Temple & Webster Group Ltd (TPW) Earnings Call Transcript
August 13, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Temple & Webster Group Limited 2025 Full Year Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Coulter, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia. I'm joined today by our CFO, Cam Barnsley, and we'll be taking you through our FY '25 results presentation, which has been uploaded to the ASX this morning. Now, starting on Page 4, you can see Temple & Webster has delivered another exceptional set of results this year. Despite challenging retail conditions, we grew revenue by 21% year-on-year to a record $601 million for FY '25, driven by growth in both new and repeat customers. We ended the year in a strong position following the end of financial year promotional period, with checkout revenue in June up 28% year-on-year. This full year performance has seen our share of the furniture and homewares market grow by 17% versus PCP to a record 2.7%, showing we are making great progress towards our goal of being the largest furniture and homewares retailer and the first place Australians turn to when shopping for their homes. Pleasingly, we were able to deliver this growth, with an $18.8 million EBITDA result, increasing 43% year-on-year, and representing a margin of 3.1%, which was slightly above our FY '25 guidance range. Our cost discipline and the ongoing integration of AI across the business has also enabled us to achieve further conversion rate and cost advantages. As Cam will talk to later, our asset-light negative working capital model continues to position us well, generating $38 million in free cash flow for the year. We had a closing cash balance of $144 million with no debt, meaning we are fully funded to execute on our midterm goal of achieving $1 billion in annual sales. Now turning to Page 5, you will see our key performance indicators. Active customers grew to almost 1.3 million, an increase of 16% on last year, while maintaining exceptional levels of customer satisfaction. Our continued integration of AI tools has supported further improvements in conversion rate, which hit 3% for the full year, up 5% year-on-year. For the full year, our 12-month marketing ROI was in line with our expectations. This reflects increased investment in both performance and brand-building channels as we take advantage of our market-leading position. Importantly, our customers remain profitable in their first orders, and our bottom line is increasing even with this marketing investment. Turning to Page 6. We've continued to grow our share of our $37 billion total addressable market, which remains highly underpenetrated and supported by positive market dynamics. On the chart on the left, you can see online penetration has reached 20% in the Australian furniture and homewares market as shoppers increasingly shift to online. There is still significant runway ahead when you consider levels of online penetration in markets such as the U.S. have now reached 35% of all sales in our category are sold online. Additionally, the online segment of the Australian home improvement market is performing well. Like our furniture and homewares market in its early days, the home improvement category exhibits similar traits and is ripe for disruption. Page 7 highlights our market share gains over the last 5 years. The chart on the right shows that we continue to make solid headway. Our share of the Australian furniture and homewares market has grown to 2.7%, up from 2.3% at the end of FY '24, demonstrating that our strategy and disruptive proposition is on track. To achieve $1 billion in annual sales implies reaching 4.2% market share, and our customer proposition is key to achieving this goal. It is centered around 3 key pillars. First is our price. Our online asset-light model enables a low cost base and deliver margin, allowing us to pass meaningful savings on our customers. Second is our range. Our dropship model enhanced by our private label sourcing capabilities gives us a wide product selection, allowing us to meet many customer style and price point preferences. And third is convenience. With over 90% of products in stock ready to ship, we can offer fast dispatch and avoid the long lead times that have historically characterized the furniture category. Page 8 reiterates that, we continue to track to our strategic plan, and this plan remains unchanged. On Page 9, you can see we continue to build towards becoming the top-of-mind brand in our category. High awareness drives conversion, reengagement and greater marketing efficiency, ultimately reducing marketing spend as a percentage of revenue over time. In FY '24 and '25, we invested around $22 million in brand marketing to test its impact, broaden our channel mix and optimize our spend. These efforts are delivering results with our unprompted brand awareness ranking improving from #7 to #6 in Australia, and we continue to be the #1 online-only brand. Turning to Page 10. Exclusive products contributed approximately 45% of FY '25 revenue, up from 43% in FY '24. This growth was largely driven by exclusive drop-ship products, which remains our fastest-growing segment across all categories, representing 17% of revenue in FY '25. Around 80% of our top 500 selling products in FY '25 were exclusive to Temple & Webster. Over the year, we also added 925 proprietary designs to our range. We are focused on growth across private label and exclusives in key categories such as bedroom, sofa, sofas and outdoor, which all saw over 50% exclusive penetration in FY '25. During the year, we commenced working with a dedicated sourcing team in China, which enables us to have greater visibility over manufacturing, quality and compliance and will help as we continue to grow our private label range. We've also recently opened a new 3PL warehouse in Western Australia, which will hold our private label stock, helping to reduce shipping costs and lead times for customers in the West. This initiative should help us to improve our market share in WA, which remains below our national average. As set out on Page 11, we continue to harness data and AI to deliver initiatives and develop features that either drive revenue or reduce costs across the business. In FY '25, 80% of customer pre- and post-sales support interactions were partially or fully handled by AI or other tech solutions. This has contributed to an over 60% reduction in customer care costs as a proportion of revenue since FY '23. We also continue to benefit from operating leverage as the business scales with fixed costs as a percentage of revenue declining to 10.6% in FY '25. We expect further leverage as we progress towards our $1 billion midterm revenue target. And one of the highlights this year, as you can see on Page 12, has been the significant growth in our home improvement business. As I mentioned, this gives us access to a further $18 billion market, with no online-only dominant player and significantly lower online penetration compared to our core furniture and homewares category. FY '25 home improvement revenue of $42 million, was up 43% on the prior year, supported by growing customer awareness and demand from both new and repeat customers. This is particularly exciting, given private label penetration of home improvement has increased markedly since 2023, with the continued success of Temple & Webster's collection of products. Our Trade and Commercial business achieved $48 million revenue in FY '25, representing 9% growth on the prior year despite ongoing macro headwinds and subdued business investment. Encouragingly, forward order activity improved in the second half, driven by orders across the hospitality, living and build-to-rent sectors. These orders will be recognized as revenue in FY '26. I'll now hand over to Cam to take you through the financial results in more detail.
