Home / Transcripts / Tabcorp Holdings Limited (TAH) · May 31, 2023

Tabcorp Holdings Limited (TAH) Earnings Call Transcript

May 31, 2023

Australian Securities Exchange AU Consumer Discretionary Hotels, Restaurants and Leisure investor_day 109 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Gerard Middleton executive
#1

Well, a very good afternoon to you all and welcome to Tabcorp's Investor Day. Before we start the formal presentation, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands upon which we are meeting and pay my respect to Elders past, present and emerging. My name is Gerard Middleton, and I'm part of Tabcorp's team of presenters. I have cohosted the big sports breakfast. It's a pleasure to be here today, a pleasure as well to see this Melbourne Cup trophy and a big thanks to our great partners at the Victoria Racing Club, they represent such an essence of what racing is all about, and we'd like to think we do the same. And a huge thanks to them for donating for the afternoon, this Melbourne Cup trophy, a big thanks to our great partners at the Victoria Racing Club they represent such an essence of what racing is all about, and we'd like to think we do the same. And a huge thanks to them for donating for the afternoon, this Melbourne Cup trophy of great significance. The 1950 Melbourne Cup Trophy. Any aficionado's here remember or know who won the Melbourne Cup in 1950, a rain man or woman who knows who want it in that year, anybody. Not even Charles Moon knows this. I'm surprised. Comic court won in 1950 for the Lee Brothers of South Australia, trained by Jim Cummings. Of course, Jim was the great Bart Cummings farther. Bart was a strapper for Comic Court that day and said, "Gee, I'd like to win this race one day as a trainer, when arrived in the end of that winning tour upside. So the great Bart coming strapper for Comic Court that day. So a very warm thanks again for the Victoria Racing Club for donating the 1950 Melbourne Cup today. But this is our second Investor Day since the demerger in June last year, and our management team is certainly excited to take you through the next stage of Tabcorp's evolution, in particularly the progress we are making in delivering our Tab25 targets. I'm also delighted that one of our Board members, sports administrator extraordinaire. The great David Gallop is here today. Good to see you, David. And well, there's 3 components to today's session and a formal presentation starting with our Chief Executive and Managing Director Adam Rytenskild. Our Chief Customer Officer, Jenni Barnett; and also our Chief Data Analytics Officer, who I'm told, is the doctor, Dr. Amy Shi-Nash, great to see you all here today. And unfortunately, our CFO, Dan Renshaw, is [ cooked ] today. So Adam will present the finance component of today's session and our Chief Operations Officer Paul Carew will be available for the Q&A session at the end. Now after the formal presentation, we encourage you to ask questions from the floor as well. And we then ask you to join us in the tab lab just across the way here, the hallway as well. And we'll have an interactive session with our Chief Technology Officer, Alan Sharvin. Jack and Pat as well from our product team here as well, and we'll have some refreshments and you'll have the opportunity to chat with today's speakers. Then it's a sure walk across to Adelaide oval Origin 1 tonight money pouring in for the blues I see today as well a $1.80 to $1.77 with Tab [ number one ] $2.5 out of $2.10. So I'm not sure who we're cheering yet, what the red result in the book is, but I'm delighted to announce as well that in the suite, we'll have Lawrie Daley Origin Legend for New South Wales is going to join us and give some of his thoughts on the match and maybe a tail or 2 from his time is playing and being a coach of New South Wales as well. And also a former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke, cohosts on the big sports breakfast. Clarke, average 94 Adelaide Oval had an outstanding record in one of the great grounds in World Cricket, and he will be joining us as well. Without any further ado, I hand over to you, Adam.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#2

Thanks very much, Gerard, and welcome, everyone. Really appreciate you making the trip to Adelaide, and it's fantastic to see you all here. Now 12 months ago, almost of the day, we stood an Investor Day and launched what I called Australia's biggest start-up. It was a renewed Board a renewed executive team and a renewed energy. I said with Rip the Cardigan of Tabcorp. We pledged a new app, new products, level playing fields and that we would be responsible with your capital. I'm pleased to say that we've done exactly what we said we would do. We're delivering on our promises. Not only have we launched a new app, we've released 8 updates since, actually make it 9. We released another one yesterday. Key products like same-race multi, upgraded same game multi and bets friends in our life. And recently, we locked in a partnership with Racing and Sports to ensure we have the best form products across the app, retail and Sky Racing. We have a level playing field in Queensland, the ACT in Tasmania and Victoria will be a level playing field next year. That's now certain. Our focus though is on winning the Australian market. Today, we're going to talk to you about the next phase of our journey, delivering Tab25. Our targets for FY '25 and how we're going to get there. We've been very deliberate to make you part of our 3-year growth journey, and we'll continue to meet with you regularly, and we plan to have an Investor Day every year. Like last year, we'll not be providing guidance or a trading update. Sorry about that. At least 6 of you have already asked me. We won't be doing that. No downgrades either, as I said, but we'll be clear about our growth strategy and where this journey will take us by the end of FY '25. We're going to introduce you to some of our team that Jared's mentioned, who are leading the implementation. People like Amy Shi-Nash, who has joined as Tab's very first Chief Data and Analytics Officer. Amy was previously Chief Data Scientist at NAB and Global Head of Data Analytics at HSBC, and that means a fantastic example of the top 2 talent that we're attracting at Tabcorp. And she's using the world's best technology so we can understand our customers better, deliver great experience for punters and be more effective in our offers. I'm excited about the opportunities our new talent present as we focus our efforts on Tab25, and I'm looking forward to my team sharing with you today how we'll reach those targets. Now over the last 12 months, we've created a different company. We demerged the Lotteries business, which set us free to chart our own course and that's exactly what we've done. We've disrupted ourselves, and now we're looking to disrupt the market. We're reshaping the business to deliver customers market-leading promotions, pricing, products and customer experience. We're faster, leaner, more nimble to deliver those outcomes and in return, we're becoming a more valuable business to you, our shareholders. Since the demerger, we're creating a strong foundation to grow. We've improved our product offerings and attracted new talent from a variety of sectors to bring the best skill sets together to better reflect what is required as we transform the company. About 20% of our general managers are now new hires since the demerger. Bringing more advanced skills to our business, and we've done this without increasing the GM population. We can now compete on a level playing field with legislative changes in Queensland. Now implemented along with the ACT and Tasmania. We've simplified our business with the sale of e-Bet, and we continue to pivot from gaming services to integrity services. And we've launched Genesis, which will take makers leaner and nimbler to deliver faster outcomes for our customers. Sky Racing, which has added across 50,000 screens in 4,000 venues, as well as in homes across the country has been rebranded tomorrow closely aligned with Tab, while our international media business is performing well as we deepen access to top markets in Hongkong and France. We're also looking to expand our global vision opportunities in growth markets like the United States. Our balance sheet is strong with low levels of debt and more diverse sources of funding. Now while we're in the midst of change, we continue to embrace the foundations that make us strong. We're proudly an Australian business. We remain synonymous with racing and are the official wagering partner of Australia's 2 biggest racing carnivals, the Melbourne Cup Carnival and the Everest Carnival. We continue to be the only company with a complete wagering ecosystem. An integrated retail, media and digital experience. This sets us up strongly to grow and to invest as the market changes to a level playing field. At the beginning of our journey, we set a key to our future growth strategy would be to secure these level playing fields. To refresh your memory, in some states, we're paying up to double the wagering fees and taxes of our foreign-owned competitors. It leaves us with a structural disadvantage, and we aren't able to compete on a level playing field by investing in the same level of promotions and offers. Over the last year, we've been very public about the need for the foreign bookies to pay the same wagering fees and taxes as we do. I know some of you were skeptical about whether we could achieve this, and I'm pleased to report we've made substantial progress. Queensland, the ACT and Tasmania have implemented level playing fields, as I've said. Victoria will have a level playing field when the new license commences next year. And New South Wales has commenced the process towards a level playing field, and we are participating in the current review while in South Australia, we've commenced discussions. These are strong outcomes in our business and substantial progress in just 1 year. A level playing field provides the opportunity for us to be more competitive across the country. We'll keep you abreast of our progress and we'll continue to publicly advocate strongly for a level playing field that will ensure a sustainable industry into the future. Now before we look at Tab25, I'd like to give you an overview of the current market. We're operating in an environment where consumer confidence is softer and cost of living pressures are higher. There's increased community sentiment and regulatory emphasis on social responsibility, including the regulation of gambling advertising and the cost of the capital is raising. With less disposable income, this has led to customers being more value conscious and generosities are important in this type of environment. It's clear that the largest competitor in the market has increased generosities recently to offset the downturn in spending. We've tried to find the balance between creating enough generosity to maintain market share but we've also listened to shareholder feedback by not using it to buy market share. While competition remains strong, this is resulting in a challenging outlook for subscale operators. We'll increasingly require scale to compete, and I expect companies without scale and a differentiated product to struggle to remain viable. We see this period as a great opportunity to transform ourselves into a stronger and more competitive company with a greater share of market and well positioned for the long-term growth of the industry. There's rightly a greater focus from the community and government on the wagering sector. We've looked to take a leadership position in our industry, and that's why we're the first company to call for a reduction in free-to-air gambling advertising. And we're well placed to compete in an environment where advertising options will be restricted. We'll also continue to advocate for stronger more nationally consistent regulation of the sector. You've seen over the past few months that there's been greater community focus on gambling advertising. And I'm proud that we've led this debate. Families should not be bombarded with gambling advertising when they're watching television. As you can see, we've entered a challenging economic and regulatory environment. But Tab25 remains our target, and we're willing to invest ahead of the curve to reach our ambition. Under Tab25. Our Tab25 targets, which we announced in February at our first half results are designed to create a simpler and very looking -- very different looking company in FY '25. We want to win the game by transforming the TAB brand and customer experience with the goal of achieving 30% digital revenue market share in FY '25. We're implementing a simpler, leaner, more agile operating model with the aim of reducing our OpEx to between $600 million to $620 million. And this is a very real and substantial reduction given inflation rates and the investments we're making at the same time. And we want to grow with the aim of doubling our ROIC to 10%. We want to shape the game by leveling the playing field in every state, so that Tabcorp and corporate book makers pay the same taxes and fees. And we're continuing to simplify our Gaming Services business, by pivoting to integrity services where we see opportunity as regulations for gaming continue to tighten. And as a leader in customer care, we're well positioned to respond to changing community sentiment and regulatory changes. That includes a partnership with globally recognized responsible gambling company Mindway AI, who are using technology to identify changes in customer behavior faster so we can help problem gamblers sooner. So let's look at how we plan to achieve our 3 major Tab25 targets of increasing market share, delivering OpEx reductions and doubling our ROIC. Part of disrupting ourselves has been to put a light on the hill. This is where we want to be. Everything we do as a company is focused on Tab25, and it's given real clarity and focus to the business and everyone in it. I'm not afraid of making our internal targets public, it's what drives us every day. And as I said, it's given us great clarity. Our Tab25 execution framework is built on 3 big bets and multiple levers to deliver on those bets. And we call these fields of play. And they are dominate racing, focus on the right sports and delivering the best entertainment experience in customer care. Jenni and Amy will talk in detail about the specifics of how we'll go about doing this. But from an investor perspective, the measure of our success will be our turnover growth, our gross yield and our net yield. So rest assured our growth will be disciplined and profitable, and this will be amplified as level playing fields are implemented. This is why we place so much emphasis on our future operating model and execution excellence. Our Genesis cost transformation program is designed to ensure we deliver a world-class business performance and the measures of our success will be our OpEx levels and our ROIC. A Part of Tab25, a big part is the changing culture. Culture is infectious, and we're on a 3-year journey of changing our culture and disrupting ourselves. I'm pleased to see our people are already living our new values, spark change, play far and raise the game. I'll talk later about how the P&L will be significantly reshaped as part of Tab25 to accelerate our growth in FY '25 and beyond. I'll now hand over to Jenni Barnett, that's Jenni Barnett, our Chief Customer Officer, to talk about how we're going to win the Australian market, thanks.

