Freightways Group Limited (FRW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Freightways FY '25 Results Briefing. We will begin with a presentation by the Freightways management team followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Now, I'll hand across to the Freightways management team. Over to you, Mark.

Thanks, Kiara, and welcome, everybody, to the half year presentation for Freightways for FY '25. Here with me today, as we have done in previous sessions, got Stephan Deschamps, CFO; Neil Wilson, General Manager of Freightways; and Aaron Stubbing, General Manager of Express Package. Between the 4 of us, we'll work through the presentation and then happy to take questions at the end of that session. We'll cover off an overview. Stephan will give you a financial summary of the consolidated results and talk about capital management and the dividend. I'll cover off the divisional performance of the 2 divisions, Express Package and Business Mail and Information Management. And together, Neil, Aaron and I will cover off the strategy update for each of the 4 activities we have and then we will give a brief outlook as to how we see the future. Before we move into the presentation formally, I'd just like to acknowledge the passing of one of the Shred-X team over in Melbourne, a tragic accident that occurred in December last year. Our feelings are with the family and with the colleagues that were impacted. And while we continue to investigate the cause of that accident, our paramount attention is to the safety of all of our team of 6,000 across Australia and New Zealand. Moving into the presentation. The first slide here just represents the key brands of Freightways, which you can see under Express Package, Business Mail and Temperature Control, which form the EP and BM division; and then Information Management and Waste Renewal, which are part of the Information Management division. Around 82% of revenue in Express Package and 18% in the half for the Information Management division. The brands that we run here all aim to be #1 or a fast charging #2 in each niche they operate. We aim to generate a competitive advantage by taking market-leading positions, improving our density and offering the best possible service in each and every business that we operate. I'm proud to say when you look through the suite of brands there, every one of those brands has been successful in delivering really strong service and that has helped them pick up market share during the year. And that's really important where we are still in pretty grim economic times here in New Zealand and slightly better times in Australia, but by no means firing on all cylinders. I'll hand over to Stephan. He can talk through the consolidated result for you and talk to the dividend.

Thank you, Mark. As Mark mentioned, the economic environment in which we operated in the first half remained difficult, especially in New Zealand. We've seen 2 GDP decline of more than 1% for the September and June quarters. And so the economic activity remains somewhat subdued, a bit less in Australia. In this context, we are pleased to report that we've increased our top line and our EBITA by more than 6% over the same period last year to respectively, $662 million and $86 million. As a CFO, I'm especially pleased and it might not be completely obvious when you look at the headline number, but by the fact that some of our core businesses have increased their margin significantly, which was a key focus for us. The top line benefited from the fact that the debt was slightly lower than the same period last year. So, interest expense was stable and we increased the NPAT by 9.5%. This has allowed us to increase slightly the interim dividend to $0.19. So, if we look at some of the details behind these numbers, in the Express Package division, we continue to see weaknesses of same-customer volume, but we've been able to mitigate that through price increases and new business and market share gains. As I mentioned, some of our core businesses like NZC or Post Haste have significantly increased their margin over the same period last year, which allowed the Express Package division as a whole to increase margin by about 80 basis points. On the flip side, we continue to see some businesses under pressure. Big Chill, which is more sensitive to the economic environment, continues to see a reasonably low level of margins despite the work that the team has started implementing to mitigate that. For a range of reasons on which we'll come back also, both ProducePronto and MSL have seen some margin contraction. On the Investment Management and Waste businesses, we've also seen a level of margin contraction for a range of different reasons. For Shred-X, there's a one-off cost adjustment that's related to previous period's workers' compensation fees, which is all impacting us in the first half of this year. We were also expected to get the outcome of a tender for Victoria Health that has been delayed and is now expected to happen later in our financial year. And for the TIMG businesses in New Zealand and Australia, in New Zealand, we overlapped a year last year where we still have the benefits of the census, which is positive for the margin. And in Australia, we've seen a lower level of bureau activity, which again impacts our margins negatively. If we look at the balance sheet and the dividend, we continue to manage our balance sheet in a way that mimics an investment-grade profile. The debt was slightly lower at half year compared to the same period last year. And we are still confident that the balance sheet will strengthen over the course of the year. And we'll get back -- one of the targets we follow is net debt over EBITDA and we believe we'll get back close to the middle of our range by the end of the year. Taking this into account and the fact that we are cautiously optimistic for the activity in New Zealand in the second half of the year, we've decided to increase the half year dividend by $0.01. So, we will be paying $0.19 compared to $0.18 paid over the last 3 years. I'll hand over now to Mark to look at some of the divisional results in more detail.

