SG Fleet Group Limited (SGF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the SG Fleet Group Limited 2021 Full Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I now would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Robbie Blau, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. I know it's another busy reporting day, so I appreciate you taking the time. My name is Robbie Blau, CEO of SG Fleet. And with me today is Kevin Wundram, our CFO. I'll refer to the slide numbers as I go through the presentation. So if you could please turn to Slide #3 now for a quick overview of the period. While COVID-19 was still a feature in the second half, the effect was certainly not as pronounced as previously. And I think we can be very proud of our resilience at the start of the year, and we certainly built further on that in the second half, delivering a full year underlying profit of $51.6 million. That was up close to 42% on the 2020 financial year. This has allowed the Board to declare a final dividend of $0.05393 per share, bringing the total for the year to $0.12585 per share, an increase of about 26% on last year. In fact, we increased the payout ratio to offset the impact of the LeasePlan acquisition-related rights issue, which took place earlier this year. Our corporate business in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. continued strong performances from the first half. In addition to that, the value of used vehicles remained at exceptional levels in all 3 countries, boosting our end-of-lease income significantly. In the Novated segment as well as the U.K. Employee Benefits business, orders continued to recover, in line with improving consumer sentiment. They have now returned to pre-COVID levels, which bodes very well for the future. In Australia, this recovery occurred despite COVID still impacting employment in some industries. Across the group, we've again done an exceptional job in retaining our existing customers, and we've added a significant number of additional accounts by winning the majority of tenders we pursued. I'll talk a little more about that in a few minutes. At the same time, we've been able to upsell our products and services further to create growth on both fronts. And as was the case in the first half, delivering the growing number of orders we won has been a challenge as we continue to face supply constraints in our industry. We don't expect those constraints to normalize during this calendar year. As a consequence of the delivery challenges, the order pipeline at year-end almost doubled on the previous year, which means a significant number of orders will spill into the current financial year. Please now turn to Slide #4 for a recap of the period in our Australian Corporate tool-of-trade segment. The Australian Corporate segment has very much seen a continuation of its strong performance in the first half. The competitive landscape was largely rational with 1 competitor adopting some unusual tactics to win deals. We don't believe the approach of this competitor can be maintained for any great length of time. Pleasingly, our opportunities pipeline grew steadily throughout the period. And as was the case in the previous period, we did very well in this environment, and we again saw a number of uncontested contract renewals and some great success in the pursuit of new business. We are also seeing increasing interest in our growing range of products and services. We continue to be very agile in how we support our customers in this environment. There's been a particularly strong demand for solutions that allow our customers to ensure they use their fleet as efficiently and safely as possible. And again, I'll give some more detail later in the presentation about this trend. Our Bookingintelligence asset management product is a key enabler in that regard, and again, had a stellar performance this year. Customers are also looking for flexible arrangements such as subscription services and shorter-term leases. Over the past few periods, we've seen a steady surge in interest in low or 0 emission vehicles in both passenger and commercial, and this certainly has continued strongly through the period. I mentioned in February a little about the Biden effect and the fact that the EV conversation has certainly come to front of mind. And certainly, it's remained very high on the agenda with many of our larger customers. Increasingly, this interest is forming part of a wider corporate and government drive towards a more responsible approach to transport with less reliance on ICE vehicles. Using our eStart fleet transition solution, we work with our customers to map out and implement this approach, both in terms of cost and efficiency as well as in relation to emission reduction targets. In the context of the demand growth we are seeing in the Corporate segment, delivering orders remains our biggest challenge as vehicle supply is still pretty tough out there and yet to recover. Related to that is, of course, the state of the used car market. And as we reported previously, secondhand vehicles remain at exceptional levels. As it stands, we do not expect that to change this calendar year. As supply constraints start to clear and used vehicle values begin to normalize, we will then also be able to start accelerating the delivery of the large order bank we have in train. However, we expect this to be a prolonged and gradual process. Please now turn to Slide #5 for a look at our Novated segments in Australia. You'll recall that we reported a very mixed first half in the segment in February with the first quarter still very much dominated by the COVID-19 impact. And whilst Victoria was still affected by the lockdowns in the second half, we saw a strong overall improvement during the period. I'll provide you with an update on this a bit later on now that we are again dealing with similar challenges. Our team made a massive effort to maximize the benefits of improving consumer sentiment by fundamentally revitalizing our marketing approach in this segment. We digitized processes across the full spectrum of customer interaction, moving that into action online, and in the process, redesigning the shape and focus of our content, particularly our marketing content. The resultant improvement in the customer's digital experience also allowed us to become more targeted in our approach with marketing content being tailored to specific employees -- employers, should I say, and drivers. These efforts to ensure retention of existing accounts was very strong again during this period. In addition, we won several new accounts at the big end of town, albeit some of those wins were on panels. The outcome of all of this was that we achieved a sustained recovery in demand for our product, initially manifesting itself in a recovery in leads and to beyond pre-COVID-19 levels and subsequently, in the form of firm new orders, which are now also ahead of pre-COVID-19 levels. In fact, in our Novated segments in Australia, the number of orders at 1 July 2021 was more than 3x higher than at 1 July 2020, a good result indeed. In addition to that, we increased our share of wallet per lease by increasing the penetration of accessory products in that business. Again, as was the case in the Corporate segment, supply issues have meant that many of these orders will only be delivered and