Tourism Holdings Limited (THL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tourism Holdings Limited Fiscal Year 2024 Half Year Results Briefing. [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, Grant Webster, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daniel. That was a wonderful introduction. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today for the FY '24 interim results presentation. We've got a couple of people in the room with us today. We've got Amir Ansari that you know, welcome back Steven Hall from -- for [indiscernible] leave and thank you very much for taking on the acting CFO role, which we announced today as well. And of course, Nick Judd, our CFO, your last results phone call with THL in this current reign at least. If we don't get you back in the future, we'll see. All right. We're going to move through the presentation reasonably quickly so we can get to your Q&A. We do think there are some elements that are a little bit competitive in the result, given the merger, but broadly speaking, it's pretty self-explanatory. So if we're at the explanatory note page, it's fair to say that overall, we know it is a messy period again due to the comparatives, the transaction accounting, number of the intercompany eliminations and we've still got the pro forma results in here and a lot of moving parts. So our goal has been to simplify the information that we're focusing on today. We want to be talking about the business performance in general. We want to be talking about the outlook and the long-term goals of direction accordingly. Before we get into that, we've had a couple of questions come through already this morning on the treatment of the purchase price acquisition accounting. In relation to our guidance of NPATs, we would see it would be around $75 million for the year. Clarity for all that number does include the acquisition accounting impact, which we had previously estimated at around $4.4 million and we still believe that's around the right figure. So on a pre-acquisition accounting basis, the equivalent would be $79.4 million. We've mentioned this previously that we are consistently including the $4.4 million. There are elements of it that will continue in perpetuity and we believe it is the most accurate way to be recording. Not everyone has grasped that. So just that clarification as we try and keep things simple. So let's move straight to the executive summary. The rentals business within THL is going well and we've seen the transition back to tourism globally very positively across the business. The sales business, I guess would say is okay with some expected headwinds in what is an uncertain FY '24. But importantly, we see no longer-term or structural changes in that market or consumers in any way that concerns us. Debt is higher than it's historically been, but again, that's about us increasing our fleet. And with that, obviously, an expectation that we increased revenue and we deliver that return on funds employed that we expect and hold dearly to the way that we operate this business. We'd note that the synergies are going very well and as a business we're happy with how the merger is progressing in general. The synergies both from a timing perspective and overall quantum are positive. Strategically, we have reinforced the point that we are well positioned to achieve the FY '26 goal of $100 million net profit after tax. The assumptions and market conditions remain suitable for us to achieve that. When you look at that future goal, you've got to say that this year is a transition year, a minor bump in the progression towards those broader strategic goals. Just quickly moving on to the results slide. It's all pretty self-explanatory, the statutory result of $39.7 million, up 58% on the prior year has been well received by the media and has been well articulated. But we'll talk more about the pro forma comparison as we move through the divisional results. We're certainly well aligned in the business with our expectations for revenue growth and you'll see revenue up 72%. And you'll also see that we have fleet up at 15%. Now that does reflect the trading fleet. There is a work-in-progress fleet level that will be covered later on by Nick. And with that, we'll talk more about the net debt and the net CapEx number. As we've said, it does increase our net debt to $403 million and as I mentioned earlier, with that being focused on fleet growth, it is all about how we generate the additional revenue associated with that fleet. And that's where we get that opportunity to build and grow towards that target. And finally, I just want to mention the dividend of $0.045 per share. Nick will cover the details on that, including why you shouldn't try and necessarily extrapolate an exact figure for our profit for the year or a final dividend given the nature of those assumptions. All right. Let's move on to rental yields and sales margins. It's a positive story globally when it comes to rental yields. We've given some broad indication on H1 and we'll talk about our division outlook as well. We haven't included that graph that we did historically on where we thought the patent of yields are, but it would be fair to say, in every country, we have not moved in the way that we thought we had moved more positively. The result shows that we're focused on driving the right mix between yield, fleet size and market share. And given that we've continued to grow yields in the first half, we would reinforce the fact that we're coming off a higher base moving forward. It's a pleasing place to be and it's one where customers see the value in our product and shows that we're managing yield in a way that's appropriate to the market and the broader opportunities in the business. We've highlighted before and would reinforce that we do see some yield decline or stabilization in some areas as we move forward, but we'll talk about those on a divisional basis. We will not see yields return to pre-COVID levels with our current expectations. Margins are normalizing in vehicle sales and we've been clear about that time after time and recent expectations. I'll pass over to Nick now to talk about the dividend, capital management and synergies.

