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

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SG Fleet 2024 Half Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Robbie Blau. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us on what is a very busy reporting day today. My name is Robbie Blau. I'm the CEO of SG Fleet. With me today is Kevin Wundram, our CFO. As usual, I'll refer to the slide numbers as I go through the presentation. If you could please turn to Slide 3 for a quick overview of the period. I'm delighted to report that the acceleration we experienced towards the end of the previous period across our markets and channels has carried on into the first half of the '24 financial year. Combined with some improvements in supply, this has meant we are now increasingly able to benefit from a long uninterrupted sequence of financial periods with strong order growth. The consequence of that has been growth in all revenue lines in our business, with the exception of the anticipated reduction in net vehicle risk income. The fact that the increase in revenue generated by the strong deliveries more than offset the adjustments in end of lease disposal income in this period, is, again, strong evidence of the natural hedge in our business model. Order growth has reached new highs across both the corporate channel and the novated channel yet again. We were able to deliver exceptional volumes in novated, as we'll talk about a little later, reducing the pipeline in that channel somewhat. But in corporate, despite the stronger deliveries, the pipeline in that channel remained largely unchanged. Pleasingly, we achieved growth both in the Funded and Lite fleet, with Funded deliveries up close to 36%. Used vehicle values adjusted gradually during the period, and we expect this trend to continue before stabilizing well above pre-COVID levels. Labor cost increases partially connected to the integration work and partially as a result of general wage inflation, inflated operating expenses, as did other integration-related expenditures. We'll obviously be able to phase out a significant portion of these excess costs once the integration is completed. Both the integration and our digitization drive are progressing very well, and the platform we are building through these projects will fundamentally reshape our company and our ability to grow. Please turn to Slide #4 now for a recap of the period in our Australian corporate or Tool-of-Trade business. The new business pipeline in the corporate channel has continued to grow throughout the period with December tender activity reaching levels not seen for a number of years. This has continued since then, and we're seeing a very solid pipeline of further opportunities. Competition in this environment has remained strong but rational with just 1 or 2 industry players occasionally being aggressive on price. Supply continues to be insufficient to reduce our very large delivery pipeline. I'll come back to the supply situation and what it's meant for our order pipeline a little later. After a period of higher wage inflation, things have been stabilizing somewhat, and we are seeing workers generally taking a longer-term view on their careers. This has reduced the job hopping [indiscernible] prevalent across all sectors in previous years. For us, this has meant lower staff turnover, which combined with continued improvements in processes and higher automation has allowed us to step up training activities and boost service efficiency and quality across the workforce. The high level of prospecting activity again delivered a very significant number of customer wins. Our teams have continued to identify and convert a number of sale and leaseback opportunities in the period. We've also received an increased level of global tender referrals through our partnership with Ayvens. Ayvens is the combination of the former LeasePlan and ALD businesses. This has helped us to a few good wins late in the period. Another highlight has been the commercial segment in this period. The continued boom in government spending on new infrastructure programs has boosted demand for commercial units and equipment. We anticipate that the strength in commercial will continue for at least the remainder of the '24 calendar year and we are very well placed to take advantage of that space given our almost unique skill sets in that space. All in all, orders have continued to grow, and we are seeing a very healthy volumes of further opportunities to add to this in coming periods. While the supply improvement we have seen in this segment is still insufficient to make a meaningful [ dent ] in our order pipeline, we certainly were able to increase deliveries and benefit from the significant order pipeline we have built up over recent years. Continued strong interest in our additional products and services has helped our competitive positioning, enhancing our ability to win tenders and attract new customers to outsourcing. It has also delivered additional revenue from existing accounts. During the period, the DingGo accident management platform and the Bookingintelligence asset management solution were in particular demand. A significant number of customers also signed up for driver training services, the Inspect365 vehicle inspection tool, telematics and the EV consulting service, eStart, which had another successful rollout in the utility sector. Turning now to Slide #5 for a look at our Novated channel. 