IPD Group Limited (IPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
November 26, 2024
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
David Rafter
executiveWell, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My pleasure to welcome you to this Annual General Meeting of the IPD Group. For those who don't know me, I'm David Rafter. I'm the Independent Non-Executive Chair of the group and also the Chair of this meeting today. As stated in the notice regarding the AGM, we will have some shareholders, hopefully participating via a live webcast. However, just be kindly advised that you will not be able to ask questions or vote if you're joining us via that technology. We do have a quorum, so I will declare the meeting open and I will start with some introductions. So, fellow Board Directors, in no particular order, we've got Michael Sainsbury to my left. So, Michael is CEO and also an Executive Director. On Michael's left is Andrew Moffat, fellow Non-Executive Director. And to Andrew's left is Mohamed Yoosuff. Mohamed is a Director of Strategic Development for the group and also an Executive Director. So, I don't think we have any apologies. We're all here. I'll also introduce Jade Cook. So, Jade is to my right. Jade is our Company Secretary and we have our representative of our company's auditors here. So, Scott, if you could just raise your hand, front here. Scott is from PKF and conducted the audit for the most recent financial year. I believe there was no written questions submitted for PKF. That still the case. However, I'm sure that Scott will be pleased to address any questions that are raised by shareholders today during the course of the meeting. A couple of people here from Computershare. So, we've got Gemma, and I have been introduced to...
Unknown Attendee
attendee[indiscernible].
David Rafter
executiveOkay. Thank you. Welcome. So, when you're ready to vote, the box is there and these guys can help with any registration issues, et cetera. So, welcome. 3 components to today's meeting. So firstly, I will provide a Chair address, which will look at the company's salient operations for FY '24. We'll then go through the formal business of the meeting and give you the opportunity to ask any questions on the resolutions that are proposed. I will then close the AGM and then Michael, as CEO, will present an update on recent business developments. So, my address was released on the market this morning. So, I'll try and stick to what's released, so it's consistent. And apologies if that's a bit monotonous for everyone. But look, again, welcome to our shareholders. We were -- and I am delighted to report that the company has delivered record financial results in FY '24, both through organic growth and also the contributions of 2 major acquisitions being EX Engineering and CMI operations. I think there's a summary of what I'm talking to -- there is. So, revenue increased by 28% versus FY '23 and the underlying net profit after tax by 44.7%. We did change our capital structure during the year. So, the part funding of CMI acquisition, $92.1 million. So, we successfully raised $65 million of equity and we also established a $40 million debt facility with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. We've now reduced that facility down to $30 million and I'll talk more to our net debt position shortly. So, it was our first ever debt facility and it balanced the desire to preserve shareholder equity against cost-effective debt funding. Pleasingly, the group's strong operating free cash flow conversion of 88% throughout FY '24 has resulted in a modest year-end net debt of only $8.8 million and a cash balance of $22.3 million. While CMI was the largest acquisition the group has undertaken to date, this approach to funding and a strong performance over the period once again allowed the Board to approve total dividends to shareholders of $0.108 per share fully franked for FY '24. So, this equated to shareholder payments of $11.2 million and a payout ratio of half our net profit after tax, which was in line with our dividend policy range of 40% to 60%. The total dividend of $0.108 per share was 16.1% higher than FY '23. From a governance perspective, we, as a Board placed particular focus across the year on M&A due diligence, evaluating expert advice on the best way to fund the CMI acquisition, a lot of succession planning exercises, cybersecurity and getting prepared for the upcoming mandatory climate reporting legislation. We also have Jason Boschetti in the room. Jason is our CFO. And FY '24 represented the first full financial year of Jason's time in that role. So, he assumed that role in January '23 when Mohamed was the former CFO and moved to the role of Director of Strategic Development. So, we are really pleased to note that, that transition was very smooth and has been followed by continued strong execution on the part of both Jason and Mohamed as reflected in the record FY '24 results and the 2 successful acquisitions completed during that year. So, alongside Michael as CEO, the Board is highly confident that the seasoned senior management team in place will continue to execute against IPD's strategic priorities in the years ahead. Given the group's strong balance sheet, expanding range of products and services and ongoing focus on strategic M&A, IPD Group is ideally placed to continue supporting our customers as they execute against a multitude of megatrend tailwinds in turn delivering earnings growth for our shareholders. So to close, I would like to thank my fellow directors for their support and guidance across a very busy schedule in FY '24. We do appreciate the trust and support of our shareholders and the Board understands that the passion, drive and expertise of our staff and supply partners have been fundamental to our success across FY '24, and we thank all for their support and loyalty. So, I can take any questions. We've got a presentation from Michael at the end. Otherwise, we can move to the formal procedural matters of the meeting. So, setting the scene of the legislation, we have been -- this meeting convened in accordance with the Corporations Act. The Notice of Meeting was lodged with the ASX on the 25th of October '24 and therefore, within the required notice period. There are no objections, I will take the notice as read. So registration, has anyone not registered shareholders? We need you guys to register, please. And if you don't register your votes will not be taken into consideration. Okay. So the voting system, if you're a shareholder, you vote with your green card. Okay. The yellow voting card for shareholders, proxy holders, representatives who have already voted and/or not intending to vote, change the vote cast at the AGM and the white card is for visitors and invited guests. In terms of voting, all resolutions to be considered at this meeting shall be decided by a poll. And for this purpose, may I request all members present in person or by proxy, finally fill in the green voting card. Gemma, could you just hold up the green voting card at that item. If you are a shareholder and wish to cast all your votes for a resolution, please place a mark in either the for, against or abstain box. If you wish to split your votes, please write the number or the portion of votes you wish to cast in the corresponding box. Please note that the sum of the split votes must not exceed your total holding. The voting cards will then be collected at the end of the meeting and counted by our share registry. Shareholders in attendance that have already submitted a vote by proxy should note that your votes will already be counted towards the poll. You do not need to lodge another vote unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. Is there -- are there any questions in relation to the voting process? In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I now declare voting open on all resolutions. You can submit your votes at any time, and I'll give you a warning before I move to close voting. I would like to highlight that where undirected proxies have been given in favor of the Chair, I will be voting those proxies in favor of all resolutions being put to the meeting today. I will disclose proxy votes prior to the vote being taken for each item. These figures will be as at the closing time for the receipt of proxies, which was 11:00 a.m. on Sunday just on the 24th of November. Question and answer. During the meeting, I will put the various resolutions to the meeting and shareholders can raise questions that relate to the business of those resolutions by raising your yellow or green card as appropriate. Would be helpful if you could state your name and capacity before asking your question. Visitors are not permitted to participate in the question-and-answer session of the meeting. Questions should be addressed to me as the Chair. And if I'm capable, I will deal with the question or ask someone who is better placed to respond and we will do our best to answer any relevant question raised within a reasonable time frame. We can now move to the formal component of the meeting. So, first item relates to financial statements and reports. So, this is to receive and consider the annual financial report of the company and the related directors and auditor's report in respect to the financial year-ended 30 June 2024. This is just an item for discussion and there is no formal requirement -- sorry, formal resolution required for this item. As we said, we have Scott Tobutt in the room. And I'll just put to the meeting, are there any questions or comments on the financial report for the auditors. Bruce, back here.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeMy question to the auditor is that the report mentioned [Technical Difficulty] EX Engineering and CMI. In the actual [Technical Difficulty] financials doesn't actually provide any information about the revenue of each of those sectors or each of those businesses or their profits towards the company. I just think that's a bit of -- that's something that Board should have been aware of and kind of, why weren't there any further [Technical Difficulty] given in relation to those 4 businesses.