Jenni Barnett executive
#3

Glad to know who i am, Well, thanks, Adam, and good afternoon, everyone, and really great to see many of you again. So to start off with, I'd like to report back on what I said at last year's Investor Day that we'd focus on and what we've delivered to date. So we said we'd move faster and improve our ways of working, and we've done this by bringing our product design and tech teams together, just like you've seen any digitally focused company. We said we'd speed up our app updates from 4 months to 4 weeks, and we've delivered 8 material updates since launching our new app in September, as Adam said 1 yesterday as well. So effectively, a new update every month. pretty good when you consider prior to that, it was probably every 2 to 3 years. We've achieved product parity and our focus is now on innovation and leapfrogging the competition. We said we needed to invest in data and analytics, and you'll be hearing today from Amy about the data and analytics game plan we have and that we're implementing already. We said we'd need to sharpen our focus on customer acquisition, conversion and retention. And I'll talk shortly about our new data-driven customer segmentation and how we're leveraging that to run and manage the customer life cycle. We also promised to fix our customer digital journeys, and Amy will speak shortly on improvements that we've made to our on-boarding experience and early life cycle customer conversion. We said we'd up-weight our digital marketing and content. And to this end, we've changed creative agencies up-weighted digital content and marketing and have a new brand strategy. So our strategy continues to be to maximize effectiveness, minimize waste and sweat all our assets to drive shareholder value. We also said we'd invest in talent and capability to bolster particular areas. We've made a number of new hires in key areas such as data and analytics, which you'll be hearing a lot about today. We've also set up a digital content function with 2 great new key leads in racing content and sport content, really focusing on digital. And actually, now it would also be a very good time for me to introduce you to Vanessa Sanford without embarrassing her. Where is she, there she is. Who's 4 weeks in as our GM of Brand Marketing and Media. The next is a very senior and seasoned marketer, contemporary marketer and comes to us from Commbank, and she's already making an impact. So Vanessa is going to take carriage of our new brand work our acquisition and our digital marketing and leveraging our partnerships across media and industry much more. Of course, we have much more to do, and there remains latent demand but a huge thank you to the entire Tabcorp team backed by Adam, the rest of the exec team and the Board, everyone should be really, really proud of how far we've come in a year. So today, we're in a position to know much more about our customers than we ever have before. Our unique multichannel ecosystem gives us great insight into customer behavior from their digital browsing behaviors through to their call center engagement, all their transactions of costs and the destinations they frequent. These insights have enabled us to create a new customer segmentation to identify growth opportunities and to how best capitalize on these. So here it is. On the next slide, we show you how we approach customer acquisition retention and ARPU through a new customer segmentation. Not sure if any of you can see yourselves in any of those personas, let's see. So what you see here is a very high-level version of a deep and rich understanding of our customers that informs us where the opportunities lie for growth and ultimately, to deliver market share. So there's obviously a lot more detail underneath this market sizing, how we stand in that regard, who customers are, what their preferences are. But effectively, the customer segmentation model really focuses on 3 things or 3 areas, punters, fans and occasionals. So let's take a couple of examples. I'll talk through them in more detail. So take is Avi, Avi is an avid all-rounder and punter where betting is the game. He's 18 to 34 years old, and his social and passionate. Avi represents around 8% of betters but is the largest share of the revenue pie and has the highest ARPU. While over half of the avid all-rounders have a tab account, it's likely to be 1 of 3 accounts. And currently, TAB has a share of his digital wallet below the group average. As such, the key growth opportunity will be to increase ARPU and share of wallet. So how are we going to do this? Avi going to value a range of betting options, is a big content consumer who likes to study information and form to make decisions. 1/4 of Avi's betting is in cash. Any bets using cash for its instant access. And let's jump over to Bax. Bax is a sports backer. These good names, aren't they so saying that 10x fast. Well, the same age as Avi, he's a fan where betting adds to the game. He's tech savvy and very curious and just love stats and insights. So Bax represents the largest portion of betters and the fourth largest by revenue across the market. Tab share of Bax digital wallet is similar to Avi, However, only 1/3 of sports backers have a tab account. The opportunity for TAB across the fan segment is to acquire and grow. We know Bax regularly check sports news and updates likes to secure his bet early and access winnings very quickly. Around 1/3 of the betting of his betting is in cash, and it's mainly for some fun with friends. So these are just a couple of examples of how we're using a much better understanding of our customers to identify opportunities and strategies to give customers a very tailored, relevant and contextual and fantastic customer experience, employing the full suite of assets that we have across our unique ecosystem. So the opportunities for us are clear and inform where we will play. And to win the Australian market, we're going to do 4 things. We're going to dominate racing. We're going to double down on the right sports, we're going to deliver the best social entertainment experience, and we're going to lead in customer care. So first up, we plan to dominate racing and we're going to do this by giving customers the edge with the most comprehensive content, form and insights. So our recent deal with racing and sports, which Adam mentioned earlier, is one example of uplifting our form and premium content across the app as well as Sky. Dominating racing is primarily focused on increased ARPU as well as conversion of sports boosters and backers. Our strategic objectives are designed to give customers the offers and the experiences they value the most. For example, for a session lover, such as Seb, there he is, we know he values vision, tips and payout speed to get on to the next race. He also likes to bet in venue, including cash socially. So we're going to double down on the right sports. So the primary focus is going to be on acquisition but with a very targeted approach to markets and customers. We have validated a growth path for sports and are clear on what we need to focus on here. For example, for a sports booster such as Bodie, this means delivering a highly social and active experience for a passionate sports fan, who will be found at the game, on socials and other digital platforms. He's looking to a same game multi for a big potential return on a small stake that will make watching the game with friends much more exciting. Our venues. So the importance of our venues, content and app and the integration of these into a unique customer experience are at the core of providing the best social entertainment. This is not simply about cash betting. Our focus is on providing customers with a connected and immersive experience that adds to the social aspects of venues, and I'll talk to this in more detail shortly. For example, for a big eventer like Eve or you put me there actually, that's me, she values the social side of betting and the thrilling enjoyment it brings on the big occasions. She's unlikely to be doing any form and appreciates guidance and a tip and goes with well-known brands and cash remains an important channel. Our social digitally integrated in venue and on course experience provides Eve or myself with a unique fun experience in the market. And very importantly, we're going to lead in customer care and community. We are the trusted Australian brand, and we are absolutely committed to proactive care. There are a number of important initiatives, including leveraging AI to facilitate proactive harm minimization, intervention and detection, which Amy will talk to shortly. We've also been very vocal, as Adam said, in advocating for the regulation of gambling advertising and have been proactive in working with industry and community also. So our work on our fields of play is all supported by a rigorous and detailed bottom-up builds on the strategic initiatives and the projects attached to these. So on this slide gives you a flavor of the depth and detail of the work that we're executing to deliver on the targets across multiple initiatives and projects. So we've flatted projects, initiatives, return back to strategy. Let's talk about our venues. So as an example, if we drill down into the venue-related initiatives, we've clearly met the interdependencies across the organization. including things like our workforce model of the future, our commercial model and our end-to-end customer experience. We've also used this bottom-up work to understand the value of the opportunity across the initiatives in order to prioritize and execute the right things in the right order. And Paul Carew, who is our Chief Operating Officer, who some of you might know, is leading this work. It's down the front here. So this all ladders up again to our single objective of winning the Australian market. So we're also looking to reshape our venue experience to create a more connected personalized offering and better linking our key assets in venues such as vision to the app content and how we show up in venue, including our brand. It's really going to be about converting eyeballs to Tab actives. We're taking a very modular and flexible approach to format, so on the top left, the Discovery store, you'll see venues with all the bells and whistles. But you can only -- you would only expect to see a handful of these in really high-impact places. And on the bottom right-hand side, the essentials. Think of these as venues having brand updates and utilization of our screens more effectively. So very low cost but will give us the brand refresh we need by using the goodness of what we already have, so the 50,000 screens in our venues. We just got to sweat our assets that we already have. We'll be taking a really disciplined and phased approach. Locations and the rollout plan is being formulated by Paul and the team with input from our customer segmentation work, data and analytics. And we'd expect to have probably around 50 venues rolled out across different formats over the next 6 to 9 months. So I'd now like to spend a few minutes on some key enablers of our customer strategy, namely brand, digital content, and then we'll introduce Amy to outline our data and analytics game plan. So let's just start with a short reel on where we're taking our brand. [Presentation]

