius and provide more consistent snow conditions in this area. Summer trade started really well in November and December with revenue up 17.9% on the prior comparable period. This was driven by mountain biking visitation up 15%, supported by good tourist ride visitation up 37%. For the half, Thredbo's revenue was up 19.5% and EBITDA was up 30.9%. However, after a strong start in January, visitation was impacted by concerns in relation to bushfires in the region, reducing visitation by around 25% in the month when compared to the prior January. We're preparing to invest in snow factories over the next 3 to 4 years. And the intention is to focus on the Golden Triangle, which is deemed critical so that customers consider Thredbo as open and would provide a skiing and snowboarding product in even the most marginal of years. I also want to congratulate the Thredbo team for being recognized for the 9th year in a row as Australia's best ski resort, which is an incredible achievement for the team. Turning now to property and development. We have a strong property portfolio valued at around $2.3 billion. Our property strategy is to own hotel properties in key city locations that will support the asset-light growth of our hotel portfolio. We continue to divest non-core properties to recycle capital into hotel growth initiatives, including the previously announced sale of Rydges Geelong, the proceeds of which will assist in funding the acquisition of QT Auckland. As our hotel growth strategy evolves, we'll continue to review the merits of each hotel property we own and consider divestment of properties that may no longer be strategically required. In relation to our Sydney CBD properties, for 525 George Street, the sale process continues with interest from several parties, with the timing subject to ongoing negotiations. The previously announced strategic review of the George and Market Street property precinct is well progressed, and the outcome will be announced later this year. In summary, our focus is on unlocking the value of these properties to drive enhanced returns from our hotels portfolio. Turning now to hotels. The Hotels division has delivered another record result despite the disruption of the temporary works at QT Gold Coast and Queenstown, and as mentioned, the underlying result was EBITDA was up 15.6%. Overall, for our owned hotels, occupancy was up 2 points to 80.9%, whilst average room rates were up 4% to $234, driving a record RevPAR result, up 5.6% to $189. The half year benefited from strong events, including the Lions Rugby Tour in July and August and the Ashes Cricket in November and December. We are really excited about the growth we can generate from our 3 pillar hotel strategy, which I'll reference a little bit more later. And with Connect Hospitality now launched and the integration well progressed, we're generating good interest in the market. In the second half, with the range of hotel growth initiatives, including the contribution from Connect Hospitality, the acquisition of QT Auckland, the first phase rooms coming online at the upgraded QT Queenstown, which will be late April, partially offset by the ongoing impact of works at QT Queenstown and QT Gold Coast and divestment of Geelong, we expect the second half to deliver modest growth on the second half of the prior financial year. However, all of these initiatives are expected to benefit the next financial year in the order of circa $35 million EBITDA, of which $17 million will be incremental. Each of our key hotel brands achieved record RevPAR results. Rydges RevPAR was up 9.2% on prior year, an outstanding result, QT RevPAR up 3.8% and Atura up 5.3%. Our brands are continuing to deliver more than their fair market share. As mentioned, our hotel strategy has evolved. We now have established 3 strategic pillars for growth. The first pillar is via our owned EVT brands, including QT, Rydges, Atura and LyLo. We'll drive growth of owned brands by targeting a wider range of market segments, such as entering the lifestyle budget market with LyLo, for which we've secured planning approvals for new locations in Fremantle and Gold Coast. We're also committed to innovation, such as the new cozy room concepts that we launched in the half at Atura Adelaide Airport. We'll grow by entering new markets, as we have recently with QT Singapore and Rydges Resort Wailoaloa Beach in Fiji, which is now starting construction. We continue to build our brands and relationships in Southeast Asia and are opening doors for new opportunities into the future. We'll also continue to increase the asset value of our owned hotels. For example, the upgrade of Rydges Melbourne has produced impressive results, and we are now undertaking a significant upgrade of Rydges Queenstown to be rebranded as QT, which will significantly contribute to future growth in hotel earnings. The second pillar for growth is via our independent collection. This is where we are designing and creating a brand, an independent brand, that the asset owner owns because they seek to retain ownership of brand IP and leverage our capabilities. We developed this concept a few years ago, and this group has grown to 20 properties. And now we have our third pillar, EVT Connect Hospitality, which enables the management of a third-party brand when an asset owner chooses to franchise an existing brand and leverage our capabilities. Our announcement to launch EVT Connect Hospitality, and at the same time accelerate the strategy with the acquisition of the Pro-Invest business, is an important component of our hotel growth plan. The third-party hotel management model is very well established globally and represents a new pillar for asset-light hotel growth for EVT. The Pro-Invest Hotels acquisition was completed in December and includes 15 long-term hotel management agreements under franchise agreements with major global brands with around 3,200 rooms across Australia and New Zealand. We expect the acquisition to deliver annual EBITDA of $8 million to $9 million, and it has started well with strong trading performance in December and in January. Importantly, it also establishes a scalable platform that supports the ongoing growth of the Connect Hospitality portfolio. Underpinning our strategy is a significant investment in AI. Partnering with leading external experts, we're deploying AI chat and voice agents, advancing AI search and generative engine optimization and moving into agentic commerce that can really make sure that we are at the leading edge of leveraging AI across our divisions. In an Australian first with Mastercard, we demonstrated secure agentic payments, enabling AI agents to transact on a guest's behalf, marking a major step toward a seamless, low-friction booking experience. Needless to say, we're fully engaged in exploring all that AI can do to enhance our growth strategy. So we've now grown the hotel portfolio to 99 hotels and nearly 16,000 rooms, making EVT the second largest hotel operator in Australia and New Zealand. We added the George Hotel, Brisbane, and the Radisson Flagstaff in Melbourne to the managed hotel portfolio. The Flagstaff will be upgraded this year and is due to open as Rydges Flagstaff Gardens towards the end of the 2026 calendar year. We also secured a new food and beverage venue management agreement at Wellington Airport, extending our food and beverage capabilities beyond our front door. We've also secured a pipeline of new owned brand hotels joining the group in the near future. Excited to announce the opening of Atura Oran Park in 2027, QT Parramatta, Rydges Tauranga in '28 and Rydges Wailoaloa Beach also expected to open in '28. We were delighted to announce just before Christmas that we acquired QT Auckland, a 150-room premium lifestyle hotel located centrally in Auckland's Viaduct Precinct for NZD 87.5 million. We also announced the sale of Rydges Geelong for AUD 24.5 million, which completed in January. This acquisition secures one of our flagship QT hotels and will act as a key feeder hotel for QT Queenstown. The transaction is expected to settle early next month. I mentioned the upgrade of QT Queenstown earlier. This is truly an exceptional and unique property, situated in one of the best locations in one of the strongest local markets. The first phase of the upgraded rooms will come online in late April, that's 65 rooms, with all works due to be completed by 2027, which will give us another 164 new QT rooms in total. The conferencing area is arguably the best in Queenstown. And our new wellness suites launching in Phase 3 of this project will set a new standard for accommodation in this market. And we continue to innovate. You'll all be familiar with the LyLo brand, and last month we launched a trial of our new trial LyLo product, Road Trips. This camper van rental offering complements the LyLo accommodation product with many of our LyLo customers also exploring New Zealand beyond our key locations in Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown. We can leverage our existing teams and physical locations to service rental customers at minimal incremental cost. The vans look fantastic and are certainly a great marketing tool for the LyLo business. It's very early days, but we look forward to seeing what the results can generate from this trial. Overall, we've made it clear that we are prioritizing hotels for growth and we're making great leaps in building the growth platforms to reshape the EVT group. Now looking ahead to the second half. The second half has certainly started well with January 2026 delivering group revenue up 21.6% on the prior January and EBITDA up 54.5%. In Hotels, we expect to deliver another record year, including the benefit of strong underlying performance, the launch of Connect, the acquisition of QT Auckland in mid-March and the first tranche of rooms coming online at QT Queenstown in late April. These benefits will be partially offset by the ongoing impact on the second half, due to works at QT Queenstown and QT Gold Coast and the sale of Geelong. In Entertainment, the second half is expected to achieve modest growth on the prior second half, based on the blockbuster films currently dated to release, subject to performance. As part of our fewer better strategy, we expect to exit a further 3 locations in this half. In Thredbo, summer trading in January, as mentioned, has been impacted by reduced visitation following bushfires in the region. So as a result, we expect Thredbo's full year EBITDA to be around $23 million, subject to the impact of winter weather conditions in June 2026. Overall, the EVT group result for the second half is expected to be ahead of the prior comparable second half, again, subject to film performance and weather conditions. Our teams have done an incredible job driving solid growth strategies and continuing to transform the way we do business. Thanks for listening. I'll now take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of John O'Shea from Ord Minnett.

Just a quick one from me. You made a comment, I might have missed it here. I don't think I fully understood what you were saying about the Hotels business, about a $35 million increase in EBITDA with $17 million was incremental. Is that what you said or can you explain that to me?

That's right. Because we've got some ins and outs, Rydges Geelong has gone, QT Queenstown's opening in phases, QT Gold Coast was interrupted by the cyclone, but we expect to have that come on board fully next year. The acquisition of QT Auckland, the introduction of EVT Connect, we're just giving a range that we expect that will deliver us in the next financial year around $17 million incremental EBITDA.

Great. So you're talking about $17 million incremental EBITDA in FY '27 versus FY '26?

That's right.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further phone questions at this time. I will now hand back to Ms. Hastings for closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody. Look forward to catching up over the next few weeks.