Eagers Automotive Limited (APE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eagers Automotive FY '25 results analyst and investor call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Keith Thornton, CEO. Please go ahead.

Well, thank you for joining us today for our full year 2025 result briefing. I'm with Sophie Moore, our CFO, and together, we again have the privilege of presenting the company's results. Our results pack, including the slides for this presentation have been lodged with the ASX, and should now be visible via the webcast. Our results presentation follows a consistent format with an overview of the performance touching on financial, operational and strategic highlights, and there will be an opportunity for questions after the presentation. Now, please note today, the results do not reflect any contribution from our large-scale investment into the Canadian market via CanadaOne Auto Group, but we will provide an update on their performance and the road map ahead for this transformative partnership. Let's start with a summary of the key takeouts of our 2025 performance. Eagers Automotive has made significant progress over the last 5 years. During this time, Eagers has built such scale that we see increasing operational and strategic leverage. Now in an industry that is rapidly transforming globally, this is a critically valuable foundation and quite unique. We've leveraged our scale to build a business that significantly outperforms the market through numerous proprietary business initiatives and underwritten by an obsession, with the highest quality partnerships, the best property, industry-leading processes and of course, the very best people. The net outcome of this is a business that, while not immune from industry and economic influence, is much more stable and consistent through cycles, all while demonstrating the ability to consistently and materially grow. It's a valuable combination. The numbers on this slide speak for themselves, and they may represent the last 5 years of performance, but they are most valuable when viewed as an indicator to what the next 5 years may look like. Let's look at the financial highlights of 2025 now. And before we talk to this slide and the growth of the company, it's important to provide some context. Remember, Eagers is a 113-year-old company in a traditional and largely mature industry. And even looking back 5 years, was already far and away the largest player by revenue. So when we talk about our growth, please remember, this is not a startup, growing from a small base in an emerging industry. Looking now at this slide, you can see the company grew materially again in 2025. Total revenue grew by $1.9 billion for the year, split between 68% organic growth, 30% via acquisition. The last 2% was greenfield. Since 2022 alone, the company has grown by $4.4 billion in revenue or more than 50%. Also remember, this revenue does not include the AUD 5.6 billion in annualized revenue from the CanadaOne investment due to settle in quarter 1, 2026. Importantly, this revenue growth translated to record EBITDA of $620.9 million for 2025, an increase of $70.5 million or 12.8% on the previous record, which was 2024. Underlying profit was up 14.3% or $52.9 million year-on-year to a very strong $424.1 million. And despite the industry and the market continuing to experience a generally challenging net margin environment, we maintained our industry-leading margin, in line with our 2024 performance at 4% return on sales for the underlying like-for-like business and 3.3% at a reported level. The 3.3% reported net margin was made up of 3% return on sales for the first half of 2025 before improving to 3.5% for the second half. This compares to an industry that based on Deloitte industry data returned 1.2% for the full year. We continue to protect our very strong balance sheet, which Sophie will go into shortly. So reflecting a record EBITDA result, the confidence the company has in our medium-term outlook, but also balancing the material growth opportunities currently under review, the Board approved a final dividend in line with the 2024 record of $0.50 per share, which maintains the record full year dividend of $0.74 per share. This strong financial result was the outcome of a number of operational and strategic highlights. Eagers total vehicle sales for the year increased by 36,000 or 17.8%. New vehicles sold by the company increased to 177,000 as the company continued to lead the industry in the transition to new energy vehicles, which includes both full battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Eagers sells a staggering 34% or more than 1 in 3 new energy vehicles in Australia. And this supported an increase in our share of the overall new car market, which rose by 2.4% in the year alone to 13.9%. I should again highlight just how unique Eagers new vehicle share is relative to large mature markets. In the U.S., the largest dealer group has less than 2% of the new vehicle market, while in the U.K., the largest has less than 4%. And to be very clear, Eagers's market share is a key enabler to future growth, both domestically and internationally. Scale, combined with strategic and disciplined execution of our decade-old Next100 Strategy has driven our cost base down to 12.1% of sales, an historic low. This strategy, which has been well communicated over the last decade, has underwritten our significant outperformance of the industry, with our reported margin of 3.3%, a delta of 2.1% above the broader industry. Our core like-for-like margin of 4% represents an even larger outperformance. And Eagers' Next100 Strategy was not developed in response to challenging times. It was a proactive optimization plan focused on productivity to bulletproof the company, and we've been relentless in its execution regardless of the cycle. Further, we hold ourselves accountable to it by consistently and transparently communicating our progress. Moving on to strategic highlights now. And the metrics on this slide demonstrate how we have transformed our operating model compared to industry norms and outdated benchmarks. Looking at the full year 