On the Beach Group H1 2026 Earnings Report

On the Beach Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 1.20
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

On the Beach Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $52.20 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

On the Beach Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2026
• Date: 5/12/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM 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 H1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Half-year booking volumes hit a record, with bookings up 7% year over year and traveled volumes up 22%, showing the company is taking share despite a tough market.
• Positive Sentiment: Technology and app adoption are driving better conversion and loyalty; search conversion rose 24%, nearly 40% of bookings are now made in the mobile app, and repeat booking metrics improved materially.
• Neutral Sentiment: The business is seeing a later booking curve after Middle East conflict and a weaker consumer backdrop shifted demand closer to departure, especially for summer travel and Eastern Med destinations.
• Positive Sentiment: Profitability and cash generation remain solid, with net debt down, substantial facility headroom, and an interim dividend maintained, underscoring balance sheet strength.
• Positive Sentiment: Management reinstated full-year guidance for adjusted profit of £18 million to £25 million, citing improved recent trading, including bookings up 9% over the last six weeks and summer bookings up 17% month to date.

Presentation

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'll be presenting our results for the first half of FY 2026. This has been another period that has and will continue to test the resilience of the industry. What I want to demonstrate today is that our model is particularly resilient to these shocks, and that the strategic direction we've set is working. Normally, I would be joined by our CFO, Jon, but he's currently waiting for a minor medical procedure, therefore, I'll be taking you through the full presentation today. On to the agenda, I'll follow the normal structure, starting with key highlights, moving on to financial performance, and closing with strategic progress and outlook. I will, of course, leave time for questions at the end. On to highlights.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Four things I'd like you to take away from from this slide. Firstly, record half 1 booking volumes. In a very challenging environment, bookings grew by 7% year on year, we delivered that volume growth significantly ahead of the market. Secondly, significantly more people went on holiday with us during this period than last year. Departed volumes were up 22% across the half and 35% in quarter 2. This has been driven by strong growth in winter beach and expansion areas. City breaks more than doubled year on year. Bookings from Ireland grew by 74%. These are substantial numbers and show real progress. Third, investment in our technology is delivering results. Search conversion is up 24%, people searching on our site now, 24% more likely to make a booking.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Nearly 40% of all bookings are made on our mobile app. Every loyalty metric we have is improving. In-year repeat bookings up 24% and two-year repeat rates up 17%. Finally, we are profitable and generating cash. The last 6 weeks of booked volumes are up 9% even in the context of the challenging environment we find ourselves. This therefore gives us confidence to reinstate guidance for the year. Given the strategic progress, we remain confident in the medium term. Before we get into the trading detail, I wanted to spend a moment on this slide because it gives some really important context for understanding where we are today as a business and why we're confident about where we're going. Over the last 4 years, we've been through 3 very deliberate phases of transformation. I'll take you through each one briefly.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Starting with simplification, we have simplified our business model. This meant exiting the B2B channel last year and transitioning to a single tech platform powering all products and markets. That includes our expansion areas in city breaks and selling holidays from Ireland. Our tech investment is mobile first and with a focus on self-service through our mobile app. Secondly, increased levels of automation. Today, 98% of our bookings are automatically fulfilled. This compares to 60%, just four years ago. This is a real transformational change, particularly in the context of increasing our offer to 80 billion holiday combinations, up from around 1 billion only a few years ago. This, amongst many other examples, has enabled us to grow from 1.4 million passengers traveled to 2 million, more than 40% volume growth whilst reducing headcount by the same amount. There's AI.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

