Fletcher Building Limited (FBU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Fletcher Building half year results analyst briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ross Taylor, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of our half year results for the 6 months ended 31 December 2021. I'll start with today's agenda on Slide 3 of our results presentation pack. Similar to how we approached our annual results last year, myself and our Group CFO, Bevan McKenzie, will be providing the group overview. Following this, each of the divisional chief executives will be providing a short summary of the division's performance for the half year and outline of how they're progressing on driving performance and growth in their businesses. And then after a short sum up from me at the end, all of us will be available for Q&A. Turning to Slide 4 and a summary of the half year results. Pleasingly, we improved across all our profit metrics. EBIT was up 3% for the half year, our margins lifted to 8.2%, and net earnings improved significantly, up 41%. Our balance sheet remains strong. And as flagged, we rebuilt our inventories and housing investment to deal with some of the supply chain issues we're experiencing in the market. Against this backdrop, the Board has declared a fully imputed interim dividend of $0.18 per share. And we continue with our share buyback program, which is now around 1/3 of the way through. It's important to call out that we achieved these results despite the first quarter being heavily impacted by COVID. In New Zealand, we're again forced to effectively shut all our businesses for up to 5 weeks. And in Australia, state borders and local lockdowns impacted both our productivity and that of our end customers. It was our strong second quarter performance that allowed us to deliver the results we have for the first half. I would particularly call out our second quarter EBIT of $264 million, well up on the comparative period, and a strong average group margin for the quarter of 11.8%. On Slide 5, I lay out why we continue to be confident for both the balance of FY '22 and the years beyond that. Firstly, the balance of FY '22 looks very solid. Customers and forward indicators point to ongoing strong volumes. We're confident in our operational disciplines and in covering inflationary costs, and we expect second half margins to be around 9.5%, and with that to deliver a full year EBIT of around $750 million. There remains some exposure to COVID risk in the FY '22 outlook as the Omicron variant works through New Zealand. But based on what we've seen in our Australian business, we think this risk is limited to somewhere between a $25 million to $50 million potential impact to our EBIT profit line at worst. Looking beyond this financial year, we remain very positive. Our markets look strong into the future, we expect COVID impacts to ease, we remain on track to improve EBIT margins across the group to 10% in FY '23, and we have a maturing pipeline of investments to keep driving growth beyond this. As we work through our presentation today, we'll look to bring each of these points to life for you. Turning now to Slide 6. But before starting, you'll see as we go through the presentation that we have split the half year numbers, where relevant, into quarters. This is important as it provides the necessary detail to understand the COVID impacts in the first quarter and to get a sense of how the business is actually operating in the second quarter as it's this quarter that is a better guide to how we think about the upcoming second half of FY '22. Overall, our teams have delivered an outstanding result for the half year despite the first quarter COVID impacts. Revenue was up 2%. And EBIT, at $332 million, was up 3% on last year. But the real story is in the second quarter performance. Excluding our industrial development earnings of $47 million, second quarter profits were up 43%, and our second quarter margin was a pleasing 10.2%. Moving to Slide 7 and on to cash and leverage. After a very busy FY '21 year, we had flagged the need to restock both our inventory in some areas as well as our housing stock and land positions. You can see these actions clearly on the top graphic. Here, we have shown an investment in our residential business of $107 million through the half and an investment in inventory of $122 million. Net debt levels at the end of the half were $442 million, resulting in a leverage ratio of 0.4x, and we ended the half with $1.3 billion of available liquidity. This continues to leave us with a very strong balance sheet position. On Slide 8, we show that net earnings for the year are up strongly to $171 million. This includes $43 million of significant items, which mainly relate to the movements in the foreign currency translation reserve from the Rocla sale. Pleasingly, earnings per share before significant items, which is the basis upon which we pay our dividend, increased to just over $0.26 per share. Against this backdrop, the Board has declared a fully imputed interim dividend of $0.18 per share to be paid in April. Continuing with capital returns, we started our share buyback program of up to $300 million in June last year. And so far, we've purchased and canceled around 15 million shares for around $107 million. Our ongoing good progress on making our workplace safer and in reducing our carbon emissions is shown on Slide 9. In safety, our injury rates continue to fall and our TRIFR, or total recordable injury frequency rate, set at 4.2 at the end of the first half. This is a significant and important reduction on last year. It also means that for the first 6 months of the year, 93% of our sites were injury-free. We continue to make good progress towards our goal of a 30% reduction in our carbon emissions by 2030. Our emissions are now sustainably 10% below our 2018 levels, and each business has a plan to ensure we'll meet or better our 30% target by 2030. I want to now move to Slide 10 and discuss what we're seeing in our markets and where we think they'll head over the medium term, starting with the New Zealand residential market from which we get about 47% of our New Zealand revenue. Residential consents have been running well ahead of industry capacity for some time now, and we show this in the graph on the top left of this slide. Unsurprisingly, market forecasters are predicting we've seen the peak in consent levels this year at around the 50,000 per annum level, and the consents are expected to start to slow as interest rate increases and lending restrictions start to abate. That said, these forecasts are only predicting that consent numbers will move back to the rough levels of industry capacity. As we know, consents always lead work put in place by at least 6 months, but we now have the added dynamic that there's been a buildup or backlog of work to do that the industry simply hasn't had the capacity to get through. We expect the impact of this backlog to materially extend the high levels of work to get through across the industry. This is shown on the graph on the bottom left-hand side of Slide 10, where forecasters are predicting that the actual levels of work put in place will likely rise through FY '23 and only return to their present levels in FY '24. This represents a very strong outlook for the industry and Fletcher Building. This outlook has been confirmed anecdotally through our customer base, where most home builders' order books are full for the next 18 months and customer orders into the early civil and infrastructure work for residential development remain very strong. The outlook for infrastructure and commercial sectors in New Zealand are also forecast to be strong, as shown on Slide 11. Both these sectors have a chunk of catch-up work to get through as COVID disruptions, skill shortages from border closures and general supply chain issues have slowed down growth both in -- growth in both in-flight projects and scheduled project starts. In addition to this, there is a strong pipeline of large projects coming through in both sectors. The net result of this combination is an expectation that the overall volumes of work put in place will continue to rise in the coming years. The forecast outlook in Australia is equally positive, as shown on Slide 12. COVID disruptions have had the effect of keeping work production levels suppressed across all sectors. And like New Zealand, this has pushed committed work into future years, creating a backlog across the whole industry. This, combined with a strong economic backdrop, sees forecast for work put in place looking strong across all sectors. As a result, we anticipate strong activity well into FY '24. I'll now hand across to Bevan McKenzie to provide a more detailed overview of our first half financial results.

