Kogan.com Ltd (KGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] previous presentations, we'll have a short video, where Ruslan and David present the first half FY '25 results, and then we'll open up to Q&A. And I will moderate the Q&A. If you have questions, please put them in the Q&A section so we can cover them off after this presentation. I'll now go to the presentation, and we'll come back on in about 20 minutes. Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for the Kogan.com first half FY '25 presentation. I'm the Founder and CEO of Kogan.com, and I'm joined today by David Shafer, Kogan.com's CFO. It is our pleasure today to walk you through the performance of the group for the first 6 months of FY '25. Many of you will be familiar with our business structure, but for those who aren't, I'll provide a quick overview. Kogan.com is the primary business unit within our group and the larger of our 2 key reporting segments. It comprises the Kogan Products division, Kogan Verticals, Kogan Marketplace, Kogan First Loyalty Program and Advertising Platform. These operate under the Kogan.com, Dick Smith, Matt Blatt and Brosa brands. The second business unit is Mighty Ape, which joined the group in December 2020 and is headquartered in New Zealand. Mighty Ape offers a wide range of retail products, and we have been actively expanding its offering by introducing Verticals and a Marketplace under the brand. The Kogan Group has been operating for over 19 years. In our first 15 years, we achieved consistent and strong financial growth, transforming from a small electrical retailer into Australia's leading online retailer. The journey hasn't been without challenges. Recent years following COVID have tested our resilience, processes and ways of working. Now with our first half of FY '25 complete, I'm pleased to share that we are back on a strong growth trajectory. Our agile business model, loyal customer base and commitment to high-quality products and compelling value propositions continue to drive our success. Over the 6 months ended 31st December 2024, we delivered growth in gross sales and revenue alongside higher gross profit driven by expanded margins. This combined with accelerated profitability highlights the strong operating leverage of our business. The Kogan.com business unit was the key driver of performance with strong double-digit growth across key financial metrics. A core strength of our business model is its diversification through platform-based sales, which generate 100% gross margin revenue with low overheads. Strong performance from the Kogan.com Marketplace, Verticals and Advertising platform has enhanced operating leverage, reinforcing a foundation for sustainable and scalable long-term growth. While Kogan.com has long benefited from this model, we are excited to launch the Mighty Ape Marketplace following an upgrade of its website. This marks our second platform-based revenue stream for Mighty Ape after the successful launch of Mighty Mobile last financial year. Here, we present a clear snapshot of the group's strong performance, showcasing solid growth and positive momentum across our divisions. As we progress through the presentation, we will go into detail of each division's performance. The half included the peak retail months of November and December, featuring Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and Boxing Day sales. During this time, we strategically prioritized top line growth and market share expansion to drive long-term success. This was supported by increased strategic marketing investment funded from our strong and growing gross profit. As you will see from the graph here, Kogan.com gross sales, revenue and gross profit all benefited from the decision, while adjusted EBITDA also grew significantly on the prior period. The half also marked a significant milestone with the completion of Mighty Ape's website re-platforming, aligning it with Kogan.com. The new website has allowed new features and improvements that we're very excited about. The snapshot I have just provided of a strong and profitable half has allowed for an interim fully franked dividend to be declared by the Board and the proposed recommencement of our share buyback program. While David will provide a more detailed breakdown of the key financial results for the half, I would like to highlight a key takeaway for me. These results underscore the success of our strategic initiatives, enhancing operational efficiency, driving platform-based sales and strengthening customer loyalty. With this solid foundation, we have positioned ourselves to continue delivering remarkable value for our customers while sustainably growing our shareholder value. Our decision to strategically increase investments in marketing was made with the consideration of the positive impact that new customers bring to our broader ecosystem. We remain highly focused on maximizing efficiency and ensuring every dollar spent delivers strong returns. The first graph clearly validates this strategy, with results exceeding expectations. Kogan.com's adjusted EBITDA grew 48% to a margin of 11.7%, while adjusted EBIT grew an impressive 66.5% to a margin of 9.2%. Beyond financial gains, we also saw a significant uplift in customer engagement with Kogan active customers growing 15.7%, driving total Kogan Group active customers up 9.4% to over 3 million. I've mentioned platform-based sales a few times. This slide is a perfect opportunity to remind everyone why they are so important to us. These revenue streams leverage the brand we've built over the past 19 years. We partner with market leaders in essential services to deliver our verticals. We also connect with thousands of small businesses via