GWA Group Limited (GWA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the GWA Group Limited Half Year '25 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Urs Meyerhans, MD and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Darcy. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our webcast or conference call for GWA's results for the half year ended 31st of December 2024. My name is Urs Meyerhans, GWA's Managing Director. Joining me for today's presentation are Calin Scott, our Group CFO; and Craig Norwell, GWA's Group Executive for Sales. We look forward to talking further with many of you over the coming days and weeks. Moving to Slide 3. The agenda for this presentation is as before. I will commence with an overview of our group results and key themes, including an update on safety. Calin will discuss the group financial results for the half, including P&L, cash flow and balance sheet. Craig will then provide an overview of the revenue performance for our end markets and key merchants in Australia. I will conclude today's presentation with an update on our strategic progress and provide a summary and outlook for the remainder of financial year '25. As always, we are happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation. Moving to Slide 5. Let me start with a summary of the year. GWA delivered a solid result in a challenging market. Notwithstanding these difficult conditions, we delivered volume, revenue and earnings growth. That reflects the successful execution of our customer first and profitable volume growth strategic priorities. In addition, our continued focus on operational and cost discipline, what we call controlling the controllables, resulted in an increased normalized group EBIT with a corresponding lift in our normalized group EBIT margin. We continue to generate strong cash with a cash conversion ratio of 116% for the half. Our balance sheet remains strong with net debt at its lowest levels in 5-plus years. That enabled continued growth in dividends with the interim dividend up 7% to $0.075 per share fully franked. We continue to gain good momentum with our growth strategy, including further engagement with plumbers, the successful launch of new products and ongoing improvement in our customer service metrics. While that has enabled an improved first half result, it also continues to create a stronger platform for future sustainable growth areas of our business. Let me move to Slide 6. As we always do, let me provide an update on our continued emphasis on safety. Across the business, safety is and remains our #1 priority. We continue to focus on lead indicators. We believe these are more relevant in preventing longer-term, more serious outcomes. Building our internal capabilities and awareness has led to an improvement in incident reporting with worker insights reporting increasing by 26%. Our total injury frequency rate improved slightly from financial year '24. But most importantly, our continued focus on early intervention as part of our injury management strategy has led to improving injury severity rates. This results in staff being able to return to work quicker and the effect on the business, including the financial impact greatly reduced. I will now hand over to Calin to go through the group financial results.

Thanks, Urs. Turning to Slide 8. This slide presents the results first on a normalized basis, which excludes significant items and then on a reported basis, which includes significant items. Significant items for the first half were $2.3 million after tax and in line with guidance we provided at the FY '24 results. These include costs associated with the implementation of our ERP project in the U.K., which is now successfully completed and costs relating to the enhancement of our digital platforms. In comparison, a tax significant items in the first half of FY '24 were $0.2 million, and this related to the start of the ERP project in the U.K. Group revenue was up 1.9% from the prior corresponding half, reflecting volume growth in Australia and the U.K., partially offset by the decline in the challenged New Zealand market. We had good growth in Australia with sales up 2.4% and volume growth of 1%. Similarly, we had an increase in the U.K. with revenue up 14.5% and volume up 19%. New Zealand continues to be a very challenging market and sales declined by 13.3%. We have made great progress with our reset strategy, adjusting our business model to the current market conditions. Craig will detail the key components of revenue in his section. Normalized EBIT was up 3.2%, a solid result in what remains a challenging market. We continue to be disciplined on costs, and that's resulted in a minor uplift in normalized EBIT margin to 18.3%. I will go through the key drivers of EBIT on the next slide. Turning to Slide 9. This slide contains the waterfall chart we typically present to set up the key drivers of earnings over the period. As always, this is presented on a normalized basis. Looking at volume, as mentioned, we delivered volume growth in Australia and the U.K. from solid traction with our strategic initiatives. This was partially offset by continued challenging market in New Zealand. Looking at price mix, we implemented price increase of roughly 4% in Australia in February 2024, primarily related to cost increases. This was partially offset by the introduction of entry-level products in response to customers looking for more affordable products and solutions. With regards to foreign exchange, the average Australian dollar-U.S. dollar exchange rate for the first half was $0.66, and this compares to $0.69 for the prior corresponding half. The lower Australian dollar impacted stock purchases and balance sheet revaluations. This was partially offset by our hedging activities. Turning to other. This bar relates to our continued cost discipline, controlling the controllables across the business. That discipline has helped deliver another increase in underlying earnings despite the challenging market. Turning to Slide 10. We continue to generate strong cash, which in turn provides enhanced return to shareholders. Operating cash flow of $53.7 million compared to $61 million for the prior corresponding half. Cash conversion remained strong with a cash conversion ratio of 116% for the half, driven in part by a reduction in debtor days as a result of our Customer First, right First Time initiative to improve service levels. Capital expenditure for the half was $1.8 million and this compares to $1.7 million in the prior corresponding period and was in line with our expectations. Total capital expenditure for FY '25 is expected to be between $3 million and $5 million. Our capital expenditure program remains focused on growth initiatives to drive revenue growth opportunities and cost efficiencies. Turning to Slide 11. We remain focused on providing strong returns to our shareholders with a dividend policy to pay 65% to 85% of net profit after tax as dividends. Our continued strong balance sheet and cash flow enabled a 7% uplift in the interim dividend to $0.075 fully franked. The dividend is scheduled to be paid on the 7th of March 2025. Turning to Slide 12. GWA remains in a strong financial position. Net debt as at the 31st of December 2024 was $92.3 million, which was 5% down from 30th of June 2024 and is at its lowest levels in more than 5 years. Our credit metrics remain strong and we are towards the lower end of our target ranges with a leverage ratio of 1.2x and gearing ratio of 19.1% on 31st of December 2024. We have total banking facilities of $220 million with significant headroom of $128 million. I will now hand over to Craig to discuss our performance by markets.