Thanks, Ross, and good morning, everyone. Turning first to Slide 14. As Ross has noted, the group delivered a strong operating performance following the impact of the COVID lockdowns in the first quarter, and I'll touch on that in more detail on the next 2 slides. So there's just 3 additional points to highlight here: Firstly, significant items of $43 million were noncash charges resulting from the reclassification of the currency translation reserve on the divested Rocla business. Secondly and in line with our prior guidance, we'll be resuming cash tax payments in New Zealand at the end of FY '22, which has allowed us to attach imputation credits to a strong interim dividend of $0.18 per share. And finally here, our financials are now reported in line with the IFRIC decision on cloud computing arrangements. In short, this requires configuration costs for the implementation of cloud-based products to be expensed to the P&L rather than capitalized. The impact on the group's P&L in the current half year is $2 million. And for the full year, we expect it to be around $10 million as we continue our push into digital. I do note that these impacts are fully factored into our earning guidance of around $750 million for the full year. Turning to Slide 15. As mentioned, the first quarter of FY '22 was heavily disrupted by COVID-19 restrictions. This was particularly the case in New Zealand, where a full shutdown of almost all our operations for up to 5 weeks resulted in lost revenue of around $300 million and lost earnings of around $100 million. In the second quarter, trading was relatively unaffected by COVID restrictions, and the group's performance was strong with EBIT of $264 million, well up on the $153 million in the prior year. We do note that our 2 industrial development transactions for FY '22 were both completed in the second quarter, and these contributed $45 million. What we show here is that when these earnings are excluded, like-for-like EBIT was up 43% year-on-year. On the right-hand chart, we show that all divisions except Construction delivered materially improved earnings year-on-year. The team will speak shortly to the key drivers of their divisional performances, but thematically, I'd call out 3 key aspects of our second quarter result. Firstly, group revenues were up 10% year-on-year, reflecting good strength in market volumes. Importantly, in a disrupted supply chain environment, our local manufacturing positions and our selective investments in inventory meant that we were well placed to capture this ongoing high demand. Secondly, our quarter 2 result saw gross profit percentage up 60 basis points year-on-year. We've talked in previous results calls about our focus on pricing and margin management. We continue to see improved disciplines in the businesses in these areas, which is translating into our ability to more than offset cost inflation. Thirdly, we continue to see good management of the overhead cost base, which has materially improved in recent years. This is resulting in excellent operating leverage to volume with like-for-like EBIT growth of 43% running well ahead of revenue growth. This operating leverage is reflected in more detail on Slide 16, where we show the drivers of the EBIT margin improvement. As Ross has said, the group's target is to deliver an EBIT margin of 10% in FY '23, and the performance in the second quarter of FY '22 shows our continued strong progress to meet this objective. Overall, group margin for the second quarter was 11.8%. If we again exclude the industrial development to create a more like-for-like comparison, the group's margin was 10.2%, which was 230 basis points ahead of the prior year. This was driven particularly by the strong uplift in the New Zealand materials and distribution divisions, reflecting gross profit accretion and operating leverage, and in our residential business, where we benefited from a circa 30% year-on-year uplift in house prices as well as the continued cost benefits from our ability to build at scale. In Australia, we made continued progress to our targeted margin of 5% to 7%, while Construction margins were lower due to productivity impacts from on-site COVID restrictions through the period. Having delivered this strong second quarter momentum, on Slide 17, we note that we expect our second half margins to be in the order of 9.5%. We expect market volumes to remain strong and broadly in line with what we saw in the second quarter and with the continued focus by the group on the 2 key areas of pricing to recover input cost inflation and driving operating leverage. On a like-for-like basis, a second half margin of 9.5% compares to 7.3% last year and, hence, a year-on-year uplift of around 230 basis points. This puts us firmly on track for our 10% margin target in FY '23. Perhaps to preempt a question for later, I would note that the second half margin at 9.5% is slightly lower than the 10.2% delivered in the second quarter, and this is due solely to the slightly different revenue mix between the 2 periods. As we can see, the year-on-year uplift we expect in H2 is equivalent to that, that we delivered in the second quarter. And finally here, I would note that our 9.5% guidance is done on an underlying basis. And as Ross has mentioned, there is potential for Omicron to cause some disruption in the second half. Our expectation though is that any restrictions and, therefore, any earnings impact would be far less than we saw in the first quarter as we do not expect any requirement to fully shut our operations. Moving to Slide 18. We provide the detail on the group cash flow performance for the half year. At the full year '21 results, we highlighted a need to reinvest in inventories following a significant drawdown of stocks in that year. Cash flows in the current half reflect a rebuild of these stock levels and also our decisions to make targeted investments and inventories to provide supply chain resilience and support customer service levels wherever possible. We're seeing the benefits of these investments both in our earnings and also in our continued improvement in customer satisfaction metrics. On Page 19, we provide more detail on the working capital investments. In Residential and Development, we've previously signaled an investment of around $200 million in FY '22 as we rebuild stock levels and continue to scale the business. Around half of this planned investment was made in the first half of the year. In the materials and distribution divisions, investment in inventories was driven in part by higher sales volumes and higher stock values and partly by a rebuild of stock to more normal levels. As we've highlighted, in FY '21, stocks in these divisions reduced to levels which were around 3 days below what we consider to be effective. As we show on the lower table, we rebuilt this in the current period but still remain well ahead of where we were previously, which reflects the improved inventory management disciplines in the business. Finally, I'd note that we consider that in the manufacturing distribution divisions, inventory is now at a good level to support operations in the current environment. Turning to Slide 20, and the focus of our capital expenditure program remains consistent. On maintenance CapEx, we're seeing the benefit of our investments in prior years in a well-controlled spend that is now in line with underlying depreciation. I'll note that this does include our investments as we create a fit-for-purpose system environment for the group. Our base CapEx environment -- envelope, excuse me, also includes $50 million to $100 million per annum of growth investment focused on digital, sustainable product adjacencies and manufacturing efficiencies. This growth CapEx supports the group's drive to improve profitability to around 10% earnings margins in FY '23. Above this base CapEx, as Ross has pointed to, the group has a maturing pipeline of additional growth opportunities which are primarily organic. There is potential for these above-base investments to be in the order of $150 million per annum over the next 3 years, providing targeted returns of around 15%. As I'll show in a moment, our balance sheet remains well placed to support these investments. On Slide 21, we show the half year bridge for net debt. Debt levels remain low overall, with the increase in the period due to the expected investments in inventories, the Winstone Wallboards plant CapEx and the share buyback. On Slide 22, the increase in our net debt position during the half year translated to a slight increase in leverage to 0.4x. Consistent with our prior commentary, we expect leverage to move back to the lower end of our 1 to 2x target range over the medium term as we complete our investments in the wallboards plant, the final Construction legacy projects, the balance of the current share buyback and also look to invest in growth. The group's balance sheet remains strongly positioned to support these growth investments. We note here that depending on the phasing of these investments and the lag between CapEx and earnings on some of the organic plays, this may lift the group's leverage by between 0.2 and 0.5 turn over the next 3 years. We expect though that even with these additional investments, we'll continue to retain significant balance sheet flexibility and operate it just below or at the lower end of our target range over the medium term. Slide 23 shows that the group's funding profile remains very strong. We've maintained around $1.8 billion of total credit facilities, which have good tenor with around 69% of all borrowings at fixed interest rates. In addition, they are long-dated with around 85% of our facilities maturing in FY '25 and beyond, which means that at 31 December, a liquidity of $1.3 billion which included around $400 million of cash on hand. On Slide 24, as Ross has noted, the group will pay an interim FY '22 dividend of $0.18 per share. This is a 50% increase on last year, reflecting the ongoing performance improvement and positive outlook for the business. A dividend of $0.18 represents a 68% payout ratio, which is in the upper part of our payout range. The interim dividend will be imputed for New Zealand taxation purposes for the first time since FY '17, which is very pleasing. On the share buyback, this remains active, and we have completed purchases of $107 million to date. On Slide 25 and in summary, the group's results in this period demonstrate our ongoing performance momentum. We're seeing the benefit of initiatives put in place over the past 4 years. Notably, our improved pricing disciplines mean we are more than offsetting input cost inflation and expanding our gross profit margins. We have a much improved cost base, which we are maintaining and which is giving us strong operating leverage to volume. This resulted in underlying earnings margins of 10.2% in the second quarter, giving us clear line of sight to hitting our 10% target in FY '23. On cash, good working capital disciplines mean that we can make targeted investments in stocks to support customer service levels and earnings growth, making the most of our local positions in a disrupted supply chain environment. As we look ahead and as the team will talk to now, we have a good pipeline of growth opportunities primarily through organic investment and adjacencies. We've established a strong balance sheet position to support these growth investments as well as good returns to shareholders. We will continue to maintain strong balance sheet flexibility and conservative metrics as we drive this next phase of our performance and growth. I'll hand now to Hamish to talk to the Building Products results.

