Serko Limited

Serko Limited

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Serko LimitedUS flagOther OTC
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Q4 2026 · Earnings Call Transcript

May 20, 2026

APIChat

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Serko FY '26 Full Year Results Announcement. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Darrin Grafton, CEO.

Please go ahead.

Darrin Grafton

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our investor briefing for FY '26 financial results. I'm Darrin Grafton, CEO of Serko, and I'm joined by our CFO, Shane Sampson; and our COO, Matthew Gerrie.

Let's begin on Slide 4. This morning, I'll take you through our performance and highlights for the year.

Shane will cover the financial results in detail, and Matt will update you on our strategic progress. I'll then return to cover our FY '27 outlook before the Q&A.

Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons are to the FY '25 and dollar references are to the New Zealand dollar. FY '26 was a strong year for Serko, demonstrating both the quality of our business and our ability to execute.

We delivered total income at the top end of our narrowed guidance range and materially grew our EBITDAFI. Booking.com for Business continues to deliver strong growth, and we remain the market leader in Australasia.

We are also leveraging our IP and experience to drive rapid progress. Serko.ai is now in a closed beta in the U.S.

with the first users onboarded. Finally, disciplined cost management continues to support efficient growth with total spend at near parity to total income while preserving a well-capitalized balance sheet.

We enter FY '27 with strong momentum and a disciplined focus on execution. I'm now turning to Slide 5.

Total income grew 34% to $120.9 million, driven by strong momentum in Booking.com for Business and the first full year of the GetThere revenue, which added $16.1 million. Total spend was at 102% of total income with guidance reflecting disciplined cost management as we invest for growth.

Operating expenses increased 23% against total income growth of 34%, demonstrating the operating leverage in our model. EBITDAFI reached $6.5 million, up 137%.

Net loss after tax narrowed by $4.2 million, largely due to the noncash accounting impairment in the prior year relating to our acquisition of the GetThere business. Free cash flow was negative $4.4 million as we increased the investment to support our strategic initiatives.

We remain well capitalized with $54.1 million in cash and no debt. Turning to Slide 6.

When we look at our total income growth in more detail, you can see the breakdown of total income with and without GetThere. Income from the pre-acquisition business increased 22% from the $85.7 million to $104.8 million, driven by Booking.com for Business.

In total, online bookings increased 41% from $6.4 million to $9 million. This scale strengthens our market position and informs smarter product decisions.

Turning to Slide 7, where we take a closer look at Booking.com for Business. Completed room nights grew 31% to 4.3 million, driven by strong active customer growth of 36% to 301,000.

We added approximately 79,000 active customers over the year, reflecting the continued strength of our customer acquisition strategy and the appeal of the product in the SME market. Average revenue per completed room night was down 4% to EUR 9.25 and in line with broader market pricing trends and the impact of commission tiering as the volume scale.

Looking at the chart, our strong 3-year growth trajectory gives us confidence in the long-term potential of the partnership. I'm now on Slide 8.

In Australasia, we continue to see growth across customers and bookings. Travel revenue was up 6%, while online bookings and ARPB both rose 1%.

This travel revenue growth was largely driven by one-off services work with specific partners, so we don't expect that growth rate to repeat. NDC continues to gain real traction in this market.

Very few providers globally can offer full integration across both Sabre and Amadeus. We are one of them.

And our early investment has strengthened our market-leading position in this region. Turning to Slide 9.

GetThere has established Serko in the U.S. in a way that would likely have taken years to build organically, giving us direct customer relationships, transaction data at scale and greater visibility in one of the world's largest business travel markets.

This U.S. foundation is now supporting 2 significant initiatives, which Matt will take you through in more detail.

The first being Serko.ai and the second, targeting defined U.S. corporate segments through the Booking.com for Business.

Both initiatives remain early stage, but the early signals we are seeing reinforce our confidence in the opportunity ahead. Thank you, and I'll now hand to Shane.

