Superloop Limited (SLC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Superloop Limited FY '24 Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Paul Tyler, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Superloop's FY '24 Results Briefing. My name is Paul Tyler. I'm the CEO of Superloop, and I'm joined here by Dean Tognella, our Group CFO. I wanted to say at the outset how proud I am in the group's achievements and operational success throughout the year and the financial performance we've been able to deliver on the back of this for our shareholders. It's a testament to the strength of our operating model, our brand and the entire Superloop team. If we move to Slide 3, our performance highlights. FY '24 marks the end of the first year of our 3-year Double Down strategy. I am pleased the completion of our first year, sees us tracking ahead of the plan. It's been another record year for Superloop with 30% year-on-year revenue growth to over $420 million, with all 3 of our market segments contributing to revenue growth. We're particularly pleased to report that the vast majority of this revenue growth was generated organically. Alongside our growth in customer numbers, which increased almost 24% to 455,000 customers. And most pleasingly, underlying EBITDA grew 45.2% to $54.3 million, coming in above the top end of our guidance. We also continue to see strong growth in free cash flow, an increase of 26% on FY '23 to over $29 million, providing a further solid proof point as to the cash generation capability of the Superloop platform. If we move to Slide 4. As I've noted, we're tracking ahead of our 3-year plan. During the year, we saw organic revenue growth of 23%, alongside NBN market share gains with our share up almost a full 1 percentage point to 4%. Consumer revenue experienced particularly strong growth of 47%, with a record 80,000 new customers added and particular success with our targeted high-speed plans. Our positioning as a high-performance yet value product is resonating with customers, particularly during this time where there are significant cost of living pressures. All segments contributed to revenue growth, with business revenue up 4.3% and wholesale revenue up 9.4%. The FY '24 represents the largest sales year for our wholesale business in Superloop's history, milestone contracts were signed with AGL and Origin Energy, with these contracts set to make material earnings contributions from FY '25. As we scale, the benefits of our operating model are evident with our OpEx as a percentage of revenue ratio down 2.6 percentage points to 17.1% for the full year. We move to Slide 5. We've maintained a consistent trend in revenue growth as well as growth in underlying EBITDA, not only year-on-year, but also half-on-half. Operating leverage is now clear with the increase in underlying EBITDA of 45.2%, exceeding the growth in revenue. The underlying EBITDA margin increased by 1.3 percentage points to 12.9%. Our double-down ambition is mid- to high teens EBITDA margin, and we're making good progress towards that goal. If you jump to Slide 6. All market segments contributed to revenue growth, with consumer being the standout in this result, up 47.1%. Business segment grew 4.3%, with a weaker half 2, reflecting lower project revenue and the partial insourcing of services by a large WiFi customer. Overall, a solid result in a very challenging market. The Wholesale segment grew by 9.4% with a significant step-up to come in FY '25 if major contract wins such as AGL and Origin amongst others coming into the result. Slide 7. Superloop achieved record NBN adds of 78,000 in FY '24 and increasing our market share to 4%. Those charts here highlight the challenger megatrend with challenger RSP brands growing market share at the expense of the older established brands. Undoubtedly, this trend has been an important driver of our growth and the growth of all challenger and will continue to be so in the future. The chart on the left shows the net additions of the major brands across the first 3 quarters of FY '24, with the Q4 data still to be released. We're proud that our brands, Superloop and Exetel, have come out on top in this period, making us the fastest-growing RSP. But we're equally thrilled that our wholesale customers, now including Origin as well as AGL are experiencing great success in the market. And we're very proud that we can enable other challenger brands through our solution set. We see a significant future opportunity to drive market share for our consumer brands and continue to build on partnerships with our wholesale customers. Slide 8. We hope you've seen some of our efforts in driving brand awareness through digital, TV, radio and print advertising. Our core brand values are being heard. Superloop is an RSP that is different to other Internet providers has competitive rates and represents value for money. Strong gains in brand awareness since the relaunch of Superloop in Q3 FY '23 have been the foundation of our success in our targeted areas, including high-speed plans such as the 250 megabit and the 1 gigabit plans and in FTTP, fiber-to-the-premise, where currently, we have a 5.9% market share. We continue to invest in brand and have the aspiration of reaching 25% prompted brand awareness by the end of FY '25 to further support our ambitious growth plans. Jump on to Slide 9. More than 87,000 net new customers have been added over the year, which makes FY '24 a record year for organic growth. Almost 80,000 net new customers are added in the Consumer segment, representing an increase of some 33%. Business customers increased by 5% to 93,000 customers and wholesale customers grew by 9% to almost 40,000. Wholesale customer numbers will be increasing significantly in FY '25 due to the inclusion of new and migrated services as part of the Origin contract. Slide 10. Our operating model is simple. We have a great domestic and international fiber network, a modern integrated digital stack and a global resource base. These 3 components support the efficient delivery of our products across our 3 market segments, those being consumer, business and wholesale. We also form the basis of our competitive advantage as a low-cost efficient operator delivering flexible, high-performance solutions at a value price point. Go to Slide 11. This is a simple representation of our substantial asset base. The significant investment in physical and digital assets is what enables us to deliver our services at a lower cost and sets us up to benefit from operating leverage as our business grows. Move to Slide 12. Our approach to ESG is maturing as our investment in ESG is growing it goes hand in hand with our social license to operate. We've made some pleasing progress in our ESG efforts in FY '24, including driving large reductions in the gender pay gap, progress in calculating and assessing our emissions and our step-up in support of our charities, including the DB collective and other worthwhile causes. I'll now hand over to Dean to provide a more detailed overview of the financial performance.