Thanks, Calin and good morning, everyone. In my section today, I'll provide some further context to our revenue by market, by state for Australia and also some commentary on our key segments. Turning to Slide 14. This is the typical slide we present to show our revenue for our key end markets. I will start with Australia, our largest market, which represents 84% of group revenue. As Urs and Calin have already mentioned, we achieved volume growth in Australia during the period. We continue to focus on key segments where we see growth opportunities with a disciplined approach to understand and deliver to local customer needs. These targeted opportunities, including maintenance plumbers, health and aged care solutions and entry-level products for volume homebuilders. In New Zealand, the construction market remains challenging, reflecting the significant decline in local building activity in the market. As part of our reset strategy announced in August '24, we responded by simplifying our business, streamlining brands and products and adjusting our organizational go-to-market model. Sales in the U.K. were up 14%, reflecting strong execution from our local management team and the benefit of new customer wins in FY '24. Turning to Slide 15. This slide details Australian sales for the period by state. Sales were up across all states, except for New South Wales. In New South Wales, despite growth in maintenance, plumber and care sales, our business was negatively impacted by slowing detached residential completions, some volume loss in the volume homebuilder segment and the impact of softening commercial new build activity. In Victoria, as a result of consistent execution, we achieved good growth in commercial led by several key project wins in the health care segment, success winning several new volume homebuilders and improved maintenance plumber sales. Queensland sales were up 8%, driven by our continued focus on local sales initiatives with key merchants, including our plumber bundle targeting the everyday needs of maintenance plumbers, offsetting delays in larger commercial and residential work. Over in the West, our growth was led by new specification wins in the residential segment, key wins in the education sector and our expanded maintenance plumber customer base, which offset slowing detached residential completions. Sales South Australia was once again our highest growth state led by a strong performance in the residential segment. Turning to Slide 16. This slide illustrates sales through our 4 main merchant customers in Australia. Overall, we had growth in 3 out of these top 4 merchants. We continue to achieve strong traction with our Win the Plumber strategy, including growth in the plumber bundle and spare sales, which were up 13%. We remain absolutely focused on our 2 key strategic priorities of customer first and profitable volume growth and our state-based sales organization is identifying and executing against these in local sales opportunities. We continue to focus and generate good sales growth in the care sectors, which has helped offset the noticeable slowdown in residential detached and commercial new build in the second quarter. I will now hand you back to Urs.

