Wagners Holding Company Limited (WGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Wagners' FY '23 Results Webinar. My name is Sam Wells from NWR Communications and joining me from the company today is Managing Director, Cameron Coleman; Chief Financial Officer, Fergus Hume; as well as Denis Wagner, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board. Following a brief summary of the update release to the ASX aftermarket yesterday, we will have some time for Q&A with the management team. There will be a choice of two options. First, research analysts will be able to raise your hand via Zoom should you wish to ask a verbal question of the management team or we will take written questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We will endeavor to get to all questions asked. And thank you. Over to you, Cameron.

Thank you, Sam, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our full year results release for FY '23. The second half of FY '23 was a significant improvement on the first half. Demand for construction materials and services strengthened, as market conditions improve. The Group's revenue for FY '23 at $477 million is a 41% increase on the prior year. Revenue growth has predominantly come from our cement, precast and our bulk haulage businesses. The Group EBIT result of $17 million was slightly ahead of expectations for the full year. The first half was significantly impacted by the challenging market conditions experienced industry-wide, which had a negative impact on our margins. However, we have experienced considerably better margins and results in the second half as market conditions have improved. In particular, the improvements have been delivered from improved volumes across a number of business areas, particularly cement, steel and bulk haulage, where a number of new projects commenced. We saw a full 6 months production on the Sydney Metro precast tunnel segment project and price rises in our cement and concrete businesses, made a solid contribution. In addition to this, our cost control measures implemented across all areas of business, provided some upside. The EBIT result was impacted by increased losses in our CFT USA business, and operating costs also increased in our Construction Materials and Services business during the year, as a result of increased employee numbers to service the City Metro project and higher R&M, fuel and subcontractor costs. So while FY '23 was a challenging year for the business, it's been encouraging to see signs of improvement, particularly late in the second half, which did deliver improved margins. So looking at each of the segment performance now on Slide 4, and starting with the Construction Materials and Services segment, in which all businesses other than quarries, delivered revenue growth throughout the year, achieving a 41% increase in revenue compared to FY '22. In cement, volumes continue to improve with a 25% increase. Increased clinker and shipping costs did impact the business, particularly in the first half. However, we've been able to achieve price increases during the period, in part offsetting the impact of these costs. The concrete business has remained difficult throughout the year. However, we have seen improvement in market conditions in the second half. A disciplined approach to both pricing and cost control measures has delivered improved performance throughout the second half. These strict pricing policies implemented did have an impact on volume though during the period, as we simply weren't prepared to meet competitive market conditions for the sake of achieving volumes. However, with the improvement in market pricing in the last quarter of FY '23, we have achieved over a 20% increase in the average sale price, compared to the average sale price last year. We've continued to deliver precast concrete tunnel segments for the Sydney Metro Tunnel project. While there were delays with the commencement of the project impacting the first half results, the project was in full production for the second half of FY '23, which contributed circa $55 million in revenue for the second half. We are now halfway through the project, with completion expected in the last half of FY '24. Our transport projects in Queensland and the Northern Territory delivered a strong result, with a 43% increase in revenue on the prior year. Wet weather higher-than-anticipated R&M costs and the industry-wide driver shortage issue all impacted our performance. The recruitment of drivers is a key focus for the business with a number of initiatives underway to ensure that the sustained full utilization of the company's assets is achieved, and that should drive even improved performance in FY '24. The contract crushing and quarries business was unable to replicate the strong performance from the prior year. This was due to the completion of a large long-term crushing project, which has not been replaced, coupled with a reduction in sales from our Northwest Queensland quarry operations, where previous periods, we supplied materials for flood recovery works that were not replicated in FY '23. As a result, the contract quarries and crushing revenue finished 10% lower than the prior year. While our business development team were active in pursuing other project opportunities, the timing of these projects has not resulted in any additional EBIT contribution in FY '23. Our Steel business experienced a 29% increase in revenue compared to the prior period, as a result of the commissioning of our steel processing plant in Brisbane. So looking now, CFT on Slide 5, which, as you can see, delivered a disappointing result from a margin perspective. Revenue did increase by over 41% across Australia and the U.S. The margins were impacted by expenses in commissioning machines and finalizing pole specifications for our utility poles. Whilst this work is now complete, these costs are not anticipated to continue moving forward. In Australia, our CFT crossarm sales remained consistent during the period. Demand for our composite utility poles from electricity networks continued to increase, with contracts secured with a number of customers following the delivery of our first 1,000 poles for Essential Energy in New South Wales earlier this year. While sales have been strong, delivery of projects in our Australian custom build business has been challenging. A disciplined approach to pricing has resulted in an improvement in margins in the last quarter. This higher margin performance is expected to continue. In the U.S., the long commissioning process of the facility and the lagging sales cycles have meant that we were unable to reach the level of sales required, resulting in an EBIT loss of $2.4 million for the business. We continue to invest in business development activities throughout the period, which we are hopeful will deliver improved results in FY '24 compared to last year. In our ESC business, you will see there was an EBIT loss of $4 million, a slightly higher loss than the prior year. We did reduce the investment into EFC in the second half, following a review of the operations, with the traction in sales not progressing as we had hoped. As a result, we significantly reduced ongoing operating costs in the business through reduced headcount in both Australia and the U.K. Our U.K. manufacturing facility in Romford is now operational, and our focus is on utilization of our existing assets. While nothing has changed in terms of our confidence in the technology, to deliver significant savings in carbon emissions in the build environment, the political and market landscape are yet to attribute or promote the value this technology provides the environment. This has directly resulted in much longer delay than we had hoped in the market uptake or demand for the product. For this reason, the operation of the business must reflect the current market demand for the product, which at this time is limited, notwithstanding its environmental and performance benefits. We will continue to assess our investment in EFC in the long-term structure and ongoing funding requirements for the business. I'll now hand over to Fergus to take you through the balance sheet and cash flow.

