SkyCity Entertainment Group Limited (SKC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SkyCity Entertainment FY '23 Full Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Michael Ahearne. Please go ahead.

[Foreign Language] Welcome, everyone, to SkyCity's presentation of our FY '23 full year results. I would firstly like to recognize the traditional custodians of the land upon, which all our SkyCity sites sit, Ngati Whatua Orakei in Auckland, Tainui in Hamilton, Ngai Tahu in Queenstown and the Ghana people in Adelaide. [Foreign Language] With me today in Auckland is Julie Amey, our Chief Financial Officer; and Callum Mallett, our Chief Operating Officer in New Zealand. We will talk to the results we've announced to the NZAX and ASX earlier this morning and refer to the investor pack and then afterwards have some time for Q&A. from a normalized earnings perspective, the financial year ended 30 June 2023 has been positive for SkyCity. I'm really delighted to report that the group's operating earnings are back above pre-COVID levels on a like-for-like basis. A real strength of our performance has been achieving this result with a different mix of earnings contribution compared to FY '19. We now have meaningful exposure to online earnings and have reduced their exposure to international VIP as key examples of this. The result reflects a full year of operations in FY '23 without interruption, but also continued improvements in the way we are operating all of our sites. In the last year, we have made some significant one-off accounting adjustments, a provision for potential AUSTRAC fine payable by SkyCity Adelaide and then impairment of the Adelaide Casino license. Today, I'm going to focus on the underlying performance of the group. Some of the financial highlights on Slide 4 includes: our normalized revenues have grown over 50% and are now close to $1 billion in revenue. Our normalized EBITDA was $310.3 million, up 125% year-on-year, which was at the top end of the guidance recently provided to the market. Normalized NPAT of $138.8 million reflects the result of the underlying operations of the business and is a significant increase compared to the $9.7 million reported last year. While the $8 million of reported NPAT reflects the impact of the Adelaide license impairment and the provision for a potential fine payable by SkyCity Adelaide in relation to the ongoing AUSTRAC proceedings. Notwithstanding some of the challenges and complexities that we've faced in the past 12 months, SkyCity has ended the year with a strong balance sheet, a relatively low level of gearing versus previous periods and good cash flow generation that has enabled the Board to deploy a final dividend. I want to call out a few key messages as noted on Slide 5 of the pack. In the last year, the New Zealand operations have performed very strongly. This has been driven by robust growth in EGM revenues and a real rebound in our non-gaming revenues as people have returned to the [ prefix ]. Table games recovery has been slower, while in Adelaide, trading has been more challenging and there has been significant cost pressures. This has come from both general inflation as well as from legal and compliance costs as we deal with an increasingly complex regulatory environment. We've had significant focus on our people over the last year, and it has been really encouraging to see increasing engagement amongst our team. We've also made a number of key appointments to our senior leadership team throughout the year. Those include Carolyn Kidd, our new Chief Risk Officer, Shaun Philp, who has started this week in the Chief People and Culture Officer role and the internal appointment of Greg Wheeler in the role of Chief Information Officer. Our strategy is unchanged from what we outlined at our Investor Day in May with a number of areas where we expect to see progress over the next 12 months, which we will cover as we step through the presentation. We will also talk to the positive progress made on some of our bigger projects. It has been a very busy year on the regulatory and compliance front with our teams putting a lot of hard work into progressing some key work streams. In relation to the AUSTRAC proceedings, you will have seen that last week SkyCity Adelaide booked a provision of $45 million for potential civil penalty and associated legal costs. Julie will talk more to this later. The current status of those proceedings is that we are working with AUSTRAC to determine the extent of any facts and admissions that can be agreed. To the extent that not all facts and admissions can be agreed with AUSTRAC, the court will identify a process for determining any remaining issues and any potential penalty to be paid by SkyCity Adelaide. CBS, the South Australian State Regulator has been working through a process on appointing an independent expert to monitor our AML and host responsibility enhancement programs. We look forward to working closely with CBS and that independent expert over the next period. It's been a year of making significant progress in our AML and host responsibility enhancement programs in Adelaide. This is including upgrading our AML/CTF programs, the introduction of new standards and processes, increased resourcing and initiatives such as reduced cash limits. Host responsibility has also been an area of focus with increased resourcing, focus on training and the introduction of a 12-hour continuous presence policy. We are also hopeful to receive approval for the use of the focal algorithm in Adelaide, which is a world-leading bespoke algorithm that identifies changes in customer behavior. We've been using this algorithm in New Zealand for many years. now turning to the New Zealand regulatory and compliance environment where we've also been focused on improvement. We continue to review and improve our AML processes, which has