Great. Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. It's good to be here today to present a strong set of financial results for our 2025 financial year. Firstly, let me start on Page 14. This page provides a high-level overview of our results. As Mark mentioned, we delivered an impressive $601 million in revenue for FY '25, which was up 21% year-on-year. This is a record annual revenue result for the business, and we're particularly pleased with this growth given challenging retail environment and the market conditions through the year. This reinforces the strength and agility of our business model. Our delivered margin result of $191 million also increased 21% on the prior year. This is an important metric to highlight as a continued strong delivered margin gives us the flexibility to reinvest into marketing programs as well as other long-term strategic initiatives through the cycle. Fixed cost as a percentage of revenue decreased to 10.6% in FY '25 compared to 11.3% in FY '24, reflecting ongoing cost discipline in our business. Our EBITDA margin of 3.1% was up 50 basis points year-on-year and slightly above our target 1% to 3% range. We continue to see the benefits of our cash-generative model with $38 million of free cash flow for the year, up a significant 90% on the prior period. This meant that we ended FY '25, with a cash balance of $144 million. With this cash balance and no debt, we remain in a strong position to continue executing against our strategic objectives. Now turning to Page 15, to look at our profit and loss results in more detail. As mentioned, we saw revenue increase 21% in FY '25, driven by growth in both new and repeat customers. We had a particularly strong finish to the year, with checkout revenue growth of 28% for the month of June, some of which we recognized in July for accounting purposes. Delivered margin improved as a percentage of revenue by approximately 10 basis points to 31.7%. This remains towards the top end of our 30% to 32% target range. This was supported by a shift towards higher-margin categories such as bedroom, dining and living room furniture, along with lower warehousing expenses from a new contract in Sydney, which is now recognized in accordance with AASB 16. These benefits were partially offset by higher promotional activity as we navigated market conditions through the year. This strong performance carried through to our contribution margin, which increased 19% year-on-year. This reflects continued efficiencies from our AI investments, particularly in customer service, offset by increased marketing investment for FY '25. As I previously noted, we maintained discipline on the cost base with our fixed cost ratio declining by 70 basis points to 10.6%. D&A increased by $2.5 million this year, as a result of the previously mentioned lease for our warehouse in Sydney. I'll also note that, unrealized currency losses had a $1.4 million negative impact on EBITDA for the year, and this primarily impacted cost of sales. Overall, despite our elevated marketing investment and tough conditions through the year, being able to grow our EBITDA by over 40% and show meaningful margin expansion is a pleasing outcome. Now on Page 16, which highlights our strong financial position. Our balance sheet continues to strengthen, reflecting the cash-generative nature of our business, closing the year with a cash balance of $144.3 million. Inventory levels increased by 10% year-on-year despite materially higher revenue growth. This reflects improved inventory turnover and greater penetration of exclusive dropship products. Our deferred revenue balance increased to $28 million, which is up 31% from FY '24, reflecting strong sales momentum towards the end of June, providing a positive start for accounting revenue in FY '26. Importantly, the group remains debt-free and fully funded to pursue both organic and inorganic growth opportunities. Turning to Page 17. Growth in our cash balance was underpinned by strong operating cash flow and the benefits of our asset-light negative working capital model. Operating cash flow increased to $46 million, reflecting the strength of our underlying business and disciplined working capital management. The continued growth in free cash flow, combined with the low capital intensity of our model provides us with meaningful flexibility and capability to execute on our growth strategy. On the right-hand side of this page, we have outlined our capital management priorities, which remain the same as at the half. Maximizing shareholder returns remains central to our longer-term strategy and is consideration in every capital allocation decision we make. Now turning to Page 18, which sets out our FY '26 and long-term financial profile. FY '24 and '25 were investment years, with higher marketing spend to accelerate growth and build brand awareness. From FY '26, note that brand marketing will become a recurring part of our BAU costs rather than being called out separately. In FY '26, we expect delivered margin to remain within our 30% to 32% target range. Marketing costs are expected to reduce as a percentage of revenue as we see efficiencies from past brand investment. We also expect further fixed cost leverage as we scale. Our EBITDA margin guidance for FY '26 is 3% to 5%, targeting the midpoint of the range. Importantly, this range will allow us to continue to focus on revenue and market share growth whilst maintaining flexibility to adjust our margin and marketing levers in response to conditions. Over the longer term, our margin aspirations