Paragon Care Limited (PGC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
August 26, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorThank you for standing by, and welcome to the Paragon Care FY '26 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Carmen Riley, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Carmen Riley
executiveThanks, Mel, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call. I'm here today with Brendon Pentland, who is our CFO. I'll take you through the highlights, and Brendon, of course, will take you through all the financial details. And as Mel said, we'll wrap up with some questions at the end. So from an underlying position, our revenue for the year was solid at $3.7 billion, EBITDA, $97.2 million underlying and net profit after tax, $26 million. From a statutory perspective, revenue stayed the same at $3.7 billion, EBITDA $50.8 million, and we produced a net loss of $16 million. Obviously, the majority of that is from our write-down of Infinity, which we'll take you through in a bit more detail later. So if you just want to turn the slide, Mel. Okay. So as a recap, we launched our 3-2-1 strategy 2 years ago when Paragon merged with CH2. We also included Oborne Health Supplies in this at that time as well. That is now completed and closed. But firstly, before I get through that detail, I thought I'd just touch on Infinity. So at the half year, we did take a full provision for that. As you all know on the call, we've been working through the process with administrators as that was put into receivership and then administration at the end of FY -- at the end of the last calendar year. That is a long process that we're working through, and it is a very uncertain process through the administrators that they've been excellent to deal with, but we do have to work closely with them and other creditors, as we draw that hopefully to a close sooner rather than later. But during that process and based on the administrators' most recent report, we've taken the position to write back $9.2 million. And when we take that into account for the full year, we've then provided $38 million for Infinity, and that's net of the GST that we've already claimed. So that said, even though that was a very difficult setback, and we'll talk about it during the wrap-up. And obviously, I'll take any questions on that at the end. We're certainly not taking our foot off the pedal on what we can claim during the administration process. And after that close -- closes, we'll certainly be going after personal guarantees. That said, though, we do have to move forward as a business and make sure that we're driving the business forward rather than continuing to look backwards with the Infinity overhang. So on that, during the time of the 3-2-1 and particularly most of this was completed during FY '26 we've merged all of the Australian businesses now on to JDE. So that excludes the service business, which was moved on to NetSuite. So we've consolidated all of that, and that includes consolidating all of the legacy Paragon Care businesses onto those platforms. That doesn't exclude manufacturing, and we've decided to keep that because it's a bit more complicated on to SAP. We did commission the new Brisbane site and very pleased even though that was delayed and caused us a bit of pain in the first half. We did open that site in January, and we then went fully live with that in June when AutoStore went live into place on that. So that's our first fully automated DC. That also included us moving to a Tier 1 WMS warehouse management system, and that's Manhatton, and we'll continue to roll that out down the Eastern Seaboard into FY '28. So we did realize all the synergies that we committed to at the beginning of the 3-2-1 strategy, and we have used some of those to reinvest back into the business. So we have reinvested back into our sales team, our marketing team and also some of our acquisitions that was done as well. So that's exciting for us because it is around the growth platform moving forward, as part of restructuring the business. We have also, based on that restructure, we've taken it a step further and also fast-tracked certain things at the beginning of the year based on our Asian footprint, and that included expanding our office in the Philippines and also opening a shared service office in Jakarta. And we now have over 100 people in our shared service team offshore supporting the Australian business. Most of those are based in the Philippines. We also have talked about and committed to taking all the cost out of the business with the exit of the Ramsay contract. So I'm pleased to say that we've done that, and that's been executed very well. And then on a more pleasing note, we have had a number of new contracts across all of our business units, which has been very good. But without a doubt, the most honorable for us has been winning the Australian Defense Force contract, which started -- what we did start at the end of -- a little bit in the end of June, but it fully starts FY '27. So that's been a great outcome. You'll see also as part of our reinvestment back into the business that we have ramped up our digital presence. And if some of you jump online, we've just recently