2023 has been a remarkable year for our Novated leasing business and has really been a breakthrough year for Novated leasing in general. We've seen ever-growing interest throughout the period. Novated leasing is increasingly being seen as a way to save money and reduce the immediate financial impacts of vehicle purchasing, particularly at a time when there has been significant inflation in new car prices. Increased consumer interest, combined with strong competition for labor has also led to more employers offering a Novated lease benefit. The consequence of all of this has been a major boom in interest and the fortunes of our Novated channel mirror those of the corporate channel, strong tender activity, a significant number of wins, record order levels and significant potential for more progress. Leads have grown very significantly over the period and the trend continued in January. Orders were up well over 20%. Of course, the added incentive in the case of EVs and [ ZEVs ] has-- sorry, I apologize. The added incentive that the government has put in place in the case of EVs and [ ZEVs ] has supported the strong growth in demand. EVs now account for close to 40% of our orders, but we also saw a significant uptick in ICE orders, confirming again that there's limited substitution. More on EVs later. The typical Novated order trends -- sorry, the typical Novated order and driver tends to be more flexible than corporate customers in terms of which vehicle they choose. And the willingness to opt for the models that are in good supply has meant delivery levels have improved strongly over the period. Despite this, there's still a significant pipeline of customer orders weighting on stock availability yet to be delivered. And as a consequence, that is yet to translate into revenue in our business. I'll come back to older pipelines in a moment. As was the case in the corporate channel, we continue to achieve increased penetration of additional products and services in our Novated channel. I've mentioned on past occasions that we've worked hard on improving the way we operate in this channel and the benefits of that effort are increasingly visible now. The greater efficiency of our teams has also helped to offset some of the resourcing challenges we faced in previous periods. It has been a stellar period for Novated deliveries, and we are confident we can carry that momentum through the current period. If you can now turn to Slide 6 for my comments on the New Zealand business. Similar to Australia, new business and tender activity are at record levels in this market. Competition is stronger as some players target volume through occasionally fairly aggressive pricing and [ RV ] setting. Adjusted for seasonal effects, national registrations continue to rise solidly each month during the period. Over 4,000 EVs were registered just in December, the largest monthly total ever in anticipation of the end of the clean car discounts at the end of that month. Supply has also improved somewhat in that market. Our business in New Zealand has carried on from previous period, registering wins across a range of sectors. We've been particularly successful in the SME segment over there. In addition to diversifying our customer book, we've continued to develop our offering in this market, introducing a number of additional products and services. Our DingGo product was rolled out as the accident management services provider in that market following the success of that rollout in the Australian market. That has gone really well early on in this period. I mentioned the major eStart initiative in the government space back in August, and we are now nearing completion of that project. Its success has led to further eStart projects in that segment. Finally, the first phase of the New Zealand system integration has been completed successfully, and we are well on track for the next stage. Turning now to Slide #7, our U.K. business. The U.K. economy is in reasonably good shape with some of the previously seen cost pressures such as wages and fuel easing. This in turn has kept inflation in check. As in other markets, new supply has improved somewhat. Used values of ICE vehicles have remained stable, while EV values have tended a little lower. The light commercial market in which we are quite active, continues to recover with registrations rising by over 20% in the period. Our business in the U.K. continues to receive a steady stream of new opportunities and is maintaining a very healthy win rate across a range of centers. While we have some larger contracts in the customer book, it's the medium-sized fleets that are our real bread and butter in that market. These customers value our diversified bespoke service proposition the most. They are also very receptive to our Novalease products, the features of which remain unique in the U.K. market. During the period, we had a number of sole supply, corporate and Novalease wins. At the same time, our focus on existing accounts has again helped us to -- [ several ] contract extensions and the conversion of a number of panel arrangements to additional sole supply arrangements. 