So, I'll talk through Express Package and Business Mail first, look, really good result in the climate for this division. Revenue up almost 6%, EBITA, almost double that, increased by 12%. So, really good outcome given still really soft same-customer volumes, the same-customer volumes, which I'll talk to on the next slide, still below what they have been on prior periods. So, we have relied on that growth from pricing and from gaining market share. The thing that's helped us pick up the market share is that service performance I alluded to earlier. Through November and December, which are your peak periods, they're driven by Black Friday, Cyber Monday and your traditional Christmas peak periods. The performance of all of the brands was really strong. So, from Big Chill through New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, Allied Express, DX Mail, really strong service performance. We benchmark some of those brands independently against their competitors. And what was pleasing to see was really quite a market gap between our performance and that of our nearest competitor. So that leads to market share gains. There's obviously been a bit of rationalization in the New Zealand courier market as well with New Zealand Post taking on the PBT business. And that results in some disruption for some of those PBT customers as their network is absorbed into the New Zealand Post network. And again, that's been an opportunity for us to pick up market share through the year. Big Chill revenue improved and earnings improved slightly on the PCP despite still same-customer revenue being lower in transport. We've obviously had growth through the 3PL business. So, we picked up revenue as utilization has improved at Ruakura in the 3PL center. And the business has also picked up some market share. Allied Express had a really strong performance through Christmas, both operationally and financially. So, we talked in the past around the 2 automated sorting systems we've put into both Sydney and Victoria, around about $10 million each. Those 2 systems were up and running for this peak period. And what it enabled was Allied Express to get through volumes from their customers, which no longer had to be capped. So in previous years, Allied would have applied some kind of cap to customers to make sure they could get the volume flowing through the network. This year, because of the automation, we were able to remove those caps. And as I say, a result of really strong financial performance, but also delivered from a service point of view through that period. DX Mail has continued to deliver well. That is a combination of improved pricing. There is some efficiency in terms of mail sortation equipment, which enables us to get mail into our postie runs quicker and with less cost. And the -- as a result, the DX Mail business has grown its top line but improved its bottom line by a greater margin. The tough part of our business is the premium point-to-point business. So, if you think about brands like SUB60 and Kiwi Express, in the New Zealand economic environment, a point-to-point delivery, which might be $40 or $50 to get across town, that is the piece that customers look to substitute. And I guess when you have strong service performance through brands like New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste, you'll have a number of customers that will say, hey, we put it through a local hub-and-spoke network at a significantly cheaper rate rather than paying those premium point-to-point rates for a 1- or 2-hour service. So, MSL, Messenger Services Limited really is a canary in the coal mine for us in and around recessions, always has been. And they will go through a tough period until the economy starts to pick up, hub-and-spoke businesses get busy again and the demand for their services will then increase. As Stephan mentioned, EBITA margins up by 80 basis points. So, happy with that progress. That's primarily led by Allied New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste along with DX Mail. Just a few of the key metrics out of this division. So, these relate to the New Zealand Express Package businesses of New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, Castle Parcels, those household known brands. Same-customer volumes down 3.9%. So, in previous periods, when we're talking 5%, 5.5% for this particular 6-month period, those same-customer volumes were down by 3.9%. Pricing up at $8.86, excluding surcharges as an average. So, it's up about 4.2% on where we were at the full year. And of course, you will have a change of mix in any particular period. This period, we've got slightly more -- slightly smaller items, which come at a slightly lower price point. So, happy with the upgrade that we had executed, happy with what's happened with average pricing per item when we consider the size of items traveling through the network over that 6-month period. I think the other pleasing piece is just courier pay staying up above that $500 on average, pretty consistent again with the full year. We're convinced that's market-leading. We see that from the pretty low turnover rate we have through our brands and the great service quality we're getting from our owner driver contractors. PFE for residential, so pricing for effort at $1.70 through that period. B2C items slightly higher, so 21% versus 20% of the full year. And again, those fleet vacancies, which are often a very good indicator of tightness of the labor market, the ability for us to attract and retain contractors at less than 1%, and that's across the New Zealand fleet of just over 1,000 drivers. Other key points out of the Express