SEEK Limited (SKLTY) Shareholder/Analyst Call Transcript

2025-11-19 02:38:49 ET

SEEK Limited (SKLTY) Shareholder/Analyst Call November 18, 2025 11:00 PM EST

Company Participants

Graham Goldsmith
Ian Narev - CEO, MD & Executive Director
Leigh Jasper

Presentation

Graham Goldsmith ...

Well, good afternoon, shareholders, visitors and SEEK team members. Welcome to Seek's 2025 Annual General Meeting. I'm Graham Goldsmith, the Chairman of SEEK Limited, and thank you for your attendance today. Today, we are hosting this Annual General Meeting on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. On behalf of the Board of SEEK, I would like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians, elders past and present and extend that respect to all aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples joining today's Annual General Meeting.

I note that a quorum is present, and I declare the meeting open. Joining me on the stage today are non-executive Directors, Andrew Bassat; Jamal Ibrahim, Leigh Jasper, Rachael Powell, Michael Wachtel and Vanessa Wallace. Unfortunately, Leigh Jasper is unable to join us today due to ill health. Also joining me on stage is our Managing Director and CEO, Ian Narev; and our Company Secretary, Rachel Agnew.

We announced today that Greg Roebuck would soon be joining our Board as Chairman-elect. I will talk more about that shortly. Greg is also attending the meeting today in his capacity as a shareholder. Andrew Cronin from SEEK's auditors, PwC, is also in attendance.

I would also like to acknowledge members of SEEK's executive leadership team, who are all here today. Kendra Banks, Chief Financial Officer; Peter Bithos, Group Executive Commercial; Simon Lusted, Group Executive product; Kathleen McCudden, Group Executive People and Culture; Emmett Sheppard, Group Executive, Corporate Strategy and Investments; Lisa Tobin, Group Executive Technology; and Grant Wright, Group Executive Artificial Intelligence.

Before we commence the formal business of the meeting, I will outline the procedural aspects of this meeting. Shareholders, their attorneys, proxies and corporate representatives will have the opportunity to ask questions at this meeting. If your question is of a general nature, you may ask this following Ian's presentation. If your question relates to a particular resolution, please ask your question when we come to that item in the meeting. Attendees with pink or blue cards are welcome to ask questions. Make your way to the fixed microphones stationed in the room, identify yourself and state your name.

To enable all shareholders a reasonable opportunity to ask questions, please keep your questions short and relevant to shareholders as a whole. I will answer your question or direct it to another director or appropriate person from SEEK to answer or to the external auditor who is also here to take your questions related to the audit.

I will now explain the voting procedures. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all resolutions requiring a vote. Ms. Christina Piccolo of Computershare, SEEK's share registry, will act as returning officer. If you are an eligible shareholder, a representative or attorney of an eligible shareholder or a proxy for an eligible shareholder you are entitled to vote.

For those attending today and intending to vote, you should have been issued with a pink voting card upon registration. If you are representing or you are a proxy for more than 1 shareholder, you will have been provided with a separate admission and voting card for each separate capacity in which you are attending the meeting. Relevant voting instructions are printed on the reverse of your pink card. If you have difficulty completing your voting card, please raise your hand and a representative from Computershare will assist you.

Before placing your card in the ballot box, please ensure that you print your name and sign the bottom of the card. Before you leave the meeting room, please place your voting card in one of the ballot boxes located near the exit.

Proxyholders are reminded that you must vote in accordance with the shareholders' directions. Any directed proxies that are not voted at the meeting will automatically default to me as Chairman and I will be required to vote those proxies as directed. We're entitled to do so. And subject to the voting restrictions that are set out in the notice of meeting, I intend to vote all undirected proxies in favor of Items 2 to 5. We will show on screen the outcome of the proxies received prior to the meeting at the start of the questions on each resolution.

I now formally open the poll on all items of business. You do not need to vote now. You can wait for the discussion on each item and then those as all polls will remain open until shortly after the end of the meeting.

Before the formal business of the meeting, I'll make a brief address, which will be followed by a presentation from Ian.

