Lindsay Australia Limited (LAU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lindsay Australia Limited HY '26 Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Clay McDonald, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, and thanks for joining us for the Lindsay Australia's half year 2026 results presentation. I'm Clay McDonald, CEO of Lindsay Australia, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Justin Green. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging. Throughout the first half of financial year '26, Lindsay has continued to focus on successfully executing its multiyear strategy centered on strategic growth, transformation and building a more sustainable, scalable and performance-based business. We're extremely pleased with the progress we have made across all 3 pillars and how this positions us for both the current cycle and the longer term. We've expanded the network into Tasmania and Southwest WA, connecting into regions where volume is exceeding national averages and further balancing our portfolio towards lower risk and countercyclical regions. In transformation, we continue to develop high productivity vehicle solutions that are improving our revenue per kilometer, enabling us to release, repurpose and redeploy equipment. And finally, investment in safety, people, facilities and systems has positioned us well for future growth and return on invested capital uplift. The elevated growth capital phase is now tapering, and our focus has shifted to productivity and efficiency and to take advantage of the operating leverage created over the last 3 years of capital spend and acquisitions. Over the last 3 years, we have invested heavily in our network, progressed the integration of those investments and positioned the business for the next phase, benefiting from an expanded operation and higher revenue throughput, the focus now turns to converting operating leverage into higher earnings and stronger returns. We've communicated over the last 18 months competitive intensity in the road transport market remains elevated, driven primarily by an oversupply of capacity. The key market indicators we track being new truck sales and transport insolvencies are both moving in a direction that supports a gradual return to more normal market conditions. Despite record insolvencies and slowing new truck sales, the oversupply of capacity in the market is expected to remain elevated for the next 12 months. On the demand side, medium- to longer-term fundamentals remain positive, supported by population growth, increasing freight volumes and expanding horticultural output. Over the last few years, we have invested to ensure Lindsay can cover the full spectrum of temperature-controlled freight, enabling us to satisfy demand from fresh to frozen and from basket of goods to ready-to-eat meals. We were pleased to announce the acquisition of SRT on the 1st of July 2025, and I'm delighted with the positive progress we have made integrating the business and extracting value from the combined and connected organization. We forecast SRT to continue to achieve strong on island growth, TransBass growth and benefits from the integrated business being attractive to both existing and new customers. Business case hurdles are all being achieved with positive momentum on cost and capital synergies, continued volume growth and the benefits of a counter seasonal earnings profile driving double-digit EPS growth. The impact of this acquisition extends well beyond the Tasmanian market. We're seeing the advantages of combined capability, deeper customer relations, equipment interoperability, greater procurement scale and the sharing of best practice solutions across the broader business. The cultural fit is strong, and the group is now more robust across growth opportunities, management capability and the breadth of our service offering. I'd like to note that from this reporting season, Lindsay has transitioned from pre-AASB to post-AASB reporting for its financial results. A reconciliation is included in the appendix to this presentation for reference. Let's start with safety. I'm pleased to report a 30% reduction in lost time injuries and a similar decrease across other lag indicators, including total recordable injuries, incidents and accidents. Improved performance has been supported by capability and systems investment plus training and development of our operational leaders. We still see significant opportunity for further improvement. However, I'm encouraged by the progress we have made in the first half. Moving to our financial results. Group revenue increased 24.8% to $540 million, driven by a full half contribution from SRT and GJ plus core growth across all 3 divisions. Underlying EBITDA increased to $66.3 million, up 16% with underlying NPAT flat at $15.8 million, reflecting higher depreciation from the investment cycle, elevated interest rates and increased interest charges following the SRT acquisition. Importantly, the group now benefits from a more balanced earnings profile with the contribution from recent acquisitions supporting improved second half earnings. The Board has declared a fully franked $0.021 per share dividend, which is 59% payout ratio compared to 49% in the previous year. Taking a closer look at the operating results, performance was supported by recent acquisitions, geographic diversification and increased spend of wallet from existing core customers. Transport lifted underlying EBITDA by 15.6% or $9.6 million. Rural was up 17.7%, delivering a record first half result and Hunter's 3-year turnaround plan underpinned a 32% improvement in underlying EBITDA. We expect the business to deliver in excess of $1 billion in revenue in FY '26 and the elevated investment phase required to support the 87% growth over the last 4 years has largely been executed. We've built capacity into our network that has improved current working conditions and can scale at lower incremental costs as the cycle turns and the market grows. I'll now hand over to Justin to take a closer look at the financials.

