Flight Centre Travel Group Limited (FLT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our 26th Annual General Meeting. My name is Gary Smith, and as Flight Centre Travel Group Limited Board Chairman, I will chair this meeting. As we have the necessary quorum, I declare the meeting open. Today's meeting is being held online via the Lumi platform. This allows shareholders, proxies and guests to attend the meeting virtually. All attendees can listen to a live webcast of the meeting. In addition, shareholders and proxies can ask questions and submit votes. Online attendees can submit questions at any time. [Operator Instructions] Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or, if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio questions facility is available during this meeting. [Operator Instructions] You will listen to the meeting on this page while waiting to ask your question. If you have any issues using the system, please return to the Lumi platform. Finally, due to time constraints, we may not get to answer all questions. If this happens, we will answer them in due course via e-mail or by posting responses on our website. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new voting tab will appear. Selecting this tab will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed. I now declare voting open on all items of business. The voting tab will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. I will give you a warning before I move to close voting. I would now like to introduce the Flight Centre Travel Group Directors: John Eales, Graham "Skroo" Turner, Rob Baker and Colette Garnsey. Also with us in Brisbane, we have our Chief Financial Officer, Adam Campbell; and our Company Secretary, David Smith. We're also joined today by various senior executives. They include, from London, Chris Galanty, the CEO of our corporate travel operations; from Brisbane, Melanie Waters-Ryan, the CEO of our leisure travel operations; from the U.S., Charlene Leiss, our President in the Americas; from Brisbane, James Kavanagh, our Managing Director in Australia; from London, Steve Norris, our Managing Director in EMEA, that's Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Haydn Long, Head of Investor Relations. Finally, our auditor, EY, is represented today by audit partner, Ric Roach. Proxies have been received for this meeting. Proxy details will be advised before each resolution. The Notice of Meeting has been circulated to all shareholders registered as of the 17th of September 2021. I will take the Notice of Meeting as read. Minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting, which was held on 5 November 2020, were approved by the Board and signed by the Chair of that general meeting. Minutes are available for inspection at the company's registered address. We now move to the company's reports and accounts. The financial report, directors' report and the auditor's report have been forwarded to shareholders in the annual report and are tabled at this meeting. As usual, we will start off with the Chairman's address before inviting Skroo to address the meeting in relation to our plans and prospects for financial year 2022. We will then move to the resolutions before addressing general questions from shareholders. I will now proceed with the Chairman's address. The 12 months to June 30, 2021, was another incredibly challenging period as governments globally ramped up their efforts to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. These efforts led to most of the international travel restrictions that were adopted late in financial year '20 being extended throughout financial year '21, along with curbs on other everyday activities. In Australia, we also encountered a year of domestic travel upheaval. Estates attempted to ring-fence the inevitable COVID outbreaks by locking down citizens and, in some cases, regions and frequently closing and reopening their borders, thereby creating a complex and constantly changing travel environment. Within this uncertain environment, our overall recovery trajectory was broadly in line with expectations, although we did not initially anticipate the rolling shutdowns and border closures that we encountered in various parts of the world and particularly in Australia. Our key operational achievements for financial year '21 have been summarized on this slide. In essence, our recovery gained momentum as the year progressed, particularly in the United States and in the corporate sector, culminating in record COVID period revenue in June 2021. Momentum has continued with FY '22 first quarter gross TTV exceeding gross TTV for the FY '21 fourth quarter, which would normally be a seasonally slower trading period. Trading conditions generally improved as vaccination programs gained momentum globally and as travel restrictions were relaxed or removed in various markets. When this happened, we typically experience strong and immediate rebounds in demand. We were, however, adversely impacted late in financial year '21 and into financial year '22 by the reintroduction of heavy travel restrictions in both Australia and New Zealand. While cost control remained a key focus during financial year '21, we balanced this against our objective of investing to win market share. I'll talk about this in more detail shortly. In both the corporate and leisure sectors, we successfully executed our key strategies. I'll also expand on this a little later. As part of our proactive capital management strategy, we refinanced our bank debt and secured extended covenant relief, in addition to securing a $400 million convertible bond to extend our debt maturity profile. Overall, we're ready to capitalize on a major industry-wide lift-off when travel resumes in a meaningful way, which is now starting to happen in many parts of the world. I'll now give an overview of our results. Our financial year '21 financial results have been summarized on this slide. As you can see, we recorded a $507.1 million underlying loss before tax for the year, in line with both the financial year '20 result and financial year '21 market guidance. Financial year '21 TTV finished at $3.95 billion with revenue of $395.9 million. By way of comparison, this was about 26% of our financial year '20 TTV and about 17% of our record financial year '19 result, which is, of course, achieved pre-COVID. Overall, the global -- our corporate businesses contributed $2.2 billion in TTV, 55% of the group sales, up from 37% pre-COVID. The slower recovery [ in leisure ] travel to date reflects leisure travel's heavier international weightings. Corporate is weighted more heavily towards domestic travel, which has been subject to fewer restrictions and the leisure division's overall weighting towards the heavily locked down Southern Hemisphere markets of Australia and New Zealand. Globally, revenue typically increased month-on-month through FY '21 with this revenue growth offsetting the JobKeeper subsidy reduction in Australia at the end of the second quarter and the program's removal at the end of the third quarter. Our ability to maintain a global revenue growth trajectory throughout FY '21 despite regular border disruptions in Australia and other parts of the world, plus the loss of JobKeeper, again, underlines our business' diversity, which we consider to be one of its great strengths. For example, our U.S. business performed strongly in Q4 to offset the inevitable slowdown we experienced in the ANZ region when border restrictions were reapplied. Monthly TTV increased at a 22.6% compounding rate in the U.S. during the second half with the Liberty leisure and GOGO wholesale businesses returning to profitability late in the year. You can see this TTV escalation in the Americas on this slide as well as the Australia and New Zealand slowdown after lockdowns were reintroduced. While not included in U.S. results, we also saw a strong recovery from our Discova destination management company in the Americas. In his upcoming address, Skroo will provide more color around the growing number of our businesses that are now at or approaching profitability. Outside of travel, the Pedal Group cycle [ business ], consisting of retailer 99 Bikes and wholesaler Advance Traders, performed strongly with profit before tax tripling to $54 million and group sales increasing 66.5% to $333 million. This trend has continued into financial year 2022. Flight Centre owns roughly 47% of this business, which expanded into New Zealand during financial year '21 and now has 6 shops throughout New Zealand in addition to the 60 shops in Australia. Company-wide, monthly recurring costs were typically $70 million to $75 million and increased after Flight Centre welcomed back some stood-down staff in Australia when JobKeeper ended. Variable costs, mainly incentive payments to sales staff, typically represented an additional 15% of revenue. Operating cash outflows during the second half were between $30 million and $40 million per month and, by year-end, were mainly being