Thank you, Bevan. Good morning, everyone. Overall, for the half year, Building Products revenue was up 9%, profits were slightly lower due to the Q1 impact, and our overall margin was 12.5% for the half. Following the lockdowns, we saw a very strong bounce back in volumes across several sectors and finishing trades in particular. This resulted in a very strong second quarter EBIT, and our second quarter margins improved significantly to 15.5%. Key features of the half were the tight labor market and the continuation of higher raw material and freight input costs, which we ensured were pass-through to price. Higher contributions from steel in Humes were particularly pleasing. With supply chains disrupted and a number of players withdrawing from New Zealand, customers have continued to show a preference for locally manufactured product and the improved reliability that provides. Our Winstone Wallboards and Tasman Insulation plants are running at full capacity, and I'll comment on how we're addressing this on the next slide. On Slide 28, there are a number of operational improvements we are driving in order to maintain our strong margin of approximately 14%. In Laminex, we continue to expand and refresh our product range, which is driving higher sales and margins. Our investment in digital is delivering a positive swing to online transactions, which are now over 25% of sales for this business. Meanwhile, our automation investments are ensuring cost pressures are controlled. This has the added benefit of expanding capacity and service improvements. For example, our plant upgrade at Humes Papakura has enabled us to move to a single North Island concrete pipe manufacturing location and will add a further 20% capacity once fully completed in June. In steel, site rationalizations are delivering, and we've commenced our PCC ovens upgrade, which will deliver better efficiencies, greater capacity and a significant reduction in carbon emissions. This is expected to be fully completed by Easter 2023. On growth, the right-hand side of the slide, we have a strong pipeline of exciting initiatives in place, which are expected to deliver a material uplift in earnings over the medium term. At our Laminex plant in Taupo, we are embarking on a significant upgrade, which will introduce a much wider range of wood fiber-based panel products, some of which are currently not available in New Zealand. In terms of our glass wool plant, we'll add 200% more capacity to meet the expected demand driven by new rules for insulation requirements coming to the force towards the end of this year. The average newbuild home will require up to 3x the previous amount of bales used. In steel, we have acquired land for a purpose-built steel distribution and processing center, which will be constructed by FY '26. In addition, we have also ordered a new purlin mill, which will enable us to expand this category by the end of 2023. This is an exciting time for Building Products division, and we remain focused on driving sustainable performance as we continue to deliver on the growing market demand. Just moving finally to Slide 29. This is a recent photo of construction progress on our new wallboards plant. And I just wanted to clarify this project is on time and on budget and we expect to be fully commissioned by June 2023. And with that, I'll hand over to Bruce McEwen to cover off Distribution.

Thank you, Hamish. Good morning, everyone. On Slide 30, Distribution revenue was up 4% for the first half, with EBIT slightly lower compared to last year due to the first quarter COVID lockdown. Following the COVID lockdowns, the division delivered strong year-on-year growth. Second quarter revenues were 20% higher; and EBIT, 62% higher than the prior period. The second quarter EBIT margin of 8.5% was over 200 basis points ahead of last year, a strong performance off the back of operating leverage and improved pricing disciplines. Outside the lockdown period, the division delivered significant revenue growth across all geographical segments, most predominantly in Auckland. The growth was particularly evident in the core timber, cladding and frame and truss categories, categories in which market demand has outstripped industry capacity with disrupted supply chains from the ongoing impact of COVID. This disruption has reduced trading cash flow as we needed to invest in higher inventory holdings due to supply chain inconsistency. On Slide 31, as we look ahead, having delivered strong second quarter margins, we're very confident that we're set up to reach our EBIT margin targets earlier than forecast. The strong performance is partly through the operating leverage we are achieving in the strong market. However, we're focused on driving improved and sustainable performance through disciplined pricing methodologies and building enhanced pricing capabilities to continue to offset input cost inflation. We'll continue investing in our customer efficiency programs and into our customer-focused digital programs, including integrating into our customers' ecosystems to make it easier for them to do business. As we look forward to growth opportunities in the medium term, a continued development of digital capabilities will further enhance our customer value propositions. This, coupled with new data and analytic capability, will enable us to understand customer behaviors to therefore better serve our customers' needs and create expanded share of wallet opportunities. And whilst new e-commerce tools are enabling us to service customer needs in new and exciting ways, our nationwide branch network is critical to delivering an end-to-end omnichannel experience. As such, we're driving network expansion and growth corridors through new branch openings and targeted acquisition opportunities. Finally, on Slide 32, as we continue to future-proof our business through the potential of digital and big data, we've seen our tradie customers are becoming more attuned to the opportunities of e-tools and making their lives simpler. The Distribution landscape is evolving, and we're in a strong position to capture and drive improved performance from that change. I'll now hand over to Nick Traber, who will cover off Concrete.

Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. Despite the COVID lockdowns, the Concrete division nearly delivered the same revenue as in the first half year of 2021 with a strong second quarter rebound of 14%. This was on the back of focused volume growth and good pricing discipline. EBIT was solid, up 40% in the second quarter, thanks to great progress on shifting volume to more profitable market segments. We also benefited from cost initiatives across operations, supply chain and overhead. Our EBIT margin was strong, reaching 17.2% in the second quarter. This was due to a focus on operational efficiencies across all 3 businesses. In particular, it was pleasing to see the increased usage of alternative fuels at GBC, where the recently completed waste tire facility helped to lift coal substitution rates from around 35% up to around 50%. Our trading cash flow, while strong, was down marginally on last year due to the strong market demand and inventory rebuild, as flagged earlier. Moving to Slide 34. We have a strong pipeline of opportunities to drive growth in the short and medium term. Pleasingly, we expect to deliver the targeted margin improvement earlier than expected, and we continue to drive operating performance improvement through: one, investments in the renewal and debottlenecking of key operations and securing quarry resources; two, expand our solutions offering such as wall systems, flooring and roading for industrial and retail customers; three, optimizing our supply chain; and four, further strengthen our cost leadership through operational excellence and a lean and agile organization. In the medium term, right side of the slide, we are focused on growth opportunities in sustainability, innovation and digital particularly around: one, strengthen our leadership in low-carbon binder and concrete. To stay at the forefront of innovative construction material solutions, we have established an innovation lab to fast-track go-to-market of new products and solutions. Two, decarbonization of cement manufacturing. We will further increase the use of alternative fuels, replacing coal, and raw materials as well as supplementary cementitious materials. Three, digital initiatives. We will focus on enhancing our customer experience, such as Firth's ready-mix online sales portal as well as digitalizing our operations and supply chain like the Firth mobile ticketing or Golden Bay's ERP upgrade. Finally, on Slide 35. We see a very strong and fast increasing demand from customers, specifiers and stakeholders for low-carbon products and solutions. Our leadership in Concrete is evident through an already 20% lower carbon footprint than imported product. This provides us with a major growth opportunity by further improving and expanding our portfolio of sustainably enhanced products and solutions. I'll now hand over to Dean to cover Australia.

Thank you, Nick. Hello from Australia, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 36, we present our performance on a continuous operations basis. So Rocla, which was divested in August, is excluded from the results. Overall, revenue was up 4% for the half, and we saw a strong improvement in Tradelink, Fletcher Insulation and Iplex. EBIT was up 4%, and the margin remained stable overall. Pleasingly, second quarter performance with a margin of 4.1% supports strong momentum as we move into the second half. This was achieved by a continued focus on pricing strategies, product mix and performance in key sectors such as the SME plumber, which did drive higher margins in Tradelink. And keeping a firm hold on our cost base, we are delivering operational leverage. As Bevan noted, we have invested cash into inventory, positioning ourselves for the second half and ensuring we have stock where our customers need it. Slide 37 shows we're continuing to drive performance in both the short and the medium term. We have momentum, and we are confident of delivering further growth in margin. Our second half margin will be greater than 4%. Our pricing disciplines are well embedded as we lean into inflation. In our steel business, price increases are programmed to ensure we recover the recent rapid raw material rises. And we continue to see the benefit of digitizing our businesses, which is improving customer satisfaction scores and attracting new customers particularly in Laminex and Tradelink. With a 5% to 7% margin sight for next year, we are well positioned for further EBIT growth through strategies such as category expansion adjacencies, our new Haven Kitchens joinery pilot stores are now open and running in Melbourne. This format competes against flat-pack kitchen providers and offers a much faster installation for both the fitter and the end user. In digital maturity, in distribution, we see Tradelink. We will have 70,000 products online by the end of June. Our digital strategies are driving incremental sales and with a margin that is higher than traditional bricks-and-mortar-based transactions. And through vitality, we have a very healthy multiyear pipeline of new products coming through, like Laminex Surround, which takes us into new categories for value. Automation remains a key focus for efficiencies, as evidenced by Fletcher Insulation, which has grown its manufacturing capacity by 20% and levered this to take market share. And finally, in innovation, we continue to explore new areas like bamboo as an alternative fiber source. We have made wallboard from bamboo and tested it in market. With a strong market ahead of us, we're driving performance, setting ambitious and logical targets to deliver further earnings growth. And finally, on Slide 38, some examples of how we're driving growth through product expansion and vitality. On the left-hand side, you see Haven Kitchens, which is looking to disrupt the kitchen cabinet market and a value for us and our customers. And on the right-hand side, we see Laminex Surround, a great product which takes us into the vertical wall space, disrupting traditional categories like plasterboard. This has 6x the margin of raw MDF that we make and sell. So this will wash nicely through to the bottom line. And with that, I'll now pass you over to Steve Evans to cover off Residential and Development.