Thanks, Craig. Moving to Slide 18. We continue to launch new products during the period to build our presence in core segments. In summary, this included an expansion of our entry-level product range to meet the growing needs for cost-effective residential and independent living solutions, a refresh of our iconic Main peer ranges, incorporating latest design and technology to enhance value and the launch of Caroma CleanClush Urinal technology to elevate our product offering in the commercial segment. Moving to Slide 19. Continuing on with new product development. We are introducing our new smart thermal disinfection technology. Thermal disinfection is a regulatory requirement in care facilities to ensure the safety of patients, care workers and public. Water systems need to be periodically disinfected by running water at high temperature for a set period of time. Traditional thermal disinfection processes were manual time-consuming, costly and lie on manual recorded information to meet regulatory requirements. Leveraging our Caroma Smart Command Internet of Things capabilities, we can automate this process and unlock operational cost benefits and superior governance. The launch of this innovation coincides with the continued investment into the development of new hospitals and major upgrades of existing hospitals throughout Australia and New Zealand. We are currently installing this solution in the redevelopment of a major hospital in Victoria. Moving to Slide 20. I will make a few comments about our strategic progress and how we continue to evolve our strategy, focused on key growth segments. Moving to Slide 21. Our strategy remains clear and consistent. This slide summarizes our strategy on a page. Our strategic priorities confirm our position as a trusted technical partner in delivering sustainable water solution for bathrooms. We continue to maintain an absolute priority on customer first and profitable volume growth with particular commitment to Win the Plumber. On the next slide, I will summarize our progress in delivering this strategy. Moving to Slide 22. This slide shows our strategic scorecard. I'm very pleased with the continued progress over the last 6 months. For Win the Plumber, as we have stated consistently, plumbers represent the single biggest opportunity for GWA to grow volume and share in Australia and New Zealand. Extending our reach and engagement with plumbers continues to be the core of our strategy. We made good progress here. As Craig mentioned, our specialized plumber bundle and spare parts offer parking and maintenance plumbers continue to gain traction with sales up 13% on the prior corresponding half. During the half, we continue to extend our reach with Australia and New Zealand plumbers and have invested in internal plumbing specialists in all our ANZ markets. We are assisting plumbers with technical training and to help them meet the CPD hours. We have now conducted training for over 6,000 plumbers. In March, we will hold the second plumber roadshow across all our markets titled Plumbing of the Future. We have experienced strong adoption of our Plumber Hub app available for mobile devices, providing stock availability, product specification and installation guides at the plumbers fingertip. For care, as I mentioned previously, health and aged care remain key priority segment for our sales efforts, leveraging our technical expertise and product quality. During the half, we continue to secure major contract wins, particularly in Victoria. For residential, while overall detached completions have declined, we continue to target specific volume homebuilders and have secured some major new customer wins during the half. And then in commercial, as we mentioned, the commercial new build segment continues to be weak and that has impacted performance in this segment this half. Given that ongoing weakness, commercial renovation is key area remains a core focus and we are well placed to grow in this category as commercial premises are refurbished, particularly in relation to water saving technology. And finally, merchants. As Craig outlined, we remain committed to our customer first strategy and identifying and driving local sales opportunity. One example is our most recently introduced online trade up, which enables merchants to electronically engage with us and obtain critical stock and product information online at a convenient time for them. Moving to Slide 24. Let me summarize the key points from today's presentation before concluding with the outlook for the rest of financial year '25. In a challenging market, we delivered a solid result. Given those challenges, we continue to concentrate on what we can control. We continue to deliver revenue and volume growth with an increased normalized group EBIT and margin. While the New Zealand market remains challenged, we have responded swiftly and directly with the reset and simplification of our business. Our balance sheet remains solid with debt at 5-plus year low and our focus on customer first and profitable volume growth initiatives have resulted in most deliverables progressing as planned. Moving to Slide 25. I will conclude with an outlook for the remaining of financial year '25. First, a summary of key geographic markets. In Australia, the outlook for most segments remains mixed. However, we expect solid demand in health and aged care projects. We are also seeing promising progress for sales of our plumber bundle offering in spares. We anticipate a slow recovery of the New Zealand economy in late financial year '25 going into financial year '26. We have simplified our business to focus on the plumbing industry and health textile. And in the U.K., we expect a modest external market recovery in financial year '25 across both new build and repair and renovation and we also expect to continue to benefit from new customer wins during financial year '24. Moving to Slide 26. Moving more specifically to Australia, our largest market, accounting for 84% of group revenue. In commercial, new office build activity is depressed, somewhat offset by a positive outlook in health care and office refurbishment. In response, we continue to prioritize health care and aged care projects and increased product specification with existing builders and developers. In residential detached, we expect a decline in completions before an expected improvement in financial '26 flowing from increased approvals. In that context, we are currently focused on increased market penetration and product specification with volume homebuilders. Activity in multi-residential is expected to increase, driven by an acute housing shortage, although the timing of this recovery continues to remain uncertain. Within this segment, we target social and affordable housing and build-to-rent projects. And finally, in repair and renovation, we expect a gradual improvement. However, this is constrained by economic uncertainties. We will continue to focus on maintenance numbers and providing a complete commercial office refurbishment solution. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the presentation. Calin, Craig and I are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Shaurya Visen from Bank of America.

A couple of questions on Australia first, if I may. Just starting with the first half revenue number, the growth of 2.4%. Just comparing that to the first quarter number that you sort of provided us with the trading update, that number of 5%, 5.5%, looks like the second quarter has slowed down quite meaningfully. Could you just give us a sense of what's driving that? And I had a follow-up.

So thanks for the question. As we mentioned in the presentation, I think what we saw through the course of the first 6 months is you saw a noticeable decline in commercial new build activity for quarter 2 and also residential-detached activity as we came towards, I suppose, the end of the backlog and our role at the end of the construction cycle. So that is probably the 2 key drivers for the second quarter.

