Trade Window Holdings Limited ($TWL)

Earnings Call Transcript · May 28, 2026

NZSE NZ Information Technology Software Earnings Calls 27 min

Highlights from the call

In the fiscal year 2026, Trade Window Holdings Limited (TWL:NZ) reported a trading revenue increase of 20% to $9.6 million, driven by strong customer engagement and operational efficiencies. The EBITDA loss narrowed by 19% to $1.2 million, while the net loss after tax improved by 26% to $2.6 million. Management maintained guidance for FY '27 revenue growth between 13% to 18%, signaling confidence in their operational strategy and market expansion, particularly in Australia, which now represents 43% of total revenue.

Main topics

  • Revenue Growth: Trade Window achieved a 20% increase in trading revenue, reaching $9.6 million, up from $8 million last year. Management noted, "The momentum is clear" and highlighted that "Australia accelerated, now representing 43% of group revenue."
  • Improved Profitability Metrics: The EBITDA loss narrowed by 19% to $1.2 million, reflecting both revenue growth and cost discipline. Management stated, "As revenue has grown, we've held our cost base steady," indicating effective cost management.
  • Customer Retention and Growth: Customer retention improved to 89%, with a focus on higher-quality customer relationships. The management emphasized, "When we say when we win customers, they stay," showcasing the durability of their customer base.
  • Geographic Revenue Diversification: Australia's revenue contribution grew significantly, now at 43% of total revenue, with a compound annual growth rate of 30% since FY '23. Management noted, "The geographic balance of this business is shifting and it's shifting in the right direction."
  • Freight AI Development: The development of Freight AI is on track for a September 2027 rollout, which is expected to enhance operational capabilities. Management indicated, "Freight AI represents more than just a rebuild for TradeWindow Freight," highlighting its strategic importance.

Key metrics mentioned

  • Trading Revenue: $9.6 million (vs $8 million last year, +20% YoY)
  • EBITDA Loss: $1.2 million (narrowed by 19% YoY)
  • Net Loss After Tax: $2.6 million (improved by 26% YoY)
  • Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $10 million (up 17% YoY)
  • Customer Retention Rate: 89% (up from previous year)
  • Cash Position: $4.2 million (sufficient to sustain operations)

Trade Window's strong revenue growth and improving profitability metrics suggest a positive trajectory for the company. The focus on customer retention and geographic diversification, particularly in Australia, positions Trade Window favorably for future growth. Investors should monitor the successful rollout of Freight AI and the company's ability to maintain operational efficiency amidst rising costs.

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

Operator
#1

Good morning. Welcome to TradeWindow's FY '26 Results Presentation. I'd now like to hand you over to Andrew Balgarnie, TradeWindow Chief Strategy Officer.

Andrew Balgarnie

Executives
#2

Thank you, Richard. Today, we're presenting our financial results for the year ended '26 March -- sorry, March 2026. Before we begin, please direct your attention to Slide 2, which contains an important notice regarding this presentation. We'll be presenting a series of slides that were released on the NZX, ASX and our investor hub this morning, along with our audited financial reports. Moving to Slide 3. I'll start with an overview of our financial results, most of which was covered in the quarter 4 FY '26 Investor Update. Dewald, TradeWindow's acting CEO, will provide an update on products and customers. Deidre will then provide more detailed information on the financials before Dewald will finish with our outlook. There will be time for questions at the end, and we encourage participants to ask questions using the chat function on the platform. I'm on Slide 4. FY '26 was built on solid foundations of FY '25, and the momentum is clear. Trading revenue rose 20% to $9.6 million, up $8 million on last year. Our EBITDA loss narrowed by 19% to $1.2 million, reflecting both top line growth and tight cost discipline even after absorbing our ASX foreign-exempt listing expenses. Net loss after tax improved by 26% from $3.5 million to $2.6 million. We closed the year with $4.2 million in cash. Monthly cash consumption held steady at $200,000, unchanged from FY '25. We are confident we have sufficient cash to sustain the current business operations and take the business through to profitability. I'm now on Slide 5. As we've presented on the 5th of May, the underlying metrics reinforce that momentum. ARR crossed the $10 million threshold for the first time, up 17% on FY '25. ARPC grew strongly across both shippers and freight forwarder segments, driven by usage rather than price increases, to an extent. Australia accelerated, now representing 43% of group revenue. Gross margin is improving, and Freight AI development is advancing towards September 2027 rollout. The direction of travel is consistent and clearly positive, which I'll cover in more detail in the following slides. Moving on to Slide 6. When we say when we win customers, they stay. Annual recurring revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 28% since FY '23. Organic acquisition growth that reflects the durability of our customer relationships. Gross margins are improving, driven by operational efficiencies and onboarding and support and by the near-term completion of our cloud migration. The full year margin of 60% reflects a temporary drag from carrying both legacy and new cloud infrastructure simultaneously. And it's a transitional cost, not a structural one. The Q4 margin reached 63%, and we expect the recovery to continue into FY '27. As revenue has grown, we've held our cost base steady. Cash burn has stabilized, and we're approaching EBITDA breakeven. Moving to Slide 7. This slide tells a story of consistent compounding growth. Shipper ARPC has grown at 21% compound annual growth rate since FY '23, reaching $30,352 in FY' 26. Freight forwarder ARPC has grown at 24% over the same period -- sorry, 27% reaching $13,907. Both are being driven by customers using our platform more broader adoption, higher transactional volumes and a deliberate focus on larger customers. Customer count sits down -- sits at 547, down slightly on the prior year, largely due to the rationalization of micro freight customers in favor of more lucrative mid-market freight forwarders segment. The retention has recovered to 89%, reflecting stronger, more engaged customer base. Now on Slide 8. New Zealand remains our largest market by revenue with the revenue growing at a 22% compound annual growth rate since FY '23, reaching $5.2 million in FY '26. That's a solid maturing base. But the standout is Australia. Revenue has grown at a 30% compound annual growth rate since FY '23, reaching $4.1 million. And this market now represents 43% of total group revenue. Australia is closing the gap on New Zealand fast, and that's our top commercial priority in FY '27. The rest of the world, which is comprised of Singapore, Philippines and Pacific Islands, makes a modest contribution at $300,000. I will now hand over to Dewald, who will provide an update on customers and product.