2023 has been the year in which our U.K. business has firmly established itself as a leader in its market segment. We've succeeded in building an excellent service proposition there, particularly suited, as I said earlier, to that target segment. Customers can count on us to provide continuity of service and exceptional expertise boosted by our innovation capability. Most importantly, we're able to consistently deliver quantifiable high value-add outcomes. With Novalease, we generate savings for both drivers and employers as well as improved staff retention. Our Tool-of-Trade offering delivers fleet cost and operational savings, and this has led to greater company driver satisfaction. In both segments, we are also increasingly a major contributor to the environmental agendas of our customers by assisting both Novated and Tool-of-Trade drivers in their switch to lower emission vehicles. All of these attributes have resulted in the business becoming the first and only leasing company to win awards at all headline industry events in the same year. I'll now recap on the various comments I've made regarding supply, order pipelines and used vehicle values. Please turn to Slide 8 for this summary. Despite the strong registration numbers, the supply improvements we have seen are still insufficient to reduce the pipeline built up over a number of years. This is particularly the case for mainstream Tool-of-Trade vehicle models. Continued shortages in vehicle componentry and aftermarket equipment are also still adding to [ 8 times ]. The rebound in the VFACTS industry numbers that we have seen is mostly in the shape of private registrations. That, of course, includes Novated. As I mentioned before, consumers are generally more willing to change their vehicle choices based on availability and, of course, are taking up the readily available high-volume electric vehicles. Things are not back to normal for typical corporate fleets though, and supply is still not able to cover both pipeline and new demand. The consequence of that has been that despite a 14% increase on the previous corresponding period, Tool-of-Trade deliveries are still struggling to keep pace with the strong order growth, and our group corporate pipeline has remained static when compared to June 2023 at about 11,400 units or 4 times what we would consider to be normal levels. Deliveries in Novated were up about 57% for the reasons observed above. And as a consequence, the pipeline in this channel has reduced by about 25% on June '23 to about 4,800 units, still 5 times normal levels. So in summary, despite strong deliveries, our pipeline has remained high, and that's a sign of the very strong order activity in the half. Used vehicle values softened gradually as anticipated, but demand for our end of lease vehicles remained high. This has continued into the new year. So while we are seeing some green shoots in global supply and manufacturers, generally are more positive about the longer-term. The improvement in mainstream vehicle type supply is likely to remain very gradual. Accordingly, we expect no dramatic change in supply and used vehicle trends for the foreseeable future. Similarly, the normalization of our order pipeline, particularly in the Tool-of-Trade channel, will take some time. Taking into account the continued strong order growth, it's likely that it will take several periods for the pipeline numbers to return to normal levels. This obviously translates to [ banked ] up revenue opportunity for the business over the future periods, and also obviously means elevated deliveries for the foreseeable future. I'll now hand over to Kevin for a closer look at the financials, and then I'll chat more to you about the strategy of the business going forward.

Thank you, Robbie. If you could please turn to Slide 10. In this period, we've had exceptional growth in the volume of vehicle deliveries, particularly in Novated deliveries, which has driven material growth in most of our revenue lines. Offsetting this somewhat was end of lease income where, as expected, we experienced some softening in the used market, coupled with lower disposal volumes relative to PCP. Notwithstanding this, we were able to grow net revenue by 10.8%. Operating expenses are still growing faster than we would like as a consequence of labor market conditions as well as our integration projects. The net result of all of this is we were able to grow net profit after tax by 8.5% versus PCP. If you could turn to Slide 11 for a look at the Corporate fleet movement. We received orders for 7,612 Tool-of-Trade vehicles, which is 5.5% up