Austin Engineering Limited (ANG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Austin Engineering Financial Year 2021 Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. David Singleton, CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for coming in on the call this morning. This is my first actually as the CEO of Austin, although I have been a Nonexecutive Director of the Board for a little bit over 2 years before I started this role. I got to this position because at the beginning of the year, the Board was having a discussion about the future of Austin. And having cleared up a number of issues from the past and getting the business on a strong footing, we felt it was important to start thinking about the future. And we were clear that the business was now stable, had a good balance sheet, as you yourselves can see, and was in a really strong market position. But having said that, we felt that the longer-term strategy for the business was unclear at that time. And that has translated into poor support from the investor community with real issues associated with liquidity in the shares of the business itself. So these were things that we sought to correct. The result of that was that the Board asked me from about May of this year to conduct a strategic review of the business. And the target of that strategic review really was to determine a clear strategy for the business for the longer term; to increase or improve the ongoing performance of the business in the shorter term; but very importantly, to also regain investor confidence in the business so that we could see a stronger involvement of institutional shareholders in the company. The original intention of that strategic review was that I would carry that out for a period of 3 months, and then we would determine who is the right person to lead the business and implement those changes to the company. However, it became clear to me very early on in that strategic review that there were multiple clear opportunities for us to significantly supercharge the performance of the business as we exited the COVID period. And that there was really little need for us to delay, that we should get on and do that immediately. So not only did I -- was I doing the strategic review, but we decided that we would start to implement the major outcomes of that review as they became clear to us, and that's what we did. Almost as importantly as the changes to the business itself, it became clear to me that there was a longer-term and very strong strategy for the business based on the fact that the company itself has a very strong brand, has a good market position in the sectors that it operates with some very high-performing products that are appreciated by the market. And that felt to me like a real opportunity for the longer term. And that's something that I'll talk about a little bit later in this presentation. I've been asked a couple of times by people why I chose to do this role, and I will say that I'm very passionate about manufacturing. I'm passionate about the jobs it creates and the wealth it creates in a country. But Australia is not a big player in the manufacturing sector around the world. And I did see in Austin a company that does have a strong manufacturing capability and can continue to grow and develop. And so it seemed to me like a real opportunity for me to put into place some of the things that I think are important for manufacturing in this country as Australia takes its place in the manufacturing world, particularly in the mining sector. So I'll move on now to Page 2, which is a key facts page. And I think one of the things that I think is very important about Austin is it has such a strong brand, over 50 years of manufacturing history associated with the company. But it is the -- in the sectors that it operates in, particularly in truck body design and manufacture, it is the largest truck body builder in the world outside of the original equipment manufacturers as -- like Caterpillar and Komatsu and the like. And about 2/3 of the revenue of the business comes from that truck body-type activity. The business operates around the globe. So obviously, well-known here in Australia and in Perth, its new headquarters, but also in Batam in Indonesia, in Chile and out of the United States. So the footprint is broad across the mining world as well. In fact, 10 different locations, either -- 4 wholly owned plants and 6 other facilities, either our own or agency-type operations around the world. Business is also involved in buckets but not ground engagement tools associated with those buckets as well. So the bucket business is not so big as the truck body business but nonetheless, an important part of that and together creates a load and haulage business which is significant. What I think is interesting about the bodies is that they are bespoke bodies. So they're designed specifically for an ore body. So depending on the specific gravity of the ore, the abrasiveness of the