Shane Sampson

Thanks, Darrin. Turning to Slide 11.

FY '26 delivered strong total income growth and disciplined spend. This saw EBITDAFI increased 137% to $6.5 million.

This increased operating leverage from our existing businesses funded increased platform investments. While total income increased 34%, total spend increased by $30.3 million or 33% to $122.9 million.

This primarily reflects a full year of GetThere costs adding $20.8 million and increased platform investment of $13.3 million. Partially offsetting the increased investment, we continue to deliver increased operational leverage in our Zeno and Booking.com for Business operations with reductions in direct costs of $1.7 million despite volume growth and reductions in other operating expenses of $3 million.

The net loss after tax decreased to $17.7 million, an improvement of $4.2 million, and I will talk to the drivers on the next slide. Free cash outflows increased by $2.5 million to $4.4 million, reflecting the stronger EBITDAFI being more than offset by realized FX losses, lower interest income and increased capitalization of internally generated software.

We also made net payments of $2.8 million in relation to the GetThere acquisition, reflecting the final payment, partially offset by a working capital adjustment. We have excluded this from our free cash flow calculation, consistent with our approach in prior periods.

I'm now on Slide 12. Our net loss after tax improved by $0.4 million more than EBITDAFI, a very small difference, but the underlying story is a bit more complicated.

The bottom part of Slide 12 shows the reconciling items between EBITDAFI and the net loss. The key drivers of the movement were net finance income was $2.4 million lower, reflecting lower cash balances as a result of the GetThere acquisition, lower interest rates and new leases and foreign exchange losses increased by $3 million.

These negatives were offset by asset impairments and disposals, which were $3.2 million lower than the prior period and lower amortization and depreciation of $1.9 million. In relation to the foreign exchange losses, the $3.8 million loss on forward exchange contracts in FY '26 was due to the significant appreciation of the euro and Australian dollars against the New Zealand dollar.

Historically, we did not designate these as hedges for accounting purposes, even though they did act as economic hedges and substance. Any gains or losses on the foreign exchange contracts were recognized in the profit and loss, while the revenue was accounted for at the actual rates applying at the time the revenue was earned.

To reduce volatility in reported revenue going forward, we have designated a significant portion of our FY '27 euro contracts as accounting hedges, which includes selling EUR 32 million across FY '27 at an average rate of NZD 1.977 per euro. As reported at the half year, we incurred a $2 million noncash accounting loss on the sale of our InterplX business in September 2025.

The disposal made a small positive contribution to profitability in the second half and is expected to generate ongoing financial and strategic benefits. Those of you who attended our Investor Day on 10 March will recognize Slide 13.

The slide shows the mix of our product and technology spend in the first quarter of FY '26 and our expected mix in the first quarter of FY '27. As you will see, we are roughly doubling the level of platform investment with a much more modest increase in overall spend as we continue to reduce spend on our managed travel products.

As noted in November, we undertook an optimization program in the second half of FY '26, which, while largely neutral in FY '26 due to timing and severance payments will materially reduce future spend on our Zeno product. We expect to continue to drive further efficiencies in our existing products on an ongoing basis.

In this context, I note that platform investment refers to the ongoing process of moving components of Booking.com for Business onto our new platform and building new Booking.com for Business capabilities within that platform, together with our investment in building the Serko.ai experience that launched last week. The spend includes our pre-existing teams working on Booking.com for Business and the additional staff added in both our India hub and in the U.S.

to help accelerate our transition to the new technology. Slide 14 shows our income and spend trajectory over a 5-year period during which we have grown income by 5.4x, while spend has only increased by just under 1x.

Across the period FY '23 to FY '25, we grew income by 78% while holding spend flat, excluding the GetThere acquisition, showing the strong unit economics in the business and our resulting ability to generate operating leverage. In FY '26, spend grew by 33%, while income grew by 34% as we increased platform investment and incorporated a full year of GetThere results.

