Austin Engineering Limited (ANG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Austin Engineering H1 2022 Results Briefing. [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 taking the time to call in this morning. I know it's a pretty rough day on the markets. But hopefully, through this presentation, we can give you some enthusiasm and optimism about this company at least. Now this is my second presentation as CEO of Austin, but first as CEO, what I'd like to think of as Austin 2.0 has reenergized and revitalized development of a 40-year-old business. I was a Director of Austin for 2 years before I took over as CEO, and that gave me some really good insights into the strength and capability of this business and how well it is positioned globally. And the features of that, that I would outline would be that this is a business with a very strong brand, both here in Australia as Austin or John's Engineering in the United States as WesTech but also in other countries around the world. And that's an important feature. Brand is always something that is difficult to create and maintain. We're a market leader in some of the products that we build, particularly in truck trays around -- pretty well throughout the world. We also build products that are essentially through the cycle-type products. Our products are not linked to capital investment in the mining sector. But really, they are wear products, which are used continuously and replaced continuously in the production environment, so much more stable through those cycles. And as I said before, the position -- the business is positioned very strongly globally. However, I have -- I believed as a Director of the business, and I'm now very clear about is that there is a lot of latent capacity inside this business, a lot of opportunity for us to grow the business. And I really believe that as a Nonexecutive Director. And the only thing that's really changed, since I've taken over as CEO over the last 6 to 7 months, has been that latent capacity, I think, massively underestimated just how big the opportunity here was. Today, I'm going to talk about 2 things. One is the success of our first phase of Austin 2.0, and I will show you that in very graphic and clear financial terms. And the second thing I'm going to talk to is really to allude to the next phase of development for the business. It's already well underway about how we exploit our brand, our geographic position and fundamentally, how we use that to grow revenue. So I'm going to turn to the next slide. So for those of you who are looking at the presentation that was put onto the ASX this morning, it's Slide #3. For those of you who can see the webcast slide is up in front of you. Gareth will cover the financial statements in some detail in a moment, but I'd just like to call a couple of things out of the financial numbers, just to start with. The first is that we've achieved an EBITDA of $11.5 million for the first half of the year. That's a 14.3% EBITDA margin. And if you look at that graphic on the right-hand side of the slide that's showing at the moment, that slide shows first half profitability of this business for 6 consecutive years. And you will see that there's been a significant step change in first half performance in the business as a result of and a direct result of the fundamental changes we've made to the cost base and the competitiveness of the business in a short period of time that we've been operating Austin 2.0. You can see we've gone from an average of $5 million or $6 million EBITDA in the first half to $11.5 million we're reporting today in the first half. The second thing is that the net profit after tax of $6.7 million. That's nearly 2.5x the net profit after tax achieved in the first half of last year on a statutory basis. The third point I'd like to mention is that the -- you will see that net debt has increased, but that is as a result of significant investments that we've made in the business primarily in work-in-progress associated with a very strong revenue performance that we expect to see in the second half, some increases in steel stocks as a result of making -- in order to make sure the business is protected from supply chain logistic-type issues and some capital investment that we flagged some months ago. So really, the business is now gearing up for a much stronger second half in terms of revenue and a stronger FY '23 as well. You'll see also that we've maintained our dividend at $0.002 per share, which is the same dividend as we declared for the first half of FY '21. I'm going to turn now to what is Page #10, if you're reading the presentation issued to the ASX this morning, Page #3 in the presentation we've got on the screen. And this just gives you a little bit more detail around the outperformance that we have seen in this business in the first half of Austin 2.0. You can see on the left-hand side of that graphic, that we've gone from a recent history of EBITDA margins in the 4 years of around about 10.5% in the last couple of years and achieved a 14.3% EBITDA margin in the first half. And again, that clearly is down to significant cost optimization program that has been undertaken inside the organization. Also, I'm really pleased that we have now got the return on equity of the business up to 15%. So that takes the first half profitability of the business -- net profitability of the business in double-digit for the full year. So that's the way we've done that calculation. But the 15% return on equity, I think, is a very significant number because it demonstrates a key feature of this business and that it's a low CapEx business. We run pretty standard factories without highly complex or expensive equipment in site. And so the capital base of the business is really pretty low. And our investment needs, our capital investment needs over future years is pretty subdued as well. And that allows us to get what a very strong return on equity and an opportunity to get that return on equity significantly higher over the next period as well. So we're going to move on now to the financial results. And I'd like to introduce you to Gareth Jones, who's the Chief Financial Officer. Gareth is new to Austin Engineering, joined in November of last year and took over when Sam Cruickshank stepped down. I've known Gareth for about 15 years, has worked for me previously, and I was very pleased that I was able to draw him into Austin several months ago. I have a very high regard for Gareth. He is a very professional determined and capable person. But I remember when I first met him about 15 years ago, and he's done something that I've never had the courage to do which was to pick his family up -- give up his job in the United Kingdom, pick his family up and arrive in Australia without a job, without a home and with, I think, a couple of nights booked in a hotel. And that set a great deal to me about the determination of him and his family to do something like that. And I've seen exactly that kind of determination in his work over the last 15 years or so. So this is very much a baptism of fire for him as we change many things in the organization. But I'll hand you over to Gareth Jones now.