Thanks, Grant and hello to all on the call. Focusing for a start on the dividend, it is pleasing that we will pay our first interim dividend in a number of years, a $0.045 dividend which is 100% imputed and 25% franked. A reminder that our dividend policy is to pay 40% to 60% of underlying NPAT. As previously guided, our dividends are expected to be split approximately 30% at interim and 70% at final, which aids the seasonality of cash flows associated with the fleet purchasing and business earnings. As Grant stated earlier, the 30 to 70 split is an approximation and shouldn't be used as a proxy of $0.045 to try and work out the profit number for the year. It has materially increased in half 1 as we have grown fleet, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, held fleet for longer due to the slower sales market, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, taking delivery of some fleet earlier than expected, particularly in the U.S. and New Zealand and had a rise in full plan debt associated with holding stock for longer in our Australian retail business. At the 31st of December, we have a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 2.1 and it will stay more elevated as we continue to invest in the fleet regrowth, but this is in line with expectations and we expect full year net fleet CapEx to be around previous expectations at $170 million, with an additional $10 million spent on non-fleet CapEx. As Grant mentioned, we had a significant number of fleet sitting in the work-in-progress balance at the 31st of December as U.S. purchases were delivered earlier than original expectations and a large number of fleet, both new and used were shipped from the U.K. and Europe down to New Zealand and they're in the process of being on fleet at that point in time. Supply chains do remain with some bumps and hence, why we have taken delivery of some vehicles earlier, but it is certainly in a much improved situation from a year ago. Positively, even with some longer-term low fixed rate debt rolling off and being replaced by current price debt, we have seen our effective interest rate at 7.2% for the half decrease and sit slightly below the FY '23 effective interest rate. And we continue to see pricing improvements from our funding group. We continue to have a strong and very supportive lending group and have significant headroom to enable the [ reflow ]. Turning to merger integration and synergies. As Grant has touched on, the story is positive here. And if this slide looks familiar it is because it is. We've used this slide consistently regarding our synergies in a number of our presentations. The information on the slide also remains similar as we are on track to deliver the $27 million to $31 million in pretax cash synergies ahead of our original timing and we are now at a point where we can assuredly say that the synergies will be delivered. We will achieve 100% of the synergies in FY '25. Significant activity continues in the business to deliver the synergies with key recent focus areas being delivery of the integrated IT road map, product-related areas such as the bill of materials and repairs and maintenance supplier spend and the final labor property and duplicate corporate costs coming out of the business. Alignment of the manufacturing businesses in Australia and New Zealand is going well with quick win productivity and operational synergies identified and plan to roll out in half 2 and longer-term initiatives planned for implementation in FY '25. FY '25 is also aimed at scaling the North American fleet synergies with a trial of fleet transfers between Canada and U.S.A. currently underway and taking place this month. Given that they are reoccurring costs over multiple years, we have not excluded the $1.5 million in implementation costs from our underlying performance. We expect to be under the implementation cost budget that we identified and with the majority of spend having occurred also. Lastly, with every month, the counterfactual plans, which the synergy comparison was built against get less and less relevant and we are likely to stop reporting on the synergies in the near future as the counterfactual has become irrelevant and you will see the benefits flow through to the NPAT bottom line. It is important to remember that we are not immune from the inflationary cost increases that all businesses face and which will impact costs into the future. I'll now pass back to Grant to give a summary of the business unit performance.