Fellow shareholders, it is my pleasure to address you today and provide some of the highlights of the past financial year. Before I speak about the highlights, I would like to comment on Chairman succession.

Today, we announced the appointment of Greg Roebuck, whom I introduced earlier to the Board. Greg will join the Board as a non-executive director and Chairman-elect from the 1st of January 2026 with the intention that he becomes Chairman from the first of March 2026. At that point, I will retire after 13 years on the Board and 7 as your Chairman.

As I indicated at the time I was reelected to the Board last year, we anticipated that I would not complete my 3-year term. Following a succession process overseen by the Board, I'm delighted that the Board has selected Greg as a non-executive director and as Chairman-elect. Greg has a wealth of valuable experience and I expect his background and passion will make him an exceptional Chairman.

It has been a privilege to be a director and Chairman of SEEK. SEEK is a unique company and has been helping people live more fulfilling and productive working lives and organizations to succeed for over 25 years. Along with this purpose and its strategy and foundations, SEEK is in a strong position to continue to be a market leader and deliver significant value to shareholders. Thank you to those of you here today and to all our other fellow shareholders, Board members, SEEK's executive leadership team and employees for your ongoing and support during my time as Chairman.

I would now like to comment on Board succession. The Board continues to take a structured approach to Board and committee succession looking out over a 3-year planning period and taking into account various matters, including SEEK's strategy and operations, director tenure and the skills, diversity and experience desired for the Board and committees. Leigh Jasper and Linda Kristjanson are presenting themselves for reelection at this year's AGM.

Both Leigh and Linda are independent non-executive directors, and continue to make significant contributions to Board deliberations and decisions. They are valued members of the Board and your Board unanimously supports the reelection of both Leigh and Linda.

I will now turn to performance during the year ended June 2025. The business continued to perform strongly at an operational level. This follows the completion of platform unification in 2024, continued strengthening of our foundations and disciplined ongoing investment in growth in the core including in product and artificial intelligence.

Our 2025 financial results were solid. And during the year, we paid a total dividend of $0.46 per share to shareholders, up $0.11 per share from 2024. We also strengthened our balance sheet and reduced our drawn debt.

During the year, we continued to increase our placement share in ANZ and achieved our highest placement share in Asia in recent history. We achieved double-digit yield growth across APAC, which was driven by price and product innovation. Our total costs grew more slowly than revenue despite ongoing investment in SEEK's competitive foundations. In Ian's address, he will talk in more detail about the outcomes for 2025 and our present outlook for the remainder of 2026.

As management communicated to investors in May this year, SEEK will focus on repeatedly delivering on 3 key strategic areas: increasing placement share to grow leadership position, achieving high single-digit yield growth and creating operating leverage through maintaining mid- to high single-digit cost growth through the cycle with revenue growing faster than costs.

Our strategic aspiration is to strengthen our market leadership position by executing well on these controllables. SEEK has a significant revenue opportunity across our marketplaces and will continue to spend the money required to both run the business and on growth investments.

A large proportion of growth investments is in the core, for example, product, data services and AI. There was a smaller proportion directed towards adjacencies where it makes sense, such as our recent reacquisition of Sidekicker.

Investments are considered under a return on investment framework, which supports the efficient allocation of capital and improved accountability for investment decisions.

As a Board, we also continue to focus on overseeing the management of our key financial and nonfinancial risks, including cybersecurity, AI and data protection.

SEEK holds an 83.8% interest in the SEEK Growth Fund, which provides shareholders with an economic exposure to high-growth investments and human capital management markets. Since its inception, SEEK has achieved a return on its investment of 32%, and the value of the fund has increased by 7% over the last year. SEEK has received a total distribution of $166 million from the fund to date, including $153 million in 2025, largely through the fund sell-down of a stake in Employment Hero and the sale of Sidekicker.