Our track record of investing in growth and delivering operating leverage gives us confidence as we invest in the platform with the key difference to earlier years being that the investment is now substantially funded from operating cash flows of the business rather than shareholder funds. Moving to Slide 15.

The partnership renewal was structured to mutually incentivize and benefit both parties to grow Booking.com for Business. The structure included retention of the 50% commission rate until Serko was earning strong returns on its earlier investment.

Once those returns were achieved, we moved to lower commission tiers for incremental volume, which provides a stronger commercial incentive for Booking.com to drive further volume growth. The success of both parties in growing Booking.com for Business means we have moved into the first of the lower commission tiers during several months in FY '26 with our blended commission rate falling from 50% to 48.7%.

The lower blended commission rate explains why our average revenue per completed room night fell by 3% more than the average commission per completed room night. As we continue to grow volumes strongly, we will see the blended commission rate decline, but we remain confident that each incremental transaction will continue to drive incremental profit contribution, reflecting the very low incremental cost per transaction.

With the avoidance of doubt, I note that the potential future volumes on this slide are aligned to our April 2024 communication of the tiering structure rather than a projection of FY '27 and FY '28 volumes. Finally, looking at Slide 16.

Serko's balance sheet remains strong with cash and short-term deposits of $54.1 million and no debt. Our strong balance sheet provides us with resilience and optionality as we pursue the opportunities in front of us.

Thank you, and I'll now hand over to Matt.

Matthew Gerrie

Thanks, Shane, and good morning, everyone. Today, I want to briefly recap our strategic focus, including its context and update you on the progress we've made on our strategic initiatives so far this year.

Let's start on Slide 18. As shared at our Investor Day, we predict profound change in the way that people experience business travel and how travelers behave.

There are early visible signs of this predicted change in customers' expectations and in travel tooling and supply. At the center of this shift is travelers moving from manually booking trips to AI agents acting on behalf based on the travelers' behaviors and preferences learned over time.

In this new world, trust becomes the primary differentiator. Travelers need confidence in the results they receive and companies need assurance that those results remain within the travel policy and deliver real value.

Serko's advantages to deliver in this new world are real -- are difficult to replicate. We have travel data at scale, a connected supply ecosystem, and embedded technology system and years of policy and compliance intelligence.

So in reality, we've been building towards this future for several years. At Investor Day, we focused on the 3 strategic growth initiatives shown on this slide to deliver sustainable growth in the coming years in pursuit of our $250 million FY '30 aspiration.

The first strategic initiative is Serko.ai, our new multi-agentic AI solution, which we are very excited to have launched in closed beta. The second is scaling Booking.com for Business, which remains our most important revenue driver for future growth.

The third is bringing incremental demand to Booking.com for Business, delivering value by targeting specialist U.S. corporates that regularly move people at scale and whose needs neatly fit with the features offered in Booking.com for Business.

Moving to Slide 19 and our first strategic initiative, Serko.ai. At Investor Day, we outlined the upcoming launch milestones, and we are delivering on those.

As I mentioned earlier, we've been laying the foundations for an AI solution such as Serko.ai for several years. In the last 6 months, we have made rapid progress.

And last week, we release Serko.ai in closed beta to U.S. users with the first users onboarded.

Initial user feedback is highly encouraging. Now we are continuously iterating the product based on our user feedback to launch the product to an expanded user base as part of the open beta later this year.

When it comes to the user experience -- the user experience in Serko.ai, our focus is on simplicity and ease of use. However, developing a simple and ease-of-use product is vastly complex.

The current functional product includes a careful coordination and orchestration of numerous AI agents that carry out tasks in parallel, interactions with third-party suppliers and it delivers a seamless conversational experience to users despite hundreds of actions taking place behind the scenes. We are really excited about the developments of this product and proud of the progress our teams have made with Serko.ai.

On Slide 20, I'll take you through the successful progress we've made in our second strategic initiative, Booking.com for Business. In the past year, we have delivered numerous initiatives with positive outcomes.