Thanks, Nick. Appreciate that. Let's go through the results, starting with New Zealand. We're very pleased with the New Zealand business and always to give free aspect of the operation. As with Australia, when we compare year-on-year, the previous period did have the sale of vehicles to GC. But in New Zealand, the tourism demand has been particularly strong and yields have continued to grow by double-digit amounts and show no signs of decreasing at this point in time. Vehicle sales volumes and margin remained broadly in line with our expectations, although we would note that vehicle sales market is quieter at the top high end of the market where price points sort of north of $200,000. We're positive about the broad outlook for rentals in vehicle sales in New Zealand, we note the opening of two more RV Super Centres, one in Hamilton that leverages the actual manufacturing site in Foreman Road and one in Palmerston North. That's certainly a good growth area for us as a business with low capital deployed. Let's move on to Australia. So the Australian result was slightly behind our internal expectations. When looking at the pro forma result, you certainly see a significant drop on the prior year. But we note again that that compares with the juicy sale of vehicles and a significant non-tourism revenue benefit that we had in the prior corresponding period relating to the Sydney floods which obviously wasn't repeated this year. And because of the time of year, it wasn't something that we could replace with tourism revenue easily. Within tourism in general, there was a shift from domestic to international as more Australians chose to travel overseas. And with vehicle sales, we saw the decline against the pro forma corresponding period, reflecting the general market for automotive and leisure sales in Australia. The gross profit margin is normalizing as we've indicated and again, that's what we've expected. This segment also includes Brisbane manufacturing in the administration costs for Australia, which will be separated out in time. We're very pleased to get the Camperagent Adelaide acquisition underway and completed at the start of this year. [Technical Difficulty] really well for good synergies in that market and ongoing development of the region in South Australia. Moving on to the U.S.A. That's simply a disappointing result for us driven clearly by vehicle sales market. If you do follow this market, you would have seen reporting from the industry of the public listed companies up there that clearly indicated it's a market-wide issue, it's not THL issue and you don't understand where the current market is. Importantly, the vehicle sales market, there is an expectation that it will [Technical Difficulty] and over the decade, has had an ongoing comparing growth. Calendar 2024 is expected within the market to see some growth in RV sales and the general market is reflecting that. Particularly, we expect to see growth of interest rates start to fall, which could be any time anybody expect, but we would suggest sometime around midyear. We remain conservative in our expectations from a rentals and sales perspective at the moment. In the U.S.A., you'd see that we had growth in hire days in retention of the yield growth, which we've achieved over previous years. The rental outlook for this coming high season remains reasonably positive. There is an international trade event in Germany in just over a week's time, which should give us some real good indication of the mood towards the U.S.A. and Canadians rental markets. It will be interesting because those markets will certainly see the trends for the high season coming out of Europe. If you look at the public information from the listed wholesale entities in tourism, it certainly does indicate that demand is still strong for North America tourism in general. The customers seem to be more price sensitive than the U.S. market. That's what we're seeing and some of it relates to exchange rate, but we overall remain positive about the U.S. in the long term. And again, we see no structural issues in that business that doesn't see it improving over time. With Canada, a positive result for the first half, really strong yield growth over the prior period, corresponding period indicating pretty much double-digit growth and yield. It achieved those high yields, obviously, because we had a higher rental demand than the U.S. and it is a shorter season and fleet size and the total market seems to have stayed pretty stable. We see yields stabilizing in this market in the current period, but again, would reiterate that point that that stabilization is coming off a higher growth base. Vehicle sales in Canada remained a challenge and for the same reasons as we just discussed in the U.S. Realistically, both Canada and the U.S. are one market when it comes to vehicle sales. We continue to progress our synergies in that area and we've got much greater alignment between the U.S.A. and Canada when it comes to vehicle sales and we'll be combining the leadership of vehicle sales across Canada and U.S. in a very short period of time. The U.K. and Ireland are still a minor part of the business at this point in time and they had an okay half year. Costs have increased in that business and we're watching it carefully, in particular, insurance that's been a real issue for us, which we're looking to resolve over the coming period. We did see the flex fleet movement commence again in New Zealand in the last period. And for those of you that might be new to that, but simply put, that's where we take the opportunity to move vehicles from the U.K. post their high season down to New Zealand for the New Zealand high season. Thus you get a double utilization opportunity within one year and can then look to move those vehicles in the New Zealand sales market. We did have shipping issues this year and you would have heard that in a number of different businesses, which did impact the availability of those vehicles for the peak season. Action Manufacturing had a very pleasing result and they continue to grow from the benefit of scale. And we also see, as Nick mentioned, some of those supply constraints starting to ease, but would offset somewhat in those shipping issues that we're seeing on a global basis. When you look at the growth in head count here, it reflects both the demand from a sales perspective, the growth in acquisitions and the easing of the labor market as well. Chris Devoy, the CEO of Action Manufacturing now leads both New Zealand and Australia and that's provided us some real opportunity to get more synergies happening in that space to better explore technology benchmarking. We've seen our design capability leveraged across both those businesses and obviously, we're getting those supply chain benefits as we've expected within our synergy goals. From a tourism perspective, the business has recovered extremely well. We're really pleased with the results from the FIFA Women's World Cup. We saw that it was very beneficial over the winter period. We'd like to see the different councils and government in New Zealand target more events of this kind into the future. The EBIT margins in the tourism businesses are returning to above pre-COVID levels and it shows that strong operating leverage that exists within the business. We have importantly said that our expectation at this point in time is that the tourism businesses, these two businesses combined will exceed the previous record EBIT results and that will be with a lower visitor number than pre-COVID. So we continue to see a positive outlook for these businesses and we'll continue to invest in these businesses as appropriate. When you look at group support and eliminations, it's a complicated area that I don't think we need to go through in detail. There's no real change in approach at this time, but we will consolidate all our group support costs moving forward and simplify the way that we proceed them given that a number of those costs are within the Australian segment. The increase in cost saves does, as we've talked about, relate to the integration program and obviously, the group support share of the employee bonus that we put in place as well. At a group level, right across the organization, just to remind people that it was over $2 million cost for the period as well. The next couple of slides are just a really good slide to get an idea of the divisions in comparison and we'll leave you to realize that in your own time. And we'll move on to the final slide of the outlook. It's important to note for us that, in general, we continue to be on track with our expectations from both an EBITDA and an EBIT perspective. It has been a slower vehicle sales market in the first half, which has, in part, led to higher net debt, but we do have that high net debt because we are growing fleet for the future. Importantly, that higher debt has higher interest costs. And so when you look at our expectations for FY '24 of around $75 million, it's important to note the primary movement is in the interest cost line. The expectations for the year are slightly below our earlier ambitions for the year. But we would remind everyone that this is a transition year. It is a small change and where our earnings composition in the future shifts from elevated sales margins of recent years towards more sustainable rental earnings. Importantly, we'd reiterate again that the assumptions and structural nature of the business reiterates our ability and belief to achieve the $100 million impact goal in FY '26. That will be the benefit of stronger rental earnings through a larger global fleet, greater stability in global sales and importantly, the realization of the full synergy benefits from the Apollo merger. We'll move to Q&A and thank you, everybody, for taking the time to be part of this presentation and we'll open up, Daniel, to you for questions from the floor.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Kieran Carling with Craigs Investment Partners.