We were the first U.K. package online travel agent in ChatGPT, which we launched early this year. Further integrations are in progress. Our share of voice over indexes for package holidays, which means we're well-positioned as customers increasingly use these products. Traffic from these products are still small, but is growing fast. There's 10 times more traffic coming directly from large language models this year. I'm sure more of our customers are using it as part of their research journey. It's not just customers who are increasingly using AI. All areas of our business are benefiting from it. Agentic AI is deployed across engineering, supply, operations, and customer service. This is improving both quality and productivity across the business.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Overall, whilst each of these phases can be delivered to some extent on their own, to achieve the best results, you must deliver against all three of these, and that's why we've not seen them as separate initiatives, but as one program of transformation and lots more to come. Moving on to trading for the period, I think important for me to give you some more context on the trading picture. Even before the war commenced, booking patterns had changed. People were booking their holidays much closer to departure. This is market-wide, not specific to us, and it reflects a challenging consumer environment. Despite this, October to February, bookings were up 10% year-over-year, with significant growth in bookings for city breaks and winter travel, including winter beach. From the first of March, there was a significant change in demand.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Customers planning holidays to the Middle East and East Med destinations slowed significantly. That reduced our half 1 bookings growth from 10%-7% and has shortened lead times even further. These dynamics mean that first half bookings have a lower average booking value, and some of the summer volume we'd normally take in half 1 is coming later. Our forward orders for the second half of the year are about flat to last year, but this later booking curve means there's significant volume still to come, and we know that most people are still planning to spend at least as much this year on their holiday plans. Important to note, I do remind people of this, that unlike others in the industry, we report on a booked basis. Others report on a traveled basis.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Therefore, these trends are more apparent in our half 1 financial performance than some of our tour operator and airline peers. This will normalize across the full year, and by the time we get to the end of the year, we'll all be judged on the same travel period. In terms of traveled volume, this was well ahead of the market, up 22% in the half. For me, this shows that what we're doing is working, and our outperformance has been very consistent. Every quarter has been in volume growth since COVID. That's 18 quarters of consecutive volume growth. I have another slide which gives some context on how lead times are impacting, I suppose our booked performance. This slide is really important context for that, and hopefully it will give people confidence about how our forward order position will evolve.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

The chart on the right-hand side shows how each number on this slide represents the forward order position for May 2026 travel, and that's important because it's the 1st month of the summer. I think it's a good indicator of what's still to come. As you can see from this slide, May departures are currently 5% up year-on-year, but all of this growth in May travel has been driven by later bookings. Bookings for May departures since the 1st of April are up 27% year-on-year. This isn't just a flash in the pan for May. This is the pattern that we've now been seeing for several months and we expect to continue. The booking curve has shifted. Customers are still planning to travel.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

They're just making that decision closer to departure, and that's what you can see in our half 1 reported numbers. For a business with an asset-light model, this is very manageable. We don't have the complexity of managing this demand shift. We don't have aircraft seats or hotel room inventory to worry about. Our business will naturally flex with this demand, and we are confident that people are still gonna want a summer holiday this year. We can see it coming through in the numbers. Now on to financial performance. Traveled bookings were of 201,600, were up 22% year-on-year. As I said earlier, that's the real demand picture for our business and for the industry.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Booking volumes were 324,200, up 7%. Total sales of GBP 626 million were up 2% year-on-year. Adjusted revenue of GBP 52.9 million was down GBP 6.4 million on last year, and that movement has several drivers, which are largely a function of market-wide dynamics. The Middle East conflict has had an impact on booking volumes and particularly higher margin summer bookings. There is mixed dilution from growth in lower value, shorter duration holidays, city breaks and winter beach. Of course, in this environment, there is competitive pricing, which obviously we would respond to. Some of these dynamics, we would expect to unwind in the second half of the year, which will be more weighted towards bookings for summer travel.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Further down the P&L, marketing costs fell by GBP four and a half million year-on-year. That's down to efficiency. A greater share of bookings is coming through the app, through brands, and through repeat customers, all of which cost far less to acquire than paid search. As a result, marketing as a proportion of revenue fell from 44%-41%. Overheads increased by GBP 3.1 million to GBP 21.6 million. That's primarily driven by the investment in technology, which enables us to scale into new areas, increase site conversion, and drive marketing effectiveness and operational efficiency. These investments cannot be viewed as a snapshot point in time. They should be viewed in the context of overall strategic delivery. EBITDA and profit before tax was around GBP 6 million lower than the prior year.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

This change is explained by the revenue shortfall resulting from the external and mix-driven factors I mentioned earlier, which we expect to be short-term impacts. On to the balance sheet. Net debt reduced by GBP 2 million year-on-year to GBP 27 million, with GBP 88 million of headroom on our facility. This is after committing GBP 33 million of capital to buy shares and pay dividends during the period. The balance sheet remains a genuine strength. The trust account balance is GBP 210 million. The year-on-year reduction of around GBP 14 million simply reflects the shift to shorter lead time bookings.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Customers are paying later, so less sits in trust at every given point. This is simply a consequence of the later booking curve. An interim dividend of GBP 0.01 per share has been declared consistent with the prior year. This is a demonstration of confidence in profit and cash generation.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