accounted for in the '22 financial year. If you could please turn to Slide #6 for my comments on our U.K. business now. What a difference 6 months makes. In February, I was talking about how the macro situation in the U.K. had been far more challenging than in Australia and New Zealand. Now, as the country continues to open up, the economy is seeing ongoing improvements. The expectation is now that national economic outputs in the U.K. will return to pre-COVID levels before the end of this calendar year. And in line with that, the U.K. car market has seen a strong recovery over the past 6 months. Car registrations for 2022 are expected to reach 2.12 million. That's against 2.3 million registrations in 2019. So a pretty strong recovery. Light commercial has been particularly strong with van registrations reaching their highest level in the last 10 years. That obviously works very well for our business as we've carved out a very interesting niche in that space. And so we are doing well out of that trend. Elsewhere, tax breaks in full electric and low CO2 hybrids have significantly boosted business and consumer interest in such vehicles. Those types of vehicles now account for 22% of new vehicle sales against 13% the same time last year, significant growth in anyone's books. Remarkably, Tesla's Model 3 was the best-selling new car in the U.K. in 2021. We've obviously carved out a strong reputation for ourselves in this space with our eStart solution, and that is duly reflected in the percentage of lower emission vehicles in our U.K. fleet. These low-emission vehicles now account for 1/5 of our existing fleet, which is significantly higher than the National Car Park. In terms of business development, we continue to register good wins across the corporate SME and employee benefit segments, with the latter doing particularly well as consumer sentiment continued to grow. 8 sizable new employee benefit schemes were launched during the second half, and we are awaiting a decision from a number of very large employee benefit customers in the first quarter of this financial year. In line with the supply challenges everyone is facing across the globe, we continue to see extended lead times and a further lengthening of our order book in the U.K. The good news though is as the case is -- as is the case in Australia, used vehicle values have remained at exceptional levels across our book in the U.K. Oddly, despite the improvement in the economic outlook and the fact that we are not in a GFC-type situation, we have seen the funding environment become somewhat challenging in the U.K. market. All in all, our U.K. business has proven extraordinarily resilient during the COVID period, performing strongly throughout. As the situation in the U.K. continues to improve, we expect our business to pick up further speed over there. Turning now to Slide #7 and New Zealand. The New Zealand economy continues to recover from the effects of COVID-19. General business sentiment improved on the back of that and businesses are becoming increasingly confident to invest and hire. Similar to the Australian situation, new vehicle supply issues persisted during the period with a 3- to 6-month average wait for standard ICE vehicles and a 6- to 8-month average wait for electric and hybrid vehicles. In line with that, used vehicle pricing remains at record levels in that market. So a consistent theme you see throughout all our operations across the 3 countries. Tender activity is strong. And while competitive behavior is mostly rational, we have seen the same competitor as in Australia adopting some novel pricing tactics. One particular aspect of the tender request that we've seen and business opportunities that we come across regularly in that market is the large proportion of demand for our electric vehicle and mobility solutions in that market. New Zealand is tracking well ahead of Australia in terms of adoption of fully electric vehicles. Electric vehicle know-how is rapidly becoming a must-have in the pursuit of these opportunities as is the ability to develop an integrated approach to mobility requirements for our customers. We're obviously delighted to see that trend accelerate as it plays into our well-recognized expertise in this space. Over the years, we've built significant expertise working with companies in the energy sector, and this has helped us record another great win in that sector over the period. We also converted a number of accounts from managed only to funded. This included one of our marquee customers in that market. And as you know, that's a consistent strategy at SG Fleet, and that was a very pleasing result for that business over the last 6 months. A number of further opportunities on the horizon for us as we strengthen our market position in New Zealand. And again, the challenge, as in Australia and the U.K., will be to clear the order pipeline, which remains at record levels. If you could now turn to Slide #8 for a quick update on our tender activity and product penetration trends across our business. We've now provided this update for a number of periods, and I'm happy to report continued good growth and progress for us in activity levels. Tender as well as other business opportunity activity in the second half of 2021 was again higher than in the previous period, and many of these are yet to conclude. So a busy tender book continues into this period. Amongst the completed tenders we pursued, we increased our success rate across both the Corporate and Novated segments to 52% and 82%, respectively. I think it's important to say that the win rates in Novated is clearly unusual at 82%, and we're likely to see it come off, but we'll take -- we'll certainly take it in this period. Retention of existing company accounts is at over 99% across the Corporate and Novated segments, a wonderful result again for the business and something we are very, very proud of. That means we are adding a significant number of new accounts to a customer book that is seeing little or no churn. At the same time, within the book, we are consistently bringing in additional products, and our customers are taking these in significant numbers. During the second half, we saw penetration of our DingGo product grow significantly within our customer base, and this was across our large corporate and government base, which is very pleasing. Of the total book, more than half are now taking up multiple products. That was 1/3 about 3 reporting periods ago, so great growth there. Penetration is even higher amongst government customers with 2/3 taking up multiple products. And amongst our top customers, all but 1 take up multiple products. So great cross-selling and penetration coming through, as we've talked about for a number of periods. In other words, we have a larger number of customers taking up additional products on both fronts, and so we are seeing further opportunities emerge all the time. At the same time, most of these additional products, including Bookingintelligence, generate revenue on an ongoing basis. So they are further shifting our revenue profile towards recurring revenue, a strategic goal of ours that Kevin and I have talked about for a number of periods now. I'll come back later to provide an update on developments in our business. And in the meantime, I'll hand over to Kevin to take you through our numbers. Thank you.