incurred in Australia and New Zealand and in Flight Centre's global support area as has again been the case early in financial year '22. Our liquidity position at September 30, 2021, has been illustrated on this slide. We currently have $1.2 billion in cash and investments, including debt facilities and a circa $800 million liquidity position. This is a conservative view of our liquidity because it allows for a complete unwind of both working capital and client cash. Throughout the pandemic, client cash has remained above $300 million at all times. We continue to adopt a proactive capital management strategy. During the past 18 months, we have refinanced our bank debt and issued a $400 million convertible bond to extend our maturity profile and strengthen our balance sheet. We felt that the bond issue was preferable to a capital raising or increasing bank debt given the relatively low ongoing costs, the absence of any covenants, no immediate dilution of our shareholder base, and it will be delivered at a premium rather than a discount to our share price. Our ongoing strength in this area provides a solid platform for our company to capitalize on the expected rapid recovery of international and domestic travel as borders reopen. In our initial response to the COVID crisis, we focused on cost control and liquidity before shifting our attention to growth as conditions stabilized. At a time when many competitors were forced to either hibernate or pare back their expenditure on business-critical functions, we continued to invest in initiatives that will enhance our customer offerings and drive future growth and shareholder value. For example, we enhanced our already strong technology platforms and have recently delivered new platforms for customers of our extremely successful FCM and Corporate Traveller brands, along with other initiatives that have been outlined in Chris Galanty's and Melanie Waters-Ryan's annual report columns. Development of Melon, our new digital platform for our Corporate Traveller SME customers, was made possible by our acquisition of the San Francisco-based technology business, WhereTo, early in the pandemic. We've also invested in our global FCM corporate travel footprint. Earlier in financial year '22, we announced plans to launch FCM in Japan, the world's fourth largest corporate travel market, [ via a joint ] venture with Tokyo-based NSF Engagement Corporation. Japan is, of course, a key corporate market because of its size and importance within the global economy as a business hub for multinational companies. As Skroo said at the time, this will enhance our ability to win new local, regional and multinational accounts while also gaining greater control over and enhancing the service we provide to our existing customers with operations in Japan. Within our in-destination area, the Cross Hotels & Resorts hotel management business has also expanded into Japan through a master franchise agreement with Tokyo-based AB Accommo Company Limited. The agreement will eventually see 7 properties trading under Cross' Away and Cross Vibe brands with the inaugural property, Away Okinawa Kouri Island Resort, now open and pictured on this slide. While the recovery trajectory within our businesses globally is tied to the prevailing travel restrictions, we are generally achieving our corporate and leisure strategic objectives within a constrained trading environment. In corporate travel, we are winning and implementing large volumes of new business while continuing to retain almost 100% of our customers in the FCM business thanks to our very compelling client offerings, which fuel our proven organic growth model. We've also transformed Corporate Traveller through the new Melon platform, which has just been launched in the Northern Hemisphere. In leisure, we are diversifying our offerings by investing in a broader range of channels to support our smaller but still highly accessible shop network and to give customers additional options to access [ our services ]. At this relatively early stage, the evidence suggests we are maintaining or increasing market share across these channels in key locations like Australia and South Africa while preparing to benefit from the pent-up demand for travel. As you will hear shortly, we're experiencing a strong leisure recovery in South Africa, which underlines this pent-up demand, and we're starting to see very positive signs in Australia. We're also working hard to attract new customers through our multichannel offerings and expect to see market share gains as a result of industry consolidation. Looking ahead, we believe that we are ready and well placed to capitalize on what shapes as a major rebound when international and domestic borders reopen fully. From a financial perspective, we have a lengthy liquidity position, which has been key to weathering the COVID challenge while maintaining our key assets. Our business and geographic diversity will underpin our resilience during financial year '22 and beyond. While Australia-New Zealand remains our largest region by sales, generating about half of our pre-COVID TTV, our profits are now significantly leveraged to larger overseas markets like the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa. These markets have already reopened to varying degrees and were key drivers of the TTV growth we delivered during the FY '22 first quarter, while Australia was heavily locked down. We also see considerable upside globally in leisure travel now that discretionary travel is starting to resume. Crucially, we've also maintained a strong workforce of expert travel advisers whose skills will be more relevant than ever in a more complex travel environment post COVID. People are our most valuable asset, and we continue to work hard in challenging conditions to retain a highly skilled team to guide us through to the recovery phase. Our people in front-end sales roles within our support ranks and at executive level have skills that readily translate to other sectors that are less affected or are recovering more rapidly, which underlines the importance of our retention programs. Another benefit flowing from these programs, which are built on share rights, is that virtually all of our people will be shareholders in our company, in line with our philosophy of encouraging everyone to have genuine ownership and creating an even stronger alignment between our people's and our investors' interests. Before handing over to Skroo, I'd like to provide you with additional detail around 3 important areas: firstly, board size and structure. We currently operate with a relatively small Board consisting of 5 people. During financial year '20, we took preliminary steps to add an additional nonexecutive director to our Board to incorporate new thinking, new areas of expertise and to allow us to better manage our business and geographical diversity, but these plans were placed on hold with the onset of the pandemic. We now plan to reinitiate this search with a view to adding an additional female director to our ranks to take our Board size to 6. During financial year '21, we've also enhanced our ESG, that's environment, social and governance, focus. ESG is very important to us, our people, our customers and other stakeholders, and we are committed to building on our credentials in this area moving forward. During financial year '21, we released our first sustainability report after [ an internal ] stocktake of the many programs we offered globally across our various operations. Since then, we have formed an internal group with senior leadership representation to further embed ESG considerations into our business and with a view to setting our strategies and targets for the future. The third area that I'd like to discuss is the constitutional amendment, which you'll be shortly asked to vote on. As is always the case, we've engaged with various proxy advisers and special interest groups ahead of today's meeting. During these interactions, some stakeholders have asked for further detail around the proposed amendment, which will, if adopted, allow for virtual meetings. In bringing forward this resolution, our intention is not to break with tradition. We strongly believe in the value of physical meetings, and we will continue to hold face-to-face or hybrid events wherever possible. This amendment is effectively a precaution that will, subject to passing of legislative amendments currently before the federal parliament, allow our meetings to proceed if an unforeseen crisis arises in the future, and governments do not provide the regulatory relief they are providing now to allow important meetings to proceed in extraordinary circumstances. So in conclusion, I'd like to thank you once again for your ongoing support of our company and our people during what's been a very challenging period. We look forward to seeing you face to face at our AGM next year and updating you on our continued recovery as financial year 2022 progresses. I now invite Skroo to address today's meeting.

