On the Beach Group H2 2025 Earnings Report

On the Beach Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 19
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

On the Beach Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

On the Beach Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 12/2/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:30AM ET

On the Beach is one of the UK’s largest online package holiday specialists with significant opportunities for growth. Founded in 2004 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2015, today over 1.7 million customers find, book and enjoy their perfect package holiday with us every single year. Our innovative technology, low-cost base and strong customer-value proposition provides a structural challenge to legacy tour operators and online travel agents, as we continue disrupting the market. Our model is customer-centric, asset light, profitable and cash generative.

On the Beach Group H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Delivered a record year with TTV of £1.25bn, 11% TTV growth, a 150bps improvement in EBITDA margin, 20% PBT growth and EPS up 45% to £0.19, funded £50m of buybacks and a 33% dividend increase.
• Positive Sentiment: Strong start to FY26 with recent TTV +16% (last eight weeks), winter bookings now +15%, summer volumes +8%, and management guiding FY26 adjusted PBT of £39–43m.
• Positive Sentiment: Strategic progress and engagement gains—the group says it has tripled its addressable market (cities, Ireland, cruise), reached ~1m app downloads with app bookings rising to ~40%, repeat bookings +18% and customers booking 2+ holidays +15%.
• Negative Sentiment: Margin and cost headwinds remain as average margin per booking fell ~£6 from mix into cities/Ireland and pricing investments, AWS/cloud and card charges rose, and there was a £16m non‑cash loss from winding down Classic Collection.

Presentation

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Welcome, everyone, to the On the Beach FY25 results presentation. We have split this presentation into four parts. I'm going to start with some highlights. Jon going to take us through the financial performance, and then I'll provide updates on the markets in which we operate and the strategic progress we've made this year. Starting with some of the key highlights, this year has been another record year for On the Beach. We've delivered another very strong financial performance with TTV growth of 11%, improving operating margins, and record amounts returned to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. Overall, this results in a 45% increase in earnings per share to GBP 0.19. Within this, we are growing ahead of the market, significantly ahead of the market. Summer 2025 volumes were plus 13% year-on-year, with volume growth to all destinations and star ratings.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

In addition to our core beach destinations, we have made good progress in our expansion areas, which I'll talk about more later. We continue to make significant progress against our strategy, with double-digit growth in lead indicators against our three core strategic pillars: stickiness, choice, and Peace of Mind. Finally, we enter FY2026 with trading momentum in a very resilient market, with confidence that this will be another year of strong growth and strategic progress. Moving on to trading performance. On this slide, you can see the trading performance on both a booked and a travelled basis. The chart in the top right shows booked sales by month. As you can see, sales momentum continued from the first half through into the second half, with booked sales growth of 11% in both periods.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

As you know, we reported a slowdown in trading in September, in particular due to the shortening of lead times that impacted bookings growth of summer 2026. This was widely reported across the travel market. However, you can see on this chart that we've extended through into October and November that post-year-end trading has returned to strong growth. In the last eight weeks, TTV is 16% up year-on-year, and within that, summer 2026 is plus 8% year-on-year and strengthening. So, no signs that that slowdown in September was structural. The chart in the bottom right shows the value of holidays departing by month. This is in line with how tour operators report their numbers, so you'll be able to do a read across. Winter finished very strongly with 17% growth, which is nearly 40% on a two-year-on-year basis.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Sales for summer departures were 14% up year-on-year and significantly ahead of the market. We also have a very strong forward order book for the winter, which runs from November to April and is currently at 12% growth year-on-year. This is driven by demand for both winter sun and the popularity of our new city breaks proposition. I'll now hand over to Jon to take us through financial performance.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

Thank you.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

Thanks, Shaun. Morning, everyone. I'll start on slide seven, which provides a summary of the key results for the year. As Shaun said, it's been another record year in this three-point that I'd like to bring out on this slide. Firstly, we've achieved strong top-line growth with record TTV of GBP 1.25 billion and bookings up 9%, which are well ahead of the market. Secondly, we've continued to improve our operating leverage with a further 150 basis points improvement in our EBITDA margin. And these two factors have resulted in a 20% year-on-year growth in PBT. And thirdly, our strong cash generation has resulted in significant shareholder returns through the dividend, which has seen a 33% increase year-on-year, and two share buyback programs, which have contributed to a 45% increase in basic adjusted EPS to GBP 0.19.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