Scott Tobutt
executiveYes. I think there's a requirement to include segment reporting within the financial statements. That has been disclosed in accordance with our accounting standard. And what the Board -- management included in their report [Technical Difficulty] I assume is more from that perspective. So, within the annual report [Technical Difficulty], this was in segment reporting, which is from a different perspective.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeI think it should have been included because we did, in fact, purchase those businesses. There should have been some information about how they were performing. And I just think that the auditor should have ensured that in the report, there was some segment reporting included rather than just the general report. Most other businesses are perhaps either in the annual report, they do have quite a breakdown percentage reporting. [Technical Difficulty] included in the report.
Scott Tobutt
executiveWe're very satisfied with how this has been reported. So, [Technical Difficulty] take onboard for next year and that's in accordance with the standards.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveI think Bruce, from our perspective, we take onboard your feedback. It may not necessarily be an auditor's position because there is just making sure we're in accordance with the standard. But as a management team, we take onboard your feedback and we'll endeavor to be able to give you more transparency in the future.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeLast year, when you were doing the presentation, you presented very clearly how you expect these businesses to perform and there's nothing in that report [Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveGot it. Bruce. Thank you. Loud and clear, mate.
David Rafter
executiveThank you. Any other questions regarding this resolution? Okay. So, I'll now ask Jade as Company Secretary to record that the annual financial report and related reports in respect of the financial year 30 June '24 have been received and considered by the shareholders. Thank you. I will move on to Resolution #1, which is the adoption of the remuneration report. So, this resolution appears on the screen. I'll take it as read. And also on the screen are the proxy votes received before the close of proxies for this resolution. So, I now open this resolution for any discussion. Okay. So no questions, I will formally put this resolution to the meeting and please cast your votes on the resolution. Thank you. Now on to Resolution #2 relates to the reelection of Mohamed Yoosuff as a Director of the company. And I would ask Mohamed to just provide a brief bio on his candidacy for renewing as a director of the company.
Mohamed Yoosuff
executiveThank you, David, and good morning all. Good to see a lot of familiar faces. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mohamed Yoosuff and I have been in the business since inception since 2005. So that comes next June. I would have worked in the business for 20 years. The first 18 years of that would have been as the CFO of the company. The last 2 years, since Jason took over as the CFO since January 2023, I've been working as a Director for Strategic Development. That covers the mergers and acquisitions. Also, it covers the Investor Relations, [Technical Difficulty] our shareholders where I can. And also, I look after the overseas operations in Sri Lanka and Philippines. By training, I'm an accountant and I started most of my working life, I have spent in financial roles in large industrial companies and some of them U.S. multinationals, U.K. multinationals. And my last role prior to the IPD business was as a CFO of a listed company called Ludowici, which is no longer. That was sold out to a German company. So, most of my working life has been industrial companies and financial roles. And I'm quite excited to be here and I'm looking forward to working for a lot longer and enjoying the role and continuing with the business.
David Rafter
executiveThank you, Mohamed.
Mohamed Yoosuff
executiveThanks, David.
David Rafter
executiveOkay. So, we've got the proxy voting on the screen and I can now open this resolution for discussion. Last call. Okay. So, I'll now formally put this resolution to the meeting and please cast your vote. Thank you. Resolution #3 relates to the approval of the employee incentive plan. The resolution is on the screen. I'll take it as read. We also have the proxy votes received for this resolution. And I can now open this resolution for discussion. Last call. Okay. Thank you. I formally put this resolution to the meeting, and please cast your vote. Resolution #4 relates to the approval of the issue of performance rights to Michael Sainsbury, our Director of the company. Resolution is on the screen as are the proxy votes. I can now open this resolution for any discussion. Last call. Okay. I formally put this resolution to the meeting and please cast your votes. Resolution #5 relates to the approval of issue of performance rights to Mohamed Yoosuff as a Director of the company. Again, resolution is on the screen and I'll take it as being read and the proxy votes are also displayed. And I now open this resolution for any discussion. Last call. Okay. Thank you. I formally put this resolution to the meeting. Please cast your vote. Resolution #6 relates to the approval to renew the proportional takeover provisions of our constitution. Again, this is a special resolution and it appears on the screen. I'll take that as read and we have the proxy voting stats there as well and I open this resolution for any discussion. Last call. Well done. Thank you. I'll formally put this resolution to the meeting for voting. Please cast your vote. Anyone like any more time to vote. Good. Okay. General questions. So, are there any questions on the matters we presented or any general questions relating to the business of the company you'd like to ask? Okay. So, ladies and gents, that concludes the formal items of business. I think to close the voting, does anyone need the last call to vote. Thank you. So, we'll now close the polls. And when voting has been collated, the results will be declared on each resolution and released on the ASX, tomorrow. All right, by tomorrow and also on the company's website. So that concludes the formal business of today's meeting. Thank you very much. It is now 11:22 by my watch. So, Jade will declare the AGM closed and I'll pass over to Michael, the CEO, to give an update and there's a formal company presentation. Do you want to swap seats?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveThat's all right. I'll stand up. Hopefully, everybody online, I'll try and project my voice as loud as I can, so everybody online can hear me clearly. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Nice to see you all here, as Mohamed said, certainly some familiar faces in the room. For those of you who don't know me, it's been mentioned a few times, but my name is Michael Sainsbury, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of the group. I joined the organization in 2013 and took over as the CEO mid-2014 and has been in the role since. So, thanks for taking the time to be here with us today and I'm pleased to be able to run through a presentation, giving you a little bit more clarity and information about our business. Our next slide, please, Jade. So, what we'll share today, we'll talk a little bit about our strategy, the market, a little bit of a financial review looking back and some of it will touch on the points that David has already touched on. So, we'll move through that fairly quickly. And then we'll talk about an FY '25 update and then some time at the end for any questions and answers. Next slide, please, Jade. So, we've moved on to the slide, which is now titled our strategy. At the end of the day, our business is an end-to-end solution provider in the electrical infrastructure space. As a business, we consist of Addelec, IPD, CMI and certainly also EX Engineering business. Those 4 businesses all complement each other and have the ability to work together to be able to support our customers through the life cycle of the product or the solutions that we sell. Our purpose, our vision is to help build a future where sustainable electrical infrastructure creates a better life for all and all 4 of those businesses are well connected to that. And our mission more short term is to enhance every aspect of electrical infrastructure through energy efficiency, automation and secure connectivity while prioritizing the safety and well-being of our people and the community. 