Thank you, Gary. Did you write that yourself or...

Pretty much, Skroo. Most of it.

Hopefully, you did [indiscernible]. Thanks. Thank you anyway. As you've heard, financial year '21 was another tough year for travel. Conditions have gradually started to improve. Indeed, we start second quarter of '22 with a fair degree of optimism given the regular travel restriction relaxations we are seeing now globally in most of our 23 countries. Some very important routes are now open or expected to reopen in the coming weeks, while travel is finally poised to take off again in Australia. This Australian outbound reopening, which was flagged a couple of weeks ago, has promoted a surge in leisure inquiries for most key locations, particularly U.K., Europe, the Americas and Fiji. Before outlining our plans and prospects for '22, I'd like to reflect briefly on the past 1.5 years or so. As an organization, our priorities have evolved during the pandemic, initially, emergency cost cutting to maintenance of those significantly reduced operational expenses while investing in our brands, developing and implementing our technology, improving productivity and fine-tuning our recovery strategies. We remain very focused on improving returns in the short term but also continue to build for the future, while others are hibernating or unable to invest significantly in their offerings. This balance will allow us to capitalize on opportunities now as [ demand ] starts to recover and in the future as we target a return to pre-COVID sales volumes. When lockdowns are lifted, borders reopen, we see that travel bounces back immediately and strongly. South Africa is a great example of this, as is Queensland following Monday's announcement, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, what we're seeing, shortly. As you all know, Flight Centre has -- Flight Centre Travel Group has 3 main travel divisions: leisure, corporate and supply, which is basically our product -- our travel product and services. We believe this diversity is of enormous value and a great advantage to us and our suppliers. You'll see on slide -- this slide. Also, our stable, capable, very experienced and fairly intelligent leadership team has played a major role in getting us to where we are now, and this will be an integral part of our future success. We have learned a lot over the last 18 to 20 months. The main things, I think, are being compassionate, particularly about the many thousands of people that we had stood down or made redundant; being resilient and consistent; being as optimistic as possible to see us through these tough times; also, using these times as an opportunity to improve and streamline our systems, our technology and our overall operations. One of our major goals at the same time was to maintain -- identify and maintain our key assets. [ Most of our ] markets are now living with the virus, accepting it is with us for the long term, and we are planning as much as we can to be back in black on a monthly basis later this financial year and back to 100% of the 2019 TTV, which was about $24 billion, around June 2024 but with a leaner cost base and a more efficient operating model. We're targeting a return to monthly leisure and corporate travel profitability during financial year '22. The exact timing of our return to profitability is uncertain and remains largely in government hands given that revenue generation opportunities are intrinsically linked to borders reopening, staying open and international travel resuming in a more meaningful way globally with fewer restrictions. And we're finally starting to see that. The uncertainty means we're not currently in a position to provide financial year '22 profit guidance. We initially expected the restrictions would gradually and selectively ease as countries cautiously opened back up through carefully selected travel corridors or bubbles. On a very positive note, this has started to happen more rapidly on a larger scale than we expected in most places. For example, last Friday, we learned that international travel from New South Wales would resume from early November. The U.S. would welcome fully vaccinated international travelers, too, from November 8. The move effectively has relaunched 2-way transatlantic travel, which is very important to us. Prior to this announcement, Americans could travel to the U.K., Canada or Europe, but reciprocal rights were not available to the U.K., Canadian or European travelers hoping to venture the other way. Each of these reopenings will potentially deliver material benefits to our company. Given that our very large Australian leisure business is very heavily weighted towards international travel, this represented more than 80% of pre-COVID TTV. And secondly, the U.S. status is a key destination of our leisure and corporate customers globally. The U.S. was, in fact, the largest outbound market for our U.K., Canada businesses pre-COVID and the second largest outbound market for our Australian business. At the start of this week, the Queensland government also announced reopening plans, sparking another strong and immediate response from travelers. Following this announcement, our Ignite business, which operates a specialist My Queensland division, recorded a 668% (sic) [ 663% ] increase in page views above the average, and flightcentre.com.au recorded its largest day of online sales since June '21 when Australian borders were opened with inland -- inbound Queensland bookings doubling compared to the previous week. As we have indicated previously, we need to generate some 50% of our traditional TTV in corporate and about 40% in leisure to reach that profitability in each of these divisions. This is based on current cost bases, which means that the breakeven proceeds will increase if we choose to invest further in key growth drivers like people, marketing, sales channel or technology so that we can generate stronger future returns. While returning to profitability is very important to us in the short term, winning and retaining customers, which will be reflected in our TTV, is paramount for the long term and will be a key focus in the first instance. As we're already seeing, our profit recovery trajectory will not be linear given costs will ramp up to service anticipated customer demand before we benefit from the revenue. So it will be somewhat lumpy. We're expecting strong returns on pandemic-period investments, too. Looking within our own business. We expect to see tangible returns on our pandemic-period investments as the world reopen. We're certainly now a leaner and more efficient operation -- organization, which means we're well placed to benefit as the cycle improves. In both the corporate and leisure travel sectors, we're successfully executing our productivity strategies and achieving our operational