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

Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for making the time to join us today. I know it's a particularly busy reporting day, so we do appreciate your time very much. My name is Robbie Blau, I'm the CEO of SG Fleet. With me today is Kevin Wundram, our CFO. I'll refer to the slide numbers as I go through the presentation. If you could please turn to Slide #3 now for a quick overview of the period. I'm delighted to report that our performance in the period benefited from continued strong order growth as well as an improvement in several areas, including better supply levels, particularly later in the period, and a stabilization in the labor environment. Positive momentum has been maintained across all businesses and in some markets and channels, we've seen an acceleration towards period end. Novated in Australia benefited from the EV government initiatives announced in the first half, but tellingly, ICE vehicle interest grew as well, leading to unprecedented activity levels in that channel. Another strong indicator of our continued momentum is the 4% increase in the group's total amount financed during the 2023 financial year, with every one of our channels recording growth on this measure. We started to see some improvements in supply towards the end of the period, but mainstream vehicles remain scarce. In line with that, used vehicles in the vehicle types that make up our operating lease fleet remained particularly strong. The delivery environment improved somewhat, yet our order pipeline again grew further as strong new business growth outpaced the delivery improvement. Larger order pipelines obviously mean locked in revenue will be delivered in future periods, as we've said for some time now. In Australia, EVs have clearly taken off, and this is playing nicely into our capabilities in this space. To optimize the benefits we are getting from the LeasePlan acquisition, we'll be reprioritizing the Australian system migration steps of the integration process. This will ensure we continue to give our customers the best possible service experience. I'll talk more about that a little later. Very pleasingly, we've completed the refinancing of the LeasePlan warehouse facility without any meaningful change in cost of funds and with an improvement in general terms. This is an excellent outcome for the business. Overall, the second half delivered a strong performance, and this has continued in the months since then. Please now turn to Slide #4 for a recap of the period in our Australian corporate or tool-of-trade channel. Generally, the business environment has remained stable. Tenders continue to come to market on a regular basis, and competition has been largely rational. As we have seen in previous years, many of our existing customers simply renewed or extended existing contracts. While for some EVs and nonmainstream models, supply has improved, models in higher demand for corporate fleet remained hard to get and delivery times lengthy. What has changed somewhat is that manufacturers now deliver on their promises even if delivery numbers remain limited. I'll come back to the supply situation across the group a little later. Another area where we have seen some welcome improvement is the labor environment, where things have stabilized somewhat and recruitment is becoming somewhat easier. Our win rates remain very healthy, both with the existing full service accounts and with organizations that move from managed-only to financed or are new to outsourcing. Whereas in previous periods, this meant we were simply adding volume to the pipeline. In the second half, the supply improvements in some areas have meant that we were also able to increase deliveries noticeably. This trend improved throughout the period with the corporate business achieving its best delivery numbers in the fourth quarter since about 2 years ago. While this is, of course, great news. In addition to that, business growth has been strong, so deliveries again could not keep up with orders and the pipeline grew further. This is a high-class problem to have in a sense, but it does highlight the future positive impact of a continued improvement in deliveries. As I said, I'll come back to the pipeline situation a little later. I'm also very happy to report that once again we saw increased interest in the value-add services we offer to our customers in the mobility space, and particularly Telematics and the DingGo accident management and repair platform. It won't come as a surprise also that demand for our eStart EV transition solution grew further, given what has happened in that space over the past 12 months. Please now go to Slide 5 for a look at our novated channel in Australia. We reached new highs in terms of novated leads in the first half, and this trend has just accelerated in the second half, helped by EV interest and a significant step-up in our marketing presence. We've increased on-site activation at our largest customers, supported by an enhanced library of novated and EV marketing and education content. We've also launched a number of campaigns in direct cooperation with manufacturers. This is a very pleasing development given the supply