650 people in our team. And at the end of the day, the 5 key areas here are really the value proposition for us as an organization. When we talk about industry scale, we are one of the largest electrical product distribution networks in the commercial and industrial sectors in Australia. We have trusted brand. We take to market on an exclusive basis or master distribution, trusted brands and our portfolio features some of the world's most recognized value brands. So, we're certainly taking to market a very quality offer. Expert solutions. Our deep customer technical knowledge, application knowledge enables us to deliver reliable, compliant electrical solutions and guide customers through complex regulatory requirements. And certainly, as an organization, we put a large investment on the engineering skills to be able to work at the front end with our customers to do design and all the time working in around the regulations. Custom solutions. We have the ability to be able to build customized solutions for our customers who don't have the capacity or don't have the manpower to be able to build those complex solutions. We have the ability to do that in-house. So, we can either sell the product as a loose product to our customer or we can build that up in-house in our manufacturing facility to be able to provide customized solutions. The CMI business, a large portion of their business comes from the Minto plugs, which goes in underground mining applications and a lot of the assembly, the manufacturing is done here locally as well. EX Engineering also does do assembly of complex hazardous area solutions for the electrical infrastructure in those complex environments as well. Our commitment to safety and compliance, there's a note on this later, so I won't drill into it too much. But certainly built on a legacy of in regulated markets, we prioritize compliance and safety to deliver sustainable industry-leading solutions. Our results, and we don't deviate from this, our results is to provide sustainable shareholder value creation in the short, medium and long term. Next slide, please, Jade. Bruce mentioned before to the 4 pillars of our business -- sorry, you mentioned to the 4 companies. This is the 4 pillars from a strategic perspective. Obviously, the #1 there is about business growth. We are focused on customer value, market expansion and accelerating growth. We have not been shy in the fact that we call out that our expectations over the short, medium and long term is to grow at a rate of twice the market rate by aggressively taking market share and complementing that with accretive acquisitions that strategically and culturally fit our business. Those 2 things organically and inorganic growth will be part of our growth mechanism for the future and we are committed, as I say, in the short, medium and long term to look at both organic and inorganic growth. From an operational efficiency perspective, our aim is to build scalable operations and leverage off the synergies of emerging technologies and the synergies of the different businesses under our ownership. We look to introduce and continuously improve a scalable operation to leverage off a shared services market that is able to support all of our businesses and streamline processes, reduce costs and expand our industry reach. And certainly, we look to use our partnerships and emerging technologies to create innovative, adaptable solutions that drive value and growth. And a couple of examples in the last 12, 18 months of new product introductions has been UPS and high-efficiency motors, which are absolutely fit smack bang in the middle of that emerging technologies play. Our third pillar is we call it sustainability here. It's really a commitment to ESG. We're committed to be responsible environmental and social impact. We have an aspiration of reducing our environmental footprint. How are we going to do that? We want to reduce the grid, the electricity we're drawing down from the grid from our own organization. It's walk the walk, talk the talk. We are going to transition our fleet from combustible engine fleet to a hybrid electric vehicle as appropriate in the coming years. And we want to emphasize on the circularity and reduce to reduce waste and maximize product and material life cycles. And really pleased to say that ABB globally have us a showcase around sustainability in this circular type environment where we're using collapsible crates to receive our product from ABB. We unpack it out of those crates. We fold the crates back up. We send it back to ABB and they ship it in those same crates again. So -- and it's being used as a global discussion point around ABB's sustainability. And we aim to make lasting social impact by supporting charitable causes. Every quarter, we nominate a different charity and the organization and the people, more importantly, the people in our organization support these charitable causes on a quarterly basis. We also do educational programs to strengthen the electrical industry. In Sri Lanka, we take a number of students, engineering students out of all of the universities and put them into our business and do on-the-job training in electrical infrastructure and electrical design as part of the university course. We are the biggest employer of electrical engineers in Sri Lanka, second to the Sri Lankan government. So, we put a high emphasis on training and certainly those industry-related initiatives. People. Without our people, and I think David mentioned it earlier, we pay homage to the people that have contributed to our success. It depends on a strong, engaged diverse workforce, which is essential for us to be able to deliver sustainable growth. We put a massive emphasis on employee well-being and development. And I'm pleased to say a lot of the career progression in our organization in the last 12 months has really pointed to the fact that we're doing a good, strong job there. And we aim to attract strong talent and retain those we've got through developing their strengths and upholding high standards. So, they are the 4 pillars for an organization that we will talk to on an ongoing basis. Next slide, thank you, Jade. I mentioned it before, a connected group. IPD Group is the listed entity as the parent company. It consists of 4 organizations. I won't go through them. I've said it before. This slide here is to talk about how attached by using the different models of those 4 business, we are to our customers and the full life cycle of the product. It's a little complex this wheel here, but effectively, it's everything from system and architecture, which is more product specification and design and creating demand through to engineering and installation, maintenance, repair and operation and the full life cycle of the product. So, not only are we trying to sell the product to the customer at the front end, but we're able to support that product for the life cycle of the product with the EX business and with the CMI business. So a really, really diverse touch point with our customers and the ability to be able to touch them on many different points. Next slide, thank you, Jade. I spoke before about our customers. They are the lifeblood of our business. We -- once a year, we do a survey of our customers where we ask them 15 different questions about our performance. I'm pleased to say in the last 12 months, in every one of those 15 questions, we have improved from customer feedback in the last 12 months. So, our efforts are certainly being recognized by our customers and the plans we put in place to make ourselves more relevant to our customers are certainly biting. There's one question there we ask our customers and we hold ourselves to account with that on the Net Promoter Score is, how likely are you to recommend IPD as a supplier of choice? And our Net Promoter Score there is 32.9. That's a blended result from all of the organization. Anything over 30 is deemed to be a strong result. So at 32.9, it's a strong recognition