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I know David touched on a couple of these points. But just before I start, I just want to just point out that all the numbers that we reported are statutory for continuing operations and the prior corresponding period figures have been restated for any discontinued operations. So I just want to make sure that, that's clear to everyone before we start. If we just run through the results for the half year, so as David mentioned, EBITDA of $11.5 million, it's not only exceeded the original market guidance by 15% that we previously issued, but it's also up on the prior corresponding period by 76%. So it's a significant improvement on prior period. This improvement has been achieved probably through 2 main factors. I think the first is by eliminating any activities, particularly in the Asia Pacific region that have not been considered to be profitable and consolidation of some of the eastern states, operations on Mackay was consolidated into AUSTBORE. This, however, has had the negative impact on revenue, only slightly, taking that down from $85.8 million to $80.1 million, but certainly has helped to improve the underlying profitability of the business. Second, I think the most significant factor is what -- again, what David just alluded to, is the implementation of the cost reduction initiative, which is across all of the business units in the group. This has been achieved in a very, very short time frame. The implementation didn't really start until the start of the financial year, but already, we've implemented that and starting to see the benefits of those cost reductions coming through in the financials. The full benefit is circa $11 million on an annualized basis. So as you move into the second half of the year, we're going to see a much stronger benefit from those cost-reduction initiatives that we've implemented. These actions have led to a significant increase in EBITDA margin percentage now up to 14.3%. So that's an admirable improvement and something that I've certainly been impressed with, as I said, having -- as David mentioned, having only joined the organization in November to see such a turnaround in improvement in such a short space of time, it inspires you and fills you with confidence that the second half is going to be equally as strong, if not better. There's some other points on the table I just want to draw your attention to. You'll see that depreciation and amortization is reduced. Now this is because we have placed some of our operations or discontinued some of our operations and now those assets are held for sale. And I'll talk a little bit more about that on the subsequent slide. We've also benefited from a reduction in our interest costs. You'll be aware that we've refinanced our financing facilities with HSBC. Now this was completed and implemented in August last year. This facility has not only increased our debt capacity from $25 million to $35 million, but it's also taken about 25% out of the interest costs that we were incurring previously, which is a significant benefit to us. The final point I wanted to draw your attention to is the tax expense. Now we've got -- we're obviously operating in different jurisdictions around the world. Our effective tax rate is 21%, which is an advantage to us. We continue to utilize losses that we have around the group as well. So the actual cash tax -- net tax expense that we incurred was $1.5 million, as you see on the cash flow statement. So we're in a pretty good position from a tax perspective. And those losses will continue forward as we go through the second half of the year and, obviously, into FY '23. In summary, I think -- and again, David has already mentioned the number. I just wanted to really just emphasize the significant uplift in performance. And the net profit after tax improvement of 202% is certainly commendable. I'll just move on to the next slide, which is cash flow. You'll see that from the slide that we had an operating cash outflow for the period of $5.1 million, and there's a number of reasons, again, which David has already alluded to, which have contributed to this use of cash. The biggest number on there is the increase in working capital of $30 million. Now this is largely being driven by inventory, and this is all about being prepared for the second half of the year. Work-in-progress has increased by $7.8 million, and that's across all the business units. And this is to support the high levels of activity that we're going to see in the second half of the year. We've also invested a further $2 million in additional steel stocks. And this is really to underpin this growth and to make sure we're protecting our operations and the cost base from the ongoing supply chain risks that we're all aware of. Also, as we've previously advised, the business was restructured following the strategic review that was undertaken. So we've actually incurred cash costs of about $1.6 million to actually implement that cost-reduction program. And then the balance of the $13 million earnings just a net movement in debtors and creditors is just a small number. In terms of the other numbers on that table I just want to draw your attention to. Again, David has mentioned that we've invested further capital in terms of how we deliver the Austin 2.0 strategy. So further $2.6 million has been invested in manufacturing efficiency. So this will reduce costs going forward and also leads to further improvements in profitability. And particularly as we head into FY '23, by the time all those manufacturing changes have been implemented, we will be predominately into the second half of the year. I also mentioned the new HSBC finance facility earlier. One of the key points that I just wanted to highlight was that we've actually increased our net debt level by $9.1 million, and that's predominantly been to fund these investments that we've just spoken about, and this is absolutely essential. I can't stress that enough to just ensure that we maintain this level of performance throughout the second half of the year. So certainly, well thought through, well-considered investments in inventory. And lastly, on this slide, I just wanted to just point out that another significant cash outflow with the final dividend for FY '21 that was paid in September for $1.6 million. I'll just move on to the slide on property portfolio. Again, I mentioned earlier that we've discontinued a number of operations. And you can see how that's affected our property portfolio from the slide. We now have a number of properties in Australia and South America that are held for sale. The 2 properties in Australia actively being marketed at the moment with local real estate agents on the East Coast, and discussions and interest on those properties is progressing well. In South America, literally in the last week or so, we've actually concluded and settled the sale of the property in Colombia and the proceeds have also been received. So we're now in the process of just settling all of the outstanding costs associated with that operation, and we'll wrap that up very, very shortly. The other property for sale in Chile has been sold. That sale is completed, and that should be completed within the next month or so if everything goes according to plan. So pretty much, I think it's fair to say that by the end of the financial year, all of the properties that we have held for sale and certainly the material ones there will actually be sold and those operations [ contribute wonder ]. So that concludes the summary of the financial results. So I'd just like to hand back over to David who is going to provide an update on the global strategy.