Thanks, Dean, and good morning, everyone. On Slide 39, our residential business had a very strong first half, reflecting the ongoing strong housing markets. Whilst delays to house construction during the New Zealand lockdowns in the first quarter impacted the number of houses we were able to settle in the first half, we achieved significant price growth with average sales 33% higher than the same period a year ago. As a result, our residential business delivered $65 million in EBIT, ahead of the first half of FY '21 when we sold nearly twice as many homes. Additionally, the delay to the completion of homes due to lockdown helps the second half as there are over 200 confirmed sales awaiting completion prior to settlement. We also started construction of the first of our Vivid Living retirement villages in this half and recognized a $9 million land revaluation gain following the transfer of this land at Waiata Shores and Red Beach. The resulting EBIT margin of 27.2% is a very pleasing result. Our industrial development business delivered earnings of $47 million through the sale of the Rocla Emu Plains site in Penrith and the Fletcher Insulation site at Rooty Hill. This completes our development sales for the year and is well ahead of the $25 million per annum EBIT run rate we guided to for this business. As Bevan noted earlier, we lifted our funds base during the first half following a significant drop of housing stocks in FY '21. We expect to increase funds further in the second half of this year as we continue to transition conditional land deals into commitments and as we continue to grow the business, as noted on the next slide. Slide 40. As we look ahead to the second half, we expect to deliver unit sales significantly ahead of the same period in the previous year. Our product resonates very well with customers, and we continue to have a strong level of demand. We continue to refine our home typologies particularly at the more affordable price points where there is depth of demand in the market. Whilst higher input costs are affecting our business, we continue to innovate to achieve cost efficiencies. One example is the increasing use of Clever Core, which will allow faster recycling of our capital and which will help increase sales for Fletcher Living in the second half of the year. We're also pleased to see sales of Clever Core homes to external customers as the business continues to scale its volumes. Looking further ahead, on the right-hand side of the slide, we remain focused on growing our housing, apartments and retirement businesses to deliver around 1,400 to 1,500 units per annum by FY '25. Importantly, the land to deliver these volumes has already been secured. We do however remain prudent about acquiring land at sensible prices with our focus on strategic sites, which will deliver the communities we are now known for. Work has already commenced on several new apartment buildings in this first half, with the first Vivid Living and apartment sales expected in FY '23. We've now secured an apartment pipeline, which allows us to deliver over 1,700 apartments in the next 5 years. So a bright future and an extremely pleasing 6 months both on driving performance but also on growing our future. Lastly, on Slide 41, the left side photo shows our community at Whenuapai in Auckland, where you can see, in the middle left of the image, the row of Clever Core homes that has been assembled only in the last few weeks. The right-hand side photo shows our continued progress at One Central, the inner city development at Christchurch. These are the latest stages in 2 large established sites, which have been running for multiple years and where we have worked hard to master plan these communities with a range of typologies and price points to meet the deeper pools of buyer demand. With that, I'll now hand over to Peter Reidy to cover off Construction.

Thanks, Steve. Kia ora and good morning, everyone. Construction gross revenue was up 11% to $720 million. This largely reflects the increased activity from our buildings business, primarily the New Zealand International Conference Centre, and the new Winstone Wallboards plant. I note that the Conference Centre revenue in the first half was at 0 margin. Earnings and margin were seriously impacted as a result of the stringent COVID lockdowns in August and September, the ongoing supply chain constraints and regional border restrictions in the Auckland and Waikato regions. These COVID impacts resulted in lower productivities and unrecovered plant and labor costs across many of our contracts. A portion of these costs are expected to be recovered through contractual entitlements. Some claims remain to be settled in the second half, and we're making good progress on this. The start of new work was also delayed due to these COVID constraints with revisions of large client programs shifting work and margin into the second half of FY '22 and some into FY '23. Meanwhile, the Construction businesses have worked successfully to contain costs through operating efficiencies against a backdrop of skilled worker shortages given the closed immigration borders. Pleasingly, our trading cash flows were positive $2 million, which was supported by the resolution of some large historical claims across our infrastructure services and major legacy project businesses. During the half year, we've continued to focus on reshaping our forward order book to a lower profile, and I'll cover this on the next slide. In response to the slippage of contract work caused by COVID, we're focused on delivering our planned productivity across our contracts. Labor shortages on key projects have been addressed through retention plans, and we remain focused on controlling our cost base whilst progressing with our digital program to improve productivity and establish a common project management platform across all projects. We continue to progress winding down our remaining legacy projects with only around $300 million remaining work to complete, representing circa 9% of our forward order book. As we enter the second half of the financial year, we have 90% of our budgeted revenue secured and 52% secured for the FY '23 year. Pleasingly, our forward order book at December '21 has remained at a strong level of $2.8 billion. We have a further $300 million in preferred works for the Auckland AMETI busway alliance project. And since December '21, we're also preferred on an additional $300 million of lower risk contracts, including a 3-year framework agreement with Auckland International Airport. We are continuing to reposition the order book predominantly to lower risk, smaller self-perform work in our specialist infrastructure services businesses of Higgins and Brian Perry Civil. Barring any Omicron impact, we are expecting a strong second half. We are confident in the business delivering a 3% to 5% EBIT margin as we start to deliver our growing high-margin committed order book especially as it appears the government will not now put in place new COVID restriction lockdowns, thus allowing projects to start and for our small and large projects to achieve their planned productivity. Lastly, on Slide 44. This is the Waikato 50 treatment plant construction project for Watercare in Tamaki Makaurau, delivering water from the Waikato River into Auckland, completed in November '21. This was a successful, large cost-plus contract delivered in record time with a strong safety performance. I'll now hand you back to Ross.

Thanks, Peter. Moving to Slide 46. I'll briefly sum up the outlook for our business. If I had to pick a headline, I'd say that we're well positioned to deliver both a good result in FY '22 and then to grow strongly in the coming years. Firstly, on the FY '22 outlook. The forward indicators and our customers point to ongoing strong volumes. We're confident in our operational disciplines and in covering inflationary costs. We expect second half margin to be around 9.5%, basically continuing what we achieved in the second quarter and, with that, to deliver a full year EBIT profit of around $750 million. As mentioned earlier, there remains some further COVID risk in FY '22 as the Omicron variant works through New Zealand. But based on what we've seen in our Australian business, we think this risk is limited to somewhere between a $25 million to $50 million potential impact to our bottom line results at worst. Looking beyond this financial year, we're very positive. Our markets look strong. We expect COVID impacts to ease and not see the recent significant impacts reoccur. We remain on track to further improve EBIT margins across the group to 10% in FY '23, and we have a maturing pipeline of investments to keep driving growth beyond that. Before we move on to questions, I'd just like to take a moment to thank our people for their commitment and resilience through what has been again demanding times and have allowed us to deliver this performance. And I'd also like to acknowledge all of our customers for their continued support. With that, I would like to hand it back to the moderator to take questions, but I will say that we will extend it a few minutes because we've probably gone a bit longer than we thought. So if people have questions, then we'll stay here for 5 or 10 minutes longer to answer them. So I'll now hand back to the moderator.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Lisa Huynh with JPMorgan.

So my question is just around the competitive backdrop. I guess we're seeing everyone in the industry, at the moment, face rising costs and putting up prices. I guess I'd be interested whether there are any areas within your business where you're finding it hard to recover costs. And can you also talk broadly about how you think you'll place from a competitive environment as well just given we've had a player exit in Building Products, whether you think you've gained share.