Jenni Barnett executive
#4

Here we go, So Tab, we're on. What do you think? Thanks. Actually, there was really fun quote when we were testing some of these out. Someone said, "You guys are the OGs of the category, you really know what you're doing, but you have become a little bit like a daggy dad. So I'm sure there's no daggy dads in the audience, but you can get a flavor of where we're taking the brand. So we are going to be modernizing the brand, positioning it as a champion of exhilaration, a brand that's inclusive, passionate fun modern and made for Australians by Australians. While, of course, we need to retain our incredibly important and valuable brand elements, we have, such as our heritage, our expertise and our reputation. So this is going to involve scaling up the sociability component of what we do. It's inherently social in this category and making it more share worthy. We want to treat our customers as fans through their individual mix of passion for racing and sport. And importantly, always be entertaining. So I also said a year ago, we needed to change our mix of marketing towards modern digital channels, and we've significantly uplifted our digital content, which you may have noticed. What our data clearly demonstrates is that better to engage with our content at 3x more likely to place the bet. We are pivoting the way we make content and leveraging our broad set of media rights to give customers greater access and get them behind the scenes and closer to the action. So this will better engage, inform, entertain and ultimately convert our customers, and we've recently signed quite a lot of new talent, reset our social strategy and created new content, particularly in the last 6 months, which is really starting to pay off in social and digital platforms where we know younger audiences are. I also said a year ago, we needed to move faster in relation to products and I'm really pleased to report that we've been releasing a lot of new products and features to our customers since last September. So there's a long list on this slide, and you'll get a chance to talk to Jack and Patty from our product team as well as Alan Sharvin, our CIO. And interact with some of the new features and products in a tablab that we've got set up next door later this afternoon. So finally, unlocking the power of data is another key enabler, which will allow us to win in the market. We're in a position to know more about our customers than ever before. with an abundance of highly valuable first-party data combined with technology that's delivering us a single view of our customers and allowing us to deliver personalized, timely and engaging experiences. A key ingredient into tapping into this latent value is the upgrading of our internal capability in data and analytics. And as you've heard, we've made a number of new hires in the last 5 months to really amplify the current team. This, coupled with our clear data architecture, personalization strategy, the existing tech stack we have, which is really best-in-class in terms of digital personalization will hold us in good stead. So I'd now like to introduce Amy to you, and yes, we do call her the doctor who's been on board for 5 months and has had an immediate impact, and she's going to talk you through the data analytics, game plan and some of the things that we're already executing on. Amy, welcome.