ore, the amount of water that might be in it, the rock type, the truck body is designed specifically to optimize the carrying capacity of a truck in that particular mine. And that is the piece of all of this, that design competence, if you like, that gives Austin the edge that it has around the world and, as I say, that -- the #1 producer of these truck bodies worldwide. The barriers, though, are not super high in this business, and that's not to say there aren't some. But nonetheless, it's not a super high barrier to entry. However, I do believe, and this came out of the strategic review, that there are ways of us -- ways for us to significantly increase those barriers to entering and make our position even stronger. We have, of course, good customer coverage being based in Perth because many of the world's biggest miners are 15 to 30 minutes' drive away from our office. And that allows us to interact with miners who operate all over the world but interact with them on a local basis. And those relationships give us the ability to think about how we might develop and grow the business in the future and something I'll talk about a little bit later on. As you can see from the results, we have a turnover of around about $200 million per annum and about just under 50% as an order book position as we go into the beginning of the year. And that's a reasonably strong position for us given that we can book and bill on new orders in 3 to 4 months. So we have up to about 9 months of the year ahead of us in order to win new orders to fill the revenue target for the full year. So I think in summary, I see Austin as a real success story in Australia as a manufacturing business and supporting the mining industry both here and overseas. I'll move on now to key financials page, and we'll go into a little bit more detail in a minute. But just, I guess, the headline -- so a couple of headline numbers out of there. Revenue at $203 million was down 6% year-on-year as a result of a significant slowing in the Americas, both in North and South America last year, which Sam will talk about in just a moment, but a very strong performance in both Australia and Asia in a way that, I think, all of us would have anticipated would have been the way. As a result of improved performance inside the business, the underlying NPAT for the year significantly exceeded our minimum guidance and came in at $9.6 million, and that's allowed us to continue with the dividend payment of $0.003 per share. Right. I will finish at that point. I'll hand over to Sam Cruickshank, who's the Chief Financial Officer.

Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. So as David said, Austin exceeded its guidance, delivering a $9.6 million underlying NPAT. So how did we get there? First of all, there was a standout performance from Asia Pacific. They delivered a 75% increase in EBITDA from last year. But also, there was a marked reduction in our financing costs. So we brought those down from $3.3 million last year to $1.7 million this year. And that was about having a lower average debt position over the course of FY '21 compared to '22 but also having a much better debt facility in place during the year. There's a step change further to that into FY '22. We released an announcement 2 days ago in respect to a new financing arrangement with HSBC, which is a 2-year committed working capital facility. Saves us around 1% per annum on our interest costs, but more importantly, upsizes our facility levels to $35 million, which is an extra $10 million on current facilities. And that reduces our cost of capital. And it also frees up money for further capital investment. From a performance perspective, as David said, the downside was the revenue reduction of 6%, which was all about the Americas, and I'll touch upon that later. Just want to talk about the reconciliation between our underlying and statutory net profit after tax. So Austin reports underlying NPAT because we really see it as a much better proxy to our operational results. And there are 3 key items in that reconciliation that I just want to talk through. So first of all, tax. So from a tax perspective, we look at our underlying net profit after tax with a tax of 30% of our underlying net profit before tax, which is the Australian tax rate. There was a difference between our statutory and underlying tax because -- mostly because of some noncash items that were nondeductible from a tax perspective. And so that's an adjustment. Those items really related to impairments, which I'll talk about now. So we released some information to the ASX last month and took the opportunity to record $6.6 million of impairments. The majority of that related to our consolidation of our Mackay businesses, and that was writing down some goodwill items and also some fixed assets. And the remainder was across the business, small write-downs on inventory and fixed asset items. The next part that I wanted to talk about was our one-off costs. So the $2.7 million