in the last couple of weeks, launched our new website, which is great and certainly showcases the absolute breadth of the business that we have and also our geographical reach. So without a doubt, since March, like all businesses, we've had quite a number of headwinds to do with the war in the Middle East. And unfortunately, we've had the impact of fuel costs hit our business like they have on all logistics business. So we've been navigating that. We have tried and altered some of our freight to make sure that we've taken as much pressure off our cost base as we can, but we have had some challenges with that, particularly in the last quarter. And we've also had some challenges with our stock because we wanted to ramp our stock down, but as committed with some of our supply partners and the fact that they've had some shipping channel challenges, our stock ended the year a bit higher than we would have liked. But I think that's prudent and in good faith of the Australian customer base and our suppliers to make sure that we have the stock available. We also did have some challenges around foreign exchange for the year. That should be no surprise to anyone on the call. That was particularly hit out of New Zealand, Thailand and Korea. So they were our most difficult challenges. As I said, it should be no surprise to everyone here on the call being a logistics business, but we are moving through those. Nonetheless, ending on a positive on this slide, most importantly, is around our people. So I'm really pleased to let everyone now know we have a full leadership team in place. As you know, from this time last year, Brendon is new. We have had a couple of changes in that team, but I'm now very confident that we've got the bench strength in that team to drive the business forward and also to lead the rest of the team at Paragon Care. When I look at the team and the culture of the business, the team at Paragon Care should be absolutely thrilled at the underlying result that they've presented today and have done an exceptional amount of hard work to get there. So we've got a great team to lead the business forward. Just turn the slide, thanks, Mel. Just on to capital allocation. So as I touched on earlier, and as you've seen, we've actually done 6 acquisitions this year, 3 were based in Australia, 3 up in Asia. The Australian business really gave us a footprint into some of our new areas, particularly around dental. And the Asian acquisitions were not only around the breadth of supplier contracts that we could grab on to in those acquisitions, but also expanding our footprint out. So we're now expanded out into Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia. And we've also set up our Asian head office in Singapore. So that's all been established and is all in place as we speak. So our CapEx, CapEx was predominantly around our Brisbane site and the work that was done around our integration work over the last 12 months, and that will settle down and go back to a more normalized level in FY '27. Interest, a bit higher -- a bit higher than what we would have liked, but some of that's aligned with our synergies when we did refinanced the ScotPac facility. However, with the spend on some of our CapEx, that's increased a little bit this year and obviously, with the increase in interest rates as well. So just turning over to the next slide. Thanks, [indiscernible]. So just running through our sales channels. So wholesale. Wholesale had a good year despite the loss of Ramsay and Infinity. So if we normalize that backing out Infinity and Ramsay, the revenue growth was 1.5%. I know some of you might think, well, that does seem a little bit low. There were a few drugs that moved back to compounders. So if you know the pharmacy channel, we had 3 or 4 high-cost drugs, just the 3 or 4 SKUs, high-cost drugs that moved back to compounders or went direct. And we also had a generic drug into the market with Prolia. So if I back those 5 SKUs out, our market rate growth was sitting between 8% and 9% in the pharmacy channel, which was an excellent result and really fantastic recovery by that team as well. From a medical technology perspective, double-digit growth. So without a doubt, I think Asia knocked it out of the park. And we certainly held our own in Australia and New Zealand with some of the headwinds that we had in that space. Contract logistics, I talked about before, we had a refreshed view of our sales strategy a couple of years ago in that channel, and that's certainly outperformed since we've relaunched that. That growth is out of both organic growth, but also new business wins over the last 12 to 18 months, and we continue to pick up new business. So another great result. And clinical manufacturing [Technical Difficulty] underlying pretty solid growth. And we've got a new Quidel ortho contract that's now come into play, and we've started manufacturing in that process. Our first [ sort ] of exports will be done up into Japan, and that contract will continue to grow scale over FY '27 and into the future as well. So there's some great opportunities inside our clinical manufacturing part. So I'll just hand over to Brendon before you come back to me just to go through the details of the financials.