constraints over the last number of years. Customer interest has grown in line with that, with inquiry level setting new records during the period. This in turn led to quotes more than doubling in the first half. Not surprisingly, this was boosted by a dramatic increase in EV quoting during the period. As was the case in the tool-of-trade business, thankfully, we were able to deliver on this demand a bit more easily as the period progressed, with first quarter delivery numbers exceeding the previous high set in the first quarter of the 2022 financial year. In addition to the uptick in vehicle numbers, we also continued to make progress in terms of customer upsell. This was particularly marked in the legacy LeasePlan book. As reported previously, additional products and services historically weren't marketed strongly with LeasePlan drivers. But we are now seeing penetration levels there approaching that of SG Fleet customers. This was one of the potential revenue synergies we identified at the time of the acquisition, and even though we did not quantify expectations, it's good to see those being realized now. Given this rapid increase in activity levels, we are making sure we can respond to customer inquiries and service demand as efficiently as possible. We have strengthened resourcing as well as processing to manage orders, particularly for EVs. Additionally, building on the knowledge we gained across the group as well as the insights from the implementation of our eStart solution, we are in a position to rapidly step up our EV marketing presence, both in the form of educational collateral for our customers and the hands-on experience offered by our very popular EV drive days -- sorry, that should have been we were in a position to do. We already have stepped this up dramatically. Those efforts have produced what are industry-leading stats in terms of EV penetration for us. EV quoting increased 5-fold on the first half, but more pointedly, went up by 14x between the first and the third quarter of the financial year. In that quarter, about 40% of all novated quotes were for EVs. At the end of the period, we had 9x more EVs in the novated fleet than in the 2022 financial year, actually outscoring hybrid totals for the first time. EV quotes only partially replaced ICE quotes, which showed strong growth as well. This confirms what we have flagged previously and is a very important message to take home that the booming EV interest is not a simple substitution for ICE interest, but it's a genuine addition to our potential customer pool. Taking into account our typical employer profile, i.e., predominantly corporate, and our typical novated driver, we believe that our target driver is likely to be more attracted to EVs than would be the case for other employer and driver types. This will allow us to keep strong EV order flows beyond current incentives and beyond the end of the first vehicle life cycle of these vehicles. All in all, a really strong performance from our novated segment. I'll come back to EVs across other channels a little later. If you'd please turn now to Slide #6 for my comments on the New Zealand business. The impact of natural disasters created a fairly muted economic environment in New Zealand during the period. Despite this, vehicle registration numbers remain strong. Undoubtedly, this was helped by low emission vehicle buyers seeking to avoid the reduction in the clean car discount, which changed on July 1. Tendering activity has largely continued at the same pace across corporate and government there in New Zealand. There's clearly a significant public pressure on companies to do the right thing in terms of ESG, and many organizations are putting a strong emphasis on the ability to provide sustainable mobility solutions and EV-related services when issuing RFPs in the New Zealand market. While we have seen some signs of improved supply, used vehicle values have remained strong for us in New Zealand. Again, the impact of natural disaster there has played a role in the EV -- in the used vehicle values. We remain focused on expanding the services we provide to existing customers in this market, and this has not stopped us from, in addition to that, adding some big new accounts across a range of sectors. The sustainability focus I mentioned before and our recognized EV expertise has also helped us to some great wins for our eStart solution in that market as well as a number of further opportunities to win in that space. This will see us manage the electrification of vehicle fleets as well as the development of the supporting charging infrastructure for some significant entities in the New Zealand environment. Turning now to Slide #7 and our report back on the U.K. In the U.K., some of the 2022 concerns about interest rates continued to abate during the period. In due course, this led to a steady improvement in corporate sentiment and the business opportunities pipeline grew. At a national level, vehicle registration saw some growth helped by supply improvements in some vehicle categories and models. As more opportunities emerged, our business was able to step up its win activity over the period. This came in the shape of continued conversion of panel arrangements