In 2026, the fund will open a liquidity window and SEEK may request the fund manager to consider liquidity of part of our investment. The Board is considering what level of liquidity request would be likely to lead to maximizing the value of SEEK's investment in the fund. The fund will use its best efforts to satisfy any request from SEEK within 12 to 24 months, and we will update shareholders as appropriate during 2026.

Turning to our people. Our recent employee engagement surveys indicate that our employees remain highly engaged with very high participation rates in the survey. This year, there has also been an increase in overall engagement scores.

I would like to thank SEEK's employees who, over the last few years have worked hard to position SEEK as a market leader and congratulate them on the transformation of the business. This transformation includes unifying the marketplace platforms, moving to an APAC organizational structure and the rapid advance and use of AI and release of product to the market.

The Board continues to focus on talent and succession at the CEO and executive leadership team level, including the development of our current executives and their potential successors.

At the same time, SEEK remains committed to and has made positive progress on diversity and inclusion initiatives. This has included maintaining gender diversity of 50% of women in the workforce and taking actions to increase the number of members from underrepresented groups in technology roles. At the Board level, over 1/3 of our non-executive directors are women.

I turn now to sustainability. SEEK has a long-term commitment to operating responsibly and pursuing our purpose, and this was again evident during 2025. Our approach to environmental, social and governance topics focuses on the areas that we can have the most impact and align most to SEEK and our stakeholders.

On human rights, we continued our work and investment towards preventing exploitative recruitment and modern slavery on our platform. We also progressed our programs to address any modern slavery risks in our supply chains and supported smaller suppliers with understanding and managing their modern slavery obligations.

SEEK social impact is achieved through its purpose and by operating a marketplace that delivers high-quality job placements. SEEK's data and insights are provided to inform policymakers and customers on labor market trends. And we also continued our long-standing social impact investment, SEEK Volunteer, which connects volunteers with not-for-profit organizations.

Execution of SEEK's First Nations Reconciliation Strategy progressed with enhanced workforce accessibility and cultural learning programs benefiting both employees and external stakeholders.

During 2025, we also achieved our target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% compared to 2022 levels, reflecting our focus on minimizing environmental impact and mitigating climate risks. Most of our Scope 3 emissions rely on third-party emission reductions. Following a science aligned review, we revised our emissions reduction targets to a further 50% reduction from 2025 levels by financial year 2030 and net zero by 2050. We continue to invest significantly in responsible and ethical use of data and AI with a focus on user trust.

Your Board is proud of SEEK's commitment to sustainability. And I encourage you to read our already released 2025 sustainability report, climate statement and modern slavery statement.

I will now comment on our executive remuneration structure. The main objective of SEEK's remuneration framework is to ensure close alignment between executive reward and long-term shareholder returns. To date, the executive remuneration structure including the changes we made to the Wealth Sharing Plan in 2024 has served SEEK and our shareholders well.

Since 2012, when the Wealth Sharing Plan was first introduced, SEEK's share prices increased from $6.53 to $24 as of the 1st of July 2025. And our total shareholder return has grown 377% exceeding the ASX 100 growth of 266%. Over this time, the benefits received by executives are proportionate to or lower than the returns received by shareholders.

During this period, 7 of the 11 Wealth Sharing Plans have vested and 4 have lapsed. SEEK executives, including the CEO, are also granted an equity right in place of a traditional short-term incentive. This ensures that more equity rather than cash is placed in the hands of executives to further align their reward with the shareholder experience.

The Board will continue to review SEEK's executive remuneration framework and ensure it supports the sustainable growth of our business and the execution of our strategy and meets shareholder expectations.

I will now comment on the executive leadership team. Last year, the accountabilities of the executive leadership team members were changed to reflect the change in organizational structure and expanded focus on the use of AI, internally and externally.

Your executive leadership team led by Ian have worked hard to deliver on the key priorities agreed with the Board for 2025, including developing and applying a refined return on investment framework, strengthening of our internal control environment and developing our senior leadership capability.

I would like to thank Ian, his senior leadership group and the entire SEEK team together with the Board for their hard work, dedication, leadership and care for each other, our candidates and hirers and the communities in which we operate. Thank you.

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