Lindsay Australia Limited (LAU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lindsay Australia Half Year 2025 Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Clayton McDonald, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to the Lindsay Australia results presentation for the first half financial year 2025. I'm joined for today's presentation by Lindsay's CFO, Justin Green. Craig Baker, our Chief Operating Officer, would normally join us today, but he's away on a well-deserved break. We will shortly go through the presentation that was lodged with the ASX this morning, after which we will take questions. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are located today. This is traditional Turrbal and Yagara country, and I'd like to pay my respects to both the elders past, present and emerging. I'd like to start by providing an update on the conditions that are influencing the markets in which Lindsay operates. The refrigerated transport and rural sectors have been facing some extremely challenging conditions over the last 12 months. In the refrigerated transport market, a combination of investment in increased capacity across the sector, rate pressure from customers and lower order quantities and a cost base escalation has resulted in the most competitive conditions that the company has faced for some time. Lindsay remains well placed within the market. However, the trickle-down impact of subdued demand at the customer level added to a horticultural sector still in recovery has impacted our first half results. We don't have a line of sight of when these conditions will normalize, so it's important we remain focused on the basics and executing on our enterprise strategy. Lindsay reset its strategy in 2024 with a focus on 3 key pillars. Grow the Network is focused on extending reach and scale in the refrigerated transport and horticultural markets. Both markets are large and fragmented and benefit from the low discretionary nature of the essential goods in which they support. A secondary advantage of Grow the Network is the benefits achieved through diversification by geography, customer and service. This month's floods in North Queensland is a powerful reminder of the importance in reducing earnings volatility by operating in disaggregated regions and sectors. The second strategic pillar is transformation. Transformation from a Lindsay perspective is defined as improving efficiency, cost to serve and changing the way we operate to create more value for our customers and our company. Transformation is a necessity in the fast-paced and hypercompetitive markets in which Lindsay operates. And finally, pillar 3 of our strategy is performance and sustainability. Both these elements have a focus on uplifting the core capability of the business from the way we work, to the systems we use to supporting our customers with sustainable rural transport and packaging solutions. I'd like to take you through a number of examples of how we have been delivering on our strategy over the last 6 months. We are pleased to announce the bolt-on acquisition of GJ Freight, an integrated transport and packaging business operating in the highly productive horticultural region of Southwest Western Australia. GJ brings more than 30 years operating experience, has 6 strategically located sites in the area and has a busy packaging wholesaler in that region. The GJ operating model is complementary to the Lindsay business and reflects our service offering on the East Coast. The integration of GJ into the Lindsay business creates multiple opportunities. First of all, we will connect GJ's intra-state road transport services with Lindsay's interstate rail services from Western Australia. This will improve our connection with the beneficial freight owner at the point of origin and the ability to extend the transport service offering into the Lindsay National network. Secondly, this region offers significant upside to grow transport volumes in the region with the added potential to complement the transport and packaging offer with the establishment of rural operations in the region. Finally, there are a number of equipment, property and customer synergies between the 2 businesses that we will implement over the next 12 to 18 months. GJ was purchased under an asset purchase agreement and is expected to complete on the 31st of March, 2025. The owner and key management team will remain with Lindsay. Secondly, we are pleased to advise that we will be growing our transport network into the highly productive Goulburn Valley region of Victoria. While leveraging the Hunters network and benefiting from our extensive transport offering, Lindsay has partnered with private equity-owned Redland Premium Fruit to support their Shepparton operations. This greenfield transport opportunity will see Lindsay replace the previously owned and operated fleet, delivering produce for domestic and export consumption from Shepparton to Melbourne and Sydney. We aim to deploy existing fleet that has been unlocked from our capital efficiency program to support the primary transport task and have already established packaging operations in the region to replicate our Fruit Loop model. This extend and connect opportunity is a great example of the unique offering that Lindsay can provide by integrating Hunter's footprint and local experience, knowledge of packaging and transport scale. Transport operations are planned to commence in March of this year. And finally, I'm pleased to advise that the 2 rural stores acquired in September '24 in Nagambie and Seymour have been fully integrated into the Hunters business and are performing in line with expectations. The stores were privately owned and part of the CRT cooperative. We like the stores that are in the fast-growing corridor between Melbourne and Shepparton and have positive exposure to the hobby farm and equine markets. The stores have been rebranded as Hunters, increasing Hunters' reach and scale whilst providing product range and purchasing power to the 2 new locations. Taking a look now at transformation and sustainability. As advised last year, we have commenced a transformation program focusing on the major opportunities of capital efficiency, procurement, systems, people and customers. The work streams have been developed, and we are in the process of rolling out some of these initiatives in the capital efficiency and procurement streams. A key opportunity in our Transport division has been the focus on deploying larger road combinations. This program is now underway with investment in equipment, people and sites to support the longer configurations. At scale, larger combinations will improve return on invested capital, efficiency and ESG outcomes. We've commenced operations in some corridors in 2025 and look forward to increasing frequency and utilization going forward. Secondly, we continue to invest in property developments and upgrades to support greater volumes and operating efficiencies within our business. Our Adelaide expansion is well underway and construction at our new Perth facility has commenced. The Perth expansion is desperately needed and timing will be ideal as we look to integrate the GJ business with our Perth-based operations. Now let's turn to the key first half financials. Group revenue increased by 3.6% to $432.8 million, with underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization decreasing by $4.8 million to $47.3 million. Lower EBITDA and increased depreciation versus the previous period moved the profit after tax result lower to $15.8 million for the half. The simple story here is revenue has increased by 3.6%. At the same time, costs have escalated 5%, creating the earnings delta. The company's financial performance enabled the Board to declare a first half fully franked dividend of $0.023 per share, up 9.5% on the same period with a payout ratio of 46%. Looking at Safety. Disappointingly, our key lag injury metric deteriorated for the half, with our lost time injury frequency rate increasing to 18.8. Safety is a core value of Lindsay and nobody gets hurt at work is a key belief of the business. We will continue to focus on and invest in capability, systems and controls to make Lindsay a safer workplace. And I'm confident we have the right strategy, leadership and commitment to improve our safety performance going forward. Taking a closer look at the operating businesses, the rural division's performance was a standout in the half with sales increasing by 7.4% to $85.1 million and underlying profit before tax improving 13.8% to $4.7 million. Sales across the rural portfolio improved with the EBITDA margin increasing from 5.4% to 5.7% on improved service, cost and product mix. After several years of accelerated growth, revenue in the Transport division stabilized in the half. Transport top line revenue, including fuel, was slightly behind the previous period at $296 million. Excluding fuel, revenue grew 4.5%, driven by blue chip contract customer wins achieved in late FY '24. Transport EBITDA was down $3.7 million to $58.2 million, driven by higher operating costs, property costs and freight imbalances caused by lower horticultural volumes. Weak economic conditions in Victoria continue to impact our WB Hunter business. Whilst revenues were up 33% due to the additional months trading versus the previous period, the contribution from 3 months of trade with the new Nagambie and Seymour stores. EBITDA was down $221,000 to $1.3 million. But sales margin and lower sized basket of goods impacted the result. The state of the Victorian economy is well documented, so the Hunters team is actioning a number of initiatives to offset the downturn and position the business positively for when confidence does return. Lindsay has expanded its footprint, added packaging as a product line and focused on growing its loyalty program participation numbers. Sales from loyalty customers now represent one in 4 sales. I'll now hand to Justin to take us through the numbers.

