Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our investor call.

Thanks for joining us this morning. No doubt you've had an opportunity to look at some of the information we put out today, and it shows a reasonable outcome, I think, for the company, particularly in light of obviously what happened in the Middle East earlier in the year and that which, no doubt, impacted the business.

We still managed to get some TTV growth in there and got to just tiny little bit under $4 billion, which was up 4.1% on the previous year. Would have been a lot better had it not been for the June quarter being impacted by events in the Middle East.

In any event, it wasn't a bad wasn't a bad outcome, all things being considered. What we are seeing though, on the positive on a positive front, is that the growth for the September quarter and beyond is actually quite reasonable.

We're we're very pleased with the way that that is progressing. I think the pent-up demand that was created by the impact of the Middle Eastern conflict earlier on in the year is now starting to come back through in new bookings that we are seeing around our agency networks in Australia and New Zealand.

Our revenue margin increased from 4.9% to 5.1%. Whilst that probably doesn't sound like much on the face of it, that sort of an increase in revenue margin is very significant from our perspective.

We work very hard to maintain that revenue margin and even harder to try and grow it. To actually achieve 0.2 of a percent growth in that margin, I think across the full financial year, was was a very good outcome.

It's reflective of some commentary that I've made in the past as well about the good relationships that we have with the carriers. We've contracts with 154 airline carriers around the world, and also with our major supplier partners in some of our ancillary revenue lines, including cruise, hotels, insurance, and car hire.

We're very pleased to see that that 0.2 of a percent increase across that $4 billion TTV. Our investment strategy has played out reasonably well throughout the year, with one small exception, which I will touch on momentarily.

Our acquisitions across the business, particularly MTA, and acquiring the other 50% of that business—we we initially bought into it in 2016, and 10 years later, we bought the remaining 50% of that business that we didn't own, and that's now wholly owned by Helloworld. That's gone very well, and our other investments have too.

The only one that hasn't is, of course, Webjet. We have some concerns about the way that is running.

It's currently our investment is currently sitting at 20.29% of the shares in the group, and it's crossed the 20% threshold because of the share buyback, which they're continuing to maintain, despite our best efforts to tell them that's not really a very good idea. It's fallen in value.

We all know that. It's less than what we paid for it.

It's less than what just about everyone paid for it at the moment, I have to say. I think that the major shareholders in that group, including ourselves, are not very happy with its performance to date.

I'm not going to go on about Webjet. I'm here to talk to you about Helloworld, but it is part of our overall investment profile, and we are looking for some way big improvements coming out of that business in the next 12 months.

Back to our business, and that's really, as we have the largest network of travel agents and brokers across Australia and New Zealand. We've got 2,600 agencies and brokers, and there's over 10,000 travel professionals working in those businesses.

They are doing a fabulous job. They continue There continues to be significant demand.

We've got really strong brand recognition, not only in the Helloworld brand, but across some of our other brands as well. The trust and the the support services that our agents offer to customers is really very, very much appreciated and and needed.

Whilst everyone has been saying to me basically since I started in the travel industry in 1987, the travel agents will not be around in the next whatever period of time, as I've now become the CEO of the largest independent network of agents and brokers across the country and I've been doing that for a decade, I see the demand for services from travel agents continuing to, in fact, expand. Our agents report that their businesses are growing.

The number of customers coming in the door is growing, and they are going extremely well. As I said, that's really the trust and support services that our agents provide travelers is very much valued by our travelers.

This is not like buying a television. It's not like buying a motorcar.

It's not like buying a lot of products. Travel is complex.

Anyone who pretends that international travel isn't complex is kidding themselves. Even though you might just be taking seven nights in Bali or seven nights in New Zealand somewhere, what have you, that still can be complex.

It can turn from a wonderful holiday experience into something that's actually not such a wonderful experience, really at the drop of a hat. Whether that's weather-related advent events, whether that's volcano-related events, whether it's airline-related events, whether it's wars in various parts of the world, etc., etc.

There's many a thing out there that can turn what is looks like on the face of it quite simple program itinerary, it can turn it into something that's very, very complex and requires help. As a traveler, you need that help.