involved a significant increase in resources. Enhancements to our host responsibility process include the next stage of facial recognition technology for monitoring time spent on AGMs and customer use of some of our ATMs and a new dedicated host responsibility room in Auckland. SkyCity continues to work closely with the DIA who want to take frequent audits of our business, including an AML audit that is currently underway. Turning now to Slide 8. I think it's important to summarize the overall investment we've made in enhancing our regulatory and compliance resource and capability that I've referred to in the last 2 slides. As mentioned earlier, we've recently appointed a Chief Risk Officer, who's working on continuing to expand our capabilities in risk management, AML and host responsibility. We have significantly increased our head count in the risk and compliance functions over the last few years, as highlighted in the graph on Slide 8. This has seen headcount in these functions increased from about 30% in FY '20 to well over 80% in FY '23. You can see in the chart to the right of the slide that in FY '23, there was $18 million spent on a combination of BAU and one-off costs. In FY '24, we have budgeted for increased costs in these areas. In addition, we've also invested capital in technology to help our host responsibility and financial teams to be more effective. Turning now to Slide 9. I think it's really important to acknowledge the important role that SkyCity plays in the communities that we operate in. We are very proud of the deep and extensive relationships we have with a wide range of organizations, only some of which are represented on the slide here. In the last year, there was $5.3 million of grants that was approved to 122 different community organizations by the SkyCity Community Trust. There were also contributions made to support the recovery of communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and the numerous extreme weather events in the Auckland region. We are also seeing good progress and success of programs like Project Nikau, TupuToa Internship Programme, where we have onboarded 73 rangatahi in the last year and expect to welcome a further 90 in FY '24. These programs play an important role in providing a path for young Pacific Islands and Maori people into employment at SkyCity. This is helpful when contributing to the increasingly diverse and engaged workforce that we have at SkyCity, bringing a good mix of skills, ideas and experiences and is increasingly mirroring our broad customer base. We undertake a comprehensive engagement survey of our employees every 2 years. On our recent survey, our overall engagement score was 78%, highlighting strong engagement, indicating that our staff are motivated, proud to work here and would recommend SkyCity as a great place to work. This was particularly pleasing as this was a challenging period for our team, and they covered a period of obviously high-cost inflation, a lot of business interruption and numerous uncertainties. I think it's no surprise that the engagement of our employees has improved as the performance of our businesses improved, which I will walk through in a little bit more detail now. Referring to Slide 12. Pleasingly, we delivered a normalized EBITDA at the top end of the range we had previously guided to. You can see in the chart at the bottom of the page that Auckland continues to dominate the contribution in [indiscernible] contribution to normalized EBITDA. Turning to Slide 14. And you can see a few of the highlights at our Auckland precinct over the last 12 months. There was the opening of the new Cassia restaurant. We also opened Sky Bar, a world-class cocktail bar on the top of Sky Tower, and this is part of our strategy to refresh and enhance our food and beverage offerings in Auckland. Turning to Slide 15. Our Auckland property delivered a 150% increase in normalized EBITDA to $252.6 million. The strong revenue growth across gaming was driven by EGM performance. The mass market was the strongest performing segment within EGMs, which was really encouraging. This is the core of our customer base, and it's proven to be very resilient. Table games recovered through the year with a stronger second half due to increasing operating hours once more staff were available. The food and beverage performance was supported by the greater opening hours, which increased progressively through the year, while other nongaming revenue received a boost from the decrease in tourism, which was particularly evident in Sky Tower visitation. The revised operating model is allowing our business to maintain strong EBITDA margins while absorbing cost inflation. If you turn to Slide 16, you can see some of the momentum in Auckland by looking at the last 3 halves financial outcomes. EGM revenues in the second half of FY '23 was slightly down on the first half as the pent-up demand constraints in the first half of the year were released. And we also, as you'd be aware, experience some adverse weather that impacted visitation. Table games revenue responded well to the increased capacity with weekly hours up 12% in Q4 versus Q1 as an example. You can see that the last 3, 6-month periods have seen a steady increase each time in the table games revenue. Breaking down the non-gaming revenue shows that the extra capacity in hospitality has seen a building of momentum with growing demand from both local and tourism markets. We are still seeing consumer spend at our outlets in Auckland holding up and being supported by various events like FIFA Women's World Cup. Margins settled in half 2 to levels that are closer to the ongoing running of the business with more normal opening hours and staff recruitment. Now turning to Slide 17 with an update on the Horizon Hotel and New Zealand International Convention Center. We are well advanced in our