Thanks, Clay. I start by setting a theme for the latest balance sheet and the numbers that I will take you through. You hear us talk a lot about investing for growth, investing for the future and investing ahead of the curve. That is exactly what we have done and what you will see in these numbers. Simply put, in the past 12 months, we have invested more than any other time in Lindsay history. This equates to $140 million in invested capital, taking us to almost $425 million at the end of December. These investments support a $1 billion-plus turnover business and support long-term growth. Let's kick off our deep dive and start the CapEx on Slide 11. In the first half of '26, we invested $28 million in fleet and facilities. Our CapEx profile is skewed to the first half as it supports seasonal volumes. We'll see a similar trend in '26 with the second half of CapEx being much lower. A key call out on this slide is rail. Although we classify these assets as rail in this table, important to note these assets are multipurpose and are being deployed to support SRT growth opportunities and improving our overall asset utilization in this category. You'll also note the lower CapEx requirements for these assets on an ongoing basis as maintenance CapEx is much lower for these long-life assets. You can also see on the slide that investments in facilities is tapering, reducing in '26 as the key projects have now been completed. We've also called out here the synergy benefits we have been able to extract from the SRT and GJ Freight acquisitions. Those synergies and coupled with further transformation and procurement initiatives, we've been able to reduce our original CapEx forecast for the full year to come in around $43 million. Let's now take a look at ROIC on Slide 10. Not surprising that investing $140 million in 12 months and more than doubling the invested capital in 3 years that we see a short-term impact on ROIC through the cycle. We take a long view when making these key decisions and are very comfortable that the investments are delivering immediate benefits and will continue to deliver benefits for many years to come. As we extract those long-term benefits, we will see key metrics like ROIC normalize and trend back towards our midterm target range. Let's move to debt. I'll turn to Slide 14 for borrowings and see how these investments have been funded. As you can see on the bottom table, we came into this cycle with a very strong balance sheet with plenty of capacity to deliver organic growth and growth by acquisitions. We've delivered on both those growth strategies. And importantly, we come out of the cycle with a very strong balance sheet and are very comfortable where we are positioned. Yes, debt has increased, but that debt is all associated with long-term growth. This point is really highlighted on the next Slide 15, which shows a borrowings waterfall. It's a really good graph and clearly articulates this core versus strategic debt increase. Core debt or pre-acquisition debt has only increased $4.7 million or 3% in the past 12 months. It's an outstanding result, demonstrating strong balance sheet management during a period where we have transformed the business. The remainder of the $89 million increase is directly associated with acquisitions. $62.5 million of the new debt is one-off and will reduce over the midterm as earnings are delivered from those acquisitions. Coming back to the borrowing slide, I just want to provide some details on the net leverage. And no surprises that given the investments that we have highlighted in the first half skewed CapEx plan for '26 that we see an increase on the net leverage for this reporting period. This is expected, and we've flagged this previously. We're comfortable though where the leverage sits and remain confident with the large debt funded investments now executed that we'll see the leverage track down back into our target range over the next 12 months. Let's now touch on cash as there are a couple of key callouts that I want to take you through. In a lot of moving parts, in particular, with operating cash flow over the last few years. So we really wanted to simplify this graph. We have commented a lot about the government incentives and the deferral of tax payments. In the '25 year, we saw a large unwind of deferred tax, and we've seen a further unwind in the first half of '26. Tax paid for this period was almost $18 million. Now around roughly 70% of deferred tax has now been unwound. The cash tax will be lower going forward. We forecast tax payments in the second half of '26 to be around $10 million lower than the first half. Operating cash has trended similar to previous years with a seasonally lower first half conversion. Though this year, the conversion rate was lower, we expect the previous year's trend to continue with a higher second half conversion, finishing the full year with around a 70% conversion rate. Lastly, I just want to touch on the earnings per share, and you can see on the top right graph here that on first glance, it looks like our underlying EPS has dropped 14%. There's one really key point that I want to call out though. On completion of the SRT acquisition, we issued 46.5 million shares as part of the consideration for the deal. And those new shares were issued on 1 July. SRT earnings, though, are only included in the consolidated accounts for 6 months. So the shares issued has had a dilutive impact to the first reporting period. To try and provide some additional clarity on the EPS graph, we've included a 12-month pro forma EPS, which incorporates SRT as if the acquisition had completed on the 1st of January 2025. This represents an increase of 13% of the FY '25 EPS. Although not a direct comparison and should not be interpreted as a forecast or guidance, this illustrates the group's commitment to deliver double-digit EPS growth from the SRT acquisition. Thank you, and I'll hand back to Clay now to take us through the outlook.

