Peoplein Limited (PPE.XA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the PeopleIN Limited FY '25 Full Year Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ross Thompson, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much, Allison. Good morning, and welcome to PeopleIN's Financial Year '25 Results Presentation. I'm joined by PeopleIN's CFO, Adam Leake. Our purpose to inspire excellence in our people. PeopleIN has continued to weather the challenging economic conditions of FY '25, ensuring that the business remains adaptable, resilient and efficient. Our focus on sales and candidate acquisition as well as our sector diversity has enabled us to continue to outperform the staffing industry. We've been smart about pricing and maximizing our workforce given our improved systems and reporting. As a result, our billing rates are up 6.9%. We're fighting fit going into FY '26. Our costs have reduced by a further $9 million, taking our total reduction over the past three years to over $25 million. As a result, we're delivering an industry-leading net revenue margin of 23.3%. We've built a diverse, resilient business with both our Professional Services and Agri and Food Services divisions delivering strong, solid organic growth and mitigating economic challenges in other sectors. We have a robust balance sheet going into FY '26 after collecting 125.4% of normalized EBITDA, reducing our net debt ratio from 2.1 to 1.6 in 12 months. As a result, we're now able to take a dynamic capital management approach. We're pleased to announce a $6 million on-market share buyback, which highlights our confidence in the future. Part of what's driving this confidence is the pending infrastructure boom in Queensland, which will generate strong market conditions for several years. Our origins are in Queensland and nearly half of our revenue is generated in the state. So we're well-positioned to capitalize on this opportunity. A couple of key callouts on this slide. Our current performance isn't where we want it to be, but we're outperforming our industry peers with many reporting over 30% decline in revenue and profit. We have several businesses growing, showing our diversity, including our Service business, which is up 18% year-on-year. This includes Vision Surveys, Timberwolf and Mobilise. As mentioned before, our net revenue margin of 23% is industry-leading, and we're focused on improving this even further over the coming three years. Regarding cash collections, we generated $0.40 per share on a current share price of $0.62 and paid down over $27 million of debt in the year. This clearly highlights the resilience of our business model and gives us confidence in being more dynamic with our capital management, including looking at future acquisitions. Our performance is stabilizing. We don't expect the situation to worsen. And based on our June and July results, we're starting to turn the corner, albeit slowly. I'll now pass over to Adam to run through our results in more detail.