We set some of the highlights out on the left-hand side of Slide 20. For example, customers told us that they wanted an improved mobile experience, so we delivered one.

In fact, this enhanced experience resulted in conversion rates 1.4x higher than before implementing the new mobile experience. This work has delivered a better experience for customers, which in turn drives value for Serko and our Booking.com partnership.

We've also significantly improved how we support our customers using AI. In fact, we now see that 30% of support queries are resolved autonomously with no human intervention required.

This creates a rapid, easy solution for customers while driving efficiency for Serko. Now in the current financial year, we are in execution mode.

We continue to drive improvements across acquisition, activation and retention of our customers. We are working closely with Booking.com to identify business booking customers and bring them on to the business platform, which helps drive significant customer acquisition.

Similarly, we're making it easier for customers to see all their bookings in one place. Customers will be able to seamlessly navigate between bookings that are made on Booking.com for Business and those they've made on the core Booking.com product, which in turn should drive product stickiness.

On Slide 21, I show progress on our third strategic initiative. We are pursuing U.S.

organizations who regularly move large volumes of people at scale, but who do not need the complexity of large enterprise travel tools. We are targeting and onboarding these customers on to Booking.com for Business, which has the features and supply perfectly suited to their needs.

We're making solid progress in generating and validating qualified sales leads. To do so, we brought on new sales leaders who -- from travel brands like Airbnb, who have experience in attracting U.S.

organizations like these. And we've onboarded additional sales staff to bolster these efforts.

Our focus is on learning as we bring these initial customers on board. The next stage will be increasing usage into meaningful volumes before onboarding additional customers to drive volume at scale.

Thank you all for listening. I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress as we achieve our milestones.

I'll now hand back to Darrin for the FY '27 outlook.

Darrin Grafton

Thanks, Matt. Business travel demand in our key markets remains resilient despite the ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and macroeconomic challenges.

Serko has made a strong start to FY '27 with booking volumes slightly ahead of our growth expectations. Serko expects total income for FY '27 in the range of $128 million to $134 million.

The range is primarily driven by the timing of booking volumes from the strategic initiatives targeting defined U.S. corporates.

Serko expects total spend in the range of $132 million to $140 million. Guidance is subject to the uncertainty and volatility in the economic and geopolitical conditions, including the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on business travel demand.

We have provided additional context for our guidance in the appendix. And we're now happy to take your questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to your first question coming from the line of Joshua Dale with Craigs Investment Partners.

Joshua Dale

First question, in addition to your $250 million revenue target by FY '30, you also had a $100 million free cash flow target. You've signaled cash burn of $5 million for FY '27, if we look at your guidance midpoints.

But then to hit $100 million free cash flow in 3 years' time, there's some quite significant operating leverage implied for FY '28 to '30. Is that correct?

And is that what's being targeted?

Shane Sampson

Josh, it's Shane. I'll cover that.

I think the first point I'd make is that in terms of cash flow for FY '27, there are some noncash items within total spend, particularly the share-based compensation. So if you like, at the midpoint, we would probably have positive free cash flow.

I think the key point to your question about leverage, from our perspective, we've absolutely shown that our business generates strong leverage as we grow revenue to date. We think that will continue.

So if we hit $250 million, the business would be generating significant cash flow. However, what we are also doing our focus for FY '27 is our focus is on what's going to generate the best outcome for the best value for the company and for its investors.

And our view is FY '27, that key focus is delivering the strategy that Matt just talked to. And so if you like, that's our key focus versus arbitrary focus on generating positive free cash flow.

Looking out to FY '30 as an example, if we were $250 million is a stepping stone to where we think this business could go, not the end objective. If we were seeing for example, great LTV to CAC ratio, then it would not be a good decision for us to decide to try and drive more free cash flow and turn down the opportunity to grow value in the business even more.