to sole supply, a strategy that we've been pursuing for some time now. The addition of vehicle units to existing customer fleets and some of those additions were pretty meaningful winning new divisions and other opportunities within existing customers. And noticeably, another period of significant success for our Novalease consumer product. A number of new accounts were signed as a result, and we also upsold the product to existing tool-of-trade accounts. There is no doubt that the upward pressure on both new and used vehicle prices is driving consumers to look for a more efficient way to access vehicles in the U.K. market, leading them to consider our salary sacrifice offering, particularly where there is an added tax incentive as is the case with EVs in the U.K. This is reflected in the rapid growth of the passenger vehicle EV proportion in our fleet. The added bonus of greater general consumer interest in salary sacrifice is, of course, that it is pushing employers that do not offer this benefit yet to start the dialogue with us on adding a Novalease type arrangement for their staff. Happily, following the Business Car Best Eco Initiative Award we received for the eStart solution in the first half of the financial year, we won the FleetNews Leasing Company of the Year award in the sub-20,000 vehicle category in the U.K. This is a significant win and a great result for our business and a very appropriate recognition for our team in the U.K. I'll now recap on the various comments I've made regarding supply, order pipelines and used vehicle values on Slide #8. During the second half, there has been some evidence that the supply environment is improving. However, global vehicle availability remains patchy, varies by manufacturer, and particularly in the case of ICE vehicles, is dependent on vehicle complexity, with cars with less chips and semiconductors generally becoming more available than more complex vehicles. In Australia, improvements are primarily driven by EVs and new market entrants with mainstream vehicles still remaining in short supply. We saw the typical June promotional activity, particularly in relation to the approaching end of the instant asset rights of initiative, and that inevitably compared well with June 2022. June was a strong year across the board for vehicle deliveries in Australia. Add to that, the massive jump in EV registrations predominantly from Tesla and BYD, with Testa delivering about 7,000 units in June and BYD going from 0 last year to 1,500 units in the same month. The port quarantine and processing situation has improved somewhat, but a backlog certainly remains. And harbor site storage is limited. So some manufacturers are actually holding up shipments deliberately as a result. One of the reasons Tesla got so many vehicles into the market is they actually take whole ships when they deliver their vehicles into Australia, and that sort of helped them get a massive volume to the market late in the '23 year. A number of mainstream manufacturers are still down on last year in terms of deliveries. So supply coming to us is still not sufficient to keep pace with the rapid growth in the order book, as I mentioned in my overview earlier. While the Tesla effect has helped us in terms of deliveries in the novated channel during the period, delivery growth in the corporate channel will continue to be hampered by the lack of typical fleet models. So on one hand, we have some improvements in supply and we are increasingly able to deliver, which is very positive. And on the other hand, we have our continued success in growing our order book at a rate significantly exceeding the supply environment. This means that the combined corporate novated pipeline is up 17% on the same time last year. In fact, compared to the fairly typical levels we were seeing 3 years ago, the combined pipeline in Australia is now more than 6x larger. That is a very significant statistic, this despite having the best quarter in terms of deliveries for quite some years. Assuming a gradual further improvement in supply, our immediate target is to maintain order growth and ramp up deliveries to match that growth so that the pipeline stabilizes and then ultimately normalizes at this elevated sort of level. That improvement in deliveries does, of course, also mean that we'll be able to bank the revenues from strong order growth in recent periods at a more rapid pace. Stronger supply in deliveries will also translate into a larger number of vehicles returning to us for disposal. Used market values have generally held up while commercial and plant and equipment used values remain exceedingly strong. Average gross profit on disposal remained fairly stable throughout the 2023 financial year for us. We anticipate that a gradual improvement in disposal volumes on the back of higher deliveries will on a dollar basis partially offset any declines we may see in average end-of-lease prices for the foreseeable future. This trend is expected to continue for the majority of the F '24 financial year. And so we don't see much change in strong residuals and increased deliveries. That obviously bodes well for the year. I'll now hand over to Kevin for a closer look at the numbers. Thank you.