objective. We have both protected our assets and continued to invest in our key growth drivers, including our famous brands during an enormous -- immensely challenging period that's led to some market consolidation, particularly in the corporate sector. Travel will inevitably be more complex in the post-COVID world, and customers will require more assistance from our expert travel advisers as they navigate the new requirements and seek to understand any restrictions that will apply. Within this environment, our people's knowledge and our enhanced systems will prove invaluable every step of that customer journey as we're already seeing in the corporate sector. In leisure, recent research by the U.S. Family Travel Association and the NYU School of Professional Studies has highlighted the increasingly important role that travel advisers will play post COVID. According to this research, which was included in the U.S. Family Travel Survey in '21 -- 2021, 65% of respondents said they'd consider using a travel adviser over the next 2 years compared to only 17% who used 1 in the previous 2 years. As Gary mentioned, our brand and geographic diversity is another strength and it's helped to shield our company from some of the challenges other businesses in travel have faced while also potentially fast tracking our recovery given our earnings leverage to countries and regions that are starting to exhibit strong recovery trajectories. For example, about 55% of our pre-COVID earnings came from the Americas and EMEA regions that have well-advanced vaccination programs as well as few restrictions in place and solid sales momentum. The Americas and EMEA also stand to benefit significantly from the large pipeline of corporate accounts won during financial year '21. That was about USD 1.4 billion. Some 70% of this new business is set to trade in these 2 regions. In addition, there's very significant potential upside in heavily restricted markets like Australia and New Zealand, which are particularly important to our leisure division. So we believe the travel industry is poised for rapid takeoff as more favorable market conditions emerge. Several lead indicators point to the possibility of a fairly rapid travel industry takeoff. Firstly, vaccination programs are gaining momentum. According to Our World in Data, by the start of this week, almost half the world's population received at least 1 dose of COVID vaccine. In most of our countries, numbers now exceed 65%. Secondly, travel restrictions are now rapidly being relaxed or removed, as highlighted earlier. Thirdly, consumers are ready to travel with confidence recovering in most market, savings at all or near all-time highs and significant pent-up demand is evident. Fourthly, suppliers are looking to resume service as quickly as they are allowed to and generally keen to work closely with us to fast track that recovery. In Australia, we believe a number of airlines, including Singapore Airlines, United Airlines, [indiscernible] Fiji and Qantas, will be back to pre-COVID capacity early in the new year once caps are lifted. In terms of pricing, we expect airfares will also return close to pre-COVID levels in the new calendar year as we move out of peak season and as capacity and load factors start to normalize. Due to the trading update, much has changed during the 8 weeks since we released our financial year '21 accounts. If you look at Slide 22, the outlook globally in now appears considerably brighter, as evidenced by last week's U.S. and Australian announcements and a string of significant reopenings from Singapore. The Australian reopening plan has sparked a flurry of activity and created genuine buzz. This leads to a significant uplift in leisure inquiry and quotes in particular in recent weeks. While obviously not as strong as inquiry growth, given that New South Wales has been the only state to so far open up formally and proactively announce international travel resumption, we have seen significant bookings growth. The next slide shows how international leisure bookings have now surpassed domestic bookings in Australia for the first time since the start of the pandemic and almost tripled between July and September. Booking numbers this month have already surpassed the September total with more than 1/3 of the month still to come. To date, [ stand-out leisure destinations ] internationally have included the U.K., U.S.A. and Fiji. Also, based on web sessions in Australia, interest in these destinations has increased by multiples of 6, 11 and 20, respectively, during the past month alone. Already this month, bookings to Fiji are in line with October 2019, which was pre-COVID in the Ignite business and more than 2.5x the September 2021 monthly total across Australia's leisure shops. On the next slide, we fine-tune -- as we fine-tune our plans ahead of the imminent Australian travel reopening, we are drawing on our experience so far in other locations like U.S. and South Africa. Where demand picked up in the U.S. in the financial year '21, we used our Canadian business, which is operating under heavy restrictions at the time, to service excess U.S. inquiry. As travel returned to South Africa, strong demand meant that some leisure customers had to queue outside our shops to book or inquire. To help address this issue, webinars are now being held to educate customers as they navigate this new travel world. Given that response from leisure customers to reopening announcements typically have been strong and immediately -- immediate, we are now returning sales staff to full-time roles to ensure we have enough people to service the likely surge in demand. And we're also developing COVID support desk to help customers navigate those post-COVID travel complexities; also, enhancing capabilities across other sales channels, including online to reduce the immediate pressure on our shop network. In the next slide, you'll see results during the first -- the financial year '22 first quarter. We generated almost $1.6 billion in gross TTV, and this was more than double the gross TTV generated during the prior corresponding period and an 8.1% increase on the fourth quarter result from last financial year. This is despite the first quarter of the financial -- of the fiscal year traditionally being a softer trading period and again highlighting the same -- sales momentum we are experiencing. If you look at the next slide, at the end of September, gross TTV was tracking at 27% of pre-COVID levels. That was in financial year 2019, with activity increasing late in the month and escalating in October after positive border reopening announcements in multiple countries. We expect and already are seeing further second quarter acceleration given the positive recent travel announcements in Australia, the U.S., Singapore and other