Fleetwood Limited (FWD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for joining us for today's investor briefing. I'm Andrea Pidcock, CEO of Fleetwood, and I'm joined by our CFO, Cate Chandler. Today, we made two announcements, the sale of Camec to Aussie Traveler and the acquisition of Red Dog Village, a major transient worker accommodation village in Karratha. This presentation is focused on the Red Dog acquisition, although we will also be happy to take any questions on the Camec sale at the end. Fleetwood's acquisition of Red Dog Village significantly expands our WA accommodation portfolio. It strengthens our position in one of Australia's most active resource regions and it positions Fleetwood to benefit from sustained accommodation demand in the Pilbara. Today, we'll cover an overview of Red Dog Village and its strategic fit, the commercial rationale of the acquisition, the transition timeline and longer-term plans, a combination of demand and supply dynamics in Karratha and the value this acquisition creates for customers, partners and shareholders. At the end of the presentation, we'll be happy to take your questions. As always, I'd like to remind you that this presentation is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Any forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and expectations that are subject to change and should not be relied upon as guarantees of future performance. Turning now to the acquisition. Fleetwood has entered into an agreement to acquire Red Dog Village from Bechtel for $20 million. Red Dog Village is a modern large-scale transient worker accommodation facility with 2,169 rooms and high-quality modern amenities. Village was developed in 2022 to support workforce requirements for Woodside's Pluto Train 2 project. With that project expected to finish in December this year, Fleetwood will take over operations at Red Dog Village from January 2027. The acquisition provides immediate scale in one of Australia's most supply-constrained accommodation markets and significantly expands our ability to service existing and future customers in the region. Our detailed review of Karratha accommodation demand and supply shows that the market is expected to remain undersupplied by around 1,500 beds over the next 5 years, even with both Red Dog Village and Searipple operating. That demand outlook provides a compelling foundation for this acquisition and supports our confidence in the asset's long-term earnings potential. Red Dog Village has the potential to increase Community Solutions EBIT by around $10 million to $20 million on an annualized basis, depending on occupancy and market conditions. Importantly, this opportunity builds on already strong operating position. Searipple continues to perform well with FY '27 occupancy forecast at between 75% and 85%, with 71% of available capacity already contracted. The acquisition will be funded through a term debt facility, preserving our balance sheet flexibility. Combined with Searipple, Red Dog Village establishes a leading accommodation platform in Karratha, increasing our scale, strengthening earnings potential and reinforcing Fleetwood's position in a market characterized by constrained supply and sustained demand. Karratha is one of Australia's most significant resource and infrastructure hubs, supported by a diverse mix of energy, mining, industrial and export operations. The region continues to attract substantial investment through major project developments, which require a large transient workforce. Demand isn't limited to construction activity though. Operators also need accommodation for ongoing FIFO workers, shutdown maintenance teams and the broad range of support services that underpin these industries. We've seen this demand firsthand. Searipple has operated at consistently high occupancy levels throughout the last 2 years. The addition of Red Dog Village positions Fleetwood as Karratha's leading transient worker accommodation operator, providing the scale required to support multiple projects simultaneously. Importantly, Fleetwood is uniquely positioned through the combination of accommodation operations and modular manufacturing capability, allowing us to work with key local stakeholders, including the city of Karratha, the WA state government and local operators to support the region's longer-term workforce and housing needs. Fleetwood's operating model brings together accommodation operations and in-house modular manufacturing. This integrated approach allows us to adapt our facilities, whether by having the capacity to meet high project demand or upgrading and reconfiguring existing villages to suit different workforce profiles and project phases. Built to support transition from construction phase accommodation through the key worker and residential solutions, which is increasingly important in Karratha where housing availability is tight. Red Dog Village strengthens this platform by adding a high-quality established facility that can be adapted as demand evolves, enhancing our ability to repurpose accommodation in line with market requirements. The addition of Red Dog Village creates a portfolio approach to accommodation in Karratha. In the near term, it retains available capacity in a market where accommodation remains constrained. Over time, the combined portfolio enables more effective yield management by allowing customers and project workforce to be allocated across both assets as demand fluctuates. This flexibility helps optimize occupancy, improve customer outcomes and enhance earnings resilience through project cycles. In addition, Fleetwood has strategic options to evolve and develop assets as regional workforce and housing requirements continue to change. Demand for transient worker accommodation in Karratha is expected to remain elevated over the