our Marketplace. This allows us to generate highly scalable, capital-light, 100% gross margin revenue with low overheads. Importantly, these divisions also generate strong cash flows, which allow us to expand our product range and provide incredible value to our customers. In this period, we grew Kogan.com's gross sales contribution from platform-based sales to 64% and is a major factor for the strong adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBIT margins I pointed out on the previous slide. The Kogan Marketplace returned to growth this period, achieving double-digit growth following enhancements to our marketing strategy. The division delivered over $150 million of gross sales while recording $14.8 million of revenue. The combination of these results, positive changes in the competitive landscape and continued platform improvements is expected to drive strong performance through the second half of the year. Launched in 2019, the Kogan First Loyalty Program has been driving customer engagement and retention for nearly 6 years. It has become a cornerstone of our strategy, offering exceptional value to members while strengthening long-term loyalty. Revenue from the program grew by over 24% to $28.2 million in the half. We continue to explore new ways to enhance the program and provide even greater benefits to our most loyal customers. As we expand its offering, we expect Kogan First to remain a key contributor to the company's strong performance. We aim to achieve this by enabling our most loyal customers to get the best value in Australia and New Zealand. Verticals play a crucial role in diversifying our business model, offering customers value pack solutions across telecommunications, energy, insurance, credit cards, travel and more. At a time when many are facing financial pressures and tightening their budgets, our Verticals provide meaningful savings on essential services. This half's results reinforce their growing impact, with revenue reaching a record of $11.3 million. This result also highlights the significant opportunity ahead with the expansion of Mighty Ape Verticals. We are excited to launch several new offerings in the second half of the year, further diversifying and strengthening the Mighty Ape business model. Following the conclusion of the half, we note an important development in our largest vertical, Kogan Mobile Australia. The network underwent a significant improvement, doubling in size. This upgrade enables our hundreds of thousands of telco customers to access a larger and more reliable mobile network. As a result, Kogan Mobile Australia is now delivering better value than ever before. The Kogan Products Division is made up of 2 offerings: our exclusive brands and our third-party brands. Our exclusive brands has been delivering remarkable value on the most in-demand products to our millions of customers since 2006. From TVs and electronics to white goods and appliances, these products offer premium quality without the premium price. Over the past 19 years, our exclusive brands have built a strong reputation for affordability, reliability and exceptional customer value. Complementing this is our third-party brands division, where our team sources the best deals from leading suppliers worldwide, ensuring customers get the most competitive price on global brands. Revenue grew by over 21% and gross profit grew by over 37% in the half. More and more customers are turning to Kogan.com for the best prices available, reinforcing our position as the go-to destination for value-driven shopping. The Kogan Products division has undergone a strategic refocusing over the past 2 years, refining and improving our product offering. Our focus remains on high-value, large ticket items, including TVs, white goods, home appliances and consumer electronics, where we have a strong competitive advantage and offer market-leading value. The impact of these improvements is clear. The average item value has risen significantly, reflecting stronger customer engagement and demand for bigger ticket products. At the same time, we've expanded our share of sales from our exclusive brands range, driving greater customer loyalty and repeat purchases and doubling our focus on what makes Kogan unique in the market. These efforts position us for sustained growth. The re-platforming of the Mighty Ape website has been a long-term project. Historically, Mighty Ape has operated as a product retailer specializing in gaming and electronics. Since acquiring Mighty Ape in 2020, we have envisioned a broader future for this much-loved New Zealand brand. The new website allows for an expanded range and offering through the Mighty Ape Marketplace, adding millions of new products to the platform. This will also be an opportunity to launch the Mighty Ape Advertising platform. Additionally, we have introduced key enhancements to the Mighty Ape Primate program, driving a significant surge in sign-ups, which is expected to have long-term benefit as these loyal customers return to shop again and again. Behind the scenes, the new website has enabled better data-driven decisions through improved analytics and reporting. Additionally, it has delivered improved protection of our customers with enhanced fraud prevention technologies. We note that the launch of the new platform has not been without its challenges, which impacted financial performance from November to January. Our team is working through these technical issues, and we expect to resolve them over the coming period. In the coming weeks, we will also launch our Mighty Ape Mobile App, made possible by the new website technology. I will now hand over to David, who will provide a more detailed overview of the financial results.