Thanks, Robbie. If you could please turn to Slide 10. In this period, we've seen significant growth in deliveries, particularly in novated deliveries. This, together with an increase in end-of-lease disposal volumes has driven growth in net revenue of 12%. The used vehicle market continues to be exceptionally strong, albeit off the highs that we experienced at the start of the year. Our operating expenses continue to be impacted by current labor market conditions and our ongoing technology investments. The net result of the above is that our underlying NPAT grew by 9.4% versus pcp. If you could turn to Slide 11 for a look at the corporate fleet movement. The business continues to take more orders than can be delivered due to ongoing supply shortages from the mainstream manufacturers that make up a typical corporate fleet. New deliveries grew by 7.2% versus pcp, and our corporate order pipeline grew by 12% to 11,632 vehicles. The corporate-funded fleet size has reduced versus pcp as has the novated fleet, which I'll talk to on the next slide. The fleet size reduction is due to the buildup of orders in the pipeline, together with the fact that the LeasePlan business had several customers in runoff that were lost prior to the acquisition. This runoff has been lower than expected, but it will take a few more years to wash through. Turning to Slide 12 for the novated fleet segment. Novated orders grew strongly by 18.1% and deliveries by 18.6%, enabled by supply from nonmainstream manufacturers and a material uplift in electric vehicle volumes. 12% of novated deliveries in FY '23 were pure electric vehicles. At the end of the year, we have 6,462 novated orders in the pipeline, which is 27% higher than pcp. Touching briefly on the Lite Fleet on Slide 13, the Lite Fleet end of the year on 149,500 units, which is 2.9% up on pcp. Turning to Slide 14 for a look at the individual net revenue streams. Net rental and finance income grew by 18% as a result of growth in on balance sheet funding. Our on balance sheet book is now circa $1.6 billion, covering almost 53,000 vehicles. Over to Slide 15 and touching on net mobility services revenue. We were able to grow this line item by 2% during the period, driven by growth in the total fleet under management. Please turn to Slide 16. Net additional products and services income grew by 3.3%, driven by the growth in new funded deliveries and improved rebates due to integrated procurement volumes. Offsetting that somewhat was the tighter margins earned on our trade advantage product as customers demanded stronger pricing on the used car. Over to Slide 17 to look at finance commission. As I said, new funded deliveries increased by 13.3% versus pcp. However, we diverted about $100 million worth of originations from P&A funding towards the securitization warehouse, which caused the slight dip in finance commission. This is because on balance sheet funding produces annuity income over the life of the lease rather than upfront finance commission income. On a per unit basis, though, finance commission was higher as a result of higher average funded capital amount driven by new car price inflation and the growth in electric vehicles. Please turn to Slide 18. End-of-Lease vehicle risk income grew by 21% as a result of the growth in operating lease disposal volumes. The used vehicle market remains exceptionally strong, albeit off the peak that we saw in the middle of last year. Please turn to Slide 19 for a brief look at the fleet and credit provisions. The growth in the expected credit loss provision is driven by 2 factors. Firstly, as we shift volumes from P&A to warehouse funding, it triggers an increase in the ECL provision. And secondly, as vehicle usage patterns are returning to normal, we have more instances of vehicle running cost balances turning negative, which is a credit risk that we provide for. Over to Slide 20 for a look at operating expenses. Technology costs have increased materially due to our continued investment in our infrastructure platforms and cybersecurity measures. Employment costs increased by 12.8% versus pcp, driven by the increased headcount from the LeasePlan acquisition, coupled with the impact of current labor market conditions and record levels of staff turnover, both of which are causing material wage cost pressure. Fortunately, we have seen some improvement in staff turnover ratios in recent months. Touching on the balance sheet on Slide 21. The balance sheet remains in a strong position with corporate leverage at 1.4x, a slight reduction on the position we reported 12 months ago. Turning to Slide 22. Based on the 65% payout ratio, the Board has declared a final dividend of $0.0727 per share fully franked, which brings the total dividend for the year to $0.1618 per share, which is an increase of 7% versus the prior period. Please turn to Slide 23. In July this year, we extended our $1.3 billion autonomy 2021 securitization warehouses in Australia and New Zealand for a further 2 years. Notwithstanding the increase in bank and securitization funding margins since these warehouses were first put in place, we were able to limit the increase in cost of funds to an immaterial amount. We were also able to improve other terms of the facility, including a reduction in the equity requirement and improvements to eligibility criteria and portfolio parameters. We will now turn our attention to the extension of our corporate debt facilities, which mature in September next year. Finally, please turn to Slide 24. Cash generation came in at 103%, an improvement from the 92.6% that we reported in the pcp. I'll now hand back to Robbie for an operational update.