from our customers, but our ambition is to improve that year-on-year-on-year and it's one of the key metrics that we follow as an organization. Our diversified revenue comes from a number of different products, the biggest one being power distribution, which is the ability to get power around the site, whether that's a data center, a hospital, a distribution center, a mine, food and beverage, water, waste water, it doesn't matter what it is. It's the ability to get power around that site in a safe and secure manner. Automation and communications, it's about the ability of safety, but it's also a reduction of costs through automation. Communication is something which is arising massively in our industry. The ability now to be able to interrogate all of the electrical infrastructure basically at every connection point and to be able to communicate with devices both in front of the devices and remotely is big. Cable is 12% through the acquisition of the CMI business. Motor Control is simply that the ability to be able to turn motors on and off simply, effectively. Hazardous Area Equipment through the CMI business and the EX Engineering business and then Services at 7%, which is predominantly the Adelaide Power Services business and then Power Monitoring at 5%. Importantly here, and we'll make reference to this at a later slide, 37% of our revenue is derived from what we call Commercial Construction/Buildings. 37% is not necessarily all commercial construction. We class hotels, we class shopping centers, retirement villages, distribution centers, warehouses, there's a whole lot that fits in under that building, but 37% of our revenue is derived from that Commercial Construction environment. 23% from Infrastructure, Industrial Mining, the likes of water treatment plants, the likes of food and beverage and mining -- sorry, they come down further, the water treatment. Data Centers at 12% is growing. It grew from 7% in the previous reporting period to 12%. And we have called out that we expect that to grow at 25% year-on-year and there is a future slide giving some clarity from a third party about the phenomenon with data centers. Water Waste Water is another growing aspect and particularly security and Water Waste Water, and we'll talk to that in a future slide. Utilities is a part of our business, food and beverage, less than 1% of our revenue is attached to Residential Construction, which is a good thing because it's certainly being somewhat challenged at the moment and 7% of our revenue comes from Other areas. Next slide. Thank you, Jade. Just a quick snapshot of our business there from the people and what we're doing, how we're traveling around sustainability. We've got 664 employees in the organization on a global scale. Our Net Promoter Score from our employees, again, a blended result of the combination of the businesses comes out at 35%. And there's a number of questions we ask our employees. The one that determines the Net Promoter Score is how do you find IPD as a place to work? Do you -- are you a promoter? Are you a detractor? And again, the same result there, anything over 30 is classed as a strong result. So, a validation of the fact that we are certainly seen as an employer of choice. The one thing I will say in the last 12 months is we have seen a significant improvement in the quality of candidates applying for our role and the ability to secure higher caliber candidates. As we grow and as we scale, it is easier to attract even higher candidates and a bigger talent pool. Really pleasing to say that our lost time injury frequency rate is 0, and that's measured in lost time injury over the past 12 months for every million hours worked. So, a great result. And we now have gone 470 days since our lost time injury, which when you consider we have manufacturing, we have trades people working on 33,000-volt equipment. We have warehousing operations. We have assembly, salespeople on the road, a lot of people with cars. That's an amazing result and one we're very proud of. We talk about sustainability. I mentioned it before, the circular effect of ABB, the collaborative approach where we done with ABB and this is talking about that freight issue that I spoke about before. So, it gives a little bit more information. So, without going into it, and I'm sure there are -- I want to leave enough time at the end for questions and answers. So, we'll skip through this a little bit, not to dilute its importance, but we've already spoke about it for all intentions purpose. Next slide, thank you, Jade. This one here, data centers. I mentioned in the previous slide the fact that we expect it to grow 25% year-on-year. Question is why? As a household at the moment, if we talk about 2024, the average household has 24 connected devices in every house that is feeding into a cloud. 24. If you hadn't done that 3 years ago and told someone got 24 devices in your house connected, you would have been held down. These days, 24 devices. The forecast is by 2030, we'll have 51 devices in every house on average connected to a cloud. And it is driving massive requirements for data storage to be able to handle all that information, not only in a resi space, but in more of an industrial space as well. So, we're seeing double the volume of requirements there for data centers in residential environments. When we talk about the megawatt capacity, required for data centers. We talk about the requirement now in '24 being 1.35 megawatts is what is being consumed or being stored for data centers now. The forecast is in the next 6 years, that will grow by a factor of 2.3x. That will be a combination of that resi, but it will also be every device, the Internet of Things, the emergence of AI, all of these things driving a massive upswing in data centers and one which we are well attached to. So, a growing demand in residential, certainly a market here, an investment of $26 billion. Now please, $26 billion is not our market. It's the full data center attachment. So that includes civils and construction and all that sort of thing, but massive investment into the data center space over that period. Next slide. Thank you, Jade. This one here talks about water infrastructure and the forecast spend on water infrastructure. The aim here, and I could have put health care up here because it's another growing phenomenon. But in the interest of giving you some clarity of the diversity of our organization, in this sort of space here, we're not so much looking for power distribution and continuity of power as we were in a data center. This is the ability to control motors, to control pumps, to be able to get -- in industrial communications, cyber threats and in water infrastructure. The forecast there over the next 3 years, 4 years is 6.9% cumulative annual growth. Our motors relationship with ABB and our drives relationship with ABB, just to mention 2 are well attached to this phenomenon. So the aim here is to give you some clarity. We are not a one-trick pony where data centers are the only phenomenon that we're attached to. There is a diversity. It is water, waste water here. And when we talk about it, it's in every part there, the population growth, the urbanization, climate change driving it and the security, technology changes, aging infrastructure and government investment. So, it is really across the full spectrum and one of the growth opportunities for us for the future, particularly in that motor control space. Next slide. Thanks, Jade. The financial review, I'll call out some headline numbers, next slide, where we come to the boxes. For those of you online that are skipping through the boxes there for our results overview for 2024. Revenue of $290 million, which was up 28% on the prior comparative period. EBITDA, EBIT and net profit, all up similar ratios to $40 million, $34 million and $23.3 million, respectively. Our earnings per share went up 30% to $0.242. Our net assets at $150.7 million, which was an increase of $72.9 million, some of that coming back to the acquisitions. We spoke about net debt. Net debt is at $8.8 million. So, we look at our debt position and take off the cash position, which gives us obviously a net debt. And as of the 30th of June, our net debt was $8.8 million. Capital raised $65 million for the CMI acquisition. Lost time injury frequency