planning for the opening of the Horizon Hotel in 2024. We're very excited about this addition to our Auckland hotel portfolio. Positive progress is also being made on the NZICC over the year, and the opening is expected during 2025. We're seeing strong early demand from conferences and conventions and look forward to welcoming a significant number of delegates and visitors to the precinct, which is likely to have a positive flow-on effect for visitation to the casino. I will now move to discuss Hamilton and Queenstown. And you can see some imagery associated with the opening of the new restaurant, Shanghai at SkyCity Hamilton. And we also expect over another Hamilton restaurant in the new year, further enhancing our entertainment proposition in Hamilton. SkyCity Hamilton reported normalized EBITDA of $35.2 million, which was a record result for the property, driven by strong EGM performance underpinned by the local economy, which is very little to exposure to tourism, really a local business. Hamilton has also seen staffing levels return to more normal levels over the course of the year. SkyCity Queenstown also had a record year, delivering normalized EBITDA of $4 million. The business is now consolidated on one side, and we expect that to be our model going forward. Moving now to SkyCity Adelaide where it has been a very complex and challenging year. The $35 million normalized EBITDA was a significant improvement on the previous period, which was impacted by COVID. The EGM business had a positive year with revenues up to $100 million, up 34% year-on-year. This business outperformed the market and ended the year with an average of market share close to 10%. We still think there is upside to this. Table games revenue was lower than anticipated. There has been -- this has been impacted by lower levels of local VIP visitation as well as some of the enhanced AML controls, including the introduction of daily cash limits. The non-gaming businesses, Eos hotel, food and beverage and conventions, all benefited from a full year without interruption for the first time since they were all upgraded. The EBITDA margin was constrained by significant cost pressure, including additional compliance-related costs, legal costs, labor cost increases, food and beverage input costs, higher electricity prices due to instability in the national network. Management remains focused on trying to offset these inflationary pressures by driving price increases and productivity gains where possible. Of note was the one-off compliance cost of $8 million incurred in FY '23 relating to the AUSTRAC investigation and subsequent proceedings and a CBS independent review as well as implementing the AML/CDF enhancement program. Over to page on Slide 22, you can see that the second half of FY '24 saw some softening in operating performance. EGM revenues came off a little, and you can see the impact of lower levels of activity in table games revenue. Hotel and F&B performance were positively impacted by some notable events through the second half of the year. The AFL Gather Round and LIV Golf brought significant visitors from other states. This highlights the potential of our Adelaide business when there are major activations in the city center. We have undertaken a restructure within the Adelaide business, disestablisheng a number of positions, changing the operating hours of table games and [indiscernible] and implementing other cost and revenue efficiencies. These changes were effective from July 23, and we expect a minimum of $5 million annualized earnings upside from that. Now I would like to spend a bit of time talking about our online business on Slide 23. The business for the year generated normalized EBITDA of $10.7 million, which effectively flows straight through to EBIT due to no depreciation and amortization. The comparison of this in FY '19 is 0, highlighting the change in our earnings composition across the group. Our earnings have declined year-on-year as the New Zealand online market is aggressively targeted by offshore operators who are heavily marketing and not adhering to the current ambiguous marketing standards for New Zealand. The results for the year reflect this difficult operating environment where we've seen our market share decline. However, we have continued to enhance our online offering with new content, and we will also be launching Bingo in the year ahead. Online remains a strategic growth opportunity for SkyCity, and we've had another year of significant engagement with a wide range of stakeholders in seeking the potential regulation of the online gaming market in New Zealand. The lack of any harm minimization rules plus the lost opportunity to collect a significant stream of tax revenue are factors we believe the government needs to address. Our 10% equity stake in GiG has increased in value by about 40% since we acquired it, and we continue to enjoy the strategic benefits of being associated with this entity. Now just some comments on our International Business. As we advised earlier this year, we've made substantial changes in this business over the course of the year. Results for this year are dominated by domestic Australian VIP play, and we will continue to focus on addressing the Australian VIP market. We have restructured the business, consolidating our VIP businesses into the Adelaide and Auckland properties, respectively. We have disestablished a number of senior IB roles, including the international sales personnel and we've changed our customer programs. For example, we no longer offer credit or check cashing facilities. These changes and strategy will result in our VIP business being significantly smaller than it was historically, and we will stop reporting IB as a separate business unit going forward. And with that, I would now like to hand over to Julie to talk about our financial resilience.