Thank you, Kevin. Turning to Slide 26 for the 5-year horizon slide we've presented for some time now. Under the cost and efficiency heading, we've completed the credit system replacement as planned. In terms of supply normalization and used value adjustment, as mentioned earlier, we've seen some isolated signs of this. Used vehicle values are expected to remain strong for the foreseeable future. Across the business, we also see trends continue to drive structural growth and demand for our services, such as the continued increase in outsourcing trends and greater EV take-up. At a company level, we also continued to expand our offering and make improvements to our service delivery, and this, in turn, allows us to drive greater penetration, particularly into the LeasePlan book and strengthen our customer relationships. The digitization of our customer experience is now gathering pace, and we'll be introducing a number of solutions that will optimize how we interact with our customers during the forthcoming period. This will yield clear benefits in terms of service quality as well as customer retention and penetration. It is precisely in order to protect and enhance these positive trends and ensure we continue to provide the best possible service to our customers that we continue to manage the LeasePlan integration in a sensible and pragmatic fashion. I will now go into more detail on this on Slide 27. The LeasePlan integration has continued as planned during the second half, and our focus firmly remains on benefit extraction by standardizing our offering across the 2 brands and leveraging our greater scale. In addition to the harmonization of our dealer network and process, we obtained improved supply arrangements for tires, accident management and roadside assistance. This is obviously in addition to the similar outcomes we achieved for fuel in the first half. The integration is generally going very, very well. We've brought together our people and integrated various departments. We've taken full advantage of our enhanced scale, and we've been very successful in retaining customers and increasing product penetration. Our planning and work towards the full integration continues, and we are constantly reviewing processes and products and their impact on customers and our service to those customers. The changes we are making are positive from a product, risk and customer point of view, but change always comes with some temporary disruption. While for the most part, the integration process remains unchanged, we formed a view that we can improve the customer experience during the system migration phase by making several planned products and services changes in the LeasePlan system and under the old brand initially. We are already in the process of moving simpler customer accounts onto our SG Fleet system, but we will not move more complex customers over to the SG Fleet system while we roll out these products and services changes. Completing the pre-migration product harmonization in the LeasePlan system first will ensure a smoother transition for customers when they do migrate to the SG Fleet system. The greater similarity between the SG Fleet and LeasePlan books in New Zealand means there is no need to take the same approach over in New Zealand. Work on the New Zealand system continued as planned and will be all but complete by the end of the current financial year. We obviously want to ensure we continue to give our customers the best possible service experience and not burden them with too much change. This does mean the process will take longer and the final stages of the Australian system migration will now be completed towards the end of the 2025 financial year, at which point we will start benefiting from the remaining acquisition synergies in the 2026 year. As indicated before, this is the bulk of the total synergies. The synergies planned for the current financial year will be maintained and there will be continued synergy extraction throughout the 2025 financial year. This reprioritization has no impact on the current financial year, and the minor synergies flagged for the year are expected to remain and be delivered. We reconfirm the synergies from the acquisition. And in addition, we are looking at opportunities to extract additional benefits over this time. I've talked about the EV boom in the novated channel earlier. Please turn to Slide 28 for a look at EVs across the group and their impact on our business performance. Australia has made massive progress in terms of EV penetration in the last year or so on the back of a number of government initiatives. New EV registrations are predominantly private, highlighting that companies and government departments are yet to make the leap as they have in Europe and the U.S. That means that there is a second wave to come in Australia, and our tool-of-trade business is yet to see the positive impact EVs have had on our novated business. Given the complex nature of fleet EV transition, organizations are likely to require the help of an EV specialist such as SG Fleet to manage this transition and this process. That, in turn, is likely to give further impetus to the fleet management outsourcing trend we described earlier. There