Brendon Pentland
executiveOkay. Thanks, Carmen. So I'm on Slide 9. So pleased to join this morning and take you through the financial results and financial position at the year-end. And Carmen has talked to a few of the, I guess, those normalized factors that we back out of our results, just to give you a sense of what the like-for-like performance of the business looks like. We've also included a couple of slides which you are accustomed to now around our revenue bridge. So I'll talk to those in due course. And we've also included this time an underlying earnings bridge. So it really provides you a look through of the numbers, which I think we hope you'll find useful. So just at a top line, that underlying revenue growth before the normalizations was 1.8%. And after the normalizations, 6.7%. And when we talk about the normalizations, again, you'll see those on the revenue bridge, but that is taking into account the impact of Infinity, Ramsay and FX predominantly. One of the metrics that we do look to is our organic growth after normalizations. We think that's a really healthy number at 6.7%. There's growth across most of the channels in there. Contract logistics has been a really strong performer for us at the revenue level and also the Asian business, which we'll get to in due course. Of course, we do have the contribution from our acquisitions, both in ANZ and Asia, which has contributed to our growth. And again, they are identified -- their contribution identified on the bridge. But along with the revenue contribution, what that does is broadens our geographical reach, our product range, our customer reach and our capability offer. And what we are establishing now is a truly geographical and regional presence and focus in that area and building out a team that has responsibility over all of the 9 territories that we are in and extending our capability across the countries rather than working in silo. So really pleasing contribution from those entities. The unfavorable revenue impact from the translation of foreign revenues is also identified in the bridge, as Carmen said, is New Zealand, the Thai baht and Korean Won in that sense. I'll just move on to underlying EBITDA had a growth of 2.1%. So just to, I guess, reinforce this, that number excludes the impact from the Infinity Group debt provision, the restructuring and integration costs, as Carmen said, they are associated with the 3-2-1 program, which is now complete. The M&A costs, we have had a busy M&A year. I think it is -- was 7 acquisitions, Carmen. So they obviously cost a little bit of money. So we isolate those. And there also is the foreign currency impact and a AASB2 fair value of some share-based payments, which is accounting doesn't really reflect the underlying value of those equity instruments. So that's been identified, and it is particular to the integration period. I mentioned the strong growth from Asia at a revenue level, but that is also coming through at the EBITDA level, and we'll talk to that a little bit further. The exit of Ramsay, the Ramsay contract, which we announced would have no impact to our margin as we take cost out, so we can confirm that. So that really characterizes our underlying results. Turn to Page now 10. In our expenses, again, Carmen has touched on a couple of these things, but we did have the higher freight charges in the second half. And we'd like to think that they would -- well, look, we're going to incur the impact of those into the first half, and there's uncertainty around what that looks like beyond that period. So offsite storage, I guess, is a bit of a good and a bad story in the sense that we've got volume that we need to find space for. We don't often get a recovery of that necessarily through from our customers. So there is an extra cost that we've carried through most of FY '26 with the opening of Willawong and adding some capacity there, and that should -- will start to unwind in FY '27. Associated with that were also some, I guess, express shuttle and into branch transfers, which we haven't normalized, but they're in our numbers -- in our underlying numbers. Carmen mentioned, we have made strategic investments across a number of areas, sales, marketing to foster, I guess, that long-term growth in the business. We are a growth business. So -- and there are particular channels that we are in, particularly in medical devices and aesthetics that we do need to spend to generate new leads and new revenues. Infinity debt ECL that we booked in the period, just confirming that was $38 million before we took into account the GST recovery. The statutory EBITDA, again, the bridge of the reconciliation, I'll take you through, but we just listed those items that we've separate out from our underlying result from our statutory. Our net debt did come in in line with our target at the top end of the range, which is -- it was a heavy CapEx year with the investment in new businesses and also the Willawong site. So keeping that to 2.5x, I think, is a good result. We did enter into some new debt facilities in New Zealand and Australia to help finance our acquisitions. Now on Slide 11. Most of these items you'll be familiar with and are consistent with our half year reporting. I won't dwell on them too much. I've touched on some of them. But if I just step through them from top to bottom, and I'll talk to our statutory EBITDA figure, but the rest of them all follow. We start off at $50.8 million. We add back the impact of the Infinity debt. We've got merger and acquisition-related costs, which we spoke to, restructuring and integration activity in there reflects roles that have exited in the year. The share-based payments, which I touched on. We also take out the impact of FX hedges and other currency remeasurements unrealized to call that out and also the amortization on the fair value of identifiable intangible assets through the merger and acquisition business combination accounting, including the discounting on deferred consideration, we back those out because they -- we don't consider those to be reflective of performance of our operations. So I think that gives you a really good look through of how we bridge between our statutory and our underlying result. I'll just now turn to Slide 12, which is our balance sheet. The call out on this