First question from me is just around your commentary on yields in Australia through the second half, holding in line with the PCP. We've been hearing from some of the operators that in Australia rental yields are starting to soften quite dramatically, particularly in relation to the domestic consumer. Can you just provide us with a bit of a read on how the domestic consumer is holding up relative to international and whether you see any risk that yields decline into FY '25?

So I'll pick that up, Kieran. Thanks for the question. Look, we would reiterate the key points that we've said. So yields are stabilizing. There could be some decline, but they are coming off a higher and higher base. So yes, there could be some movement. We've always stated that year after year after year, we've stated since post-COVID of the high yields that there will be some degree of movement in stabilization in those yields. From a domestic perspective, we're still positive from a domestic perspective. Yes, domestic business in total has declined. You would expect that as outbound tourism has increased and we have more international coming into the market. So your comments from other players in the market don't overly surprise me, but they would not be an indication of where we see our yields necessarily. We remain positive about the demand outlook that we have relative to our expectations, including yields.

Okay. Just in terms of your updated guidance of around $75 million, that implies just over a 60% lift in underlying NPAT for the second half of the year and obviously a fairly even distribution of earnings between the first and second half. Can you just help us carve out kind of where that earnings uplift is going to come from within the group in the second half and also where you see the seasonality of earnings beyond FY '24?