locations. As expected, monthly operating cash outflows globally have been in the order of $40 million during the quarter. If you look at the next slide, Slide 29, this should also improve given the results during the period were impacted by decreased revenue obviously during our lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand; seasonality, specifically the extended Northern Hemisphere summer holiday period; and the removal of government subsidies as various furlough programs ended; also, a significant investment in ramp-up ahead of anticipated surge in demand when borders reopen and travel resumes. Accounting losses for the period have been slightly higher than operational cash outflows, and that's because of customer refunds processed during the quarter as Australian border restrictions tightened as well as noncash depreciation and amortization costs. These losses are likely to decrease from here as activity recovers, leading to stronger revenue generation. A number of countries are now profitable or approaching breakeven on a monthly basis, including South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico as well as France. Singapore should also quickly return to profitability given its low cost base and with the opening of vaccinated travel lanes with key countries that traditionally represent about 40% of the business' sales. Globally, the Corporate Traveller brand is now approaching breakeven with the businesses in the U.S., Canada, U.S., U.K. and South Africa generally recovering well. Collectively, our corporate businesses contributed almost $1 billion to first quarter TTV while also establishing further foundations for organic market share growth through another strong pipeline of global account wins. To date, in financial year '22, the company has secured new accounts with projected annual travel spends of excess of USD 500 million on top of the USD 1.4 billion in account wins during financial year '21. Winning new accounts and retaining existing customers underpin the corporate Grow to Win strategy, which was implemented at the start of the pandemic. As part of this strategy, the company is also investing in new products and platforms for the post-COVID world to fortify already strong technology offerings across the 2 category leading brands, which is FCM and Corporate Traveller. Both brands have brought to market new digital platforms that will deliver meaningful benefits to customers and, at the same time, are likely to further disrupt legacy travel management companies. The ongoing investment in these new products, which is also integral to Grow to Win, will ensure Flight Centre Travel Group's corporate division reemerges with more customers, new differentiated brands and 2 completely new products in both these brands. This delivers a clear growth pathway in a fragmented and incredibly large market that may not return to pre-COVID volumes in the near term. The next slide, Slide 32 shows Corporate Traveller's new Melon platform is now live in the U.S. and Canada and will be released in the U.K. early next calendar year. The FCM platform, which is now operational in China, is in beta testing elsewhere and set for release globally early next calendar year. The next [ slide ] shows you, in the leisure sector, our structural changes have been completed. We have positioned ourselves for recovery. We've started to see some very positive signs that strategies are working. We see significant upside in the near term as discretionary travel is cleared for takeoff. As you've heard, the leisure recovery has already gained significant momentum in South Africa and the U.S., but Australia should also rebound rapidly with both domestic and international travel poised to return in at least some forms in the coming weeks. Our shops continue to capture the bulk of our sales, but we're also seeing solid momentum across some of the other channels who operate alongside our stores in our various leisure brands. For example, our growing networks of independent contractors, we refer to that as our business-to-business model, generated about 10% of leisure globally during the first quarter. flightcentre.com.au is currently capturing 15% to 20% of Flight Centre brand's TTV in Australia, well above the traditional 8% but below 25% to 30% highs achieved in the domestic-only environment during last financial year. As you can see on this slide, we expect ongoing shifts to these new growth markets -- growth models in the coming years, part of our ongoing leisure strategies. Now before I hand back to Gary, I'd like to briefly outline our position in relation to a possible constitutional challenge to extended domestic border closures in Australia. We feel it's vital we find more sustainable ways to safely and sensibly navigate our way out of the pandemic and return to a degree of normalcy in everyday lives while protecting the vulnerable and minimizing hospitalizations. We also need to be conscious of the impact extended lockdowns and isolation, tactics have commonly been -- which have commonly been used against COVID-19, what effect they are having on people's health and well-being. In recent months, the outline has improved significantly in Australia with the federal government and some state governments proactively releasing reopening plans. We welcome those plans, believe it's critical we join the rest of the world reopening borders as soon as we're able to. This ensures we're not rapidly left behind in a business sense in terms of our freedoms while reducing the emotional and psychological damage on society in general. State like Queensland, which is normally heavily reliant on tourism dollars generated by interstate visitors, also faces very severe economic impacts if it remains closed for an extended period while people from New South Wales and Victoria are allowed again to travel internationally, which it appears everyone is very keen to do. We recently expressed interest in joining a proposed constitutional challenge if some states do not reopen their borders once it is widely considered safe and reasonable to do so. Although we hope this action won't be necessary, we're prepared to do that if necessary. So in conclusion, after a very challenging period, we start the new financial year -- the new fiscal year with [ solid ] foundations and recovery prospects in what looks like to be an improving global market for both leisure and corporate travel. We continue to target a return to monthly profitability during this financial year based on our current recovery trajectory as well as an expectation that international travel continues to return, and Australian domestic borders reopen and remain open. Thank you once again for your support. We look forward to updating you on the process -- on our progress. And I'll now hand the meeting back to you, Gary.