Thank you, Ross. As Ross has described, the PeopleIN business has continued to forge ahead, actively making the critical business investments and improvements to its operations. Since May, there has been a change in the economic environment, showing increased business confidence and additional activity. This includes positive results for July. As we look backwards at the whole year, revenues exceeded $1 billion for the third year in a row at $1.098 billion, slightly lower than FY '24. Total billed hours were $18.8 million for the full year, down 11.2%. The second half started slowly with disruptions from Cyclone Alfred impacting our March and April results. Although since May, there's been a noticeable pickup in activity. Build rates continued to improve over the prior year, up 6.9%. There has been both an improvement in mix to higher skilled roles as well as a repricing of contracts, including new wins. We have been deploying data analytics across divisions, highlighting opportunities for repricing and ensuring more profitable returns. The Group has increased its efficiency and generated further cost savings. Project Unite IT transformation continues to drive efficiency gains across payroll, finance and operations. Overhead costs were $9.1 million lower than FY '24 or 7.7% lower. This takes our cost savings across the last three years to over $25 million. Our use of technology, automation and early stages of AI continue to bring cost savings and revenue benefits through pricing. Permanent revenue was seasonally lower in quarter three. Activity from May has been positive with June being the best month since early 2024 and July is not far behind that. Normalized EBITDA was 10% lower at $33.3 million. The lower permanent revenue reduced the net revenue margin to 23.3%. Although lower, the net revenue margin remains ahead of our international peers operating in this region. Underlying NPAT was higher, up 7.1% to $6.5 million on the back of lower amortization and interest costs. That equates to an underlying NPATA of $0.156 per share. Now we present a deeper look into our business units and activities. In our ISS division covering Engineering, Trades and Labor. EBITDA performance was softer, down 25% on FY '24. Build hours were lower 8.6% in our labor hire areas, in particular, Victoria and New South Wales were softer throughout the year, while Queensland and Western Australia remained buoyant. The lower levels of demand was seen particularly in our hospitality labor brand, Tribe, with EBITDA down $1.5 million from FY '24 levels. Billing rates improved, up 7% on the prior year. Higher value trade roles and improved workers' compensation experience continued to give positive benefits to margins. Engineering, trades and labor have also significantly increased its non-labor hire services income with EBITDA up 17.1%. We continue to see this as an area of expansion into FY '26. And July activity has started strong with improved trading conditions. In Food and Agriculture, EBITDA has increased to $20 million, more than doubling since acquisition in June 2022. This growth has been driven by the rise of PALM visa holders over recent years. As most are on 3- or 4-year PALM visas, we are now starting to see these first post-COVID surge workers returning to their home countries. This is temporarily reducing hours by 11.7% in the year. The client and participant demand for the PALM Scheme remains positive and does provide key workers to critical sectors in regional areas. Build rates continue to increase, up 12.6%. Using data analytics, we have increased marginal pricing in some areas, increasing rates and exiting unprofitable contracts. In addition, we're seeing improved workers' compensation experience, all helping to improve returns. Costs across RWM reduced. Demand for hours has flattened out in recent months. Community Care areas continue to see growth, particularly in South Australia and Queensland. The growth in Community Care activity across the year has now resulted in Community contributing the larger proportion of the healthcare and community result. Program Unite has delivered benefits to healthcare and community with efficiency gains and automation helping to drive costs $2 million lower. Professional Services is the most notable change from the highs of FY '23 with its heavy mix of permanent revenue. EBITDA was up 4.6% in FY '25. Temp hours were down 20.6% on the prior year. Client activity has been subdued in temp placement. Quarter 4 activity was steady. The June result was the highest hours since late 2024. Professional Services has organically created a growing niche in government contracting roles, particularly in technology roles, benefiting from increased government spending on IT projects. Permanent placement fees remained subdued. Activity from May has been positive with June being the best month since early 2024 and July not far behind that. We are starting to see more activity in the permanent market with a rise in applicants per role. With our strong Queensland presence, we do see rising activity and opportunities across engineering and construction-related professional roles. Our cash flow performance has been particularly strong and a key focus of the business over the last 18 months. Our operating cash flows before interest and tax was $38.7 million for the year. After taking into account normalized expense items that were paid in cash of $4.1 million, normalized gross operating cash flows were $42.8 million for the year. That equates to over $0.40 per share of cash generated this year. With normalized cash collections of 125.4%, this is an excellent outcome and well above our target 80% to 90% collection range. This result has benefited from an inflow of net working capital on the back of improved debtor terms. Our debtor days have remained consistent and steady. The positive cash collections have ensured that our net debt has reduced significantly during the year. The net debt reduced $27.4 million in the year. With the strong collections added to this has been lower CapEx spend and the conclusion of the contingent consideration on previous acquisitions. Amounts remaining on previous acquisitions are now exclusively small warranty holdbacks. These are payable over the next two years when claims expire. Despite earnings falling over the period, net-debt-to-normalized-EBITDA reduced to 1.6x. This is moving to the bottom end of our target range of 1.5x to 2x and now gives incredible flexibility as we move to future capital management strategies. Management are focused on ensuring that capital is deployed to maximize shareholder value. The robust balance sheet now allows the Group to announce a $6 million on-market share buyback. Given the consistent ability to generate cash returns, options remain very open to deploy capital in an accretive manner. Thanks, Ross.

Thanks very much, Adam. I'm sure it's not news to anyone on the call that the Queensland economy is about to boom with record infrastructure spend projected across the state over the next 7 years. Infrastructure Australia estimates that the state will be short of over 50,000 engineering construction workers over the coming years, with the peak in demand projected in FY '27 through to FY '29-'30. I was in Townsville last week to speak at an industry conference on workforce challenges in Queensland, and everyone is focused on how we'll find workers to deliver projects, whether that's in the transport, defense or sports sectors. We're still around 12 months away from the boom, but it's starting to build, which is positive. Our Queensland Survey business Vision is starting to see benefits with recent wins to support design activity. Queensland represents a significant opportunity for PeopleIN given our market share in the state. We're the largest staffing business in Queensland and 42% of our total revenue is currently generated in the state. We're Top 3 provider for our staffing brands and the following are a couple of brand examples. When we look at AWX, who is a leader in the infrastructure construction sector and have been operating in this sector for over 30 years and have deep and established talent pools to draw from. Perigon is a leader in finding professional service staff that will be required as companies grow their state operations, including accountants and HR partners. As the investment builds, then the pubs and restaurants will start to get busy again throughout Queensland, and our Tribe business has the client relationships and talent pools to benefit from this. Any major tenders will have a local content score or requirement, and we can clearly demonstrate this being founded in Queensland and also having a network of regional offices. PeopleIN scale, sector expertise and regional reach enable us to be a workforce engine for Queensland's run to the 2032 Olympics. As a sovereign veteran-led business, we're well-placed to benefit from the increase in defense spend over the next decade. We've spent the last two years building our profile with the Department of Defense as well as Defense industry. On the department side, our near-term opportunity is to support the recruitment of Pacific Islanders into the ADF. We're well placed given our international defense knowledge and our deep PALM Pacific experience. Our defense industry work is starting to build momentum, which is great. We've listed a few examples on this slide. The largest opportunity for us over the coming years will be construction work in Northern Australia as well as supporting the manufacturing of equipment and vehicles. Having been associated with defense for many years, it takes time to enter the sector, but we're on the cusp of this happening. While we've experienced some early improvements in trading, we're expecting the major growth opportunities to be still several months away, but we're set up to capitalize given our strong cash position and balance sheet, which will also support targeted accretive acquisitions that generate immediate cost synergies. We continue to leverage our technology-enabled productivity gains to maximize earnings, also expansion into defense opportunities, including potential Pacific ADF recruitment initiatives and defense industry opportunities, and we're well-positioned to benefit from the Queensland infrastructure boom, especially in 2026 through to 2032. Thank you very much for your time today. And to our investors, thank you for your ongoing support. Cheers. We'll now open up to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question today will come from [ Liam Cummins of Petra ].