Okay. So let me just take the last part first. The seasonal earnings beyond FY '24 over time, we will revert more towards professional pre-COVID split. You've got to take into account, obviously, Canada being in the business and so forth and so on. So there are some changes. The general trend is heading that way. There's no big difference than pre-COVID. In terms of the second half, I mean, basically, it's an extension of that same point. So you've got a much stronger January, February, March high season in New Zealand and Australia relative to the prior year. You've got more fleet in those jurisdictions over the high season period as well. Those are the big changes that move the seasonal nature of the second half. Same with obviously tourism as well as peak season for the tourism businesses. Anything, Nick, that you would add to that?

No.

Okay. And you touched on the fact there were some shipping impacts for vehicles coming into New Zealand from Europe just prior to the peak period. Are you able to quantify how many vehicles that impacted and what the financial impact was for the first half?

So it was just shy of 200 vehicles, but we wouldn't quantify what that meant because we were sort of phasing those into the fleet over that time. We started to see that the shipping delays were -- they weren't well, well forecasted, but we did plan for them. So there wasn't a massive impact from their perspective. It's more about the debt levels at year-end relative to the earnings.

Our next question comes from John O'Shea with Ord Minnett.

Look, a couple of my questions have already been covered, but I just wanted to confirm in relation to the synergies. What we're talking about here is with that graph at 100% realization, we're talking about a run rate, is that correct? So that means that by FY '26, we should get the full quantum of that earnings in the FY '26 financial year. Is that the right way to think about it?

Hang on, John, I'm glad that the number of times we've shown it, we've finally got the [indiscernible] through to everybody. It's spot on.

Okay. Terrific. I guess the second question relates to just picking up on your comment there, you said about the Canada and the U.S., some synergies there between doing some business between the two. Can you just elaborate and give us a little bit more color on what you're talking about there, Grant, and that opportunity and what that could mean moving forward?

Yes. So look, the simple way of talking about it and in fact, it probably won't be simple when I get into the detail. But anyway, the simple way of talking about it is that you've got two fleets, two different, obviously, same peak season, but a lot lower off-peak season in Canada. And basically, looking at buying a particular group of fleet that can work across both jurisdictions. And by doing so you can pull some of the capital out over winter in the Canadian operation. And so that's part of it. And then obviously, from a sales perspective as well, being aligned where we can actually sell across both markets and in big ways rather than sort of one business going to one dealer with a particular fleet and coming back in the door the next week, just is really aligning where all that fleet sits and what we retail in each jurisdiction, so forth and so on. So it has literally been a vehicle type by vehicle type comparison, comparison of what chassis, what manufacturer, what those costs are, what achieves the right yield, dot, dot, dot and adjusting all those fleet numbers.

And I guess the extension of that is clearly, I mean the question is, does that vehicle exist that is suitable for both and if it does, how quickly can you act on that?

So that's the trial that Nick talked about. So we do get some vehicles that are moving at the moment. And yes, we have ordered vehicles into next year that will be multi-dips across those jurisdictions, not all vehicles, but some vehicles, yes.

And I take it then that that -- if you work through the numbers on that, that would be a material -- it could have a material impact on the earnings. Is that reasonable?

And for the material for the North American business in time as the fleet already takes through, absolutely. Yes. Thank you for highlighting that. You're absolutely right.

And is that included in your $100 million target?

Some of it is, some of it flows through beyond that as well.

Our next question comes from Vignesh Nair with UBS.

Just 3 questions for me this morning. First off, just focusing on the sales business. I thought you mentioned kind of gross margins on sort of resales coming back in line with long-run averages. You've sort of done 19%-ish for the first half by my calcs. What can we sort of expect going into the second half? Is it sort of a kind of a steep decline into your long-run average levels of sort of 13% to 14% or is it kind of buffered with sort of that long and average sort of resale margin hit in the sort of FY '25 year and beyond?

Yes. No. There's no dramatic change in this in the second half. There might be a little bit more in the U.S. normalization as we get towards the end of the financial year, but most of it flows through into FY '25.

And is that sort of the same for the retail sales, so the non-fleet sales? Is this sort of -- I think you did 14% in Australia. Is that kind of a similar style of decline in the second half and beyond there?

Look, exactly what happens with margins in the retail side in Australia will be interesting. And by that, I don't mean that they necessarily go back in a dramatic way at all. We're focused on making sure that we are maintaining our market share and pushing volume through that market. There might be a little bit of a margin hit. But overall, when we look at gross margin dollars, I think it will be at a reasonable pace and quite comparative.

