SHAPE Australia Corporation Limited (SHA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to SHAPE Australia's FY '23 Results Webinar for the period ending 30 June, 2023. Presenting today is SHAPE's CEO, Peter Marix-Evans; and CFO, Scott Jamieson. Today's format will have the team run through the results presentation followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I will now pass to Peter.

Thanks, Mel. I'd just like to start off with an acknowledgment of the country, and pay our respects to our First Nations peoples on whose land we meet today. So today, we've got a slide pack to walk you through. We've only got 16 slides there, so I promise it won't be death by PowerPoint. And as Mel mentioned, there's a Q&A function. So we'll have time -- plenty of time at the end for questions. So today, we're pleased to share some good results with you today. And I'd like to start off just by thanking all of our hard-working staff for the achievements and what they've done this year to achieve those results.

So I'll walk through the financial highlights for FY '23. I'll start in the top left-hand corner there. We have had significant growth compared to last year, FY '22. FY '22, we did $658 million. Our revenue for FY '23 is up 31% to $862.4 million. And moving across to the right-hand side to EBITDA, we've produced an EBITDA of $19.4 million, which is both up against our statutory reported results and our underlying results. In FY '23, we actually had no differential between the statutory and underlying results. But if you'd like to make reference to the differences in FY '22, there in the slide deck at Appendix A, that EBITDA was certainly assisted. As our revenue grew, we were able to keep our overheads as a percentage of revenue down. So our overhead percentage was down against the same time last year, which obviously, assisted us in a significant increase of 104% underlying EBITDA compared to last year, which leads us on to net profit after tax of $10.5 million. Again, a 225% increase on underlying FY '22. We're certainly in a strong position from a balance sheet point of view, with cash at the 30th of June 2023 of $90.6 million, up 10% against last year's balance of $82 million. Our project wins, again, we exceeded. They were record project wins, exceeding $800 million for the first time. Within that -- within our revenues and our project wins, our actual average size project is between $3 million to $4 million, even though we do undertake projects, we did have a handful of projects up towards the $100 million mark. Backlog orders. So backlog orders of $343 million, although slightly down on last year, compared to historical averages, they are actually quite a bit up. Those backlog orders of $343 million certainly set us up for next year's revenue and a prosperous FY '24. And then moving down into the identified pipeline. So the identified pipeline is all of those opportunities that are currently present themselves that we have the skill set to undertake those projects, and that's at $3.8 billion, which is a significant increase to this time last year. Earnings per share of $0.126, so that's based on our number of shares issued of circa 83.5 million shares. And the dividends declared for FY '23 were $0.115, which is up 44% against last year. The final dividend that's just been declared by the Board is $0.065, which is a significant increase on the 2022 dividend of $0.02. So very, very pleasing set of numbers and some good solid growth for the FY '23 year.

Thanks, Scott. So just building on from that. Obviously, the past years presented some headwinds for many businesses. We just wanted to point out a couple of high-level points of difference for SHAPE, which continue to provide the business with a level of resilience. So as Scott mentioned, there's a lot of our projects that are of shorter duration. So our workbook is almost 50% of projects that are 4 months or less in duration. So what that does is just helps to provide some resilience towards cost of goods, rising pressures and that sort of thing. Further to that, a large portion of our work is actually interior. So we're interior refurbishment specialists, but the fact of being 80%, 85-plus percent of our work being interiors, just gives us another level of resilience and an inoculation against headwinds around external pressures and wet weather and that type of stuff. The final one I'd highlight there is just our client base. So if you look at our workbook, over 85% of it is repeat work. So that's work with clients that we've already established relationships. We know how to interact with each other, and we're used to the level of quality that's required to complete those projects. So that repeat business really ties into our high Net Promoter Score and helps to provide some resilience to the business throughout the cycle.

