The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Joseph Philip Thomas - HSBC, Research Division - Analyst
: Rob, if I could ask my questions, please? First one would be in the U.K., are you seeing any sort of market share issues? And the reason I asked that
is because I think it was well understood that 365 were making a bit of a land grab earlier on in the year. And I just wondered to what extent that
might have influenced the revenues that you're seeing over the course of the most recent period? That would be the first question.
The second thing is on Australia. Can you remind the scale of the impact to EBITDA of the tax increase in New South Wales and Queensland? And
also importantly, would you plan to mitigate that by higher over rounds, which I think is what you did in the past?
And the final thing, I'd just like to ask you about, please, is cost inflation in the business. I mean developers, et cetera, are not getting any cheaper.
And I just wondered to what extent that is going to impact your sort of SG&A line?
Question: Ivor Griffith Rees Jones - Peel Hunt LLP, Research Division - Analyst
: Could I ask about contribution margin online? How do you respond to a reduction in customer value? Do you -- what you're prepared to pay as a
CPA to try to protect the contribution margin? Or do you keep spending at the same marketing level to try and grow share even though customers
are less valuable?
And secondly, you said that the top 2 cohorts in the U.K., it had revenue halved as a result of affordability measures. Was that to do with a reduction
in their spend per head? Or is that a large proportion of those customers simply churning off when challenged on affordability?
Question: Ivor Griffith Rees Jones - Peel Hunt LLP, Research Division - Analyst
: Just to be clear, Rob. Does that mean that you tried -- you're implying you try to protect the contribution margin because obviously, you could still
have healthy revenue growth and a 20% contribution margin? Both the contribution margin you're targeting because you're targeting the marketing
ratio?
Question: Ivor Griffith Rees Jones - Peel Hunt LLP, Research Division - Analyst
: And just to be clear, does that apply to the implied revenue change for the second half of this year, that will -- you'd expect that to drop through
at the contribution margin? There's no funny as I should be thinking about that would imply -- that drop through?
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