slide is the net working capital number, which you'll see a decline in that number of 25%. There is a little bit to unpack in that. So we're not going to pretend that that's all cash. It is -- we do get the benefit in that number of the inventory -- sorry, the Infinity provision. And we also included in that number is deferred consideration and the current deferred consideration on the acquired acquisitions we've made in the year. So if you back those out and then take into account the impact on acquisition -- of acquisitions contributing to that number, it's largely flat. But again, for the year, we think that's a decent result and Carmen spoke to some of those supply channels and some customers and suppliers needing to, I guess, build stock due to some logistical concerns has contributed to that number. You'll see a large increase in our goodwill and intangibles, probably worth calling out that apart from a couple of smaller acquisitions, the acquisition accounting is provisional at this stage, which we will finalize most of those -- some of those as we get to the half year. And then those that were in the second half of FY '26, we'll finalize those at this time next year. So they are provisional. It's all lumped into goodwill at the moment, but we need to go through the exercise of allocating those to the identifiable intangibles that we've picked up through those acquisitions. So we do note there, excluding the deferred consideration, the net working capital is $116.3 million compared to $126 million last year, but obviously, $116.3 million includes the Infinity provision as well. Funds employed. So just on that, we did spend $15.7 million of CapEx in the year on our new Brisbane site, and we acquired $4.9 million of fixed assets through the acquired businesses. Our debt facilities are largely with ScotPac, which you're familiar with. And also I mentioned the new facilities for New Zealand and Asia, which we took on in the year. And just, I guess, making clear our net debt figure there at 2.5x does include the full last 12 months of our acquired entities. I'll just move on to Slide 13, which is our cash flow. So really improved cash from operating activities of $29.1 million, which was up $42.5 million on last year or 317%, which is a pleasing result. I think if you characterize that with net capital expenditure, you'll see the application or use of those funds. It's not all in Australia, of course, but -- and then the proceeds from financing activities of the new acquisitions contributed to help -- to fund the acquisitions in the period. We did receive a corporate tax refund of $7.3 million in the period. CapEx, which I -- well, investing activities, I've spoken about the investment in Willawong, DC and [ PPE ] (sic) [ PP&E ] for the period was $13.5 million. So that was a big CapEx year for us, and we'll get back to a normalized level next year or FY '27. So I think that's a pretty good story around the operating cash flows for the year compared to last year. I will just move on to Slide 14, with the revenue bridges. And again, we have touched on these matters, but this makes it really clear around the impact of those businesses that exited the impact on COVID drugs and GLP-1 drug growth, contribution from the acquisitions. So that organic growth figure is a number that we like. So having that at 6.7% after those normalizations gets a big tick from us. So I think that's a really good story, which allows you to just join all the dots. I'll just move to over to page -- next slide. Thanks around the EBITDA bridge. Again, similar just presenting same information here around Infinity Group contribution, no Ramsay contribution that normalized out as we were able to take costs out of the business. But that normalized EBITDA growth of 7.4% after adjusting for the Infinity FY '26 acquisitions, fuel offsite storage costs and FX is a strong number for us, which we like. And obviously, we'll look to the contribution from the acquired businesses, and we'll get the full year benefit of those as we move into FY '27. I think just the other items on there, which we probably touched on as well, which were the fuel -- elevated fuel costs and the offsite storage. So -- but that is all there for you to work your way through. So we'll just drill down a little bit into each of our geographic segments, Australia and New Zealand to start with. which was a reported ANZ total growth -- revenue growth of 0.2%, which again seems modest, but when we take out the normalizations, at 6.1%. We think that's a solid number. Med Tech's -- Med Tech market was a pretty solid result. There are a couple of businesses in there that face some challenges, especially in orthopedics and vision, but we have really confident around that channel and the opportunities that it does present. There are new products coming to the market, new suppliers that we are working closely with, and we are continuing to invest in the aesthetics business, which we see contributing greater in FY '27 and beyond. New Zealand in here is impacted by the FX, which we've called out there. Contract logistics at a revenue line, really strong growth from both our existing customer volumes, which is a testament to the execution in that business and also new customers and pipeline in that space looks pretty promising for us as we continue to expand and grow that particular channel. Clinical manufacturing was benefit from the acquisition of Fisher in the second half, but that did post some really good numbers for us at both the revenue and the margin line. The margin, we talked to on the next slide, on Slide 18. At ANZ, it remained steady at 8%. Wholesale grew a little, up from 6% to 6.3% as we exited some low-margin business in that space. Med Tech was marginally lower, but that is on the back of some FX impacts and also as we invest to enter in those new markets and products that we spoke to. And contract logistics, the pleasing result in the revenue line is it actually grew at the margin as well. So profitable revenue growth is what we like to see. And clinical manufacturing margin was up as well as we just established what the right operating cost base was for that particular channel. The Asia segment is a really good story, continues a good story from prior periods as well. continues to be a growing