Congratulations on another strong result. Look, a couple of questions just sort of relating to, I suppose, the Olympics and the balance sheet. I know in your Annual Report, you mentioned that it's been a difficult time for the industry and a lot of participants have been struggling. And I'm just sort of thinking you've got a really strong balance sheet now and the Olympics will probably start to pick up, I suppose, on a 12- to 18-month view. So can you give us a feel for maybe when you do think you'll see a pickup in Olympics-related activity firstly? And then secondly, if there are any opportunities to maybe lean on the balance sheet a little bit to sort of take advantage of maybe some weakness in the marketplace ahead of maybe a rebound in the end market?

Yeah. Thanks, Liam. And we agree with your view on timeline with Olympics. That's 12 to 18 months, particularly when construction kicks in and that demand for engineers and construction workers. But some of our businesses are already benefiting like Vision Surveys. But yeah, the big bulk will come through in that 12- to 18-month period. And then from an acquisition perspective, then clearly looking at continuing to build our pipeline there with our net debt ratio being where it is now and looking for businesses that will be accretive, but also where there's cost synergies as well. But given the announcement today on our -- on the buyback of $6 million then really, that's part of our confidence in the future of the business, but also where valuations are in the private sector versus our own valuation and deploying capital in ourselves at this point in time. But at some point, obviously, we'll continue to look for acquisitions and be in a position to buy. Adam, did you want to add to that?

No, I think Ross is right. There is good activity happening, and we do some work for the Olympic Authority already. But again, it's only early stages. Most things are just starting to ramp up now. And we share your view in the sense that the balance sheet is now in a really good spot. We've got funding lines available to us. We've got capability to do it. We've got capability and capacity internally to execute on these things. It's just finding the right thing that is accretive to us.

Makes sense. And then I suppose with Project Unite sort of done now, I suppose the focus really is sort of shifting back to growth given where the markets are going at the moment. But maybe is there much more to do on the cost out front, just sort of thinking about what the base might be going forward or should we sort of consider what you've done now to be the go forward?

Yeah. Look, I think we're in a BAU mode now. I think Project Unite has been an incredible transformative project for us. It's gone on for quite a while. It's all stopped now. We're at the end of that. We're in a BAU mode now. But we continue to find benefits that stem from that. It's given us the base to go ahead and put automation in, put data analytics in, experiment with some AI tools that are all seeing benefits in our back office, in particular, in our operations. So that's feeding into revenue gains, that's feeding into cost gains. I think there's just -- there'll just be a continual grind of more of that now.

Okay. And then maybe last before I sort of jump back in the queue, but -- it might be a little bit too early to make a call, but I know the sort of the economic roundtables raised NDIS funding as a potential source of cost savings going forward. Do you have any sort of preliminary views around potential risks to some of the funding that might sort of then go under the employment, some of your health segment at all?

Yeah. We don't see that as a major risk for us given our client portfolio there is more with national clients who are providing that acute support in that disability space. So what we've seen and highlighted in our report in FY '25 is more of growth in that space and that community space rather than any decline, and we expect that to continue.

Our next question today will come from [ Oli Bernstein of Ordinnett ].

Just a couple of questions from me, if I may. Just firstly, on the FIP business, it looks like the number of workers on the PALM Scheme have dropped off slightly in recent months. I was just wondering if you could comment maybe on your market share, how it's tracking at the moment? And I guess, what the organic growth profile looks like for FIP into '26? And then just secondly, have you seen a rebound in the Industrial and Specialist volumes following all of that wet weather up in Queensland during March?