rate, we've already spoken about, the 470 days and dividends at $0.108 averaging or rolling out at 50% payout ratio of that net profit result. Next slide. Thank you, Jade. Financial overview. This is a replica of the slide that David showed earlier. So, I won't spend a lot of time on it. Revenue growth, good; gross profit, strong; EBITDA, up; strategic investment, I should spend a minute here. We have expanded our team in the space of strategic development. What is strategic development? Our business consists of 2 different phenomenon by and large. It's either designed by a consultant, whether it's in its full capacity or in a smaller capacity and it comes out to the market specified what product would have to go into that facility or into that installation. The second one is called design and construct. The electrical contractor has more autonomy in selecting the products that go into that installation. Up until recently, a lot of our -- majority of our time, in fact, nearly all of our time has been put into the design and construct market. And literally, the specification approach, this prescription approach has been dominated by the largest competitor in our space, which was a company called Schneider Electric. We have made investments into this space, so we can start to build a much more robust organization and sales pipeline through that large portion that comes from specification. And it is a very different approach. The salespeople aren't getting orders. The salespeople are working with consultants to get products into the design, into the specification. So, when it comes out to a market, the market has to use the product that is written into that specification. And we put -- some of our cost growth has gone into this space here. Our net assets have grown, our working capital increased and cash flow, an outstanding result for the '24 year with, I think it was 88% conversion, which was a great result. Next slide. Thank you, Jade. Sales, earnings and growth, obviously, record revenue and EBITDA. Growth driven by organic and strategic acquisitions. A lot of this information has been covered. So, you can see here what I will highlight over the 2020 to 24 years, our cumulative annual growth over that period of 35% at revenue level. And in EBITDA, we've grown from $9.1 million in 2020 to $40 million in 2024, representing a cumulative annual growth rate over that period of 44.8%. So a very, very strong result. Next slide, thank you, Jade. So, the slide I'm sure everybody is looking forward to and with bated breath, our trading update. To a large extent, the information we have on this slide has already been circulated out in the market, but we are suggesting our EBITDA result. As we look at first half 2024, $16.1 million. If we look at the pro forma result, which includes all of the businesses effectively for that period -- for the previous period at 24.8%. Our guidance is a factor of between $22.5 million and $23.1 million at an EBIT level between $19.2 million and $19.8 million. The question is, I'm sure from the floor and I'll preempt it, why are we forecasting guidance in a subdued or a reduced fashion on the previous year? A couple of things that I'll call out there. If I talk about 4 key parameters as a business, sales revenue for the 6 months of this year, the first 6 months, we are forecasting to be up on last year. And we're forecasting it to be up by a factor of circa 3% on last year on a pro forma basis. In the current market, we are indelibly attached to construction and it is certainly not operating at the same level it has been for the last 3 years. And it materially is going to have an impact on our business. We can't shy away from that. We are a business that is attached to it. And that environment, I guess, the drop in the activity in that space is certainly having a detrimental impact to our overall results. How have we been able to achieve revenue growth considering that? We talk about these megatrends of data centers and the emergence of electric vehicle charging and the emergence of health care and investment into all these places, water, waste water. Our business has shifted a lot in the last 12 months. 12 months ago, I would have stood in front of you and said 70% of our business is day-to-day. What does that mean? I provide a price list to a customer. A customer orders off that price list. We get an order, we ship it today, they get it tomorrow. 70% of our business, what we call day-to-day. The other 30% was what I would call lumpier or bigger, higher dollar value projects. I'm going to shy away from the word projects and day-to-day because ultimately, they're the same thing, just on a different scale, just a smaller order value attached to it. We're talking about a distribution center that might have 1 switchboard and 5 DBs as opposed to a data center that could have 6 switchboards and 100 distribution boards. So, when I talk about projects, a lot of our day-to-day business is still projects. It's the dollar value, which -- and as an organization in the last 12 months, because of the tough market in that commercial construction and general construction, it's no doubt our business has changed. And 50% of our revenue now would come from these bigger meatier projects as opposed to 30% previously. That's how we've been able to achieve revenue growth because the downturn in construction has been offset by this growth in these larger, more meaty projects, bigger dollar value. Second point there and if I talk about positive, the order backlog, it would be remiss of me not to point this out because materially, it's having a substantial impact on the results for the first half of the year. When we used to sell 70% of our equipment and it was dispatched same-day, next-day delivery to the customer, it was very much a transactional roll on, roll on, roll on. Our order book backlog has grown in the first 4 months on the prior comparative period, and this is on a pro forma basis. When I talk about the backlog, what we have in backlog, we've grown from $62 million last year to $93 million, an extra $93 million in backlog. What is backlog? Customer places an order and I'm not yet shipping it. I'll ship it at a later date when the customer calls or when there's a agreed date to ship that to the customer. So, this shows a 50% growth in our backlog, which will be invoiced at some point in time. We don't have risk to our business. We don't have cancellation of orders. A customer never places an order and cancels it 6 months later. It may get delayed. In fact, in the bigger projects, more often than not, it gets delayed because the time frames on these major projects are something that are materially just pie in the sky numbers at the early stage and best guess to a large extent. But as the project evolves, dates slip. So, this is certainly a validation that our shift from a day-to-day operating business model to more of a larger and meatier project business model. And this reconfirms it as well. While we're only seeing 3% revenue growth, which is what we're invoicing, for the first 4 months of the year, our average order book per month has grown from $29 million to $40 million per month. The 2 good things, revenue, quite strong in the current environment, pleasing result. Orders, an outstanding result. At the end of the day, the process we follow in our business is generally in these larger meatier projects, we quote a customer, they place an order, we deliver. And we can see here that, again, 40% growth in our average monthly orders [Technical Difficulty] what we are doing is working, but it won't necessarily be invoiced next day like it used to be when the business was as it was before. Does that mean we will forever more be a project business from here on? No. We are not neglecting our day-to-day operations. We're putting as much time and effort in there because one thing is for sure and certain. Commercial construction, construction as a whole is coming back. Population growth is driving it. Infrastructure investment has been done. Construction will come back and we're not neglecting it. When it comes back, we will be indelibly touched -- linked to it as much as we ever were when it was booming in the last 3 to 5 years. And these megatrends that are supporting our business and somewhat supporting a little bit of the