We've got a slide this year on cash, specifically on cash. And that slide represents our daily cash balance -- well, our average daily cash balance over 12 months. It's really there to highlight the cash cycle. So what that shows is throughout the month that there's a couple of dips there, and those dips represent the -- effectively the payment run to our supply chain. And they're in accordance with the various security of payments legislation that applies across the country that varies between the states. So you'll see there that our cash dips at the start of the month, as we make our payment run to majority of our states or the suppliers to the majority of our states. And the cash continues to work its way up. And then you'll see a little dip there where we pay New South Wales and then there's some further dips depending on the timing for states such as Queensland and WA. And then the end-of-month cash balance is generally, it's certainly towards the high or if not the high at the end of the month. But we certainly pride ourselves with consistent application and rigorous cash management by the process. Project teams, we obviously maintain diligent capital management, because whilst we have a large cash balance, we need to maintain a certain level of net assets and certain working capital ratios for the purposes of prequalifications and various external financial assessments. And you'll see there throughout the month or throughout the year, actually, our average daily cash for the whole of FY '23 was $77 million. So it's quite an impressive number. And our average minimum, so our cash even at its low, only gets down to $48 million. It's also just worth noting that included in those numbers is about $7 million of restricted cash, and that primarily relates to things like project trust accounts, project bank accounts, retention, trust accounts. And they're being implemented by the various state legislations, where certain amounts of money are held in those trust accounts, depending on the -- of course, sometimes it's the size of the project, sometimes it's the state legislation. But in saying that, there's $7 million that's set aside in those accounts that we don't necessarily have access to. The money flows in and out of those accounts in relation to a project which is separate from our general banking accounts.

Thanks, Scott. So this is a bit of a busy slide, so I'll just skim through some of the items here, and we do go further -- into further depth in some other slides. So from an operational excellence point of view, we remain very committed to providing safe workplace and really driving that safety -- resilient safety culture. Pleasingly, our LTIFR and TRIFR have continued to improve and have both reduced down to 0.9 and 3.8, respectively, which is very pleasing to see that, that ongoing commitment to pursuing perfect safety. That's had a 37% decrease in recordable injury. So very, very important to us and something we're very proud of. From a people and culture point of view, so SHAPE's only asset is our people, and we're very proud of our team with over 570 employees, which is around about an 8% increase on prior corresponding period. So our ability to attract and to retain the best talent in the industry is really backed up by our commitment to culture and pleasingly, we've achieved a Great Place to Work certification this year and also been nominated in the top 10% of Culture Amp's Australian database, again, really highlighting our commitment to our people. From a partnership point of view, we remain very committed to our clients, and I'm very pleased to report our very high Net Promoter Score of plus 84, and also a subcontracting Net Promoter Score of plus 74. So those, both combine with our people to allow us to achieve 91% of our projects achieving Perfect Delivery, which is as certified by our clients and again, it ties in with our pursuit of delivering exceptional customer service. Onto growth and diversification, and I will come back to that on a separate slide, but we've had a really good year from a diversification point of view, with strong growth in our Defence sector. We continue to have good, strong revenue in our facade sector. But we've also opened a couple of new offices with Gold Coast and Newcastle. Also delivering work in Tasmania and pleasing to say that our modular business, both KLMSA is both earnings accretive in year 1, and we've also established an additional operation in South Australia in the last 12 months. Finishing there on environmental and social impact. So again, I've got another slide on that, which I'll go into further detail. But suffice to say that SHAPE's continued commitment to ESG remains well on track.

So I'll just talk a little bit about the financial commentary, which is sort of reiterating the financial highlights page. Again, just talking through those points there with a 31% increase in revenue. We've talked about the statutory and underlying metrics are being identical and the increase in the underlying NPAT of 225%. In saying that, given the backlog in the construction industry with a shortage of skilled labor, the increased wages pressure, rising costs through the significant CPI increases, together with supply chain disruptions within the industry, I think all in all, SHAPE has performed exceptionally well with that. Obviously, we've got a lot of risk management in place to overcome those sorts of things. But all in all, we are positioned extremely well with a strong order book of $343,000 (sic) -- that's million, sorry, and strong cash, as we mentioned before, of over $90 million, and we look to continue to scale those overheads and provide efficiencies as the revenue goes. But you can see there on that table, just a very sort of high level of the increase and the significant favorable movements as percentage increases on all of those items here.