2025, productivity per person per annum is now at $1.48 million per person. Our brand portfolio now encompasses 54 leading OEM partners. New energy vehicle market share is more than 1 in 3 in Australia. easyauto123, our unique independent used car business is operating at better than global benchmarks for pre-owned unit economics. And we have a property portfolio of now $900 million in Australia alone. And these are all key to driving sustainable, healthy growth. And this slide is the evidence of our continued progress. A statement we have made before is that we're not just focused on building a bigger business. We are building an increasingly better business in parallel. I'll now pass over to Sophie to take us through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Keith. The headline numbers that Keith has highlighted reflect a strong financial result and demonstrate the growing strength and resilience of our underlying business. Today, I will focus on some of the further key insights into the financials. Eagers delivered record revenue for the full year, up $1.9 billion to $13 billion, exceeding the $1 billion full year growth target we foreshadowed in February 2025. Our underlying EBITDA before impairment reached a record $20.9 million for the 12-month period with an EBITDA margin of 4.8% compared to 4.9% in the full year 2024, still well above our long-term average of 4.1%. A key highlight is the underlying cost before interest and depreciation relative to turnover. On a reported basis, including acquisitions, cost leverage, excluding interest and depreciation as a percentage of turnover was 12.1%, a record low and well below the long-term average of 13.8%. This reflects the benefits of scale with the continued growth of our overall business, and optimized operating model and a relentless and sustained focus on productivity and cost efficiency. Slides 37 and 38 in the appendices includes a reconciliation of statutory to underlying EBITDA and PBT. For the full year 2025 financial year, statutory PBT was $393.7 million compared with the underlying PBT of $424.1 million. To ensure full transparency consistent with our prior year disclosures, the $30.4 million difference is primarily driven by items beyond our core underlying operations, which this year include $20.6 million primarily related to business acquisition and capital raise costs associated with our significant investment in Canada, which is expected to settle in quarter 1, 2026. And finally, an additional $5 million impairment of our New Zealand operation now fully impaired given the continued economic challenges and associated business performance. Eagers remains in a strong financial position, supported by a substantial property portfolio and asset base. Our approach to capital management links back to our culture of business sustainability, growing the group's profitability while also strengthening our underlying asset base. One should not and has not come at the cost of another, and this was the case in 2025, which was a transformative year for Eagers from a capital management perspective. Eagers first offshore investment totaling $1.043 billion was funded by a balanced combination of cash, debt and new equity, reinforcing this disciplined capital management and allocation while delivering immediate accretive returns. The transaction reflects our long-term commitment to making continued meaningful progress on sustainable material and accretive optimization and growth opportunities. As of 31st of December 2025, corporate debt was $100 million net of cash on hand, down from $813.1 million at December 2024. Excluding the proceeds from a successful entitlement offer associated with our Canadian investment, corporate debt net of cash on hand was $594 million, still well down on the December 2024 number. Our long-term debt supports our $900 million property portfolio, anchoring our presence in key strategic locations. This will increase to approximately $1.6 billion when combined with the CanadaOne's property portfolio. At December 31, 2025, we held equity in the property portfolio of $343 million and $372 million in inventory, reinforcing the strength and resilience of our asset base. In 2026, we will focus on continuing our proven track record of executing a balanced capital management strategy built on 4 key pillars: investing in the business, disciplined acquisitions, a property-backed balance sheet. We are well positioned to continue to fund future growth opportunities with the capacity to invest in further identified opportunities in both Australia and North America. The group's total liquidity capacity is backed by $1.3 billion in committed core debt facilities from our syndicate and captive finance partners. The successful securing of additional debt liquidity in both 2024 and 2025 underscores the strong confidence of our finance partners in the long-term execution of our Next100 Strategy, and also our ability to navigate evolving economic cycles with resilience. And importantly, we will continue to ensure we deliver the final pillar of our capital management strategy, rewarding shareholders with strong returns. Keith has already highlighted the progress we have made over the last 5 years across key financial, operational and strategic metrics. Slide 11 demonstrates Eagers' long-term ability to deliver shareholder returns through periods of significant business transformation and varying economic cycles. Importantly, growth in market capitalization and share price has been matched by consistent compound growth in earnings per share and dividends, underscoring the strength and sustainability of our performance. Over the past decade, Eagers have delivered compound annual growth of 8.6% earnings per share and more than 8.7% in dividends. This dividend growth includes the final dividend for 2025 of $0.50 per share, maintaining the prior period record. And over the long term, we can say that Eagers have clearly demonstrated a commitment to rewarding shareholders while maintaining the flexibility to capitalize on the strategic growth opportunities. I will now hand back to Keith to take us through the operational highlights.