there, $1.9 million of that number related to restructuring costs, now pervasive across the entire organization and the business went through a rebaselining of our indirect costs, both in overheads and in people, to really bring us into FY '22 on a leaner footprint to help us deliver success in FY '22 and beyond. And so we did record $1.9 million of restructuring costs from that exercise. And the balance is some one-off costs related to the strategic review and also the move of head office from Brisbane to Perth. Turning now to cash flow. So I think the standout number on this page is the cash from operating activities. So we had an outflow of $8.3 million. And what's that about? That's really 2 key items. Our net working capital was unusually low in 30 June 2020 at $5.4 million. That increased to a more normal level of $19.5 million, which impacted our cash flows. And that was about a few things. That was the revenue that we received in advance has come down from last year. So that was $8.3 million of a decrease. But also, our receivables increased by $13.1 million off the back of some significant billings in May and June for a strong end to the year. That was offset by some decreases in our inventories and some increases in our payables. The other item I just wanted to talk through was that other movements line. So the majority of that difference relates to an investment we've made in long-term customer financing. And so we've grown that facility by $6.6 to $14.6 million at the end of the year. And that's about some strategic relationships that we've built with some of our customers in Chile and in Australia, whereby we provide them with a flexible payment arrangement to secure a long-term contract with them. And it supports our long-term order book. So it's a really exciting development, I think, for Austin and something that we may well look to do a bit more of in the future. And I think with the funding that we've got in place through HSBC, there's a bit more firepower to do that. The last item that I just wanted to talk about in respect to cash flow was dividends. And so the $4 million cash outflow relates actually to 3 dividend payments. We deferred our first half interim dividend of FY 2020 to be paid in September 2020 as a result of some COVID uncertainties. Finally, for me, I just wanted to talk through the regions in terms of the sector analysis. So as both David and I said earlier on, Asia Pacific was the standout. So their revenue was up 19% for the year. But importantly, their EBITDA was up 75% year-on-year. And that was all driven out of Perth and Indonesia, both of which had a really strong performance, very busy workshops and very, very strong performance. As you know and as we mentioned earlier, we went through a consolidation process of our Mackay businesses. And that was about reflecting that we service our -- we supply our new products out of Indonesia and having a more targeted support program around that new product coming out, supported from a team in Mackay, who also assist in supporting the Hunter Valley. Turning now to the Americas. North America had a very soft year. As you know, the first half was particularly soft, and that was about COVID issues. That was about the U.S. election and particularly the U.S. election in the first half. We really saw some challenges coming through for our sales teams that we couldn't get on to mine sites and visit customers. We had -- a number of orders were being held up for decision whilst that U.S. election was underway and the outcome uncertain. So we did see a slight pickup in the second half. But nonetheless, it was a soft year for the U.S. Canada was probably a bright spot for us, and that certainly has improved sort of towards the second half. And I think our opportunities into next year look strong on the back of stronger oil prices. Just a quick number to call out. In respect of last year, in the U.S., we received some government support, $3.2 million. That wasn't available in this year, but that's worth consideration from a comparison perspective. South America, a similar story to North America, a lot of COVID-related issues, a lot of political-related issues. We had a number of fairly active, live tender opportunities in the first half of the year that have been delayed, deferred and, in some cases, withdrawn as a result of COVID and the uncertainties around that. That's had an impact on our business in South America, certainly had an impact on our throughput and our certainty of work going forward. We do see some optimism in the market there going into FY '22. What didn't help also from a results perspective is we did suffer a $1.1 million foreign exchange loss on a long-term contract measured in U.S. dollars in that region, which further impacted our earnings. Certainly, in FY '22, we would look to see much stronger results coming out of that region and believe that should be very possible. I'd like to hand back to David to talk through strategy and outlook.