Thanks, Scott. So just having a quick look at our key sectors. So you can see there revenue by region continues to grow, and we've seen a bit of a rebound post pandemic with solid growth across all of our operations and continuing in our diversified approach. So if you look at the graph on the right there, the revenue by capability, so pleasingly, again, you can continue to see that grow, not just from a BAU or fit-out and refurb point of view, but you can see the strong growth there, both in modular, facades and new build as we continue to diversify that workbook. What that does is enable us to pivot into sectors that are more buoyant at different times during this -- during the various cycles. Importantly, there, you can see our strong tender conversion rates there of 53% by number. Again, highlighting both our high level of repeat business, but again, the strong relationships we have with the industry. On to the pipeline. One of the key sort of takeaways here that I present is if you look to the left-hand side graph, just backlog order by sector, you can see the sectors of the work that we've secured, not yet completed with office sort of around the 72% or at 72%. Interestingly, when you look at the pipeline, which is identified pipeline of over $3.8 billion worth of work, which is work that we have identified that should it come to market at the right time, in the right contractual conditions, that it would be work that SHAPE would have the skill set and capability to deliver. And you can see there that we're starting to really see those growth sectors and that diversification pay off with not just to reduce the office sector, but to, I guess, diversify our exposure to the different sectors, which again allows us to pivot into and out of those different markets. So a good strong pipeline. We've still got plenty of work that we're tendering. You can see there, it's almost 400 million in decision pendings. And the works one, as Scott mentioned earlier, up over the $800 million mark for the year, which will, again, give us good backlog to go into FY '24.

So DLG shape, we're continuing with our successful partnership with David Liddiard, who owns the David Liddiard Group. David Liddiard Group is an indigenous business. The DLG-SHAPE is a partnership that we have with the David Liddiard Group, where SHAPE holds a 49% interest in that entity. There's been continued strong performance. Sales are up to $41.6 million, which is an increase on the prior year of $31.3 million. So projects won combined with construction revenue, so they're both up actually 33% for the year, so some good growth in the DLG SHAPE business. And we have increased the annual spend in relation to the indigenous supply chain for FY '23 has increased now and we're at nearly $9 million for a single year. And of course, DLG SHAPE does remain committed to promoting indigenous employment, and we continue to target local indigenous engagement. In the identified pipeline for DLG SHAPE is $200 million, so plenty of work ahead for that business. And of course, management fees generated for SHAPE during the year also increased by 53% to $2.9 million.