Package business in New Zealand. So, the half year volumes were down 1.5%. In the previous period, you may remember, we had 6 months of Temu. So FY '24, there were 6 months of Temu that contributed 3.4% of that volume in that period. So, with Temu removed, I guess, volumes up 1.9% and on the raw numbers, down 1.5%. Again, just reflecting the economy and what we talked about previously with same-customer volumes being offset by a bit of market share. A couple of the other key points in this area here. So, the guys have picked up 4% growth out of market share, winning new customers that's across a range of industries. It's B2B and B2C, pretty much an equal measure and a number of customers that were pulled in through our cross-border service, Freightways Global. The Woolworths business fully exited in September last year. So, you've got a slight overlap in the previous period versus this period, where we had it up until about September in FY '24. Big Chill Transport revenue was up 6%. So, same-customers were down 2%, but picked up market share and a bit of pricing improvement to deliver 6% increase overall. And the oversize initiative, our Horizon 3 initiative here in New Zealand, where we're targeting the same type of freight we handled at Allied Express in Australia is now on that $10 million run rate. So, really pleased with how that has gone really from 0 to a run rate of $10 million over about an 18-month period. Over in Australia, things are certainly a little more rosy there. You see that on streets when you walk around, you see it with people in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne certainly being a bit more buoyant and spending a bit more money, I think, than we're seeing over here in some of our key cities. Volumes up for Allied 8%. So, part of that is just this removing of caps on some of those customers that we would have had in previous Christmases and just a slightly better economic environment over in Australia. And again, some market share and some of that market share we've picked up has been in the B2B area as well as the strong hold of B2C. As I talked about, the automated systems really help those efficiencies. We see the leverage we get out of that in November, December, where the volumes do ramp up significantly on what you would have in the rest of the year and really not having to add a whole lot of labor because the machines are helping to do the work, weighing, tubing, measuring the freight and then sorting it out to the appropriate career run. There's good pipeline of new business prospects there, that new business team that we built over the last year or so are well into hunting out those prospects and looking to keep achieving growth in that market. Information Management, Waste Renewal, so look a flatter result here, pretty flat at the EBITA line of growth of 11.3%. So, the revenue growth is really, really encouraging. Happy with that, but a number of reasons why the earnings are largely flat. That revenue growth come across the board really. So, document storage and activity were up, which has been good to see. And again, the storage component, primarily market share driven. Digital has kept going from strength to strength. So, these are a range of projects where we're digitizing data off and off paper for customers doing something smart with it and delivering it back to them in a format that they require. So that's continued to grow. It's up 32% on the PCP and has generated, in fact, more revenue than the storage Horizon 1 part of the business for the first time. Medical Waste revenue up 20% as well. So that's a strong result for Medical Waste. It reflects just having access to that Victorian processing plant. But we are still waiting on a large health tender in Victoria, which we expect to have the result all in Q4 this year. So, our expectation was we would hit maybe 24%, 25% growth in Medical Waste, a little behind that, but encouraging to get the growth out of a number of private hospitals and clinics nonetheless. We have had a one-off cost of NZD 1.2 million in the first half, which is a catch-up of previous periods workers' comp costs. That led to EBITA being flat and because of the revenue growth, a decline in the margin, primarily made up of those one-off costs. We will shift to just a brief update on strategy for each of the divisions. So, have Aaron kick off with Express Package, followed by Neil, and then I'll talk to Waste Renewal.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning. So Horizon 1, business to business, we'll continue to focus on profitable market share gains and ensure our service is a differentiator for customers in New Zealand. We will also continue to assess our metropolitan local pricing and the associated infrastructure costs. We've expanded DX Mail's automation into the South Island and we believe that will deliver operational efficiencies that will provide for new business opportunities moving forward. And for Project Evolve, we're on track to hit $5 million in expenditure for FY '25. With regards to Horizon 2, our B2C side of things, we will maintain high levels of service to be able to command the premium for the residential deliveries that require the extra effort. And then moving to Horizon 3, which is our new lines of business, our oversized and 25 kg area, we will continue to scale oversize revenue in New Zealand. New business teams are now fully placed at Allied Express in Australia and delivering expected performance and we'll leverage improved service quality for Allied to achieve further market share gains. And finally, we'll continue to assess bolt-on M&A opportunities in Australia.