Amy Shi-Nash executive
#5

Thank you, Jenni, and good afternoon. It's very good to be here today to share with you how we're building our data analytics capability at Tabcorp. As Jenni mentioned, I've been here 5 months, and it's been a very exciting journey, and I'm having lots of fun too. To build a data-led organization in my experience, you need the backing from the top, you need lots of data to work with and you need good people. So the good news is we have all these ingredients here at Tabcorp. So we've got a really good data foundation. We've got a big ambition. And we have amazing backing from the executive team and the Board. So we are well positioned to build a best-in-class analytics capability here. So here is our game plan. Know and grow customers, so get the basics, right? Personalization at scale. So this is the secret source of creating the experience customers really love. Put the data at the heart of every business decision making and being the industry leader and creating best-in-class customer care and build a culture of excellence, raise our own game and do things differently. So in terms of execution, we're going to uplift the maturity across all of these areas, which I will talk you through very shortly. But in addition, we also need to accelerate data and tech. So modernizing our infrastructure, bringing real-time data fees and create a connected data ecosystem. So Alan and the technology team here are going to lead the transformation, and it's a real core enabler for us. Also, we need to change how we do things here as well and embrace on the experimentation and the test and learn approach. And this is new to us at Tabcorp, but we already started the journey. One good example would be the Spark tank initiatives were fairly recently launched is designed to create all the innovative ideas from everybody across the company and take them through the test and learn approach. It's only been launched in a few weeks, and we've already seen over 70 good ideas coming through is a culture transformation as much as anything. And we need to invest in our next-generation capability. So we can't achieve our ambition by doing more of what we're doing today. So the next-generation game changers, including the content and the retail experience as Jenni mentioned earlier, we also launched the [ next lab ], which is focused on AI. In fact, our Head of AI, Professor Dickson Lucas. He's going to start tomorrow. He's joining us from Monash University and has more than 25 years experience in AI. So we're really excited to be able to attract talent like them. So in summary, we have a good foundation. We've got a plan. So let me now show you a few examples and bring those to life. Know & Grow customer. So what do we know more about our customer now than before. Behavioral segmentation, so you already heard a lot from Jenni on the reaching side of our customer segments. So we know the shape of our entire customer base now, the proportion of punters, the fans and occasionals, and we also know their key behavior characteristic. So for example, the punters, they're our biggest group, they have the highest retention rate and they're also most valuable. And the sports fans, they are our biggest growth proportion in the new accounts really good news for our sports and strategy. And we also know the key behavior drivers so we can upgrade the segments along the way. Lifetime value, so this is new to us. So for the first time and automatically, we can calculate every customer every bet, the turnover revenue and the true bottom line revenue taken out the generosity and the tax and the fees's, which we fees and tax associated with the products in the states. So we've never had that view before. It's a super eye-opening and powerful in our decision-making. Digital in-venue, multichannel. So retail has always been a really important channel for us. And we know customers use our apps on the web, and they go to venue, they were twice as much. So how do we use data to drive our digital in-venue? For example, we know sports fans have much higher proportion going to venue. They love multi and we know the popular teams and the players, they bet on. So this insight has translated into the below-the-line campaign, which we can engage our sports fans in venues in a much more targeted and a meaningful way. Also, we're building a geo-location capability which can putting 4,000 venues all on the map. So our retail team can easily understand where is the footfall, the catchment area, where is the performance as well as identify the greenfield locations. Digital, this is also new to us. So we have 45 million digital interactions through our app and the web. And they were generated by 760,000 unique digital visitors every week. And the TAB appears in 25 million impressions in social and the surge. Not only now we know the top line traffic. We also know every time when you use our app or visit our website, we know which page you going to, how long you say therefore. And most importantly, we know the conversion. So either through the deposit or the bet. So this is actually a key milestone for us. So for the first time, we're able to connect our digital data with the customer information and transaction. It's taking a lot of effort in a long time to get to where we are today, but we are one step forward in personalized that digital experience. All right. So now I'm going to talk about how we're approaching customer engagements as for a life cycle-based approach. So we call them life cycle-based approach is basically following the customers, starting from the acquisition to the early stage to maturity, lapse and dormant. So throughout this life cycle, we can identify the key behavioral indicators so we know which life stage customers are at, and we have a very clear objective to engage them with. So our goal is to maximize the active customer base by improving our on-boarding and the conversion and preventing churn. So for the customers at the activity stage will drive up the activity and share of wallet through personalized engagement. So this is something we use behavior triggered automated style and the program we're developing, we called them, leave no customer behind. And it involves the steady [indiscernible], analytical capability as well as automation. So let me give you kind of a zoom in to the early life and I'll just give you a few of what that involved. So this black line, that's your customer on-boarding journey, and we can identify the key signals, the key steps and the milestones along this journey, and it's sending out automated helps or reminders or engagement at the right time. So this is going to significantly remove the customer on-boarding friction and improving our conversion. So what else do we do in the early stage. We can identify early segments in the first week of you joining so we can differentiate the big events from the potential high-value customers. So giving people that more tailored experience. And also, we developed an early life lifetime value model. This is to predict the 12 months' worth of revenue in the first 10 days. So that machine learning model has been implemented in our search engine optimization, which will drive more quality closely and reducing our cost per acquisition. And in fact, the Tabcorp was awarded the prestigious Google Honor Award the best in-house team of the year, which is a great recognition for the in-house capability. So all of these engagements, they are behavior-less. They are automated. They triggered at the right time with the tailored experience. And this is what we meant by life cycle-based engagement, leave no customer behind. Okay. So now we talk about how do we use data in our decision-making and improving the generosity spend and the campaign efficiency. So we spent significant money in generosity and there has not been always optimal. So our offers tend to be very generic and they go through above the line channels. which means a higher proportion of the higher proportion of the generosity down to the nonprofitable customers. Also, the fare of missing out means we trying to do everyone else doing in the market, which is never a winning strategy. So in the last few months, we've changed into a more data-driven framework, so what does that mean, So we're putting in a combination of customer segments and lifetime value together. So our business teams are creating over 30 different offers and then send them through below-the-line channels, either SMS or e-mails or the banner. And we also created a new campaign evaluation framework which will deliver it next day of reporting automatically. So now our business teams can see what campaigns are working, what's not working and what needs to be changed in a very timely fashion. And in addition to that, we also created a top line recorder hero metrics for the generosity. So this is the top level spending about where the generosity come and the profitability of it. So this really given us the indication we can connect those to our top line targets, such as turnover revenue and market share. So we know whether we spend the generosity in the right place and whether it moves the needle or not. So in the last 2 months, we've been doing this week on week. We've seen a very consistent uplift in our campaign performance in our generosity efficiency. Our hero metric also has significant improvement. We have the proportion go to the nonprofitable customers. So all of these are really encouraging. Our teams really feel the confidence I think we got the plan. The last one is about the contextual experience. So we also started to experiment really context experiment, which is giving you at the right time in the right locations, some very personalized messages whether they are welcoming messages or celebration. So we've seen a tremendous response from the customers. We know customers really love them. And this is one of the key agenda items on our road map. So overall, we are changed into a disciplined, data-driven approach through personalization, automation and measurement. So we're very excited to see the momentum with field change, we fill the confidence even in the last couple of months and people really feel we got the plan here. Right. so proactive cusp here. So as you heard from Adam and Jenni earlier, we are committed to be the leader in the proactive care and we're excited to work with Mindway AI on this. This is a very unique partnership. So Mindway AI is a world-leading responsible gambling leader here. They use a combination of neuroscience, AI and human experts, and they built the players' profile which learned from thousands of different responsible gambling patents, well, problem gambling patterns such as chasing the losses or in gambling. So the player profile they created are more holistic. They're also earlier. They're easy to understand and they intervene. So our work is already underway to map up our data sources, and we're going to use our first party data to retain this model, so they take our contacts and needs into account. So this capability is also a great add-on to our already pretty strong in-house capability. And we have 2 PhDs in behavioral psychology and game design. They're working with our customer care scores and building out how do we translate these signals into interventions and with our communication strategy. So thank you for listening. And I hope that gives you a bit of a flavor of what we're doing in building the capability and how do we do things differently. We've got a clear plan and the teams are really focused on delivery, and we're ready to see the difference. So now I'm going to hand back to Adam. Thank you.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#6

Thanks, Amy. We wanted to give you a bit of an insight into what we're actually doing every day. And to me, it's really exciting. We really are a different company to what we were a year ago, and that gives you just a bit of a flavor we've got more PhDs at Tabcorp than we've ever had before. I'm the least smart person there. So that's good news for all of you. I'm going to talk a bit about world-class business performance, another key part of our Tab25 objective and reshaping the business for growth. As I said in my opening remarks, Tab25 is about transforming the company to be a very different looking company, a more competitive business for our customers and for you, our shareholders. If there's just one message that I'll leave you with today is that we're reshaping this P&L into one that's set up for growth. You've heard today from Jenni and Amy on the significant improvement in the customer offering, Further, we're making progress in obtaining level playing fields across the country. And in a moment, I'll update you on our Genesis cost program and capital investment. How do we translate Tab25 into EBIT and ROIC expansion. Importantly, it's the combination of the Tab25 components working together that reshapes our P&L and provides a powerful and significant change to our earnings growth potential. To illustrate, at the moment without a living -- level playing field where we don't have one, we need 18% more turnover than our competitors on every dollar of generosity to break even on that spend. This is a significant disadvantage that means during periods when we're in an offer driven market. We're investing without being able to translate it efficiently to profit as much as we'd like. As we level the playing field, this differential neutralizes. At the same time, Amy and her team is working to increase the ROI on generosity as we've just heard, to compound the benefit. Combined with that, Jenni is doing on customer -- what Jenni is doing on customer. So we put these pieces together, you can see that we begin to generate a virtuous loop of growing market share, revenue and DC. Now if we combine this with OpEx and capital discipline, this will grow EBIT and expand ROIC. Each of these 3 big bets in our execution plan are about delivering on our Tab25 targets and releasing the business for substantial growth over the long term. I'll now spend some time on our third big bet, world-class business performance and delivering cost-efficient growth. At the first half results or at the half year results, we spoke about Genesis. Put simply, Genesis is about generating cost savings and creating capacity to reinvest in our growth initiatives. Will it be investing into those areas that will drive revenue they see in market share. I'm pleased to report that we remain on track to deliver a decline in OpEx to between $600 million to $620 million by FY '25, and we are establishing the next-gen Tabcorp operating model that enables agile contemporary ways of working. In a moment, I'll spend a few minutes on our integrated venue transformation pillar to deliver a low-cost omnichannel retail network. In the session next door after this presentation, you'll have the chance to speak to Alan Sharvin, our Chief Technology Officer, on how he is transforming and simplifying our technology to move faster and be more efficient. As I said, 9 updates after our app release, 2 years to follow that, I don't think we had any updates. So that's a significant change. And we continue to execute on property and procurement savings across the organization. As an example of the Genesis program, let's look in more detail at the integrated venue transformation pillar. You heard earlier from Jenny and Amy about the work we're doing to create a differentiated and engaging customer experience in Venue. Our physical Venue channel remains an important component of customer acquisition and retention strategy, and it goes beyond simple cash betting. Venues are vibrant social places that offer rich betting environments, however, they are evolving. In conjunction with the improved in-venue customer experience, we're also lowering our operating costs and creating a more efficient acquisition channel. We're reviewing our agency footprint and refocusing the offering on our most profitable locations. And as part of this, we'll close 31 agencies in FY '23. At the same time, we continue to bring down our cost to serve through renegotiating leases and optimizing our field services delivery. We're also implementing digitally aligned commercial models with venue partners and reviewing, with the help of Amy and her team, optimization opportunities to convert venues to a digital-only model and expand the network through greenfield digital sites. We'll continue to invest in our retail network to ensure it's a thriving and differentiated channel, a great experience for our customers, and a valuable partnership of venues. Now on capital. We remain disciplined and rigorous in our approach. ROIC has been included in TAB25 and management incentives to ensure we focus on growing shareholder value. Our balance sheet is well positioned to invest in our TAB25 initiatives, and we continue to change the mix of CapEx spend, just like OpEx, towards growth initiatives. Our forecast FY '23 CapEx is unchanged at less than $150 million. So as you can see, we're pretty energized at Tabcorp. There's never been a more exciting time to be part of this company, and we've come a long way in just 1 year. We really are a different company. But we haven't started. Frankly, we're just getting going. Actually, we have started, we haven't finished, and we're just getting going. Now I know some of you are skeptical about whether we could deliver on our plans with the new company. And you are right to, because Tabcorp didn't have a great track record of execution and hadn't performed as it should have in the past. What the last year has shown is that we're now a company that is delivering on what we say we will do. Our new app, new products and level playing fields are proof points of that. Our laser focus is now on TAB25 and delivering on those goals. What we've shown you today is that we have a solid foundation, a clear growth strategy and an ability to deliver on our promises. We can do that because we're investing in our people and our capability, and we've attracted some fantastic talent, and we've closed our product gaps. We've restructured the company to increase investment where we need to and reduce cost in other areas that don't align with our targets. And we're creating a leaner and more efficient company that's more agile to complete. After being disrupted, we're now looking to disrupt. And you're on that journey with us, and that's something that's very deliberate. It's a 3-year journey. And as I said, this is just the beginning. We've built strong momentum to deliver in FY '25 and set the company up for long-term growth. Thank you for your support. Thanks for being here, and I'll now hand over to Jared before we take your questions. Thanks.