And thank you to David Liddiard for his ongoing relationship and partnership in that joint venture. So moving on to growth and strategy. There's 3 sort of key pillars of our growth and strategy -- growth strategy that we did point out in the last annual statement as well. So the first one, growth/diversification into noncore markets, so that's continuing to add to our BAU markets into the noncore. So you can see some significant uplifts in the percentages there across Hotels, Health, Retail, Education and Defence. The second one there is the capability expansion. So when we look at our capabilities across different types of build, so through facades, modular and new build. So façade remaining stable there at getting up close to $50 million worth of revenue; pleasingly, a good increase in modular; and a significant increase in the new build work that we've taken on in the last 12 months as well. The third one there is just our geographic expansion. And we mentioned earlier that we've opened a Gold Coast office and a Newcastle office, so really good to see both of those regional offices gain traction. And we're also carrying out work in Tasmania as well, which we will look to be opportunistic, and we're seeing really quite a growing and strengthening market down there as well. Moving on to safety. As I mentioned before, 43% improvement in our TRIFR performance, so we're really proud of that. At the end of the day, SHAPE's commitment to life safety remains very much intact in that if we don't think we can do it safely, we won't do it. So we've seen our recordable injuries reduced by 37%, which is a really good downturn down to 17. Of course, no injury is acceptable to our business, and we'll continue to pursue being incident and injury-free in our operations. As I mentioned, the LTIFR improved by 55%, which, again, we're very proud of. And I guess the underlying commitment there is not just our commitment to safety itself, but continuing to commit and invest in safety leadership in the systems and also the technology that supports that. I would finally mention there as well that we have a continued focus on employee and subcontractor mental health and well-being, and we do have a strong partnership with mates in construction who are tirelessly out there every day working on exactly that. Tied to the positive safety culture there, you can see over 6,500 in positive safety observation. So that's catching people doing the right thing and really goes to not just being sort of a police out on the site, but trying to work with our supply chain and subcontractors in really driving a more resilient safety culture through the industry. From a sustainability point of view, I won't read all of those items on the screen verbatim, but we have had some good advances in measuring our carbon footprint, developing software to be able to measure that accurately. So if we can measure it, we can obviously put in place reduction strategies and plans in place for each of our offices, which we're underway with doing. I think we've talked about in previous meetings around moving to -- as we renew our offices, going to Green Star accreditation, so 5 of our offices having that. And I think importantly, we are seeing more and more Green Star projects. So 13 projects delivered this year, over $190 million, which we're very proud of as well. Nearing the end, so bear with us, we'll be able to get to your questions very soon. Just a slide there on SHAPE Modular. So we acquired KLMSA in March 2022. So that has been earnings accretive in year 1, which we're very pleased to see. So some good strong sales getting up towards $25 million worth of sales. That remains with a good revenue backlog going into FY '24. And we're well-advanced in the operational strengthening of that business. We have combined the financial sort of back of house with SHAPE as well, to start to really drive and look for efficiencies in the business. As a complementary and supplementary to the KLMSA business, we've also started a SHAPE Modular operations as well. So we've got some new key resources that we've employed. We secured 2 projects in South Australia at the moment with a small manufacturing facility that we're developing, and we really have a good faith in that. We've got a strong pipeline of work, particularly through the Adelaide market, and then we'll look to grow that outside of Adelaide and Victoria going forward.

So just to summarize on the financial component of the presentation. Again, SHAPE is well-positioned with continued investment into our strategic growth initiatives. We've had a significant increase in revenue, both through the core and noncore work, as Pete spoke about earlier in the presentation. Our underlying gross margins have increased. There's obviously a continued focus on increasing the commercial outcomes and continuing to try and create, increased gross margins and obviously, net profit and bottom line results. Pipeline is very strong and has continued to strengthen throughout the year. We're sitting very favorable from a cash position point of view. And of course, with the recent interest rate rises from the RBA, there's an opportunity there to continue to generate good interest revenue. And we maintain excellent client relationships, a high Net Promoter Score of plus 84 and, of course, healthy win rates supporting our continued performance and setting ourselves up nicely for the start of FY '24.

And just to finish on operational highlights as a summary. So as mentioned, we've got a highly engaged workforce out of 570 amazing people, strong market relationships with our clients, consultants and our subcontractors. Majority of our work is through repeat business with clients that we have relationships with. We've got an experienced and embedded leadership team with good tenure. Continued increase in performance, particularly around health and safety. We continue to pursue that resilient safety culture. We're very pleased with the SHAPE Modular operations that's been established and will provide good opportunities, both for top and bottom line growth going forward. We continue to pursue our strategic focus on Defence, and this continues to yield results, and we'll continue to see that investment by particularly the federal government going forward. And I guess all in all, that leaves SHAPE very well positioned and poised to maintain the traction that we've gained in the market. So that was the slide deck. And again, thank you for -- hopefully, everyone stayed awake for us. And we didn't kill you with PowerPoints. I think we do have a few questions that have come in. [Operator Instructions] As always, feel free to drop Scott or I a line or get in contact after as well if it's a more detailed question, but --

Might pass back to Mel if she's able to walk through the questions for us.