Thanks, Paul. It is great to be presenting Superloop's full year results for the first time. As previously mentioned by Paul, year 1 of our 3-year Double Down strategy has started well. I'll step you through our high-level results before I will drill down into more detail on the following slides. We have seen positive momentum in operational performance across all segments. And this is driving strong revenue growth, up 30% to $420.5 million. As Paul has already noted, our consumer segment has delivered the greatest contribution to growth in revenue, up 47% on the back of record growth in customer numbers. The group delivered gross margin of $145.1 million, an increase of 24%, with growth in the consumer segment resulting in a lower blended gross margin of 34.8%. Operating expenses increased 15.9% overall, largely driven by 29.4% increase in marketing investment, which has delivered strong returns. Importantly, underlying EBITDA grew 45.2% to $54.3 million. NPATA is now positive at $23.5 million. And whilst we are still delivering an overall bottom line loss, we saw a significant reduction in the loss over the prior year and the confidence of being net PAT positive in FY '26 in line with our 3-year strategy. The company continues to generate strong free cash flow of $29.2 million, an increase of $6 million on the prior year. Slide 15. Gross margin continues to grow with the company delivering $145.1 million for the year, representing growth of 24.2%. Overall, the gross margin percentage was 1.3% lower than FY '23, resulting from the increased contribution of consumer to the overall group margin. All segments contributed with the consumer gross margin increasing by $22.3 million as a result of very strong revenue growth. The consumer GP margin held steady in both the first and second half at 28% as we continue to take market share and delivered record organic growth. The business segment expanded gross margin by 2.1 points to 40.2%, and wholesale maintained its strong gross margin at 59.5%. We expect to see exceptional growth in FY '25 in the wholesale segment margin following the transition of Origin's customers. Moving to Slide 16. Our low-cost structure continues to deliver strong operating leverage. OpEx, excluding doubtful debt and marketing as a percentage of revenue is on a downward trend. As of 30 June 24, OpEx to revenue has declined to 16.1%. This compares to 18.7% 12 months ago. Superloop has more than 50% of its staff offshore and continues to make efforts to lower the average employee cost per FTE. This year, we have been able to optimize our employee expenses. We have been able to meet the market for Australian-based staff whilst also increasing resourcing levels to support consumer growth through our offshore team. With a strong focus on cost control, we have seen a reduction in other OpEx and employee expenses in half 2. Moving to Slide 17. Superloop has been disciplined in investment in network capacity and infrastructure to support our strong revenue growth. CapEx spend was $25 million for the year. This is at the lower end of the guidance range, which have included a further $5 million of additional CapEx associated with the Origin and AGL contract wins and accelerated customer growth we were experiencing in the consumer segment. Only $3 million of this additional $5 million was spent in the FY '24 year. Looking ahead, we have forecast a further $5 million to $6 million of CapEx will be required in FY '25 to support sales success in Smart Communities as lots are delivered. So we expect a total $28 million to $30 million to be spent on CapEx in FY '25, representing a modest uplift on FY '24. For ease of modeling, we have provided in the bottom chart, a guide to the changes we see in FY '25 D&A, given how difficult this can be to forecast. Moving to Slide 18. Superloop heads in the next financial year with a strong balance sheet. The business is generating strong cash flow, which continues to grow year-on-year. Underlying EBITDA to operating cash flow conversion is 92%, and we expect to see this settle between 80% to 90% for the FY '25 year. In half 1 of FY '25, we expect the Origin contracts create a one-off reduction in cash conversion due to working capital requirements. The company maintains conservative debt position with debt covenants or within comfortable levels. At the end of FY '24, Superloop was in a positive net cash position. Our significant debt capacity provides us with funding flexibility to pursue M&A opportunities that are strategically aligned with the business and support accretive growth. I'll now pass back to Paul for the segment update.