We see the demand for the services of our agencies as growing. That's contrary to what a lot of people think, but in any event, that's actually what's happening out there.

If I go to page six, sorry, of our investor presentation, we have the key financial metrics set out there. You can see them on that page.

I'm not going to go through each one of them. I think importantly for investors, I'll just bring to your attention a final dividend per share, 5 cents fully franked, brings our annual dividend across the year to 10 cents.

We think that that's quite a good return, particularly given that our shares have been trading around that $1.45 to $1.55 range. They're up a little bit this morning, but we think that's a good outcome.

We will continue obviously to reward our investors with reasonable dividends as we go forward. Our EBITDA margin for the year was 28.9%.

That's up 0.1 of a percent on the previous year. Look, it would have been we would have got to our goal of 30% had it not been for the June quarter.

Whilst we've set out in various papers throughout the presentation here our quarterly results and and outcomes, the June quarter, although we had a little bit of growth in that quarter, it was nowhere near what we expected. In March, early March, when we were calculating what our forwards looked like, we were expecting growth certainly double-digit growth to around 15% to 20%.

As it turned out, it was only 4%, and that was a result of the many cancellations that came in once the war kicked off in in Iran and the Middle Eastern carriers stopped flying here for a period of time, and of course, that put a big dent into our TTV and our earnings. I have to say that, many many customers got refunds, nearly $200 million worth, but most of those customers reinvested that either in booking with other carriers or booking later in the year.

That's pretty was a pretty solid outcome from our perspective. If I look on page 10, we've got actually you can see the quarterly results.

First quarter, we were down 1.5%. In the second quarter, we were up 6%.

In the third quarter, we went up 11.9%. As I said, we were expecting growth in the fourth quarter of somewhere in the vicinity of 15% to 20%.

That actually shrank to 3.3% with the cancellations that unfortunately occurred, and it wasn't really what we were expecting, obviously. Sorry to repeat myself, but we are expecting that in the coming September quarter and the December quarter, that we will start or we will see some very good growth based on our existing forward bookings.

We're very happy with that. I'll take any questions obviously shortly, but just wanted to run through some of the key points in in some of the material that you have hopefully received now.

The underlying expenses, they were up 6%, and that's important for us to note. We are very, very careful with our expenses, as you know.

We manage those very closely, and we thought that a 6% increase on the back of what happened, and obviously, we had a we have a large number of personnel servicing all the needs of our agents around the country. We weren't in a position, and we didn't think it was appropriate, to let any of those personnel go, given what was going on in the Middle East, as we felt it would be relatively short-term, and we felt it would bounce back pretty quickly.

I think we were right in that, and we are quite very comfortable with our staffing levels and and other cost levels in the business at the present point in time. I'm going to pass over to Mike Smith, our Chief Financial Officer, just to take us through the cash flow numbers that are on page 13 of the presentation.

Mike, over to you.

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning to everyone.

Probably the things I'd just sort of like to point out in our cash flow was that our operating cash flows for FY '26 from continuing operations were 23.3 million. That compares to a net cash outflow last year of 12.5 million.

The reason for the improved result in FY '26 is because in FY '25, there was one additional BSP payment. There was an additional BSP payment in '25, whereas in 2026, we see the same number of BSP payments as collections from agents.

Having said that, we're very very happy with the cash conversion that we saw in FY '26. You'll see that our interest income or interest received is down on the prior year from 5.8 million down to 3.2 million.

Offsetting that is higher dividend income, in particular from Webjet, so that the cash that we would have otherwise used to generate interest income, which was invested in Webjet, has generated a dividend approximately the same value. In terms of the tax paid, I think it's probably just worth pointing out that due to the company coming out of tax loss positions in 2023, what we've seen take place in '25 and '26 is effectively three years of tax payments being made.

Although the numbers are similar year-on-year, those two years in total equate to three years of tax payments just because of the way that installment rates work with the ATO and Inland Revenue in New Zealand. In FY 20 We're now back to making tax installments on a normal basis, 2027 we'd expect to be more normal levels below the 20-odd million.