Thanks, Robbie. If you could please turn to Slide 10. This is a truly remarkable period for the business. We saw growth in new vehicle orders exceed 25%, but frustratingly, the disruptions to new car supply meant that our growth in new funded deliveries was only 8.6% up versus pcp. The remainder of these vehicle orders banked up in our pipeline. COVID had a material impact on some of our customers. And this, together with the impact of disruptions to new car deliveries, meant that our fleet size reduced versus pcp. Fortunately, we have a diversified business because these new vehicle supply disruptions, coupled with an increased demand for used vehicles, translated into unprecedented profits at the back end. The end result was growth of 41.8% in underlying NPAT for the year. I'll go into more detail on the following slides. Turning over to Slide 11 and looking at the fleet size and order pipeline. The fleet size reduced by 3.1% versus pcp, with the reduction largely coming from the Novated channel, driven by early termination from employees in the airline and university sectors who were particularly impacted by COVID-19. As previously mentioned, orders grew by more than 25% versus pcp. And this, coupled with disruptions to new vehicle suppliers, resulted in growth of 83% in our order pipeline. Robbie will come back to that a bit more -- a bit later. Turning to Slide 12 and looking at the fleet mix. The development that I explained on the previous slide has meant that the product mix has continued its shift in favor of corporate leasing. Over to Slide 13 and looking at the key categories of revenue. The management and maintenance line item reduced slightly because of the reduction in the fleet under management. Additional products and services and finance commission were both impacted by the reduction in novated deliveries. The inability to deliver new orders meant that a large number of customers extended their leases. Whilst we still earn a finance commission on an extension, it is lower than what it would be on a new delivery. Turning to Slide 14. As I previously mentioned, this year, we really saw the benefit of having a diversified business because the disruptions at the front end translated into unprecedented market prices at the back end. Used car prices were at never-seen-before levels. And this, together with a slight uptick in volumes, caused a 246% increase in end-of-lease income for the year. Net rental income grew because of an increase in on-balance sheet lending. This was predominantly from the U.K., but there was a small contribution from our securitization during the period. Please turn to Slide 15 for a look at the net revenue position after deducting direct costs. On an overall basis, net revenue was up by 15% due to the factors explained on the previous slides. The exceptionally strong used vehicle market has more than doubled the proportion of end-of-lease income to 27% from 11% in the pcp and has increased the contribution from the Corporate channel from 52% to 65%. Looking at the OpEx on Slide 16. The increase in OpEx was largely driven by an increase in employment costs, notwithstanding the reduction in the average number of FTEs. This was because FY '20 had the benefit of COVID-related salary reductions, no STI payments and the reversal of the share-based payments due to nonvesting, whereas in FY '21, we incurred all of those costs as we would in any normal year. IT costs were also lower, 8% lower in FY '21 because we did not have a repeat of the costs of the group-wide rollout of Office 365, which occurred last year. Touching on the balance sheet and dividend on Slide 17. Cash generation was strong at 135% of statutory EBITDA. We've presented the net corporate debt and leverage numbers as we always do, but this year, the numbers are a bit meaningless because we are holding cash from the rights issue in respect to the LeasePlan acquisition since that deal has not completed yet. The Board has declared a dividend of $0.05393 per share, which is based on NPATA after deducting deal costs. This brings the total dividend for the year to $0.12585 per share, an increase of 25.9% versus pcp. The payout ratio has increased slightly to 68.7% as a one-off to compensate for the impact of the rights issue since there are no attributable earnings to those new shares as a result of the transaction not having completed yet. I'll now hand back to Robbie.