Thanks, Dean. Okay. We are on Slide 20. As already noted, the consumer segment achieved outstanding performance over the year, increasing revenue, 47.1% to $264.6 million. This was driven by an additional 80,000 net new consumers being serviced, including 68,000 net NBN adds. Gross margin percentage was 28.2%, remaining comfortably above our 25% long-term target. We are seeing record growth in customers, but also importantly, we've been adding higher value customers. We are confident we'll see this trend continue as consumers demand higher internet speed, reliability and value. Cost per activation was also lower in FY '24 with our cumulative marketing investment over the last 2 years, increasing brand awareness and reducing our cost to acquire. Customer churn continued to improve over the year as we have continued to focus on churn drivers. We'll jump to the business segment on Slide 21. Revenue for the business segment increased 4.3% from the prior year to $104 million with gross margin improving to 40.2%, in line with our long-term target of 40%. The growth was driven largely by increased NBN volumes and an increase in large corporate revenue. As I said earlier, the second half was impacted by a partial in-sourcing by a large WiFi customer, and we also experienced a slowdown in project and consulting revenues. Superloop strong sales in small business, and we see this together with our Smart Communities division as a significant opportunity to grow revenue in this segment. On Slide 22, you can see some examples of new wins in business with over 90 new corporate logos signed in the year. Coming to Slide 23 and our Smart Communities offering. It was another great year for Smart Communities, which is really now coming into its own. We secured 10,000 net new lots in the year, including Tier 1 operators such as Mirvac and Investa in the build-to-rent space, where in that space, we've really carved out a market leadership position. We also had good sales performance in MDUs or multi-dwelling units and Broadacre developments. In fact, I'm pleased to announce today that earlier this week, we signed a new contract with a new customer, covering 2,500 new Broadacre lots with Resimax. It's again setting us up for a great platform to grow in FY '25. We continue to be the market leader in providing tertiary accommodation WiFi, where we have an entrenched advantage through our software, our infrastructure and our skilled resources. FY '24 was not a large build year for us. However, over the next 18 months, we're deploying some 10,000 to 15,000 additional lots, which will be worth over $5 million in gross margin per year once those mature. We've seen the next few years to be really exciting to help this business, our Smart Community division really ramps up. Moving to Slide 24, wholesale. The wholesale segment revenues increased 9.4% over FY '24 to $48 million and generated a gross margin of $28.6 million, up 8.3% on the prior year. Contract wins with AGL and Launtel contributed to the uplift. But FY '25 will see the most significant uplift with the full year impact from those contract wins, but of course, in addition to the win with Origin Energy. We expect to add more than 150,000 customers when the migration is complete. We are confident of continuing to win business as an enabler of the challenger part of this market. On Slide 25, you can see some examples of those new logos in the wholesale division. While Origin Energy and AGL are, of course, landmark contract wins in FY '24. We had much more success than just that with 39 new wholesale clients, including names such as MultiWave Networks, Interphone and NewSprout. Moving to Slide 26 and the Origin contract itself. The contract was signed in March and is by far the biggest contract win for Superloop in its history. At the time of signing, they had some 130,000 subscribers, and we announced that, that would contribute more than $19 million in annualized underlying EBITDA. In Origin's recent results presentation, they confirmed that their subscriber numbers had grown to some 152,000 subscribers as at the end of June 2024. New Origin NBN orders went live on the Superloop platform in early July and we commenced the migration of the customer base in late July. We are on track to complete the transition in line with our announcement during October. The speed at which the team have been able to go live on the Superloop white-label platform in under 4 months is a testament to the capability of the Superloop platform, but also the strong collaboration between the origin and Superloop project team. And with that, I will move to the outlook from here. Slide 28. Following the successful completion of our previous 3-year strategy, which concluded in FY '23, we launched our new 3-year Double Down strategy with the ambition to more than double our consumer subs, our revenue and our underlying EBITDA over the 3-year period. Our ambition by the end of FY '26 is to reach over 500,000 consumer customers, generate $700 million in revenue, achieve EBITDA margins in the mid-to-high teens and the NPATA positive. We move to Slide 29. At the end of the first year of that 3-year plan, that 3-year Double Down strategy, we are tracking ahead of our plan, and we are confident of reaching our ambitions by the end of FY '26. We have already reached our ambition to deliver positive NPATA following strong performance in all 3 segments in FY '24 with growth in customer numbers, revenue and EBITDA. FY '25 will see a significant step change in earnings contribution from the wholesale segment through the Origin and AGL contracts in particular. Move to Slide 30, please. Our growth path is clear, and the team are completely aligned to deliver growth and value for our shareholders. As we move into our second year of the Double Down strategy, we will continue to build on the strong foundations laid in FY '24. There are 3 pillars driving growth for Superloop. A laser focus on maintaining our position as a cost leader. Continued initiatives and efforts to drive organic growth and disciplined M&A. Our positioning as a value player has shown that in the past year, in particular, we're on the right strategy, and it's underpinning our growth. To support our cost structure further, we will continue to invest in digitization and automation and focus on maintaining a low cost to acquire for customers. We will do more of the same to drive organic growth, investing in brand awareness, leveraging our increased customer base by focusing on more cross-sell options and investing to build out the network capacity to support that growth. M&A remains a focus. And whilst we see plenty of opportunities, we take a disciplined approach to what we will consider and pursue. As you saw the Symbio transaction last year, we're not afraid to bail out if the transaction moves beyond our value parameters. Any opportunity we pursue must have a strong strategic alignment, allowing tight integration with our existing business and create long-term value for our shareholders. Move to Slide 31, please. We see our cost structure and efficient operating model, providing a strong competitive advantage, and this continues to translate to earnings growth and strong cash generation. Business is in a position that we have strong earnings visibility and we can affirm our FY '25 outlook provided at the time of announcing the Origin contract win. We expect our underlying EBITDA for FY '25 to be in the range of $83 million to $88 million, an uplift of more than 50% on FY '24. Alongside this, we expect CapEx spend to be in the range of $28 million to $30 million to enable our continuing growth. With that, I'll conclude my formal remarks, and I welcome any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. Your first question comes from Joseph Michael with Morgan Stanley.