Okay. Thank you, Sam. So that's the past. Let me talk for a few minutes about the future. And I think before I do that, I might just think about 1 or 2 of the kind of big picture, strategic settings, I guess, of where we are today. I mean, first of all, it's no surprise to anybody that Australia is one of the world's premier mining locations. So we're in the right place. We have some of the best mining service providers and exploration tech businesses in the world in this country and particularly in Perth. So we're surrounded, if you like, by like-minded and high-quality industries in this sector. So it's a real breeding ground, if you like, for quality mining expertise. As I said earlier, we have the world's biggest miners on our doorstep, people who are very important in our world that we're able to rub shoulders with continuously. But another factor is that Austin is a mining product business and not a mining services business. And the reason I make that distinction is that mining products are inherently less risky than mining services. And as a business, what we do is we produce large numbers of very similar products. And so we're very much more of an industrial business than we are a service business. And so our downside risk, if you like, from contract to contract is extremely small because the ability to get things wrong in a manufacturing environment is much less than it is in a service and support environment. And so many of the characteristics we're seeing at the moment associated with labor shortages, labor and price increases, material price fluctuations, all of those are much more controllable and manageable in the short turnaround product environment that we're involved in than a mining services business. So it's quite a different characteristic. And I make that observation simply because there aren't that many mining products businesses around. And so it just requires a little bit of different thinking. However, there is a big dislocation going on at the moment. And like all dislocations, it creates real opportunity. And the first of those dislocations is the application of technology, which is creating real opportunity for businesses that are able to embrace that technology to deal with some of the key factors that we are now seeing the mining companies face up to. And these are factors like constraints on manpower, so not only constraints on the availability of manpower but also a desire by the big miners to reduce the amount of manpower on their operating sites, both from a cost point of view but also from a safety point of view. And the ability to apply technology to aid that process is a key issue for us to be thinking about. Of course, we have a high wage environment here in Australia, and that's a normal matter for us to deal with. And that requires us to be highly efficient. And in improving efficiency, data, the application of data and the insights that data can give us is key to being able to improve the efficiency. And one of the other big drivers of the big mines is decarbonization and the need for them and, in fact, the stated desire for them in all elements of their business to look at how they reduce carbon emissions, and therefore, for us as a company, how we think about, how we aid them in that process of decarbonization. The other big dislocation, of course, at the moment is the issue of logistics. And we're seeing international logistics disrupted in a way that we have never seen in our lifetime, some of that directly associated with COVID, which has reduced the ability of people to move around the planet, but also the dislocations we're seeing in the transport industry and the costs that are now piling up for people who are exporting all over the world. And that gives us real opportunities to think about how we as a business who are located actually absolutely in the right areas, both here in Australia and around the world, how we use that dislocation around logistics to our advantage. So I think there's real opportunity in that application of innovation and technology in our products to deal with those kind of dislocating issues that I talked about before. I think there's an opportunity for Austin to be involved in more products and for us to use our position to inexorably drive barriers to entry in our products much higher. And one of those, which I'll talk about now, is to really drive down the cost of our operations so that we can essentially, if I can quote an old advert, never be beaten on price. And I say that in the clear knowledge that when I say talk about never be beaten on price but also protecting our margins with real zeal. So this is the strategic environment in which we will deliver the business over the next few years. So I'll turn to the next page. And the way that we've laid out the strategy for the business going forward and the way I'll talk to you over the next 2 or 3 years will essentially be led by this image here, if you like, the triangle here, 3 different points in our strategic journey. And it's really, I guess, why I was excited about joining the business and doing the role that I'm doing today as the CEO because there's such a great strategic opportunity for us over the next few years. And not only that is there that opportunity, but there are 3 time horizons associated with that opportunity, so things that will hit the margins and revenue in FY '22, different opportunities for us that will hit margins and revenue in '23 and then longer-term issues beyond that. So I'll turn now to the next slide. And the first of those is about improving the efficiency -- the overall efficiency of the business. And our aim here is to be as efficient manufacturing, design and manufacturing business as we possibly can be. And this is the bit, if you like, that drives us to never have to lose on price but never have to cut our margins in doing so. And I think there's a real opportunity for us to do that. We said in a previous announcement that the cost reduction program would be 85% complete by the end of August. In fact, as of yesterday, we were on target to have 90% of the cost reductions completed by the end of this month, which is only a few days away, of course. And I think that's been a tremendous success. But important in all of that is that, that cost saving has the opportunity now to hit us through the FY '22 year. So it's an immediate opportunity that has been very much in our own grasp. And there is more to do as well. So we have some interesting projects underway to automate the design process and reduce the amount of design time and design hours that get into place. And the ability to use technology and data to automate much of what we currently do in design across the world is a really exciting opportunity and something that I think I'll