Good morning, everyone. We've added this slide and this is the first time you've seen this slide, just to give you an update around what's happening with our Airwork network as there are likely to be some changes in the near future. So, just by way of background at the moment, we're operating 3, 737-400 aircraft and 1, 737-800 aircraft. And our plan is to move to a 3, 737-800 network. So effectively, we're moving the 400s from our network and potentially back that up with an ad hoc charter prior to Christmas when both need to have more capacity. Operating 800s is very much our preference. Based on the service performance we've seen of the 800 to date, they're a newer technology. They have much higher carrying capacity. So, an 800 aircraft will take 23 tonnes of cargo load growth, which is 3 tonne more than what a 400 will take. And they are a lot more carbon efficient. They emit 14% less carbon emissions compared to 400. So, there will be some one-off costs associated with moving from 400s to 800s with the key ones being around the mobilization cost to get an aircraft here, security deposits on the new aircraft and there's quite a bit of training that needs to go on to move them from 400s to 800s. We're kind of expecting that cost to be no more than $2 million. The 3, 800 model will be quite a lot more efficient or cost effective to operate. So we expect that, that $2 million would be saved in the first couple of years through operating costs. The plan at the moment is to move to that -- the plan at the moment is to exit the 3, 737-400s in June next year when the current ACMI agreements on 2 of those aircraft come up for renewal. And at that stage, we look to exit those aircraft and put in place an 800 network. Last thing I want to comment on was the fact that there's a fair bit of speculation circulating around who lease us the 3, 737-400s. As I say, our transition plan at the moment is to exit those aircraft in June next year, but we have done quite a lot of contingency planning. So, if we do need to exit sooner, we're capable of doing that. On to Temperature Controlled. As Mark mentioned earlier, there's been a 9% improvement in revenue at Big Chill overall, which whilst not at what we targeted, it's encouraging. While we're still seeing slight organic decline, this has been offset by a better new business performance. What's been critical to that is the new Big Chill Connect TMS, the 3PL and Ruakura and also an improved operating performance. The Big Chill business and the lead up to Christmas did significantly well in terms of delivering on service to customers. So, our priority from a Horizon 1 perspective is to ensure that we leverage this new infrastructure and tech and the improved customer service experience that it brings to deliver further market share gains. From a Horizon 1 perspective, we believe this will see the Big Chill business really well positioned once we return to an environment where organic -- where trading conditions improve and organic growth comes back. To strengthen our offering to customers, we're also looking at network expansion, particularly in the North Island to further improve delivery standards. So, from a Horizon 2 perspective, our goal is to grow our 3PL business. We've been encouraged by customer uptake at Ruakura. Demand for pallet spaces has exceeded our expectation. And as a result, the operation is now contributing positively since quarter 1 of this year. We believe that we also remain on track to achieve 90% utilization by the end of this calendar year. Lastly, on 3PL, we're currently undertaking modeling around a further 2 sites to determine whether the cost benefit stacks up. Initial discussions with customers indicate that both sites could be quite high demand with early commitments received. So -- and that will pay a fact as to whether we proceed with both of those facilities or not. Horizon 3, our ProducePronto business has grown the top line particularly well. Very much so in the second quarter of this year when they onboarded a key new customer. That volume growth, however, has put quite a bit of pressure on the existing ProducePronto infrastructure. And to ensure service levels have remained, we've had to move into larger facilities and added additional runs, which will come at a step change in cost, unfortunately. So, our focus from an H3 perspective will be very much ensuring that we -- wherever possible, we're leveraging the Big Chill capability to help that ProducePronto brand and focusing on further new business to make sure that we better utilize the new footprint that we put out there for ProducePronto. From an IM perspective, Horizon 1 focus still remains firmly on growing warehouse capacity, particularly filling out that warehouse capacity, particularly in Australia. We're still seeing half our revenues increasing mainly through a combination of pricing and new business. New business is particularly strong in Australia in the health and government sectors. And this is being assisted by completed digital projects. What we see when we complete a digital project is most of those boxes remain -- the boxes that we digitized remain in our warehouses and we're gaining the long-term storage from those boxes as well as the revenue that we're getting from the digitization. Activity associated with media is unfortunately reducing. To offset that, we're trying to implement more or less a pricing for effort model, where as activity declines, the service associated with that, we're looking to charge more. An example being there is less media tapes being picked up and dropped off at customers. So, we have less volume going to the bins to do that work, and therefore, we're trying to increase the prices that we require for moving each tape. Our Horizon 2 focus remains around digitization. TIMG in Australia have a couple of very large digitalization work streams underway for government and again, also medical. The benefit of those contracts is that they run over multiple years and that will really help us scale -- continue to scale and grow that business that we have done to date. To date, many of the opportunities around that digital space have been presented to us by customers and that's largely off the back of successful projects that we've been completed and getting a real name in the marketplace for that capability. In the second half of this year, we're keen to invest more fully in digital sales teams and see if we can scale that business more quickly than what it is at the moment. And lastly, our 3PL Stocka e-commerce business is our H 3 opportunity. While it's still small, Stocka has grown revenues really, really quickly. For this first half of the year, that was 77% up on the prior period. Stocka is beneficial because it's helping us fill unutilized warehouse space as well as providing the Express Package carrier brands with last-mile carrier volumes.