Thank you, Ruslan, and good morning, everyone. At the start of this financial year, we set clear expectations of the Kogan Group, improve gross margin and operating leverage, return the Kogan Products division to growth, achieve strong growth in Verticals, return Kogan Marketplace to growth and continue improving our loyalty programs. Our financial performance for the half year ended 31 December 2024, along with the key highlights Ruslan just outlined, confirm that we have delivered on all fronts. These results underscore the strength of our business model. While we face a short-term challenge with Mighty Ape, Kogan.com's momentum has driven overall growth across the Kogan Group. As I present the group's financial results, I will address Kogan.com and Mighty Ape separately to reflect their differing performances. This slide presents the Kogan.com P&L excluding Mighty Ape, showcasing strong growth across all revenue and profit lines. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $23.4 million with a margin of 11.7%, while adjusted EBIT reached $18.4 million at a margin of 9.2%. This reflects impressive increases of 48% and 66.5%, respectively, and demonstrates the accelerated momentum achieved in this period. I will now walk you through the key highlights. Kogan.com achieved double-digit growth through gross sales and revenue for the half, reflecting a strong period of sales and increased customer engagement. To briefly explain the difference between gross sales and revenue, gross sales reflects the total transactional value of Kogan Retail, Mighty Ape and the Marketplaces, Loyalty Programs, the Verticals and Advertising income. Revenue reflects the accounting revenue of Kogan Retail, Mighty Ape, the Loyalty Programs and Advertising income and only the seller-based fees or commissions received from the Marketplaces and the Verticals. As platform-based sales continues to grow and the Products division enhanced its range and quality, gross margin expanded to 43.1%. This result, combined with the growth in revenue, delivered gross profit growth of 27.8% to $85.6 million. A strategic increase in marketing investment also led to a return to active customer growth. Over the half, Kogan.com active customers grew by 15.7%, reaching over 2.3 million. The Products division has now returned to growth with revenue up 21.7% and gross profit increasing 37.5%, supported by a refined and enhanced product range. As would be expected, variable costs, which includes transaction fees and third-party logistics charges, increased in line with our strong top line performance. Marketing costs also increased primarily due to higher strategic investment in search engine advertising, as previously discussed. While people costs remained relatively consistent period-on-period, we are making strategic investments in the future by training an AI-driven customer service model. This initiative is expected to significantly enhance response times while delivering cost savings. Based on current progress, these savings are anticipated to materialize in the first half of financial year '26. All of the items we have just discussed resulted in the significant uplift in profitability of Kogan.com. As discussed, the first half of FY '25 included a major website upgrade for Mighty Ape, bringing significant medium- and long-term benefits, but also creating short-term challenges. Until November, Mighty Ape's profitability remained stable year-on-year despite challenging trading conditions in New Zealand. In late October 2024, we rolled out a major platform upgrade, introducing enhanced functionality aimed at improving the offering, customer experience and future scalability. Our strike rate isn't perfect and the transition encountered a number of technical difficulties which significantly impacted performance during the November, December peak sales period. These impacts included website experience issues and online marketing issues. This led to a reduction in adjusted EBITDA, having a material effect on the first half's results in Mighty Ape. The team has been working diligently to resolve these issues, and we are confident that Mighty Ape's performance will rebound over the second half of the financial year. We will keep you informed of the ongoing progress. Despite these short-term setbacks, the website upgrade has already paved the way for several key improvements. These include enhancements to the Mighty Ape Primate Loyalty Program, introduction of the Mighty Ape Marketplace and the soon-to-be launched Mobile App to continue growing customer engagement and retention. Additionally, there will be a leadership change at Mighty Ape with Robert McEwan stepping in to succeed Daniel Balasoglou in the coming period. While the impact of the website transition has been significant, we are confident that we have enabled improvements which will drive sustained medium- and long-term growth. The tactical implementation wasn't perfect, but we are confident in the long-term strategy. Turning to the next slide, we can see gross profit contribution by each business division. More than 55% of our gross profit now comes from platform-based sales, illustrating the strong profitability and scalability of our business model. As the Loyalty Programs, Marketplaces, Verticals and Advertising Platform continue to expand, we expect to see further improvements in our operating leverage. We also note that 71.2% of the group's gross profit is derived from exclusive products and services. These are offerings that are only available through the Kogan Group and give our business a very defensible moat among all of our competitors. Combining these 2 observations demonstrates that the majority of Kogan Group's profitability is derived from scalable and unique sources. In spite of the short-term challenges faced through Mighty Ape, the Kogan Group continues to grow its operating leverage and profitability. We are now operating with gross margins of 38.9%, adjusted EBITDA margins of 9.3% and adjusted EBIT margins of 7%. These represent a significant improvement over the past 3 periods, and we look forward to further improvement with the anticipated return to better performance from Mighty Ape. Here, we have our balance sheet, which demonstrates the strong capital position that Kogan Group holds. We ended the period with over $67 million of cash and no debt. The cash balance includes investments in the share buyback program and the payment of the FY '24 final dividend. Inventory increased to $84 million, an appropriate level, ensuring sufficient stock to meet increased levels of demand. The group generated $47.1 million of operating cash flows during the period, increasing cash by $26.6 million over the 6 months. As noted earlier, this half included the continued investment in the share buyback program and payment of the FY '24 final dividend. With strong cash flow generation, the group is well positioned to pursue strategic growth opportunities while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital management in the best interest of shareholders. I'll now hand back to Ruslan to discuss our outlook and share some more on what to expect in the second half of the financial year. Thanks very much.