Thanks, Oli. So as we highlighted in the report, there's a short-term reduction that we're experiencing at the moment on the PALM scheme with visas. So visas coming off and then new workers coming into the country. So just a few things for us to work through. But the demand is still there. It's more just a process piece, both in country, the home country as well as some things just on our side. So working through those, but as I expect it all to be short-term, so really impacting in Q1 and probably a bit into Q2, but then back on a growth footing. So that's on the PALM side. And since the wet weather, yes, we've seen a tick up in the engineering trades and labor space. We're in Brisbane today and the sun is shining, which is all positive. So that's good. But the thing with wet weather, it's not when the rain drops, it just kicks back on the next day, construction sites need to dry out. So it really did go into April and some of May and then have had very good weather in June and July. And I'd say we've experienced that tick up in demand and performance.

Great. And then maybe just a follow-on from the PALM Scheme question. How are you seeing the competition, I guess, from other labor [indiscernible] in the space at the moment?

Look, I think we're still maintaining market share. I think our issues are currently, as Ross has described, mostly both home country and in-country visa type issues, getting people in and out just at present. We still continue to maintain our market share of that scheme. Certainly, the 3- and 4-year visas are the right visa groups for us to continue to work for -- work with. We're not heavy on the short-term visas. We're much more in the 3- and 4-year stability of income program. So yeah, it's providing a short-term blip to us at the moment. So that's just -- we will continue to work through that. But the work is there. We've got clients -- we've got people wanting to come. We've got clients desperate for the people. It's just physically getting their stamps in their passports.

Our next question today will come from Liam Schofield of Morgans Financial.

Just a couple of quick questions for Adam more so. Just this year's financials, it looks like you've gone to like a normalized NPAT, whereas in the PCP in the prior presentation, it was underlying. What's the difference there?

Look, I think -- to be honest, we oscillate a little bit between the different ones being the right way to think about this business. I'm trying to give you a little bit more information on both, if that makes sense. So I want to make sure that you're fully informed and you get the information you need. I don't think we're sort of trying to ride to any particular number. What we're trying to do is just present it in the most clearest way to give you the information you need. But certainly -- normalized EBITDA is really the key sort of target, but absolutely happy to provide more information.

Yeah. Perfect. And just on that more information, the divisional analysis, are we able to derive divisional underlying numbers from the accounts?

Probably the presentation is probably the best representation of the more normalized number. The financial accounts and segment reporting is a little bit more rigid in that sense. So we can't be adding back sort of normalized items in the segment reporting. But certainly, from the presentation, we're trying to give you a sense of what the true sort of normalized run rates are of these businesses over a period of time.

Our next question today will come from Ben Wilson of Wilsons Advisory.

Apologies, I've only just been able to join partway through the Q&A. So apologies if some or all of these questions have been asked. Just a few try to go through these quickly. Firstly, just in terms of business conditions, I mean, looking at the NAB Index, there was a big spike in June, which might have been a sort of reflection of the bullish market recovery post Liberation Day. But then that sort of half of that has been given back in July. Just interested in what your sense out there is broadly of business conditions.

Yeah. And I agree with your comment there around June, and we track that metric as well. But generally, based on June and July, we're seeing improved sort of business confidence. It's a slight uptick. So we don't want to gild the lily in any way, but definitely experience a slight uptick there in confidence and conditions. But to your point, there's a lot of uncertainty globally. So we're not through the woods yet. But as I said, some more positive conditions in the last couple of months for us. And then I think more broad further afield looking at that sort of medium- to long-term, the opportunity in Queensland, the opportunity in defense, which is why we are very keen to call that out in our presentation slide each because we are bullish about those opportunities in the medium-term. But in the short-term, I think it's -- we've had an initial uptick, but it's going to be a slower recovery.

Got it. Just interested in the permanent recruitment sort of conditions in the tech sector, in particular. It's obviously previously your biggest area for perm recruitment. I see Microsoft came out recently sort of announcing yet another round of mass redundancies globally. I guess across your book of business, are you still seeing net redundancies in the tech sector or is there net hiring going on? Can you just talk to that quickly?