Thanks, Neil and Aaron. Talk to Waste Renewal briefly. So, within document destruction, the Horizon 1 business, strategy there is to maintain density, make sure we got the pricing right for the number of bins we are collecting from each site. And again, in today's day and age, it's not uncommon where you may have collected 3 or 4 bins from a location, maybe that's now 2. So, the important thing for us is to make sure we capture the cost of visiting the site and collect that within the pricing we have. We have really strong positions in both New Zealand and Australia in and around document destruction. And in Australia, in particular, I think our geographical reach, the frequency with which we service suburbs and the quality in which we do it gives us a really clear advantage. So, we need to make sure that we have the right price for the collections we're performing with that really strong business. And we'll continue to focus on market share gains. And again, this year, we will collect more paper than we have in any other year despite the paperless office being predicted back in 1977. In Horizon 2, grow scale of Medical Waste. I talked about that a little earlier. The target this year was to get 25% revenue growth. We're at 20% at the half year. We had expected the outcome of a large tender in VIC would have been communicated, if not rolled out by now, at least communicated. That the current indications are that they will now be communicated to us around the start of Q4. So, we are hopeful of winning some work out of that tender and that will improve the utilization of the premises that we've set up in Victoria, help cover some of those fixed costs and accelerate the earnings of the Shred-X, Med-X business. In terms of Horizon 3, these are the new high-value products that we are collecting and working to keep out of landfill. With SaveBoard, we're picking up packaging material like liquid paperboard, courier satchels, Nespresso capsules and those products are being collected and shredded and then put into a product, which represents gyp board or a wall board 100% made of rubbish, really neat initiative, operating in Hamilton and in Sydney, starting to get a little bit of growth and starting to wash its face in terms of profitability. But I think it's part of the industry that has real tailwinds behind it. We target product destruction items as well. So, they can be items of contraband that have come over borders that regulators want to get rid of or they can be items that retailers or other businesses have decided are end of life or no longer required. So, we target that market. And then there's a lot of other closed-loop solutions for anything from textiles to coffee cups to IT equipment. Again, the premise we have is to pick it up, process it efficiently, keep it out of landfill, deliver it to someone who can make use of it. So, the 3 horizons there growing well. We have a bit of work to make sure we're just getting the right level of profit out of each of those 3 horizons, but particularly with the Medical Waste piece as we build utilization, we will see those margins improve. In terms of M&A, again, look, we continue to look -- I'll make no apologies for the fact that we're picky. We have high standards. We're looking for businesses that will either complement or be closely adjacent to some of the service lines we are running now. We're looking for good quality. We're looking for a cultural fit. And most importantly, we're looking to pay the right price. So, we'll continue to be picky and really disciplined about the way that we work through those opportunities. But there certainly are a range of them. Be fair to say they're weighted more heavily in Australia. And the majority of those in Australia in the transport niche where it's a pretty fragmented market, and there's a lot of operators out there working a particular niche, those are the areas that we're most closely interested in. In FY '25, we had the earnout from ProducePronto, which has been integrated into Big Chill over the last few years. We bought a very, very small IT asset disposal business. So that's one of those high-value waste streams where you're taking hard drives, laptops, computers, anything with data on it, destroying the data and finding a way of recycling or reusing the equipment that you have picked up. And the last comment we'll make is that we certainly have seen, I think, coming out of these recessionary periods, businesses that are a little bit more stressed than probably we have seen in previous years. So, it's increased number of opportunities. Again, they've got to be the right opportunity. They've got to have the right fit and got to come at the right price. In terms of the outlook, look, I think in many ways, the half year panned out the way we thought it would. The volume in that half year was largely as expected. We expected our existing customers would continue to trade a little bit lower than they had previously. And clearly, in New Zealand, it will just be a slow grind in this economic environment until we get some organic growth. We haven't seen a whole lot of green shoots at this stage. And what we'll be hoping for is that the levels of business confidence that are being reported, the interest rate track that we are on will start to produce some growth at some stage in the second half, but it won't be much. It will be slow and incremental. The Australian economy is a little bit more buoyant. And as you've seen in the numbers for Allied Express, that business is ticking along pretty well. So, with some decent growth, I really do think we've picked a winner there. Really happy with the way the team are performing. So, with an improving Aussie economy, we can expect even better results. The focus for us still on restoring margins. So, what we work to do is just try and get a little bit of an increment in the prices we're getting from customers over and above the cost we are experiencing. And again, often with our business, a little bit of organic growth to supplement that can help a lot in terms of margin restoration. As Neil mentioned, the Ruakura facility is performing positively. It's on track in terms of utilization. In the transport side of things, we think that will be pretty modest in terms of organic growth. Again, as we've seen in previous announcements, the food we generally are handling through Big Chill is a little bit more gourmet. It is a bit more expensive and those are the items that consumers in New Zealand at the moment are probably eating a little bit less of. Medical Waste revenue, we do expect that we will pick up some work. Hopefully, that is in Q4 this year. So, we will keep you updated on that when we come to the full year result. On the cost side of things, labor cost increases are far more controlled this year than they had been through those periods of tight labor markets and labor shortages. So, in terms of rates, they're about 3% up and then you'll have some headcount increase where volumes in different brands have increased. Full year CapEx still on track for $35 million, mainly tools of the trade, IT projects, and there's a little bit of mechanization going in New Zealand in Auckland. So it's not full automation. It's just mechanization that helps weigh cube and measure items and then push them through the network. The airfleet, Neil talked about, so we'll keep a close watch. There's a reasonable lead time on implementing changes to the airfleet. So, nothing before FY '26 ideally, but we will be attuned if we need to earlier. $1 million that we spent on Evolve as that project starts to ramp up. So, we expect $4 million in the second half, total spend of $5 million, as we previously advised and $5 million in FY '26 as well. And the M&A opportunities, look, when I say we look at a lot, probably over a given year, we would easily look at 40 to 50 businesses. Some of them are really quick. Some of them we'll look at in a bit more depth. But we're really attuned and I think we have a pretty good feel for the market and the opportunities that are out there. With that, we have some time for questions. I'll hand back to Kiara, who will moderate those and give you instructions on what to do if you want to ask a question.