Thank you, Kevin. On Slide 19, I'd like to come back to Kevin's earlier comments regarding orders and pipeline. Globally, we've seen a significant disruption of auto manufacturing compounded by a shortage of critical components throughout the supply chain. In addition, transport and shipping of parts and finished vehicles are also being disrupted, as you'd be aware, in multiple industries. In 2020, global production was down 16% on the previous year and 22% down on 2018. And current forecasts suggests that 2021 output will only be around 2013, 2014 levels. So in other words, it will take some time before production will normalize. In fact, most manufacturers are telling us they expect no improvement in supply until early next year. I know that some of you look at the VFACTS numbers which seem to be showing a significant improvement in vehicle sales. I think it's important to remember 2 things about those numbers. One, they're often coming off a low base of last year. And two, they also relate to some very specific marks that are not necessarily ordered by our customer base. The disruptions to new car supplies impacted our business as a whole, but there is less of an impact on corporate customers because based on our advice, they tend to order very far in advance. Conversely, novated drivers take a little longer to order and order closer to the end of their lease expiries. And so we're now encouraging novated drivers to bring their orders forward. Also, novated driver specific -- tend to order more specific vehicles and more bespoke sort of assets. And so there is a difference there as well. I think it's important to note, as I did in the last half, that our strong relationships with the dealer network, given the way we trade vehicles with them, ensures that we are getting good access to stock when the stock is around. The problem is that there's not a lot of stock around. As Kevin mentioned, the good news is that we grew orders by 25% when compared to the 2020 financial year. And in fact, this number would have been significantly higher if we adjust for the spike that resulted from the very large Australia Post order that we delivered literally in the last few days of the 2020 financial year. Combined with the supply disruptions, that means that we have about 3,100 additional vehicles that we were unable to deliver in the 2021 financial year when compared to the same point 1 year ago. Had we been able to deliver those vehicles, our new funded deliveries would have been -- would have grown by 25% for the year. That would have been a really great result. But in other words, the 83% growth in the order pipeline is not just delays. It's also very significant growth in our book. So we are very happy with that outcome indeed. We obviously see the benefit of these orders in the current financial year as we start to deliver all of these assets. If you could please turn to Slide #20 now. In February, I talked about a global shift towards greater acceptance and penetration of low- and zero-emission vehicles. I want to provide an update on this topic as so much has happened in the space, both in our business and globally and in terms of customer interest in the last 6 months. The introduction of electric vehicles is about a greater environmental responsibility, and it is our duty to deploy the expertise we have in this area and help our customers reduce the impact of their transport activities and make a positive contribution to the environment. We were one of the first providers to recognize the positive potential of low-emission vehicles in a fleet context and launched our eStart zero-emission vehicle transition planning service a number of years ago. eStart effectively wraps up the entire EV universe for our customers, from development of the transition process to implementation of a full-blown EV strategy. Together with our customers, we select fit-for-purpose vehicles, develop a fleet policy in which ICE and EV vehicles coexist, help with the design and implementation of the support infrastructure setup and integrate operating costs into the broader fleet billing. So as you can see, it's a full-blown package for our customers as they negotiate this transition. Many organizations are now looking to implement an EV transition as part of their broader emission reduction approach. Over the past year, in addition to our work with government customers, some of the largest names in corporate Australia have approached us for assistance with the development of their own low- and zero-emission strategies. At the same time, we continue to develop our partnerships with energy and infrastructure companies so that we can work together to implement the strategies we developed for these companies. Not surprisingly, we've seen a sharp rise in the use of more environmentally friendly transport solutions across the fleets we manage. At the end of the 2021 financial year, we achieved a 47% year-on-year increase in the number of low-emission vehicles managed in our Australian business. Fast forward that trend and you are looking at the current situation in the U.K., where, as I said earlier, a pure electric vehicle has become the top-selling model. In the U.K., low- and zero-emission vehicles now account for about 1/5 of our fleet. Australia has some way to go to reach those levels. But more importantly, within Australia, that number is primarily made up of hybrids at this stage. Full EVs make up half of that number in the U.K. In other words, 1 in 10 vehicles on our U.K. fleet is a zero-emission vehicle. You can see where the trend is going. While we don't operate a very large internal fleet ourselves, we also try and lead by example. So 12% of our own fleet here in Australia uses low-emission propulsion technology. That is ahead of the Car Park in this environment. We're also making sure that, that number is increasing as we replace older vehicles. But we also lead, by example, as a management team and a large number of the members of our management team are opting now for low-emission vehicles. So this is becoming a real theme in our environment. I mentioned earlier in the year that we were the first to register hydrogen or fuel cell electric fleet vehicles