Overall, we remain on track to deliver our medium-term ambition by 2029. Moving on to slide eight, I'll run through the key P&L highlights. As I said, we've seen 11% growth in TTV, which is 9% bookings growth and 2% growth in ABV. That bookings growth has predominantly come from growth in beach holidays, with three-star, four-star, and five-star all growing as well as our long-haul business. This is a real testament to the strength of the brand, where we've now got more than 80% of TTV coming across four-star and five-star holidays. Moving to overheads, the change year-on-year has got three elements to it. Variable credit card and debit card charges have increased, but below the rate of bookings growth. We continue to invest into talent within our technology and product teams.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

AWS costs, cloud costs have increased year-on-year, linked to the growth of our hotel portfolio of now 24,000 hotels. Our amortization charge this year is lower as a percentage of capital spend as a result of investment into longer-term strategic projects, which have got a longer useful economic life than was previously the case. And while not reflected in the continuing operations P&L that we're showing in the presentation, we do show in the statutory P&L a loss on discontinued ops, which relates to the wind down of Classic Collection. And this loss of GBP 16 million was largely non-cash, relating to the write-off of brand, goodwill, and other intangibles, in addition to trading losses in the year and the costs of closure. On slide nine, we set out our usual financial KPIs. And I'll just touch on a couple of those that I haven't already covered.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

As I mentioned, average booking value is up by 2% in the year. And this is 4% growth in beach ABV, which is offset partially by 2% impact from the growth in our city's proposition. Revenue is up 6% on an adjusted basis, which eliminates the exceptional Ryanair refunds income in the prior year. You'll see here that average margin per booking is down GBP 6 year-on-year, reflecting the move into both cities and Ireland. So, cities has got a lower margin per booking given the relative ABV relative to beach. And we also invested into pricing Ireland in the second half in order to support our marketing investment. And as Shaun mentioned, Q4 in the later booking market, we did further invest into price in the last quarter to compete in that very late market as well.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

Total marketing costs are down 4% in the year, driven by increased effectiveness of our online marketing spend. And you can see here that the total marketing spend per booking is down by GBP 10 year-on-year. And that also includes a net GBP 2 million spend in marketing into the launch in the Republic of Ireland. And there's two factors for that, really. Our cost per acquisition has reduced because across new customer acquisition, we've become more effective with our media activities, which are driving lower customer acquisition costs. And in retention and loyalty, we've built capabilities through CRM, through the app, and through our customer data platform, which are driving greater repeat purchase rates and frequency, with customers increasingly coming back to us directly. And our offline marketing campaign remains highly effective.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

We've got our highest ever top three consideration score as a result of that ad campaign, which really resonates with our customers. The effectiveness of our marketing has meant that gross profit after marketing as a percentage of revenue has improved by 3% year-on-year to 65%. Moving on to slide 10, we retain a strong balance sheet with our asset-light business model demonstrating, as you can see on the chart here, the strong cash conversion in the year. That conversion enables continued investment into our technology platform, as well as significant shareholder returns in the year. As well as returning cash to shareholders, we also funded a new employee benefit trust to make market purchases and mitigate future dilution from the exercise of grants.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

As we said, in September, we completed a refinancing in the year, so increasing the facility to GBP 120 million with a further GBP 30 million accordion. And we were delighted with the level of interest that was shown both from existing lenders and new lenders to join that facility, which enabled us to improve pricing versus the previous facility. Slide 12 sets out our capital allocation framework. So, this remains the same as the prior year. Our focus is on investment to drive organic growth. And as we've said, the return on investment there in organic growth remains significant. In the second pillar, we've proposed a final dividend of GBP 0.03, which, if approved at the AGM, would mean a total dividend of GBP 0.04 in the year, a 33% increase year-on-year. We do continue to review M&A opportunities.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

However, given the strong EPS accretion that we've been able to deliver through both organic growth and share buybacks, the hurdle rate for M&A, I would say, has increased year-on-year. And finally, as Shaun said, we've been able to generate cash and utilize the facilities to return GBP 50 million to shareholders over the past 12 months since we announced our first buyback at final results this time last year. So, that means that we've bought back and now canceled 14% of our issued share capital. And before I hand back to Shaun, just touching on slide 12 and the current trading and outlook, we've had a really strong start to the year with TTV up 16%, which is 14% volume and 2% ABV impact.