Thank you, Mark. We will now begin the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Wade.

A couple of questions from me. First of all, just on Project Evolve, you said here $5 million this year, $5 million next year. Yet the CapEx guidance says for trucks, IT capital projects. So, is that $5 million all going through the P&L through OpEx? Or is some to be capitalized? Sorry, what was that?

No. $5 million is essentially OpEx.

Right. Okay. And so the IT capital projects within CapEx is something totally different?

Yes.

Yes, that will be equipment predominantly, Wade. In the old days, we were allowed to CapEx. I think a lot of this IT development, but the rules have changed.

Okay. Just on your outlook statement, can you just provide a bit of color around -- my understanding was sort of around March, April last year that you really saw the market come off. So, did it get worse through the period? I mean why would we not, therefore, expect sort of a better Q4 as we're sort of lapping that period, either just moderating less decline or even some growth?

Yes. Look, I think it's longer than that, Wade. I think the same -- we just talked about same-customer volumes -- that's been quite a period of time now they've been coming off, coming off. So absolutely, you're seeing a bit lower volume on previous period where it was a bit lower volume. So that has occurred. When we look at our total item counts and those are probably the important things to think about the total item count we have from new business and existing, that stayed pretty steady, as you saw in our numbers. So look, we've certainly seen some of those industries where construction, I think we talked about at the full year, a lot of those construction-related customers, they were down around 30%. That now is a bit more like 6% down on the prior period. So, I guess the acceleration of the angle of decline is certainly flattening out. For the bigger industries that we're involved in, manufacturing, retail, wholesale trade, et cetera, those same-customer volumes are down anywhere between sort of 1% to 5%. But you did right. It's a period on a period, right? And that's sort of a symptom of New Zealand's economy over probably the last best part of 2 years.

Okay. And on the Med-X tender that you're expecting for quarter 4, what sort of dollar value are we talking about here? And you seem very confident, I guess, that you're going to get a reasonable portion of it. Why is that?

Look, we did a lot of work for this particular customer through the peak of COVID really back at the time that we started our Medical Waste business. What happened through the COVID period was particularly in Victoria, hospitals, aged care centers, anyone that had generated medical waste were completely overrun. There were some horrific scenes of medical waste piled up in buildings. In Victoria, in the end, it had to be buried as opposed to treated in autoclaves or incinerated. So, what we know is that the state government certainly don't want to have that occur again. They don't want to be in a position where all of the eggs are in one basket and they end up having that medical waste buried rather than treated appropriately. So for those reasons, we think they will take a dual supplier track. We're pretty confident of that. We've had really good engagement with them through the period. As to how much we get, that's unknown. So, how much of the pie we might get -- we don't know that, but yet that's what we're waiting on. But look, it could be anywhere from sort of $1 million to $3 million or $4 million in revenue per annum, which on that Medical Waste business, which is doing about $20 million this year, on track to do about $20 million would be a pretty good increase out of the 1 customer.

And how long will it run for this tender?

I think it's a 5-year term in terms of contract, if that's what you were asking. Yes.

Right. Okay. So 5-year term, but is it sort of a perpetual project? Or is it sort of just dealing with some a backlog of volumes that once you get through that 5-year and...

No. Yes. No, absolutely perpetual. So, these are regular collections from any number of hospitals and clinics, which are performed daily or weekly depending on the schedule. So, these are perpetual steady, predictable and timed in.

Our next question comes from Andy.

So, a couple of questions from me. The first is around Allied Express. And Mark, you referred to the margin expansion in EP being led by Allied. So, Allied's volumes were up about 8%, revenue slightly lower. But can you give us a sense of the level of margin uplift you saw in Allied? And I'm mindful here of the additional costs of the incremental sorting capacity that you brought on stream.

So, I think what Mark referred to was not so much the fact that Allied had the highest margin or highest margin increase, but it was in the 3 businesses that most contributed to the EP margin increase. I don't think we communicate the margin normally. But to give you a sense, Allied is probably trading about the same level as Post Haste in terms of margin, which is quite a significant improvement on last year.

The other thing, just to give a little bit more color on that, Andy, the volumes that Allied had through November, December really kicked in by Black Friday, Cyber Monday and those retail peaks. When you get that level of volume coming through, which was often 50% more than you would have in a standard month, you really saw the margin kick up in those November, December periods. So, I guess what it shows us is this business has good leverage as we can continue to get volume growth through the business. We've got these fixed cost of those depots and the sorting equipment. And while you might not hit a Christmas margin for the entire year, we can see the potential of the business over the next 2 or 3 years as we keep building volume.

And maybe taking that slightly further, in terms of what you're now achieving from an Allied margin point of view, where do you see the long-term margin expectation for the business and put that into context versus what you thought was possible at the time of the deal?

I think -- look, I think mid-teens as an EBITA margin in the mid-teens, I think, is a really good target for that business. It's probably slightly up on what we thought when we did the deal. Like right at the start, we were talking margins that were kind of around that 10%, 11%. What's that, 2, 3 years ago now, Neil. So yes, I think in the mid-teens. So that's as they grow the share of the big and bulky B2C, remembering they also have a point-to-point and fixed run business, which is about 25% of their revenue.