on PCP. We experienced a slight improvement in stock availability from the mainstream manufacturers that make up a typical corporate fleet. And as a result, we were able to grow our deliveries by almost 14%. However, as Robbie indicated earlier, the improved supply was not sufficient to make a material dent in our order pipeline, which remained relatively static at circa 11,400 units. Turning to Slide 12 for the Novated fleet movement. We've had another 6-month period of strong growth in Novated orders with group orders up 18.9% versus PCP. Delivery growth was exceptional at 57.1%, up on PCP, enabled by supply from nonmainstream manufacturers and a material uplift in electric vehicle volumes. As Robbie said, 39% of Novated deliveries in the first half for electric vehicles. Touching briefly on the Lite Fleet on Slide 13. We likely ended the year on 149,400 units, which is 1% up on PCP. Turning to Slide 14 for a look at the individual net revenue streams. Net rental and finance income grew by a massive 58.3%. This was driven by a combination of strong growth in deliveries, vehicle price inflation, together with the fact that the continued positive outlook for residual values in the medium term means that we need to book lower depreciation for on-balance sheet funded operating leases. Over to Slide 15 and touching on net mobility services revenue. So we were able to grow net mobility services revenue by 1.4% 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 21.3% driven by the growth in new funded deliveries, which resulted in a significant uptick in accessory sales as well as rebate income. Offsetting that somewhat were the tighter margins experienced on the TradeAdvantage product as customers demanded stronger pricing on their used cars. Over to Slide 17 to look at Finance Commission. Finance commission was up by 44.5%. This was driven by growth in P&A funded deliveries of 15.7%, coupled with growth in the average Finance Commission per unit of 24.8%. The growth in Finance Commission per unit was driven by a combination of the higher average funded capital per unit caused by vehicle price inflation, which I referred to earlier, as well as proportionately fewer extensions relative to new vehicles in the funding mix. Please turn to Slide 18. As expected, the improvement in new vehicle supply has caused some softening in used vehicle pricing, which has impacted our average disposal profit per unit. But even so, our average net profit per unit remains at 3 times pre-COVID levels. The result was also impacted by lower disposal volumes, which were close to 6% down on PCP. This was largely because we had a relatively high stock balance at the beginning of the comparative period. Please turn to Slide 19 for a brief look at the fees and credit provisions. We topped up the residual value provision and stock impairment provision as a result of the softening market, but in particular, due to the softness in electric vehicle residual values, both in the U.K. and New Zealand. The growth in the expected credit loss provision is driven by 2 factors. Firstly, as we shift volumes from P&A funding 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 notional credit loss that we provide for. Over to Slide 20 for a look at operating expenses. As I mentioned at the start, operating expenses still growing faster than we would like. Our headcount increased by close to 9% versus PCP in part due to our ongoing integration projects. We also continued our ongoing investment in infrastructure, platforms and cybersecurity measures, which, coupled with our digitization project is driving the growth in our technology costs. On Slide 21, we presented the detailed P&L. But since I've spoken to the key line items, I won't spend more time. Over to the financial position on Slide 22. The balance sheet obviously reflects the strong growth in the book and the related increase in these portfolio borrowings. Corporate leverage remains conservative at 1.1x. Touching on funding on Slide 23. Our Autonomy 2021 warehouses were extended for 2 more years in July last year. And in September, our corporate debt was extended for 3 years. We saw a slight improvement in the lease portfolio composition towards our goal of having half of the book funded by securitization. But it's fair to say that we would like to see faster progress in this regard. Turning to Slide 24. Based on the 65% payout ratio, the Board has declared an interim dividend of $9.60 per share fully-franked, which is an increase of 7.7% versus the prior comparative period. Finally, please turn to Slide 25. Cash generation came in at 98.9%. With the significant growth in deliveries during the period, there is obviously a significant cash outflow into the lease portfolio, which can be seen in the cash flow statement. I should note too, however, that at 31 December, we had over $100 million worth of eligible assets that have not been sold into the securitization warehouse. If that has been, the cash outflow would have been substantially lower. I'll now hand back to Robbie for an operational update.