contributor to the group at a good margin. Organic growth and acquisitive growth is strong. I won't go on -- I think it's pretty evident from the numbers themselves. And that is despite the FX impact on that particular business. So on a like-for-like basis, those numbers are all up stronger. So Thailand aesthetics, which a lot of people are interested in, continues to perform strongly. There is a little bit of margin decline in here as we enter into the new markets, introduce new products, but it's also reflective of the investment also in those marketing activities and the investment in our people and the shared services costs, which are also now in this particular segment. So I think that's, again, really, really good story. I think that the expansion of our multidisciplinary shared services team to complement our regional focus makes sense to us. And there are still some opportunities to put more roles over there in that region. So that finishes my part.
Carmen Riley
executiveOkay. Thanks very much, Brendon. If we just click over to our acquisitions. So they're all performing well. I won't go into the detail of those at the moment. I'll use that for Q&A. But if you look at the presentation on the left-hand side, they are the businesses that we acquired in Australia, which is around -- you can see 2 of them, particularly around the dental, helping us expand into that portfolio and allowing certain supplier access into that space. So we're really pleased to finally launch our dental division last year. So that's been great. On the right-hand side, our Asian acquisitions. Haju is a very similar business to our Thailand business and does exceptionally well based in Indonesia. So we're pleased to brought that on. And obviously, Pacific Medical, Hong Kong and Somnotec is based in Singapore, but again, spreads our reach across Singapore and Malaysia as well. So early days, but we're really thrilled with all the acquisitions that we've got on board, and they're working collaborative with the rest of our team to not only actually bring some of the existing Paragon business into their business, but also help us with their expertise in getting out their portfolio into other regions. So just turning on to Page 24. I won't go through all of that. But our strategy is not changing. We're continuing on the same path. We want to be making health care simpler across the region. And we do want to be across all of APAC. The only country we're not in at the moment that we'd like to be would be Taiwan, but we'll wait and see when the right opportunity presents itself. Okay. So last but not least, for our FY '27 outlook on Page 25, turn over [ to that ]. So I won't touch on every point, but I did want to highlight that we're now fully focused on driving the business forward. As I said at the beginning of the presentation, we have had a black mark against us on the Infinity. I understand that. We're not shying away from it. But I know that the underlying business has some bench strengths that we're pushing through, and we're focused on our forward trajectory now, not looking in the revision mirror. So we're going to leverage our market presence. We're now across 11 countries. Our team is aligned. We're all working very closely together, all of our country managers, all of our channel managers, and we're seeking the opportunities to really expand in each market and each channel. So yes, we are going to continue to do the right M&A opportunities, but we will focus this year just on consolidating our most recent acquisitions and making sure that we're bedding those down as well. But we'll always continue to look for and take advantage of M&A as they -- as it presents itself. FY '27, organic growth is our key focus. We'll settle down on our capital spend, and we will focus on the business that we have at hand. We've got the range, we've got the footprint, and we've certainly got the team. So I'm very excited about FY '27 and to turn that page. We'll continue to drive performance excellence. Now that we've closed out our 3-2-1 strategy, which was an incredible amount of work. You can see the detail that Brendon went through and I touched on it earlier, the team have done a lot to bring this business together, but now we can really also drive that next level of efficiency throughout the business. So just on our capital management. So we do believe that we need to reduce the number of shares on issue and also that the share price is undervalued. So to these points, we are going to commence a share buyback in FY '27. We think that we need to reduce the number of shares to a level considered more appropriate basically with Paragon Care's market size and our market position. As you know, there are some LTIs that are vesting in FY '27 or at the end of FY '27. So part of that initial buyback will be held in trust for the issue of those performance rights. Regardless of issuing more shares, we prefer not to do that and to do a buyback just to consolidate that register. At today's value, we certainly believe it's not only more appropriate for the share register, but an economic benefit for Paragon Care as well. So we won't be on the dividend. So unfortunately, we won't be declaring a dividend for FY '26, but we will review this in the first half based on trading performance. I do understand and particularly for our retail investors, understand the question on why a buyback and not a dividend. As I've said, we do see the share price is undervalued, and we do need to step through all of this in a pragmatic process. So number one was to transition and realign the underlying business, which I believe that we've done, and I think the team have done a good job. Two, we wanted to ensure that we have the appropriate level of shares on issue and to fix our register. And three, we wanted to make sure that we've got the right business structure and platform in place. And as we do that, and we have done that, we'll assess the dividend stream based on trading performance in FY '27. So just stepping through because once we start a dividend program, we certainly don't want to switch it off. So thanks for that. Mel, if you don't mind, I'll hand back over to you for any questions that the listeners might have.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Tom Godfrey with Ord Minnett.