Thank you, Skroo. Well done. I'd now like to turn to the resolutions to be put to today's meeting. The first resolution is the reelection of director Colette Garnsey. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. In accordance with the company's constitution, directors may not hold office past the third Annual General Meeting following their appointment, excluding the Managing Director. At least one director retires each year and offers him or herself for reelection. Accordingly, Colette retires and offers herself for reelection today. The number of proxies received for the resolution are now on the screen. We will now address questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution. If you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Do we have any questions on that resolution?

No. No questions on Colette's reelection.

Thank you. So congratulations, Colette, on your reelection to the Board, and you've made a great contribution during the past 18 months, particularly. I now move on to item #2, the reelection of director Rob Baker. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. In accordance with the company's constitution, directors may not hold office past the third AGM following their appointment, excluding the Managing Director. At least one director retires each year and offers him or herself for reelection, as I've just said before. Accordingly, Rob retires and offers himself for reelection today, and the number of proxies are again shown on the screen. Haydn, do we have any questions submitted in relation to this resolution?

No. Gary, no questions.

So if you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. As you can see from the screen, Rob is reelected. So Rob, to you as well, thank you very much for your contribution over the last 18 months, and congratulations on your reelection.

Thanks, Gary.

I'd like to move on to resolution #3, which is the adoption of the remuneration report. The third item of business is the adoption of the directors' rem report as presented in the annual report. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. Just a reminder that the key management personnel listed in the annual report and their closely related parties are not permitted to vote on this resolution. The number of proxies received for this resolution are on screen now. We'll now address any questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution. If you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, are there any questions on the remuneration report?

No questions, Gary.

Thank you. Well, as you can see from the screen, that motion is carried. I would now like to move on to the fourth item of business today, which is the approval of the issue of notes. In November 2020, Flight Centre raised $400 million through the issue of convertible notes. The approval of this issue by shareholders will refresh Flight Centre's placement capacity. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. Approval is sought for the following resolution: that the issue of 2,000 senior unsecured unsubordinated convertible notes issued by the company on the terms and conditions are summarized in the explanatory notes to the Notice of Meeting is ratified for all purposes, including for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 7.4. The number of proxies received for the resolution are on the screen now. We will now address questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution. Please feel free to submit questions at any time throughout the meeting. If you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, are there any questions on this?

Yes. Gary, we do have one question on the notes. It's how do you plan to manage the $400 million in notes with a slow opening to a fully operational market.

I'll pass that to our CFO, Adam Campbell.

Thanks, Gary. If I'm hearing your question correctly, it's really just with the opening up of the market taking a little bit of time, how we're going to effectively manage those bonds. The reality is that the bonds are in place for a 7-year term, and so investors in the bonds are looking at over a 7-year horizon. They receive a coupon rate or interest on those bonds over that period of time, so they're receiving a return. And currently, they're very much in the money to trade on the Singapore Stock Exchange and are trading well above their initial listing price. So there is a lot of demand for those bonds in the market at the moment. Other than that, there's really no requirement for us other than paying that coupon on a 6 monthly basis. So we're very comfortable with the way that those bonds are progressing at this point.

Thank you, Adam. And as you can see from the screen, that motion is carried. I'd now like to move on to the fifth item of business today, which is the approval of the grant of global recovery rights. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. Approval is sought for the following resolution: that the grant under the LTRP of 1,768,178 rights to receive fully paid ordinary shares on the terms and conditions, as summarized in the explanatory notes to the Notice of Meeting, is ratified for all purposes, including for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Number of proxies received for this resolution are on the screen now, and we'll now address questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution. If you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, are there any questions on this?

No questions, Gary.

Thank you. As you can see from the proxies, that resolution has been passed. I'd now like to move on to the sixth item of business today, which is the approval of the grant of post-COVID recovery rights or the PCRP. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. Approval is sought for the following resolution: that the grant under the long-term retention plan rule of 1,180,678 rights to receive fully paid ordinary shares on the terms and conditions, as summarized in the explanatory notes in the Notice of Meeting, is ratified for all purposes, including for the purpose of ASX Listing Rule 7.4. The number of proxies received for this resolution are on the screen now, and we'll address any questions that have been submitted in relation to this motion.

No questions on this, Gary.

No questions on that. Thank you. If you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on that resolution. I'll now move on to the seventh item of business today, and that is the approval of future issuances under the Flight Centre Employee Share Plan. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. The approval is sought for the following resolution: that the issues of shares under the employee share plan, as described in the explanatory notes in the Notice of Meeting, be approved as an exception to ASX Listing Rule 7.1 pursuant to Exception 13 in ASX Listing Rule 7.2. The number of proxies received for the resolution are on the screen now. We'll address any questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution, and if you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, any questions on this?

No questions on this one either, Gary.

Thank you. The eighth item of business today is the approval of future issuances under the Flight Centre Long-Term Retention Plan or the LTRP. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. Approval is sought for the following resolution: that issues of shares under the long-term retention plan, as described in the explanatory notes in the Notice of Meeting, be approved as an exception to ASX Listing Rule 7.1 pursuant to Exception 13 in ASX Listing Rule 7.2. The numbers of proxies received for the resolution are on the screen now. We'll address any questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution; and if you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, any questions on this one?