Thanks, Gareth. I know a lot of you will be thinking, well, that's good, but what about the future? And we've seen some tremendous step forward in the performance of the business over what's been a very short period of time, over the last 6 or 7 months. But I think -- I feel that, that's very much the base on which we will see much stronger growth, in fact, as we go forward. There's so much potential in this business. And one of the features I really enjoy about this business personally is it's such a fast-moving business as well. And the reason why that's important is that when we make changes to this business, we can see the impact of those changes really quite quickly in the financial results. Some of you will know I was involved in the shipbuilding business previously. And that was quite different and that it took several years for changes in the cost base or changes in revenue or deliveries to really impact the financial results. And so it's relatively slow moving. In this business, we see those changes impact very, very quickly. I was fortunate enough to bring another colleague of mine into Austin Engineering at the beginning of this process as Chief Operating Officer, guy called Graham Backhouse. So I knew back in my BAE Systems days in the United Kingdom and also worked at Austal for a period of time. He's manufacturing and project engineering expert. He's one of the best Chief Operating Officers anywhere in the world that I have known or worked with, and I'm really pleased to have him at Austin. He made a comment to me about 2 weeks into his tenure in the role when he said to me, "You know what, there's money lying all over the floor in this business." And what he meant by that was that there are opportunities everywhere, both for revenue up and for cost down. And I think the only thing that he would probably adjust if he was to think about that statement again was that there was even more money lying on the floor than we anticipated when we first saw it -- when he came in. We have the makings of what successful companies have. And that is, as I mentioned before, a very strong brand, a broad market in solid home markets, particularly in the United States and in Australia. We have a good cost base in our business. And in particular, I'd point out the fact that we have an established, very capable, low-cost manufacturing facility in Indonesia that is increasingly becoming part of our delivery system around the world and brings low-cost manufacturing to our operations in the United States and into Australia. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. And we have products which are known to be the best in the world. And when I reflect back on previous businesses I've been involved in, if you can get that nexus between market-leading products but have a low-cost base compared to the competition then you really are in a very strong and competitive position. And in my last company, when we managed to get to that position where we were clear that we have the best products in the world and the lowest cost base, we then went on to win just about everything in the commercial market that we competed for afterwards. And I think that's exactly the same position that we are heading for in Austin. So our strategy is about how we leverage all that capability, and we get outsized growth in the business over the next few years. And I want to be clear that from a personal point of view, I'm not in this to see this business grow at a modest and reasonable rate. We are all in this to see outsized growth and exceptional growth for this business over the next few years, as we allow it to fulfill its real potential. I'll turn now to the next page, and this is a slide that we used very early on in the journey that's the Austin 2.0 journey. And we talked about building a very strong base in the business, and that was Phase 1 and Phase 2, about business consolidation and efficiency and manufacturing enhancement. We've made tremendous progress on that. As Gareth said earlier, it was a very fast implementation of the efficiency, business consolidation and efficiency activities. We've closed down facilities overseas and in Australia really quickly. We've rightsized the organization extremely quickly, and that was an activity undertaken by Graham, the Chief Operating Officer, and something he's really moved very quickly on it. That's allowed us to see those cost savings come through even in the first half and, of course, more strongly in the second half. And we're making great progress on the manufacturing efficiency activity as well with the first layers of that going into the Australian business in the next few weeks. I'll turn now to the next slide. And this is really -- what I really