in Australia. Some of these vehicles are now in operation with one of our significant government customers. We're also starting to look at hydrogen-powered commercial vehicle fleets for our customers, a very interesting space, and developments will be pretty fast in that space over the coming periods. Of course, it's not only about the vehicle. We're developing solutions that integrate data from charging stations across the country and provide fleet managers with a wide range of insights such as billing information, cost of electricity consumed and utilization rates of customer-owned stations. We're also participating as the only mobility solutions provider in a groundbreaking project called REVS, which is in pioneering research to reduce the overall cost of electric vehicles, while at the same time supporting the electric grid. The findings from this project will further enhance our leadership in the provision of EV-based mobility as well as the operation of closed-loop power generation and resale structures in the Australian environment. So the space is developing rapidly, many interesting developments, and we're excited to be at the forefront of a large number of these developments. Would you please now turn to Slide #21 for a few comments on the evolution of our role as a mobility solutions provider in our markets. We are strategically executing our evolution into a Mobility-as-a-Service or MaaS provider. Our current products and services offering is just the first stage in what is a rapid evolution towards building a capability. And solutions such as Bookingintelligence are at the core of this process. I mentioned earlier that we are seeing a greater focus on ensuring a more efficient use of available transport assets. Our customers are adding more of their existing units to their pools for shared use to achieve that objective. There's no doubt that this has driven a rapidly increasing interest in our Bookingintelligence asset management solution, which allows them to manage those pools very efficiently. Vehicle pools operate essentially as a car sharing arrangement and rely on software locating, booking, allocating and tracking vehicles, then allocating operational expenses to the correct cost centers. Bookingintelligence is, in fact, the largest car share software platform in the country with about 1.2 million bookings in the 2021 financial year by over 40,000 users across about 60 customers. That's more than a tripling of journey bookings and users in 1 year. We see the trend continuing in this regard. Think of Bookingintelligence as facilitating the provision of MaaS in an organization's pool environment. Our capabilities now will start to evolve as we apply this approach and the solutions that make it possible outside of a closed environment and into the public domain. As I've talked about over the past couple of periods, in the not-too-distant future, we think mobility will rely on smaller shared vehicles that utilize capacity more effectively rather than inflexible larger transport vehicles locked into preset routes. Greater efficiency and shifting mobility preferences may mean less cars on the road in the long term, but many more of those cars will be owned and operated by mobility providers such as ourselves, who can manage people and vehicle movements professionally. As I just said, the next step in the evolution is the provision of MaaS in a wider context. We've been progressively developing or investing in relevant solutions in this regard for a long period now. Examples of that are our investment in Carly, which provides subscription services. Demand for these services has increased exponentially over the last year as demand for transport flexibility has increased. However, Carly is facing the same supply challenges as we see in our business. Talking of Carly. I think in reality, all of our leasing products, including many leases and inertia arrangements, are effectively subscription services. That is what we do for a living. We're also looking into the capabilities and more efficient utilization of connected cars, of which we already have quite a number on our fleet. The objective is to consistently improve the integration of these vehicles or telematic data in general into our Bookingintelligence and Fleetintelligence management portals. This data collection and utilization will become an integral part of how we provide fully integrated mobility solutions to our customers. The ultimate goal is to bring our innovation in the areas of vehicle technology and management, enhanced fleet management and trip management more broadly together to offer an end-to-end MaaS capability which will manage the full mobility process from journey planning, transport data and access, to booking and payment. Developing this capability is a journey, and we've been leading this journey in our industry now for the past 6 years. That concludes my comments regarding our innovation activities. If you could turn to Slide 22 for a brief update on how we're managing the current COVID situation. As you're all aware, we are dealing with the impact of a number of lockdowns right now. By now, we obviously have quite a bit of experience as most businesses do in responding to these situations. And as was the case last year, our immediate focus has been on the well-being of our people and our customers. Our aim is to do the right thing both in the office and in your daily lives. From the start of the lockdown and where required, we've moved almost all staff back to a work-from-home environment. Customer contact in affected states has moved fully online again as, of course, has our interaction with investors. Over the last 1.5 years, we've further enhanced our ability to develop solutions to help our customers maintain business-as-usual operations in this environment. We've reactivated our We Are Here to Help campaign, which offers practical solutions, including subscription services to deal with the disruption of mobility to the workplace as well as the movement of workers on the job. At the same time, we're managing practical business impacts such as the temporary closing down of some dealerships and other suppliers. Importantly, though, I