[Jon Wormald, CFO at On the Beach Group]

When we reported in September, winter bookings were plus 12%, and that's now increased to plus 15%, with customers increasingly seeking winter sun and also being attracted by our city breaks proposition. Summer is also building momentum with volumes now year to date plus 8%, and the summer season now into growth year-on-year. Given this strong start to the year and the continued progression of our technology and our proposition, the board is confident in delivering FY2026 adjusted PBT in the range of GBP 39-43 million this year. Also, finally, we remain confident in delivering our medium-term ambitions. Shaun, I'll hand the clicker back to you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Brilliant. Thank you, Jon. Right, I've got a few slides to take you through an update on the market. I'll just start with a few headlines. I won't cover all of these because I'll cover them in future slides. But what I will say is we operate in a large, resilient market, which is enjoying a trend of uninterrupted long-term growth. Whilst our core beach holiday proposition continues to account for the majority of our business and growth, in the last 18 months, we have moved into new areas and demonstrated just how scalable our business model is. In fact, we have more than tripled our addressable market, and today, we report tangible progress in these expansion areas and against our strategy, and are very confident about the year ahead and the medium term.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Providing a little bit more color on the market, the overseas travel market is significant in size and growing. Overseas travel is embedded in the fabric of U.K. consumer behavior and a protected category of spend, with a 3rd of Brits now taking three or more overseas trips per year. Within this, and helpful to our business, there's been a significant shift in the last 10 years to people choosing to book their holiday as a package rather than as separate components. Growth in package holidays is particularly strong in the younger age categories, which supports long-term structural adoption. The value, convenience, flexible payment options, and consumer protection of a package holiday are increasingly attractive factors driving this behavior. Finally, the financial health of the consumer remains good, particularly in the mid-and-top deciles of the economy, which is where travel spend is at its highest.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Onto our addressable market. So, not only do we have a healthy share of our core beach holiday market shown in the bottom left and estimated at 16 million passengers, in the last 18 months, we have more than tripled our addressable market through the addition of city breaks, Ireland as a new source market, and more recently, cruise. We expect to rapidly expand into these new areas by attracting new customers to the brand, increasing share of wallet of our existing customers and new customers, and improving customer retention. Developments to our technology over this period means we can access these additional markets with modest or no increase in operational cost. This will enable us to improve operating leverage as we scale. On the next couple of slides, I will talk about the progress we have made. So, this one really about the beach market.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

So, with respect to beach holidays, which represents 92% of our business, this year has been a year of growth in all areas. All core beach destinations are in growth, including short and long-haul, and we have grown across both value and premium. Within this, four and five-star holidays continue to be the fastest-growing segment, now representing more than 80% of our sales, further increasing the resilience of our business to any future consumer downturn. During the year, as Jon mentioned, we took the decision to close our B2B segment, Classic Collection. This enables us to focus on the faster-growing, more profitable core B2C segment and significantly simplifies our technology and operation. In terms of our expansion areas, cities are the largest expansion area in terms of market size. I am on the right one.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

From a standing start this year, we have established a new city breaks proposition with around 160 cities on sale by the end of the year, and while city breaks represented only a small part of our sales growth this year, the proposition has expanded rapidly through the course of the year, and we have established a firm base from which to grow. It's very positive to see that the city break offer is attracting repeat purchase from existing customers, as well as customers who are new to the brand. The ratio of new to existing customers has been steady all year at about 60/40, so moving into this area has been very, very low execution risk and presents a very, very large opportunity. In addition to city breaks, we started selling holidays from Ireland at the start of the year.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