Thanks, Justin. The near-term trading conditions are expected to remain competitive. However, key indicators such as transport insolvencies and reduced truck acquisitions are moving in a direction that supports market normalization. And we have the network capacity and balance sheet flexibility to move quickly on the right opportunities if they present. Our past investment and transformation work is already improving efficiency and any normalization in industry conditions will come through a more scalable, lower cost platform. The second half focus for the organization will be on utilizing our investments and scale to drive margin improvements through improved terminal efficiency. Integration of SRT is progressing well. We have line of sight on further integration synergy benefits as we continue to connect the SRT and GJ businesses into the Lindsay Corp. With SRT, we expect to be successful in a number of integrated transport offers that will grow TransBass volumes and connect into the Lindsay National network. Utilizing SRT's capability and Lindsay's network, we're also targeting secondary freight opportunities that are complementary to our business. And finally, whilst market conditions remain competitive, the low discretionary essential service nature of our business remains critical in connecting farmers and manufacturers to wholesalers and retailers where population growth have expanded horticultural output will underpin high demand for freight. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from [ Richard Stevens ] from Ord Minnett. Your next question comes from Ellis (sic) [ Philip ] Pepe from Shaw and Partners.

Just on your comments regarding the SRT acquisition, can you give us some example of the integration synergy benefits that have come through in the first few months?

Yes. Thanks, Phil. I mean they cover people, procurement and operations when you look at it. So synergies in redeploying equipment that was previously leased, significant procurement benefits and obviously, people optimization. So they're the kind of synergies that are already flowing. And we're really confident that, that $1 million we outlined in the business case will be achieved. And in fact, we expect it to be above that.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Richard Stevens from Ord Minnett.

I just had 2 questions asking on behalf of Ian Munro. The first one was, how are you seeing cost pressures across the transport business currently? And how is the environment to pass costs through to customers? Are they open to negotiations on the topic? Or how are those conversations going?

I'd say from cost in regards to our inputs is probably starting to normalize after what was a pretty significant cost increase, say, from '22 through to '24. So we're seeing that normalize, so that the input side. On the customer side, the market remains competitive. So there's still a fair bit of focus and competition around transport rates. And we're looking -- how we're looking to offset that is obviously through our transformation program.

Yes. Okay. And then just one more, if that's all right. The company has added significant capacity in the last 6 months in Adelaide and Perth. Is this enough capacity to support multiple years of growth ahead? Or how are you guys approaching that?

Yes. We're really pleased with the developments in both Adelaide and in Perth. And we've built those businesses, built those sort of facilities for now, but certainly for growth into the future. And so there is operating leverage there that we can utilize both road, rail operating leverage, but we can expand and take on significant growth in both those terminals.

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

Yes. Thanks for everyone for attending today's presentation. We strongly support the long-term thematic in transport that scale, network coverage and modern, efficient, smart and hard assets will be critical for success in the future. Therefore, we're pleased with the progress we have made in executing our multiyear strategy. And we're confident that the investment we have made in the core and via acquisition position us strongly in the market and deliver positive shareholder returns going forward. Thank you.

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