Thank you, Sophie. Looking now at 2025 business performance in more detail. The Australian new car market finished as a record ever result in 2025. And this outcome demonstrates 2 very important things to consider in our industry. The first is that the new car market is resilient through cycles and more recently continues to rebound from the normalized 364,000 unit gap that occurred during the supply-constrained period of 2020 to 2023. Secondly, and more importantly, it's worth highlighting the unhealthy obsession of trying to match automotive retail business performance solely with industry new vehicle sales data. A record market does not guarantee record profits. Equally, lower reported sales does not mean profitability is also falling. This is even more prevalent at Eagers scale. And Eagers Automotive is much more than just a new vehicle dealer. Most notably, we highlight again that the used car market operates at a factor of 3x the new car market. And this presents both an enormous opportunity and a hedge to new vehicle car sales and is a market that we already lead through our high-performing fast-growing easyauto123 used car business. Overall, the Eagers business is balanced with a mix of recurring and stable income from sales and parts and high-margin ancillary income in our finance, insurance and car care origination businesses. Having said that, as new car franchisees, we understand the need to grow share profitably and sustainably. And on this front, the company has been incredibly successful. This slide clearly demonstrates that Eagers is winning the trend. The top left shows Eagers finished 2025 with 13.9% of the total new car market in Australia. As I mentioned earlier, this share is unique compared to large-scale mature markets such as the U.S. and the U.K. These comparisons highlight the globally unique scale that Eagers has built. But it's not just our scale that should be noted. We're also one of the fastest-growing groups and the key question is how? And the answer is critical to understanding the runway in front of Eagers for the next decade. The title of this slide notes that we are winning the trend, and it's a trend that is driving a once-in-a-century market transition. The market evolution both here and globally is clear. We're moving to a market characterized by a material percentage of plugged-in vehicles. And this has far-reaching implications for the entire automotive ecosystem from OEMs upstream to retailers at the point of sale. By winning this industry trend, we are helping cement our place in the future automotive landscape. When examining the growth profile of the company, the most pleasing aspect is the balance between organic, acquisition and greenfield. In 2025 alone, we grew revenue by $1.9 billion. It's a staggering number, and almost 70% of this came from organic growth. But this was not a one-off. Our growth profile since 2023 demonstrates organic growth of almost 60% with the same balanced and disciplined approach to growing. So it's clear that Eagers growth is not a simple roll-up story. Now this mix will skew a little bit to a more balanced percentage with a large-scale investment in CanadaOne, but this high percentage of organic growth has meant that we have an unstressed debt and equity position with considerable firepower to expand in a disciplined accretive manner as strategic acquisitions emerge. Highlighted at the bottom of this slide is a graph that illustrates not only the step change in our scale from our merger with AHG back in 2019, but more importantly, the growth we've been able to deliver since the integration was completed. When we merged with AHG, we effectively doubled the size of the company overnight. but we did not stop there. We made sure the business was properly integrated and we navigated through the COVID period. But even on this much larger base, we have delivered a staggering 53% growth during the period 2022 to 2025, all while maintaining industry-leading margins. Growth alone, however, has limited value and ever since the mid-2000s, inside of Eagers, we always talk to earning the right to grow. To do so, the company is focused on a clear decade-long strategy based on optimizing our current profitability before we look to growth. The best measure of this for a franchise business is outperformance relative to the wider market. And on this measure, the company has clearly delivered. This strategy has underpinned growing margin outperformance. This strategy is also something that is supported by and accelerated by greater scale. Slide 16 demonstrates the transformation we have delivered since our 2019 merger with AHG, delivering on genuine productivity improvements. And it's this combination of a growing business, a more extensive brand portfolio, a rebalanced and rationalized property footprint and a productivity-driven workforce that has driven down our cost base and supported our net margin. Now specifically on this slide, I wanted to highlight our focus on people productivity as measured by the metric sales per annum per person. People costs in our industry represent the largest expense, more than 50% of the total expense base. And without a strategic plan to improve productivity, you will never be able to transform your operating model. The long-term industry benchmark was $1 million sales per person per annum. Back in 2019, Eagers was achieving $909,000 per person per annum. Last year, we have increased that to $1,480,000 sales per person per annum or a 60% increase in productivity. Now this sort of outcome can only occur with a clear plan and disciplined execution, and it's accelerated by proprietary technology and growing scale. So the next slide will demonstrate how we've reset our cost base. Our costs as a percentage of sales continue to head to reach record lows. Now to be clear, this should never ever be viewed as a simple cost-out initiative. It starts with ensuring that any productivity increase never comes at the expense of customer or employee engagement as we understand that will not be sustainable. Similarly, it cannot come at the expense of generating gross profit. If we simply focused on cost out at the expense of customers or our employees or transactional growth, we would not achieve the outperformance of the industry net margin that you see on Slide 18. And this slide demonstrates the operating model advantages that now exist inside Eagers Automotive. We are a more resilient, balanced and higher-margin business compared to both traditional industry benchmarks and compared to the current cyclical conditions across the industry. The best relative measure of this advantage is the gap between our reported margin and the industry as a whole and this gap has grown from 0.7%, we were 0.7% above the industry in 2021 to 2.1% in 2025. In the second half of 2025, it expanded to 2.5%. Now this is the ultimate evidence of our strategy at work. To have further expanded the delta in our net margin versus the industry is exceptionally pleasing and clearly outlines both the upside in our margins when the industry normalizes to returns of greater than 2% and the path to our long-term ambition of being able to produce 5% returns at ever-growing scale. So moving on now to our strategy. And 2025 was a very busy year for the company. Our financial and operational performance was certainly pleasing. But in 2025, we continued to accelerate our key growth initiatives, highlighted by our announcement of 2 strategic partnerships, which will be simply transformational for our company. In October last year, we announced our strategic investment in CanadaOne Auto Group. CanadaOne Auto Group is one of the largest, it's one of the most respected, and it is certainly one of the best performed automotive retail groups in the highly attractive Canadian market. We also established a strategic partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, a Fortune 100 company with over 1,500 investments globally and a mobility division with global expertise and partnerships across the entire automotive chain. Now we communicated the details of these partnerships as part of our market announcement on the 1st of October in 2025 and again, went through these in detail at our Investor Day later that month. So today, we're providing an update on what's occurred since then. Firstly, Mitsubishi Corporation. As announced late last year, we completed an equity placement for Mitsubishi Corporation to become a shareholder in Eagers Automotive, ensuring full alignment across the partnership opportunities we continue to explore. On the 1st of December 2025, Mitsubishi Corporation completed their 20% investment in easyauto123, and we have already started to explore multiple avenues where we can leverage Mitsubishi Corporation's mobility expertise, their global relationships to further accelerate the growth of this business. But before we go into easyauto123, let me provide an update on our investment into the CanadaOne Auto Group. Our investment into CanadaOne Auto and the partnership with Pat and Daniel Priestner is one of the most exciting and transformational moments in our company's history. The transaction is progressing in line with our expectations with significant progress across a