So from our point of view, yes, absolutely, we expect the business will be able to generate significant operating leverage. The big open question is what's the rate of growth we're at in FY '30 and what are the best opportunities to grow shareholder value at that point.

Joshua Dale

Okay. That's helpful.

And if I look at your FY '27 guidance again, it's a $10 million revenue increase on FY '26, most of which comes from Booking for Business. I suppose if we look forward and assume Booking for Business can do that level of growth again, maybe $10 million a year out to FY '30, it does imply actually quite material contributions from Serko.ai and I suppose the B2B partner channel.

I appreciate it's very early stage, but I just wanted to gauge your comfort with that $250 million target as we edge toward it.

Shane Sampson

That remains our aspiration. We think the market opportunity is more than big enough to deliver that.

So as you say, we're still -- it's early days. We've just got the AI product into beta.

We just started the process with the U.S. defined segment.

But we look at both those markets, we believe we have got the ability to win in those markets and the markets are more than big enough to support the $250 million aspiration. Also note that in terms of booking, there's also significant potential for further growth within that business.

So it's roughly we've got multiple parts to get to the $250 million aspiration.

Joshua Dale

Okay. Just last question for me on the B2B partner channel.

You talked to an initial customer group. Can you just go into some detail as to, I suppose, what that is, what you're testing?

Is it an actual customer? Just a bit more detail on that.

Matthew Gerrie

Sure. Josh, this is Matt speaking.

We've brought on our sales team was the first step in the process. So we've hired a few people there in our sales team that specialize and have experience with dealing with these types of U.S.

organizations. We're filling that pipeline of really exciting leads of people who are looking to come on to the platform.

I guess what to answer your question directly about what it looks like from here through the sales cycle is it will look slightly different than, say, something that you see on Booking.com for Business as a sales cycle and slightly different than what you would see in our traditional TMC business. So what we're expecting to see here is we will bring on these organizations.

We'll go through a testing phase with them, ensuring that they are comfortable with the supply and pricing and functionality of the product. And then we'll expect to scale up in volumes over time as we bring them on.

Now as I said earlier, what our plan is to start with a few of these folks. We've got a pretty solid pipeline, but we're going to choose a few of them.

We're going to bring them on. And then once we're very confident with that sales pipeline and the appropriateness of the product, then we'll be scaling that up.

Joshua Dale

That's helpful. So sorry, just to clarify, that is an initial customer group that, I guess, has been signed up for this testing at the moment?

Or is that still to come?

Matthew Gerrie

Yes. We're in conversations with them at the moment.

We're talking to a number of different potential clients at the moment, yes.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll now go to your next question coming from the line of Guy Hooper with Jarden.

Guy Edward Hooper

If I could just start on the FY '27 guidance range and the comments around that range being driven by the timing of booking volumes related to the identified U.S. segments.

Can you give us a bit of color around what sort of -- is it just the top end that's subject to that? And what sort of contributions you're actually expecting to potentially get in this year?

What are the risks around that top end?

Shane Sampson

Guy, Shane. Yes, I think the first point would be that -- and the reason why we pointed to that being the primary driver, assuming that the market continues to perform the way it is.

We've got a pretty clear track of where our ANZ and U.S. businesses are going to go.

We've got -- in booking, we've got a clear rate of growth there that we've demonstrated we can achieve. And this year, we have taken out one of the potential volatility items, which is the FX rate.

So that hedging has locked in the favorable FX rate movement that occurred in the last year. So really for us then the #1 thing that stands out the potential variance is really the U.S.

targeted segments. And so they're contributing a meaningful portion of both the low and upper end of the range.

The reason for that is we're at the early stage. And I think we had our first salesperson [indiscernible] joined us in March.

So we're very early in the process. We expect to see a rapid ramp across the year.

But even moving -- for example, if we achieved our plan, but it was a month late, that would move a meaningful amount of revenue in FY '28 given the lag between signing volumes coming through and then because it comes through Booking for Business, then there's a lag until the bookings complete and turn to revenue. So that's really the big driver for us is the exact timing and rate of acquisition of customers in that first year where we're kicking off can move around a bit.