remain unchanged. We expect to achieve these levels through supplier scale benefits, a greater mix of private label and exclusive products, improved logistics efficiency and the long-term impact of brand investment in driving repeat customers. In addition, our ongoing investment in AI will continue to deliver revenue and cost efficiencies across the business. Finally, just some housekeeping metrics for FY '26. At this stage, please expect the following: BAU PP&E CapEx will be consistent with FY '25 as a percentage of revenue. Intangible CapEx of between $1 million to $1.5 million, D&A expense of between $12 million and $14 million. This increase is largely driven by our Sydney warehouse lease moving to AASB 16, share-based payments expense of between $5 million and $6 million, and an effective tax rate closer to 30%. Thanks, everyone. I'll now hand you back to Mark.
Thanks, Cam. So, turning to Page 20, you can see that we remain on track to achieve our midterm goal of over $1 billion in annual sales as first outlined at the end of FY '23. This goal requires us to achieve market share of just over 4% versus our current position of 2.7%. We're on track to deliver the strong growth in both our core B2C furniture and homewares market and our growth plays, particularly in home improvement. Turning to Page 21. Pleasingly, the new financial year has started strongly with revenue from 1st of July to 11th of August, up 28% year-on-year. Home improvement continues to outperform. Looking ahead, with anticipated further interest rate reductions, coupled with stimulatory government policies relating to housing. We remain optimistic that conditions in FY '26 should be favorable for the furniture, homewares and home improvement categories. Our on-market share buyback program remains in place, allowing us to improve shareholder returns in the absence of more accretive opportunities. And finally, I'd like to recognize the outstanding efforts of our entire Temple & Webster team. Their dedication, drive and adaptability makes results like these possible. Every day, they help us deliver on our vision to make the world more beautiful one room at a time. Thank you, everyone. We'll now open the line for questions.
[Operator Instructions] Today's first question comes from Owen Humphries at Canaccord.
Well, done again. Just leading and beating expectations. Just to touch on the exclusive range strategy. Obviously, that's core to your business and creates a bit of a moat for you guys over the long term. Just noting that the percentage of revenue was flat half-on-half. Is this just due to the expanded range within the product?
There's 2 things to look at from an exclusive standpoint. So, there's 2 components to that. There's private label and exclusive drop ship. The exclusive dropship piece has been growing very strongly, as you can see in the presentation. And this is a really important piece for us, because it gives you a lot of the benefits of a private label product being exclusive and sort of the moat around our business, but also we don't have to hold the inventory as we do in private label. So that's been a real focus for the team getting that piece growing. And pleasingly, that's increasing as a percentage of revenue. So, we -- overall, we're trying to look at exclusives, both private label and exclusive drop ship together and growing that proportion of revenue over time.
The only thing I'd add to that is it takes time. So, to build out a private label range requires working with factories, or designing our own products and putting in production. So that's a long lead time. And then exclusive drop ship products require scale, and scale will build over time. So, the scale benefits from half-to-half are not as apparent as scale benefits over years. So, you'll see that metric tick up over a longer period of time. We're not expecting it to get to that 70% in a 12 months' time. It's -- the goal of the business is to get to 70% of the business -- 70% of the revenue of the business is exclusive to us, and that will take a time. It is a strategic goal.
And I guess you're going to get asked this question every meeting over the next couple of weeks. But just I guess, a big market, you're the leader. You've got a significant cash balance, your unit economics year-on-year were favorable, particularly on the direct basis, performance marketing. Just to understand why we're still building cash, like the 3% to 5% guidance range there, last year, this year was 3%, next year, 4% kind of margin. Just interested in your view around cash generation versus reinvestment growth.
Yes. So look, we -- as we sort of outlined in the presentation, and we did at the half as well, we do have a framework around capital management. We do have a series of investment initiatives that we're looking at for FY '26 being organic. But even with those initiatives, things like, for example, you called out the Western Australia warehouse, we'll put inventory in that, and that will obviously be a capital investment, and there's other things, too. Despite those capital investments, we are still expecting to be cash generative. We have looked more at M&A opportunities in the past 6 to 12 months. Nothing has emerged that's sort of within our strategy at this point. But we are looking at deploying that capital in different ways. And we're very conscious of the fact that we need to think about shareholder returns in that. And we'll always have a look at both organic and inorganic opportunities when we're thinking about expansion. So it's definitely a priority for us.