Thomas Godfrey
analystCan you hear me okay?
Carmen Riley
executiveYes. [ We can hear you ].
Thomas Godfrey
analystJust sort of picking up on the comment around expecting ongoing revenue and earnings growth into next year and maybe just looking at some of the features of the EBITDA bridge on Slide 15. Obviously, a significant volume of acquisitions executed this year. Just sort of wondering how that acquisition delta sort of annualizes into '27. What can we expect the contribution to be?
Brendon Pentland
executiveTom, so Somnotec was -- we acquired on mid-January. -- sorry, mid-December. So we had -- so we'll get a further, I guess, 5.5 months from Somnotec. So we've disclosed in the, I guess, our 4E what the contribution or the revenues were from each of those. Haju, we've only got 3 months of that in FY '26. So we'll get a further 9 months. And Pacific Medical was a -- I think we had 5 months on medical. So we'll get a further 7 months of that. So look, that number will be higher, as we go into FY '27, just given the timing and -- of those where most of them were in the second half of FY '26.
Thomas Godfrey
analystThat's helpful. And then just in terms of the sort of one of the bigger negative wedges in that bridge was just fuel and offsite storage. How does that sort of dissipate into next year or unwind? How should we be thinking about those costs on an ongoing basis?
Carmen Riley
executiveYes. It's a good question, Tom. It's a difficult question. So offsite storage, we're comfortable around because a lot of that was in the first half of the year, and we've backed that out. And that was particularly caused by our delay to our Brisbane site. So that was difficult. The fuel has certainly got us all by surprise, and we're trying to negate some of that, but it just depends on the fuel prices as they work through. What I don't want to do, I think like all of us, we're hoping that, that war will end anytime soon. But what I don't want to do is disrupt our customers and suppliers because hopefully, it's more short term than long term. So it's a difficult one to put a number on at the moment, and that's why we're a bit cautious of giving an outlook because we're not sure around how fuel is going to go. In saying that, I'd like to obviously give a full update by the time we get around to the AGM as well based on the Q1 result.
Thomas Godfrey
analystUnderstood. That's helpful. And then maybe just one on your balance sheet. I mean, you gave us some net debt-to-EBITDA guidance in the prior period. Is the goal to get that towards the bottom end of the range? I know you sort of spoke to quite a few cash flow initiatives for this year. Where do you sort of see the balance sheet settling in FY '27?
Carmen Riley
executiveAt the moment, if we continue around the 2.5x, I'm pretty comfortable around that. But I don't want to sit there and give us a target to wind that down to 2x and particularly the market that we're operating in at the moment, and we do want to continue to invest in the right areas. So at the moment, I'm pretty comfortable where that's sitting.
Thomas Godfrey
analystGot it. And just last one for me, just around the first pharmacy wholesaler agreement and how that's rolling through. I realize it's sort of only a couple of months in, but do you guys have an estimate at this point in terms of how much of the CSO uplift in terms of your market share you'll see this year? And just any other sort of changes in line with expectations?
Carmen Riley
executiveYes, sure. I do. I don't want to be too cagey about that either Tom, because I don't want to give away a number when we're in -- we've basically only got 1 months trading data around it. And the modeling is in line with our expectations when we had the first CSO payment come through. So that was a relief. So -- but look, we'll just wait how that extrapolates out over the year anyway. But I don't want to give a number to it at this point.