Yes. So on price increases, there's no particular point that we can't recover costs. We're actually -- it is roughly probably we're seeing inflationary costs in probably the high single digits, but it's actually far more volatile than that in particular areas. And it really depends on what's going in supply chains or particular commodity increases. So it's hard to sort of say there's an average because it averages out there but it's all over the place. But we're going -- we're finding we can recover costs in price. And that sort of, I think, is borne out in our results. In terms of the overall competitive backdrop, that -- it's probably a bit of a tailwind when you're an onshore manufacturer because what we're finding is a lot of our offshore competitors are busy in their home markets. And so they're struggling there as well, and they're less inclined to move as much stuff. And the supply chains are hard. Shipping is causing delays. So by manufacturing in-country, we're finding that's an advantage just because you have a shorter supply chain. But mind you, we're having to do certain things in our own as we import commodities to manufacture. And quite often, we're finding we're flying bits and pieces in just to keep manufacturing going. So we're very attuned to our supply chain issues, but it is a net tailwind for us to be a local manufacturer.

Sounds good. Sounds like you're navigating it well. And then I just had a second question around residential. I guess you've talked to delivering the first apartments and retirement living homes in FY '23. Can you just talk about the learnings so far in the space? And give us a little bit more color around what type of earnings contribution we should expect in FY '23? Or is it kind of relatively small at this stage?

I'll hand that to Steve to answer that.

Cool. Thank you, Ross, and thanks, Lisa. The learnings that we've had, really we've been in the apartment space for the last 4 or 5 years through developments we've done at Three Kings, through the developments at Stonefields and the developments down in Christchurch. What we've learned is the continued focus on customer is absolutely essential, listening to the range of customers that are out there and delivering their needs. We see the apartments, and particularly from a Vivid Living point of view, as being part of the wider communities that we deliver. So the use of Vivid Living and Red Beach and Waiata as a start has just been to approach a different customer than we would have normally through the sale of houses. So we've got great learnings from individual experience but also through the group experiences over the last 4 or 5 years.

Your next question comes from Peter Wilson with Credit Suisse.

I've got a couple of questions for Steve as well actually. Steve, can you just remind us how price flows through to your margin there, i.e., what price risk you're taking? And then also comment on where you're expecting EBIT margins to settle in FY '23 and beyond as some of the inventory rolled over.

Okay. First of all, where does price go? I mean the prices are largely being generated by the customers themselves if you remember that we sell largely completed homes. And what we found, particularly throughout last calendar year, is that the continued desire to purchase our Fletcher Living homes meant that we were getting multiple offers in the market then was able to define the price at which we would then transact. We're still seeing great demand across our business on that same basis that we are getting great customers that are valuing the communities in which we go into. So that -- what I would say in terms of where we're positioning all of our homes, whether it be the Fletcher Living business or the Vivid Living business, we're still getting great customer sight lines into our communities and continued demand. What was the second question? Sorry.

The question I had, I guess, where you expect EBIT margins to settle to. So you said greater than 20% in the second half but wondering what we should expect in FY '23 and over the medium term.

Look, I think what Ross has done earlier on is talk about where prices are continuing to go up and how we are responding to those through cost efficiencies and the like. I don't assume that we're going to continue to get the 27.2% that we got in the first half, but we are still endeavoring and looking at significant EBIT margins going forward.

A little bit of color on that...

And unit sales...

Sorry. I was just going to say, look, just to...

Sorry. Go on, Ross.

So with that, I mean what you're going to see is I think price escalation will probably moderate, but costs have still got a bit of way to go. So that will get crimped. You can expect that to flow through exactly what speed it does, but time will tell.

Right. And for the second half, the unit sales, the guidance is for greater than PCP. But PCP was only 320. So I imagine you could do much better than that. But what do you expect in the second half? And are you still targeting a complete 950 unit sales for the full year?

Look, I think a lot of that would depend on the supply chains following through. I don't envisage that we'll get quite to 950. But what I'm seeing and as I've said earlier on is we've got now 278 we've done in the first half. We've got over 200 sales that are already made, waiting for their houses to be completed. And so if you look at about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, then that would point you in the right direction.

Your next question comes from Daniel Kang with CLSA.

Probably a question for Dean. On the Australian business, just wondering if you can just provide a bit more detail in terms of your price initiatives across your product suite. Do you expect price to be the key lever for your higher margin expectation in the second half?

Daniel, thanks for your question. Look, the way I think about price is both behaviorally and, I think, mix. So there's probably 2 or 3 things driving that. One, we spent a lot of time training our teams. We invest a lot of time and energy into learning and development. So we've trained several hundred people just on pricing discipline. And I call that good household management, and that will continue to run. I think what's really helping as we think around our gross margin lift is, I think, 2 things. One, we're running about $270 million of new product development washing through our business that has a higher gross margin and mix sales of the categories. And the other one I think is really product segment mix, Daniel, so performance in decorative Laminex, performance in SME, in Tradelink, performance in sheds and garage doors in Stramit. So it's more of a mix question for us. And again, just to reconfirm Ross' comments, we're passing through price appropriately. There's always a little bit of lag as you notify our customers, but we're seeing really good price effectiveness washing through with CPI of raw materials, and that links back to the training that we've given.

And Dean, can you just remind me, in terms of your price announcements, are they on an annual basis? Or are you increasing the regularity of these announcements?

Yes. Look, in line with just global raw materials, I won't say hyperinflation, but we've all seen continuous price movements particularly in raw materials, goods not for resale that go into manufacturing, where historically, they may have been yearly or half yearly. They're now coming through at a much more regular basis. In Australia, we have a pricing council with our CFO and our management team that look at the potential impact of those. We'll look at them as far as we possibly can, and we communicate that well through to the customers. So they are increasing in regularity in a constrained market around global raw materials.

I just had a few housekeeping questions for Bevan, if I can. The effective tax rate looked a little bit lower than historical levels. Just wondering if you can give us a steer on expectations there and also I guess with that net interest expense expectations there.

Look, the only thing impacting the tax rate below standard, Peter, is the development sales as they flow through. So we will track back to the 28%, 29% over time. And then on net interest expense, I'm assuming you mean funding costs. We're expecting those to remain pretty stable. They will tick up a little bit, obviously, as we have some of those investments and, therefore, debt coming through. But it's circa $45 million, obviously currently at quite low levels.

Your next question comes from Simon Thackray with Jefferies Australia.

A couple for Ross and Bevan straight up. I note in your comments on the backlog, Ross, in Australia and New Zealand across resi, non-resi and infrastructure. And you'll move towards the 10% EBIT margin target in FY '23. What's the level of overall activity growth that you require to get to that 10% margin target? Or putting it another way, how far would activity have to retreat from here for you to miss that 10% EBIT margin target? That's the first part of the question. Second part is that all divisions, by and large, seem to be either ahead or on track to hit their previous targets, maybe Australia looking a little behind. What -- to get to the 10% margin target, what's the importance of, say, the Construction division or any other division coming to pick up pace from -- if at all?