Unknown Executive executive
#7

Thanks very much, Adam. And also to Amy and Jenni as well in the last. Amy, Jenni and Adam to come to the front, as we'll now move to our Q&A. And I'll be joined as well on stage by our Chief Operating Officer, Paul Carew; and also our Chief Information Officer, Alan Sharvin. So if we can get our speakers to come up to the stage shortly as soon as we get these chairs on stage. But we have some roaming microphones as well, roaming [indiscernible] for [ you feel fancy ]. So we've got some roaming microphones. So when you've got a question, please put your hand up. One of our staff will give you the microphone, so everyone can hear obviously your question. And please, if you could, as well, state the name of your organization before asking a question as well, your name and your organization before asking the question. After the Q&A, if I can encourage everyone to move next door as well to the TabLab, just across the hallway here, where our Chief Information Officer, Alan Sharvin, will give you an overview of our IT platform, Jack and Pat from the product team as well will give a demonstration of our new products. So I'm sure you won't be shy. So Q&A, go for it.

David Fabris analyst
#8

It's David Fabris here from Macquarie. Just talking about leveling the playing field. There's a slide on it that spoke about the states that have been done and the ones that are coming. I think Queensland might have been done in December. So maybe there's 5 months of level playing field there. Can we maybe hone in on that state and talk about business performance, what you've learned? And if you can maybe talk about market share and other bits and pieces as well?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#9

I'll talk more broadly and then you can talk about Queensland. How does that -- so you've seen our first half, and the second half has been interesting because the market softened and we've seen some different strategies in generosity throughout the market by our competitors. We sat out of the increase in generosity. In fact, we reduced our generosity in the first part of the second half. And we experimented with that somewhat. And then more recently, in conjunction with some of the changes Amy has been making around efficiency, we have increased our generosity, and we measure the results of that and measure our market share as part of that. So it has been an interesting market. I think what's important from my point of view is the putting that light on the hill with the market share target and those other targets has actually been a game changer for us as an organization. We talk about it in every meeting. Every day, we focus on digital share, we focus on our cost performance and we focus on EBIT, because that's what drives ROIC. That's very different. We're not just talking about sponsorships and other arrangements. And so that's been -- that's a game changer, and it's really focusing our attention on what we do in year 1 and 2 in the pathway to FY '25. Do you want to talk about Queensland?

Jenni Barnett executive
#10

Yes. So Queensland's our strongest performing state in terms of growth in turnover and rev and margin. So -- and pleasingly, we're seeing quite a lot of active customer growth in Queensland. We haven't had to -- we haven't really raised generosity spend that much. It's just proportionate to -- yes, to what you'd expect, but it's performing very strongly as a state, particularly post the level playing field.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#11

I think it's our strongest performing state. BC, turnover, revenue growth.

David Fabris analyst
#12

Great. And just another question as well. Just the venue reshaping. I mean, [ Tats ] did something similar before you acquired them. Can we maybe talk about what you have learned from what [ Tats ] did and why you think it's a good strategy to -- following something similar, that's what I'm kind of seeing. And then the second point there is, is this all included in the BAU CapEx? Or is there incremental CapEx associated with this venue changes?

Unknown Executive executive
#13

So So what we're doing, we're working very closely with Amy and her team. So our retail footprint, we think, is one of our strengths. We've looked at where it's performing and where it's not. And coming out of COVID, you don't need to be on starting to work out that some of those didn't come back as well. So we've made some hard and fast decisions on that. We now understand where our customers are. We understand how they cross over, and we understand that those DIV customers are much more valuable to the organization to determine 2 to 2.5x more valuable, so we know where they are. And we're starting to personalize offers to get them back into Venue. So our footprint work that we're doing will have the short-term benefit from an EBIT perspective because we're taking costs out, but will actually bring us closer to the customers and where they are. If you think about the age profile of a lot of our agencies, they sit in areas that the demographics have changed considerably. So from that perspective, again, the data work we'll do and understanding the customers and the segmentation of the customers will make the decisions on where we put each type of offer a lot sharper.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#14

I'd just add from my point of view, again, setting that strategy at the top that has the different pillars associated with it around both share growth and having a real anchor in ROIC and cost means we're making very conscious, deliberate decisions about how we invest our capital. In terms of overarching CapEx, there's no incremental CapEx required to execute the retail plan. It's within that envelope of less than [ 150 ].

Jenni Barnett executive
#15

Yes. The only other thing I'd say on venues is -- so the slide that we had out there around the look and feel, we're going to be really deliberate about how we roll that out. So most venues will have an uplift of sort of the brand refresh, but we can do a lot of that through the screens. So we've got 50,000 screens across all our venues, which we really haven't been capitalizing on. So there's a huge opportunity, that's low cost, that doesn't cost us anything. And then we'll update some of the signage. So the majority of venues, we'll have that approach. And then we'll be very specific about where we roll out the other venue types, and there will be a couple of what I call discovery stores or marquee corner stores or experiences in really high impact places. So we're going to be really thoughtful about that because, I mean, there's no way we would or afford to do all of that for 4,000 venues. It's just not going to happen. So we're really conscious of that.

Simon Thackray analyst
#16

Simon Thackray from Jefferies. I'm probably coming from a position of ignorance, which is pretty usual for me. With respect to the technology, the AI technology, the digital technology, are you bringing ourselves up to speed to benchmark against your competitors? Or are you looking to create technology and competency that exceeds your competitors?

Unknown Executive executive
#17

Yes, I can start. We definitely benchmark our technology, the maturity, but not within the category. We are looking at what is the maturity for any digital organization, for example, and how do we bring in the technology enabling our algorithms to be going up. So the short answer is, absolutely, we benchmark, but we go beyond the category.

Unknown Executive executive
#18

So With -- sorry, just to add to that. So we want to build best-in-breed customer experiences and products. And we're looking at the technology that will achieve that, as opposed to finding the best technology. And we have a lot of great technology already in our landscape across data, across our marketing tech. And recently, what we've introduced with our mobile app has enabled us to move a lot faster and deliver a lot more experiences faster than many others. So we are introducing that, but the reasons being to build great customer experiences.

Jenni Barnett executive
#19

So just -- I'll just add to that, which -- someone said a great quote to me the other day, which is, Jenni, you've got a Ferrari, but you just need to learn how to drive it. So the martech we have in this organization, I wish I'd had in my previous organizations. It's all there. So some of you who -- some of you might notice, so we've got the Adobe stack. It's pretty much best-in-class in terms of digital optimization. I don't know actually, that was a decision made 3 years ago, whoever did that -- made that decision was a good one. Was it you, Adam? I don't know. You'll take it. But so it's not like we're going to have to invest millions of dollars to kind of unlock what Amy described there. So I'm really comfortable and confident in the martech we've got. The bit that we need to do is stitch all the data pipes together so we can get that single view of customer. So if we know the transaction data with the behavioral data, and the other data we bring in, and we're creating experiences around that. That's the bit that we have to really do. And then the secret sauce is doing those real-time contextual alerts. So tonight, when we walk into a stadium, send me something contextual. Or if I walk on a race course -- well, like -- send me something based on my context, and the real-time nature of that is the bit that we have to hone. So hopefully, that answers your question. We're not going to have to spend a [ squillion ] dollars on martech to do what Amy suggests.