Guy Edward Hooper

Okay. Can you give us any detail around what the customer acquisition might look like in this space and the expected payback now that you've hired a sales team?

Shane Sampson

I think the -- to some degree from the range, you can get what sort of the high might be and the low assuming a small number. The -- in terms of the payback is pretty high, but one of the things we focused on with this product is, we're targeting people who have -- who we believe the current product works for.

We're not having to make product technology investment. As you would have seen our general gross margins on that sort of Booking for Business is above -- well above 90%.

And so the payback on a salesperson is extremely strong. So really the focus is just how fast can we grow that revenue, the ROIs will be extremely strong and just about a given.

Darrin Grafton

And I think probably the other point, Shane, is that it's the longer stay. So they're not like shorter stay sort of accommodation.

They're targeting more the longer stay-type bookings.

Guy Edward Hooper

Yes. Great.

Maybe just one last one on B2B and what you've seen over the last 12 months. The lower activity per active customer, is that an underlying sort of market trend?

Or is there anything different occurring in perhaps the cohorts that have come on board?

Shane Sampson

So I don't think we see a lot of difference in the cohorts in terms of timing. There is a little bit in terms of the mix of where the customers have come from.

However, I think we have seen the activity levels recover a bit in the second half of FY '26, and we're seeing that into the beginning of FY '27 back towards where they were in FY '25. So that hypothesis we had last time it was quite hard to prove that it was more about economic headwinds is kind of feeling like that probably was the case.

But based on where we're sitting now, a lot of that has come back.

Operator

Next question will come from the line of Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.

Siraj Ahmed

Just maybe two questions. Just first one, maybe for Shane.

Can you just give us the building blocks for guidance next year? I got the range is because of defined segment.

But just trying to understand, I'm guessing that there is declining B4B, is it sort of mid-teens growth? And if you just give us building blocks, that would be really helpful.

Shane Sampson

Yes. So it will decline a little bit those losses we had in the first half that we've talked to previously.

So you're more likely to see the second half replicate forward rather than the full year replicate forward. I think Australia will be sort of flattish or possibly fractionally down with a sort of slight increase in services revenue this year, and we think that will drop away again with the underlying travel business being slightly up.

And then to your point, booking is the next key piece. We haven't factored anything meaningful in Serko.ai yet because we're still seeing that as being about product market fit, but those target U.S.

segments are really the other key piece of growth other than Booking for Business continuing to grow volumes strongly.

Siraj Ahmed

Got it. And second one, just on the defined segment.

So Shane, just clarifying. So you're saying the range is actually driven by that, right?

So that's what the $6 million range in there. So just trying to think about '27.

So let's say you get the top end, you get $6 million or maybe $4 million to $6 million of revenue from that in the second half. Is that recurring that just sort of annualizes into next year and grows?

Just trying to understand that, right? If the momentum is actually quite high, does 2028, I guess, have significant contribution in that?

Shane Sampson

Yes. So definitely the exit rate, the way to think about it, those would be customers that would continue to use the product.

We would continue to add more product users. So I think that's one of the reasons why we see even if we're successful this year, there could still be a meaningful range because if you like even the midpoint of that range would see us with a really strong exit rate and a high level of confidence in a good chunk of FY '28 revenue already locked in.

So as Matt said, you kind of got the -- we've got to get them on board. We'll do some testing with them and then bring them through.

So if we're coming out the back end at the top end of that range, the trajectory into FY '28 is strong.

Siraj Ahmed

Yes. Got it.

And just maybe last one. In thinking about total spend and the comment on free cash flow into '30.

So is this a view that this is like the peak year of spend and then it starts coming down from there? Because it does look like you're using external contractors for this build-out, right?

So do we assume that start coming down from '28 onwards?