Thanks, Clay. Welcome, all. Clay touched on the headwinds that we are facing, and you'll see on this slide the financial impacts of those headwinds in the first half. There is no doubt that the current trading conditions are some of the toughest we have seen in many years. Whilst maintaining transport volumes and a standout rural performance did offset some of these impacts in the first half, underlying EBITDA has come off $4.8 million off of last year's record high. What is encouraging is we are still gaining market share with the commercial freight volumes, and that is important as those volumes are less volatile. You'll see the reduced earnings had a flow-on impact to the earnings per share, which came in at $0.05 for the first 6 months. You can see on the ROIC table that we achieved 16.4% for the period. We are conscious that ROIC will fluctuate depending on the timing of major investments. And in the past 2 years, we have committed significant long-term investments in new facilities, acquiring regional sites and also facility upgrades. While these crucial investments have a short-term negative impact on ROIC, the long-term benefits that enable the business to grow, transform and unlock efficiencies, provide the platform to execute the strategic plan. We still remain committed to a ROIC target over the medium-term of 20%. On the capital expenditure slide, you will see we are forecasting $50 million for the 2025 program. This confirms our commitment to invest through cycles. The '25 program allocates funds for the renewal of road and rail fleets, but also includes a further $13 million for facility upgrades and facility expansions to unlock growth constraints. In '25, we also see the commitment to transformation of the fleet with the larger combination road equipment that Clay touched on earlier, and we'll see further investment in this key transformation program over the next couple of years. While we execute on the CapEx program, we remain conscious of maintaining appropriate debt levels. And it is pleasing to note, that you'll see on the borrowing slide that despite the $25 million invested in the first 6 months, borrowings actually remained on par with the prior year. You'll also note that net leverage has come off a low of 1.21x last year. The uptick in the net leverage wasn't unexpected, and we are still comfortable with a 1.46 ratio. Having a strong balance sheet with funding capacity is utmost importance to ensure we can take advantage of opportunities in the current trading environment. We are pleased to announce that during the half, we executed a new syndicated funding arrangement. The new, more flexible structure provides an additional $30 million headroom in our corporate facilities and an additional $40 million headroom in equipment facilities. The corporate deal has a new 5-year term. And from a funding capacity perspective, we have never been as well placed with as much headroom as we have today. Touching on cash. You'll see on the cash flow slide, operating cash did normalize in the first half as we paid $15 million in cash tax payments for the period. We flagged this previously that the unwinding of the deferred tax liabilities would commence in this half. Our conversion rate was below our expectations, but is forecast to improve in the second half to around 75% conversion for the full year. Lastly, I'd just like to touch on the dividend that has been announced. Strong balance sheet has provided capacity for the Board to increase the first half dividend to $0.023 per share fully franked. This represents an increase of 9.5% and a payout ratio of 46%. Overlaying our capital allocation framework, the 46% payout still provides plenty of resources to maintain, grow and importantly, transform the business. Thank you, and I'd like to hand back to Clay.

