Books, broadband and money – three winners from Covid and its lockdowns among 2020-21’s new floats.
While two newishly-listed companies in Aussie Broadband and Booktopia saw strong growth in revenue and gross earnings, their bottom lines for the year to June remained in the red, despite the obvious benefits from Covid lockdowns.
But for Liberty Financial, earnings followed the solid rise in revenue.
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Telco Aussie Broadband saw its revenue leap almost 85% to $350.3 million for the year to June as the COVID-19 pandemic caused more Australians (139,487 extra services – to a total of 400,848, according to the company) take up the company’s broadband home office deals.
The company said that it had seen a strong start to the new financial year, saying it had “experienced record broadband and mobile sales month for July and is expecting a new record month for August.”
Aussie Broadband’s said the higher revenue saw earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortisation grow more than five-fold to $19.1 million, well ahead of its prospectus forecast.
The company said in its release to the ASX that “EBITDA was driven by customer growth in both business and residential segments, increase in ARPU, careful CVC management, and NBN extending COVID-19 CVC credits and promotional rebates.”
The company listed on the ASX in October last year.
CEO Phillip Britt said the COVID-19 pandemic had crystalised the importance of ‘reliable internet’ for daily life and said Australians sought out Aussie Broadband because of their “great customer service.”
The company’s gross profit was $98.3 million, an increase of well over 100% on the 2020, while the company’s loss before income tax expense fell 66% to $4.2 million.
Aussie Broadband is yet to pay a dividend to shareholders.
The shares were up 2.7% to $3.79 in early trade but the early rush faded and the shares ended up 1.6% at $3.75. That’s not far from the record $3.97 the company hit earlier in August.
But like so many other companies, there was no outlook, a move the company said was “Due to the dynamic and changing nature of the retail telecommunications market, ongoing lockdowns and the impact on CVC expense.
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Meanwhile Booktopia told shareholders on Monday that it “smashed” prospectus forecasts and had strong tailwinds for the current fiscal year, but for some reason the enthusiasm did take hold among investors who marked the shares down more than 6% at one stage.
The company reported a 125% leap in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) to $13.6 million, (adjusted for December’s float costs). The IPO prospectus estimated EBITDA of $9.4 million.
Like Aussie Broadband, Booktopia said its start to the 2021-22 financial year had been solid with revenue currently ahead of last year and the company said it had tailwinds from online shopping, lockdown customers, and extra spending money.
“Our prospectus set some very ambitious targets for our first year as a listed company, and I am very happy to report we have been able to eclipse those expectations,” CEO Tony Nash said in Monday’s statement.
“Sales for the current year are currently tracking above the same time last year, despite the ongoing lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne,” he added.
Booktopia said it had “convincingly beaten its prospectus forecasts for the full year to June 30, 2021″.
Total revenues were $223.9 million, up 35% on 2019-20 and 10% of a prospectus forecast of $204.5 million.
The company shipped 8.2 million books during the 12 months with an average customer spend of $126.85.
However, it still reported a loss of $18 million compared to expectations of a $4.5 million profit and a prospectus forecast of a statutory loss of $10.1 million. The larger loss was due to $4 million in IPO costs and the conversion of 12.6 million preference shares.
As expected, Booktopia did not declare a dividend.
Booktopia floated in November 2020 at $2.30 per share.
The shares ended down 5.6% at $2.82, still above the issue price.
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Finally, non-bank lender Liberty Financial saw a 38% rise in statutory profit to $185.4 million for the year to June 30.
The company, which listed late last year, told the ASX that after adjusting for non-recurring IPO expenses and non-cash amortisation, underlying after tax profit jumped 61% to $226.0 million for the year, almost double the $140 million for 2019-20.
It also declared an unfranked dividend of 24 cents a share for the seven months to June 30 since its initial public offering last December.
Liberty reported 17% growth in new loans to $4.1 billion in the 12 months to June 30, topping the prospectus forecast by $600 million.
Liberty also reported a material reduction the number of customers impacted by COVID-19, with 9.7%of its book, mostly residential loans, making only partial repayments in June last year falling to just 0.7% this year.
Liberty chief executive James Boyle said the company’s business partners and customers had shown “tremendous resilience” during the pandemic.
“We achieved our objective of continuing to help more people get and stay financial with Liberty,” Mr Boyle said.
Looking to the coming year Mr Boye said ““The current Australia wide lockdown and speed of vaccination rollout is causing continued short-term economic uncertainty impacting customer sentiment. However, all things equal, we remain confident of generating further value in FY22.”
Liberty shares rose 4% to $7.29.
There’s money in a pandemic.