be able to talk much more about in 6 months' time when we've got that part of our process completed. So that's Phase 1, pretty well complete with some secondary programs of work going on now but very much an FY '22 story. I'll move on to the next page now. And this is about us now employing advanced manufacturing in our business. And I think that one of the things that I saw carrying out the strategic review is that we -- as a manufacturing business, we produced 400 or 500 truck bodies a year, but we essentially produce those truck bodies as if we're only ever going to make one. There's -- we saw immediately there was a real opportunity to moving the business into flow manufacturing. So that's using the kind of techniques that were used in a car plant or even that was used in Austal for making large ships to make products sequentially in a production line-type environment. And typically, if you set up that type of flow manufacturing, you can cut labor costs by between 25% and 40%, so reduce labor cost by 25% to 40%. And given that labor is the biggest component of our product cost, about 60% of our product cost, that's going to have a mighty impact on the cost base of the business. At the beginning of the strategic review, I brought in an expert in this kind of flow manufacturing to help us think about and design a new manufacturing process for both Kewdale and Batam. That exercise is complete. We recently announced that we'd signed up to $6.5 million investment in reequipping the Kewdale and Batam facilities to go into flow manufacturing. We expect to have Kewdale finished by the first quarter of the next calendar year, so first quarter of next year, and Batam a few months after that. So the impact of that will be lower cost, significantly lower cost, more consistency, which relates to quality, and much improved safety because we can design safety into the manufacturing process. And a byproduct of that, which I know is a hot topic around Australia at the moment, is that flow manufacturing does allow you to reduce the level of labor required with -- and also, in many instances, reduce the skill level of the labor that you need in manufacturing. So it allows us to deal with some of the constraints that we are seeing coming through, particularly in Perth at the moment. So the intention is, as I say, to report on that later on in the year and early into next year and -- but very much a benefit that we see coming into the FY '23 year. So we'll see a little bit of that here in FY '22. But essentially, that's going to be a benefit in FY '23. And just to finish off, we did say in our previous announcement that, that $6.5 million investment would pay back, by the time we've finished the implementation progress -- program would pay back in less than a year. I'll go to the third element of this, and this is something I think I'm going to talk on in more detail in the future, so I won't dwell on now, given what we've talked about in the Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the strategy. But this is really about the application of technology and innovation to our business. We have set up a new technology and innovation group, took one of our most senior general managers here in Australia, put them in charge of a new innovation group. And they're up and running now and working on a pipeline of new capabilities, new technologies and new products that we can make available to our customers to deal with those kind of dislocation needs that I was talking about earlier. And indeed, we've already presented our pipeline of technologies to 4 -- 2 mining companies actually and 2 mining services companies to get them involved in understanding which are the most impactful for their businesses in the short term. And I think this is going to become a big part of the differentiation of our business going forward. I'm not -- as I said, I'm not going to go into any detail about that now. I think that's something that we will talk about more broadly in the future. So that's the end of the strategic section, and I'll just finish off by talking about outlook quickly. So if I turn over to the next page. I was pleased -- you remember that one of the comments I made at the beginning was that we were suffering share liquidity issues in the business, and that was one of the issues that we wanted to deal with. Interesting statistic that I got last night was that in the last 7 weeks, we've turned over 179 million shares in the company, and that's roughly equal to the number of shares turned over in the previous 23 months. And I say that simply because it really kind of gives you an indication of the significantly improved liquidity in the business, the -- I think, an increasing number of, familiar to me at least, institutions coming into the register and greater interest in the business as well. So that's been a good initial outcome. We've talked about the cost base optimization. I put 85 -- there's 85% on the chart there. But actually, yesterday, as I said, we're closer to, in fact, just over 90% on for the rest of this year. As Sam said, very strong performance in Asia and Pacific -- Asia Pacific, which we're seeing signs of continuing this year. But very importantly, signs of improvement in both North and South America as well. And they were a drag on performance last year, and we're expecting that to reverse itself this year. I'll move on to the next slide. In the medium term, the investment is underway, $6.5 million investment underway in advanced manufacturing. That will be in place early next year, as I said. And funded from -- will be funded from about $10 million of property that we have held for sale both in Australia and across the world. So straightforward for us to fund that investment. And then, of course, essentially repay itself back 12 months after we've completed the investment. And then just on the subject of guidance, I'm not planning to give any specific guidance at this point in the year. I'm familiar -- I guess I'm responding to the fact that there are some big changes going on inside the organization at the moment, big investments going on and big changes in our cost base underway. And we just want to see how those settle out before we think about the full year for the business. This is also a relatively rapid book and bill-type business. So I think getting a little bit into the year before we talk about full year guidance is prudent and reasonable. However, so far, things are looking positive, and I'm sure it's a subject that we'll talk about in a little bit more detail next time we get together on a group call. So that's me bringing everything to an end, and only now just a question of whether there's any Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Philip Pepe with Blue Ocean Equities.