short to medium term. This demand is supported by a combination of ongoing operational activity, major maintenance programs and a substantial pipeline of resource and infrastructure projects already underway or progressing through approvals. Region continues to attract significant investment across multiple sectors, resulting in overlapping workforce requirements and long-duration accommodation demand. Collectively, these projects are expected to require thousands of accommodation beds over many years, reinforcing the need for high-quality transient worker accommodation and supporting a positive outlook for occupancy across Fleetwood's portfolio. Now looking at Fleetwood more broadly. As I said, today, we also announced that we have reached agreement to sell Camec to Aussie Traveler, which is expected to finalize in Q1 this year. Sorry, I just noted the slides aren't quite keeping up. So maybe we can kind of move ahead a couple there you go. That's great. Thanks. Today, we also announced that we've reached agreement to sell Camec to Aussie Traveler, which we expect to finalize in Q1 of this year. This completes Fleetwood's exit from the RV segment and leaves us focused on two core divisions, Building Solutions and Community Solutions. These two divisions are strengthened by the acquisition of Red Dog Village. Community Solutions gained immediate scale in Karratha adding to the region -- adding the region's largest accommodation village and reinforcing Fleetwood's position as the leading TWA operator in a supply-constrained market. Building Solutions also benefits from increased modular demand with opportunities for additional capacity upgrades and future residential development. Together, the divisions form a resilient vertically integrated model that is now even better positioned to support major project cycles and long-term regional growth. The acquisition of Red Dog Village reinforces the complementary nature of Fleetwood's two core businesses. Community Solutions provides accommodation assets and management services, adding value and providing recurring yield, now strengthened by the addition of Karratha's largest village. Building Solutions provides the modular capability to efficiently build, renew and repurpose those assets, supporting scalable growth. Together, the divisions form a resilient, vertically integrated model where accommodation assets generate sustained demand for modular solutions and modular capability enhances the value, flexibility and future potential of those assets. Since joining Fleetwood, I have focused on three priorities that strengthen our foundations and position the company for sustainable growth. The first priority is to deliver strategic growth across both Community Solutions and Building Solutions. The acquisition of Red Dog Village is an important example of this strategy in action. We will continue to pursue opportunities and partnerships where our capabilities can create long-term value. Within Building Solutions, we operate in large markets, including education and housing where modular construction offers significant advantages in speed, quality and efficiency. We will continue to strengthen relationships with existing customers while developing new partnerships to support future growth. We're also investing in sales capability to deepen customer engagement and improve conversion of high-quality opportunities. Our second priority is accelerating excellence in modern manufacturing. The goal of modern methods of construction is to bring manufacturing efficiencies to the build process. We've implemented structural changes, brought in additional expertise, and we're developing plans to standardize processes, components and subassemblies. These initiatives will improve productivity, reduce waste, better leverage scarce trades and strengthen our competitive position. My third focus area is to build the capability and culture we need for a high-performing business. We have many highly skilled and capable people at Fleetwood, and we're continuing to strengthen capability in areas that will be important for our next phase of growth. We also need to support our people with the right technology to reduce manual processes, integrate disparate systems and equip people with the information and insights they need to do their jobs well. I want to build a collaborative and high-performing culture, supported by the right capabilities, systems and ways of working. To close, I want to bring together the core reasons Fleetwood is well positioned for sustained growth and attractive returns. We're Australia's largest modular builder with six facilities and national capacity aligned to the housing shortfall and infrastructure spend, giving us scale, capability and resilience. Our Community Solutions division provides recurring earnings with the accommodation shortfall in Karratha expected to persist through to 2030 and beyond and underpin demand across our TWA footprint. We operate in large markets in housing, education, defense and infrastructure and are well positioned to benefit from Karratha's strong pipeline of major projects. We now have a sharper higher-margin Building Solutions business following the Smithfield closure, which delivers $8 million to $9 million in annualized savings from Q2 in FY '27. We have a strong balance sheet with significant net cash and ownership of TWA assets. Taken together, Fleetwood is a business with a unique platform for growth, strengthened by our expanded TWA accommodation footprint and national modular capability. We've got the balance sheet, the operating model and the leadership focus to convert this advantage into sustained performance and attractive returns. Thank you. That concludes our presentation, and we're now happy to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Gavin Allen with Euroz Hartleys.