Thanks, David. With significant opportunity for improvement in Mighty Ape and continued growth of Kogan.com, we look forward to the second half of the year with confidence. Consistent with prior years, we will not be providing earnings guidance for the second half. Our January 2025 unaudited management accounts showed that Kogan.com gross sales continue to grow strongly. Kogan.com adjusted EBITDA of $3.6 million was achieved at an impressive margin of 11.4%. Meanwhile, Mighty Ape continued to experience platform issues, with January 2025 unaudited management accounts showing a decline across key metrics. As you can see here, we have outlined our key expectations for the second half of FY '25. We look forward to capitalizing on the strong positive momentum we have established and the clear plan to fix the known addressable issues at Mighty Ape. Highlighting the group's strong financial performance in the first half of FY '25 and solid balance sheet, the Board of Directors has declared an interim fully franked dividend of $0.07 per ordinary share. The dividend reinvestment plan will be available for this dividend. The Board has declared this while also balancing capital requirements for growth and the intended recommencement of the share buyback. Together with David and the Board, I am looking forward to completing the year with a strong result in the second half. This concludes our presentation. We look forward to meeting with many of our shareholders over the coming days. For those of you who have any questions or are interested in hearing more, please stay with us for the Q&A. Thank you for your interest in Kogan.com.

Thanks for that presentation, Ruslan and David. Just to remind everyone, we now got a Q&A session. Please -- no point in raising your hand. Just please put your questions in the Q&A section and we'll make sure we cover them off. I might start with [ Mira Jackson ], who's given us a few questions. Her first question, to what extent was the $3 million EBITDA in January '25 impacted by the Mighty Ape issues? And if you exclude those issues, what would EBITDA have been?

I'm happy to take that one, Ronn. We actually split out the performance of Kogan and Mighty Ape in the Jan update to assist people to understand that sort of differing financial performance. Kogan.com did $3.6 million of EBITDA in the month and Mighty Ape was negative $600,000. We would have expected a positive result had those issues not eventuated in Mighty Ape. So the extent of the positive result that we would have expected would have been somewhere in the vicinity of $0.5 million. So that's the extent of the impact. Had those issues not occurred, we might have been expecting a group result of an extra $1 million or so.

As we're talking about group results, another question of [ Mira ] is, do you have a targeted group EBITDA to revenue margin that you aim to operate within and particularly while it's -- while you're accelerating customer acquisition growth?