And our next question today comes from James Bales at Morgan Stanley.
Firstly, on home improvements, the reinvestment that you see as being required there for scaling home improvements, including the build-out of private label. Can you give us some idea on that? And maybe as a follow-on, how do you expect the gross margins in home improvements to compare to homeware and furnishing in the long run?
Yes, it's a good question. Primarily -- I mean, I'm going to speak to the dollars because that we're buying to growth forecast, and I'm not going to give you a back door into the growth forecast. But obviously, we are predicting high growth for home improvement. We want it to be high growth. So we are supporting the growth through increased investment in private label. The issue for home improvement versus furniture and homewares is it is an earlier part of the cycle. So most of the supply chain is oriented around offline. There's limited wholesalers in this market. So really cracking the home improvement category has required us to leverage our balance sheet, our sourcing capabilities and our China sourcing office to really build out the range and have a range of great quality products at right prices. And once you can see -- once we start improving the range, you see the growth is slow, because Australians are hungry for great quality products at great prices. I think in terms of margin profile, yes, a large part of the category is branded. However, a large part of it is not as well. So you go into a Reese and Reese's on private label, you go into Bunnings, Bunnings has its own private label. So actually, private label suits this category because, I mean, other than the really top end brands, I think people just want products that look good. Wherever there's a big opportunity for private label, usually, there's higher margins. So, we think there's a higher -- a pretty big opportunity for private label and home improvement. There's less competition. Australian -- some of Australian home improvement retailers are quite profitable. So, we actually -- it's early days and thesis is yet to be proven and the businesses are operating relatively similar margins now. But I actually think longer term, home improvement could have a higher margin potential than Furnish Homes.
Okay. Got it. That's interesting. And then I also wanted to ask about the way that you view the unit economics. So logically, marketing ROI could dip below 1x and still be meaningfully LTV accretive. How much more aggressive do you guys plan to get on brand and performance marketing? And with brand having a longer payoff, how do you expect the shape of that ROI trend to move over the next couple of years?
Yes. Look, actually, what we're -- counterintuitively, we actually think we're at the point now that we've spent enough to learn what works, what doesn't, whether it -- the mix of marketing, how that's all working together, the impact on performance. We're at that point where every -- all the models are telling us and all the analysis and the media mix modeling and everything else is that actually we should be spending more of our mix on nonperformance channels. And brand -- look, brand for us, don't forget, is a code name is a code word for anything that's nonperformance. And so, we talk about brand ads includes paid social, includes audio, includes out-of-home, includes TV. It's pretty much every channel which we're not buying on a straight performance basis. So, it's not necessarily just brand, but it's channels outside of our core performance. But everything we're seeing and what we're being advised to is actually more of a mix should be on those other channels. And what we're now seeing is because we've got to the point where we're spending enough, we've reinforced the brand. We're changing people's memory structures. You can see that we're improving our brand awareness ranking. What's happening is that, the entire marketing msix is working more effectively. And actually, our ROI on marketing spend as a whole is now improving. So weirdly actually, if the models are right and what we're seeing is going to play out, then actually as we increase brand spend, our ROI should improve because the entire marketing stack is working is better as our performance is working harder, so the other channels. So, it's the full channel mix. You see TV ad, you then maybe read some sort of content, or you see a social ad and then you're in Google and you click on the app, the whole thing has worked really well. And so Temple & Webster is the go-to brand. We're seeing that now and the overall ROI is improving. So we're actually -- I don't want to necessarily predict the marketing metrics. But as I said, if everything continues as it is, you should actually see that metric start improving even as we go further into brand marketing.
And James, it's Cameron here. Just to your question around sort of how much more aggressive we would go on brand. You can see the step-up between '24 and '25. So, we spent $10 million on what we classify as brand in '24. That was $12 million in '25. So, you see there's incremental spends here. It's not huge step changes over time.
And our next question today comes from Aryan Norozi with Barrenjoey.
Just a few ones for me. Apologies, if they're accounting based. Just around the deferred revenue piece, is the best way of just looking at that is it increased $5 million half-on-half. And so, like the vast majority of that is what you would have booked as revenue in the month of June. So basically, your revenue is understated by $5 million.
Yes. So, look, deferred revenue is a feature of our model because we do have a cutoff date where we are unable to deliver our products to our customers. And in order for those revenues to be accounted for, it does need to be delivered. Given the strength of the end of financial year period, the growth rate in June, that was a slightly higher uptick than what we were expecting in deferred revenue. So, I think, Aryan, your comment is valid.