Thank you, Justin. The refrigerated transport sector has faced significant challenges over the past 12 months. An abundance of capacity has entered the market. This, combined with subdued demand and rising costs has created an extremely competitive marketplace. As Lindsay remains well positioned, the challenges have impacted our first half results and with recent disruptions in North Queensland adding further operational challenges going forward. With no clear time line for market normalization, our focus remains on operational fundamentals and executing our enterprise strategy. Diversifying our exposure by region and increasing our commercial freight volumes combined with efficiency initiatives via our transformation program will position Lindsay positively through the cycle. We are pleased with the performance of the Lindsay Rural business. And the bolt-on acquisition of GJ Freight and expansion into the Goulburn Valley for Victoria represents exciting steps in expanding our network into new regions. Thank you. And I'll now hand over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

We're back on, Rachel.

Yes, confirming, we're back on the line.

Apologies to everyone on the line. We just got cut off then. So over to questions. Thank you, Rachel.

Your first question comes from Philip Pepe from Shaw and Partners.

Just your comment on costs up 5%. What are you doing or what can you do to sort of reduce those costs or verbalize those costs to sort of smooth out some of the earnings volatility given your comments earlier?

Yes. Thanks, Philip. I mean when you look at that sort of 5% cost increase, it's a pretty broad spectrum of costs, so operating costs, labor and handling costs, property costs. So I mean the transformation program there looking at higher efficiency combinations, looking at using less subcontractors and getting more kilometers on Lindsay fleet would be key. In the rural side, they're managing their costs, inventory management, labor management, et cetera. So I think if you look at the kind of transformation program, early days yet. So we're focusing mainly on the efficiency side of things and the procurement side, but all the other cost buckets we're looking to address. The other thing, obviously, you can keep trying to drive your top line revenue and put more volume through those sites because there are capacity in those sites.

Fair enough. If I could sneak in another one on the dividend. It was great that you were able to increase the dividend despite earnings going backwards. What were your thoughts versus paying down the debt or doing a share buyback given the current share price?

Thanks for the question, Philip. Yes, look, it was definitely pleasing for the Board to increase the dividend. I think it provides confidence in the strength of the balance sheet that we've currently got and reward for our shareholders for their long-term support. But yes, definitely the strong balance sheet that we've got. We're really comfortable where our debt levels are at the moment, haven't materially changed for the last 3 years despite the material increase in the earnings that we've driven through the business on those levels. So comfortable where the debt levels are and reward for the long-term shareholders.

The next question is from Ian Munro from Ord Minnett.

Just first one, just around recent sort of weather events up in Northern Queensland. Can you perhaps give us a sense of where you are from an operational perspective there? Obviously, it's not your biggest rail lane, but certainly an important one for the broader horti market. And I guess as an extension to that, you're cycling second half last year that had quite a major rail outage on the East West. How are we sort of thinking about that second half relative to PCP?

Thanks for the question, Munro. I think I'll start with kind of the impacts in North Queensland. We're still assessing kind of what the actual revenue and operating and volume impact of that is. So it was quite significant for a number of weeks through February. And so that was -- if we start with the rural business, that was a horticultural region that was in recovery. And so now they've kind of faced a second challenging summer period. So we're still assessing that and what it all means. But if you think about our network business, we've been very successful in winning blue chip commercial customers from Melbourne, moving it north. And generally, what we do is then offset that fleet that is north with southbound horticultural volumes. So for kind of the second period in a row, we're going to find that there's a lack of southbound horticultural volumes to kind of, to cycle that and round trip that network. So that's what we're experiencing at the moment. So getting a full understanding of the impact of that, we haven't got it just yet. But we know in the first half, we were down about 24,500 pallets compared to the PCP just out of North Queensland. That part of the region represents about 15% of our transport volume. So not overly indexed to it in the sense of just that North Queensland region, but I want to emphasize the impact it has on the networking effect that Lindsay runs. In regards to rail, rail in the North Queensland is not a big revenue driver for us. It's probably one of the least used lanes. We do use it, but it's not major. Our major lane, as we know, is sort of East West, and that's at Sydney to Perth, Melbourne to Perth, to a lesser extent, Brisbane to Perth. And at the moment, there's in a minute sort of impacts, but we're not seeing the major impact we had last year. In saying that, conditions are as bad in the half we just come out and looking forward as they were this time last year. That would be my overall comment of the PCP comparisons.