That's great. The second question around pricing. Pricing clearly a reasonable driver in the context of the domestic parcel business in the first half and we would expect that to carry over in the second half in light of where the cost growth is coming through. But can you give us an idea of where your expectations are for pricing from July this year? And maybe rather than in absolute terms, more in the context of premium to cost growth, can that continue at a similar level in FY '26 relative to what you've seen in FY '25?

Yes, might be a little bit lower, but we would like to edge cost growth again when we do the 1st of July annual upgrade. Be governed a little bit by just what the market is doing, but the competitive environment has rationalized normally. If everyone is sensible, maybe we can get a little bit over the cost growth. So, somewhere around there, Andy. The bigger piece though, I think, will be -- while that cost increase might be sort of CPI plus, really working around what we can do around local out of area. So that will be the first piece of this local PFE driven by some early functionality out of Project Evolve that we'll be trying to achieve. And that really in a context like Auckland is saying, look, some of those outer areas in Auckland, which are actually $50,000, $60,000 from the center of Auckland, some of those should be out of areas and they should be at a higher rate than the sort of average $3 that we charge for a local delivery. So that will be a piece of it as well. We'll do that work around March, April as we normally do, assess the economy, assess what the cost increases are, think about it as we come into budget round and just think about the mix between a general increase and what we can achieve on that bit of pricing for effort. But we'll be trying to edge cost a little bit where we can.

And is it fair to say that local delivery pricing will see a bigger uplift in FY '26 -- sorry, in FY '27 versus FY '26? Or do we start to see a reasonable portion of payback come in FY '26?

FY '26 will mainly target the outer area piece. FY '27 is where we think we can get a bit more funky around in Auckland again from North Harbour to Central Auckland to Manukau, some of these areas here where you need infrastructure to move it between effectively those 3 city areas, right, CBD, North Harbour, Manukau. You have trucks, you have infrastructure, you have people, you have depots that are moving that freight to get it around locally. So that will be FY '27. FY '26 will be the Puhinui Warkworth, Beachlands, [indiscernible], all of those fringe areas where density is a bit lower, but they're a hell of a lot further away than what the Auckland boundary used to be in years gone by.

Our next question comes from Grant.

Grant Lowe from Jarden. Just a couple for me around the Allied volumes, just up 8% and revenue up 7.6%. So, you referenced there the e-commerce customers. Can you talk to us a little bit about the mix change in the period and where you sort of see e-commerce volumes tracking over the next while and what that sort of mix impact has?

Yes. So with Allied, that e-com has been pretty resilient. And I think it's part of a function of -- because of the size of items we're handling, there's still the things that you might even go into a retail outlet and pick out and buy that you won't necessarily transport to your house. We did a huge number of trampolines over Christmas that must have been the Christmas present of choice. You're not going to shut that hatchback. That's an Allied Express delivery. It's right in our sweet spot, delivering that type of thing. So, I think there's plenty of legs to go in that e-com market, particularly in that size. We've seen new people enter the market. So, there's quite a number of new players that are new to market. They're bringing product in from offshore. They're warehousing it in Australia and then selling it online and we're providing the deliveries for it. I think plenty of room to go there. We have also targeted a little bit of B2B work in the areas that suit our network. And that's been interesting. So, it's a lower revenue per item because you don't have the same range of surcharges on that B2B work. And we have naturally lower density in Australia and B2B areas at this stage. But I think good for us to dip our toe into the water again. We're leveraging the facilities, leveraging the automation that we've got, slightly lower margin for us, but that's partly because we haven't got New Zealand Couriers type density when we're delivering to those particular locations. So, we will look at those B2B areas. We'll look at niches within B2B and we'll explore that as a Horizon 2 for Allied Express and say, right, what can that look like? But we just look to build that deliberately and make sure it's not dilutive to what we're doing. As I say, plenty of room on that B2C front to keep growing. And I think interesting when you look at the B2C market in Aussie, COVID, like most countries, certainly ticked it up. It moderated again after people are allowed out and could go out shopping. But the long run trend is still a good positive one that probably beats GDP growth.

Okay. And just around the IM margins. So, you've referenced the one-off cost of $1.2 million and you can see -- we can see the margin contraction in there. On my numbers, that sort of one-off cost contributes to around about 2/3 of that margin decline. Obviously, you referenced a few different things happening in that business. What's your expectations for the second half? Could we see those margins stabilize or lift in the second half?

Yes, I haven't spent a huge amount of time analyzing it half by half. But certainly, the $1.2 million that was a one-off cost that won't occur again in the second half. So look, that should help us. The other point Stephan made was in FY '24, we had the tail end of the Census project which benefited us in FY '24. So, FY '24 margin compared to this year, maybe slightly up by $1 million or so with the tail of that project and this one down by $1 million or so given this catch-up in workers' comp costs. In the Medical Waste piece, really, that tender will be pretty key for us. If we can get another liquor volume coming through there, that should help us with a bit of leverage. And then we'll probably come around to around the 1st of July where some of the pricing initiatives, particularly for document destruction and the storage business that Neil talked about would kick in. So yes, maybe a slightly better margin, but we haven't spent a whole lot of time on splitting it out between the 2, 6 months.