We don't have a target, but we do have a positive trend, which we've described in the investor presentation on the slide that covers operating leverage. So it's Slide 25. So on Slide 25, you can see the adjusted EBITDA margin over time. And we now have a group result that's almost double digits. Obviously, within Kogan.com, we're well over double digits in terms of our adjusted EBITDA margin, but weighing on that is the result from Mighty Ape. So we would hope that once the Mighty Ape issues are resolved, we will hit double-digit EBITDA margins across the business.

Last question from [ Mira ] on finance costs. They increased from $0.5 million in the first half '24 to $1.1 million in the first half '25 despite strong cash flow and no debt. What drove this? And do we annualize the first half for the full year?

So we did end the period with no debt and we started the period with no debt. But during the period, we did draw down on the debt for a period. And hence, there's an interest expense associated with that debt usage during the period. In terms of annualization, I would not expect that we would need to draw down on the debt in the second half, but it is there as an insurance policy for the business in case we decide to do so. So I wouldn't annualize it as a high-level estimate, but it is possible -- if we need to do that, then it's there for usage.

I might bring Ruslan into a couple of questions from James Wang. His first question, Ruslan, can you talk through the motivation behind the strategic marketing investment towards the end of the first half, whether you were satisfied with that return on investment. It's carried across to January. Should we expect marketing spend to remain elevated through the second half?

Yes, we're seeing very positive metrics on our marketing spend and our ability to acquire customers and those customers having a very short payback period, mainly driven by us getting the business into a very strong position. From an inventory perspective, product offering perspective, from a perspective of converting customers when they visit the site, the site is in a very strong position. And as a result of that, especially with the cost of living crisis and us being a value-based retailer, we're seeing some great customer dynamics and metrics on our marketing spend. So we have made that decision to elevate our spend and take advantage of the opportunity in the market to acquire customers. And yes, we plan to continue to do that.

Can you also give us a sense of how Kogan First memberships are tracking in terms of volumes of subscribers in the context of cycling the price increase from last year?

Yes. So the price -- we did -- for those that remember, I think it was mid-April last year, there was a price increase in Kogan First. So it obviously hasn't been a full year yet of cycling that price increase. But we are very happy with how the Kogan First program is going and the value that it delivers to customers. And the numbers speak for themselves. Our customers love it. We do not disclose customer numbers in line with the competitive landscape and what others with a similar subscription program do, but we do disclose the revenue. So you can track the performance of Kogan First through the revenue of Kogan First.

We've got a couple of questions from [ Christian Wacken ], one of which was just answered on Kogan First. But he also asks, in terms of the marketing costs, going back to those strategic investment that was done in the first half, they were up 47% year-on-year. How much was weighted to November to December, if you can share that? And what was the growth year-on-year in that period and into January? So that's for you, Ruslan or David.

I'm happy to take that. So we haven't split out the overall proportion of marketing costs by November, December versus the other months. But we have included on Slide 6 of the presentation the broader key reporting lines split between those 2 periods. So you can see that, for instance, in July through October, we were growing at 2% gross sales, and that increased to 34% gross sales growth in Kogan Group for November, December. Revenue grew from 15% growth in the 4 months till the end of October up to 32%. Gross profit growth was 18% in the first 4 months, increasing to 41%. And adjusted EBITDA was trending at 68% growth in the first 4 months, and that reduced in its growth rate down to 28% in the last 2 months. So that differential between the growth rate increase in gross profit and the growth rate reduction in EBITDA was driven by the growth in marketing in that period, combined with the negative impact of Mighty Ape. And we have segmented out the Mighty Ape quantum in the Mighty Ape reporting slide.

Maybe to just stick with you, David. Could you provide any more color on revenue in January '25 and how it's tracking versus gross revenue? Is there a mix shift contribution there?

Look, we've given the high-level update for January in the update. So we've given gross sales, which reflects full Marketplace transaction values and full Kogan Vertical transaction values as well as the transaction values for our retail divisions, and we've given EBITDA. So we regard them as the 2 most important key metrics, and the update is there.

Maybe last question to you, and then I'll go back to Ruslan. Can you provide any details on the buyback that you intend to resume?

Yes. So the buyback has a maximum of 10% share capital repurchased within 12 months. We commenced that some months ago, and we still have some capacity within that 10%. So that would be available if people want to track that through in terms of the total available capacity before we need to renew that for another year.