I think it's not an easy sector. Certainly, we're finding there's roles out there. We're getting a good pipeline of new roles, access to those roles. We are finding more candidates per role applying. So that is -- so that's another sort of bellwether of where we're at. But there are good roles out there. We're generally seeing a good turn, good sort of access to those. I think it was a little bit choppy, if you like, in the third quarter, but we've really seen a good pickup in this May, June and July period with a really good pipeline at the moment. And as I described, some of the best numbers we've seen since early 2024. So it's starting to give us more confidence that there's stuff out there. And I think just to add to that there, we've got a strong national brand in Halcyon Knights, and we've got really good leaders that are focused on winning and that candidate acquisition piece. So we're outperforming our competitors, both from an efficiency piece, but also a work winning as well because unfortunately, there has been some competitors that haven't survived the last couple of years. It's been that tough, but we've come through. And as Adam said, in the last quarter, seen an uptick in that perm recruitment volumes, which is positive. But it's early days.

Yeah. Great. Just last question on AI, if I may. There's obviously a lot of talk about the potential for mass job displacement across the economy. I just think PeopleIN is probably one of the best companies to observe on this given your scale across so many sectors, both blue collar and white collar. Are you starting to see evidence of increasing redundancies linked to this or is there actually still a lot of job creation, which is going on but just gets reported? Interested in your.

Yeah, a couple of things. Look, we're not seeing that come through. But strategically, we are focused on the doing jobs. So that's construction type work or if that's nursing or community cares or even the PALM Scheme in meat processing, et cetera. The risk on those type of jobs from AI and automation is low in the foreseeable future and into the medium-term. So that's what we are focused on. So when you look at that AI risk on businesses, I'd say, for us, our focus is on the doing jobs. But no, we haven't experienced that coming through. The key thing for us on AI is efficiency gains, and we've called that out today, both automating processes, but early adoption of AI that's driving efficiency gains and better productivity across our operational teams and also our shared service teams as well.

And as we look at professional services type roles, we probably are seeing less of the permanent recruitment in the lower level type finance accounting type roles. But that being said, there's still good demand for very senior roles. So it's almost like some of the more junior roles are being disrupted through automation and early AI, but the senior roles, it's the opposite. It's very high demand. And as you would understand, high paying and certainly high commissions for us, too.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from [ Peter Storer ], a shareholder.

I've realized the more I sit in these calls that the world of analysts and shareholders are millions of miles apart. I'm afraid I can't call halving EBITDA over the past two years and running at a loss at a strong result. It just begs belief. But anyway, I want to ask a question about the impairments that have happened, the write-offs. There was $1.32 million for brand names and $8.6 million for goodwill. Could you give us an idea of what they relate to, please? Are you able to say that?

Yeah, absolutely, Peter. Thanks for dialing in. Look, there was two types of impairment that went through the accounts this year. There were some brand names, $1.3-odd-million. That relates to brands in our Health and our Professional Services area. As you -- as a keen follower of our stock, you would have understood that our health brands have merged to one combined brand. That's allowing us to win some bigger national contracts. That also means that we're not using those other brands that we've acquired previously. So we've taken the decision to write those down to [ Neil ] in the period. And that's similarly happening in Professional Services. We had a couple of old acquired brands we no longer use or actively promote. So we've written those down. In the goodwill, some $8.6 million. Look, we took the opportunity to be a little bit more conservative. We've looked at the returns that we've had in Health and Professional Services over the last two years. We're taking a much more conservative view of the future growth for those businesses. And the end result of that is an $8.6 million write-down on prior acquisitions that we've made. I think it's the right thing to do to clean up our balance sheet and put ourselves in a good situation to go forward from here.

Okay. I understand where that's coming from now. And I do commend the share buyback. I think that I've been pushing for that for a long time. That's really pleasing to see that coming in. I think that makes a lot of sense, especially with the strong cash flow. You mentioned acquisitions, though, I'm a little bit worried about acquisitions based on what's just happened is because clearly, with those brand names sort of written off and this goodwill being written off, we seem to have a habit of overpaying for acquisitions. So -- and as you said, you're sort of in a situation where very strong value here in terms of this company. I'm just very wary of more acquisitions that could result in further write-offs of goodwill in the future. So that was more of a comment.

Yeah. Just to give you confidence on that, if you look at our last two acquisitions, they've delivered strong returns, that being FIPs and now RWM. And you can see the highlight there going from $9 million EBITDA to around 18%, closer to 20% and then Perigon as well. So I think one thing is our discipline and extracting cost synergies rather than a roll-up approach where you acquire and leave. So we're taking more to that cost synergy and really supporting those businesses to grow and be focused on winning work and finding candidates. And then the other is around our strategy and a real targeted strategy around acquisitions that make sense and bringing them into the PeopleIN family to support organic growth from sales, but also other existing brands within the PeopleIN portfolio as well. So we're not going to do anything silly. We're going to be very targeted on it and also drive the cost synergies as well from those acquisitions. But thank you for your comment.

Showing no further questions, this will conclude our question-and-answer session and also conclude the PeopleIN Limited conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.