The difference with Australia retail is you have a much broader product mix than you do than the other regions where you're obviously only selling user fleet. And so that gives us tools and levers that we can play to which has an impact on that gross margin and obviously on the bottom line as well, depending on consumer and market demand, but it's a lot more nuanced and varied because of that.

Okay. So that's helpful. Second question is just on the fleet size. You sort of have around 7,400 as of the end of the first half. What sort of target have you set for yourself into FY '24? Obviously, you have, I suppose, 400 in preparation in New Zealand and the U.S. So I suppose, is it sort of taking into account that 800 overall? And then kind of also the U.S. sales high season into the sort of latter end of the second half, is that how you should sort of think about where you should land on a final kind of year-end sales size number?

Yes. 100%. That's the right way to think about it. We haven't changed the goal that we said we're still targeting 9,500. I think we've been pretty clear that that's more weighted towards FY '25 growth exactly as you're thinking about it throughout.

And the final question is just, I suppose, double question on what Kieran was talking to in the Australian business on sort of rental revenue. I just wanted to get a better gauge of what's happening to volumes there? Like you sort of said that overall rental hire days have declined, but that's a function of the fleet size difference. What's actually happened to kind of the utilization on a per RV basis in the rental business in Australia?

So just a reminder that -- well, actually just take the transcript for [indiscernible]. No, the -- just a reminder that it was non-tourism revenue that was the big miss in the half to half within the rentals business. There are two key things for that. That essentially runs at 100% utilization for a long period of time. The way that we certainly account for it because that fleet is out essentially on a rental contract and that was a very long rental contract for the number -- a large number of vehicles in it. So if you take that into account, the utilization hasn't grown quite to the degree that we would have expected, but were designed. But if you take that out, we are still seeing utilization growth, but we still have utilization opportunities in Australia as well. And that's again part of that. We talked about this before, that domestic to international switch. So just domestic started leaving outbound before international started coming back to a full normal pattern. So that's where some of the dynamics are out in the Australian market. Again, nothing that we're concerned about structurally and we still see strong growth in that market.

Right. So just to fully clarify, on a per RV sort of fleet basis, you're still seeing I suppose PCP growth with this half versus the last on a pro forma basis?

We didn't exactly say that. But overall, we do see -- well, we do see growth I didn't specifically call out in the second half year. We should see growth.

In tourism.

Yes. [indiscernible] the non-tourism number was in H2.

Our next question comes from Grant Lowe with Jarden.

Most of mine have been asked already. So just sort of a minor one to start with. You called out on the outlook slide about earlier-than-expected payments, I believe, was the language for new fleet. Can you just quantify roughly how much that was?

Yes. So we gave the vehicle numbers in terms of that related to. So it's obviously in the U.S. predominantly, which the numbers are in the slide there. And so effectively, it's just -- and there was an impact, obviously, in New Zealand as well, where we had those vehicles that came in, as Grant mentioned and due to the shipping issues, we would rather they got this part of Christmas and they didn't. So we had the fleet paid for, but not earning, if that makes sense.

So that relates to the $400 million and the $400 million you've called out on each of those slides?

That's right.

Yes. Okay. And then just, so you've been very clear about yields sort of settling at much higher levels than pre-COVID the last few presentations clearly and you've sort of called out that 2H is looking good. But how do you see -- you're looking at the booking curve for sort of longer term. Are you seeing any sort of changes anywhere on the booking curve in terms of yields, either sort of at the front and I guess, last-minute bookings as well or sort of around shoulder seasons or any change in that booking curve?

There's a few points in there. I think most of it, we've probably answered in the general commentary that where we see things stabilizing. Some of the shoulders have been a little bit lower in some areas, high seasons have been a little bit higher still with growth. So that's -- it's a little bit all over the place, but not dramatically, not like major, major declines anywhere. At this point in time, could still be nuanced within the weighted average mix that we have. It's definitely we've made some commentary in general terms that we experienced backpacker market hasn't been quite as strong as what we thought. So that lower backpacker part of the market, which could be part of what Kieran was picking up in Australia as well, actually just reflecting on it that that part of the market is a little bit lower and they are lower priced.