So Scott and Pete, the first question here is from Matthew Chen at Moelis. So congrats on the result. Please can you talk to the opportunities that will keep expanding margin over the coming year?

So I'd jump in on that quickly and then hand over to Scott. I guess there's a couple of things on the margin. We've seen an increase in the gross margins over the previous -- over the last 12 months, as compared to prior corresponding period. A couple of things to point out there. One of our increases in margin, from incentive point of view is obviously a strong increase in revenues. So we've got different levers as far as gross margin revenue and cost base. So we've certainly been able to rely on those strong relationships in the industry to increase our revenue by over 200%. I think also we're starting to see certainly the headwinds that have presented themselves to the market over the last 18 months to 2 years have not necessarily disappeared, but they're certainly abating. And I mentioned the -- SHAPE's peculiar workbook in that a large portion of our work being less than 4 months does provide a level of resilience. So we tend to recover a bit quicker than perhaps some of the other builders who have a longer-term exposure to those rising cost of goods. But I'd also point to things like the Modular business, which -- and particularly KLMSA, which has stronger gross margins then SHAPE had traditionally had in our business. So as we start to blend those different parts of the business, pushing to Defence and those sorts of things, we're starting to see a blended margin return. So obviously, we continue to look for improvements in the market conditions. And we're, I guess, the same as everyone else, hopeful that the economy continues to strengthen, that there's no more sort of black swan events and that sort of stuff, but I think that's probably it. Anything to add on that, Scott?

Yes, I could probably add. Just given the current environment, particularly and obviously, in the industry, there's been a number of insolvencies, which has actually worked in our favor. The reason I say that is that we're now, because of the financial strength and the diligence and the governance that we have with SHAPE, which is something that we've had through, obviously, for a number of years, and particularly now that we're a listed company, we're actually now getting asked more and more and people are now turning towards us more than they had have been in the past, because of that financial status and all of the rigor that sits behind that, because obviously, there's a sense of nervousness now. Rather than just simply taking the lowest price and dealing with other companies, there's more emphasis now on the financial capability and status of a business, which we're also seeing through -- we're getting a lot more by way of questionnaire coming through for tender queries and external financial assessment. So whilst there's a lot of additional work in relation to that, we actually like that because we do stack up well against other entities that we are competing against. So I think that can help us. And obviously, as Pete said, we will continue to grow and look for those strategic initiatives and continue to seek out increased margins.

Thanks, Scott. The next question is, can you talk about the exit rate of costs generally, more specifically the cost-out opportunities around overheads?

Yes. So I guess the diverse part feeds into that a little bit, and we mentioned that in the slide deck as far as the overheads go and whilst overhead, the percentage overheads against revenue that came down in FY '23, if we can continue to grow the top line revenues, we believe that there is a level of scalability in there. So we should be able to hold or reduce those, that percentage of overheads against revenue. In saying that though, we need to then balance that with strategic initiatives and the investment we make into some of those overheads until they gain traction and then produce results 1, 2, 3 years down the track. So I guess that's a long way of saying that yes, there's scalability there, but there's a balance between that and continued investment to continue to grow and boost the profit line as the years come.

Thanks, Scott. And then just back to margins, can you comment on the timing of margin recovery? Are you still comfortable with the time line to normalize levels by FY '25?

As far as normalized levels, I guess when you're talking about normalized levels, probably talking about pre-COVID levels. The landscape certainly changed quite significantly between pre-COVID and then through COVID and then now. There's still high competition. There is still -- I mean, the CPI rates are still running fairly high. We are starting to see a little bit of ease against wages growth and those sorts of things. So going into FY '25 and where we see those margins and returning to normal, we think we're on a track or a trajectory back to an improved position. When we get back to pre-COVID, that's to be seen, I guess.