That was terrific. Just a couple of quick ones for me. Obviously People that have been sort of studying these things for some time would recognize that $20 million for this village possibly would barely cover just removing it and the cost of replacement would be much sort of more than that. Just interested in the sort of the process and discussions you've had with council to get this deal across the line. And secondly, how would we think about utilization required to deliver that sort of, let's call it, $15 million at the midpoint of your possible range?

Thanks for that question. I think if you think about the deal, and you're right, obviously, $20 million is very, very much below the replacement value of a village like Red Dog. So to think about the deal, you've really got to understand, firstly, why Bechtel was selling rather than decommissioning or any other kind of exit plan, why they chose us and how we landed on a price. And I think the first thing for Bechtel is -- I don't want to speak on their behalf. But obviously, for them, this is not their main game. The main game is around supporting the project. They built the village to achieve that. But then the way that we spoke to them about the advantages for them is it gives them a clean exit -- the lease that they're on at the moment has some remediation obligations, and that would have been complicated and messy for them to have to execute on. And so this allowed them a clear -- and it also meant that the village was still there if the project overruns in any way or if they need to come back for any reason. I think everyone understands that at the moment, you cannot get a room in Karratha. And so having that security was really important for them as they close out the project and important, I think, probably for Woodside as well. In terms of why us, we've been up in that area for a long time. We've got really great relationships with the council. We've worked really closely with Bechtel throughout sort of understanding what they needed out of this deal. And so I think that they like working with us. The council supported us as an acquirer. And I think that also has to do with the fact that we have the ability to then look at other residential options in the future. That's a really important requirement for Karratha, and we're really well positioned to be able to work with all of the stakeholders on transitioning to other accommodation options, which other providers are not in the same position to be able to do. And then the third thing, the price, I think that was just obviously a lot of deep dive understanding of the economics of everybody's different positions. And we believe that, that was something that kind of gave benefit to Bechtel and gave benefit to us. In terms of your question around the occupancy that we need, we've obviously been quite conservative in our expectations around occupancy, particularly early on, even though we know that the market is very strong. And that's just because we're coming to this without any contracted customers. By the end of the project, the -- I don't know how many thousands of workers, but I'd say probably a couple of thousand workers on Pluto 2 will leave if they can. And so we really have to rebuild the order book from scratch. So we haven't been too bullish on our expectations, just understanding and expecting that while we know that accommodation is very tight in Karratha, it will take time and projects will sort of go up and down. And so we don't want to be over optimistic around occupancy rates. But just to give you a bit of a feel for occupancy levels, the Red Dog Village is nearly double the size of Searipple. And the costs might be a little higher. So the margins won't be quite at the same level as our Searipple margins. But you can see if you've got a model of where the Searipple occupancy has to be to hit the EBIT levels, then you can kind of translate that across to Red Dog moderated a little bit higher cost.

Got it. And just one last one for me quickly. Just on the Building Solutions side, so I'm just thinking about this in terms of how your order book is looking heading into '27 and how we should think about Building Solutions post Q2 FY '27 when the cost base has been reset. Is there any flavor you can provide us on how to be thinking about that going forward?