really want to stress that the operational efficiency drive we've been on for a number of years has continued uninterrupted while we've managed the COVID-19 impact, and we've seen a lot of success in improving process across our business. And in fact, some of this has actually been accelerated by the need to do it because of COVID. In terms of demand for our products and services, at this stage, we're seeing little or no impact in the Corporate business, and this is in line with the experience we saw last year. In the Novated segment, we are monitoring lead activity carefully for any lockdown impacts. And in fact, over the last week or so, we are starting to see signs of a small slowdown in orders, which is to be expected in these lockdowns. Finally, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the soon-to-be completed LeasePlan acquisition. Turning now to Slide #23. We're expecting the final regulatory approval imminently, and that means in the next few days, and we are confident that we'll be able to announce completion as planned on the 1st of September. Since the initial announcement, we've been working hard on integration planning, and it's now in a very advanced stage. I can say that this process has been very efficient and very productive. It will certainly help us make the most of the benefits the acquisition brings to us. Organizational structures have been finalized, and we've made absolutely sure that all relevant expertise is being retained. It's been really good to see how the teams have pulled together to get us to this point. And very pleasingly, something I couldn't say when we last spoke about the acquisition because we hadn't spent enough time together, our businesses feel very well aligned culturally, and that certainly is going to be massively helpful in this integration process. Despite the occasional frustration about not being able to meet face-to-face, the lockdowns haven't really slowed the process, and we really are ready to go and raring to go. It's a very exciting time for both businesses to come together. And the future is very bright for the combined entity. As you're aware, profits from the acquired business, which incidentally has been trading as well as we have over the past few months, will start accruing to SG Fleet upon completion. If you could please turn to Slide #24 now for a recap on today's presentation. So in summary, our Australian Corporate business continued its strong performance, helped by strong interest in new products and solutions. Used vehicle values have remained very supportive throughout the period. In our Novated channel in Australia, while the impact of COVID was still felt in the beginning of the financial year, sentiment has recovered steadily since then despite some lockdown activity. That was duly reflected in a strong rebound of leads and orders to beyond pre-COVID levels. The U.K.'s fortunes have improved significantly in the last 6 months, and evidence of that was most pronounced in our employee benefits business over there. The business proved very resilient during the worst of COVID and has made further progress since then. In New Zealand, we continue to pick up blue-chip accounts, and we again face a challenge in delivering the orders we won during the period. Across the group, retention levels in our business were close to 100%, and we again reported further gains in terms of tender win rates and customer penetration. Interest in low- and zero-emission vehicles is growing in all geographies, and an increasing number of large customers are enlisting our help to organize and implement their vehicle transition processes. We've also witnessed a sharp increase in demand for products such as Bookingintelligence as governments and companies target greater efficiencies within their vehicle pools. The solutions we've already brought to market and are currently under development are paving the way towards the creation of an end-to-end integrated Mobility-as-a-Service capability for SG Fleet. This will be a massive growth engine for us over the coming years. Because these solutions generate revenue on an ongoing basis, they're also further shifting our revenue profile towards recurring revenue, again, a strategy we embarked on some periods ago. In terms of the immediate future, we do not expect a normalization of used car prices this calendar year. And after that, we think it will be a gradual normalization. In fact, we believe values are unlikely to fully return to pre-COVID levels. Similarly, supply disruption is unlikely to see much improvement during this half with global manufacturing levels taking some time to recover. The consequence of the strong performance of our business in terms of order growth, combined with this disruption, will push a significant pipeline of orders into the 2022 financial year. So far this year, we are seeing further growth in new business opportunities, both in the Corporate and Novated segments. We're seeing similar progress in the U.K. and in New Zealand. While we are currently dealing with some lockdowns, we are also in a much better position to address the operational challenges. And to date, there appears to be limited impact in customer demand. In our Corporate business, as I said, we are starting to see some signs of a slight order slowdown. In Novated, we're obviously watching the space closely, and we'll keep the market updated if there's a need to do so. Finally, we are nearing the completion of the LeasePlan acquisition. We are very excited to bring the businesses together. We think, obviously, that those profits will accrue to us once we close, hopefully, on 1 September. It's an absolutely transformational moment for SG Fleet and for everyone in the combined teams, and we're very excited to start delivering the significant benefits of that acquisition to you, our shareholders. We think the potential of this acquisition will continue to evolve as we bring the businesses together. And again, we'll keep you posted as we communicate further. Thank you all for your time. That brings to a close the formal part of the presentation. We are delighted to take your questions now.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie.