Simon Thackray analyst
#20

Yes. No, it absolutely does. In terms of the digital plumbing, if I can use that expression, when does that complete in your view so that you get to that seamless, single view?

Jenni Barnett executive
#21

Yes. So I don't know if anyone noticed some of the -- there were a few strategic enablers on all those fields of play, and one of them was single viewer customer real-time, so it's our highest priority. So I expect to have a real step change there, hopefully, for spring. But within 6 months, we will have nailed it. But hopefully -- and its progression. It's -- you can't do these things big bang, like it's just chipping away, chipping away, but we know exactly what we need to do.

Unknown Executive executive
#22

Yes. So we currently just connected the digital with customer information and transaction. This is actually the most difficult because they're coming from different systems to plug them in together and interpret the digital in the way which is more meaningful, and that is really hard. So I think we are well the way on that journey.

Unknown Executive executive
#23

And I think just to add, in most things we do, we're looking at the shortest path to value. So we're looking at what is the use case or what can we unlock from what we have, get that out to customer, get the value and then iterate on that as opposed to these big builds and plumbing and coming together at some date in the future. So we want to constantly look at that path, to the shortest path to get value. So...

Unknown Executive executive
#24

Yes, spot on. Yes. That was, in fact, what Jenni described, that contextual experience is our first use case, and that was [ fun ] driving a lot of this in connection.

Darshana Nair Syama analyst
#25

Darshana from Goldman Sachs. In your TAB25 outlook, you obviously have set out a target for your market share in digital. Can you give us a sense of what you expect your retail business to be, bigger or otherwise, when you're thinking about TAB25? What's your vision about that? And what do you expect some of these changes, like the marquee venue changes, et cetera, to bring about to the TAB brand?

Unknown Executive executive
#26

Two words from me. It will be smarter and it will be more connected. So we won't operate in isolation, as you saw we put up there. We'll know more about our customers. We'll know where they go, we'll know where they live and then we'll be able to plan our retail around that. And the specific offers that we'll have will be tailored to each segment. The good news for me is in the retail world is our highest grossing segments of customers are representing the highest in retail. So we've got them there. We just haven't been able to market to them properly in the past. Now, we can.

Darshana Nair Syama analyst
#27

Okay. And with that in mind, you obviously said your OpEx picture is likely to change. Can you give us a sense of, obviously, because you've also done a lot in terms of customer segmentation and improving analytics, et cetera. How should we think about, say, buckets, like what sort of cost increases we should expect from that? And also the venue reconfiguration, how should we think about what's it likely to look like in 3 years' time?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#28

The cost-out program, just saying the number in $600 million to $620 million doesn't really give you an accurate picture of the story, because we really are reshaping the OpEx buckets within that. So for example, Jenni is getting an increase in her available buckets in terms of the capabilities she needs, above-the-line marketing and also generosity spend, where we've made those decisions to be competitive in the market. So not only are we reducing the cost of base in a real sense, but we're sure investing in the areas that matters. That requires some real restructuring of the way we're set up and the way we operate. There's a -- when we talk operating change, operating model change, we talk about being more efficient, more agile. It also means less people, so there's an element of efficient means a smaller workforce in time. We're stopping doing a lot of things. So the thing that I'm trying to get across to you today, where we've got this strategy that we published 6 months or so ago, and we've got these pillars around winning the Australian market and structural reform, et cetera. There's key initiatives under that. And then there's key action plans under each one of those. That's really important. That's how we manage the business. Every time we meet as a team, we look at those, the team talks about how we're tracking against those. What are the blockers, what's going well, the GMs, that's their accountability. That's really going to ramp up now into F '24. And what's really important in that is what we're not doing. Because there's about 200 initiatives in the organization that we said, no, we're not doing any of those anymore, and they were really generating value. So that, to me, frankly, those targets and how we track to those targets and beyond, the value in them is much more than whether we hit them or not. The main value is what we focus our time on, what we focus our energy on, what we focus our decisions on, and that is ultimately creating a very different-looking P&L.

Unknown Executive executive
#29

Can I give 1 example? I don't have to dodge this one yet. But as part of the transformation work, we're looking at how do we triage calls as they come into a service support center as opposed to sending a technician. In the first week of that trial, we reduced calls by 4.9% out to venue. So that's just by asking the right questions when the service call comes in, that makes us more efficient, enables us to deploy resources where they need to go. So if we can extrapolate that at over a 12-month period, it's a big number. So they are the sort of little things we're doing that all add up to give you any more bucks to spend on customer.

Jenni Barnett executive
#30

And Darsh, the other one I just -- we're trying to be quite thoughtful in terms of can we repurpose roles or slightly reshape roles? Just to give you an example, I mentioned the digital content function that we set up, and the original ask that came to me was, "Jenni, can I have another 15 headcount?" I said, "No, go and have another think because we own a media company. So go and talk to the media company and see if we can solve this together." So then the revised ask came back as, "Actually, just need 2." Right. So I think it's just a mindset, using the goodness of the company that we've got overall, and just try and think about things a bit differently yet to create the right outcomes that we need on cost and growth.

Justin Barratt analyst
#31

Justin Barratt from CLSA. I just wanted to ask your additional ownership in Dabble that you completed relatively recently. I just want to see if there's any -- been any learnings from that that we've heard about today or if there's anything in addition to today that Dabble has helped you with?

Jenni Barnett executive
#32

Okay. Just looking for Jack and Patty, maybe they've gone into the other room already. But look, we -- I'll let Adam comment on the broader business strategy there, but we've been talking to them a lot on their speed-to-market innovation. They've got a really good -- like it's an inherently social platform and really engaging and they're also very good at attracting younger audiences, and we're typically under-indexed there, as I'm sure most of you know, under-indexed in under 35-plus sports. So we're actually, from my perspective, in my area, where we talk to them quite a lot in terms of some of the things they think about with the product design and also their execution strategy. So it's been quite useful, actually, just from my perspective, to get different views. They're very agile, young startup-type mindset, which I think is good for us. Yes.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#33

I'd just say more broadly, we're really happy with that investment. They're going well, and they're -- they've got a good culture themselves. The way they're thinking about the market, I think, is different to anyone else in the way they approach it. So we're really happy. We sit on their board. We've got -- Angus sits on their board for us. And so we're close to them, and we're happy with that investment, really good.

Justin Barratt analyst
#34

And then I really appreciate, I guess, just additional commentary on, I guess, balancing your market share growth with earnings growth. But I just wanted to sort of come back to the digital business. I mean, I appreciate that it's very -- or digital aspect, but I appreciate that it's very early days in that process. But is there any kind of quantitative or numbers that you can put, you think to the digital approach and how it could actually improve the effectiveness or efficiency of your generosities that you offer at all?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#35

Yes, I'll hand over to you in a minute. Is that all right? That's on to Jenni. I think -- remember, we're on a 3-year journey here. And the first thing I wanted to do was hold share, because we've never held share before, we've never found out a way -- found a way to stop losing share. We've also got a brand that needs to be attractive to a different type of customer. And so the brand refresh we do is really aiming to be relevant to a younger customer that we don't have today. So these take -- these things take time. I think we're about 1/3 of the way into our transformation. So this is really very much on the journey. The share growth gains will come. We're very focused on it. We've got a plan for it, and we've got a fantastic team who are passionate about it. But we're 1/3 of the way in. That goes for culture, cost programs, share growth, et cetera, but we've made great progress, and we've got a plan for that to continue. But more specifically...

Unknown Executive executive
#36

Yes. Maybe I will just add one before Jenni can talk about the digital shares and stuff. I think our generosity -- at the moment, we've got a huge opportunity in digital space. We haven't really leveraged our digital capability as much as we'd liked. Because now we know more about our customer, we know their content. We know individually, if we can contact them and engage them through the digital channel, it will be much more efficient. And I think that's partially on our next phase is really looking at how do we get to the digital channel and make them more tailored and based on your experience. And I think that would help us in terms of how much we spend and how kind of effective -- those contextual experience, they need to come from digital, and that's basically on our road map. Jenni, do you want to comment on anything else?