In terms of investing cash flows, as you can see there, a good proportion of the outflow from investing activities was around the investments that we made. Andrew's already covered a number of those being Webjet, MTA, Phil Hoffman, Hunter Travel World are the main ones.

Then finally, from financing activities, you can see the largest new item there in FY '26 is proceeds from borrowings. In October '25, we drew down on our Citibank debt facility to fund some of the business acquisitions that took place.

Overall, comfortable with the cash flow results that we've seen in FY '26.

Thanks, Mike. When we look at the divisional outcomes and the divisional commentary that we have in the presentation, the first one is retail.

Retail is our biggest part of our business, includes our air ticketing business and all of our agency networks across the country of both countries in Australia and New Zealand. I think there's a couple of things just to point out there.

Approximately 2,600 members, that includes our individual brokers who are part of our various brokering networks in Australia and New Zealand, plus all of our agencies as well. They have with the agency staff and all the individual brokers are working, it's just over 10,000 people.

There's a lot of people out there selling the products and services that we put to them and provide them with as part of their network membership. In FY '26, we were very pleased to win for Helloworld Travel, our branded network, they won the most outstanding travel agency group at the NTIA Awards, which was nice and a great recognition of the way they look after their customers.

Retail marketing activity, we've got a lot of billboard activity going on out there at the minute. We advertise a lot in the press.

We advertise a lot digitally. From next March, we'll have a new stadium that's actually going to be called Helloworld Stadium out in Penrith.

You probably all know that, but we've taken the naming rights to that stadium. We've got a five plus five year deal.

We've got the first five years kicking off in February of 2027. I think that will provide us with further brand recognition, particularly in the markets of Queensland and New South Wales where rugby is the number one game played.

Our Helloworld Travel Academy, mentioned that there in the presentation, and that's certainly really contributing to the growth in our business, particularly making sure newer consultants that come into the business, firstly, are trained properly, and secondly, stick around. That longevity is extremely important for the growth of those agency businesses.

In the wholesale and inbound areas, I'm joined here this morning by Cinzia Burnes, who heads up the wholesale and inbound side of things. I'm going to pass over to her to give us a little bit of background and what's going on in those parts of the business.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Wholesale and inbound are going very well. Wholesale, in particular, is benefiting from the acquisition of 100% of MTA, where the advisors that were previously using alternative suppliers, and with some of the internal promotions we've done, we have seen triple-digit growth from that group of advisors.

Certainly, the winner out of all the brands in wholesale is ReadyRooms, with a 50% growth in TTV and continues to have more and more agents using that platform. Our team in Athens, this is a proprietary system, and they continue to do a great job in enhancing it.

The Viva and GO Holidays brands, as well as Cruiseco for cruise, are benefiting from more and more loyalty from the networks. The cruise division also won the NTIA award last year for best wholesale brand in Australia, which was very, very pleasing.

Inbound had a good year last year and was very much helped by the Lions and the Ashes, given that the UK is our number one inbound market for our division. We look at at least matching what last year was in FY '27, thanks to some more group series that are materializing for the next few months.

Thank you for that. I think the important thing to note, particularly with our wholesale and inbound divisions, is particularly when it comes to domestic content, including both Australia and New Zealand, they feed off each other.

We have a large wholesale business that's selling the whole world, including Australia and New Zealand. We have significant content sales through those divisions.

Inbound as well, coming from, as Cinzia said, the UK, our number one market, a lot of European visitors, a lot from North America, they're selling exactly the same content that wholesale is selling. We've got good margin out of both of those businesses, and they continue to be material, very material in terms of our overall profitability.

Just to point that out. Air consolidation, our air tickets business sits really as part of the retail division, but is a very significant air consolidator.

As I mentioned earlier, 154 global airline partners, and we have very, very strong relationships with our top dozen or so carriers, both domestically and internationally. We're very pleased with the way those carriers have reacted, particularly to the challenges of the Middle East.

Our Middle Eastern partners have been really tremendous to deal with, so that's been one of the highlights throughout the year is how everyone responded to that. Technology and innovation, I'm not going to spend too much time on that.