We have a profitable, cash generative business with a strong balance sheet. We can manage through volatility and periods of weak consumer demand without compromising our strategic investments. Now some slides going into a bit more detail on our strategic progress, starting with an overview. Our addressable market is large and rapidly expanding. We've been expanding our share of it. Customers booking closer to departure is a market-wide trend. Our significant growth in traveled volumes tells us the demand for our product is strong. The Middle East conflict is a headwind for the whole sector. Travel has always been prone to these shocks and challenges. In my experience, long-term structural growth has always reasserted itself. Our asset-light model is a key competitive advantage in exactly this kind of environment. Our strategy is working. We are taking share in this market.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

We have, as the next slide shows, a clear strategy for growth, which many of you will be very familiar with. It is consistent and key to delivering our medium-term ambition. As a reminder, stickiness is about increasing how often customers book with us. Choice, making us more relevant for more customers and more of our existing customers' holiday spend. Scale and automation, this is about designing for 10 times scale, not +10%, and scaling the business potential at a much faster rate than the structural cost base increases. Peace of mind, making sure the experience customers have with us builds trust. By delivering on these pillars, we will attract more new customers to the brand, and we expect those customers to book with us more often, generating greater value. Some proof points of how we're delivering against these strategic pillars.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

On stickiness, monthly active users on our app are up 29% year-on-year, and nearly 40% of bookings are now made on the app. We are now in a position where more than 90% of our customers access the app at some point between booking and traveling. Every retention metric we measure is up. Our customers are traveling with us more often in any given year, and they are more likely to book with us again in subsequent years. In-year repeat bookings are up 24% year-on-year, and 2-year repeat rates are up 17%. On choice, we continue to address more of our customers' holiday needs, adding more choice for our customers, and now offering more than 80 billion holiday combinations. We continue to perform well in all of these expansion areas, and I'll come onto that shortly.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Each product expansion or market we add uses the same technology, the same brand, and the same people. The execution risk of adding new products or markets is therefore very, very low. On scale and automation, we have created a scalable business. Earlier, I shared our focus on simplification, automation, and AI, and this means that over the last four years, we have scaled our offer from 1 billion holiday combinations to 80. We are sending 40% more people on holiday every year, and we have a headcount which is 40% lower. This shows real progress against our pillars. Onto our addressable market. Two years ago, our addressable market was 16 million passengers, represented by the three blocks in the bottom left of this chart.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

As well as beach, our market now includes city breaks, cruise, and the Republic of Ireland as a source market. Today, our addressable market is 3 times as big as it was 2 years ago, 50 million passengers and growing. Ireland growth year to date is 70%. City bookings have more than doubled. These areas continue to grow, in a very short space of time, we are established and significant player in these markets. It's our pre-existing technology investment that has enabled us to establish presence in these areas so quickly and for a relatively low level of investment. That's a structural advantage that we have that newer entrants cannot easily replicate. Finally, onto current trading and outlook. Despite the challenging environment, we continue to trade profitably and generate cash.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Demand has improved and settled since our last update in March, and momentum is building for the summer. Over the last six weeks, bookings are up 9%, and month to date bookings for summer are up 17%. These recent trends and our experience in the industry gives me confidence that consumers value their summer holidays very highly, and therefore, despite the current challenging environment, we are confident in delivering adjusted profit for the year of between GBP 18 million and GBP 25 million. Looking further ahead, we have made significant progress this year and are well-positioned for the medium term. On that, I will take questions from the room.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Hi, Ross Broadfoot from RBC. Three, please. We'll go one at a time, given that you're on your own there, Shaun. One of the benefits of the tech stack is obviously its agility and the ability to add new destinations or accommodation. Can you bring to life any examples of how you've pivoted given the recent challenges?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Well, yeah, thanks, Ross. I mean, it's definitely true. We've reached a point now with our tech stack where the barrier towards adding more product is simply our desire, not our technical ability to do it, and it's pretty trivial. It's an automated process. We can add hotels and suppliers very quickly. Given the current situation, we haven't changed our approach. Our approach has always been to add relevant product and add it as we see fit. We're continuing to roll through a program of managed adding more suppliers to existing destinations and product, plus adding new destinations where we see them to be relevant. I guess what we continue to see is whatever we add to our platform, we sell.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