No, no questions, Gary.

Thank you. The final resolution, the ninth item of business today is the proposed amendment to the company's constitution, which I spoke to earlier in my address. Approval is sought for the following resolution: that in accordance with Section 136(2) of the Corporations Act, the company's constitution be amended, as set out in the explanatory notes to the Notice of Meeting, with effect from the close of this meeting. Section 136(2) of the Corporations Act requires the amendments to the constitution to be approved by a special resolution of the shareholders of the company. If you have any questions on this item, please ask them now. The number of proxies received for the resolution are on the screen now. We will now address questions that have been submitted in relation to this resolution, and if you haven't done so already, please cast your vote on this resolution now. Haydn, are there any questions on this resolution?

Yes. Gary, we do have a question here from Kelly Buchanan from the Australian Shareholders' Association. And basically, Kelly is saying, would the company consider a change to allow online meetings only if no other alternative is legally available.

Thank you, Kelly, for your question. As I mentioned in our address, this is somewhat of a procedural resolution. So it's certainly our intention moving forward to hold face-to-face meetings. But I might pass this to our company Secretary, David Smith, to comment on your specific question, Kelly.

Yes. Thanks, Gary. Look, this resolution is really aimed at just ensuring that Flight Centre has got the flexibility that it needs to engage with shareholders in whatever means is appropriate given what might be very uncertain circumstances. So as Gary said, it is our intention to get back to normal and hold meetings that involve a face-to-face component. And interestingly, the engagement through the virtual platform has actually seen more shareholders and attendees than in our physical meetings. But certainly, going forward, we will be not looking to use this [Audio Gap]

Thank you, David. We'll now address questions [ submitted ] on the annual financial report, the directors' report, the auditor's report or to the company's management. As mentioned earlier, Ric Roach from EY is available to answer questions about the audit's conduct, the auditor's report preparation and content, the accounting policies adopted by the company in relation to the financial statement's preparation and the auditor's independence in relation to the audit's conduct. Ladies and gentlemen, if there are no further questions, in a couple of minutes, I'll close -- I beg your pardon. Sorry, are there any questions, Haydn, in relation to the account?

Yes, we do have a few questions that have come in. The first one -- well, a couple from Ray Tollefsen, a longtime shareholder and member of Teaminvest. Ray's first question relates to the arrangements with Google Flights and Amazon that we announced a little while ago. Ray says, are you -- or Ray asks, are you now able to expand on those arrangements including where the Flight Centre is the only travel company associated with each one? And if so, how long is the arrangement in place for?

Thank you, Ray, for that question. That's a good question. I'd like to throw that firstly to Mel, and then we might ask Charlene for some comments from the U.S.

Yes. Gary, thanks. And Ray, it would have been nice to see you this time. Maybe next time. So I'll firstly just speak to the Google Flights arrangement, which, no, is not exclusive to us but does include both our BYO, Aunt Betty brands and Flight Centre. What it is it's not, as I said, exclusive, and there's no formal time frame. It's kind of in perpetuity at the moment. It's mainly in the metasearch [indiscernible] Flight Centre [ assess ] very little of its volume from metasearch. But currently, this represents about half the metasearch volume that we get into BYO and Aunt Betty. So I hope that does answer the question. It does give us some flexibility, too, in those brands in terms of global expansion, which we're currently exploring. And you will see us look to expand the BYO brand, particularly, in some further markets. But very exciting and we're very pleased with that relationship. I'll get Charlene to talk specifically about the Prime and StudentUniverse because that's particularly aligned in the U.S.A. So Charlene?

Yes. Absolutely. Thanks, Mel. So the StudentUniverse, Amazon Prime deal originated in August, on the 5th of August, and it's really gained considerable momentum since then. Our September numbers are up nearly 50% in August, so we're seeing some great traction. That right now is not an exclusive arrangement by contract, although we are the sole travel provider for Prime Student on Amazon and hope to be in that position for quite a while to come. But certainly, we're seeing some great numbers increase month-on-month just from September to August, and early signs in October show that those numbers are growing considerably as well.

Thanks, Charlene. The next question is -- there's another one from Ray actually. Is it intended to pay down all debt over time once business returns to normal?

Thank you, Ray. You'll recall, we went into COVID net debt free, so it's a noble goal for us. I'll pass that to our CFO, Adam Campbell, for comment.

Thanks, Gary. Ray, yes, look, as you know, we've always had a fairly proactive and active capital and debt management focus that over the last 18 months has really been focused on operating in a very low-revenue environment. But now it's switching to how we focus on operating and exceeding in what is now becoming a high-growth environment. And certainly, as the balance sheet and our cash balances see the benefit of that return to travel markets, we'll continue to monitor the optimal debt levels that we've got and the structures we've got, and we'll make any adjustments to them as we need to. I can't promise that we'll certainly pay down to 0 debt, but we will be looking at the structures and the levels of debt that we have as we return to, as you referred to, a more of a business-as-usual climate.

Thank you, Adam. Haydn, the next question, please.

A couple of questions from Kelly Buchanan of the Shareholders' Association. The first one, last year, John Eales suffered a significant against vote due to a lack of gender diversity on the Board. As mentioned in the Chairman's speech, the issue still remains. What specific steps is Flight Centre taking to improve the diversity of its Board of Directors?