Yes. Look, just to start with the first one. I mean we've -- we don't -- haven't baked in market growth to achieve the 10%. I'm not going to get into plus or minus speculations. When I look at it, I go back to what we said about the market. It feels like it will be that at least as we look forward. So we don't need growth to get there. If we're more or less the same, we'll get there. When I look at it, I -- and what you've got to believe, I mean we had pointed out 3 things: more improvement in the core, the resi margins and the Construction margins. So it's broadly still those themes. But what you're seeing as a result of performance, we're sort of a bit ahead of that. Sorry, I forgot to mention Australia as well in that. So if you look at where we are, the 9.5%, I think we're -- the reason we're pointing to that second half margin and the 230 basis points improvement in the first quarter -- the second quarter, which gets us to 10.2%, it feels to me like you must be just about ready to take the question, will we get there off the table, because we're sort of seeing that performance there or thereabouts. We've got a bit of runway to do a few things. And you can see as construction gets the COVID impacts behind it -- and Australia also is still suffering. It's been suffering from COVID and then the Omicron wave as well. So just the -- settling the COVID part down in those businesses will actually give them a natural lift. So I think it should be sitting there as very achievable, the 10%, from your perspective. But I can't put those thoughts in your head. I can only advocate for them.

No, no. They're in my head, Ross. That's okay. That's fine. You'll be pleased with that. The next question was, Bevan, just in terms of the $150 million of incremental CapEx from investments over base, that there are opportunities split between growth initiatives, which is each of the divisions have sort of articulated and M&A included in that, just can you give us a sort of a sense of -- that's one. So just to be clear, that's $150 million over the base that we are currently seeing now at a 15% IRR. Is that what we're seeing over the next 2 to 3 years?

That's spot on, Simon, exactly. So we've got that. We've got a bit of growth investment, as we've talked to in the past, embedded in our base CapEx, and that gets us to the underlying margin target. And then above that, we've got approximately $150 million. And we've talked in the past as well, there could be a bit of lumpiness around when that exactly lands. And I guess all we're talking to is we think the returns on that as we look at the opportunities. We think there's 15% type returns there. And therefore, we -- that's what's giving us the confidence in driving the growth above the 10% margin that Ross has just talked to.

Yes. That's super helpful. And then one for Steve, we couldn't leave him alone on -- given the yield curve frenzy that's going on and rates going up, Steve, you made the point that you haven't seen sort of any moderation so far in inquiry or demand. Is there -- are there any indicators in terms of sales or in price that are making you -- that are allowing you to see some sort of cooling of demand in New Zealand on the resi side?

Look, I'll talk probably about my business first and then the broader. We are continuing to see high levels of demand. When you look at our delivery, about 70% of our homes are below the median price anyway. So we are seeing strength in that market, which is just continuing. So I see absolutely no drop off in terms of price as we continue to build through the year. I think that what you'll find in the rest of the market is that, as I think Ross turned up, turned -- or said earlier on, the market is incredibly hot at the moment. So what you'll see is you might see some sporadic results, but the group homebuilder market really isn't trying to chase any work because there is just so much stuff out there that they're currently delivering on.

Your next question comes from Grant Swanepoel with Jarden.

Australia, the business is set to have had only $5 million of COVID impact, but 1Q was quite materially down against the PCP. Can you talk about why that occurred? And then while you're on that track, can you talk about how Omicron impacted the Aussie business in December and January? Some of your peers were talking about 20% down on revenue, but it doesn't appear as though you guys are talking about much impact at all.

Do you want me -- Grant, I assume that's to me. I didn't see Ross point it my way. So I'll take it unless Ross tells me differently. Grant, thank you for your question. First, let me answer what I would call Delta impact in quarter 1. As you know, we saw restrictions ranging from, in Australia, Stage 3 to Stage 5. That did bite quickly and it bit deeply from the middle of July. And then they started to unwind at a state-by-state level. And as we got into quarter 2, it's essentially A&A which was -- which is impacted. Bear in mind, Laminex' revenue is 60% weighted to A&A. So I sort of saw Phase 1 in quarter 1 as a heavy bite. Phase 2, innovation driving necessity. We started to sort of divert our product and mix around -- as we started to mitigate the risks as they unwound. And that gave us nice momentum in quarter 2, perhaps, as you say, maybe potentially better than some of our competitors. Again, domestic manufacturing didn't do us any harm there, certainly caused us now ill will, which was nice. And that was evidenced by our rising DIFOT and Net Promoter Scores in that period of time as well. And then we got ourselves in a nice momentum in quarter 2, as you see in the results. And then Omicron did hit, Grant, as you know. It does put people into isolation. So in December, we did see a spike of capacity issues at a macro level in the industry. That was about 10% of the labor force in isolation, which has rapidly come down now as those exemption rules have come into play and less of an isolation period. So we saw that spike in December and into January. We've got really nice momentum at the end of January and again very nice momentum in February, the watch-out being, Grant, is the supply chain just like Europe had the problem with Omicron. The industry is seeing a shortage of drivers, so again thinking about where we send the product. And that links back to our inventory commitment to hold more inventory in the appropriate places. So we think we're coming out of that big bulge on Omicron, if that makes sense. And I hope it doesn't impact commitment in the same way. Did I answer that?

The next question -- yes, you had answered it well. On Building Products, sorry to focus on the negatives in such a good first half results and outlook statement. The Building Products ex steel was down almost 27%, which is materially worse than all the other divisions, so from $84 million down to $66 million. Can you talk about what occurred in the Building Products ex steel to cause this? Because your commentary in your divisional comments didn't seem to point towards anything untoward.

Yes. No problem, Grant. It's fairly straightforward really. It's the Q1 impact of the COVID because our main significant plants for that part of the group are Auckland-based. So we have quite a material impact when those plants shut. So we lost like our Felix Street, Onehunga plasterboard plant, our [ Tins ] plant which is next to head office here, our Pacific Coil Coaters plant, our Humes pipe-making. So there's quite a material impact for us when we lose Auckland from a manufacturing perspective, and that really hit us in that Q1. But as soon as those plants got up and running post the lockdown period, we quickly recovered, as you can see in that quarter 2.

And finally, on the negatives. Construction in 2Q also had a decline even though we were post the COVID lockdown period. What are we looking for in 2H? Can we expect a 3% margin on those revenues? Or are we still very, very low singles?