Dewald Janse Rensburg

Executives
#3

Thank you, Andrew. We are now on Slide 10. Slide 10 speaks for itself, but let me give you some context behind the logos. Our shipper customers span dairy, meat, seafood, horticulture, timber and more. Collectively, our New Zealand shipper customers are responsible for over 50% of New Zealand's primary industry exports by volume. That's not a minor footprint. That's a significant share of what this country sends to the world every year. Names like Silver Fern Farms, ANZCO Foods, Synlait, Sealord, Zespri, Whittaker's, these are household names and pillars of the New Zealand economy. In Australia, we've been making good progress, too, adding Tassal and Huon, both well-known and sizable seafood exporters to our customer base. When you look at our top 5 customers, 3 are large meat exporters from New Zealand and 2 are large freight forwarder clients from Australia. That's a healthy mix across both segments and both sides of the Tasman. On the freight forwarder side, we work with some significant global and regional operators. DHL uses our Origin service. That's one of the world's most recognized logistics brands choosing TradeWindow. Alongside them, you'll see Crane [ Worldwide, ] DSV, Zaphon and a range of strong regional players. The breadth and caliber of the customer base gives us confidence. These are not customers on a trial with -- on a trial with a new product. These are serious businesses that depend on our software to keep their operations running every day. That's the definition of mission-critical, and it's a foundation that we are proud of. We are now moving to Slide 11. This slide gives you a clear picture of where our revenue and customers are coming from geographically. And I think it tells an interesting story about how the business is evolving. New Zealand remains our largest market, contributing 54% of total trading revenue. That's $5.1 million for the year, generated by 247 customers who are primarily shippers. This is our established home market, the foundation of the business, and it remains strong. Australia now contributes 43% of revenue, $4.1 million from 284 customers, who are primarily freight forwarders. What's striking about this is that Australia actually has more customers than New Zealand yet generates a smaller share of revenue. That's not a concern. It reflects the state of the Australian relationship. Freight forwarder ARPC grew 27% this year as we recontract customers onto our new pricing plans. And as that base matures, we would expect the revenue contribution from Australia to grow proportionately. The remaining 3%, $338,000, comes from 16 customers located in Asia and the Pacific Islands, a small but interesting signal of demand beyond our 2 core markets. The geographic balance of this business is shifting and it's shifting in the right direction. A year ago, Australia represented a smaller share of revenue. Today, it's 43%. Our goal is to keep growing that contribution, and the customer numbers suggest the foundations are there to do exactly that. We are now on Slide 12. The 2 charts here are worth spending a moment on because they speak directly to the quality of our revenue base. On the left, customer retention. 89% of our customers retained for the full year to 31 March 2026. The vast majority of customers who joined TradeWindow stay with TradeWindow. In a SaaS business, retention is everything. It's the foundation that compounding growth is built on. On the right, customer concentration. This is an important one for investors to understand. Our single largest customer represents just 4.7% of revenue. Customers 2 to 5, together, account for 7%, and customers 6 to 10 account for 11.3%, which means 77% of our revenue comes from a broad base of customers beyond our top 10. What that means in practice is that we are not dependent on a single customer or a small group of customers to sustain our business. If we were to lose our largest customer tomorrow, which we have no reason to expect, it would represent less than 5% of revenue. That is a generally resilient revenue profile, and it's one that derisks the investment case considerably. And there are further dimension to this diversifications story. With the majority of our growth now coming from Australia which represented 43% of group revenue in FY '26, we are progressively reducing our dependence on any single geography. That matters more than people may think. It means we are better positioned to weather macroeconomic disruptions, natural disasters and other events that might affect one market but not the other. A more geographically diversified business is a more resilient one. Low churn, low concentration, high recurring revenue and growing geographic diversification -- these characteristics, together, are what gives us confidence in the predictability and durability of our business as we move into FY '27. We're now moving to Slide 13. One of the questions we get asked a lot is how predictable our revenue really is. This slide answers that directly. 