Ruslan, there's been obviously a lot of focus on the strategic marketing and the benefits that have flowed through. And we've got a question from Owen Humphries on this. With paid marketing now 14% of revenue, is that a level you're comfortable with going forward? You have spoken about unit economics on active customers. Can you talk through how you see those economics moving positively or negatively on the additional marketing spend?

Yes. So historically, as a business, we've been fairly conservative with marketing and aimed at to breakeven on the first transaction of a customer. So our goal was always to spend up to the GP of any transaction to win a customer. As we're seeing increased loyalty on our platform and we've got our inventory in one of the best positions it's ever been in lots of exciting products -- Marketplace has 50 million products available to customers -- and, in general, we're seeing very good activity on our platform, we've been willing to slightly increase that to pay off a customer in 1, 2, 3, 4 months to -- which still generates significantly positive results for the business. But it's us slightly loosening those marketing metrics, and we're happy to continue to do that.

A few questions from Tim Piper that have come in. David, how much of the deferred revenue benefit was in the January EBITDA of $3 million this year versus the $4.9 million in January last year? It looks likely to be higher in the PCP, hence, cycling a hard comp? That's from Tim.

So -- I mean, Tim will be aware that end of -- December's balance sheet deferred revenue always includes some proportion of Boxing Day sales that are transacted in December and dispatched in January. The figure year-on-year is broadly similar, although I think it was about $23-odd million last year and $21 million this year. So there is a $2 million differential in the aggregate amount of deferred revenue as at 31 December.

And just a balance sheet question from Tim. Why have payables increased at December '24?

So the primary driver for the growth in payables is the growth in our Marketplace sales. So that's both for Kogan.com and the new Mighty Ape Marketplace. So Marketplaces have a negative working capital cycle, which means that we pay our Marketplace sellers typically in arrears. So as we make transactions through the Marketplace, our cash balance builds up and our payables balance builds up. And because Marketplace has returned to growth this financial year and has also commenced in Mighty Ape, a new Marketplace has grown there, we have a larger payables balance driven by Marketplace transactions that have occurred that haven't yet been paid to our sellers.

Last question from Tim, maybe one for you, Ruslan. Tim is not asking you to quantify this, but just wants to get a sense of direction. Has the Kogan First membership number increased versus the last disclosed number at June last year?

In line with what everyone else does, being the Amazons and Walmarts, in disclosing off the subscription -- number of subscribers of a loyalty program, we don't disclose the numbers. So I would guide Tim to watch revenue of Kogan First and monitoring how that progresses.

And we have no other questions that have come through. So maybe -- everyone's got a long day ahead with the results season. So we might look to close it off a little bit earlier. But I might finish with a question for me, if that's okay. Without you giving guidance in any way, a lot has been achieved in the first half. What excites you most about the opportunities you're seeing for the Kogan.com Group in the second half?

Well, we are very happy with where the business is at in terms of the efficiency with which we're operating at the product range that we have in the business, what we're achieving especially in our core product divisions being the big ticket items of TVs, washing machines, dryers, air conditioners and the market share gains that we're winning there. We disclosed in our presentation -- you guys would have seen for the first time the portion of our product range that is exclusive and our average basket size, which we think is something that really differentiates us from other e-commerce players because many would operate with average basket sizes of under $50. Ours is at over $170, pointing towards the brand that we've built around brown box goods, appliances and white goods. So that's going incredibly strong and winning a lot of market share, and we're really happy with how that's going in the business. We're excited about our return to top line growth and getting to serve more and more customers. We have some challenges ahead of us, obviously, with -- we'll be fixing the Mighty Ape integration and really scaling the Marketplace there. And we've seen some really good green shoots from that. But in general, very proud of the team and their ability to deliver significant top line growth with significant EBITDA margin whilst delivering also a lot of operating leverage. So very excited about what the future holds.

Thanks, Ruslan, and thanks, David, for your time this morning. Thank you, everyone, for joining on this results webinar. And as always, I'm sure if you have any further questions, please reach out to Ruslan and David. Have a great day, and thank you for your time. That ends today's presentation.

Thanks, everyone.