Well done on a good result in some pretty tough conditions on the other side of the world. Just on that expanding into North America while conditions have been challenging, I guess perhaps with you coming on board, David, I would have thought it would have been an opportunity to downsize a region that hasn't been performing in recent times, but you've chosen to invest. So what's the light at the end of the tunnel? What attracts you to that size or that part of the world given how strong Australia and Indonesia has been, the investment offshore in what's still somewhat challenging conditions over there, I would have thought? What's the light at the end of the tunnel?

Yes. Okay. Thanks for the question. You and I have not met before. So I'd love to get on a call at some stage, but thank you for the research that you and your group put out. It's a good question about North America. North America has been a good performer for us in the past. Austin has an extremely good brand name in the United States, and that's always a tough thing to get. There's a good industry in the United States, particularly up in Canada, but Arizona and Nevada as well. And we see there's a large number of truck orders in that market, and we could get reasonable penetration there as well. So I think it's a really good market for us. But it has changed. And so we have to respond to that change. And we are -- you probably noticed that we've talked a lot about -- I talked a lot about manufacturing innovation, advanced manufacturing in Australia and Indonesia. I think the solution to improve things dramatically in the U.S. is similar but different. And it isn't -- and what I mean by that is that it's quite a dispersed market in the United States, all the way from Canada down to the Mexican border, really and, in fact, arguably, over the Mexican border into Central and South America. So we have to think a little bit about what the right manufacturing strategy is over there because the product that we build, it's a large product by volume but not particularly high value. So logistics costs of moving large truck bodies around the continental U.S.A. is a very high proportion of our cost base. And so we're working on a strategy, which I'm not ready to talk about yet, but we're working on strategy internally about how do we better serve from a manufacturing point of view, how do we better serve the U.S. market and be much more efficient about the way that we do that. And I think we have that strategy reasonably clear now. We're just working through the details of it. So the conclusion of that is I -- Phil, is I do see the U.S. as being important. It's a sophisticated market like Australia, but it has some slightly different challenges to what we have in Australia. And we need to respond to those, and we will do. We're working on that at the moment, and it's something that we'll talk about, I guess, over the next few months.

Yes. Makes sense. And I look forward to meeting you when Gladys lets us Sydneysiders out of the house hopefully sometime this year.

Sometime in the distant future, yes.

Your next question comes from James Lennon with Petra Capital.

David and Sam, just 2 questions from me. Firstly, you mentioned your order book. I'm keen to know the composition of that in that, is it mostly Australian orders you've got there? Or is it sort of spread more across the globe?

I think it's reasonably well spread. I don't have a -- it's a good question, James. I don't have a breakdown of it, but it's reasonably spread across the globe, I think. I don't know whether, Sam, you've got any more details?