95% of our revenue is recurring. Let me explain what sits behind that number. Our revenue has 4 components: Transactional revenue -- and each time a customer creates or shares a set of trade documents -- makes up 53% of the total; subscription revenue, which is monthly, quarterly or annual fees to access our solution makes up 42%. Together, these 2 streams account for 95% of our revenue, and we consider both to be recurring. Why? Because the nature of our customers' business means that they just don't stop. Exporters keep exporting and freight forwarders keep forwarding. The activity that drives our revenue is nondiscretionary. It happens regardless of the economic climate because it's fundamental to how these businesses operate. The remaining 5% is made up of one-off installation fees and ad hoc services revenue from customization requests. We are actively working to standardize our products which we expect will progressively convert that services revenue into recurring revenue over time. The picture here is one of a revenue base that is predictable, diversified and growing in value per customer. Next, we will look at the product road map. I'm now on Slide 5 -- 15, sorry. As we look at Slide 15, you will see that Freight AI represents more than just a rebuild for TradeWindow Freight. It's the foundational platform architecture supporting TradeWindow's long-term intelligent trade ecosystem strategy. Customers are increasingly seeking greater workflow automation, interoperability and operational efficiency across fragmented trade processes. Freight AI is intended to support those evolving operational requirements through scalable platform infrastructure and embedding intelligent automation. The first pillar is the foundation. This is about establishing a scalable and a unified platform architecture capable of supporting long-term platform convergence, shared services and operational scalability. The second pillar is intelligent automation. Our focus is not AI for the sake of AI, but rather embedding practical automation directly into operational trade workflows to support productivity, workflow orchestration and operational efficiency. The third pillar is operational productivity. Freight AI is designed to progressively reduce manual effort, improve processing accuracy and support greater operational throughput across the trade life cycle. The fourth pillar is platform convergence. Over time, this supports shared micro services, integrated workflows and interoperability, and a more unified operating environment across the TradeWindow ecosystem. Finally, ecosystem expansion positions TradeWindow to progressively extend connectivity, transaction capability and shared data intelligence across its broader platform environment. Importantly, Freight AI is intended to evolve progressively over time as additional workflows, services and interoperability capabilities are introduced. FY '27 revenue will be largely driven by maintaining a healthy pipeline for new features, workflow enhancements and platform capability across our existing product suite, supporting both customer retention and future scalability. As we move to Slide 16, you will note that it depicts our delivery approach, which is intentionally phased and structured around controlled platform evolution and disciplined execution. As mentioned, Phase 1 focused on establishing a foundational platform architecture, which was completed in April 2026. We are currently in Phase 2, which is focused on operational capability and longer-term platform convergence. In parallel, we are progressing advanced platform modules, including monetization, billing, interoperability and shared data capability. Phase 4 focuses on validation and release readiness, including integration testing, operational preparation and controlled deployment sequencing ahead of the initial rollout. This leads into a targeted initial rollout for September 2027. The phased delivery structure is intended to support controlled execution, progressive capability deployment and disciplined capital allocation while maintaining focus on practical operational outcomes. I will now hand over to our CFO, Deidre Campbell, for the financial overview.