number of key completion obligations. We're in the final stages of the OEM consent process, and we remain on track to complete the investment in the first quarter of 2026. On Slide 23, you can see the strong growth in earnings that CanadaOne business has delivered over the last 5 years. It's an incredibly impressive story. Now this reflects a combination of their targeted and accretive acquisition strategy, along with incredible organic operational improvements that their team deliver post acquisitions. At our Investor Day held in October 2025, we communicated the results for the 12 months through to June 2025 for CanadaOne. And today, we provide an update that reflects the 12 months January to December 2025 and aligns with Eagers's calendar year financials. As you will see, the business continues to perform, and in fact, it continues to improve. Revenue, EBITDA and PBT are all up at record levels and on what we communicated in October 2025. The calendar year PBT of CanadaOne was AUD 248 million at a very healthy 4.4% return on sales net margin. And the opportunity for further growth in the Canadian market remains significant, as shown on Slide 24. The fragmented dealer market provides a runway for further consolidation and the future rollout of unique Eagers businesses, such as easyauto123, which again, I highlight Pat elected to take an equity stake in alongside Mitsubishi Corporation, which reflects his personal confidence in the model and the opportunity he sees for Canada in due course. Turning now to easyauto123, which remains the biggest strategic growth opportunity for Eagers Automotive. Over the past 12 to 18 months, through our results briefings and Investor Days, we have articulated the size of the opportunity in the used car market and why easyauto123 will be the dominant player in this category. Today, I would like to highlight a few key areas within the easyauto123 materials that have been included in our results pack. Before we start, though, it is important to understand the economics of independent use. Traditional franchised automotive dealerships deliver a circa 20% return on capital employed when they are acquired at a fair multiple and they're operated well. It's not a bad return. But within this consolidated 20% return is the used car market, which is just 1 of 5 departments that make up a normal new car franchise dealership. Now industry standard delivers an illustrative 14% return on investment for used cars, as shown on this slide. However, on the far right, you can see that when used cars are run at scale with a focus on high velocity stock turns, that return can be more than 90% on a unit economic basis. Now this is easier said than done, primarily due to supply. The challenge for most independent used car business is where to access a high volume of inventory at the right price. Remember, there is no such thing as a used car factory. Now Eagers has totally unique sourcing advantages that are linked to the trade-ins we access via our 13.9% share of the new vehicle market. To illustrate the scale of this, just consider the following. In general, we see 4 to 5 sellers of used vehicles for every vehicle we sell. And last year, we sold more than 230,000 new and used cars. That means more than 1 million high-intention sellers of used cars come to Eagers each year physically at 0 incremental acquisition cost. This inventory advantage in our business is unrivaled and frankly, almost impossible to replicate. It is and it will be a valuable moat to this business. So now imagine combining those unit economics on this slide under Australia's leading used car brand, easyauto123, linked to Australia's dominant dealer group with circa 14% of the new car market and growing, all in a market 3x that of the new car market, and with no clear market leader, certainly until now. There are simply few opportunities in any industry this large and this fragmented full stop. And this is why we constantly refer to it as the biggest strategic growth opportunity inside of Eagers. Now the metrics on Slide 27 demonstrate just how well the business is performing with the total PBT for 2025, up 60% on the previous record, the year before in 2024. We've also included the January 2026 result to demonstrate this momentum has continued into this year with another all-time record month just last month. In 2026, easyauto will explore selective expansion of the network to drive scale and further establish the brand as the dominant player in the used car market. On Slide 28 now, you will see an image of the expansion of our Hendra facility in Brisbane, which is currently underway. we've elected to take an additional 14,000 square meters in the neighboring property. And this was a carefully considered decision, and it reflects the supply that we are able to access, the demand we currently see and the performance of the Hendra site. And this site will act as a high-profile lighthouse facility for the brand as everyone arrives in Brisbane Airport, they basically have to drive past this facility. Further expansion plans will be communicated over the course of 2026. To be clear, our road map for easyauto is very clear. We will continue to optimize the business model. We'll scale volume while building out this mobility ecosystem you see on this slide. And ultimately, that will build a template for other markets. As stated at our Investor Day in 2025, our ambition to answer any question a consumer has regarding mobility with the statement we can help with that is both our vision and the compelling opportunity available to Eagers. With that, we'll turn to our outlook. So on Slide 31, you'll see a pro forma for the CanadaOne business combined with Eagers on a consolidated full year basis. It represents the calendar year 2025 results for both companies. Now it's important to note, this is not a forecast and CanadaOne is expected to contribute 9 months of earnings in 2026 at this stage rather than the full 12 months that are represented on this pro forma. But using the actual '25 results, the pro forma on a consolidated basis represents $18.7 billion in revenue, $98.6 million in EBITDA, and $671.8 million in PBT, quite a business now. Below this pro forma income statement, you'll notice the key factors we believe will influence 2026 for the industry in Australia and New Zealand. We think Australia and New Zealand will be largely a stable new car market. It's going to be driven by competitive OEM activity as another year of new entrants being established in the Australian market and legacy brands being reorganized will occur, although we think this transition is nearing an end. We think the interest rate environment will be largely flat for the first half of 2026. But within this environment, Eagers Automotive will continue to be relentless in driving outperformance compared to whatever industry dynamics present and we will continue to remain focused on the strategic growth across multiple areas. We're a 113-year-old company. We take a mid- to long-term view on everything we do. 2025 laid the foundation for what we're referring to internally as Eagers 2.0. The partnerships we formed with Mitsubishi Corporation and CanadaOne are just the start of the next evolution of our company. Opportunity exists with both legacy and new OEM partners, both domestically and internationally in our core franchise business and in the broader, much larger and expanding mobility ecosystem. These opportunities will increasingly involve strategic partnerships to ensure the opportunities that are emerging at this inflection point in the industry are not missed. And this next slide is something I wanted to share today just to demonstrate one of the many unique parts to our company. While a shareholding and Board alignment similar to what is shown on this slide may be more common in smaller companies, I did want to demonstrate the unique alignment that exists in Eagers Automotive. 41% of the company is owned by people either in the boardroom, leading operations or working in our corporate support team. These same people are forming the strategy and driving the performance each and every day. And this alignment, which will include Pat Priestner and the Priestner family, the founder of CanadaOne Autos, who effectively will become the second largest shareholder on completion, demonstrates alignment rarely seen in larger, certainly century-old public companies. And it should provide great confidence to all investors that Eagers operates in a very deliberate way to ensure all stakeholders, whether they're employees, customers, our many valued business partners, the communities in which we operate and, of course, shareholders are delivered the best possible long-term outcomes. So last but never least, I wanted to take this opportunity to publicly recognize the tremendous efforts of the entire Eagers Automotive team. It is a great privilege to work alongside you all, be part of this great team and to be able to report your hard work and your incredible results. Thank you, everyone. So on behalf of Eagers Automotive, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest today, and we'll now open up for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from John Campbell from Jefferies.