And just on the AASB 16 accounting. So, I guess the guidance was always 1% to 3% EBITDA margins, but like there's a pretty material movement in lease costs going out of EBITDA and into sort of D&A. Like -- the 4% to 5% margin, like -- was that always part of the thinking around the lease costs falling away from it and giving a benefit to EBITDA? Or is that a change? Because if you take the 4% to 5% and you take out the benefit from lease accounting, it implies a much lower margin.
Firstly, 3% to 5%, not 4% to 5% on the guidance range.
Sorry, 4% to 5%. Sorry.
Targeting midpoint. Secondly, look, that's an accounting EBITDA guidance measure. So, we did get a, call it, 30 to 40 basis point sort of improvement from that lease moving out of our warehouse costs and into D&A being below EBITDA. But there's a lot of things that go into like FX, for example, we had an FX headwind to the tune of about $1.4 million for the full year, which is over 20 basis points. So, you net those 2 things out, and we're still at the top end of our guidance range. So, look, there are definitely things that move EBITDA like FX and AASB 16, but it is an accounting EBITDA measure that we focus on.
And our next question today comes from Rachael Harwood at Macquarie.
Just a quick one for me. You mentioned the WA 3PL that you're opening. Could you maybe just talk to the market share that you've got in WA at the moment and how big you see that market?
Yes. So, I mean as far as we can tell, and obviously, the data is everything here. But definitely, we are underpenetrated in WA by -- it's probably around -- I think it's around 20% to 30% below our national average. The reason for that is pretty obvious. Our products are stored mostly in Melbourne and Sydney and shipping times are longer and most problematically, shipping costs are much higher. If you look at -- if you take out WA, basically, we're at the scale where our sales follows population. So primarily Eastern Seaboard in the metro areas. However, WA is a high-growth market. It's one of the few high-growth markets in Australia. So, what we've done is, as I said, we set up a 3PL in WA, and we've had containers sent directly there to start right. We will also be looking at sending mixed containers across the country from our Sydney, Melbourne, so having goods stored in WA. The goal, obviously, is that then we'll market to WA residents that we have goods that are quick ship and cheap to ship to you, with the goal of trying to get the WA back to kind of national market share averages.
And our next question today comes from Chami Ratnapala with Bell Potter Securities.
Congratulations team, Cam, and Mark, again, another solid sort of execution. First question, just on fixed cost leverage and also AI, you talked a bit in detail, Again, once again, leading the group here. Perhaps talk to us -- just give a bit more color on where -- because now the customer service cost line seems to be nearly fully executed. Out of that into revenue and cost lines, including that marketing investment as well, maybe talk to us through where this could lead to because the fixed cost line in addition also looks pretty promising over the next few years in getting to that 15% EBITDA margins.
Yes. Maybe I'll -- it's Cameron here. Maybe I'll take the question on the operating leverage first. So, I think look, it was a pleasing outcome for the year. So, we reduced that fixed cost ratio down from 11.3% to 10.6%. The key driver of that and the largest fixed cost in the business is our employment expense. So that grew by 13% year-on-year versus revenue at 21%. So, there's obviously very natural operating leverage there, and we hope that we continue to see that operating leverage as we go towards our long-term goal of 6% fixed cost to revenue. There are a bunch of different drivers in that operating cost. And I think you spoke to Chami, around the customer service cost. That has continued to come down year-on-year, as a result of AI investment. So about 60% reduction as a percentage of revenue over the past 2 years.
Sorry, Mark, you go, yes, on the AI.
Yes, I was just going to say, in terms of AI, I mean, it's a big question, right, where we're going to be using AI. I mean, I think it's safe to say, we're at the start of the journey with AI. Yes, we have deployed into some of the more obvious first areas such as our customer care interactions. But we're using it, as I said in other calls, across the site in terms of content, in terms of search, in terms of personalization -- but we're at the really start. So, the goal -- our goal that we're working towards is really everything is personalized, whether it be the products that you see, your service levels you get, the marketing offers that you may receive, the experience will look very different from one Temple & Webster customer to another. And to do that, you need AI at scale. So, I think, look, we're at the very start. I think cost base, we're still working through enabling our teams to be more effective and have higher productivity using AI. We're now training the entire -- pretty much the entire company on AI. We have an AI dedicated team, which comes up with the innovative out-of-the-box solutions, plus we have our engineering team, which is also being trained in AI. So, where it goes, I think we're really at the start of the journey. So, I think there is -- as you say, there's opportunities in every line of the P&L, whether it be fixed cost or marketing, or even margin and pricing, there is opportunity for AI to have a huge impact.