Deidre Campbell

Executives
#4

Thanks, Dewald. Most of the key points have been commented on already, so I'll just recap and provide a little more detail here. Firstly, on Slide 18, we're looking at our overall trading performance. Trading revenue increased 20% to $9.6 million, with sales growth across all of our core products. Operational employee costs were steady year-on-year, which reflects disciplined cost management as we scale the business. Other costs increased 52%. This was driven by 3 main factors: The first is the high platform usage or the high, rather, platform usage with broader adoption and as transactional volumes continue to grow, i.e., this cost is variable to revenue growth. Secondly, we had the transitional costs of our cloud migration project. And this is the project where we saw the migration of our on-premise TradeWindow freight customers to our TradeWindow-managed cloud-hosted solution. And third, with the costs associated with our ASX listing. Overall, our EBITDA loss reduced 19% to $1.2 million, supported by the strong revenue growth. On Slide 19, we dive deeper into revenue. The 20% organic trading revenue growth was driven by our focus on higher quality customer relationships, both those [ acquired ] last financial year and this financial year. Recurring revenue increased strongly with transactional and subscription revenue representing 95% of trading revenue. And as already mentioned, Australia led the revenue growth across the Freight suite and Origin products. And Australia revenue now comprises 43% of our total group revenue. On to Slide 20. Total customers at 547 were down 7, reflecting our deliberate rationalization of lower value accounts. Monthly average revenue per freight customer increased 27%, reflecting our focus on mid-market operators and recontracting of customers onto refreshed pricing plans. Monthly average revenue for shipper customers or a shipper customer increased 22%, reflecting our focus on mid-market and large enterprise customers. And we continue to see strong engagement from these customers, which are frequent high-volume users of the platforms. We managed to effectively pass on cost inflation in both segments as well. Slide 21 provides details on our operating expenses, in particular, our largest cost, which is staff, and the staff numbers associated with that. Total employee spend for the year was $7.4 million, up $0.5 million on the prior year, in line with the Freight AI development plans. Of the total spend, Freight AI development of $661,000 was capitalized to the balance sheet. And our operational employee expense was $6.8 million, which was steady year-on-year reflecting our disciplined cost management as we scale the business. And as I mentioned previously, the other costs increased to $4.1 million was driven by the increased platform usage, our cloud migration project and the ASX listing in December last year. Slide 19 shows our balance sheet. Current assets have increased, largely reflecting the increase in the cash on hand at balance date of $4.2 million. Total assets were $15.1 million including the capitalized Freight AI development of $661,000. TradeWindow has no bank debt, and we have sufficient cash on hand to fund the planned Freight AI development program. Finally, on Slide 20, we're looking at cash flow. And our net operating cash outflow reduced, reflecting the revenue growth and the disciplined cost management. During the year, TradeWindow raised $7 million in total, $6.8 million via placements and $200,000 through a share purchase plan. Our average monthly cash burn across the year of $184,000 was up slightly on the prior year, and this reflects the investment in the Freight AI which commenced partly during the year as well as the ASX listing. Now I'd like to hand back to Dewald to take you through the outlook.

Dewald Janse Rensburg

Executives
#5

Thank you, Deidre. I will briefly take you through the FY '27 outlook. The Australian market continues to present a significant long-term growth opportunity for TradeWindow, and we remain focused on expanding operational capability and customer penetration across that market. At the same time, we continue to maintain a healthy pipeline for new features, workflow enhancements and platform capability across our existing product suite, supporting both customer retention and future scalability. As highlighted, development of Freight AI remains on track with an initial commercial rollout targeted for September 2027. From a financial perspective, we expect FY '27 revenue growth to be in the range of 13% to 18%. We project that we have sufficient capital to maintain current business operations and expect to be close to EBITDA breakeven for FY '27, noting that forward-looking financial information should be read in conjunction with key assumptions as outlined in Slide 29. Finally, we believe that TradeWindow remains firmly on a path towards becoming a Rule of 40 company over time. Overall, we are encouraged by the progress being made across both the core business and the Freight AI platform evolution, and we believe the company remains well positioned for long-term scalable growth. That concludes the FY '27 outlook. I will now open up for questions.

Andrew Balgarnie

Executives
#6

We have one question online, and the question is in regard to notifications coming out about results or updates. The best way to get results and updates is to sign up to the investor hub, and that will give you up-to-date information about what is happening in the business. And we'll also be releasing market releases from time to time on the ASX and NZX as is required by the market rules, whether price sensitive or non-price sensitive. Any further questions in the chat?

Dewald Janse Rensburg

Executives
#7

If not, I just want to thank everyone for joining today. Should you have any further questions, please ask via our investor hub, which Andrew alluded to. And we look forward to providing a further update on our first quarter trading in July, and we sincerely thank everyone who joined today -- who joined today's update. Thank you, everyone.

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