A couple of questions. I know there'll be a heap of questions from others. So I'll just ask 2. Firstly, just on your OpEx to revenue, which continues to fall 90 basis points or so every year, and you exited 110 sites in 2025. Are you sort of seeing this as this process is -- it's not a 2-year process. It's 5, 6, 7 years of potential to consolidate sites and drive, drive better productivity and therefore, that sort of OpEx improvement that we've seen over the last few years going forward?

First off, John, thanks for the question. It's 110 sites on a cumulative basis like-for-like since 2019, not 110 sites last year. So that was just a small...

That's a big one.

No, yes, exactly. So -- but generally speaking, your question is what is occurring. The reason we consistently show a period of, say, 5 years is to show that we're on a journey. We don't run the business for the next 6 months and how our results are going to look for the next 6 months. We are on a journey to make this business stronger every single year. The strategy we have around optimizing our business is something that's been in place since the mid-2018, more than 10 years since we articulated. And to be honest, we were working on those same key items before. So yes, your question is right. We will continue to drive this down. It doesn't necessarily reach a bottom or if it does, I don't know what the bottom is because the thing -- one of the things that actually drives it is scale. And the reality is economies of scale is something we all learn about at university, but it is a real thing, and we are leveraging it. So we're using scale to drive down that OpEx. The other thing that's occurring here in Australia, less so perhaps in Canada and other markets, is that given the industry is in this transition with so many new entrants coming in and so many legacy brands needing to reorganize their footprint and their representation in the market here in Australia, we get the opportunity in a changing environment to change it for better. If nothing was happening, if there were no new entrants coming to Australia and we were just dealing with 25 OEMs, it would be a very stable environment and a little bit harder to affect meaningful change and drive higher productivity. But in a changing environment, we are constantly making changes to our property footprint, to our brand representation, to our people, to our back office, technology rollout, easyauto transition, they all work together to drive this better or higher productivity, which will drive down costs. And the reason we always focus on cost, John, is we are a franchise business, and we are a cyclical business. That means that in the gross profit, so in the margin levers that we make out of selling a car, servicing a car, selling a used car, writing finance, et cetera, it's much harder to break out of what the general cycle is. So it's always dangerous for people to say, we make more money on selling a car than anyone else does. That we actually think that's sort of nonsense. We might finance more cars. We might be more productive on service. We might use our scale to make better growth in parts. But ultimately, the things that underwrite our margin is controlling higher productivity across property, people, inventory, marketing, back office.

Great. And maybe just on GP margins overall, and I know that there's so many things that go into that figure. But I mean in your view, do you think that GP margins are now -- given everything you're saying about how dynamic the OEM sort of situation is globally, given that, generally speaking, I think consumer remains pretty challenged in many jurisdictions around the world. Do you feel GP margins are now pretty much normalized. We're at that base and from here on in, we should probably expect no real contraction from here?

Very hard to give a short answer to this, John, but I will. And I just want to be careful because when people talk gross margins, if you don't intimately understand automotive retail, you can get a misread on this. We have gross margins as a percentage of sale, which includes new vehicle sales, used vehicle sales, finance service and parts. And that's a combined gross profit number of circa 17% across our whole business. So if you're talking to that number, that has got a lot of moving parts in it. None the least, a rapidly growing retail joint venture business over the last couple of years that has a lot of new vehicle sold at around 10.5%, 11% margin, but very little high margin from the back end, which drags down that headline number. What I think you're really asking is, is the margins on the sale of new vehicles largely bottomed out. And I think that's a fair assumption to make. The reason for that is that we are generally now back to a much more normalized supply environment. So there's 2 things that have occurred, 2 periods have preceded today. The first one in recent times that is, we had the COVID period where there was very short supply and we had elevated margins because people were ordering cars at near full margin and waiting for delivery. We then had an influx of inventory post that those supply-constrained COVID period, where there was an excess inventory as brands suddenly ordered too much because they thought demand was so high. We had new entrants. And effectively, the industry was almost flooded with too much inventory. We are now much more normalized in terms of supply and demand, and that ultimately is a great environment to be in to support margins. So we've almost been through that, I guess, trough, if you like, of dealing with that excess inventory. And I think you'll find across most OEMs, they've got their inventory much more in balance, which means dealers will make steady, consistent margins. Where we do win, John, is where we start to sell more finance, more car care, sell more motor vehicle insurance policy, and we do it on a lower cost base. That's how we have a higher return on sales margin.

Your next question comes from Sarah Mann from MA Moelis Australia.

Just a question on Canada, if that's okay. Clearly, delivered some nice growth in CanadaOne in the period. But just curious, can you give us any trends across recent months or even at the segment level, just given some of the headline data has been a little bit softer?

The business -- Sarah, thanks for the question. The business has been really good. There is no doubt that the CanadaOne team are exceptional operators as good as we've ever seen, and they are running a really, really strong business. Ultimately, what those numbers, those improvements in the results that we've communicated today is on a like-for-like basis. It's the same business. It merely reflects the second half numbers of 2025 and drops out the second half of 2024. I think what you're seeing there is the CanadaOne team and their ability to operate better than others in the marketplace. And we've seen it. And being car dealers, being automotive retailers, we can see other good operators in action, and that's what we see. So first off, I think what you're seeing in that uplift is their performance. And as they've integrated those acquisitions and getting immediate upticks in performance and their focus over there, the way they get uplift in performance is very different to the way we get it in Australia. They are a much more stable environment in Canada, big scale market, big dealerships. They drive more inquiry. They drive better conversion. They drive better gross pool of growth through finance attachment rates, et cetera. They drive that into bigger service and parts results. So the way they do it is more through a gross profit angle, whereas in Australia, in a hypercompetitive environment, the way we do it is through a productivity and a cost base leverage basis. So it's a different way to going about getting a result. In terms of the Canadian market in general, the Canadian market is obviously, at the moment, working out where it's going to go in terms of the change to the tariff regime that the Canadian government has announced with China and opening up 49,000 units that would be tariff-free from China. That's a tiny percent of their total market. Their market is 1.9 million or thereabouts. They manufacture 1.4 million cars in Canada. They need to protect that. Opening up the market for 49,000 units to be -- to not have the 100% tariff at this stage is probably a sensible way to go about it, and we'll have very little disruption to what the market is like. In terms of how Canada is performing economically and industry-wise, I think it's more a reflection of just that the industry is working out how they deal with the U.S. and Trump's tariffs.