Thank you, Kelly, for your question. As I said in my address, we had started a process back in financial year '20 to appoint an additional director, and we were to appoint a female director. And when COVID hit, we put that on hold for obvious [ reasons ]. The focus was very much on looking after the business. We have reinstigated that process, and it is our intention that certainly by this time next year, we will have a sixth director, and that director will be a female. And that will put us in compliance with, I think, the Australian Shareholders' Association rules around gender diversity. Haydn, next question, please.

The next question from Kelly is for you, actually, Gary. After so many years on the Board, your Chairman is no longer considered independent. What plans do you have for Board renewal? So a little bit similar to what you've just answered [ as well ].

Sure. So Kelly, I think the comment around independence is in relation to the Australian Shareholders' Association rules relating to independence. And I have been on the Board longer than your rule. I think your rule is 10 years, and I've been on the Board 14 years. So I guess as you would expect, the Board as well as with -- looking at senior management for succession, we also look at the Board for succession. And that's certainly something that we annually visit. As well as that, the Board annually makes an assessment of independence of each director, and that assessment, in my case, is that I remain independent. I think it's fair to say our focus for the next year or possibly 2 is around stability and experience not just in the executive team, but in the Board as well. It's important for our post-COVID recovery that we maintain that stability and experience. So Kelly, I think the answer to your question is it's certainly something we're looking at in terms of our future Board succession, and that'll unfold as time moves forward. Thank you. Haydn, next question.

A couple of questions, probably for Chris Galanty, actually, but I'll leave it up to you, Gary, to ensure that's the right person. The first one is from one of our self-managed super funds. In order to reduce their carbon footprint, many organizations intend to reduce their travel. What impact could this have on Flight Centre?

Thanks, Haydn. And we will pass this to Chris. And Chris, I know from the many conversations we have, is in regular contact with our customers around the world. So Chris could give some good insights into what companies are thinking in relation to their future corporate travel demands.

Is he still awake?

Hopefully, he's still awake. He's in London. It's getting pretty late.

I'm still awake. Thanks, Gary. Yes, look, we talk to our customers all the time about this. And what we do is we help our customers achieve their strategic objectives of their travel program, be that financials, so reducing costs; be it employee engagements and making sure their staff have great travel experiences; or be it sustainability related such as carbon footprint. So firstly, we have released great features in our Melon and FCM platform products to enable customers to track and have sustainability targets and reduce their carbon footprint. So we're very much engaged with that. We have been talking to customers, and some of them have been talking about traveling less in some cases but traveling better. So there is that balance of reducing carbon footprint but also in a tough retention market, making sure their staff have good travel programs. So that means policies, which allow them to maybe travel business class from an economy on longer flights and was the case before COVID. But overall, we encourage it. We obviously have our own ESG goals. So we're happy to help our customers reduce their carbon footprint through travel. And this is really part of our Grow to Win strategy. We said from the outset that our way of growing is by winning new customers, retaining customers, growing market share. So some of our customers travel less because they have sustainability goals. We're very positive about that.

Thank you, Chris. Haydn, next question, please.

Probably also for Chris. A question from [ Antonio Russo ], a shareholder. Are the new corporate account wins of USD 500 million in addition to the $1.4 billion of new corporate wins previously captured?

Chris, [ can you take that ]?

Yes, I'll take that, Gary. So yes, they are. So that $500 million are our financial year-to-date wins in both FCM and CT and the $1.4 billion related to last financial year.

Thank you, Chris. Haydn, the next question, please.

Yes. Another question from [ Antonio ]. With the significant dilution of [ that ] some 18 months, is there any thinking around a potential share buyback as a possible option in lieu of dividend recommencement down the line?

Thank you, [ Antonio ], and that's a good question. We're not expecting to be in a position to pay a dividend this financial year, so it's really a question for financial year '23 and beyond. All I could say is that we'll monitor our overall capital structure and determine appropriate mechanisms to return value to shareholders at that time. But we also recognize that dividends are very important to our shareholders as well. So we'll take all of those things into consideration, and we look forward to that conversation around the Board table, I've got to say. Haydn, next question, please.

Next question is from [ Ben Clatworthy ]. Pre-COVID, Flight Centre started its education program where it helps students obtain a certificate, then possibly placed into a job. Will this resume any time soon?

I might pass that one to JK, who is Managing Director of our Australian business. JK, would you like to comment on that?

Yes. Sure. [ Ben ], thank you for your question. That service and offering has continued right away through the past 1.5 years. So we haven't actually closed down that offering by giving students the opportunity to gain a certificate and also a diploma with the potential opportunity of getting a job placement. We are actually starting to see a number of increased applications for this as things start to look a lot more optimistic, which is great news. And the services are actually extending not only jobs into the travel agency but also into the hospitality market as we start to see a decline in inbound travelers and people on working holiday visas, so certainly, some good opportunities. And it's a great time to join the travel industry because we are starting to hire again.

That is exciting. Thank you, JK. Haydn, are there any more questions, please?

Yes and no. There's one more question or comment in the queue. It's from Howard Coleman of Teaminvest. It's a bit of a pat on the back for Gary actually. So I won't read it out word for word, but basically, Howard is saying that he supports Gary continuing as Chairman rather than a new person who would have very little understanding of the business. So just a comment on, I think, Gary continuing in the job potentially into the future. I think that's the last one there, Gary.

Thank you, Howard. So if there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, in a couple of minutes, I will close the voting system. Please ensure you have cast your vote on all resolutions. I'll now pause to allow you time to finalize those votes. [Voting]

Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen. I'll now close the voting. The results of these votes will be notified to the ASX and placed on the company's website later today. I'd just like to thank Kelly and Haydn and David from Flight Centre who have helped organize everything for today's meeting. They've done a mighty job. So ladies and gentlemen, that being the end of all business, I thank you for your attendance and declare the meeting closed.