We spend a lot of money on that, I can tell you, and our tech is extremely good without picking any particular parts of it. The investments that we've made really over the last decade, and we continued to make them throughout COVID, we knew we'd come out the other side of that, and we needed to continue to invest in that.

Our investments in that have been extensive, and it's delivered an enormous amount of efficiency and service to our customers as a result of that. We are at the minute, as all good companies everywhere in the world, I wasn't going to say up to our neck in AI, but we're not up to our neck in AI, but we're up to our neck in thinking about it and finding the various applications that we can utilize to significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our businesses.

Now, I'm not going to get on my soapbox and give you my AI talk about what I think of the prospects of it and the overhyping of it. There is a tremendous amount of hype.

The one thing that I take out of or I'm conscious of in all of this is that when we look at why a customer walks into an agency or calls an agency or corresponds with an agency, that's a travel agent, not some sort of digital agent, when they are engaged with their travel agent, why do they do it like that? Why aren't they just happy to sit at home punching in a computer and book it all themselves, utilizing some sort of AI itinerary generator or what have you?

People actually enjoy the process of planning their holiday. There is a lot of research out in the marketplace that indicates that, in fact, people enjoy planning their holiday more than they enjoy taking their holiday, as extraordinary as that might sound.

Particularly for leisure, the planning of the trip is one of the most delightful experiences that people can have. It's not sitting there on the computer screen and getting some agentic agent to come up with some sort of an itinerary through Italy, Greece, Spain, wherever it might be.

It's actually sitting down and talking to somebody about what can they do, where can they go, what are the options, can they get from here to there, what's the best way to do it, should they take the train, a plane, the bus, hire a car, whatever. It's all of that process that people just love doing.

From where we sit, more and more of them are loving doing it, and more and more of them are coming into our agencies. We see a lot of positives in the continued high level of customer service that we provide.

Our average, and you all know this, but our average age for our customers is 55. It's been 55 for a decade.

It hasn't gone from 55 to 65. It's still at 55, which is where it was when we researched it back in 2016, and it's where it is today when we researched it in 2026, and pretty much where it's been every time we've undertaken that specific research around our demographics for our business.

I think that I can't see that that is changing anytime soon. We have a lot of confidence for the future of our business and a lot of confidence for the agents who make up the major part of our footprint in both Australia and New Zealand.

Our operations, just to quickly talk about those, and there's a piece on page 21 of our investor presentation. Australia, obviously, 420 people here.

New Zealand, we have a pretty big team over there as well. We're in Fiji, where we have a number of operations undertaken there, a coach operations, which we inherited back in 2014, actually, when we purchased ATS Pacific as AOT, funnily enough, of Helloworld.

We've also got an inbound business in Fiji, and we also have quite a number of personnel in Fiji working in our admin and finance teams. Our tech division, a big chunk of our tech division is based in Athens.

That came about as a result of the purchase of Exciting Holidays back in 2019, and that had some interesting outcomes. Of course, we've got through COVID with that still intact, and that's actually been what has driven our ReadyRooms development, which, as Cinzia indicated earlier, is going extremely well.

What's the TTV now at ReadyRooms? It's

just under $100 million.

Just under $100 million. When we bought it in 2019, they were doing about $50 million at Exciting.

They weren't making any money. In fact, they ultimately fell over, and we purchased it from the administrator.

It really has grown, and our agency network continued to embrace it more and more every day. It features 250,000 hotels on it, bookable with automatic confirmations, has a very, very big selection of touring product on it, and a very big selection of car hire on it as well.

It's a tremendous function and facility, and it's continuing to drive our TTVs and profits forward. I'm going to pass over to Mike to any general comments that you'd like to make, Mike, at this point.

No, Andrew. No, I think it personally, I think it was a it was a good year in light of, the challenges that that hit us unexpectedly in unexpectedly in Q in Q4.

I think to to have delivered a an increase in our underlying EBITDA above 60 60 mil, with growth in the underlying in the in the revenue margin, and also slight growth in the underlying EBITDA margin is is a good result.