is no doubt this burgeoning interest is more than an incentive-driven temporary phenomenon. We are witnessing a significant shift in our customers' mindset and buying behavior, with the importance of adopting cleaner and greener means of transportation increasingly front of mind, both for consumers and organizations. As one of the country's largest vehicle [ Audio Gap ], we are playing a key role in bringing EVs to local drivers, accounting for a significant proportion of new EV registrations nationally. In June this year, SG Fleet was responsible for close to 10% of all Tesla registrations in Australia. The number of EVs in our Australian fleet doubled in the 12 months to December 2022 and then more than tripled in the 6 months since then. The number of EVs in our New Zealand fleet has been growing steadily for a longer period now, but still doubled over the last 18 months. As you will be aware, EV take up in the U.K. is significantly ahead of that in the Australian region. Current forecasts estimate that about 1/4 of vehicles in the U.K. will be battery EVs by next year. SG Fleet U.K. has clearly established itself as an EV specialist in the local market, getting industry recognition for its know-how and sharing its insights across the entire SG Fleet organization. A feature of this market is the high uptake of light commercial EVs, which account for 1/3 of our EV -- U.K. EV fleet. With light commercial EVs largely unavailable in Australia and New Zealand at this stage, our U.K. experience in this vehicle class again gives us a head start when helping corporate customers when the electrification of their commercial fleet will get underway in earnest over the coming years. At the end of the 2023 financial year, EVs accounted for close to 22% of SG Fleet's U.K. fleet. And with about 37% of new orders during the period going to EVs, this percentage will continue to increase. As mentioned earlier, recent increases in EV penetration in our U.K. fleets have been predominantly driven by passenger vehicles in the shape of salary sacrifice or company car arrangements. An astonishing 80% of all our personal contract hire vehicles comparable to novated are pure EVs. Clearly, the U.K. experience is well ahead of that in Australia and New Zealand, so we do believe we have the best position in the market to help Australia and New Zealand customers with their EV plans. What does the EV boom mean for us from a financial performance perspective is the big question. Well, firstly, our EV expertise is opening up new doors for us in terms of business development. As mentioned earlier, it's bringing a new target segment to us in the novated channel. And on a per unit basis, we do indeed expect the overall effect to be positive. While a lot of income drivers in the vehicle cycle remain the same whatever the propulsion technology, at this stage, the average amount funded for an EV is about 52% higher than for a petrol engine vehicle, and that will, of course, benefit us in terms of financing income. In terms of the maintenance costs, our experience in the U.K. has been that maintenance profile might vary, but that total costs are not materially different. Notably, tires are expected to be more costly and get more wear given the acceleration and weight of EVs. If you could now turn to Slide 29 for a few words on our recent progress in the ESG space. SG Fleet's approach to long-term value creation, as I've said before, for all of our stakeholders is driven by the principle that industry-leading ESG behavior should be integrated into our daily business practices. Our yearly sustainability statement, which is published in September, provides an account of how we are working towards this objective. During the second half, our Board approved the company's new harmonized environmental policy, which outlines how we'll be improving our environmental performance and management. This policy has also set a target for us to reduce emission intensity significantly by 2030. We believe that we can create a positive environmental impact not only by reducing our own footprint, but also by shaping and supporting behaviors with our various stakeholders, including, very importantly, our customers. SG Fleet's core expertise is mobility. In the past and -- in the past period, we stepped up the way in which we share our know-how and our operational scale by introducing our customers to the latest advances in electric vehicles and micro mobility via our e-drive days and our investments in Zoomo. Following several years of significant socioeconomic changes and the resulting impact on individuals' lives and workplaces, we've also increased our efforts dramatically to support the health and mental well-being of our people. During the second half, we introduced a number of additional initiatives to provide a better and more flexible workplace and increased employment benefits. As in previous periods, we supported a wide range of initiatives in the countries in which we operate. These included -- and this list is just some, but not all -- road safety weeks in Australia and New Zealand, the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust, Pink Shirt Day, support for cancer research in the U.K. and Motor Neuron Disease