Perfect. And then, if I may, just on the revenue and FY '26 outlook, great to see 28% maintained in the month of July, checkout revenue-wise. I mean, rate cuts earlier this week and comps in September, October, obviously much easier than after that seasonal period on November, December, quite harder or challenging. How do you view the uplift you get from the overall consumer sentiment benefit as well to your category?
Yes. I mean, definitely, we want there to be more rate cuts. That has a benefit for the business in a few ways. Obviously, the most obvious one is if customers have more disposable income and they're paying less on their mortgages, then great retail will benefit. But there's secondary benefits, particularly for a furniture and homewares retailer, and that is it gets the housing market going. So really, we want these people moving, because if you think about your own life, when are the times where you bought the most furniture, and it's usually life event. It's you've moved out of home or you've moved into your first department or you moved into -- you bought your first house or bigger house or kids come along or whatever kind of those life stages. But getting the housing market turning, getting people moving is great for the furniture industry. And you can already see the rate cuts start leading to the housing market improvement. I think what happens from now, we'll see. But economies are as much psychology as financial fundamentals. So, the moment customers think, okay, we're safe. We don't have another rate rise around the corner. Actually, we've got another rate cut coming, and that may be another cut. But once the psychology shifts into, okay, we can breathe now, then I think you'll see consumers open their wall.
And our next question comes from Ed Woodgate at Jarden.
Well done on the results. So just wanted to follow on from the warehouse question. So, you mentioned there's a 30 to 40 bps benefit there, but can you just talk to whether there was any increase in warehouse capacity as part of the new lease agreement? And was it related to the WA contract?
No, this is in relation to our Sydney warehouse. So, we entered a new lease with our provider in Sydney. It was a slightly longer term, and we have a bit more control over it than we previously did, and it meets the requirements now for AASB 16 accounting. So no, the WA warehouse is a separate contract.
Has that started yet? When will it start?
Yes, that has started actually last month. So we're now live in WA.
Okay. And then just in relation to the 3% to 5% EBITDA margin target, if we take the midpoint at 4%, just curious what cost -- I mean, if we think about marketing spend being flat, the performance marketing spend and some modest growth in other cost basis, it seems like it implies a big step-up in brand, but you're suggesting that the step-up is going to be incremental. So just trying to get my head around like where you're going to invest in that cost base.
And also where -- is the question, Ed, where the operating leverage comes from to get from 3.1% to 4%?
No, I think it's going to -- I can see it…
It's the other way around.
Yes.
Okay. Look, I think it's a very simple message. We are targeting 4%. I think if you look at the last half or the last full year, we were quite pleased with the operating leverage that's come through. We did have that elevated marketing investment, so sort of above 16% of revenue. But at this point in our cycle and with our market share of 2.7%, we don't need to go and add significant amounts of operating leverage if the growth is there, and we can continue to grow. Like growth is still our #1 North Star. And the reason for the range is obviously so that we can be flexible around that. So if we see market conditions really strong, and we want to push a bit more on marketing and we want to push a bit more to try and achieve better growth in a strong market, then we'll do that. But at this stage, very much targeting 4%.
And our next question today comes from Wei-Weng Chen with RBC Capital Markets.
Just a question from me about U.S. tariff impact. So I think in May, you kind of came out with an announcement where you talked about reduced shipping rates. But when I look at your table of delivered margin expectations on Page 18, this benefit isn't really obvious. Can you explain kind of why at the midpoint, delivered margins are expected to kind of fall year-on-year?
So maybe talking to the Trump tariff situation first. So we did talk about a reduction in freight costs at the May trading update, which had just kicked in. So that has only now been running for about a month or so, over a month. We haven't yet seen any material changes in product cost out of the situation. I think the -- there's still a lot of uncertainty around where tariffs land. And we haven't seen yet the same thing that we saw in 2018, which is some benefits from increased competition and potentially reduced demand in factories in China. We expect that, that may happen, but it's still -- it hasn't come through quite yet. So look, that's still a watching brief and obviously, the situation is very, very fluid.
Yes. Okay. Cool. And then just one more broadly, I guess, online retail is a notoriously difficult industry. Locally, we've seen sites like Catch and MyDeal shut down. What do you think the key is to operating a sustainable online-only business?