want to -- if I can achieve something here, I'd like to leave you with the impression of the enormous opportunity that is in front of this business. And we put this graphic together to really give an impression of the opportunity that sits inside this business. As I said earlier, we're a market-leading business for truck trays in North America and in Australia. And if you dwell on the market data that you can see there, you will see that Australia has nearly 50% of the replacement market for truck trays in the world. There are about 21,000 truck trays in the world, and they get replaced regularly because they wear out and they get damaged. And nearly half of that activity is in Australia, worldwide activities in Australia. So that means we're in the right place because we're in Australia. The second biggest market in the world is North America, the United States and Canada with about -- with nearly 20% of the world market of replacement truck trays every year. And we have the leading brand in the United States, the WesTech brand in the United States and Canada, and that also says that that's a very strong home market for us. So about 70% of the world market just in those 2 areas as well with access to South America through Chile and in Asia through Indonesia. But it's not just about markets, it's also about products and the cost base which leads to competitiveness, as I've said before. And most of our competitors around the world are small and local. There's no other international global players in the truck tray business and to a lesser extent, in the bucket business, but certainly in the truck tray business. They tend to compete by being local. Australia is by far the most sophisticated market in the world, very focused on efficiency and quality. And that's a real benefit for us because it drives our R&D and it drives our development focus around our home customers here in Australia, and then we can take those very high-quality products and use them in other parts of the world. So that's proving to be a real benefit for us. In the last few months, we have redesigned some of our key products to deal with some market gaps that we've had. And we're now very clear that we've got all of our products at market-leading positions. And that's not just rhetoric, we've looked at what our competitors are doing. We've looked at those designs. We've analyzed those in detail, and we've made sure that our own products are highly competitive and better than anything we see from the competition. So that's a positive move and something we've achieved in the last few months. The second part of that, which I talked about earlier, is the importance of Indonesia, the low-cost center in Indonesia. And I'll give you some context about how important that is. If I look at Canada, which is our most expensive in the oil sands area of Canada is our most expensive operating region and costs in Canada are around about $120 production costs to around about $120 a production hour. In Indonesia, the same production hour cost us around $5. And that's a huge opportunity to leverage that facility. And although transport costs around the world are very high at the moment, it's actually cheaper to transport equipment from Indonesia to Canada than it is from Central U.S. up into Canada. So we not only get a price advantage on labor, but we also get a price advantage on transport, which is not intuitive when you kind of look at the map in front of you. So we're now able to offer U.S. and Australian designed quality products with an Asian cost base to different locations around the world. And in the last 5 months, we've gone from thinking about that as a good idea to actually making that happen. I'll now turn to the next slide, and this is similar kind of data, but it's talking about Australia as a market rather than the world as a market. And I'm using this just to give you a little bit of an example. You can see that on the West Coast of Australia, we have about 40% of the market in WA, but relatively small part of the market on the eastern side -- on the eastern states in Queensland and New South Wales, an average about 8% or 9% market share over there. So when I talked about redesigning some of our products to meet the market needs, that's exactly what we've done, but with Queensland and New South Wales in mind. And there are different markets over there, coal-orientated markets, but different types of markets. But we've also redesigned the products so that they can be made in Indonesia. They can be shipped down to the eastern states and final assembly in containers. So very large pieces of equipment that can be containerized, shipped down to the eastern states, assembled there and then moved into those markets, which