Association in the U.K. and many other worthwhile initiatives. Looking ahead, we'll focus on further aligning our ESG values across the organization to take full advantage of the strong commitment of our people and obviously sound ethical behaviors. Please turn now to Slide #30 for a summary of today's presentation. In summary, the second half exceeded our expectations with our performance in the period benefiting from continued strong order growth and better supply levels, particularly later in the period. Labor pressure stabilized, which allowed us to tackle some of the service bottlenecks we reported in February. Momentum in the Australian corporate business was maintained, and we started reaping some rewards for our good performance in previous periods as deliveries picked up towards period end. The novated channel saw unprecedented activity levels across inquiries, quotes, orders and deliveries. While obviously, the EV boom was a contributor to that, we also achieved strong growth with ICE vehicles, confirming we now have access to a larger pool of driver targets. This positive impact on orders will continue to play out over future periods, and the EV transition will eventually also manifest itself in our very large tool-of-trade channel. The focus on sustainability continued in New Zealand, helping us to major eStart contract wins in the government space over there. After earlier interest rate concerns in the U.K., business sentiment has improved and that translated to an acceleration in business activity towards the end of the financial year. While supply showed some improvement and we had our best delivery quarter for some time, our new business writings remain strong and are still leading to increases in the order pipeline, a very positive sign for the future, obviously. We anticipate that a gradual improvement in disposal volumes on the back of higher deliveries will on a dollar basis partially offset any possible decline in average end-of-lease prices for the foreseeable future. We reprioritized the number of projects that are part of the LeasePlan integration to ensure we continue to maintain and enhance the value add of our products and service experience of our customers. And I think the important point I want to make there is that this is a long-term game for us, gaining this significant scale advantage in Australia is a long-term game and we have to do the right thing by the business for the long term. And we think that these decisions are absolutely going to benefit the business in a financial and nonfinancial way very significantly over the long term. While this means that the full run rate of acquisition synergies will come a little later, we certainly reconfirm the full synergy benefits. And as I said earlier, we continue to look for additional synergies. It was -- this re-prioritization certainly does not alter any of our expectations for the F '24 financial year. And in addition, we believe the better performance in the second half of F '23 will carry over into the current period. In conclusion, we are positive that we will continue to deliver growth in F '24 in all areas of our business. Thank you all for your time, and we'll now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Allan Franklin with Canaccord Genuity.

Look, great to see the commentary and the uptick in the novated side. Wouldn't mind just starting off there, please. Just in terms of the -- of the sort of consumer that is coming through in that novated, do you feel like that is within a typical subset of what you've seen before? Or to what extent are the new orders coming in, coming from a buyer that perhaps wouldn't have used novated before?

I think it's a mixture, Allan. As I've said, we do think there's a net increase in the pool. So it's a mixture of both.

And just on your comment that the -- I guess the corporate wave is yet to come. Just interested just terms of the -- what the drivers might be to that? I mean I would have thought both Tesla and BYD would be open options for corporate fleets. Is that not a fair observation? Or I guess to what extent...

A correct observation. Tesla is not correctly priced for corporates. And I think corporates are not quite jumping into the Chinese made sort of electric vehicles just yet. I think time will change that. But right now, both of those vehicles are not obvious choices for different reasons.

Sure. And just on the corporate side, just any additional commentary you can make on the extensions piece? So it does feel like there's sort of, I guess, heightened extensions coming through at the moment. Is that obviously just a continuation of the supply discussion that we've been having? Or is there anything else worth drawing out?

There's nothing else. It's a continuation of the supply discussion. They've been pretty stable for the last couple of periods. And they're stable at a high level and that's because of supply constraints.

Sure. And then just one last one, just on the divisionals, please. It looked like the U.K. profit was down, but there also looks to be some sort of change to segmental corporate allocations as well. But a comment on the U.K. profitability as well as how you might be reallocating cost differently [ in ]'23?