[Foreign Language] Michael and kudos to everyone listening in. As Michael has already mentioned, the group delivered strong financial performance in full year '23 with normalized EBITDA of $310 million and normalized NPAT of $139 million. But before I dive into more detail on the group's financial performance, I want to first talk you through our reported NPAT of $8 million and the 4 most significant items in full year '23 that are reflected in this result. Firstly, since the NZICC in 2019, we have reported some very complex technical accounting entries. In the current financial year, these entries reflect the further refinement of the estimation of the extent of the fire damage and of course, the associated cost of the reinstatement. The reinstatement phase of the program is expected to be completed in full year '24. This means that the project moves back to its construction phase and the fire accounting requirements will also end. This also means that SkyCity's construction CapEx under the project building works contract will recommence in full. There is further information in relation to the project on Slide 17 of the group's results presentation. In relation to our Auckland Investment Properties, as required under accounting standards, we undertook an independent valuation of the properties to ensure their carrying value reflects the prevailing market conditions at reporting dates. The overall decline in the Auckland real estate market has resulted in a fair value adjustment at 30th of June 2023. This will continue to be assessed in future financial periods as per accounting standard requirements. You will also note the recognition of a material impairment of the Adelaide casino license of AUD 46 million that the group disclosed on the 14th of August. This impairment is on the back of an independent valuation of the Adelaide cash-generating unit and alignment with accounting standard requirements and largely arises from changes to 3 key factors since the 30th June 2022 reporting date. The first being an increase in the weighted average cost of capital rate to reflect the higher operating environment risk, largely resulting from heightened uncertainties in the Australian gaming sector that could have future implications for SkyCity Adelaide. Secondly, and as referred to earlier by Michael, there has been a material scaling back of international earnings. And this segment of Adelaide's future business performance now focus on selected offerings to interstate premium VIPs who meet SkyCity Adelaide's enhanced compliance requirements. And finally, a slower ramp-up in table games earnings on the back of the trend we have seen since COVID-19 but more recently, the softness following the introduction of cash limits by SkyCity Adelaide in January 2023. And now moving to the AUD 45 million provision that SkyCity Adelaide recognized at 30th June 2023. This is a material item in our full year '23 reported results, which relates to our potential AUSTRAC civil penalty and associated legal costs of the proceedings for SkyCity Adelaide. While the proceedings between SkyCity Adelaide and AUSTRAC remain at a relatively early stage, as a result of the court settlement and the proceedings against the crown entities and the additional work that has been ongoing in relation to AUSTRAC's allegations, a provision has now been recognized. The provision was determined after considering a very wide -- a very large number of factors, many of which remain highly uncertain. Estimating the potential exposure of SkyCity Adelaide to penalties and legal costs arising from the proceedings is highly dependent on significant uncertainties and outcomes for SkyCity Adelaide that are not yet known. Also of important note, there is no [ set ] court prescribed methodology, which can be used for determining the provision. And AUSTRAC has not yet provided any indication of the level of any penalty that we'll seek in the proceedings. Consequently, there remains significant uncertainty and any eventual civil penalty applied to SkyCity Adelaide in relation to the AUSTRAC proceedings could vary materially from the provision that SkyCity Adelaide has recognized. And to preempt the question, the timing of any civil penalty payment by SkyCity Adelaide is also unclear. Also for completeness, I do want to point out that the provision has a neutral impact on the valuation that underlies the Adelaide casino license impairment that I referred to earlier. Now moving back to the operational performance of the group. I refer you to Slides 12 and 13 in the presentation, which summarize the group's financial performance, delivering normalized EBITDA of $310 million with a margin of 32%. As highlighted in our interim results, the group operating margin has come up slightly from the 33% for our half year performance, largely due to the cost uplift that was anticipated on the back of the ramp-up in recruitment to support the increased operating hours. Of the group's normalized revenue of $967 million, 50% was generated by electronic gaming machines, predominantly from mass market play. For context, in full year '19, EGMs represented 38% of the total group normalized revenue, reflecting a shift in the group's revenue composition that Michael referred to earlier. And while table games are our second largest revenue contributor at $231 million, this was $28 million behind table games revenue in full year '19, again, an indication of the slower recovery for table games since the COVID-19 disruptions. However, I will call out that pleasingly for Auckland, the successful recruitment of table game dealers in the second half of '23 has enabled an increase in tables opening hours to meet the customer demand, and you will see the 11% uplift in table games revenue and the full year '23 half-to-half comparison on Slide 16. Non-gaming business segments are now contributing over 20% of the group's normalized revenue. For context, group hospitality delivered earnings in full year '23 that are $16 million higher than full year '19 being a year without restrictions. This reflects another structural shift in the group's operating model and the uplift from an increase in the number of outlets and of course, Eos Hotel in Adelaide. Of important note, in full year '23, Auckland's outlets on average, operated at availability well below pre-COVID levels. This reflects a combination of the resourcing constraints experienced across food and beverage during the first half of the financial year, but also importantly, it reflects the heightened focus of the hospitality team on increasing the overall profitability and margins of the outlets opening hours. Moving now to expenses. Similar to most businesses, the group is also experiencing high inflation, which requires close management. There are many initiatives across the group to sustainably remove costs, improve operating efficiencies and refine operating structures in order to grow earnings and protect margins. Some of these initiatives were executed near the end of full year '23. I do want to call out manpower as this continues to be the group's single biggest cost, representing 53% of the group's expenses. As Michael mentioned earlier, we welcomed a significant number of new people to the SkyCity [indiscernible] during the year, which in effect translated to a full-time equivalent increase of 455 FTEs from the prior financial period. In addition, the cost of employment increased by an average of 7% across the group from full year '22. Both of these factors have driven an overall increase of $45 million and the group's manpower cost from the prior financial year. And now moving to full year '23 capital allocation. You will see from Slide 26 that while the group's capital spend of $48 million was up by around $15 million against full year '22, this also reflects our prudent approach given the ongoing affordability focus. Full year '23 capital spend has been prioritized towards the more critical maintenance, refurbishments, ICT systems and, of course, gaming product to increase customer visitation and experience. We do expect, however, to return to normal capital levels in the full year '24. We are also very pleased with the strength of the group's balance sheet and our financial resilience, as you see on Slide 27. The group ended the full year '23 financial year with a healthy level of liquidity headroom of close to $600 million. This level of headroom helps to equip the group to manage its future commitments and uncertainties. In addition, the group's strong debt gearing ratio of 1.5x at 30th June 2023 as well within the requirements of our finance years and in alignment with the group's investment-grade credit ratings. And before I hand back to Michael for an update on full year '24, we are very pleased that the group's strong normalized NPAT performance and free cash flow delivery has enabled the declaration of a final dividend of $0.06 per share, taking the full year dividend to $0.12 per share, which prudently reflects the lower end of the group's dividend policy. Back over to you, Michael.