Grant, thanks for your question. Look, we're certainly frustrated by the impact of the heavy COVID restrictions. I think there's a couple of things I'll point you to. One, certainly in the first quarter, yes, we did have labor and plant productivities particularly -- impact particularly across our Higgins and Brian Perry businesses. Two, what you do see with -- in the Construction with the COVID impact, as you get the project drag, so what we have seen in the first and second quarter was some projects being pushed through to the second half. Some of those projects have bitumen volumes, which is quite a high margin. What we are seeing in the second half is that we have unlocked some of those projects. I mean there are some -- we've won $300 million of work since December '21, and some of those will be starting shortly. We've still got some restrictions on, particularly, our larger projects through COVID and border controls. But we are seeing some better productivities obviously with our Higgins and Brian Perry, which represents circa 80% of our revenues. So we're confident particularly with our growing order book and lower risk and the higher margin that we'll be unlocking there as we get into the second half.

That's very positive. And I'll finish with a positive question. Just in terms of your $0.18 dividend in 1H, up from $0.12 last year, should we be looking for the $0.12, $0.18 split that we had last year? Or should we be holding on to maybe a $0.68 payout ratio for the full year? Or is there just no guidance on dividend?

I'll have a go with that. I was just -- Bevan and I were looking at -- so thanks for the positive question, Grant, but much appreciated. The -- look, I think we haven't made a decision on that. But certainly, if you look at the outlook we've got in front of us, it's quite positive. So you should think about the dividend in a positive way as well.

Your next question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford with Barrenjoey.

Just first one around the, I guess, contingency for $25 million to $50 million impact in the second half. I appreciate it's not your base case, but can you step through some of the assumptions you're making to get to that level of EBIT impact just so we can try and track how things have gone?

Yes. Look, you're going to be -- find it disappointingly unsophisticated, to be honest. When we saw it washed through Australia -- and that was the -- that's the guy we've got. I mean we probably found out revenues and impacts circa 5% to 10% sort of flowing through the margin in that fashion as well. And it's -- if I look at the staff that we -- absenteeism and then the supply chain issues, predominantly logistics, that's sort of the rough proxy. So if you look at our second half earnings and you sort of apply it, it will be a 5% to 10% impact if it gets going and if we can't mitigate it. So that's why I sort of think it will be that $25 million, $50 million, I said, at worst case. And we've done a lot to get organized in terms of getting materials and goods distributed as far as we can, thinking about contingency split shifts, being -- keeping our manufacturing going, thinking about RAT tests and get them organized to keep our staff at work. So we've had the benefit of watching Dean's having to learn on the run. So we -- hopefully, we can do better than that. But I just didn't want to sort of say that it remains a risk without trying to quantify it. So it's an order of magnitude so you can sort of at least understand what I think the risk is.

Yes. That's fair enough. Appreciate it. It's not that straightforward to estimate. Another question just on land development. The business seems to, and more often than not, beat expectations and guidance on land development EBIT. I just want to confirm. You are expecting nothing material in the second half, but is there a chance that any sites that at the moment are planned for FY '23 and beyond to be pulled forward in the second half or just no chance and that would be 0 or at a slight degree of confidence?

No chance. So you can comfortably say the earnings for the land development business are done for this year.

Great. Last one from me. Just on Australian Distribution, up 1% revenue for the half. I'm talking about share gains. Just can you step through why you feel you're gaining share in that business? 1% just doesn't feel overly strong and -- against sort of a strong backdrop, albeit September quarter was impacted. But just relative to what some other companies are reporting, 1% doesn't, to me, suggest significant share gains.

Yes. Thanks, Brook. We have got share gain in both Oliveri and Tradelink. I think it's important to remember the weighting of Tradelink. It does have exposure to commercial, maybe some of the other people you may be thinking about. Of course, the COVID restrictions essentially stopped those. So that probably explains why maybe some of those large projects didn't land. That's also encouraging for our pipeline in that sector, by the way, as we unraveled Delta and Omicron. And then as I think around Oliveri's performance, it's materially above its run rate. It's moved probably to expansion. It's moved out of the kitchen into bathroom through Oliveri. A lot of the builders are taking that up. So we're seeing category share in the areas that we want to win in, and that's improving our SME plumber performance. You'll know, Brook, that we made a commitment several years ago, a long-term structure to win back the SME and Tradelink. We think that's the core $1.5 billion market in that $4 billion plumbing market that's important to us. It offers the highest gross margin. And again, the management team and Tradelink have taken share there as a combination of good brand and good focus on the SME. And as I say, the other piece is just around those COVID restrictions affecting commercial, which we know had rather performed well, assuming that it's driving margins.

Just a quick note. We've only got time for one more question. I apologize. I've got other commitments and interviews and stuff. So we'll definitely, after that, be able to follow up. So one more question.

Your final question comes from Keith Chau with MST Marquee.

Ross, I'll make this brief. Just want to talk about your outlook statement. I mean it seems as though you're getting more and more bullish and comfortable on the outlook. I think in prior sessions, we've talked about strong demand going into the back end of FY '22, maybe the start of FY '23. Now you're talking about the end of '23 and into -- potentially into the end of '23. Given this, I guess, bullish backdrop, how much visibility does Fletcher Building have on its own backlog? Or maybe put it another way, what proportion of your sales are actually locked in and contracted for clients into the balance of FY '22 and '23? And then secondly, have there been any notable changes in order cancellations as material prices are rising?

So on the first question, we have good visibility probably out 6 months. I mean we -- there's a few lead indicators across our businesses in terms of the sort of products we're selling into what I call residential, infrastructure and in Bruce -- the Distribution business, just the forward estimates we might be doing or the frame and truss orders. And then obviously, in the Construction business, you can see the size of the order book, and we have a good visibility of what that infrastructure sector looks like for multiple years. So in infrastructure, that -- we get good visibility. The rest of the business, we can see it's going to be strong through at least this calendar year broadly would be the way to talk about it. And the final part, no, we're not seeing cancellations. And I think it's the opposite.

Great. Ross, just going back to your point around the opposite. I mean the opposite of cancellation means ultimately, customers are actually stepping up orders and doubling down on their order backlog. So that is what you're seeing, these customers come back and perhaps ones that you may not have expected orders from are actually coming to Fletcher?

Yes. That's exactly what we're seeing, and we're having to allocate and just give longer lead times is basically it. Look, thank you. Look, I'm going to have to leave it there because we do have to get off the line. So apologies for cutting it short. And as I said, just ring in and we can actually answer questions that you've missed through the day. Again, thanks, everyone. I appreciate you joining the call, and we'll be seeing a lot of you, I know, over the coming couple of days. So thank you very much.