That's a real tough question. What are we doing well versus the Catch and MyDeal, I think you're probably asking. I think -- look, I think what Temple & Webster does really well is that we are very, very focused on sticking to our knitting. So we are a retailer for the home. We have a great range of furniture and homewares. Home improvement is definitely in the sweet spot because it's products for the home. We've built a brand which means something, which is if you're looking for high-quality products, you're looking for an aesthetic, you're looking for great prices, you come to Temple & Webster, and the service proposition matches. So running at mid- to high 60s NPS is world-class. So I think retail is detail. It's a bit of a truism, but you have to kind of do everything really well. You have to get your sourcing right and you have to get your pricing right and you have to get your promos right and you have to get your site speed and technology and UX and UI and marketing, everything else right. And then obviously, the products need to match what you're selling. And then, if there's an issue, you need to fix it. All of that is a really complicated chain, and it's taken 15 years for us to not perfect, but to get it as good as it is today. I think we're not perfect. There's always room for it to be better. I think the retailers you mentioned, I've always said, if you're a general merchandise retailer with an undifferentiated brand, your only proposition is price, it's a really tricky game because you can buy those same products on lots of sites, there's a race to the bottom and the winners will be the ones that actually can deliver products faster and better. And so you get the giants like Amazon emerge with those delivery capabilities. That's not our game. Our game is not undifferentiated branded general merchandise. Our game is primarily private label and white label furniture and homewares, which has an aesthetic, which you can't get in other places and people coming to us because they trust us. And that's a very, very different competitive positioning. So I think, it's like comparing apples and oranges a marketplace general merchandise versus the Temple & Webster, which is a category-specific branded retailer with their own products and stances on it.
And our next question today comes from Sam Teeger at Citi.
This looks to be an impressive result. Just on the deferred revenue at 30 June, how much of this still has to flow through post the trading update? Or would it pretty much all be in the trading update?
The trading update importantly is also based on checkout revenue. But look, the deferred revenue balance at 30 June does get delivered in July. So it's not like it extends over many, many weeks. It's a sort of thing that can take a week or 2 to move through the system. So you'll see that deferred revenue balance get recognized as revenue in the month of July. Important to note that, our deferred revenue balance also includes other things like gift cards and store credits. So not the entire balance is relating to the hangover from 30 June to 1 July, but the majority is.
I just want to make sure everyone is really, really clear. You're talking about the half results. That number, the trading update is -- doesn't -- deferred revenue is out of that. It's actually -- it's a straight checkout revenue number. So it's actual growth. It's got nothing to do with deferred revenue, the trading update.
Correct.
All right. That's clear. And then just on the EBITDA margin guidance, it looks strong in the context of what you guided to last year. Just wondering from where we are now compared to a year ago, do you think that 15% longer-term target might be achievable earlier than you thought?
Well, the 15% is a very long-term number. So whether it's moved by a year or 2 in the future is not something that necessarily think about too much, but it gives us increased confidence that, that 15% over the long term is achievable. Whether it's achievable slightly earlier, still TBD, but it does build our confidence in getting there over time.
And our next question today comes from Sam Haddad with Petra Capital.
Congrats on the strong results again. Just on the trading update, can you give further color around trends you've seen around level of promotional activities versus last year and versus recent months to drive sales in the context of recent rate cuts, and also, just conversion rates and average order values and things like that?
Yes. I mean, look, the trading of the business is good across the board is a really short answer. So that we're seeing growth in our core markets, in our growth plays across first-time repeat customers. Our core categories continue to do really well. there's no single point which is really driving that -- driving the current growth. It's a story across the board. I think in terms of promotional activity, I mean, we're in a very -- still in a high promotional activity period. You'll pretty much all competitors will be on sale at least part of the range. And that really hasn't changed for quite a while now with the cost of living crisis. I think really, you have to look at kind of June and July, I mean, together, and you see that growth rate has continued. We had the end of financial year sales. But across the period of those couple of months, very similar promotional intensity as last year with end of financial year sales being the main driver. If anything, our competitors may have actually gone a bit earlier than us. I mean, they started the end of financial year sales in May, end of May, we were in June. So, I do expect as rates decrease, customers get -- start spending more that, that promotional intensity will subside a bit, but we're not there yet.
Okay. And just in terms of marketing plans, I know you haven't separated your brand spend plans. But just in terms of your program in terms of marketing births, last year, you didn't get on TV ahead of Black Friday and so forth. What are your -- can you just sort of give us a high-level thinking about timing in terms of brand marketing, what channels? And also, will you start to advertise for home improvement?
Yes. So actually one of the takeaways from the media mix modeling was not to do brand births, which we had been historically. So, we've been pulling our marketing budget into more births to try and get higher reach and cut through and frequency during those burst periods. The media mix modeling said actually much better to be always on. So, we switched our marketing strategy to be always on. So, you'll always see every month, you'll see something. Now what that is, we constantly change, update, optimize based on the learnings of the campaign and the modeling. But you won't see -- as I said, you won't see particularly periods where it's on and other periods off. It will just be much more consistent. That's why we started to move away from thinking about it and talking about it as brand versus performance. It's just marketing. And every month, we'll optimize how we spend that budget, top of funnel, mid-funnel, bottom funnel, it's up to us to deliver the highest ROI. So that is, I think, what you'll see. So, you should always be seeing Temple & Webster ads and if you're not, let me know. The rehome improvement, we already have started, but rather than do top of funnel, so like TV ads, the TV ads are still furnished and homewares. We're doing much more mid-funnel marketing for home improvement. So, we've already started to take the lessons over the last 15 years and go, what could we have done differently -- what would we have done differently if we had the money. And one of the things that we would have done differently is we probably would have started the journey to move more mid-funnel, top of funnel marketing earlier, and we now have the money for home improvement. So, actually we're doing a lot more content ads, a lot more social media ads, specifically around home improvement, so before and after shots, for example. And so you'll start seeing probably on social media more likely, but also things like Pinterest and kind of YouTube, but you'll start seeing more content-led marketing, specifically around home improvement.