Right. Okay. That's helpful. And also just looking at Australia's first half volumes of 1%, I think, correct me if I got that number wrong. So 1% overall volume. Within that, can you give us a sense of each of your key segments? How did they look? Not looking at an exact number, but directionally, how do these numbers look, say, for R&R, commercial, and rest?

So, I'll take that one. So we did see some growth in the R&R market. Some of that was driven particularly around, we talked about the plumber bundle and we talked about an increase in the plumber bundle of 13% that helped to contribute towards that increase. I think as Craig mentioned, though, we did see a slowdown in residential detached and commercial that would have detracted from that volume. So the driver was clearly in the R&R space for us in this period.

Great. And just the last one, if we could quickly touch up on New Zealand. Of course, you've been calling that market to be quite weak. So can you just give us a sense of how did second quarter looked versus the first quarter? Was it any improvement or same as the first quarter?

So the New Zealand second quarter, there was probably saw a slight improvement on the first quarter, but nothing material. It's been fairly consistent throughout the half.

Your next question comes from Ben Kairaitis from MST Marquee.

Just on Slide 22, I note you've again indicated your progress of the FY '24 EPS growth target as Amber rather than red or green. Just since growth in the first half was below 2%, I just wanted to see how you guys are assessing that 5% to 10% target and what is required to catch up with the lost ground so far to get back to the target range.

Sure, Ben. So look, in terms of both of those, we're actually probably tracking around 3.5%. That's why Amber. The first half of '25 was at 3.4% Look, in terms of what we need to see to move that into green, it's obviously further traction with our strategic initiatives. And then as we see the market, I suppose, uptick or potentially uptick in '26 and into '27, those are the 2 things we see as driving that into the green.

Okay. Cool. And then just quickly on FX. Obviously, cross rates have moved adversely since the last result and that's reflected in the higher headwind in guidance. Just wondering if the Aussie stays at current levels of around $0.63, are you expecting a similar headwind of around $4 million in FY '26 and what level of hedging do you have in place? And just whether you're confident that you can recover any imports through price as well, please?

Look, we've come to the market with a price increase on the 1st of February of 4% and that's in anticipation of the U.S. dollar, and the Australian dollar exchange rate of around $0.63, $0.64. So in terms of recovery through FY '26 from price, we expect to be able to recover that headwind. If you're asking me for an outlook on the exchange rates, Ben, you guys are probably better placed than us for that one. If we think about what we have coverage, so we have coverage at around $0.67 for the rest of this financial year. And then we have some modest coverage into FY '26 but nothing of significance yet.

And what we always said, if we can't absorb any of the cost increases, we would see obviously a further price increase in financial year '26.

Your next question comes from Guus Vreeburg from Macquarie.

Just on the mix shift in the EBIT bridge, just really looking to delineate whether that's a function of end-market performance or whether you've seen any signs of customers trading down in your markets.

Thanks for your question. Look, I think we mentioned that about a year ago, we saw a change in the market, particularly with some of the economic conditions. And we have clearly seen that there was a sort of a drive towards better value products. Therefore, our introduction of entry-level products has come at the right time. So yes, so even when we talk to some of our merchant partners in the last 6 months, we hear that customers are looking for cheaper solutions than previously.

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. And presumably, that sort of speaks to the plumber bundle sales as well which were up 13%.

No, look, that's not necessarily directly linked, but the plumber bundle being up 13%, that's really just a direct reflection of our efforts to get closer to the maintenance plumbing sector, helping them understand some of the advantages of our products, continue to do trading and providing technical specification. So I wouldn't link that to a price consciousness.

Okay. And just digging a bit deeper on the cost performance. That was quite good at expanding EBIT margins last year. Could you maybe just explain a little bit more about what's driven by efficiencies and strategy benefits that you've been working on over the last couple of halves and years and or whether some of those benefits from things like locking in ocean freight?

Yes. So look, if you look at the cost savings, first of all, ocean freight probably had a little bit of a benefit because we usually lock in about 50% of our volume 12 months ahead. But also we've seen some quiet volatility. So sometimes we use some of the spot rates, which are more advantageous to us. In regard to cost management internally over the last few halves, we've been really focused on seeing what cost and what function support really drive and support our strategy. So we've been probably more selective when it comes to A&P and probably about 6 to 12 months ago, we adjusted some of the back offices. But on purpose and I think we mentioned that we never touched our sales organization.

Yes. And in terms of ocean freight, how much do you have locked in for this year? Is that still at the same level as it was in August?

Yes. So we typically keep around 50% on contracted rates. We did this time last year, to increase some of our coverage for FY '25. We did use a lot of that through the extreme volatility that we saw. So at the moment, we're probably sitting around 50% for the rest of the financial year.

[Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions at this time, I'll now hand back to Mr. Meyerhans for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thanks for your time, and we're looking forward to catching up with many of you over the next couple of days and weeks. Thank you.

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