This year was about establishing a brand presence and a solid base from which we can grow. We estimate the market to be around 15% of the size of the U.K. market and are pleased with the progress we have made in year one. 12 months in Ireland already represents around 2% of group volumes and 1% of group revenue, and we expect this to grow rapidly in FY26 and finally, cruise. Cruise is very much in the test and learn phase. However, we are very interested in its potential. We estimate the market ex-U.K. to be around 4 million passengers, and it's one of the fastest-growing markets in travel. Cruise has the potential to be very complementary to our current offer, as there is significant overlap with our existing customer base.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

While it's early days, I look forward to updating you on progress on cruise and other expansion areas later this year. That's the market update, so now on to strategic progress. Most of you will be familiar with this strategy, Will, but I will recap. We have a very clear strategy for growth, underpinned by the four core design principles you can see: stickiness, choice, Peace of Mind, and scale and automation. We chose these pillars for four reasons. One, customers are shopping around as much as ever. Therefore, we must design for stickiness. Two, we have historically only competed for a small share of our customers' holiday wallet. We, therefore, must design for that increased choice. And we know that customers want choice, value, and flexibility, but they also want hiccup-free holidays. Therefore, we must design for Peace of Mind.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Finally, as shown earlier in this presentation, because of the developments we've made, we have significant opportunities to expand our customer base. Therefore, we must design for scale. By this, we mean having a platform that can deliver 10 times scale, not plus 10%. By delivering on these design principles, we expect to achieve a higher level of repeat bookings, increase our average annual customer spend by increasing the number of customers who make more than one booking with us each year, attract new customers to the brand, and continue to improve operational leverage. To achieve a period of transformational growth, which is what this next four years is about, we must deliver against these principles. I'll take you through some of the progress we've made this year. Starting with stickiness, we've made significant progress with all of our app lead indicators during the year.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Our key metric here is the volume of bookings from repeat customers, which this year was an increase of 18% year-on-year. And on those app metrics, we have significantly increased app usage and engagement. We've had a million downloads, which is a 28% increase year-on-year. 80% of our customers are now using the app between booking and departure, and 30% of our bookings this year were made on the app. We started the year about 20%, and we've ended at about 40%. So, significant progress. And there are really clear reasons why we are investing in the app, and we see this as a key to unlocking value. App users convert better, up to six times higher conversion than web. So, people who visit the app are more likely to book a holiday. They rebook at a higher rate.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

People who use the app have up to 50% higher rebook rates, and they are generally more satisfied, scoring 22% higher for Net Promoter Score. Therefore, this year, we have significantly enhanced our app experience. We provide a seamless booking journey, and we make it easier for customers to access what they need from the point of booking right the way through to traveling. Moving on to choice. By adding more choice to our proposition and competing for a higher share of the total holiday wallet, there is a significant opportunity to attract new customers to the brand and increase the number of customers booking more than one holiday in any given holiday year. Our key metric for success here is the number of bookings that are being made by customers who book two or more holidays.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

That has increased 15% year-on-year and represents 25% of the bookings made. This is that there's still a lot of headroom in this number, so even though that sounds like impressive growth, the average holiday maker will take 1.7 holidays a year. So, we have a lot of room to grow into with this key result. We have achieved this growth by aggressively scaling new destinations and the options within our existing destinations to significantly increase customer choice. We've significantly increased the number of destinations, hotels, and airlines on the platform and now offer more than 80 billion holiday combinations, and all of this has been achieved while significantly increasing the accuracy and the speed of holidays that we deliver on our website. Next pillar is Peace of Mind.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Peace of Mind is a key factor in the consideration set when deciding who customers are going to book their holiday with. Fewer inbounds to our contact center means we can improve customer experience, whether you contact us or not. Work in those two areas is really paying off. Our Net Promoter Score has increased by 14% versus last year to 56%, and customer inbounds have reduced by 21%. This has enabled us to reduce customer wait times by 23% and increase customer satisfaction scores for customers who need to contact us. Some of the key drivers of this year: clearly, the benefits of the Ryanair integration, the upgraded platform, and significantly improving the customer booking experience. App development and features like live flight information, WhatsApp in resort, and perks on the app like price drop protection.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