has given us a huge cost competitiveness advantage in that market. And the result of all of that is that in the last 2 or 3 months, we've won 4 out of 5 of our major competitions on the eastern states with our #1 competitor over there. And that's a situation which has reversed completely from what we would have seen only 6 or 9 months ago. And just to be clear, we've only really just started in terms of the importance of that going forward. So I think all of this leads to what I think will be a very strong revenue improvement opportunity for this business over the next 6 months and well into FY '23 as well. I'm going to finish now by looking at outlook, and I know this is an important feature for many of you. I didn't give guidance early in my tenure in this business because I wanted to spend some time really looking at the business and understanding how it worked before I put my name to guidance, but we're now in a position where we can give some guidance going forward. We gave half year guidance at the AGM and beat that guidance twice. That got us to the $11.5 million EBITDA. We're now in a position to give guidance for the full year. The guidance is that we are confident that our revenue base will be higher than last year. So we were $203 billion of revenue last year, and we've said consistently that we think revenue will be higher in the full year this year than last year. And the evidence for that is we've also said that we've achieved and we're 35% ahead in the order book on a prior corresponding period basis to December of last year. So the order book is looking strong. And I can tell you that, that strength has continued into the early part of this year. So we've had a very strong January and February period for order intake and all the signs are that, that will continue, and that's already building a strong revenue base for FY '23. We have -- we are guiding that full year EBITDA will be a record level for many years of circa $30 million for the full year. Bear in mind, FY '21 was $12.7 million on a statutory basis. And full year NPAT will be over $18 million which is a comparison to a $3.3 million statutory performance in the last financial year. So a very solid step forward in all of those numbers. Against that guidance, we've provided just some context about the basis of that going forward. I know there's a lot of discussion in Australia about labor shortages and labor risks and those sorts of things. We're not really so affected by that. It's not an easy market, but it's not as stressful as those that are operating in the Pilbara region, for instance, or those sorts of areas. We're in factories in the middle of major cities, which tends to make things a little bit easier from a labor point of view. We are also not heavily affected by input-cost variations. This is a business I often describe this business as one where we win an order every single day of the week. And as a result -- and our delivery time -- order-to-delivery time is about 3 to 5 months, typically. So our ability to reprice -- in what is a pretty elastic market, our ability to reprice for input price changes, both around labor and material costs, is pretty broad. So we don't really get caught by those things. I do have a concern about what may happen in Western Australia as a result of COVID-19 and the opening of the borders on the 3rd of March. So we will see how that goes. We've obviously had a lot of time to put as many preventative supportive measures in place as we can. And certainly, we've seen some of the relaxation of rules on definition of close contact and casual contact being relaxed is actually going to support maintaining the business much more than we've perhaps seen in the eastern states. So whilst that is a risk, we've had a lot of time to prepare for that. The last thing is we have -- we've made that statement on the basis of FX rates that were due at the end of -- sorry, that were relevant at the end of the last period. Obviously, this is a business with an international revenue base and strong revenues out of the United States and Chile, in particular, and so adverse changes in FX rates can sometimes have significant impacts on the business. So everything I say is predicated on the basis of FX rates at the end of FY -- sorry, the end of the first half of FY '22. And then the last point I will make is that at this point, all of the indicators suggest to me the strength that we're seeing going into the second half of this year will continue into FY '23. And obviously, we'll update that as we go through the rest of the year. Now that brings my presentation to a close, and I think we'll move to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from James Lennon from Petra Capital.

David and Gareth, can you hear me?

Yes, we can, Jim.

Well done on the great results. I had a couple of questions. Firstly, just a quick one on the tax. You're saying the effective tax rate going forward 21%. That's a bit lower than what I would have thought. Historically, you've sort of been more around the high 20s. Is that sustainable, 21%, is that what we should now be aiming for?

I think it's reasonable to assume 21% at this point in time, Jim. Obviously, it's going to depend on what profits you're making in which jurisdictions as to how that moves because the underlying tax rate in each is different. But I think that's a fair assessment for the time being, yes.

Okay. Great. And the second one was just on the Americas. So quite a good turnaround there in the margin. Just wondering how much of that improvement is sort of driven by the market's recovering post-COVID and how much of that are you putting in some efficiency measures?

Certainly, the U.S. had -- we did some very significant efficiency changes or cost base changes in the United States as well. They reduced the overhead expenditure, for instance, by overhead labor and nonlabor by about 40%, which was in line with the rest of the group, so a very significant change for them. That's definitely flowed through into the numbers in the first half. But of course, we've also seen revenue lifting in the United States as well, but that revenue lift sort of came during the year. So we've really seen that accelerate in the latter part of the first half. So you've definitely got a combination of those 2 impacts there. I think my reading of the U.S., though, is that cost base down, and we'll get the full effect of that in the second half, but they're going to have a really strong revenue second half as well and having a strong order intake period as well, and have managed to put some repricing through on some of their products as well. And as a result of that, I think they're set very strong for the second half.

That's great. And so just for North America there, is it reasonable to assume that, that segment could do a margin similar to what Australia does? Or is there still sort of issues there with maturity, distance that sort of prevents that to being sort of on par with Australia?

Yes. So it never has achieved the same profitability levels that we see in Australia. And obviously, internally, our target is to get to the same kind of levels. I haven't seen anything yet, Jim, which makes me believe that there is a kind of structural difference between the United States and Australia that says we can't achieve those -- we can't achieve the kind of margins that we achieved here. So I have a degree of confidence, but I can't prove that at this point. I have degree of confidence that we can get margins up nearer to Australian levels than what we've seen previously, and that's a combination of cost base volume but also pricing impacts. And we've definitely seen opportunities to get quite significant pricing improvement in a number of markets in the U.S.

Right. All right. And just one last one, if I can. Just looking at WesTech's results earlier in the week, they mentioned that their order book similar to yours is up almost 100%, but they're also seeing quite an increase in demand for spare parts because of the delays in terms of getting that supply chain issues getting that equipment to the end customer. Just wondering whether that's an opportunity for you, is a very strong demand for equipment that new equipment obviously delayed. Does that affect you in terms of demand for your products?