Thanks, Julie. I would like to conclude by making some observations around the outlook for FY '24. Recent trading has been pleasing, and we are planning to build on the momentum achieved in FY '23 into the current financial year. 2024 is a milestone year for us with the opening of the Horizon Hotel, reintegration of the car park, which will bring with it significant earnings and of course, getting ready for the opening of NZICC in 2025. We see a continued recovery in tourism combined with improved staff availability as positive factors for the year ahead. These could be offset by an uncertain economic environment, continued inflationary pressures, there'll be some opening costs at Horizon Hotel and NZICC and further investment in risk and AML capabilities. We do remain cautiously optimistic about the outlook for the year ahead based on our revised operating model, which provides us with a certain amount of flexibility to manage the performance of the group as we navigate variable operating conditions, as we've done in the past year. Additionally, initiatives that we've recently implemented and are continuing to execute in FY '24 will support our future earnings growth and mitigate some of the cost pressures. A good example of these initiatives is the restructure of the cost base in Adelaide. As a result of all these factors, we expect to see a modest year-on-year increase in our normalized EBITDA for FY '24. And finally, I'd like to thank the SkyCity Board, my senior leadership at SkyCity and most importantly, all of the SkyCity team for their incredible and collective efforts over the past year. With that, I'm going to pause and look forward to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Justin Barratt from CLSA.