Thank you, Kevin. Turning now to Slide 27 for the 5-year horizon slide we presented for a number of periods. I won't dwell too much on the slide today as essentially all of our cost and revenue drivers and their timings remain unchanged. The only changes we are incorporating are the splitting up of the expected ZEV take-up between consumer, where the take-up has obviously accelerated sharply in the last year or so and the timing of an anticipated Tool-of-Trade adoption, which I'll come to a bit later when talking about the EV landscape. The only change is our current best estimate of how much time it will take for supply to fully normalize and for the order pipeline to return to normal levels. As I mentioned earlier, based on the trends we are seeing, this is likely to take several periods, and we, therefore, believe normalization will take at least 1 year longer than previously estimated. Please now turn to Slide #28. This slide actually really excites me. And we want to illustrate on this slide kind of the future state of our business and where we're heading. So as we move closer to the completion of the integration and our digitization efforts gain momentum, I wanted to spend some time taking you through our vision rather than go through the individual steps of that process. And this will kind of really give you a feel for where we are heading and what the company will look like once we're through the integration and got significant digitization done. In other words, this effort and these projects will set our business apart. It will give us an edge from a product and service perspective. And ultimately, this will give us an ability to go higher, continuous revenue and profits over the longer term. Of course, we've been reaping the benefits from the LeasePlan acquisition throughout the integration process so far, and we will continue to extract a few million dollars of synergies every year prior to completion of the systems integration. But the key transformation occurs upon completion of that integration. We believe that the move to a single system, coupled with the digitization of our business will fundamentally reshape our company and enhance the opportunities we are creating to grow beyond our current offering. Common functions and processes across all groups routes to market performed in the same way and on the same system will ensure we can achieve best-in-class standards and eliminate costly duplication. Interaction with a single network of business partners has already boosted our buying power and already generates cost benefits. But more progress will be made in this regard over the coming periods. Having a single set of processes will facilitate continuous improvement and fast track how we train our people. More efficient processes will also enhance staff engagement, allow for further improvement of service levels and as a consequence, deliver higher customer satisfaction. A single stronger brand presence will ensure that investments in that brand yields permanent beneficial outcomes for our company. This in turn anchors our offering when we market into new prospects, and it will support greater product penetration within our existing customer book. Once we bring the systems together, we will have the largest data pool by far in our industry. This centralizes all types of vehicle information, for example, fuel consumption, maintenance, disposal information as well as customer insights and supplier data across 3 markets, giving us the added ability to monetize this data. Leveraging off the back of these data capabilities, a single system, combined with greater digitization will allow us to become more agile, improve our existing offerings through accelerated innovation and expand our income streams. Digitization will also support our longer-term Mobility-as-a-Service ambitions and enhance our ability to partner with other players in that ecosystem. Doing all of this from a single platform, of course, also means lower development costs. Finally, a single system builds a strong platform for inorganic growth as any potential future integrations will be far less complex and costly and can be completed expeditiously. In addition to all of these revenue-generating advances, completion of the move to a single system, combined with greater process digitization will, of course, facilitate the extraction of all available synergies, significantly enhance our efficiency and lower our cost-to-serve on a permanent basis. This means that at completion, we will then also be able to rapidly phase out the work hours, capacity and additional costs that were required for the integration process. As you can tell, these are exciting times for the company and our people, and we look forward to bringing all of these initiatives together over the next few years. I've talked about the EV boom in the Novated channel earlier, and I'd like to provide a brief recap on what has happened in that world since we last presented. Please turn to Slide 29. Obviously, we've come a long way in terms of EVs in the past 12 months. EVs are now better established in the private market in Australia and New Zealand and have been for some time in the U.K. market. 