When things go wrong or change, we've introduced significantly more automation for the ability for the customer to self-serve more often. Final pillar: scale and automation. I think the headline sums up our approach here and where we are. We are building for 10 times scale, not plus 10%, and we are ready for an AI-first world. Taking these from left to right, firstly, for the last three years, we have been building AI-ready technology. That wasn't necessarily about building technology, thinking about AI. It was having a modern technology stack that can connect to AI platforms. This means that our content is ready to be seamlessly integrated into platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini when they are ready to start doing that.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

This is a big opportunity for us to diversify where customers can discover our product and an opportunity for us to unlock the benefits of AI on our website and app in the future, not just on third parties. Moving across to number two, AI automation across the back office is happening company-wide, and this is already saving us thousands of hours per week. With respect to infrastructure, we have developed infrastructure that scales with a cost that does not scale in the same way. So, we can add three times the product, but not incur three times the cost. We are now able to store billions of holiday combinations and present the results to our customers in seconds. There is so much headroom in our platform capabilities now that the scale of our growth is only really limited by the scale of our ambition.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

And finally, we've established a blueprint for international expansion. By moving into Ireland, this means we've developed the technology to handle languages and currencies, which will enable further international expansion when we are ready. Moving on to brand. And I suppose this is the wrapper that sits on top of our leading-edge technology. It is our differentiated proposition and brand loyalty. We have evolved and extended our unique perks proposition to provide Peace of Mind, an enhanced holiday experience, and to reward loyalty. More of our customers benefit from a perk than ever before, and we have prioritized investment in those that resonate with customers the most. So, our absolute spend on perks has not gone up, but we're delivering more perks to more people. As a reminder of the overall benefit that perks give us, I refer to the diagram on the right.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Having a unique value proposition gives us a point of difference we can communicate in a way that our customers can't. Having this differentiation increases the effectiveness of our marketing activities, and we've seen that now year-on-year come through marketing leverage. It gives us the opportunity to talk about quality in a tangible way. This strengthens our brand, broadens our appeal, and helps attract new customers. And to complete the loop, these value-add elements enhance our customers' holidays, increase the likelihood they will rebook or recommend us to friends and family. So, it's now become a core embedded part of our proposition. Results this year have been very strong. We've maintained a high level of spontaneous brand awareness at 27%, and our top three consideration of 32% is the highest it's ever been. Moving on to focus for this year.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Not a huge amount of new things to say on this slide. We're very happy with the progress we've made this year, and we're going to continue driving progress in the same areas. So, with stickiness, that means more app activation and engagements, more customers booking more than one holiday per year, and more of our customers repeating with us year-after-year. We will leverage the increased choice to consistently take share in our expansion areas, move into that white space, and improve customer search conversion. So, again, more likely that when people come to our website, they will book a holiday. And we will continue to build for scale. And this is about being ready for AI distribution, which is a position we already occupy, and leverage that AI-powered automation both at the front and back end.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

And finally, just we've laid out a high-level roadmap to help people understand how we see delivery of the medium-term ambition. If you start in the bottom left-hand corner, by delivering against those pillars, we will bring new customers into the brand, increase customer repeat rates, and increase the number of people booking two or more holidays a year. There's a multiplier effect on these. So, modest improvements in each of those multiplies up to quite big numbers. Those metrics across the term of the medium-term ambition to 2029 combined to deliver a CAGR of 11%. So, this year, the cumulative effect of that is 7%. And I think we're happy with that given the standing start that we made on some of those factors and the progress. The progress has been graduated through the year. We then have a discrete pillar on the medium-term ambition for Ireland.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

This year, we've booked around 40,000 passengers, again from a standing start, with an ambition to reach 300,000 by 2029. And finally, through an increasingly efficient operating model, our ambition is to achieve 40% EBITDA margin. This year, we've already improved our operating margins by one and half percentage points. So, good progress this year. So, that concludes our presentation.

Participants

Executives

• Shaun Morton, CEO
• Jon Wormald, CFO