Excellent. And just picking up on the comment about the tariff drop. So again, take your point, it's tiny in the scheme of things, but a couple of brands have already announced their intention to launch in Canada. Just curious about -- again, it's small, but is there an ability to leverage your existing relationships there?

Sarah, really early days because if you think about it, what's been communicated over in China by the Canadian government is that there'll be 49,000 units without the 100% tariff. Now there is no detail on who gets those 49,000. Is it the first 49,000 sold and then it stops? Is it an allocation basis? Is it a quota basis? No one really knows. I think the comment we've made all along is that Eagers have great relationships with 54 OEMs that we represent, each one equally proudly. Those relationships stand us in good stead no matter where we operate or where we partner globally. We're partnering with the best operators in Canada. We'll keep saying that because they are. We've just never seen better. And partnering with them and being great operators, I'm certain that between Pat and Daniel and the team at CanadaOne and the Eagers team, if there's any opportunities with existing brands or new brands, we'll be looking at them.

Your next question comes from Jared Gelsomino from Morgans.

Maybe just firstly, on the guidance commentary, you pointed to a material uplift in ANZ revenue. The last 3 years has averaged roughly $1.5 billion incremental each year. I'm just -- how do you sort of think about the composition of organic business growth, changing OEM mix and potential further acquisitions within that guidance?

Thanks, Jared. Good question. We have been deliberate in not calling out $1 billion growth this year. To be quite frank, I think the way the market reacts every half year to forecast, whether they're beat or miss is a little bit erratic these days. So I don't think there's a lot to be gained out of being specific, but we are very confident that there will be material organic growth in the business this year. January is up 8.3% on revenue on January 2025. So that's already evident in the first month. Our like-for-like order right in January was up 9%. So at the moment, you can work out how that will come about. There's a couple of reasons why we've also been over and above just that there's not a lot to be gained by being specific. There's a number of reasons why we would just want to be cautious. I mean, last year, we called $1 billion in revenue growth, and we delivered $1.9 billion. We expect there'll be somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in organic growth this year. So we'll see how it goes. The other thing is we've also got a number of potential acquisitions that we're looking at in our pipeline here in Australia. And of course, Pat and Daniel and the team over in Canada are always active over there as well. There is a new acquisition regime in Australia. It might slow down acquisitions by a month or 2, then you lose a couple of months in turnover. So a little bit harder to be explicit around exactly how much growth, but feeling very confident.

I appreciate that. And maybe just a follow-up then on CanadaOne acquisition. Just trying to understand maybe the consolidation runway there. I understand, firstly, you guys just want to get the acquisition completed and finalized, but I just want to know if there's maybe a pipeline of opportunities that may be in the wings as you look to settle the transaction that can support the inorganic growth towards the back end of the year.

Jared, you hit the nail on the head. We just want to settle, which is imminent, coming very close. We're really keen for that to occur. We're actually -- a number of us are heading overseas early next week to spend some time with the team again. So that's really exciting for us. In terms of acquisitions, there's no doubt that the CanadaOne team is super active in the market. Everyone knows that group over in Canada. They've got great relationships with all the key OEMs. What has been really, really encouraging is in our engagements with the OEMs in Canada, how incredibly positive they are. There was not one who didn't say explicitly, we want to grow with CanadaOne and they want to grow because it's performance-based. That's what gives you growth inside automotive retail inside of franchise environment. We talk about being a preferred partner for our OEMs to grow with and Eagers have done a reasonable job over 100 years to do that. That's evident in all of the conversations. They are absolutely explicit to say we want to grow with CanadaOne. Separate to that, the team over there are very active in looking at what the best opportunities would be. And third point is, obviously, Eagers' partnership with CanadaOne created a little bit of noise in the market over there, and there's a few people that are probably making some inbound calls and picking up the phone and giving Pat or Daniel call and saying, "Hey, let's have a chat, which is all interesting. The other thing Sophie can talk to this more is that the CanadaOne business has kept considerable capital available to grow. So we have got there's certainly no impediment to not just growth over there, but material growth.

Your next question comes from Chenny Wang from Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just first one on Australia industry PBT margins. Obviously, you've got that slide there kind of showing the degradation in industry margins over the last few years. And I'm just wondering how we should think about that in particular, going forward. I guess margin variability is fairly normal in the industry. There is, I guess, a cycle over and above it. But historically, we have seen that when industry profitability does start to bottom or take a turn lower that maybe there's more support, there's more intervention to correct some of that. So yes, just wondering how we should kind of think about those industry margins going forward given that it's been degrading for a number of halves now.