Just a couple. With the comment you made about how people are making orders far in advance, what's the underlying growth in orders because I assume that's having an impact on that increase that you're calling out?

Yes. So as I said, the underlying growth in orders, if we try -- are you asking what it would have looked like in a normalized sort of environment?

Yes, because you've called out that people make orders far in advance. So [indiscernible]...

No, I think all we were saying was we're trying to encourage orders far in advance because of the situation with deliveries. It doesn't change the profile of changeover. So what we're telling you is absolute and true growth. So the order pipeline has grown by about 83%. The -- if we try to normalize it and obviously, it's a bunch of moving parts that go into normalization, absolute growth for the year would have been about 25%.

Okay. And then just on the cost side, there's obviously a few moving parts around the sort of growth in operating expenses. Can you talk maybe what sort of underlying trends are? Because as you mentioned, there were some pay reductions last year. So what's the underlying cost growth?

So look, I mean underlying employment cost growth this year was pretty nominal. Yes, there weren't material remuneration increases across the business. But I think we are certainly starting to see wage pressure. And that probably won't be repeated. In FY '22, there will probably be a more material increase in underlying remuneration across the group.

Yes. And just on that, how are you managing leave provisions? Are you forcing people to take leave? Or is that building up and driving costs as well?

We're strongly encouraging leave, not forcing people.

Okay. And then just you called out the impact in fleet from specific sectors. Has that fully cycled through now? So is that something that we can [indiscernible]...

Sorry, it wasn't in fleet. It was in novated, importantly.

Sorry. Yes.

Yes. Look, is it fully cycled through? We certainly don't think there's a massive impact still to come. Look, the airlines are talking about some more redundancies, as you know. But certainly, it won't have the same sort of impact as it had previously because the numbers are generally much smaller. So in the context of the size of the fleet, it won't be nearly, nearly, nearly as material as we've called out. So yes, it's largely cycled through. But that's subject to what happens in our economies, and there's some unknowns developing again. So we're in a very positive space, but there are some unknowns that we all need to watch closely.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from Chenny Wang with Morgan Stanley.