My first question just came around the EGMs. Obviously, as you've highlighted a really strong result there. I just wanted to try and understand, are you confident that this reflects a new normal for the business going forward? Or are you expecting some moderation in EGM play going ahead?

Justin, we're really pleased with the EGM performance across the group, and it's obviously our largest business and contributor as the group, so really important for us. So I'll break it probably into New Zealand and Adelaide. And I would say, look, in New Zealand, we had a really strong start to the year in the first half. Second half came off a little bit but we see this is a new base for EGMs that we expect to grow off. And that's probably a trend globally as well. You see that in other gaming machine markets around the world. And in Adelaide, we've got -- the market has been pretty strong there and our share, about 10%. And as I said earlier, I think we can grow on that base.

Fantastic. And then just wanted to confirm in terms of group compliance costs going forward, did you say that you're budgeting in FY '24 for higher one-off costs in '24 on '23?

Yes, I did. Yes. Yes. So we'd expect in the current year that those costs will budgeted that would increase slightly. And at some point, we'll see the one-off costs disappear.

Great. And then 1 final 1 for me. At your 1 half '23 result, you highlighted that you had voluntarily commenced a responsible game play program in Adelaide, and I was really keen to see some of the initial takeaways from that program in this result. But there doesn't seem to be. So I was just wondering if you could provide us with a little bit of detail about how that program is going to this point.

Yes. I think what you're referring to, we introduced in our VIP rooms mandatory carded across EGMs and table games. But however, on a manual basis, we don't have the systems to enforce that yet, but that's something we're working on. We're getting very high in the high 90% participation or rate of play in those areas. So we're pretty pleased with that and will continue. We also introduced cash limits into the property. It wouldn't appear that there's been any impact in our EGM business. However, you can see our table games business was a bit softer than in particular, our VIP table games business was a little bit softer. And probably the other thing we would have called out was the 12-hour continued presence that we've introduced across the group.

Our next question will come from Wade Gardiner from Craigs Investment Partners.

I got a few questions here. Reasonably extensive qualifications around the AUSTRAC provision, I guess I'm just wondering, if we go back 6 months, you were reluctant to make a provision. And it almost sounded like to raise a provision, you'd want some sort of clarity around the situation. So bearing in mind the level of qualification that you put, what's actually changed there? And what have the auditors said?

I might hand this question over to Julie.

Yes. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Wade. So first of all, yes, you can imagine we spent quite a bit of time with our auditors on this. And it is -- they fully appreciate the difficulty on there, but they are comfortable with the provision we've booked being very mindful of all of the uncertainties. So what is different? So we've been actually assessing provision since we got the statement of claim. What has changed in the last few months is really largely around 2 factors. One is the rolling with Crown and the outcome of that and being able to review the statement effects and actually have a sort of a court ruling around that level of fine for those properties. And the other one is how we're progressing ourselves with our legal advisers on our preparation for the proceedings.

Okay. You mentioned the DIA review. Have you noticed any differences in their approach given what's happened in Adelaide. And how often are they in there?