Jenni Barnett executive
#37

Yes. I mean, all I'd say is I see a lot of latent growth and a lot of growth opportunities still in digital. So just to give you an example, so one of the things Vanessa is going to do very early on is just look at our off-platform strategy, so sort of digital marketing strategy, cost per acquisition, get a bit smarter there in terms of the way we do that. Another example, we've got a lot of customers on our books that we could reactivate. Now to reactivate, we make you call the call center, then we make you go into one of the stores to show your ID. I mean, like, who does that? In this day and age, like it's a standard e-commerce pattern. So -- and the product team's on to that. But there's just upside there in terms of the digital experience. And then all the work -- I know we've talked a lot today about personalized experiences in data and analytics, but it really does allow us to create the conversion uplift that we need. So the strategy is going to be, we've got to top up the funnel with younger audiences as well. And then we need to nurture our existing customers and really drive ARPU and give them reasons to return. And content will play a role in that. Obviously, generosity is one pace study. If we -- all we do is focus on that, it's just a race to the bottom. So yes, we're very focused on every single touch point with customers to drive that incremental growth, and then the sum of the parts will help us lift.

Andre Fromyhr analyst
#38

Andre Fromyhr from UBS. I was wondering if you could reconcile the 2 ideas of segmentation and then personalization and scale. And what I mean by reconcile is segmentation, you put up 7 archetypes, which is a simplification of your customer base. But I can imagine if you're doing personalization, if that's all working properly, you've actually got thousands of permutations of what a customer looks like and what they want. So what are the implications that you're taking out of one or both of the other, organizationally or in your products?

Unknown Executive executive
#39

Yes, I can take this one. I think this is our steps, essentially the maturity. So segmentation is just the representative of a larger group of people. So we know enough, then at least they're different. But the real game is in the personalization. So each individual, they all behave differently. They want different things. So at the moment, I think if we use the traditional stuff, we could do segmentation. And if we want to do real one to one, we need to go AI. So that means we need a lot more data, and a lot more live data. And we need to convert the content, the images, and the text and stuff, understand what they're really interested in. And that would create that connection or become the recommendation, becoming the contractual engagement. So that's kind of our mature stage when we're going from segments to a contextual and personalization at scale.

Andre Fromyhr analyst
#40

I just had one more, coming back to the costs question. And I appreciate you described that there's a change in sort of the composition of the cost base. But you've -- in doing so, you've got plenty of costs coming in. I imagine [ PhDs ] are expensive. So can you give a sense of what the gross kind of cost out is, like what is the task of what you're taking out that you're reinvesting to get back to your target?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#41

These are round numbers, but to give you an indication, to get to the 600 to 620 -- I think we started around 650 -- we need to pull $100 million of costs out to get to that number and do everything else we're doing. So that's -- we've got a plan for that.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#42

[ Jackwin Airlie ], Airlie Funds Management. I just had a question around -- and it wasn't touched on as much today, but just around the balance sheet, if you look at the debt targets as well as potentially with a Victoria license, but even with not, there's excess capacity from the payout ratio, as well as just the excess free cash flow generation beyond your NPAT. How do you see capital allocation beyond the TAB25 program? Is it reinvestment in the business? Or is there a potential for greater shareholder returns?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#43

We've got a lot to occur in the market. We've got a big license outcome. So we'll see how that -- see what the outcome is there, potentially. We've got potential -- we're looking to a level playing field nationally, which potentially, there'll be other commercial outcomes associated with those. So I think that we feel like we've got plenty of debt capacity or we've got enough debt capacity for what we want to do. And we -- beyond that, I think any investments we make outside of that will be totally aligned with winning the Australian market at this stage. There's nothing more planned beyond that.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#44

And if there is additional capacity, is that -- just comes through dividends is what potentially...

Adam Rytenskild executive
#45

Too early to say. I think our focus is on growth. And as I said, we've got a couple of a few big things. If we -- depending on Victoria and what the outcome is there, and potential other markets where we're looking to level the playing field, we -- as I said, we've got plenty of capacity for that. We don't need to raise equity or don't feel we need to raise equity. That's not in our frame at the moment. And we haven't thought beyond that in terms of how we deploy capital beyond that -- beyond FY '25 at this stage.

Alexander Mees analyst
#46

It's Alex Mees at Morgans. Just with regard to the TAB25 targets, I appreciate it's not always about the destination, that's part of the journey as well. But I'm just wondering how you embed TAB25 into your executive management incentives and what the accountability is if they're not achieved, what happens?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#47

I think embedding is really important. So we're putting some systems in place around that. So when it comes -- that goes right through to one being clear about the strategy; two being clear about the fields of play. We've talked about that and each of the initiatives and projects under those. The accountability for those is very clear in terms of which GM owns each of those initiatives, what their targets are. Every initiative will have a ROIC target, for example. So whatever -- whether it's market share or ROIC or cost target, depending on the initiative. And then we manage to those and people's incentives are framed around those targets.

Alexander Mees analyst
#48

And then just on the level playing field. You mentioned that here in SA, you've commenced discussions. I'm just wondering how advanced are those discussions and what will happen next?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#49

Look, I can't talk specifically about the discussions we've had in South Australia. We've certainly had numerous discussions, and we'll continue to do so. I think South Australia, a level playing field would be very good for South Australia in terms of the racing industry. And we've got a solution for them in that regard, and we continue to talk to them. So -- but there's no catalyst for timing outside of those discussions.

Alexander Mees analyst
#50

And then just finally, Jenni, I think you mentioned that you were looking to double down on the right sort of sports. So I was just curious as to how you define what the right sport is as opposed to a wrong one.

Jenni Barnett executive
#51

Good question. So we've just looked at sort of what our sports strategy should be because we are under-indexed in sport. We all know that. So no surprises, it's domestic sport. And the investments we made in U.S. sport were the right ones. So basketball, in particular. What we need to do is do more with that, sort of these great assets. But we need to do more with them. And we will create a connection with the NRL and the IFL. We don't need vision rights to do that. Some of you might have seen the way we're thinking about that with some of our content partnerships, for example, with the Cowboys, with a couple of So the content is really meaningful for all of us, but younger audiences in particular. So when I say the right sports, just take that as we can't be all things to all people, so we need to focus on where the biggest opportunities are. Yes.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#52

Amar from [ Elwan. ] Can you please outline a bit more on the LTV dynamics you spoke about? Am I right in saying you had no LTV calcs as of a few months ago? How sophisticated are the current calcs? Anything you can share in terms of customer acquisition versus LTV, and how the last few months have looked maybe versus 6 or 12 months ago?

Unknown Executive executive
#53

Yes. So the lifetime value is really hard to do actually anywhere. So I think in the last few months, we really just focused on how do we measure things for the clear definition from the turnover to net revenue and the bottom line revenue. So that was one of the clear definition we need to get into it. And then we moved on to the prediction. So prediction for the entire lifespan, which we anticipated. And if we use just the average, it's going to be very different. So we're actually taking a segment-based approach in the retention rate of those number of years, and it was the likely revenues going to be. So building the lifetime value, essentially taking the segmentation into account. So in terms of the acquisition and retention, each of the segments, they behave quite differently as well as when we look at more efficiency of the generosity, we're looking at -- there is definitely a very encouraging sign as we can change to some of these key value base of segments moving forward. But we haven't been long enough to give you a good kind of shift in terms of our lifetime value, et cetera. But clearly, the each segment, we've got a very clear benchmark now. We know what's their acquisition retention and what's the lifetime value. So all of these market share or the revenue target, for example, we can convert into type of active customers we need in that segment and what's the value we anticipate to bring in. So that's kind of how we evolved from thinking about a concept to using it. I'm not sure if that answered your question.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#54

It's [ Midran Somi ] from [ Tanara. ] This one, it's probably for you, Adam. Are there any conflicts or tensions potentially between your market share aspirations and your ROIC targets? And if so, what do you prioritize...

Adam Rytenskild executive
#55

It will be a lot easier to get the market share if I didn't have a ROIC target. So yes, there's tension there. I think we're really -- that's why leveling the playing field is so important to do at the same time as all of the win the customer initiatives that we have. When we've got the same margins as everyone else, this all translates into a very different-looking P&L. And everything we're doing today is to try and manage those things as well as we can whilst initially stabilizing share and then growing share and setting ourselves up really for a level playing field market. That's what we're shooting here for. Once we have a level playing field market right across the country, especially in the biggest markets, everything we're building today makes a massive difference. In fact, double the difference. But until we achieve that, there is a tension, because if we we're willing to just not be ROIC-focused through this period, growing share is easy if we're happy to tear up profit to do it. So everything that Amy is talking about is really important, by increasing the efficiency and the performance of the spend that we have.