And our next question today comes from Scott Hudson at MST.
Most of my questions have been answered. I just had a question on the trade and commercial business, obviously lagging the 2 other segments from a growth perspective. Can you just give a sense of sort of what the headwinds you're facing there are? And I guess, when you may need to make a call as to whether or not that segment is worth the effort?
Yes. Look, it definitely has some headwinds in that sector. Businesses -- business spending tends to follow consumer spending. So, businesses have pulled back CapEx spends on things that fit out. Offices, there's a structural decline in offices due to the work-from-home trend. So, it's in a tougher position. Still growing. 9% up year-on-year is not bad. It's still accretive. The big orders. It's a relatively small part of the business in terms of team. So, it's not like there's a huge additional cost to get that revenue. So, I think it's not a sector we'll ever be pulling away from because it's completely even more so now, it leverages the mothership. So, we've actually simplified. One of the things that's going on in the background is we've simplified our proposition to market. So, we're not offering very complicated services anymore for that very reason what you said, which is a focus, which -- and actually, we've got these great bright spots, which are home improvement and furniture and home is B2C, let's be disciplined to focus our capital and time on the areas which are working really well. Having said that, B2B leverages our full catalog, our supply chain, our logistics model, our technology and if we can access all of that and leverage all of that to access different revenue pools, I don't think it's a waste of time. In fact, it's a chunk of the business. And when those headwinds become tailwinds, I actually think the 9% will pop back up to more impressive growth. We're just in that cycle where we're running against those wins.
And Scott, it's Cameron here. We have seen some positive shoots in the longer lead time part of the business. So, we do have more sort of forward orders. And we have seen some signs over the last sort of half of increased activity. So, we're feeling good about B2B.
And our next question today comes from Tim Piper at UBS.
I'll just ask one in the interest of time. Just on the marketing cost guidance for '26, 15% to 16%, obviously coming down from current levels. And I note that, obviously, brand has come into the mix there. But just -- when you model that out, your expectations on greater marketing efficiency, what's kind of the mechanics of that playing out? Are you expecting a reversal of CAC trends? Are you expecting greater repeat order activity and frequency? Or is it going to be driven by conversion? What's the main mechanics of your expectation of that coming down?
Well, essentially, the ROI and marketing, right, is the delivered margin we make from a customer in the metric that we report is a 12-month margin we make from a customer. But whenever we talk about first order, obviously, we're just talking about first order profit margin. I mean, that influence is going to be average order value, our product mix, our delivered margin. They are really long-term trends in terms of pricing and everything else. So really, the ROI is mostly influenced by the CAC. That's the biggest driver of its movement in the short term. That CAC, which is true first-time customer. So, it's not just our total marketing costs divided by all our orders, all our customers. It's -- we identify the first time -- how much we're spending on first-time customers. That is going to be driven by the efficiency of the marketing spend, the channel optimization. Obviously, things like conversion rate improves that if our conversion rate goes up, then we're getting more customers for the same spend. There's a lot that goes into that. I think what -- where -- what the data I'm seeing is I think that one of the biggest drivers is going to be just actually building the brand. So, the more we build the brand, the more we're changing memory structures, the more we're getting cut through on our marketing, the better the whole marketing stack and pie will work. Customers will click more and convert more, because they have not only recognize the brand, but we've built the trust structure as well. So, I think what you'll see over time is actually the CAC come down as our marketing mix works harder and therefore, the ROI will revert its trend.
And that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Coulter for any closing remarks.
Thank you. And thanks, everyone, a few time today. As you can see, we continue to deliver impressive results. Now that's especially given the background of tough trading conditions. Our strategy of positioning Temple & Webster as the brand for the next generation of furniture shoppers is working. And the key takeaway is that we have a long road of profitable growth ahead of us. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. We thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect your lines.
Read the full transcript via the API
You're viewing the first half of this call. Get the complete Temple & Webster Group Ltd transcript - plus 251,000+ transcripts from 12,000+ companies, speaker segments and full-text search - through the EarningsAPI REST API or hosted MCP server.
Get an API key View API docs →For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to Temple & Webster Group Ltd earnings transcripts and 251,000+ others is available through the
EarningsAPI REST API and the hosted MCP server.
Quarterly plans from $105 - full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search,
and the /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.