Just in terms of that industry comment, maybe perhaps just give us a little bit more color, if possible, on like average sort of weight per consignment of your existing customers and kind of what's required to get that dial up again back to more normalized levels from an economic perspective? And just, I guess, as a follow-on, interested in -- you've got the transformation, obviously, investing in the West and sort of intensifying the network. How do you feel you placed over the next couple of years from an industry perspective? If you're finding it tough, how does that sort of correlate with market share and industry position?

So I might start with the second one first. I mean, I think we would be consistent with what the industry is experiencing in this sector, if you're in exposed to that sort of primary freight market that we are into DCs, et cetera. I think you would find that the order quantities are getting smaller. So there's more consolidation, which means more handling costs. I don't have a number, Munro, on the change from what a freight order number would be, but we know that it's -- there's a lot less full loads going in, a lot more handling and therefore, a lot more handling costs. And the reason for that is everyone is going through their own transformation program, including producers and commercial freight, the primary freight owners, and they're looking at sort of holding less inventory and producing less based on customer demand. And so I think what we would be facing is pretty commensurate -- That is a pressure on top line revenue and stubborn cost, but an increasing costs. So if you look back now then on our transformation program, and I guess we've just got that underway, the benefit of those larger combinations, you can see we can get 12 additional pallets on to move from sort of a 34 to 46 in certain lanes, and we're calling that our sort of 4 for 3 program. So for every 4 B doubles you run, you can run 3 triples. So trying to drive that efficiency and that operating discipline through our business to offset the higher cost and the cost pressure.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Ben Wilson from Wilsons Advisory.

Just first one, can you give -- apologies if I missed this a little bit on the call, but can you give us a sense for the nature of the increase in competition you've mentioned, whether it's more on the road or the rail side of things and in what regions?

Yes. Thanks, Ben. I think we've been calling out for some time. There was a supply and demand imbalance a couple of years ago with the -- leading up to when Scott's fell over certainly a lot more demand in the market than there was supply, both on the rail and road side. That has -- and we've been calling it out for some time that there's been a significant investment mainly in road fleet -- refrigerated road fleet, and we've seen that mainly on the East Coast. And so, that's been sort of building for some time, which kind of we emphasized I think last year was a record sales year in heavy trucks. So that's kind of played its way out into the market. So you're seeing more capacity come into the market. At the same time, those order sizes and that revenue has slowed down. So they're the kind of competitive tensions we're experiencing in the road fleet. On rail, our rail business, you can see is the volumes are down around 8%, but the revenue is down 3.6%. What we've seen is that's mainly driven by horticultural volumes out of Western Australia. They have a biannual kind of growing pit, so a large growing pit followed by a smaller growing pit. That's impacted those numbers. We have a bit less East-West freight with a particular customer who's invested in some of their own fleet, so they've in-sourced that. But we've offset that with growing volumes from Melbourne to Brisbane on that rail line. So that's been the impact in rail. Anything to add to that, Justin?

No. Good summary.

That's helpful. And just on that sort of extra refrigerated road fleet on the East Coast, is that sort of mostly in the linehaul routes? Or is it more the -- sort of the last -- not quite last mile, but sort of more regional routes?

The road fleet is definitely linehaul fleet in the primary market where we compete.

Yes. Okay. And then just my last one, it's a bit of a sort of granular one on WB Hunter. But just so I understand, just looking at the sort of breakdown of revenue in the half between horticulture and commercial versus PCP, sort of a massive uptick in horticulture and slight decrease in commercial, is that just sort of a bit of a rebadging of the product lines there? Or is there sort of -- some sort of mix in shift that's worth pointing out?

It's kind of the -- it's the down trade in building and that sort of home improvement side and an increase coming through from the Nagambie and Seymour stores.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. McDonald for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us on the line. As we've emphasized, conditions are challenging across the sectors in which we compete, and we think that will be the case going forward. So we're focused on operational execution and executing of our strategy. And delighted today to announce the bolt-on acquisition of GJ Freight and the expansion into the Goulburn Valley. And we'll continue to execute that strategy to position the business positively going forward through this cycle. Thanks, everyone. Good morning.

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