7% of Australian new registrations in 2023 were for pure EVs. The vast majority of these are private and of those, Novated leases accounted for a significant proportion. This was reflected in our own book where, again, the vast majority of EV orders came through the Novated channel in the form of finance leases. Compared to the first half of the 2023 financial year when the EV incentives were introduced in Australia, Novated EV orders are up more than fivefold, representing about 37% of Novated orders, as I said earlier. We will see continued growth in EV unit numbers and early adoption stage will inevitably be followed by a second wave. We have witnessed that pattern in the U.K. and globally more broadly in recent years. Things are somewhat different from the corporate market. Clearly with organizations being more cost and efficiency driven, the current cost differentiation between ICE and EV, limited fit-for-purpose model availability and the lack of adequate charging infrastructure, continues to be a significant inhibitor. For corporate to adopt EV in greater numbers, not only do the economics need to stack up, but there also needs to be efficient aftersales servicing and a well-developed service network. Of course, governments have set emission targets and the inevitable transition even if only partial to 0 emission fleet, will ensure momentum will eventually pick up in the corporate EV segment. It will be interesting to see how the new vehicle efficiency standards will contribute to this trend. These standards may encourage a move to low-efficient hybrids and zero-emission vehicles in the corporate market. We're already seeing early signs of this with some of our government and major corporate customers pushing on with their EV rollout initiatives, which we support with our eStart solution. Taking into account the specific needs of corporate fleet, we believe the Tool-of-Trade EV takeoff will occur in a few years' time, depending on what initiatives are rolled out. Given the size of our Tool-of-Trade book, and I recognize the expertise in that space, we will obviously benefit greatly when that time comes. If you could turn to Slide 30 for a few words on our continued progress in the environmental, social and government space -- governance, should I say, my apologies. We have stepped up our ESG program across all stakeholder groups during the first half with a particular focus on enlisting our people in the pursuit of the objectives we have set in our ESG strategy and our environmental policy. For that purpose, we created a dedicated ESG hub through which we provide education on various topics to our people. Our focus on the well-being of our staff has included a significant ramp-up in our education and training programs and facilities. In the environmental space, we continue to roll out a range of initiatives to reduce energy consumption and waste and emissions in general. We are currently close to obtaining carbon neutral status in New Zealand, which would make us carbon neutral as a group. After setting an emission intensity reduction target in the previous period, we've set up an environmental management system in the reported period for which we received ISO 14001 accreditation, just last month. Of course, the biggest impact we can make in this regard is supporting our customers with their own environmental initiatives and the role of their fleets in their personal vehicle and the -- sorry, and their personal vehicles in that context. ESG is also about ethical business behaviors and how we treat our customers and our people. This is a paramount consideration for us at SG Fleet when we develop and price our products, including importantly, our Novated leasing offering. On this slide, you can see some images of the ESG initiatives we introduced during the period. Please turn to Slide 31 now for a quick summary of today's presentation. In summary, this has been another period of strong progress for SG Fleet. We've been able to reap the benefits of multiple periods with good order growth as the delivery environment improves. As I pointed out earlier, the fact that the increase in revenue generated by the strong deliveries easily offset the adjustment in end of lease disposal income is strong evidence of the natural hedge in our business model. Orders and deliveries continue to set new records in both of our channels, and Novated has had a real breakthrough year in terms of recognition with more and more employees now offering a Novated lease benefit to their staff. This was reflected in the record lead numbers seen over the past few months and continuing into the current period. New Zealand continues to make good progress with the development of new business opportunities and greater product penetration. And our U.K. business has had an exceptional period growing its business on the back of the recognition it has received as a leader in its market segments. Given the continued strong order growth and insufficient improvements in supply, we believe it will take multiple periods for the order pipeline to normalize, which means that we'll have elevated delivery numbers for this foreseeable future. Limited supply improvement is also likely to lead to a continuation of used vehicle value -- continuation of used vehicle value trends. In other words, a gradual and limited adjustment that is likely to balance out, as I've said in previous times, considerably above pre-COVID levels. We believe the full integration of LeasePlan and the digitization of our business will fundamentally change our market position and our ability to grow, and we look forward with excitement to the moment, all of the resulting benefits will be achieved. Electric vehicles continued to attract strong interest during the period, and we have taken full advantage of that in our Novated channel. We believe the big payback in the form of broader corporate adoption is some years away, but the scale and impact for our business will be very significant indeed. It has been a very positive period for us, and our good performance has carried into the second half, which is obviously very promising as we look to the full year numbers. Thank you all for making time for us today. We'll now take your questions.

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

Just wanted to get a little bit more detail, please, on the finance income piece? Sorry, just to sort of clarify, Robbie. And Kevin, a lot of that should continue to flow through given some of the data points on the increase in average price per vehicle. Is that fair? Or is there anything we should be stripping out of that number moving forward?

Allan, it [ couldn't ] come through really clearly. Can you repeat that, please?

Yes. Hopefully, this is better. But just on the Finance Commission side, you do refer to an increase in the commission per unit. Just to be clear that we can think that, that is -- there is longevity to that and we can directionally follow the shape that the first half [indiscernible]