Shane Sampson

I think the key point, we're kind of keeping our options open around where FY '28 spend goes coming back to is highly successful, then the cost of acquisition, we will be wanting to push that hard. So I think we would expect sort of we've indicated probably more into FY '29, back end of FY '28 that the continued progress on the new platform should allow us to start doing some rationalization in some of our cost of running the old platform.

But yes, I think the key open thing for FY '28 is we'll continue to drive operating leverage out of the existing business, but what's the level of investment to drive the growth.

Operator

Your final question will come from the line of Vignesh Nair with UBS.

Vignesh Nair

Can you hear me?

Shane Sampson

Yes, we can.

Vignesh Nair

Two questions. The first one, obviously, Shane, I think you made a point in the presentation to mention that growth CapEx from here is funded by organic free cash flow from the core.

Like you got $54 million of cash on the balance sheet, about $4 million or $5 million of cash burn this year, still ends up with $50 million at the end of next year, you would have thought. Just keen to hear your sort of views on how you aim to allocate that spend sort of you're looking at M&A at the moment, sort of any sort of color on that would be helpful.

Shane Sampson

I think at the moment, Vignesh, our key focus is delivering the strategy that Matt's talked to. So our key focus at the moment is getting Serko.ai up and running, getting the targeted U.S.

segments up and running and continuing to scale Booking.com for Business while we retain customers in the managed travel business ready for when Serko.ai can be targeted at them. So potential things like M&A, I mean our key reason for holding that large amount of cash from our perspective, it just gives us optionality.

So for example, if we were seeing great LTV to CAC coming out in the Serko.ai, then we've got the ability to invest in it while still leaving ourselves plenty of buffer against any sort of surprises along the way. So from our point of view, the $54 million gives us optionality as we continue to execute on our plans.

Vignesh Nair

And the second question is around -- I suppose it's a reasonably dynamic environment, but just scrutinizing a few of your views in terms of sort of assumptions for the Middle East and implications there. Like if you dissect the last 2.5 months a bit more and look at sort of maybe weekly year-on-year numbers in the ANZ and U.S.

business, is there any sign at all of a gradual deterioration over the last, call it, 10 weeks, like the last sort of 7 days different to the prior 28?

Shane Sampson

Yes. So we have been watching that closely and the answer is no.

One of the reasons we got April and May and say, March and April in the slide in the appendix, I think Slide 33 was because of Easter seasonality, April was much stronger than the prior year, but a lot of that was seasonality. So that's why we combined the 2.

But definitely running into the first couple of weeks of May, we've still seen that resilience. And so there's a wide range of possible outcomes that could occur from here.

I think our view is we are not well placed to make calls on that. So we've largely baked into our core guidance that, that resilience continues.

And there's a little bit of allowance in our forecast for weaker macroeconomic performance in Europe will continue to be a little bit of a headwind for us. But actually, the change in European growth is not that dramatic.

It was never going to be a fantastic year for growth in Europe. It will be a little bit weaker.

So guidance is really assuming that, that resilience stays there. And as recently as last week, we've checked through those, and that still remain -- we're still seeing strong numbers.

Operator

And it appears there are no additional questions. I'll now turn it back to you for any closing remarks.

Darrin Grafton

The global business travel market is growing, but the more important shift underway is structural. The industry is shifting from search-led travel management to AI-led travel execution.

We are already seeing changing traveler expectations and a behavioral shift towards conversational and AI-assisted travel experiences. That shift creates an opportunity significantly larger than the traditional travel management software alone.

Serko sits at the center of the travel ecosystem between the traveler, their organization and global travel supply. We believe that matters more in an AI-driven world, not less.

Our AI advantage is built on 3 things: millions of real travel transactions, deep policy intelligence and trusted relationships across the travel ecosystem. As you've heard today, we're already putting these advantages to work.

We've entered FY '27 with positive momentum, disciplined execution and an ever-increasing velocity. Thank you for your time today.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect.