Austin Engineering Limited (ANG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Austin Engineering FY 2024 Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions]. On today's call, we have Mr. David Singleton, CEO and Managing Director; and Mr. David Bonomini, CFO. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. David Singleton.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody. It's David Singleton here. Thank you for so many of you calling in this morning. We appreciate that. I think looking at the numbers, it's a record number of people both on the webcast and on the dial-in this morning. So I very much appreciate the support that you've given the business, in my period at least over the last 3 years and also more recently as well, of course. I am very pleased, of course, to present what by any measure is an outstanding set of financial and operational results for the business this year. It does really make my task and David Bonomini's task who's with me this morning much easier, of course, when we have such a solid set of results. As you know, this has been a 3-year journey for us as we've gone through our Austin 2.0 strategy, which continues to these days. But I just thought I kind of dwell on that a little bit before we get into the meat of the results. I'm a great believer that if you get the combination of good products, your cost base and your customer involvement correct then you'll develop a very strong business. And I think that, that is where we are today. We provide products that give performance enhancements to our customers. It allows them to run their operations more efficiently and more effectively than if they're using OEM products, for instance. We've been -- and then combining that with we've been investing and pushing very hard so that we can produce products at the bottom end of the cost curve. That gives us, of course, margin opportunity. And then we've been, more recently over the last year or so, investing more in customer support and those relationships with customers across the globe. When you get that combination of things right then you can become very hard to beat. And you combine all of that with a good brand that Austin has, not only here in Australia but overseas then you really have got the makings of a strong long-term and developing business. And I've said to many of you over the years, Austin does have a very strong brand overseas. I would argue in some of our sectors, the strongest brand for customized products in the mining industry, both in the Americas through Asia and of course, here in Australia. So you get that combination right and it gives you the opportunity to grow revenue, to grow margins, and develop the business as you run forward. Nothing, however, proves a point more than a good set of financial results, and I hope that you'll agree with me that that's what we delivered today. So I've got no intention of going through all the slides today, which I'm sure will be a great relief to you. David Bonomini, the CFO, and Vince D'Rozario, the Chief Operating Officer, and I are coming over to Sydney and Melbourne for -- during next week. So we're over Monday to Thursday of next week, and that will give us an opportunity to talk to you in more detail about some of the things that we skip over today. So I'd like you now for those of you who are following us on the pack, I'd like now to turn to Page 4 if you would, which is a summary of the financial results. So if you're on Page 4, as you know, we had a very strong order intake in FY '23. We ended that year with a multiyear high in our order book. And as a result of that, we've ended up with a multiyear high on our revenue base, $313 million across the business, which is up 21% from the previous year. Pleasingly, this increase in revenue has been broad based and across all of the business units, both in the Americas and here in Australasia as well. And I'm very pleased that, we took early steps a couple of years ago to bring increased capacity onto the line, and that has been a major part of our ability to deliver that revenue -- increased revenue that we've seen through the year. Underlying EBITDA result from all of that was $46.6 million a very impressive 49% from the previous year. We have shown that number as an underlying number. Interestingly, the underlying brings it down. It was actually $47.7 million but brings it down to $46.6 million because we backed out an FX gain that we got in the year for comparative purposes because we have an FX loss in the previous year. Our statutory result for EBITDA is even starker up 135% to the previous year. So that's using the $47.7 million number. And I think it's really testament to all of the hard work that's going on for the last 3 years on improving the efficiency base, both in manufacturing and in procurement of our operations around the world. All of this has led to an underlying impact of $31 million which was up 71% from FY '23, within guidance of course. And on a statutory basis, again, even more impressive up over 3x to what we achieved last year. The key however, and I know we've had this discussion with a number of shareholders over the last year has been the importance of operating cash flow. This is the year we had a good -- we had a reasonable year I think last year in operating cash flow, but this is the year where the operating cash flow has really strengthened to the kind of levels that we will expect to see I think in the future or conversion levels that we expect to see in the future. So operating cash flow was $36.6 million. David will explain that in a little bit more detail later on, of course. But pleasingly, and very importantly, I think, has moved the business into a net cash position of $9.6 million. We were $14.1 million net debt last year, so moved us into a net cash position of $9.6 million. And that's allowed us to substantially increase the dividend from the first half. So the full year dividend will be $0.012 per share, with $0.08 to be paid in the final period. The key to the future, of course, which is what we're all interested in and focused on is the order book going forward. We saw a strong order book last year drive a strong revenue and margin increase this year. And once again, we've seen the order book grow to a multiyear record level of $187 million. And that's a good signal, I think, as we move into FY '25. Importantly, on that order book, our order cover is up substantially as well. Now order cover is order book divided by expected revenue. So order cover going into FY '25 is stronger based on our guidance than it was in FY '24. And I'll just bring your attention to the graphic on the right-hand side of Page 4, and you'll see that we have been growing EBITDA -- dollars million EBITDA by a very impressive compound annual growth rate of 54%, if we take it back to when we started the Austin 2.0 program later in FY '21. So really powerful growth rate in the business. And that's required a lot of changes and will continue to require a lot of changes in the business, of course, to absorb that level of both revenue and margin growth. And just a last statistic to throw at you and one that doesn't get talked about too often, but it's always been one that I thought was very important when looking at businesses is EPS growth. Our EPS growth is up 315% from $0.0122 per share to $0.051 per share in FY '24. I'd like to move you now to Page 7 and it talks about our 40-year journey. But there are 2 graphics on there that I would like to bring your attention to. So it's Page 7. On the left-hand side, you can see the EBITDA margins. Now this has been a really important area for us right from the beginning, which was to make sure that we could lift our EBITDA margins. We were capping out -- some years ago we were capping out at 10%, so we've been 10% or less on a pretty regular basis, for several years. And as you can see, we've lifted margins now to around 15% in FY '24. This is very much a product of the efficiency work that's been underway, both in manufacturing and in procurement and in our overall cost base. And whilst we've got to the 15%, we still and I've said this to many of you before, we still see opportunities to increase the EBITDA percentage margin and beyond where we are. 2 of our business units are in the Americas are operating well into that level. But we think across the business, we can continue to improve margins as we get even more efficient in our factories and as we reduce our procurement costs through our AustBuy program. On the right-hand side, this is a graph particular favorite of mine as a return on equity graphic. As you can see, that's grown from what was around 10% before we got really going with Austin 2.0 to 23% now. And the reason I like this graph is I think it tells us a couple of things. Not only, of course, that the business is increasing its profitability, but also fundamentally important to that is that the -- we're not having to invest large amounts of capital into the business. It's always been a feature of Austin that we're a mining services business, but we're also a capital light mining services business and we've been able to invest capital in the growth of the business over the last 3 years and do that in a very efficient and effective way. And I think by any measure, a 23% return on equity for an operating business, a manufacturing business is an extraordinary number really in many ways. Right, I'm going to hand over now to David Bonomini, the Chief Financial Officer for Austin. And I'd ask you to turn to Page 7 in your packs, and David will talk from there.

Thanks, David. And good morning, everyone. It's great to be here today. Today, I'm excited to present the Group's FY '24 financial results. It really showcased the strong operational performance and the contribution of the business. Austin 2.0 operational strategy is consistently driven positive impacts on revenue and profits. The strategy has also enhanced the integration across the business. I think today we're probably more joined up than we've ever been and it really positioned us for sustained growth. Turning to the financial performance Slide 8. As you can see, we achieved group revenue of $313 million for FY '24, a 21% increase compared to the previous year, driven by robust growth across all regions. The group's EBITDA rose by 49% to $46.6 million This strong performance is attributed to growth and efficiency improvements. Austin's really leveraged its scale and manufacturing capabilities to reduce cost. Key contributors, in terms of the performance has been the turnaround of Perth's performance. We're also seeing increased production expansion out of Indonesia. And U.S. and Chile continue to grow both top-line and bottom-line. And also, we've successfully integrated AustBuy across the APAC and Chile regions. Depreciation and amortization costs increased due to Austin 2.0 plus an additional facility to support the U.S. expansion. Net interest expense decreased from reductions in the Mainetec acquisition term loan and the increase in other income. The group's tax expense reflects a tax payable position in the U.S, Indonesia and Chile. There's a tax credit of $3 million from Australia's carryforward tax losses recognized. There's also an adjustment for the Indonesian withholding tax expense of about $1.3 million and the Singapore tax expense of $1.1 million related to an intercompany dividend to repay an historic legacy Asia Pacific intercompany loans. The group's net profit of $31 million is up 71% from the prior year. And as previously mentioned, it's been adjusted down for a $1.1 million FX gain for comparative purposes. Turning to Slide 9, revenue performance. As you can see from the graph, we've seen revenue increase by 21% compared to the prior year, driven really by the expansion programs and investment in sales. We have seen revenue grow across all sectors. North America revenue grew by 27% due to increased sales from trays. South America grew by 26% from the repair services business with tray sales maintained at prior year levels. With the major OEM sales making a small contribution in the current year, but expected to accelerate and drive growth into FY '25. The Asia Pacific revenue increased by 17%. Tray production moving to Indonesia freed up production capacity in Australia to grow bucket products and repair services, which were up 43% compared to the prior year. Revenue growth has also been enabled by recurring customer sales of around 90%, along with new wins creating a compounded growth effect. Diversifying product sales mix, consolidate group bucket products and repair services are up 13%. As I mentioned before, Asia PAC contributed grew by 43%. The bucket sales growth was relatively low in the U.S. and Chile as the sectors focused on the [ tray ] and growth opportunities. The expansion programs have also added production capacity across all sectors and further expansion planned for the U.S. and Chile into FY '25 to support their growth aspirations. Turning to Slide 10, profit performance. It's great to see our revenue growth converting into profit. As illustrated on the graph, profit for the year has increased materially to $31 million a remarkable performance. Key reasons for the increase include revenue growth enabled by the production capacity expansion and the investment in sales across the business. Manufacturing leadership and leveraging Austin [ scale ], which has driven down costs and lifted margins and AustBuy has significantly reduced our cost base across our materials. We are seeing profit improvements across all business sectors. Chile's profit margin improved to 27%, the highest in the group from quality sales growth. Asia Pacific margin increased to 11%, benefiting from the move of tray's production to Indonesia, lifting -- which Indonesia lifted the tray production across the group and allowing Australia to focus on the bucket opportunities. The U.S. margin is at target at 18% and this is on the back of them expanding production capacity and delivering a stronger revenue growth through the year. Collectively, the sector has delivered a fantastic profit result. We expect margins to increase further, with the introduction of new manufacturing systems now in operation in Batam and Perth, and being extended into the U.S. and Chile, along with the continued focus on pricing improvements. Turning to Slide 11, working capital. Working capital improved by $13 million from $47 million to $34 million or down to $34 million. The improvement is attributable to raw material reductions of about $4.5 million from Chile and Australia. Trade and other receivables also increasing at a lower rate of 15% compared to revenue growth of 21%. The customer advance payments continue to offset inventory work in progress and our trade and other payables were up 26% driven by the steel supply trading terms and material deliverables that are better aligned to production. The working capital improvements are contributing to a positive cash flow position with less working capital tied up in the day-to-day operations. Turning to Slide 12, operating cash flow. Strong revenue, strong profit growth has doubled the Group's FY '24 opening cash position from $20 million to $40 million. The group achieved an impressive profit to cash conversion of 94%. The outstanding outcome saw EBITDA of $48 million converted to an operating cash flow of $45 million before interest and tax, delivering a free cash flow of $31 million after accounting for $9 million in interest and tax expenses and $5 million in capital expenditure. The cash flow improvements were predominantly driven by profit enhancements from cost reduction initiatives and also from working capitals revenue growth. The cash improvement has enabled the business to invest in plant and equipment, reduce its external debt and increase its cash to shareholders. Turning to Slide 13, net debt position. The group's strong profit to cash conversion has resulted in a net cash position of $9.6 million with net debt to capital ratio improving to a positive 8%. The strong cash position has enabled us to increase our dividend and provides the group with the cash to support its internal investments, further expansion into U.S. and Chile, and also to continue to lift or return cash, further cash to the shareholders. Turning to Slide 13, order book. As illustrated in the graph, the group's order book has been growing at a compound annual growth rate of 44% over the past 3 years. As you can see, it's lifted from $63 million up to $187 million which is a fantastic result. Heading into the new year, and we are extremely buoyed with $187 million up 30% on the prior year to start the year. The order book growth is underpinned by our strategy to focus on sales and marketing. The business has invested in reinforced sales team in Australia. We've increased our presence on the East Coast of Australia. We've added product support managers. We've invested in training and new systems for the sales team and the business, and we're expanding the U.S. and sales team to support both tray and new bucket sales opportunities. The order book by sector, Australia's order book is in line with previous years. U.S. order book cover has grown by 78% predominantly from sales with bucket opportunities expected to increase with the support from the Chile and Indonesian manufacturing capacity. Chile's order book has grown to 24%. The major OEM that commenced during the year is now ramping up and we expect it to drive growth into Chile and other regions. To summarize, we ended the year with an excellent result, revenue growing by 21%, EBITDA up 49%, and EBITDA profit to cash conversion of 94%. This all demonstrates an outstanding operational performance. I'll now pass you back to David.

Thank you, David. I'd like to turn now to Page 20 in your slide pack, and that's a slide titled, strategy. And I'm going to talk about -- so I'm going to -- no, I'm not going to talk about sector analysis today given the amount of time, and I'm sure that's something we'll engage in when we talk to many of you next week. But the strategy for this business has been all important. But it's the strategy and the deployment and the execution of that strategy that has got us to where we are today, which is a fundamentally different operational and financial position than we were in a few years ago. And so it's important as we go forward to think about how that strategy will play out over the next period of time. Essentially, as we go into FY '25, we are going into a period of really doubling down on the strategy that we've been deploying over that period of time. As the business has become stronger, it's given us the opportunity to invest more emphatically in those key areas of the strategy. And when I talk about investment, I don't talk about -- many of you will think about that as a financial investment. What I'm really thinking about is the amount of effort and time and concentration that we put into improving key areas of our business. And this is the sort of thing that sort of is a bit sight unseen, I know, for many shareholders. You don't see a lot of this activity that's going on. But I can ensure you that the employees in Australia and around the world are going through a lot of change in the business have been very successful in deploying that. And the rate of that change accelerates as we go into the future. So I just thought I'd bring you back to the triangle that we've been using for all of my period here in Austin and just think about what that means. First of all, if I look at the top of the triangle, and it really, really this kind of links back to something I said at the beginning. It's key here to have a strong customer focus. Where we do well in the market is when we understand the value that our product brings to our customers and we're able to help them think about that in their own operations. That's the key for us in selling across the world. We've been -- through FY '24, we've been investing in growing our sales teams. That's in place now, and we've continued to see we've seen some of the benefit back in FY '24, and we'll continue to see that in FY '25. If I take Australia as an example, obviously, we have pushed very hard into the bucket side, the mining bucket side of the business following the acquisition of Mainetec. And so we have put into place much higher levels of customer support than we previously had. Buckets need more support in the market than truck trays, more spare parts, more wear parts. So different opportunities, not only for selling buckets, but also for refurbishing them, and then selling spare parts and wear parts to go with them. So that's been an example, if you like, of the kind of changes that we have made in Australia. In a different -- in a slightly different area, we've been increasing our marketing activity. We now have a marketing -- small marketing group inside our business supported by marketing specialists outside of the company. And that's really been about enhancing lead generation, finding more opportunities for leads across the world and perhaps including in some of the harder to reach places, like, Africa. And one of the ways you might see that is a greater presence of the company at trade shows around the world, and we will be a significant display -- we'll have a significant display at the world's largest mine expo in Las Vegas in a few weeks' time for instance. so that area of customer focus will continue. And the guys have done a great job in FY '24, but really leveraged now to improve that as we move into FY '25. Going down the right-hand side of the triangle, manufacturing leadership, we're a engineering and manufacturing business. That's an area that we absolutely have to get right. Again, it's not something that many shareholders will see, but fundamentally important that you strive to get your cost base down to the bottom end of the cost curve. And that allows you to look at margin get margin improvement, which of course is what we've been seeing and use your revenue base to invest more effectively in new product development and customer support. Part of that has been that we have been deploying a series of common operational systems across all of our operating units around the world progressively. We typically trial those in, either in Batam or in Australia and then roll them out across Australia through Batam and then into the United States and Chile. And that has been a great success. We have a small central group that works across the world to make sure that those systems get put into place. This year, we embarked on the rollout of a new ERP system. We have completed the rollout on the 8th of July. We went live with a new ERP system in Australia, replaced 5 legacy systems here with a single new top quality integrated system. And that will move into the United States next and then down to Chile after that. And I think we'll probably have most of that done by the end of this financial year. It's been one of the better ERP installations that I've seen over my operating life and a great credit to David Bonomini and the IT group who've put that into place. The other part of manufacturing leadership, of course, is procurement. We set up our AustBuy business a while ago. That's having a real impact. David mentioned earlier that our stock holdings of raw materials, particularly steel are down across the group. It didn't happen by accident. That happened because of concerted continual drive by AustBuy not only to reduce the cost, the input cost of steel, but also to manage stock holdings much more effectively across the group, while still giving us the operational opportunity to pivot into new sales quickly because we've got steel on the ground and available. And then the last point I just want to talk about was product leadership and this is the key part of the wholly manufacturing trinity is to make sure that you've got product leadership as well. And of course, as the business has grown and developed, it's allowed us to invest in those products. As I said at the beginning, where we do well is when we deliver highly optimized, highly customized products that deliver efficiency to our mining customers. And that's what we focus on. And that's what our teams think about, when they're selling and it's how they represent themselves into our customers. We've seen mining bucket sales growing across the group. Mining bucket sales even though we've been seeing quite a substantial increase in truck tray manufacture over the last year, our exposure to mining buckets has increased over the last 2 years from 17% of revenue to 21% of revenue. So we're seeing that growth, primarily in Australia at the moment and an increase in Chile, mostly around rebuilds. But we've invested in and expecting to see that start to grow in the United States as well. The other thing that we have been doing is developing digital systems in the background that are available to customers to help them with monitoring wear and performance on their systems. And we see that as a real differentiator going forward. So that's a product that we got from the acquisition of Mainetec and we're investing that in the background to support particularly mining bucket sales, but also for truck trailers as well. So just to kind of conclude on that slide, what has served us well in the past will serve us well into the future, but we're essentially doubling down on the amount of effort and time and investment we're putting into those areas. I'd like to move now to Page 28, which is my penultimate slide before we finish. I'll just talk about a few of the major objectives for FY '25. We see great opportunity to continue to strengthen the order book. I've been talking for some time about a significant new orders from a major worldwide OEM that has started in Chile. That has now moved into place. We've seen a lot of orders placed over the last 2, 3 months, and we've been given projections of orders going forward, which will have a huge impact on throughput in Chile initially. They're going to see very substantial growth in that business as a as a result of that. I indicated that I thought this could become our biggest single order in Austin when we started this or maybe a couple of years ago. I'm now crystal clear that there's every chance of this moving into our biggest single customer order base across the business. And that will move into the Batam region for Australia and Asia shortly as well. So really something exciting to watch, as well as other new customers, of course, that we're seeing around the world. So keeping that pressure on is really important. Second thing, as I've been talking about, we continue to drive our manufacturing systems and our ability, which means our capacity to deliver into the expanding order book. We're doing some expansion work in the United States at the moment. So this is not a brand new facility that we've talked about before, but taking on a new -- we've managed to take on a new leased facility in Casper, Wyoming as well as expand our supplier network in the United States, and that's allowed us to deliver into what is a much expanded order book in the United States as well. AustBuy will continue to drive operational growth as well as competitiveness in Austin. It's now well deployed across Australia and Indonesia has made its first deliveries down into Chile and I think will be quite substantial deliveries into Chile in FY '25. And we're looking at the U.S., U.S. is a little bit more difficult because of tariffs, and tariff protection that occurs in the in the U.S. So that's a slightly more difficult area but nonetheless we expect to see AustBuy grow and develop. They're also going to take on shipping and logistics. That's become a more complicated area over the last few months because of actions we've seen, particularly in the Middle East, but also out of China with the threat of increased tariffs of China. We've seen much greater movements out of China into the rest of the world. And we've set up a logistics business in AustBuy to manage that more effectively as we go forward. Logistics is a big part of our overall business. And then underlying all of that over the last 18 months, we've been investing in and building out our leadership teams across the world to make sure that we're able to deliver into this much larger business. And in fact, if I would point my finger at one thing in the whole business that I think will continue to drive the momentum into the future and that is the strength of the management team that has been built over the last 18 months, maybe 2 years, which has a long-term focus on the business going forward. I'll move to the last page now, 29, which is probably the first page some of you turn to when you pack up this morning. But we have given full year guidance. So it's the first year, I think, that we have provided full year guidance. We usually did half year guidance in the past, so that should perhaps give you some indication of a degree of confidence improvement that we have in that guidance. We move into the year, as I said at the beginning, with a higher level of order cover, that's order book to expected revenue than we did even in FY '24 and certainly did in FY '23. So that's been a good feature. It's an interesting market at the moment. We do -- you hear some stories of softening in the industry. It's not something that we are seeing from our customers. I don't think I've seen any evidence of softening of demand at all anywhere across the world. And to some extent, that's offset by a different view that we get when we talk to the major OEMs like Caterpillar and Komatsu, and the like who tell us that their order books are extremely strong, and in fact, they're struggling to deliver into the demand in FY '25. And if the world's biggest equipment builders, Caterpillar, Komatsu and the like, are seeing that continued strong demand, then I think that's a pretty good and solid signal. So that leads us to our full year guidance, which at this stage of the year, early on in the year before we see how things develop. We've got a full year revenue guidance up 12% from FY '24 to $350 million with an underlying EBIT level of $50 million which is up 30% from FY '24. So still substantial margin growth over the previous year. Now I have switched -- I am conscious that I've switched from an impact target last year to an EBIT target this year. We did that really to take out some of the tax noise. And I guess when we talk to some of you in a bit more detail later on, you'll see some of that tax noise and which seems to be highly unpredictable tax noise. So we switched to an EBIT number, which I'm sure we'll stick to from here on in as a guidance number. But as I said, it's up 30%. I think it's a good comparator with other mining services companies, and hopefully, that will be helpful to you. And just probably my last point is that one of the significant characteristics of this business, again, which I've spoken to many of you about over a long period of time, is that we sell wear products that have to be continuously replaced in all of our markets around the world. Truck trays only have a limited life and have to be replaced. Buckets have a shorter life and have to be rebuilt, refurbished and eventually replaced. And that means that if there is any softening in the market, we are in a strong position to ride through that more effectively than many. And we've looked back at how we performed during the last slowdown in the market. And actually, the business did very well through that period of time for the reasons that I've indicated previously. So with that, it brings my or our presentation to an end. Thank you for the time. It has indeed been a very large number of you on the webcast this morning. So I thank you for your time. And I'll bring the formal part of the presentation to an end. And I think we will move now to Q&A and there's a couple of questions on the board, I think starting with Philip Pepe.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Philip Pepe with Shaw and Partners.

And well done on the results, particularly the cash flow. Yes, if I can start with the last slide or the first slide, Slide 29 on the guidance. Revenue guidance of $350 million that you've got a current order book of $187 million I mean, if you typically, you've got 6 months visibility on the order book, so that suggests perhaps revenue in the sort of mid $370 million, $375 million type range. How much visibility have you got on your order book? And what's the likely first half, second half split going to be in revenue this year based on what you can see at this stage?

Yes. I think the best way for me to answer that question, Phil, because I don't have a crystal ball and can't look into the future is really to reflect on how the business has performed. In the past, we typically have an order book around about 6 months of production ahead of us, a firm fixed order book of about 6 months ahead of us. I've said to many of you in the past, we kind of win an order every day in this business, but they are small orders and they're cumulative over time. Typically, and you've got -- there's a chart in the pack there. You can see that our second half order book is usually equal to or slightly higher than our first half order book. So if things play out, as I have done over the last few years, then your view that the order book would be reflected into the second half. Typically, we've had slightly -- we've had stronger revenue in the second half than the first half. That is a product of the buying patterns of 2 or 3 of our major customers both in North America and in Australia. And I suspect that that will play out a little bit this year as well. So I think we've been modest in our outlook on revenue and we'll just see that play out as the year goes through.

And if I could sneak in another one. In terms of where margins might go, where are you in terms of capacity utilization in your 3 major regions?

Yes, capacity utilization is very good across the group. Indeed, our focus though switched a little bit from expanding capacity through putting new units on to improving the capacity that we have available to us. So when we talked about manufacturing excellence earlier, part of that is really using the real estate and the people and the capacity that we currently have to do more. That's the most effective way of doing it, a, it's the least disruptive but b, it leads to the best margin improvement because you're getting more out of what you've already got. We have moved in the United States -- having said all that, we have moved in the United States to do 2 things. One is to do some repairs to the current facility, to allow us to use more of the current facility more effectively. And that's well under we're committed to capital to that and that's well underway. And we're expanding -- we have a rental -- rented facility in Casper, Wyoming as well, been able to swap that out for a much larger facility to support what is some very rapid growth in the U.S. And down in Chile as well, we're seeing a burgeoning order book and potential down in Chile and we're investing a little bit of capital, not much to $1 million to $2 million over the next few months just to make sure that they have the capacity expansion that they need. I think we're well set now in Australia and Indonesia. We have the capacity we need for the order book. So nothing dramatic I suppose is the way of answering that question in terms of the needs we have for capacity over the next 12 to 18 months.

Your next question comes from James Lennon with Petra Capital.

Well done, guys. Great result. 2 questions from me. Just curious with the guidance you've given for '25, it implies an EBIT margin around that sort of 14% level, and that's sort of 2% up on PCP. Just given what you're saying in terms of the volume, the order book, your capacity and AustBuy, just keen to know what's sort of driving that sort of uplift in margins. Is it more AustBuy? Or are you confident on the volume front?

I think it's a number of things. One of the ways I've often described this to investors in the past is that, when you've got inefficiencies in the system, you see some leakage from the [ BIT ] margins or if you like, the one margins when you win new work to the actual delivered margins. And as we've got better, as we've got more effective at delivering product around the world, as we become more efficient then we've improved those margins in all of the business units and we continue to expect to see that. So I think some of that comes from manufacturing, some of that will come from AustBuy increasing its influence and that is a significant influencer, no doubt, AustBuy. We really have -- that has been a very effective part of our business and will continue to grow into FY '25. And then I think we've just become more effective at delivering as well. Things generally go better than they did 3 years ago and that helps you to increase your operating margins. So we feel -- I've been saying for a long time that there are -- we will continue to be able to lift margins. I think that's true in FY '25.