I might just start with a few on the Origin contract. So firstly, it was just sort of keen to reconcile some of the numbers around Origin broadband subscribers. So I think last week, they restated their ambition to get to 600,000 broadband customers by FY '26, but the growth hurdles for them to achieve the sort of maximum of $30 million in Superloop shares. They only need to get to 450,000 broadband customers, and there's no time line on that. Can you help us reconcile the difference between those 2 numbers?

Thanks, Joe. There isn't a difference in those numbers. I want to be really careful not to put any words into Origins now. Their customer numbers have been announced in their own announcements and their ambition is their own ambition. We communicated the terms of the contract with Origin at the time of the signing of the Origin contract and included in that the relevant growth milestones that are part of that contract. I agree that the maximum equity contribution is achieved if they hit 450,000 subscribers. I don't really have anything more to add to that one.

Okay. I might just ask one more question on Origin. Just around sort of the run rate. So they look like they added about 56,000 subs in the first half and second half. Is it fair to assume that, that run rate will accelerate now that they've -- or they will soon be fully onto the Superloop platform, where they're in control of the sales and marketing once they've sort of got more ownership of that customer relationship? Is it fair to assume that their run rate will accelerate?

Look, we're very happy with the structure of the contract and the win-win incentives that it sets out. But again, without being disrespectful, I'd have to say that Origin's own plans are their own and for them to communicate rather than for us to communicate.

Okay. Great. And then I'll just ask one more follow-up question before I go to the back of the queue. Just around consumer broadband, you're sort of at 4% share now. Just wondering how you're sort of viewing the growth runway there. The top 4 players still have 80% share. Is there still some more low-hanging fruit? Do you still see upside to your market share gains? Or is it going to be harder from here? Do you think the competitive landscape will get harder and share gains will be more challenging going forward?

Thanks for the question. Joe, I think a couple of years ago, we communicated a vision where we thought that the challenger part of the industry would secure some 30% market share. Now it was an ambition based on or vision if you like, based on what we've seen in other industries, financial services, energy, international markets for broadband. At the time, I think the collective market share was mid-single digits. The last ACCC report, put the collective challenger's share at something like 18.5%, I think 18.6%, I believe the number was. We haven't changed our view of what's possible. That 30%, in fact, that 30% may even be conservative. So I think that there is a long future runway for success for the challengers to take share from the incumbents because we simply provide a better product, better value, better performance, and the marketplace is starting to understand the ease at which they can move to us. So yes, we believe there's still a long way to go in terms of the challengers, of which Superloop operates a number of brands, and we enable other brands to take significant share from the incumbents.

Your next question comes from Nick Harris with Morgans.

Paul, thanks for the opportunity to ask some questions, and I loved your free cash flow. It's always a highlight for me. 3 to be the magic number to ask questions. So I'm asking as well. The first one is the extra CapEx in FY '25? I'm not sure, I guess how commercially sensitive it is. But is there any kind of flavor you can give us around sort of timing, return profiles and things like that? Or perhaps to ask the same question in a different way, is there any reason to think it would be similar or dissimilar to the likes of like an Opticomm or Unity style deals just to help the investment market understand?

I think that's a good parallel to draw, Nick. It's a similar -- we operate in a very similar industry, similar sort of cost per premise to build, obviously, as we make the distinction between multi-dwelling units and broad acre lots, which have a slightly different CapEx profile. So there is a mix question of the mix of broad acres versus MDUs on how much we spend. But I think the Opticomm parallels that you have at your disposal or a pretty good proxy.

Excellent. I would describe that as a very good spend then. Second question, just on the direction on the OpEx into FY '25. I know on Slide 30, you've got continued OpEx control. So I'm just trying to think in my head, we'll just get a direction, I guess, second half '24 OpEx was down on the first half. Is there some seasonal softness in that? And apologies, you might have said this was just struggling multiple calls, but can we basically take second half '24 OpEx and run with that? Or is there some seasonality in there? And then if we ignore sales and marketing spend, is there any reason to think OpEx should move up or down materially in FY '25? And one last question after that.