Look, the DIA is a very active regulator and has been like that for many years. They have -- their history is they conduct frequent reviews or actually audits of areas, particularly host responsibility and AML. They have increased their resourcing over the last number of years, and we see that in visits to the property on a weekly basis, you'd expect to see DIA here. And also in terms of the audits, which they undertake, which are pretty comprehensive, we just called out, they're undertaking an AML audit, which is sort of a routine audit taking right now. We also -- look, I say we're very good engagement with the DIA at all levels of their organization.

Okay. Just in terms of the CapEx, it's reported that there's a sort of $50 million difference between your estimate and Macquaries. What's -- where do the main differences lie there? Is it just a WAC agreement?

Look, it's more complicated than that. I would say, look, we're obviously in court at the moment. Our approach as well, we want to get the best outcome for our shareholders. I think the counter party has been pretty difficult in this process. We thought we would have come to a closure by now. However, it's still underway. It's really about the source, the interpretation of some clauses in the contract. We'd expect how -- it's certainly in this financial year and hopefully, in this half, we'll get this resolved. The car park is a good business that generates $15 million to $18 million of earnings. And we certainly hope in the second half, we're seeing those earnings coming through.

Okay. And just finally for me, you talked about the normalization of the -- sort of the maintenance CapEx number. What should we assume there going forward?

Yes. Look, we're sort of, as we said in the past, $80 million to $100 million, it will sort of move on different years. We have a little bit of a catch-up of $80 million to $100 million is where we think the maintenance CapEx is for the business.

Our next question comes from David Fabris from Macquarie.

Just the first question, I was wondering if you could walk through guidance a little more. I mean, with the comments on modest growth. Maybe you can talk about the expected benefits from the open car park concession, how we should think about any contribution from the Horizon Hotel? I know you've made a little comment around the compliance cost creeping up. But any further information that would be helpful to help us try and carve out the '24 guidance?

Sure. I suppose to words we use there, we're cautiously optimistic. And there's a lot of moving parts in the year ahead. We see a pretty conservative macroeconomic environment, cost of living pressures from consumers and so on. So we're cautious on that. But then we see international tourism, we're expecting a pretty good and strong summer of tourism. And for example, in Auckland, the cruise ship market is going to have a really strong season. But there's some material one-off items that in the year ahead. So for example, opening cost, preopening costs of Horizon Hotel and also a ramp-up of preopening costs related to the operationalization of the Convention Center. And then you'll have the earnings, of course, of Horizon Hotel. I think we would probably have a quarter of earnings for that hotel, but it will take a little bit of a ramp-up. It's in the following year, you'll see obviously, a full year of the earnings materialize. And then car park, it depends on when the car park comes back to us. We want to bring that to a conclusion as soon as possible. But realistically, it could be in the -- we may only have a half of earnings from the car park, but it's still obviously some uncertainty when that will happen. We did the car park -- just to give some guidance to car park, we'd expect to generate somewhere between $16 million to $18 million of earnings for the full year.

Got it. Just to be clear on the comments on the Horizon Hotel, with those preopening costs, for the horizon and NZICC, will that kind of mitigate any earnings benefit in that quarter? So should we be thinking about no benefits of the horizon and a bigger benefit in FY '25?

That's probably a good way of thinking about it. When we run our budget, they had to sort of the sort of way we're looking at it.

Okay. And just another question. Just thinking about the dividend. I mean you guys have done a really good job around mitigating OpEx growth in some form, you're pretty much ex-CapEx. How should we think about that 60% to 90% target range? I mean once you settle the car park dispute, is there an opportunity to scale up towards the high end of that range?

Look, I think the opportunity certainly in the longer term is to look at that. I think our Board is being prudent right now, which I think is appropriate given where we're at. But as we removed some of the uncertainties, and we go ex CapEx, I think we expect to see that increase, particularly as the earnings grow as well.

Great. And sorry, 1 last question. Just with the domestic tables business, it's still tracking below pre-Covid levels. And obviously, international tourism should be a beneficiary for that. But has there been a structural impact that may see that sort of not see as much growth as we've seen historically and maybe it struggles to get to pre-Covid levels.

Look, domestic tables, and maybe I'll get Callum to talk a little bit about the New Zealand and open table games business, which is the largest one and what we've seen there.