Operator
operatorYour next question comes from John Hester with Bell Potter.
John Hester
analystCarmen, perhaps if you could talk in a little bit more detail about the clinical manufacturing business. You mentioned the Japan contract. What's that worth? And tell us more about it.
Carmen Riley
executiveYes, sure. So I can't give you the value of the contract because they're commercial in confidence, but the majority -- well, that is actually around a contract that we have with Q QuidelOrtho. So -- QuidelOrtho. So they're closing some of their facilities, and they're looking, obviously, to put their footprint into Australia with the opportunity to expand out to the APAC region. So look, it's early days. It's a lot of work to get those contracts up and running because of the TGA and everything that you need to go through. And you can imagine, we've got a team of scientists that actually work through that process. So it is very complex. But we're working very well with that contract, really pleased with it. It will step up -- it's a year-on-year step-up as they roll certain products and portfolios out, and they'll obviously expand into different geographical regions as well.
John Hester
analystSo is it for a single product? Or is it multiple product.
Carmen Riley
executiveNo, it's multiple products.
John Hester
analystAnd is it a multiyear contract or.
Carmen Riley
executiveCorrect.
John Hester
analystCould you estimate what the total contract value might be worth over a few years?
Carmen Riley
executiveI couldn't -- I couldn't, John, because I'll probably get in a bit of trouble if I said that one.
John Hester
analystI'm sure you could, but
Carmen Riley
executiveYes, just joking. I do know what's -- so.
John Hester
analystAnd just what else the highlights there. I mean, contract logistics was really good, good margin, good growth there. So looking at the margin there on that business, you talked about fuel costs and so on, that would be impacted one would gather by that -- by that [indiscernible]?
Carmen Riley
executiveWhich one are you looking at?
John Hester
analystContract logistics almost looking at [indiscernible].
Carmen Riley
executive[indiscernible] not impacted in their gross margin. That's an expense, John. So it's not on the gross margin side of things. But a little bit of a double-edged sword at the moment. I'm absolutely thrilled how we're doing with contract logistics, and we've got a lot in the pipeline on that space. I do think that, that is a subscale business for us. So absolutely pleased on where it's going. Problematic at the moment when fuel prices are going up because it is logistics, but I do believe that to be a bit more short term and the cost pressure will come off. We'll have some benefits in fuel. I know Tom asked, as he mentioned the question before, we'll have some benefits in the future with fuel because we won't be running so many IBTs that we did with the reshuffling of Brisbane, and that had a bit of an impact -- well, a lot more impact actually around contract logistics than any other division. So yes, the growth side will continue to grow there, but we will have that short-term fuel pressure, although not as much as what we had in FY '26.
John Hester
analystAnd just one additional question on acquisitions. Obviously, you got very active this year, 6 acquisitions. Balance sheet is reasonably geared there. Now you said you're comfortable with 2.5x debt. So how does that leave you in a position now to fund acquisitions? Because I gather you've got more in there, you're going to issue more paper? Or are you just going to ramp up the debt, do you think?
Carmen Riley
executiveIf the right acquisition came along, the right debt doesn't bother us because we see that adding longer-term value for the shareholders anyway rather than raising equity because that's just not something that we're interested in doing. Look, I'd be shocked if we're sitting here this time next year, and I'll tell you we've done 6 acquisitions anyway. So I'd like to have that settle down a little bit, but it would be around the right acquisition. So it's a hard question to answer without something short-term insight, but yes, we would use that facility if we had another acquisition that we wanted to go after.
John Hester
analystAnd just perhaps one final question for Brendon, if I may. And this is sort of what Tom was asking as well. What is the -- do you believe is the full year impact of the 6 acquisitions you completed for a full 12 months EBITDA.
Brendon Pentland
executiveEBITDA, no.
Carmen Riley
executiveYes. We're being a bit cautious on the outlook at the moment, John, just as they settle down. So early days when you read the 4E, they're delivering on their results, but we just need to make sure that we're getting through that first quarter. Once we're through first quarter, we'll be a bit clearer on making sure that we're giving the right number out to the market as well.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from James Tracey with Blue Ocean Equities.