Thanks, Scott. And then we have a question here on who gets the interest on the trust accounts where security of payment funds are held?

Yes. So with those -- with the trust account, I guess the short answer is we receive the interest. In saying that though, the interest levels vary from 0% through to the cash rate less 10 points. Thankfully, though, 2/3 of that trust account money is sitting in -- into the New South Wales retention trust account. The New South Wales retention trust account is in relation to projects that are in excess of $20 million and any retention held on subcontractors in relation to those works are put into the retention and trust account. So 2/3 of that is in, I guess, the highest interest earning account. So we do -- whatever interest is generated, we receive the interest.

Thanks, Scott. And then could you highlight what percentage of profit is generated by repeat work?

So yes, our repeat work is 80% to 85% year-on-year for the last few years.

Thanks. And then we have a question from Josie in regards to the dividend. The dividend is $0.065. With the growth and great performance reported, why isn't this higher?

Thanks, Josie. So I guess if you look at the dividend, if we look at from an earnings per share for FY '23, we're up at 12.6 from 8.7. So that's a 44% increase in earnings per share. So if you look at, again, that dividend is probably higher than we've seen historically, and is representative of a pretty good year. Too, if you look at from net profit before tax, underlying's a 233% increase in performance, which is a very strong rebound from prior corresponding period. And I think that dividend represents that high performance.

Probably worth noting as well, Josie, that the dividend this time last year it was $0.02. So it's more than triple what it was for the final 2022 dividend. So for, yes, FY '23, up over 3x.

Thanks, Scott. And then Josie also has a question on how many employees have left SHAPE this financial year? And do you have any comments around that?

So our unplanned churn for -- currently sits at less than 10%. But that's driven down from I think we reached 26% during the heights of the pandemic, so a significant recovery there. And the construction industry, an industry average of unplanned churn is normally around the 15% to 20%. So typically sort of we talk about 18% being the construction industry average. So sub-10% is -- in the past, ISIS or SHAPE always had a sub-12% target as being best practice, and we're below 10% on that. So we're very pleased that, that has reduced. When we talk about the reasons for leaving, we are quite -- so we do carry out exit interviews. Probably the majority are going for opportunity growth. Now that ties into -- that's a headline that ties into a number of things as far as increased salaries and/or people that want to work on larger and more complex projects or in different parts of the industry. But yes, it's very, very, varied, but I guess, the key takeaway there is that we've gone sub-10% from an unplanned churn, which is -- it's very important to us, particularly with the training and the commitment that we put into our staff. It's very low. As I said, our staff are our only asset. So we have a very strong focus on that.

Thanks, Pete. And our final question for today is the growth strategy for Health is up 5%. Could this be higher?

I mean, I think I'll jump in there. I guess, if you look at our growth, we can only ever grow as quickly as we can hire good people, because we won't grow for growth's sake and we won't grow beyond our capability to deliver work for our clients. So if you look at the record-low unemployment, the access to talent and the war for talent still remains quite tight. In saying that, we will always look for the best opportunities that have the best margin and present themselves with the best contractual conditions. So we always want to maintain a presence in the sectors outside of office, so including Education and Health and Hotels, et cetera, et cetera, but it will always be a targeted focus on which projects best suit the skill set and capability of not just SHAPE itself, but certainly of the state operations where those projects are.

Thanks, Pete. Well, we've got one final question. Josie just said thanks for the communication. So that's the end of the Q&A there. So I'll pass back to you for final remarks.

No, thank you very much, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. It's -- we're very, very pleased to be able to deliver these results and certainly a big uplift on prior corresponding period. We continue to seek out the best opportunities that we can, continuing to invest in our people and our clients and those growth strategies, and we'll continue to work towards continuing the trajectory that we're on now. And again, don't be a stranger if you've got any other questions. You can contact Scott or myself or through our communications team. And that's all from us. So again, thank you.