drop in the day-to-day business will still be there because these megatrends are short-term focused. This augurs well for a very good, strong business model in the short, medium and long-term business. But what it does show is a little bit of a transition of our business. Now, I spoke about the 2 things there that are going really well. What is contributing to an EBIT result that is down on last year, considering revenue is up? 2 things. Margin erosion of about 1% on our whole business. And it is validated by the fact we're shifting to a larger project model. We're not sending as many orders where the customer orders straight off their price list. We place the order today, they get it tomorrow. More of our business is in this project space, which is negotiated. For all intentions and purposes, it's like a tender, but just an informal tender process. It's more competitive. It's more visible to competitors. It comes with notoriety to pick up these big projects. I've always said that the meatier projects will come at a lower margin realization. And because more of our business has come from that space, it's had a margin erosion effect on our business. I can't shy away from that. At the end of the day, we have done a great job in holding our revenue in a challenging environment in construction by using these larger projects to be able to backfill that. The second area that's having a negative impact on that EBIT result is the cost base. And if you benchmark our cost base against the sales revenue result, you would say we are overinvesting. I look at it differently. We would not have achieved sort of orders results or this sort of backlog if we weren't investing for the growth for the future. The investments we are making are working. It is giving us orders growth at 40%, it is working. These will be invoiced at some point in time. When? I can't tell you that because truly, I don't have the ability to influence land lease or these large construction companies around their time frame. And to a certain extent, our customers are bound by those time frames as well. But it's fair to say, if you were to benchmark my cost base against the orders result for the first half of the year, it would be a very, very, very good result. So, what do I do? Do I cut our cost base to support the revenue model I've got today with the detrimental effect on the business medium and long term? My strong answer is no. We need to be investing and we need to be investing to continue to grow our number. At the moment, it is project -- it is lumpy projects base, but it will come back to a balance between day-to-day and project base. So, if you benchmark our costs against our orders, it would be a very relevant result, benchmarking it against revenue, not so, and it's having a detrimental impact on the EBIT result. Next slide. Thanks, Jade. Questions and answers. So for me, the summary and the closing comment for me, we have stood in front of investors, in front of our analysts, in front of the wider community, the investment community quite a lot over the last couple of years and presented what I believe is a very compelling story for short-, medium- and long-term growth. And from my perspective, nothing changes. The business is still well set up to achieve the growth that we've spoken about. The megatrends will exist for the next decade, even longer. Construction will come back. We will invoice this backlog of orders we've got and somewhat, it will rectify itself. Can I tell you hand on hard here that the second half we'll close the gap between that? I can't tell you that. I'm not Nostradamus. If I could tell you that, I'd have a very different job that I've got here. What I can tell you is that order pipeline and the activity that we're creating on a day-to-day basis, we'll see a much stronger second half result than the first half result. Just that orders result alone will underpin that. We are committed as a management team. We don't benchmark ourselves truly on 6 monthly performance. Our commitment was in an earlier slide is to shareholders in a sustainable manner. If I was to cut the cost base to improve the EBIT result now, it would have improved the result in the short term, but it would not have validated the growth in the short, medium and long term for you guys as investors. Having said that, we're not sitting on our hands. the cost base, we have reacted where we can. We've made redundancies in our IT space to the equivalent of $500,000 per year. We had an IT team, which has been rolling out IT projects and has been resource heavy. The problem with that is when you finish a project, because you've got resources full-time employed by you, you want to introduce a new project. And that comes with license costs and all sorts of costs from an IT perspective. We've moved to now a contracting model in IT, where I don't have those resources as ongoing cost in our business and we only engage third parties to support us when it's needed. That materially, a $500,000 benefit -- cost benefit per year already acted upon. And that cost base, we will see that in the second half of the year. Any roles that become vacant in the second half of the year will be critically assessed by the organization as to the need and the necessity and the value that, that role can add to our organization in achieving a strong result. And I'm sure you will see a difference in cost in the second half of the year. It's fair to say, though, some of the costs we've achieved, 80% of our cost comes from people, property. The next one would be IT. People, we've had to pay salary reviews, goes -- we're attracting much better quality people. We've had to pay those people and reward those people. But we've already made $0.5 million adjustment there. Properties, we had some properties coming to end of lease. Property lease values have gone up and we had adjusted lease values, but we're talking materially not a great deal to turn the dial. But a massive cost in CMI and EX Engineering to bring it up to the required levels from a cybersecurity and an operational, if you want to call it, compliance effectiveness. There's been a massive investment into CMI and EX Engineering, which now is business as usual. We're comparing us to a prior comparative period where those costs weren't there. In CMI's case, it wasn't even part of our organization. We have done what we need to do to protect the organization from risks and that's part of our responsibility as a leadership team, but that now will be ongoing costs and will be relative half-on-half. So the upshot for me is, while the result, I would have loved to have been standing in front of you with a different result today, I do not shy away from the fact that not one part of me or my management team is in any way, shape or form pessimistic about the future. We've got some challenges in front of us, no doubt. We've got a diversity in our customer base and our end markets more than we had substantially 5 years ago. If 5 years ago, commercial construction went through the challenges it is today, it's massively different effect on our business. The diversification over the last couple of years has given us some protection where we have relatively control of the bleeding. I don't like using that word. It sounds really terrible, but it's fact. So that's it for me. Thank you very much for everybody here for your ongoing support. There's a lot of familiar faces. Really appreciate it. Look forward to working with you all in the future and showing some really strong results well into the future. Thank you. Any questions? Bruce?
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty] So, we don't have any control over [Technical Difficulty]. I also have a question in relation to Page 75 of the annual report where it shows that our intangible assets increased from $10 million to $78 million last year. Can you explain what the extra [Technical Difficulty]?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveI'll defer to Jason Boschetti, our CFO, to answer that question for you, Bruce.
Jason Boschetti
executiveYes, Bruce, thanks for pointing that out. That's the acquisition of CMI. [Technical Difficulty].
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty]
Jason Boschetti
executiveWe don't require to impair those assets. That will remain [Technical Difficulty].