Our next question comes from Marcus.

I just wondered if you could provide a little bit more color in terms of potentially the EBITDA uplift in the core Express Package business in the half, just in terms of its contribution to that transport EBITDA improvement?

Yes. So as Stephan had talked about, New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste have benefited from a really well-executed price increase. So that has helped with that margin expansion. Volumes, if we took away Temu, which was relatively low-priced e-com work that we've talked about previously, if you take that away, the volumes are up slightly and with slightly better revenue per item. There's still some e-commerce stuff there. And as you can see in our e-com mix, 21% versus 20% previously. But those businesses have done a great job controlling costs. They've got the efficiencies out of labor. They don't have temp labor. The people they have, they are retaining and so they're better trained and they can be more productive. The couriers that we have aren't turning over to the same degree they might have done when we had those really tight labor markets, makes those contractors more productive. So, I think it's a combination, Marcus, of a well-executed price increase, netting about 5%, managing to keep the total costs below that. So labor, as I say, sort of around 3%, 3.5% depending on the business. And we've all got the same overhead cost increases of rates and insurance and all those types of things that hit your personal pockets as well as businesses. But the team with a little bit more volume, excluding Temu have done a really good job of managing that through the network, not too much in the way of depot expansion, I think, during that period. Yes. So New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste have both improved their margins through that time. DX Mail has as well, but DX Mail runs at a lower margin to those New Zealand Courier businesses. Big Chill improved their EBIT, but probably improved the margin percentage as such. So as Neil said, got a bit of revenue through that's 3PL. It's only a little bit of price. So, they probably haven't capped their cost increase with price necessarily. A bit of market share, which is really pleasing based on service, but not necessarily any margin expansion in the Big Chill business yet. And that won't come really until we get a bit of organic growth in there.

Would it be fair to say, Mark, that Express Package accounted for the majority of the transport EBITDA improvement?

Yes, Allied, New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste.

I know you put Allied in there. Let's say New Zealand.

New Zealand, NZC and Post Haste would have again, quite a step back for Messenger Services. Now Messenger Services is a relatively small percentage of revenue in the EP division, but their margin absolutely went backwards as it always does through really tight times, people don't do same-day air links. They don't do as many same-day cross town $60 jobs. So, their margin came backwards. But yes, New Zealand Couriers and Post Haste drove the majority of it.

And we had a positive impact last year of the finalization of the [indiscernible].

[ Proper countdown piece ]. We charge -- you might remember, Marcus, we charged -- sorry, we charged in FY '24, we had transfer fees that applied where Woolworths took on our contractors that we had trained and recruited and developed. So, we had a bit of that benefit in FY '24.

Corporate costs up from $5 million to $8 million. Can you just talk to what was happening there?

It's mostly a number of provisions and accrual we've put in place. And the main one would be around what Neil mentioned, which is the transition from the current aircraft fleet to a newer one. So, we've put in place some provision to prepare for that.

So there's some one-off in there?

It's essentially one-off. It's not a structural increase. The other difference is, I mean, it's not as big an impact. But last year, our results were significantly below budget. So, we reduced the provision for bonuses. It's not the case this year.

Okay. I think you mentioned $2 million for the aircraft. Is that sort of what the provision has been in?

Yes.

And then just finally, Mark, first half profit up 9%. Second half, like the economy probably can't be worse. You've got a Med-X contract. Like is it fair enough to assume that another 9% in the second half in terms of profit growth is a reasonably conservative starting point for the business given it's traveling at the moment? Or is there something I'm missing?

We've got most of the cost of Evolve coming in the second half.

Yes. I think first half is always better for us, Marcus, the leverage through peak periods, the extra volumes. I'm told by the team a lot more Mondays in the first half than the second half. That makes a difference. Mondays are bigger days for us than any other day. No, I think that -- look, without a good uptick in the economy, that's a really good first half. I don't think you'll see that replicated by the same percentage in the second half and we will have that Evolve cost coming through there as well. But yes, peak periods give you good leverage.

Thank you very much. That brings our Q&A session to a close. I'll hand back to Mark for any final remarks.

Great. Thanks very much, Kiara. Thanks, everyone. The team across Australia and New Zealand have been really, really impressed by their commitment to service, the ownership they take for all of the brands and businesses they operate in, but operating within that one big Freightways family. And yes, I think regardless of the economic state, we've got businesses that are in really good positions. They've got strong market positions, filled with good teams with heaps of talent, doing a great job. So, we look forward to the second half and we look forward to the New Zealand economy at some point getting a few legs. So, thanks very much for your time this morning, and I'm sure we'll see many of you over the next few weeks. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.