Yes, Chenny, it's interesting. The difference, I think, at the moment is this global transition, this global emergence of China over the last couple of years. Everything you say is right. As the industry tightens, there is more intervention and support from OEMs. The general environment in Australia is that -- and you've probably heard me describe it this way before, it's a turf war for the best dealers, the best dealers facilities, the best dealers locations, the best dealers people, the best dealers database expertise, workshop parts and customer relationships. Now what that means is that in a market like Australia where you have all of these new OEMs coming to the market and you have existing OEMs in the marketplace, they need to protect their turf. The way they protect their turfs is creating a profitable environment for their dealer partners. That's how they protect their turf. What has occurred over the last 2 years has been effectively the transition. And we think actually this year will be the final year of it. And by that, I mean, it will be probably the final year that you'll see material entry into Australia from new brands, whether they're Chinese or other. And it will be the final year -- it won't be the final year ever, but it will be the last year of material reorganization or restructure of existing OEMs footprints and dealer networks, which is going on at the moment. So think of a showroom either number of dealers inside a brand's network reducing, showroom sizes being changed, new entrants coming in. All of that disruption is not overnight. It's not like just changing the shelves at Woolies or Harvey Norman. You've got purpose-built facilities, you have purpose-built service departments and parts department. We think 2026 will be the sort of the final reorganization, if you like. So think of that as sort of this is the end of the transition. And secondly, link that to the fact that OEMs, new or existing need to make their dealer network profitable to protect their market position.

Got it. And then just maybe a second one, just an update on the Auto Mall concept. I know I think it was your Investor Day a number of years ago that you had that time frame and that schedule. And just kind of looking at that 2026, 2027, we're coming into view of some major decisions and a lot of those projects where, I guess, maybe you guys have to make that decision on whether to go ahead or not. But yes, any update on that?

Yes, Chenny, we're still working on a major one in Victoria. We are still working on our Auto Mall concept for our Newstead representation. Aspley in Brisbane is a good example. We don't actually -- we do name it the Auto Mall, but we haven't shown photos of it. We probably should to show you actually what we've developed there. There is -- I'm just looking at the team now, we're at 10 brands at Aspley. So it's quite a significant Auto Mall concept there. So it is still -- it is an ongoing concept and part of this property optimization or getting greater productivity out of our property footprint, which we need to do in that competitive environment that I've just talked about in Australia. Probably the only thing that's slowing that down a little bit is -- and this isn't -- this isn't news in Australia is building costs are pretty high. So when you need to actually rebuild something new, the economics of that is -- need to stack up. So we're not just going to simply move to a new facility and then go the cost to build a new dealership, it doesn't make the auto concept stack up the way it perhaps did in the past. That's not across the board. That's in isolated instances. What that means, though, is that's part of this moat around dealerships at the moment and this turf war. The number of stand-alone new dealerships being built is just not high at the moment. Again, that means the ones that exist are highly valuable. No one has a bigger footprint in Australia than Eagers. And that is something that you're able to leverage as a dealer partner. I'm certain our peers will talk about the same thing. These showrooms, these locations are incredibly valuable. we will make sure that we partner with those that can afford them and can give us an appropriate return out of them.

Got it. And then maybe just one last one on Canada. I appreciate that the deal is still yet to close, and you talked to some of the, I guess, longer-term organic and inorganic growth drivers there. But maybe if I could focus your attention, maybe a bit more shorter term. How should we think about your top priorities for Canada once that deal completes? What would you really want to get underway?

Well, and this is the beauty of this deal, Chenny, it's an investment with partners who run the business day-to-day. There is no focus or need to worry about integrating the business, absorbing the business, rolling out Eagers' way of doing things. There's 2 things. First is integrating best practice, which is learning from CanadaOne, which we will learn a lot over here in Eagers and of course, sharing anything that we think is useful to improve their business. So it's just like Eagers here in Australia. Step one is how do we actually optimize your business? Can we help your business be even better? And I know, again, Pat and Daniel and their entire team are very open to that. That's one of the things we love about them. You know what Eagers are like. We're avid students. We want to learn. We are here. We do not know at all. We are happy to learn from them as well. So step 1 is how can we make our existing businesses better as they stand. Step 2, obviously, is growth. And the growth -- the fact that they are so high performed, again, in the comments I've just made, way back from when Martin worked -- Martin first joined Eagers and I was working with him, we sat down and said, we need to make as much money as we can out of the existing business before we rush off and buy new ones. And the great thing about Canada at a 4.4% return on sales, industry-leading performance, there is no issue. There is no need to improve their business. We want to, and they'll constantly work on improving it, but it's not like a business that needs to be improved, fixed, optimized. Their platform for growth is solid. The opportunities for growth are coming from everywhere. It is a matter of being disciplined, being targeted and making sure that we work with them and support them. But to be quite frank, Chenny, they're the experts in Canada. We're going to take their advice.

Your next question comes from Tom Kierath from Barrenjoey.

Just a quick one on the performance in the half. Can you maybe just break down how you did in the September quarter versus December quarter? I just noticed that, I guess, the interest rate environment has kind of changed in the last few months and some of the VFACTS start has actually been a little softer. But have you guys seen a bit more weakness in the December quarter versus September quarter? Or just some comments there?

That'd only be comments, Tom. We don't run our business quarter-to-quarter, and we won't unless we have to. We -- as I keep saying, we're a 100-year-old company, and we're growing for the mid and long term. And I think if we started running things quarter-by-quarter, we wouldn't be focused on the main game. Just general comments, though, in the fourth quarter. And again, it's a little bit distorted because there is always an element of seasonality. December is always a huge profit year for us in terms of -- we have -- some of our key OEMs have year-end checks. We have KPI income. We have balance sheet reconciliations. Just, general commentary around the business. The fourth quarter was better than the third quarter, simple as that. However, in the fourth quarter, November was tough. October was strong. December was strong. So one of the things we're seeing is a little bit more volatility. It's a little bit more up and down. I think I spoke to you, Tom, right at the end of November last year, and we just had a challenging November and then December was exceptionally strong. So hard -- I'm sorry, I haven't really given you a great answer there, Tom, but...

No, that's all I was looking for.

Yes, yes, no, no. It was a stronger quarter.

No, not expecting like numbers or anything. That's helpful. And just the other one, I think when we spoke then you said that you had like there's a hailstorm that meant that you couldn't deliver a bunch of the BYDs or potentially you couldn't deliver them in this year. I was just checking whether they did, in fact, get delivered in this year or whether that's in the January number that you spoke to that 9%.