It's about us picking the right things and making sure that we can make them searchable and discoverable by our customers. Yeah, it's, you know, we've got a good track record of doing this now and it's working nicely.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Number 2. It might be a bit too early, but any signs, perhaps even in terms of search, that people are starting to reinvestigate some of those Eastern Med destinations?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, I, certainly traffic to site has, you know, now got a good, healthy trend over the last five, six weeks have been significantly up. We are seeing more search to Eastern Mediterranean, demand for those areas is still a bit subdued and lower than the counterparts in Western Med at the moment. Definitely a slightly improved picture.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Okay. Finally, could you just give a little update on the cruise rollout and where you're at from that perspective? Thank you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Thank you. Still really at test and learn for cruise. We've got a significant amount of traffic on site that's now exploring it. It's available on our web and our app. We've got thousands of searches for cruise every day. The product is vast and it's there, but there's still bits and pieces we need to add. I guess we're doing this the way that we said we would, which is very low execution risk. We're not spending money on attracting people to site. We're gonna leverage the traffic that we've got, and we'll be slowly building this and, you know, doing it the right way over the course of this year.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I'd say by the end of this financial year, and certainly by the end of this calendar year, we'll have that proposition in the place that we want it, and then we'll start to see what the real potential is. Yeah, really exciting and good to see the significant numbers of people that are exploring that product in our site.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Thanks.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Ivor, I think you had your hand up.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Here you are.

[Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC]

Thanks.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thanks. Ivor Jones, Peel Hunt. Could you talk about the gap between TTV growth and revenue growth? One of the components you mentioned was price.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yes.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Where do you think On the Beach is in terms of price relative to the competition? Are you the lowest cost provider? Is that how you're driving that very strong revenue growth?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

You know, well, there are 80 billion holiday combinations, so I think that it's always gonna be a very nuanced picture. I would say that we basically set our price to make sure that what's coming through in the website represents good return on investment from a marketing point of view, so it fluctuates up and down. Across the board, I would say that our product represents relatively good, very good value in the industry. You know, you'll find examples of products that we are better value than our competitors are, and you'll find examples where we're not quite as much. I'd say on balance, represents better value either for like for like or because we offer more flexibility in what customers can purchase.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Back to that gap between TTV and revenue. Can you talk about how much is price, how much is mix, how much is something else?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, I'd say you're probably talking in equal measures. There are three things that are affecting it. You've got the people who are buying shorter term departures, winter breaks and cities. You know, we're happy to sell all of those things. That mix is not a negative thing for us, but the reality of it is it's creating a gap. We've got the price competition. I'd say that's another third of it. The market is incredibly competitive on price, and of course, we are going to respond to that.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

The final thing is with the conflict in the Middle East, I'd say that's exaggerated both the people may be delaying their summer holidays departures, but also we've seen a mix shift out of more valuable Eastern Mediterranean into Western Mediterranean bookings. I'd say they're probably of equal two parts. We would expect the long-term structural mix of selling more of an expanded product base is fine for me because ultimately it's incremental and it creates a stickier customer. The other two, I would expect to fluctuate but largely unwind across the medium term.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Could you talk a bit more about AI? Firstly, what is the customer journey that lands an On the Beach booking via that channel? Commercially, I guess you're going to say it's good, is that a good or bad process from On the Beach point of view?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Well, I mean, at the moment, I would say it's absolutely good. I mean, how they're landing at the moment, whilst it's growing, still a very small proportion of our customers come directly from a large language model. That's where people are clicking through and linking through. Now that traffic is 10 times higher than it was a year ago, huge growth, it still represents less than 0.5% of our traffic. One side effect we can definitely see is customers are coming to our site with a better idea of what it is they want to book, more better informed customers. That means the traffic has higher intent and our conversion is better. Now, that makes our marketing spend work more effectively.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I suspect that is because these customers are spending time researching on large language models, and then they're coming indirectly to us, which is net very good for us.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Do you have to buy that traffic? Is it a cheaper route than Google pay-per-click?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I guess we buy it so the traffic that comes directly, we don't spend on. The traffic that's coming in directly, we buy it in the normal way. Some of those clicks will come organically, some will come through paid search. Whichever route they come through, they're coming with higher intent, so the return on spend is better.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Lastly, you've talked about, repeat bookings, particularly strong in-year repeat bookings.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Is that partly or entirely about city breaks? Is the additional booking in the year a city break someone couldn't have booked before, or has that not happened yet?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, it is definitely partly, but it's not entirely. You know, we're seeing a real blend of what people are buying with us. I mean, Winter Beach has been incredibly healthy, across the winter, we've had nearly 15% growth in people traveling to Winter Beach destinations. You know, that's an addition to people's holiday repertoire for the year, which we're taking. Yeah, I mean, you know, city breaks becoming more meaningful for us obviously gives us a greater opportunity for people to buy more holidays, and I think that's gonna be one of the biggest driving factors for sure.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Previously, you've talked about what proportion of city breaks come from existing customers and what proportion were new to brands. Has that held up for?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Similar blend as it was, yeah. About 60% still coming from existing customers.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Okay. Thank you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah.