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty]
Jason Boschetti
executiveYes, correct. [indiscernible] $10 million.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeNow the other question, Michael, [Technical Difficulty] many people supported the capital raise provided from the base business. [Technical Difficulty] You didn't actually mention is one of those. [Technical Difficulty]. Can you give us a bit more update on what's going, how competitive you are in this space compared to the Chinese and other people who are [Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveYes. Thank you for the question. It's remiss of me not to talk about it in the presentation. When I talk about megatrends, the electrification of the economy is one of those megatrends and it is indelibly attached to the phenomenon of EV charging. So, the answer to your question is, more than ever, we are seeing revenue recognition from EV charging-related activity. When I talk about lumpier projects, in our order book, we have Kingsgrove Bus Depot, electrification of the Kingsgrove Bus Depot. It was originally a $5 million project. The design is continuously changing. Transport and Transit New South Wales are continuously changing the design. We expect it to be greater than $5 million by the time we land on a finished design. But that is one of the lumpy projects that will be sitting in that order book, not delivered. There's one over in Malaga called Perth Transit Authority, which is electrification of a bus depot over there as well. That is around about the same sort of dollar value in revenue. It sits in that order book. We've just delivered Wollongong University, the electrification, full EV charging for Wollongong University. The pipeline in EV charging for the last couple of years, there's been a lot of -- actually, we've completely flipped, Bruce. The last couple of years, there's been a lot of activity and not necessarily a lot of revenue. Actually, by the fact that I haven't spoken about it today, we've flipped 180 degrees. The revenue is starting to roll. The projects are certainly there. We're quoting on another bus depot here in Sydney and the project size is $12 million. And we are -- the design that we've done at Kingsgrove is being used for the design of that bus depot here in Sydney as well, puts us in a really strong position. You don't want to get arrogant, but puts us in a really strong position. The rubber is really hitting the road in EV charging, but it's not necessarily in destination charging. To be honest with you, what we have worked out over the last couple of years, destination charging, when we're talking about charge cycles of 10 to 12 hours in the home, it's a more commoditized solution. People -- and we're talking about maybe $800 to $1,000 per charger. You're got to sell a ship load of them to turn the dial. And to a large extent, homeowners are just going for the cheapest one, not the technology-rich. So, we're not really aligned so much with that destination charging. We will get a pull-through when we do high-rise residential or commercial. The National Construction Code is out for comment at the moment. We're seeing massive changes in the National Construction Code. What happened before, a contractor had the responsibility when a building goes up to make that construction, that site EV ready. So, the electrical infrastructure had to be right to support EV charging, but no expectation about putting any EV charging in there. The new code is out for comment at the moment. We expect it to be introduced in 2025. And it now calls for not just the building to be made EV ready, but EV chargers to be put into the site as well. So that will drive an upgrade. And when we're putting high-powered chargers into there, rule of thumb, you put maybe for every 1 high-power charger, you'll put 10 smaller chargers. So, it will pull destination charging through for us, but it will be more in the commercial, that construction phase more than residential, Bruce.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty] state government spend [ million or billion ] dollars on providing charging stations, [Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executive100%. Yes. A lot of -- when we talk about NRMA and we've talked about a lot, a lot of NRMA's activity is government funded, is grant funded. They're giving the funding to NRMA to do the rollout. So, the answer to your question is that is precisely what we're looking at, high-powered charges, infrastructure-rich, 80% of the investment in those sort of phenomenon is in the electrical infrastructure. Only 20% of the investment is in the hardware you see ticking up above the ground. And that is right in our sweet spot. So, you're 100% right, mate. That's where we're looking. Council is, big one, too, they're investing heavily in EV charging in car parks, in libraries and that sort of places. But even buildings like ours. I've now got 10 chargers in at Wetherill Park. I've just put 6 in Brisbane. There's a need as my employees migrate more to electric vehicles, I've got to provide solutions for them to charge their cars.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeYou said the revenue growing by 10% or 15% [indiscernible].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveYou're going to hold me to account for whatever I tell you now. So, on the basis that I don't want to make any commitments to anything that I don't want to let you down because I know how vocal you are when I let you down. I'll just say it's going to be strong. You can make your own deduction what strong is, mate and that way you don't...
Unknown Attendee
attendeeYou won't be bleeding?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveNo, I won't be bleeding. No.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeThe other one question is, you have a lot in the media about power storage and bridge stability. How are we placed to get involved in that space?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveIt's a really good question, Bruce. Thank you for bringing it up. You could be my PA. You are. At the moment, we call it BES, which is Battery Energy Storage systems. We don't have a BES offer at the moment. We have a couple of vendors that we're talking to that are very strong in Battery Energy Storage. At the moment, our play is more in the infrastructure that supports the Battery Energy Storage system. So, UPSs for all intentions purpose are a form of Battery Energy Storage, but on a much smaller scale. But I will say, we actually have an agreement with an EV charging provider called eLumina. eLumina has Battery Energy Storage built into the charger. So, it's not the reliance on the grid is nowhere near as substantial as it is all of the other chargers. And we are the exclusive distributor for eLumina in Australia, which has Battery Energy Storage built into the charger. So, when the grid is powering that charger, it's charging the batteries. When the batteries get fully charged, people can charge off the batteries. When it gets down to a critical point, the grid starts charging the batteries up again. So, the electrical usage in those EV chargers are certainly part of it coming from battery energy. It's an area where we could do more. It's an area where we will continue to investigate and look at partnerships to expand because we are well placed as an organization to be able to support it. At the moment, I'm a little bit shy, too, mate. I will say, I'm a little bit -- I don't want to create a portfolio that is so big and so broad that my team become a little bit of everything and a lot of nothing.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty] That really made it hard for management to sort of [Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveI've got a large capacity, mate. I've got a massive engine. I've got to match that.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty]
Michael Sainsbury
executiveNo. I'm not going to have a heart attack. And even if we do, there's some really good people in the organization that could do the role that I do and do it probably better than I do. And I can't believe I'm going to say that public, but the answer to your question, Bruce, we haven't -- CMI and EX Engineering, we haven't integrated at all. They're still running as separate organizations. So realistically, the people in IPD and the traditional IPD business, not one second of impost on their time. At a management level, yes, I get involved. But realistically, my role has changed a lot in the last 3 years, where I used to be intimately involved in IPD and James Feltham down the front of the room is the Executive General Manager of our IPD business for a sales perspective. He now controls the sales operations. I don't have to get as indelibly involved in that as I did years ago. James looks after that. That frees up some of my time to be able to spend working with EX and working with CMI to assist them to do what IPD has done over the last 8 years and do it at the same scale. So, the answer to your question, I'm very comfortable the resources we got can handle the workload. I'm very confident in the capabilities of the people to do the job. And I just put a guy called Adam Jones, who is the Executive General Manager of Operations for the IPD business into CMI. I was going to say there's no one that I trust more, there's a few people in the room to get offended if I say that. But Adam is certainly a very trusted individual for me and I know he'll do a great job of turning the dial for CMI in the future.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeSo, my follow-up question is, you can't sort of commit to [Technical Difficulty]. Are you looking for more acquisitions or if something came up, you consider?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveI pay this guy a ship load of money to look for acquisitions for me to underpin inorganic growth for the future. The answer is yes. And we've got a couple of really good conversations going on with potential acquisitions as we speak. Nothing that I can materially talk about today. But our willingness, our enthusiasm to invest in acquisitions is as strong as it's ever been and it will certainly form part of our growth strategy moving forward inorganic growth.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeMy final question...