Thank you. Cinzia, any commentary you'd like to make?

I just wanted to go back for a second to AI and just put into perspective the two extremes that we have, for example, in the wholesale area. We're printing brochures.

We continue to print brochures because that's what the agents want in their shops. They've got a storefront.

They need something on the shelf. As a result, in fact, a lot of our preferred suppliers have started printing brochures again because of the demand.

Then, on the other side, we've got a current AI project in development, which will allow us to upload the over 2,000 over actually 3,000 contracts we receive from hotels and touring companies, etc., straight into the system without manual intervention from humans. We are picking where AI is applicable within our business, while keeping the traditional things that the agents and the clients are looking for.

Thank you. I think that the other comment I'd just make is that travel does not look to us, and when I look at various results from various travel companies, obviously Flight Centre were out today as well, and others around the globe.

Travel is not performing as other retailers are performing. Now, we've all seen the commentary from JB Hi-Fi.

We've seen the commentary from Myer. We've seen the commentary from Jerry Harvey and others who are in traditional retailing.

That's not how it seems to be going in travel. I've maintained the position for a long time that I don't believe that travel is a discretionary part of the household budget.

I think it's largely a non-discretionary part of it. That people are traveling.

They're going. It would take a herd of elephants to stop them from going.

Because there are things that will deny them the opportunity to travel. I think that the desire for travel on so many different levels, and I won't go through all of the psychology that goes into all of that thinking for travelers, but the desire to travel is insatiable.

You look at the numbers, and you look at our quarterly results, even in the June quarter of FY '27 FY '26, I should say. You look at the June quarter results for there.

Although it fell, it didn't fall by that much. Although the Middle Eastern carriers had to suspend their operations, which was a massive undertaking, most people worked out a way to get where they wanted to go anyway.

We suddenly saw our sales of China Eastern, China Southern, Cathay Pacific, and others really very significant growth. People are so determined to go.

We think that in the next couple of years, travel will continue to be an extremely attractive option for people to devote their savings and earnings to. We think it will continue to grow pretty well into the future.

I just make that point. Sometimes we get marked down, I think, as an industry, because we are lumped into the broader retail sector.

There are certainly a lot of things to indicate that the way the travel industry progresses and the way the travel industry performs, sure, JB Hi-Fi doesn't get hit if there's a crisis in the Middle East. We do.

We recover from that very, very quickly, and the desire and demand continues unabated. Thank you very much for your attention this morning.

I'm going to open up now to questions, and we'll go from there. Thank you.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. If we look at the segments, Australia was very strong, but New Zealand was really weak.

What's sort of going on there? I get we've got the conflict, but I thought the economy was sort of starting to pick up.

What's the expectations for New Zealand in '27? Then can we maybe have a bit more color on I know you've given no guidance, you're looking to potentially give that at your AGM, but can you give us a bit more sort of feel of what these forward bookings are doing?

Then, Mike, the underlying tax rate today was 25%. How do we think about that in '27, please?

Thank you.

Thanks, Belinda. Thanks for your questions and joining us today.

Firstly, if I could talk about New Zealand. The economy in New Zealand has not been going very well.

I don't think that comes as a surprise to anybody. They have really struggled across the last couple of years.

I think that what we've seen is that the business into our agents across New Zealand has declined. I think the other thing that has happened there is that it's not so much that the number of passengers has declined.

The average expenditure of passengers has declined. They're taking shorter-haul holidays.

They're taking holidays to cheaper destinations. We've seen that having a very significant impact on both the wholesale business, GO Holidays, which we have in New Zealand, and across the retail market generally.

If we look at the number of business class or the premium cabin fares that we sell out of Australia compared to what we sell out of New Zealand, it's a much higher proportion in Australia, particularly in the last 12 months. Right?

The Kiwis have cut back. They're flying down the back of the bus to a certain extent.

That they're certainly lesser than flying up the front than were previously. They're staying in more economic accommodation, for want of a better expression, and they are not going for as long.

We take some positives out of that. The positive element in that scenario from our perspective is that people still want to go.