They were cars that were impacted by hail. BYD have worked at how they're going to now deal with those. Obviously, we're their biggest partner, and we've worked with them on how we're selling those cars that will be sold over the first quarter of this year.

Your next question comes from Tim Piper from Jarden.

Just on Canada, looking at the trajectory there, obviously, the cuts in interest rates in Canada has had a benefit to the PBT line. Is the Canada businesses Balmain & Corporate fully floating rate debt, and it looks like you've probably got a further annualization to run through the numbers on where rates sit now for this year, so we could expect that PBT growth can continue to outpace sort of EBITDA growth?

Look, there's certainly in the -- there was -- in that $48 million increase year-on-year, there was probably 1/3 of it related to interest rate benefits in that second half related to the rate reductions. In terms of how that flows through, we'll just have to look at that once we take control of the business and look at the debt profile.

Okay. Got it. And just one on BYD. Maybe just some high-level comments around the second half of calendar year '25, obviously, post the distribution change. For the retail joint venture, did anything practically change within the business? And then there was obviously a bit of a step-up in volume delivered in BYD market as a whole in the second half versus the first half. Did you get operating leverage on that volume increase and see margins expand in BYD? I know you're not quantifying exactly what margins are now, but can you comment maybe on the direction of margins for BYD in the second half versus the first half?

Yes. We -- obviously, with any brand that we represent, Tim, that we get significant volume uplift, which that brand is growing fast, we get operating leverage. So there is -- and this is why sometimes there's always a misread. We have had brands in the past where margins have reduced, but volumes have significantly grown and you get a better net result because you get greater operating leverage. That is what occurs in any fast-growing brand. Certainly, BYD has been fast growing, and they've got ambitions to continue to grow. So all of our OEMs that we represent that grow quickly give us that operating leverage advantage. So yes, as their volume increased in the second half of 2025, there was benefits that flow through.

Sorry, just to clarify, I mean, it sounds like you're saying that earnings were higher in the second half than the first half, but the PBT margin percentage generated by BYD, was that lower in the second half than the first half?

It's in that core margin, which was 4% year-on-year. So -- and then on a half-on-half, if we looked at what the core underlying ROS was 4. 2% in the second half versus 3.7% in the first half. Some of that is the TFL checks, but also the balance sheet mix and that's sort of the level.

The short answer is yes, it contributed a better result in the second half as volume came through and as operating leverage was achieved.

Your next question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS.

Just 2 questions from me, if that's all right. Firstly, Keith, just I think you mentioned order rate up 9% in January. How do we think about the order right versus delivery dynamics? And then maybe I don't know if you can make any comments in terms of that plus 9% order rate for the core part of the business versus the kind of EV beneficiaries that you're getting through?

So the 9% is the total business, and it's like-for-like. So there's no acquisitions that exist in January this year that weren't in the business in January 2025. So that is a true like-for-like 9% increase in order right. So I think the first part of your question was how does the order right relate to deliveries. They're largely in line, and that's evidenced by our revenue, which was up by 8.3% in January '26 versus January 2025. The reason for that is that we are in a more normal supply environment, which means that, the majority of vehicles are being sold and delivered within 30 to 45 days of the order right. So they're broadly similar. The one exception at the moment, which has been reasonably well documented is Toyota at the moment. Toyota's VFACTS numbers for January and probably will be the same in February. indicating some shortage of stock that will come through in the second quarter. And what we're seeing is that Toyota order write is still exceptionally strong and the Toyota dealers are actually building order banks because of this tighter supply across a number of key models in their franchise.

Got it. In terms of the January up 9%, I was more asking like the core part of the business ex BYD. Are you able to give us any steer in terms of how that performed in January?

The core part of the business was also up.

Got it. And then just lastly on Jared's, like following on from Jared's question about CanadaOne. So am I understanding correct that everything is kind of wheels in motion and you guys are kind of ready to hit the ground running as opposed to sitting there wanting to bed down the business, take a pause, et cetera, when you're thinking about the acquisition opportunities?

There is -- yes, I think that's a fair assumption. There is nothing -- there's no need for a pause. There is no need for an integration that is business as usual in Canada. The team over there are running the business exceptionally well. They haven't missed a beat. When it settles, it's just settled. Nothing changes. The conversations we've been having effectively since the middle of last year have been on how that business is performing, how that business has been running, what we can learn from them, but equally, what are the opportunities that they're looking at. That will continue. There is no need for that to speed up or slow down and certainly no pause. Can I just -- before you go, actually, I just -- that question was just asked about the core versus the new energy vehicle. One of the things that it's worth pointing out because I think this is really important is that you shouldn't talk to -- or shouldn't look at our business as core and one other brand or new energy vehicle sales because part of what we're doing at the moment is we have a footprint, which I was talking about before. We have a footprint of showrooms of people of our business. Inside that footprint, we are optimizing it, which we've done for 100 years, by the way, which means that we are putting the right partners in the right locations to produce the best result for them as our partner and for us as a company. That means that whatever brand it is and pick any brand and we don't like talking about specific brands. But any brand, if they are the best party to represent in a certain location, that is who we partner with. So it's better to think of our business as a core business rather than different sections, probably with the only exception being our easyauto123. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that because I felt like it was a little bit -- it'd be misleading not to.

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

Thank you. I appreciate that, and thank you, everyone, for your attention. We think Eagers' result from 2025 is a great credit to the people inside our business who have worked really hard. As I would say, we're a quality business, and we've got quality opportunities ahead. In 2025, we entered into 2 key partnerships and the quality of those partners, CanadaOne and Mitsubishi Corporation. If you ever needed evidence of the quality of our opportunities ahead, that is the evidence. They are as high-quality partners as we could ever hope for. And we're very excited because we are just starting on the next stage of our growth journey. So thank you for your attention, and we'll talk in the next period.

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