Okay. I might handle that one, Nick. So second half, we continue to refine our employee numbers. I look to leverage as much as we can of offshore resources and that helped us support the consumer growth in particular. Moving into the first half of '25, we'll have the normal sort of salary adjustments we see that effective in sort of September. So it will be the main change will be a sort of a CPI-based salary adjustment. That will come in the first half and then second half will be sort of fairly similar once we've baked in the salary adjustment.

Dan. That's helpful. And then just my last question on NBN competition. You guys nailed that in terms of net adds this year and continue to do better and better. I guess just thinking about the competitive landscape, you've seen a new challenger brand enter the market. Curious if you've seen that have any particular impact at the moment. They've been aggressive on sales and marketing, which is impacting your customer acquisition costs or anything like that? Or does the sort of dynamics feel broadly similar?

Look, I think the -- I'll come back to that mega trend I was talking about, which is the challenger is collectively taking share from the incumbents. And there are a number of challenger brands, of which we operate, several, and there are a lot more in the marketplace. But that megatrend is continuing. We are collectively taking share. And there's certainly plenty of space for us all to take share from the incumbents, which is exactly what's happening. I'd say competition has increased a little bit over the last couple of months. And obviously, the sort of the market-wide repricing on the back of some of the NBN changes has driven some of that. But I think the meter point is the shift in volumes from the incumbents to the challengers. And as was pointed out earlier, the incumbents still have the vast majority of the market. So there is plenty of space for us all collectively to grow into.

Paul. I'm probably putting words in your mouth, but how I interpret that is it hasn't -- don't expect massive changes, I guess, this year. Is that reasonable?

I would take that as a comment, Nick.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Ross Barrows with Wilsons Advisory.

Just a couple of questions. Just a comment around wholesale. So the comment earlier was to expect exceptional growth in wholesale following the Origin transition. So are you able to maybe -- are you looking to rebase that expectation for wholesale margins? Obviously, the gross margin has been around 60%. That's been a target you've mentioned a couple of times, and you're now achieving that. So is that base likely to change at all? Or any kind of quantitative comments you can make around that?

No. Look, our long-term target for all 3 segments are maintained. So 25% for consumer 40% for business and 60% for wholesale, where we can exceed the margins, of course, we will. And we have been, as you rightly pointed out, in a couple of places there. But at this stage, we're maintaining 60% as our expected long-term margin for wholesale. Obviously, there is a mix question there, and that may change in time. But at this stage, we're maintaining that as the target.

Great. Just on just calling out, I guess, Slide 16 for reference where you're talking about operating leverage and obviously, a couple of hundred basis points improvement half-on-half. Just wondering where you think the tipping point is there, where that really does start to kick in? Or do you think you're kind of there? Or are you still not just there yet?

I mean, I'll hand it to Dan, but I think we're there.

Yes, I think we're showing a clear operating leverage. We're very focus on costs and driving improved performance. We continue to look at the way we onboard customers, automation. So I think there's a little way to go. But as you can see, it's been a step change in terms of scale, which we'll benefit from.

Okay. And just the last one. You did give some comments earlier that new sales of Origin customers, I think it was early July, if I'm not mistaken. Are you able to make any comments, I guess, being 5, 6, 7 weeks past that, how that's going so far?

Well, I'll just repeat what I said, which is that, yes, all new sales that Origin make are now on the Superloop platform. And we're progressing through the migration in line with our migration plan. It's a complicated migration that we're working through, but we are maintaining the ambition or the forecast or whatever we've called it, of completing the migration in the October time line at which point all Origin customers will be on the Superloop platform.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. And I'll hand back to Mr. Tyler for closing remarks.

Thank you. Well, I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to join the call. As I said in my opening, I believe FY '24 to be a watershed year for the company. We feel in great shape. We have great momentum across all 3 segments, and we believe FY '25 is going to be really exciting. So thanks all for joining.

It does concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.