We're stronger in the replacement market than we are the brand new market. So typically Caterpillar, Komatsu, Hitachi will try to sell a piece of equipment, whether tray or a bucket on it, their own tray or bucket on it when they deliver it. They don't -- that doesn't happen so much in Australia because the miners here are very focused on efficiency, and so they want to customize product. But nonetheless, typically, they will try and sell that. So a large proportion of other goods, if you like, going to the market with an OEM piece -- OEM bucket or tray on it. But of course -- so our market tends to -- whilst we're strong in that market, we're much stronger in the replacement market as those components wear out, where a great deal of that equipment is produced by companies like ours, which have customized products. So the corollary of that is that if the product -- if the yellow goods stay in the market longer and there are more replacements of those equipment, that's net positive for us.

Your next question comes from Trent Barnett from Euroz.

Sorry, I just missed the numbers on how much asset sales are you expecting in the second half in terms of...

Trent, how much what?

Like the dollar number of asset sales in the second half from property, I missed the number, I think.

I think pretty much all of it tracked. We're expecting everything that's there will actually conclude through the second half, only one which might and it's a minor one might be the Peru one. It's -- it may take a while longer, but all the other I'm expecting to conclude by June.

Okay. Great. And just on CapEx...

One concluded, which is Colombia be already including which is Chile. We've still got Mackay.

Mackay. And there's strong appetite for Mackay. So there's no reason why that can't be done as well. So all the 3 material ones, there should all be placed by June definitely.

Okay. Great. And just in terms of CapEx, the number in the second half or the full year for CapEx roughly?

It's going to be a similar sort of number because we're still progressing the investment in advanced manufacturing. So I think you'll probably see a similar number in the second half.

Your next question comes from [ Patrick Moore from KMP Supor. ]

In the longer run, what percentage of sales are you aiming to devote to R&D please?

It's a good question. We do a lot of -- if you think about our business, our business is a customized product business. So much of what we do fits into an R&D-type bucket. So if you think about -- what will often happen is a customer will come to us and they'll say, we've got so and so truck or so and so excavator, it's got a bucket on that. But we want a slightly larger bucket. We want a slightly smaller bucket. We want a bucket that's capable of operating more effectively in these types of ground conditions. And can you design us a bucket for that? Now if you take that into account, a very large -- we're probably -- I don't know, Patrick, I haven't done that number, but a pretty significant part of our engineering resource, which is a reasonably significant part of our cost base would be associated with product development-type activities. So reasonably large in this company. And certainly, I think I mentioned a couple of times through my presentation, the absolute focus on making sure we've got a leading product and a leading cost base. And so we have done a lot of work in the first half, for instance, on making sure that where we've got some gaps in that leading product desire, but those get fixed pretty quickly. And that would have been R&D-type expenditure. So significant, but I can't put a number to it.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Neil Watson from Petra Capital.

A couple of quick questions for you. The implied revenue uplift in the second half, which geography or geographies do you see that's coming from? And the second question is sort of more philosophical, I guess. Where do you see the longer-term EBITDA margins in this business once Phase 1 and Phase 2 are done?

Yes. So there was strong revenue performance in all parts of the business going forward. So in all those -- in all 4 jurisdictions, we'll see a strong uplift in performance in the second half compared to the first half. The biggest jumps, however, will be in North America and South America fundamentally, because in FY '21, they were the 2 regions that were heavily COVID affected. So we're seeing a strong recovery, if you like, of those businesses back to their normal levels of revenue. So if you did it on an FY '21, FY '22 basis, that standouts will be North America and South America. If you look at it on a first half to second half basis, all 4 regions will see significant revenue growth in the second half. As far as EBITDA margins are concerned, so I don't want this to be seen as guidance or anything of that nature. But I do believe that a business of this type can achieve around 20% EBITDA margins. In fact, I believe that a business of this type absolutely should be achieving those kind of levels. And if I think about how quickly we've gone from 10% to 14% without on lower levels of revenue and on not having full year amortization of the cost savings, the indications are that we're moving in that direction.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Singleton for closing remarks.

Thank you all. I know it's been a difficult morning as I opened up by saying on the market today. And I also know that there's a number of people all coming out with the results at the same time. So thank you for dialing in this morning and listening and look forward to talking to you in about 6 months' time.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.