They're going to take their holiday. It's just that at the moment, they're not taking a holiday that's as expensive or as priced as it previously was in the previous couple of years.

The other thing is that a number of cruise ships pulled out of New Zealand. Those cruise ships, in a country the size of New Zealand, have a big impact.

Right? You get a ship that takes 4,000 passengers calling into Auckland and loading up with Kiwis, for us, we sell a lot of cruise.

For us, those cruise ships were significant TTV generators within our retail businesses, within our wholesale cruise business, Cruiseco. Many of these ships would go off into the Pacific for 7, 10, 12 nights and then come back to New Zealand.

They're no longer there. The cruise companies have taken those ships and put them somewhere else.

That had a negative impact. We are seeing some little green shoots in New Zealand at the moment.

We have -- I won't call them bad weeks, but we have good weeks and not as good weeks across the financial year that started in July. I think that the Kiwis are going to perform reasonably well this year.

They'll do better than '26. I don't think it'll be double-digit growth, but we'd like to think that they'll certainly get sort of somewhere between 5% and 8% growth in the TTV in New Zealand.

In terms of the forwards, Belinda, just to talk about those for a moment, as you're right, we're not going to release guidance at the moment. We will release it, however, at our AGM coming up later in the year.

I know Flight Centre do the same thing. We're all staring -- well, we're not staring at international business, but we're all staring at the same Australian and New Zealand business coming through.

It's certainly been our experience over many years that July is always a good indicator, but once we've got the first quarter under our belt, we know what looks like from July through to September, we can produce what we believe is much more accurate guidance for the market on the back of those quarterly results. I'll pass over to Mike to answer your question to him.

Hi, Belinda. Belinda, you're correct that the underlying effective tax rate, excluding the impact of significant items for FY '26, was 25%.

The reason it's sub-30% is because we have franking credits, withholding tax offsets, and R&D tax credits that effectively provide a benefit. To specifically answer your question, I'd expect that sub-30% effective tax rate to continue into certainly the immediate future.

Maybe just one more if I could. Obviously, sort of destination and carrier and airfares all had an issue in '26.

Are you seeing an improved mix already? The more the Middle Eastern go back to the Middle Eastern carriers that pay you better, to more to the long-haul destinations you make more money on?

Can you just talk to that?

We're certainly seeing the Middle Eastern carriers are performing, particularly Emirates, and to a slightly lesser extent, Qatar. Emirates and Qatar, from our perspective, are basically back to where they were.

Now, we've had a few -- when I say issues, not problems, but we've had issues with Etihad insofar as they have not yet got back to a schedule that resembles their pre-Middle Eastern hostilities commencing. They're still flying quite a lot less flights on a weekly basis in and out of Australia.

Both Qatar and Emirates are pretty much back to their pre-conflict numbers. We're certainly seeing our sales are holding on very well.

Having said that, our Qantas sales are going very well too. It's interesting, they were forced by the conflict in the Middle East.

Those going through on Middle Eastern carriers to Europe were forced to make other considerations. Qantas filled up pretty quickly with its available capacity.

Was very quickly absorbed. Singapore Airlines was also very quickly absorbed.

We suddenly found that a lot of the flights that people were looking at were actually full. They started looking further afield to the likes of Thai, to the likes of Cathay Pacific, and other carriers that have been around for years, and we all know them, and they're familiar to us.

We've seen a continued increase in demand for those carriers. It's sort of broadened people's ideas around how they can get to various places around the world.

That's actually, we think that's a good thing. Cinzia?

Also, we can see from our wholesale division that extraordinarily, the United States is our second-largest destination, followed by Italy. From the beginning of July, we've seen a double-digit growth in bookings for cruise.

Certainly, in terms of the wholesale division, both for land and cruise, we have started the year very well in terms of bookings as forwards.

Oh, great to hear. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Belinda.

Thanks very much. Again, thank you for joining us this morning.

Business is proceeding very positively. We thank you for your continued interest in the business.

When you're going anywhere, don't forget to see your local Helloworld travel agent. Thanks, everyone.

See you.