[Richard Stuber, Analyst at Deutsche]

Hi, Shaun. Richard Stibber from Deutsche. Just a few questions, if you don't mind. The first one, in terms of your full year guidance, I think it works out being PBT in the second half down about 30%, but you're still doing bookings up 9%. I was wondering, can you just explain the bridge to get there? Presumably, it still means that there's still pressure on the revenue to TTV margin, and presumably that's price competition. If there's any sort of guidance, and how you're thinking about that.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Thanks, Richard. I mean, it's difficult, isn't it? The business that we see at the moment, we can obviously see that these bookings are coming through for the summer and really healthily. Like May, for example, last six weeks, bookings for May up 27%, and the summer, you know, booking up 17% month to date. Really, you know, really healthy. I guess we're putting guidance out there with everything that we think we can safely assume today, which is a continuation of some of these trends that we've talked about.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

The increase, the price, the competitive environment remaining to be at least as competitive as it is, the consumer environment remaining as challenged as it is, and us continuing to see the downside effect of some of these mixed challenges with people changing, you know, the destinations they're going to and the type of holidays that they're booking. I think that that is the sort of sensible, responsible way for us to produce the guidance today.

[Richard Stuber, Analyst at Deutsche]

Thank you. I think historically, you've been overweight marketing in the first half of the year because of the peak booking window in January and February. I guess given the later, people booking later to departure, does it make more sense to spread the marketing budget more evenly through the year? Have you any thoughts on that?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I mean, you know, this is obviously a conversation that we've been having for longer than just the last 3 to 6 months because this is a trend that's been emerging, and you will definitely see us spending, you know, our marketing pounds in a more balanced way across the year now. That doesn't mean that we're not gonna see the H1 waiting because the benefit of H1 is largely everyone's still in market to book a summer holiday, and that population that you can address diminishes as you go through the summer. If you take May as an example, outside of January, May has typically been the second biggest month for people booking their summer holidays. It makes sense that we would be visible and present as a brand in a month like May.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I think definitely you're right. You'll start to see a more balanced level of spending across the year in brand. Now we're not talking big fame driving TV, we're talking about repeating that message with our brand message on radio and other channels like that.

[Richard Stuber, Analyst at Deutsche]

Just a final question. Historically, you've done lots of perks as well. Could you just talk a little bit about what's going on there? Are there particular perks which are hitting better with consumers, things like the Price Drop or Lounge Access and just any update in terms of what's going on there?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, you know, we've experimented with a suite of perks, as you know. You know, it gives our brand differentiation, and it makes our marketing spend much more effective. Now, where it really wins is where it resonates, and we can see a conversion impact with customers and higher levels of repeat. Now, the 2 perks that are winning hands down when it comes to those metrics are the free lounge access, which we typically only offer that for a few months of the year because there's constrained lounge capacity. The other one is our Price Drop Protection, which customers are, you know, really engaging very heavily with, and we're seeing that as good in terms of satisfaction and retention.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

You know, they're two things that we also will continue to monitor them but work particularly well for us.

[Richard Stuber, Analyst at Deutsche]

Thank you.

[Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg]

Hi, Jack Cummings at Berenberg. First question, just on the guidance, there's clearly kind of a GBP 7 million range between the top end and the bottom end. With respect to the building blocks of either getting to the top or the bottom, is it all driven by revenue, or are there specific cost lines that could change that move you towards either the bottom or the top?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I mean, it's largely a function of revenue. I mean, obviously there's some variability in our cost lines that flow through with that, but it's, you know, it's largely about revenue. Yeah. I mean, obviously our overheads, we've got, you know, we'll start to see some of the operational efficiencies come through in the second half based on the restructure that we've just done in the business. Most of our cost base and our marketing line for sure is pretty much, you know, a known entity.

[Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg]

Great. Second one, just in terms of the competitive landscape, are you finding that it is kind of competition for marketing spend, particularly given the later booking window is more aggressive this year versus last?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

I mean, It sort of flows through everything really. I would say, what we're seeing more of or more acutely rather than marketing is actually it's the promotional activity and price led. We do have a consumer in market at the moment that is, you know, looking for value and therefore more likely to shop around more places. You know, you have to be competing properly because they're not just going to see your offer.

[Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg]

Great. Final question, you put the slide in about how the business has transformed over the past 4 years. If we were to be having this conversation in 4 years' time, kind of what are the areas of the business that you would deem are key to kind of delivering on this strategy? Is it further automation, further scale? Is it a bigger TAM? Anything you can comment on there. Thank you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, it's all of those things. I mean, that journey is not complete, you know, by any means. The good thing at the moment is we've set a mindset in the business where those three principles are things that everyone in the business is going after. You know, expect to see us retain that mantra of being simple and scalable and continue to see us develop automation either through better technology, which is what we've got, or use of agentic AI.

[Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg]

Great.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Great. Oh, Ivor, go.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thank you. Never wanna miss an opportunity.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

No.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

We didn't ask you specifically about supplier pricing. It's really hard to know what's happening.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

If all your customers are booking late.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

What are late flight prices and late hotel prices like? Is that helping or hindering sales?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Well, in, with both of those, you know, you can see the competitive environment play through. Both hotel and flight prices in the near term are, there's very little inflation and actually in some instances to some destinations, there's deflation.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Okay. Following on from Richard's question and really thinking about how you might think about surplus cash and buybacks by the time we get to the end of the year, wars are famously over by Christmas. What happens at the end of this one in terms of the competitive environment? I think post-COVID there was a bit of a marketing rush to try and reestablish shares, but that was after essentially zero trading. Will you be holding cash as a, as firepower for next Christmas marketing?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Oh.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Do you think you'll still have surplus cash?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would say to that is, you know, we're in a very fortunate position where we have optionality or will have optionality if, you know, for things like that at the end of the year. I think, yeah, maybe ask me that question again in, you know, once we've seen a bit more of the summer, I think.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thank you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Thanks.

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

Morning. Excuse me. It's Sahill here from Singers. Looking at FY 2027, I know there's a lot going on at the moment, but how should we be thinking or how are you thinking about planning for FY 2027 at a high level?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's about continuing to deliver on the proof points that we've got. We have an expanded proposition. We've got a track record of growing quarter on quarter. What we're doing is working. You know, we'll continue to invest in making sure we've got the best possible proposition. We'll be investing in the business to make sure it can scale, you know, efficiently. You know, I see no reason why we can't continue this track record of growth for some time to come.

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

Sorry, just to add on that, what's your working assumption in terms of the consumer outlook?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Thinking-

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

For that particular year?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Well, I think overall consumer outlook, I think we need to expect, you know, regardless of when the conflict in the Middle East ends and some of those concerns start to subside, I think we're going to see the shock of that continue with consumers for probably at least the next 8-12 months. I think it's going to have a bit of a lasting effect. But, you know, I think the good thing about where we're positioned is we have a meaningful share in all of our areas, but with significant opportunity to expand, and we're very flexible. I think regardless of consumer environment, you know, we will be growing as a business and growing share.

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

Given that, should our working assumption be in terms of what your previous profit guidance was for this current year is probably more of a three-year outlook, or are we looking at something a bit closer than that?

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Well, because of the strategic progress we're making, yeah, I think I would be much more optimistic than that in, yeah.

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

Okay.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah.

[Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers]

Thank you.

[Shaun Morton, CEO at On the Beach Group]

Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you very much for listening to me, and thanks for your questions. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Shaun Morton, CEO

Analysts

• Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg
• Richard Stuber, Analyst at Deutsche
• Ross Broadfoot, Analyst at RBC
• Sahill Shan, Analyst at Singers