Look, Yes, absolutely. We are still tracking behind pre-COVID. But bear in mind, it was back to '17, '18 when we saw the peak in tables. And even prior to COVID, we were seeing some softening in tables. We're pleased with how the last quarter of last year has gone and tracked. There's been a number of initiatives the teams have put in. And as Michael and Julie have covered, obviously, getting our open hours up has been a big impact. We don't have our new hours up, particularly in Auckland to where we would still like them to be. So we are still recruiting in that space. And you're absolutely right. As we see [ shoulder ] and peak tourist season come in, we would expect and hope to see that trend continue.

Our next question will come from Matt Ryan from Barrenjoey .

Just with Adelaide, can you comment on the performance in the second half and where you think we are in regards to the impact of any operational changes that you might be making in the course of sort of, I guess, changes around AML and the like that you're looking at?

Matt, look, what I would say, obviously, the second half was softer than the first half, particularly, we saw some weakness in table games. We also -- the cost base is something that we've been working on. So we've actually made some changes to our cost base there that we executed at end of the year in June. That is with those changes, we've changed our opening hours, some changes in manpower as well. And we would expect those to a $5 million or so impact to our earnings going forward. I think it's also fair to say, over the course of the year, we have implemented more significant controls and process from an AML point of view. I'd expect that, that business has rebased, particularly the table games business rebased, and we expect to see it start to grow from here over time.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Mark Robertson from Forsyth Barr.

Just a question, I guess, along the lines of when that was going around this new table sort of trial or what is now permanent in Adelaide. Is there any thought about rolling that out across more of the group, either the New Zealand properties or maybe into EGMs around the cash limits on gaming? And further to that, you've talked about this $5 million of cost savings. What's the ability in terms of cost savings in New Zealand?

So look, we're looking at things across the group in terms of how we can operate with synergies and where we can take best practice from more parts of the business to the other part of the business. Right now, we're not -- in terms of the specific cash limits that we have in Adelaide, we're not applying those. We have a separate set of controls and cash limits in Auckland as example. However, in the long term, we are looking at mandatory carded play as an example. That's something that we're committed to. We want -- I think on cash limits and that specific, what's key is that we've introduced really good cash technology, the ability cashless technology that allows customers to seamlessly transfer of funds to us on a cash flow basis. So that's work that we'll be doing, but that's going to take a number of years to deliver. So that's what I will call out. And I think there's other things. So for example, in Auckland, we have very advanced facial recognition technology in place, but we don't have that in Adelaide yet. We're working with the regulator to get approval to put that in place. So that's the first question. In terms of cost savings in the business, I would say, look, right across the group, we're always looking at how we operate our business, and what's the optimal model for us. So whether that's opening ours in restaurants, operating hours in our casinos, and they've actually changed many times over the course of the year. So it's -- and we think of it in terms of the margin that we're targeting for each business. So we're pretty pleased with the margin that we got, I think, in the Auckland business with around 43% or so when I think of it. And a lot of work goes actually into the initiative to deliver that. I don't know, Callum, do you want to make any additional comments there?

Yes. just to echo what Michael see, we've put in a number of operational changes across the New Zealand facility since COVID. We've learned a lot from COVID, the [indiscernible] of pandemic. And whether that is the operating hours right through to the automation that we've spoken to many on this call about before. So to answer your question, Mark, we're constantly looking at our model, and constantly trying to protect margin.

That's awesome. And if we just talk about FY '24 guidance, if we were to remove the uncertainty around the timing of those additional revenue streams in terms of Horizon Hotel and the car park, the underlying business, where do you see that performing? And is it a case of solid New Zealand outstrips soft Australia? Or sort of how does the underlying business move there?

Look, unfortunately, I can't remove them from our future. But look, I think cautiously optimistic is how the right way to characterize how we're thinking of the year ahead. Like if I take a more longer-term view, we see lots of upside, particularly in our Auckland business with -- once we were through Horizon opening, Convention Center opening, the CRL, which will be opening probably 26 here in Auckland. There's a lot of really pretty structural things that are -- that will be helped the Auckland business in particular.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd now like to hand it back for closing remarks.

Okay. Just thank you, everybody, for the call and over the course of the next couple of weeks. Look forward to engaging with you all.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.