Michael Sainsbury
executiveMy God, Bruce, you break my back.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeWe know that ABB and Hitachi Power have got good relationship. Do you have any relationship with Hitachi Power?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveSo, the answer is yes. We have -- we take Hitachi Power Factor Correction to market. We also take Hitachi Medium Voltage Surge Protection to market. So, we have a strong relationship with Hitachi. We are talking to Hitachi about expanding our offer with more Hitachi product. They used to have a very strong relationship, Bruce, Hitachi and ABB. They split the transmission and the distribution and to a certain extent now, there is no cooperation whatsoever. In fact, ABB have medium voltage switchgears and Hitachi have the medium voltage transformers and that sort of thing. So, they actually are now true competitors. So there's not the same collaborative spirit there once was, but we're dealing with both of those people independently. Thanks, Bruce.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty] grid upgrade?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveIn the grid upgrade?
Unknown Attendee
attendeeYes.
Michael Sainsbury
executiveIndirectly, yes. So, being in electrical infrastructure, we provide a lot of the infrastructure, but we don't work on a transmission perspective at all. We're more on the distribution side. It's a growth opportunity as was Battery Energy Storage. When we're talking about remote grid locations and these sorts of things, it's using a lot of the BES phenomenon there to be able to do off-grid technology. So, it's very indelibly linked to the question Bruce asked before around Battery Energy Storage. Massive growth opportunity for the future. But at the moment, we're more just on the infrastructure side, not necessarily the hardware side.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeSecond question is in relation to the orders that you have. When do the customers place orders? Do they pay deposit? [Technical Difficulty]
Michael Sainsbury
executiveMy first answer is to say no, they don't pay a deposit. But in the Adelaide Power Services business, when we're doing design, we have milestone payments along the way. So, it's not deposit as such, but it's paid for the services that we do in that design space. When we get to the in-store component -- and for instance, we just ordered transformers for that Kingsgrove Bus Depot and they're Siemens transformers. They will pay us. They paid us a deposit for those transformers that we've ordered for them, but they're a 26-week lead time. So, some items, we get a deposit. Generically, our core business, they place an order and they don't pay anything until we ship it. The good part about these big projects are from a working capital requirement perspective, much less because I don't have to stock as much product as I used to because they order with a 6-month lead time. I can put an order on a vendor or a 12-month lead time or whatever it is, I can put an order on a vendor for that project for all the equipment for that project and effectively back to back. As soon as I receive it, I ship it. And sometimes, our vendors actually ship directly to the customer. And so it comes with a working capital reduction for us in those major projects.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeIn fact, the order book increase, your inventory actually...
Michael Sainsbury
executiveThe answer to that question is, if I was going to change my business model and become more a project business long term and not necessarily a day-to-day business, it would change it. We've got to be careful about change -- making a massive reduction in inventory because when construction does start to come back, our customers are going to be looking to us saying, we need your help. And if we've made -- the answer is yes, you should see and we are seeing a reduction in our inventory based on the changing model. We just have to temper that with a little bit of patience that we don't rip and tear that too much that it has a detrimental impact on our business at some stage down the future, down the track. Bruce?
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty]
Michael Sainsbury
executiveEvery one of our suppliers, we have commercial trading agreements, which generally are 90 days, rule of thumb, 90 days. Some of them, we have 60 days and we're putting a whole lot of pressure on the blowing them out to 90. Some we get 120. So, not many are 120. We're pushing ABB at the moment for 100 days.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeCould be a situation where you can invoice the customer and get paid [Technical Difficulty] on the supplier?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveNot really because our customers pay us generally on average 60 days, too. [indiscernible] is that it happens similar sort of times. But remember, their invoicing on us is from the time it leaves from the plant. And if I've got 6 weeks sea freight, 1.5 months of that is eaten up in freight before I even get to it.
Unknown Attendee
attendeeThe point you made is [Technical Difficulty].
Michael Sainsbury
executiveYes. And the other thing that we've done too, in terms of -- we put in a vertical -- an automation, we call it VLM, Vertical Lifting Machine. So, from a warehousing perspective, it's our first dip into automation. And that will provide a saving around head count for us in warehouse operators and we'll be able to do that more effectively, more efficiently. Our hope is in the next 12 months or sort of maybe I got to be careful, no one in my warehouse working here is there. We think we might be able to save 2 heads in the warehouse just by this VLM. We've gone over time, but I find time for one more question because Bruce has taken up most of the time.
Unknown Attendee
attendee[Technical Difficulty] Are you looking for price increases?
Michael Sainsbury
executiveYes, absolutely. We had one planned for February 2025, where we're going to do a 4% price increase in 2025. Ultimately, though remember this, as our business -- at the moment, our business is very project lumpy orders and it tends to be negotiated. So, the price increase doesn't really materialize in those sorts of opportunities. On our day-to-day business, that's where it materializes. And even there, we only see half of it materialize because some of it are on contracts where we've committed to sell for a price for 12 months to a customer based on their ongoing usage. Some of them are on a quote basis. So yes, the answer to your question is, we're not doing that because we've got pressure from our vendors. I'm not seeing any massive increase from our vendors. Partly, it's to compensate for rising salary costs and rising cost of doing business and rising rents and all that sort of thing to improve the result moving forward. It's not because we're feeling pressured from a supplier perspective around costs going up. That's fairly stable at the moment. All right. I have gone over and I've got to jump on a plane this afternoon, so I will have to cap it there. But if you guys have got any questions, I'm going to say I'm happy for you to ring me, but I don't want to open the floor to get 1,000 calls tomorrow. So, ring Jason Boschetti. So in closing for me, thank you for your time. Thank you for your ongoing support. I know the results that we've published isn't what we would all want to be presenting, but I truly believe it's a short-term in what is an otherwise very exciting mid- to long-term future for the organization. Thank you for your time today.
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