And if you were to say what you think the optimum level would be for Austin, where do you think that EBIT margin can get to ultimately?

That's an interesting question. I don't -- I'm not sure I know the answer to that, Jim. We have indicated that we think the group is capable of an EBITDA margin. And I know I'm swapping between different margin levels, but an EBITDA margin, which was this year around 15%, we think that that's possible to get to in the range 18% to 20%. So there's still -- within that there's still plenty of growth. When we get to 18% to 20%, Jim, ask us that question again and we'll give you an answer. But I don't think -- I think we're a long way from being capped out in margins.

Just 2 more for -- quickly just AustBuy, if you look at the working capital, I would have expected once AustBuy really kicks in, you'll sort of get more lumpiness in the working capital. Is that something that we can expect? Or is that not the case on the company you're buying bulk?

James, there will be, like anything with working capital, as the business grows, we'll deploy and invest in working capital. So there'll be a bit of growth there, but our expectation is that growth, will keep that tight in terms of our revenue growth. So we don't expect it to grow. From an AustBuy perspective, what we've found with AustBuy as Dave mentioned, is that we're the group's much more joined up. AustBuy's got greater, better systems in terms of demand planning and forecasting tools. They're able to -- they're working closely with the manufacturers in terms of their demand. So that enables them to kind of align the deliveries of the steel from the steel mills to the low manufacturing locations, and then also, align the ultimate payment to the supplier to our customers. Now we haven't got there optimally yet, so there's still opportunity there. We're still working on that, but we've seen great progress. And the other thing that AustBuy is doing is they're aggregating the total steel holding across the group. So they're managing inventory, working with the GMs and the manufacturing teams to make sure that we've got the appropriate level of inventory at those facilities. So I think that combination is really kind of driving the performance there across the group.

So is it fair to say there shouldn't be a material uplift or sort of swing between first half, second half in terms of that inventory?

No. No. No. The key thing -- no, not in terms of inventory. Expectation is we'll continue to kind of -- there's still some room there to lower the inventory, particularly in Chile. We've made progress. But as you can appreciate, it takes some time to kind of consume some of that inventory down there. And with the order book that Chile has and the potential outlook for Chile in terms of future orders, I think we'll see some favorable movement down there. And then really the rest of the inventory and U.S. has always done well. And Indonesia, it works very closely with AustBuy on a day-to-day basis.

And just one last one quickly, just the tax rate. Is that expected to sort of creep back up to that 22%, 25% range? What's sort of the outlook for this year?

Yes. The tax expense will creep up, so it will reflect a tax expense in that range going forward. That's what our estimates look like. The good thing is that from a cash flow point of view, we're going to still maximize and utilize the tax losses in Australia. So that's -- so even though our tax expense will lift, the cash impact will be less.

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

Thank you, everybody. It does look like it was a record number of you on the call today, so I thank you all for the time. As I said at the beginning, I think this has been an outstanding set of results. I think we're all very proud of the results that the guys have delivered over the last 12 months. It feels like we're on a really strong curve now of improvement and development of the business. We're well underway. We've got great momentum. I think we've learned in our business what needs to be done, what works well and now we're doubling down on making that happen as we go forward into the future. I'm pretty excited about FY '25. There's always a few there's always a few headwinds in business, of course. Nothing goes, all right all the time, and we can see a few of those around the world with logistics and, 1 or 2 of the commodity prices. But having said that, the macro environment as we see it from the eyes of some of the ultra large OEMs continues to be very strong. And as a result of that, we've got a pretty strong view on the future into FY '25. So thank you for calling in. I look forward to seeing -- David and I look forward seeing you all, or many of you, I'm sure, in a week or so over on the East Coast.

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