James Tracey
analystThe first question I've got is just around the pro forma EBITDA. If I take the net debt and divide it by 2.5x, it implies that pro forma EBITDA of $113 million. in the year just finished, which is considerably higher than expectations for '27.
Brendon Pentland
executiveYes. I think, James, I mentioned this. When we calculate it, we include the full last 12 months of the acquired businesses in that calculation. So that
James Tracey
analystBut I guess the point being is that you have 12 months in FY '27. So I guess it's a question around -- yes, you've given guidance for earnings growth, revenue growth in '27. The base level is considerably higher than the number reported. I guess, is there anything that you would pull out to take out of that pro forma number to help give us a sense of what we could see in '27.
Brendon Pentland
executiveNo. I mean, I guess the way we present that on an underlying basis because we want to give you a look-through of what has impacted FY '26 that of a significant nature that we just want to make sure that you've got a clear line of sight of what our underlying business is doing. But I'm not quite sure I follow that you said we're giving guidance for '27 because we gave obviously guidance for '26. And we clearly stated when we gave that, that when we -- around the 2.5x -- 2x to 2.5x on the gearing, that does include the full year contribution or last 12 months of the acquired businesses, so.
James Tracey
analystI guess -- yes, the point I'm making is that the pro forma number for '26 is possibly better guide to '27 than the reported number because you're going to have the full year contribution of those acquisitions in it.
Brendon Pentland
executiveYes, yes.
James Tracey
analystSo is there anything that -- is there -- I noted in that the slide that everyone has been referring to the EBITDA bridge that there's something like $3 million of the Infinity Group sort of coming out, which presumably won't recur. But then on the other hand, you've got a whole bunch of other things like the CSO funding, which is a positive, the defense contract, which is a positive organic growth and so on. So I'm just wondering with respect to setting my forecast for '27, I'm not asking the guidance, but is there a big number, for instance, for Ramsay in that pro forma number, which is $113 million that doesn't recur or should some of these other [ factors in ].
Carmen Riley
executiveNo.
Brendon Pentland
executiveNo.
Carmen Riley
executiveNo, there's not.
James Tracey
analystOkay. That's good. And the second question is just around the buyback. Could you just give a bit of color. I haven't seen any detail on the number of shares that you'd be authorized to buy back. And could you just talk to your intention of actually sort of fulfilling it? Because a lot of companies will authorize the buyback and then not actually do a meaning -- not actually execute or buy a meaningful number of shares.
Carmen Riley
executiveThat is the case, and that is the case, James. So it's a good question. So as I said, there is a step through approach. There's some in the employee incentive plan that we think based on the price now anyway, it's better to buy them rather than to buy them in the trust rather than to issue those shares. So we'll be doing that. And then we can -- in a general buyback and under the general rules, we can buy up to 10%. That is not saying we're going to do all of that, but we just want the flexibility as the year rolls out and based on our trading based, where we get on half year and on our dividend policy as well on where we sit with buying those shares over the course of the 12 months.
James Tracey
analystYes. Okay. That's clear. And just a final question for me around cash conversion. There was a big improvement from the negative operating cash flow in the first half to close to $30 million positive in the full year. Obviously, the operating cash flow is still well below the EBITDA. I mean, do you expect to see the operating cash flow to be a high percentage of EBITDA at a time when you don't have as many issues around [indiscernible] and so on.
Carmen Riley
executiveYes, without a doubt.
Brendon Pentland
executiveYes. And look, being transparent as we are, James, I mean, that $29.1 million for the full year also included in the second half, the corporate tax refund. So there is a benefit in there. So look, we're working hard around working capital management to always improve the cash flow. So we'll obviously looking at ways we can do that.
Operator
operatorThere are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Ms. Riley for closing remarks.
Carmen Riley
executiveOkay. Great. Thanks very much, Mel. Hopefully, we've given everyone some color around the business. We've closed out some major issues that we've had that giving you the confidence that we're fully focused and ready for FY '27 and the years to come. So I look forward to catching up with hopefully most of you as we do the road show. But if you've got any questions, feel free to give myself or Brendon the call anyway. And hopefully, we'll see you all face-to-face soon. So thanks very much.
Brendon Pentland
executiveThanks.
Operator
operatorThat does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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