Andrew Orbach analyst
#56

Andy Orbach from Taylor Collison. It was never really clearly delineated what would happen to the assets of the joint venture in Victoria upon termination. I'm just wondering if you've got a view on the customer there. And a second question in relation to the Victorian Racing Club and the speculation over $100 million vision in relation to the Spring Carnival. I'm wondering how we should interpret that? Have there been sort of firm commitments made or I guess, high-level plans from a tactical perspective in that respect?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#57

Yes. I'm lost a bit because it took this long to get to a question on the Victorian license, which gives me an opportunity to tell you I can't really talk about it. But look, just in related -- so I can't talk to you about the assets of the joint venture, including the customer data. I will say more broadly about customer data in general is that we've got a responsibility that we take very seriously for our customers to protect that data and the privacy of that data. And we wouldn't do anything with their data unless they gave us consent to do it, whether that's in Victoria or any other state. In terms of the VRC, we've been partners with the VRC from the very beginning. They're very -- we've really valued that partnership. We want to do more with them in time to not just grow as part of the Melbourne Cup Carnival, but to grow Flemington and for them to help us grow. So it's a really partnership where we're looking to take 1 plus 1 and make about 6, and the potential deal around media rights for the Melbourne Cup Carnival's one of those. And the VRC are thinking about it in that way because of, one, our partnership; two, our capability and what we may be able to do with that. We've already got their international rights, so domestic rights for the Melbourne Cup Carnival is an opportunity for us to grow. That's how we're thinking about it.

Andrew Orbach analyst
#58

Okay. One really quick, final one. It can just be a one-word answer. Just in terms of the Queensland market, you said it was your best-performing market. Are we to take from that, that you are gaining net wagering revenue share?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#59

Sorry, I missed that thing.

Andrew Orbach analyst
#60

Are we to take that you're gaining share, as in net wagering revenue share, in that market if it's your best performing?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#61

You can take it that it's our best-performing market, and we're not giving guidance here today. But we're really -- our performance has improved since it is a level playing field in all metrics. I think the other thing I'd say about Queensland, the good thing about it being a reasonable-sized market, having a level playing field there over the last 5 months, this team is still learning about how to really take share in a level playing field environment. And Jenni and Amy and the rest of Jenni's team and with Paul are looking at -- able to test and learn in that market. And so far, it's been good.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#62

[ Sean from Fire Chou at the [ back end ]. You've got a pretty significant media business. Just trying to get a sense of whether that can grow into 25? Or should we just be thinking about that as supporting wagering and the actual earnings from media going to grow?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#63

Yes, we do have a fantastic media business. We've really value Sky Racing. And you've heard about content and customer experience. So we're going to be using that asset more and more. And in fact, next time, we should unpack that business. In Australia, that we see that as a real enabler for TAB growth. And that makes absolute sense when you've got a level playing field. For every customer we get, we double the margin, we can reinvest that into that virtuous loop. So the economics for Sky Racing really makes sense if they're an engine for TAB growth. That's how we think about it. The earnings beyond that are in -- we've got deals with some of the corporate book makers, Sky Racing. We're happy with those deals. And we receive revenue from those. But the real enabler for us is around using that in a stronger way as we build out this other capability as a differentiated growth...

Unknown Analyst analyst
#64

Because I guess -- that's what I'm getting at, right, is you've got deals with Sports Bet, for example. It sounds like the media business is really about enabling your wagering business. But as this content becomes somewhat commoditized, I mean, how do you balance that?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#65

We've got -- Sky is -- gets more eyeballs than just about any media business in the country through free-to-air or anything else. The reach is phenomenal, and that's because it's a wall-to-wall betting channel for racing that is made possible because of our breadth of rights. And no one else has those breadth of rights, and we do sell some content to others such as Ladbrokes for particular streams, but no one else pulls together the wall-to-wall channel, and that's not going to change in the near term. And that's why Sky Racing is really valuable to Sports Bet. We've also got deals with some other corporates, and that will continue. But then there's -- beyond that, there's things that we can do with that content that we want to use to enrich our experience. So both are important, and we want to be -- provide really good service to Sports Bet. They're a customer. They pay for that channel. That will continue. We want that to be served up to them in a way that's appropriate for their business, for the fee they pay. But what's important is what do we do with that content over and beyond to differentiate the TAB experience, and that's where Jenni and Paul and the team are focused.

David Fabris analyst
#66

It's David, here again from Macquarie. You spoke earlier about the regulatory framework tightening when we think about the restrictions on marketing, advertising and free-to-air TV and whatnot. But what if we think about deregulation, so in-play betting, for example, doubling down in sport. Is there something you can do differently in-venue or something like that to see in-play sport become more prominent here in Australia?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#67

Do you want to talk about in pump stations and stuff?

Unknown Executive executive
#68

Yes. So there is -- well, we're waiting for regulatory approval on hardware that we've got sitting in a warehouse to enable us to do that.

David Fabris analyst
#69

Can you elaborate on that a little bit further?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#70

There things we can -- so the answer is yes. We've currently got approval to -- for in-play betting in the venue through cash. And then the other ways through -- like everybody can through the contact center, and then every operator has done everything they can to make that as seamless a pathway to the contact center, which is, according to some of the regulations, almost too seamless a pathway at times for in-play. So Paul's does have some plans around how we leverage that in their new approval in a way that amplifies in-play betting, but it does still need regulatory approval. So it doesn't have the regulatory approval yet, is what he's saying.

David Fabris analyst
#71

So I can assume that would allow you to use your mobile device if you're in-venue?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#72

Potentially, yes.

Unknown Executive executive
#73

Thank you all for your questions. So -- we got another question. Can you go for it?

Unknown Analyst analyst
#74

Yes. I want to just -- similar question to the one from that one just around generosities. Can you give us some more color? I mean you said that you're kind of being more targeted and increasing return on invested capital. Can you just a bit more color as to what that actually means in terms of what you're achieving before from your generosities to what you're achieving now?

Adam Rytenskild executive
#75

Do you want to -- it basically means we're spending, call it, $300 million a year on generosity, which is -- the percentage of turnover is lower than our competitors. And on top of that, we weren't getting as great a return from that spend as we could because, for example, we were taking a constantly improving, but still quite a generalized approach to the way we share that with customers by landing it with customers in a way that's meaningful for them, on products that are meaningful for them at times that are meaningful for them. We expect to get more growth from the same level of spend, basically.

Jenni Barnett executive
#76

Yes. So I kind of describe it as a strategy going from spray and pray, hope for the best, to just really thoughtful about how you utilize that generosity investment. So that's kind of the -- that's the way that I sort of think about it. And Amy's -- Amy, Vanessa and myself have had experience in our last organizations on the conversion uplift when you do this stuff really well at scale. And it's anywhere from 3x to 10x conversion rate just by being targeted, being very contextual, targeting the right customers. So we're really early in this journey because we've only just connected the data. We need to build more places that you can personalize messages within the app. We haven't even got to web yet. Believe it or not, that's still quite a sizable piece of the puzzle for us. So all I can say is the early experiments that we're doing, we're seeing really good uplift, so up to 3x, 4x conversion with this. This is small scale, but we're experimenting so we learn first. But I expect, once we do this really well and at scale, it will allow us -- maybe we will spend the same amount of money, but we'll create a better outcome, maybe we'll be able to reduce generosities and get the same outcome. So it's all about the right customer, right time and being really smart about where we place them.

Unknown Executive executive
#77

I will only add, I think we're just doing the basics. At the moment, so getting the basics right is really important because we need to know where we spend and what is the actual return at the campaign level. So that's what we've been focused on. And I think we achieved that by each of the campaigns, we can manage to see the response, the uplift from every metrics we can think of. And now what we're looking at is how to roll it up to the top, at the top level. So we know where we spend at the bucket is the right, but we haven't gone long enough to see how does that lead into some of the really moving the needles and stuff like that. So I think we are getting there. The basics now, right, we can look at a bigger scale experiment and a different, much more creative, doing things differently, because we've -- if we do all these similar offers and stuff, we just can't get the return. So what else can we do to be more confident in terms of pulling up or down. I think that's what we learned fairly recently, is if we know how to measure it, we can tune it up or continue down. We can do something very differently, but very quickly pivot if it doesn't work.

Adam Rytenskild executive
#78

Thanks very much, everyone. And thank you to our speakers. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. And that concludes our formal Investor Day presentation. But surely, ladies and gentlemen, you can make your way across, and we'll give a display of our IT platform over there in the TAB Lab just across the hallway. And also, the [ 1950 ] Melbourne Cup will be there. So please feel free to get a photo with that piece of history as well. Say again? Okay. Right. No one. Take it with you, fair enough. No level playing field as far as go to blues though, I had to give that one in as well tonight. But thanks so much for your presence here this afternoon. Also, heading to Adelaide over, of course, and we'll hear from Michael Clarke and [ Laurie Dale ] there to get a tale or 2 from them as well ahead of the big game tonight. And of course, next door, you'll have the opportunity to speak directly with our executive team here today. And they're happy to provide some more detail as well about our strategic growth plans and look forward to chatting with you there in the TAB Lab as we have that presentation as well. But thank you for joining us for the formalities. Enjoy the rest of your evening with us here at Tabcorp, where we're raising the game. Thank you.

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