And you sort of mentioned about how the yields are sort of -- I forget the exact wording you used, more positive than you'd sort of expected a few months ago. How are you seeing the margins, we can obviously do the math, the percentages and the dollar margins on the vehicles. But how do they compare to your expectations? Again, you've been very clear they're coming down, but how are they tracking relative to those expectations of the [indiscernible], for example?

They -- well, slightly different by region. In general terms, you would say that they've been declining at a slower rate than what we expected. U.S. is probably the one that's declining in line with our expectations.

Our next question comes from Ben Wilson with Wilsons Advisory.

Again, most of my questions have been answered. But look, just in terms of the 500 vehicles that were prepaid, not wanting to labor the point, but can you potentially just clarify a little bit how that relates to the 400 vehicles that remain in preparation for own fleet in both the U.S. and New Zealand? I imagine the 500 mostly relates to the U.S., but also the shipping issues in New Zealand. If you can just clarify how [indiscernible] please.

You've got Amir here. I'll just step in for the guys. So look, when we look at the work balance, we're saying that there's 400 in [indiscernible] and 400 in the U.S. But especially in the context of net debt and the movement there, we're flagging that there's an additional net 500. The reason for that is that there is generally a level of work-in-progress within each market. If you go back to 30 June, there was some work in New Zealand. So when you look at the net number, it's 500.

Okay. And then just lastly, in terms of U.S. sales, just wondering how much of the weakness was general market weakness in demand versus did you still have a bit of an issue in terms of being able to secure enough room on dealership floors for your product?

They sort of [indiscernible] really in terms of so that the overall market was soft and so as they lend into certainly the winter period, there was a lot of resistance and reluctance to even utilize floor plan lines that were available. Some of them had less available than what they had previously. But certainly, there's no differentiation. It was symptomatic of the overall market and the sentiment up there at the current time.

I appreciate this might be drawing a long bow, but I guess with the flavor of the Camperagent acquisition as well, is there an argument that you should be looking at acquisitions or development of dealerships in the U.S., I guess, to sort of be able to take a little bit more ownership of this problem going forward?

It's an interesting one. So saying that we should be more -- own more dealerships or own dealers I mean, we've got dealership sites on our -- a number of our existing sites. Are you suggesting that we go into the dealership market more in the U.S.?

I'm wondering if it's, yes, something that you're looking at. As I understand it, you don't -- it's less of a focus than what we've got in Australia. But as I said, appreciate it.

It's on our existing sites. That's right. I mean it's to say as we're saying that we sell used ex-rental fleet and that's all that we sell at the moment. So I think we'll take that on advisement, Ben. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Belinda Moore with Morgans.

Just on the net debt, Nick, can you give us any guide sort of where you see that at year-end and I suppose, over the next few years in your peak fleet period, where do you sort of see net debt-to-EBITDA peaking? Or what level would you take it over? And I suppose more broadly, I think in some of your commentary, you allude to you continue to assess some other acquisitions, potentially a bit more flavor on that? And then just with group corporate costs, how should we think about that for the full year? And I suppose in '25, does that $2 million sort of one-off bonus come out, please?

Yes. So I'll start with the last one first. Yes, the $2 million does come out. Obviously, the Board may make a choice at some point in the future that -- to redo that again, but at this stage, it comes out. So that's an easy one to answer. Moving back to the net debt and then maybe Grant will want to touch on the acquisitions. But so we are obviously slightly higher than what our expectations were at this point in time. But we still have a reasonable number of purchases to come in many markets. So we still got peak season purchases to go for Canada, for U.K. and we continue to re-fleet in New Zealand and Australia through the manufacturing facilities that we have that have a more, I guess, a more stable build profile throughout the year rather than the peaks that we see in the Northern Hemisphere. So you can expect that debt will be there or thereabouts in terms of -- and it will be slightly more than what it is now and hence, why we've guided towards that net CapEx number, that net fleet CapEx number of $170 million. We said that we've done $103 million. So there's a net $67 million upside in that and that gives you a fairly good indication of where that goes. We obviously have in that first half, which is one thing to note was we had the dividend that came through and we fully paid that dividend both in interim and final at the same period. So we obviously don't have that repeating in the second half and nor will that go into half and future. So Grant, do you want to touch on the acquisitions picks?

Yes. So very, very briefly, sorry, Belinda, a bit reasonably standard line at the moment, which is we do have -- always look to maintain a pipeline of opportunities on a global basis. And we do have a pipeline. We -- in terms of narrowing those down, it would be fair to say, as we said before that acquisition of the rentals business in New Zealand and Australia would be highly unlikely given what we've done over the last couple of years. But certainly, there are some small opportunities such as the Adelaide type opportunity. And then we continue to look at North America and Europe, U.K. as further opportunities.

Our next question comes from Andy Bowley with Forsyth Barr.

Couple of questions from me. The first of which is going back to rental yields, I recognize it's been a hot topic in this call and more broadly around the market at the moment. Now in the context of the $100 million NPAT target over the next, I guess, 2 or 3 years, FY '26, how much flex do you have in that target in terms of where rental yields go? What's the expectation? You've used the word stabilized or stabilization a fair bit in this call. Are we expecting yields to remain stable or is there a flex for yields to decline within that target?

We said last year when we set the $100 million goal that it did include room for yields to decline from where they were at that point in time and we haven't changed those assumptions. So yes, there is tolerance for yields to drop. I think it would be one piece of information too much to tell you exactly what we put in there, even though I do know the number, just to clarify.

That's fair enough. Maybe if you want to talk or elaborate a little bit more around yields in the context of what else you see out there. Previously, Grant, you told us that there's quite a high correlation across your markets to hotel yields probably more so than any other factors that -- or data points that we can see. Is that still the case in the post-COVID arena? I recognize we haven't had too much time to generate trends. But what are you seeing that maybe gives you some confidence around the yield outlook?

So we have continued to analyze that. So there is still a strong correlation with hotel yields. It's not directly and it's a little bit -- correlation is a little bit less than what it was pre-COVID and the work that we did quite a lot of work around this for the commerce commissions in both countries in both New Zealand and Australia. And hotel yields in general, you can pick areas like you can pick Auckland and New Zealand and say, hotel yields are where they need to be, but that's also reflective of the fact that there's another 5,000-plus rooms in Auckland in recent time at 4 and 5 star level. So yes, that's quite a different situation to what we are in. So yes, the hotel yields are still looking positive on a global basis when we look at them. And you can see that if any of you're looking to go on holiday anywhere in the world, you'll probably see that reflective in the yields. Car rentals yields are staying up as well. So the fact that airlines, which obviously you know even better than me, Andy, there's some movement backwards in yields there, but that's actually more beneficial to us. We don't see any correlation with those yields. And obviously, they help grow demand and stimulate demand. So we see that as positive.

Great. Let's change track to manufacturing, something we haven't talked a great deal in this call on. The business seems to be going from strength to strength. It sounds like there's further benefits maybe to be derived from the common management across New Zealand and Australia. Can you give us a sense of how you see the margin development playing out there? We've now got, I guess, a full margin, including intercompany business of circa 10%. How much more is there to go in terms of extracting the benefits of integrating these businesses?

So there's definitely more margin in there in terms of the integration and as we said, that's one of our synergy targets that's coming to fruition. So that's positive. Broadly speaking beyond that, there'll be a point where you run into that standard trade-off between margin and volume, particularly in the retail markets, where there are some price-conscious products that we currently don't produce, which could be an opportunity in the retail market for us. They wouldn't inevitably be lower margin, but could be higher volume. And obviously, we continue to get that overhead recovery. There's a really strong discipline in that business around margin, cost recovery and how you actually price everything appropriately. But if you were purely looking at BAU and the natural growth we have, yes, there is good margin opportunity.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn it back over to Grant Webster, CEO, for closing remarks.

I'll see if I can keep it short enough to keep everybody on the line and just watch the participants they just jump off. Oh, yes, no, they're jumping off, I better be quick. Thank you very much, everybody. We will look to see many of you over the next few days and a special shout-out again to Nick Judd, thank you very much, Nick, for everything that you've done for THL. We'll talk about it as we go around on the road show, but it's been an absolute pleasure and we certainly wish you the very, very best for you in next endeavors, which we won't talk about even though everyone knows what it is.

Thank you, Grant. I appreciate that.

Thanks very much, everybody.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you very much, Daniel. That was well-done. Thanks.