Thanks, Cam. Looking firstly at Slide 7. As Cam mentioned, we've seen an increase in revenues, but a reduction in the reported EBIT. You can see on that slide at the half yearly splits on the graph showing the improvement in the second half of FY '23 that Cam has already explained. If we look now at the segment results on Slide 8. You can also see the improvements in second half performance of both the CMS segment and the CFT business, excluding the USA operations. So we move to the balance sheet and talking about working capital. Our working capital has increased in FY '23, mainly due to the increased receivables as a result of the higher sales. It should be noted that over $30 million of cash was received on the 3rd of July, that related to receivables that were due on the 30th of June. This would have obviously reduced the working capital position and our net debt. Partially offsetting the increase in receivables was a reduction in inventory, as the company actively managed the inventory to reduce the holdings post the COVID supply chain issues experienced earlier. Looking at our net debt. Our net debt has increased mainly to fund the increased working capital requirements. As I previously mentioned, the [ net debt ] receipt of $13 million negatively impacted this net debt position at 30th of June 2023. Our new banking facilities have been agreed, and we are in the process of finalizing the documentation of our existing financiers. With an expiry date of July 2026, these facilities will have both increased facility limits on both term debt and working capital debt on similar pricing and government terms to what we currently have. When we look at the cash flow, our FY '23 cash flow from operations was an improvement on FY '22. Both FY '22 and FY '23 cash flows were impacted by the increased working capital, reflecting the increased receivables. The capital expenditure in FY '23 has reduced when compared to FY '22 in an effort to improve the cash position. A major focus was put on capital expenditure in the second half of FY '23 and the main areas of spend in CapEx for FY '23 were $7.8 million on foreign plant upgrades, $1.1 million on steel processing plant upgrades at Northgate in Brisbane. Mainly pole processing plant upgrades and improvements in CFT Australia of around $1.6 million. $1.1 million in our facilities and manufacturing capacity in the USA and $1 million on finalizing the EFC manufacturing capacity in the U.K. I'll now pass back to Cam to give us a strategy update and the outlook.

At our half year results, I mentioned the urgent strategic review would be undertaken. While this remains in progress, the review has to-date resulted in the following actions being taken. It was a general review of all costs across the business to identify and implement appropriate saving initiatives, including a review of all overheads across the business with appropriate reductions implemented. In concrete, a review of all raw material costs was undertaken with savings identified, and we have continued to increase our average selling price. We've also achieved reduced delivery costs with improved utilization of our concrete agitator fleet. In CFT, we commenced a CFT optimization project to realize planned productivity targets and undertook a forensic study from end-to-end production processes to improve margins. In CFT USA, we have upgraded our marketing and sales focus to identify sales opportunities and build pipeline recognizing the relatively long sales cycles. And in EFC, we have significantly reduced our operational costs and paused all future capital investment, while focusing on generating profitable revenue from our existing assets. As Fergus mentioned, all CapEx projects were scrutinized with a focus on reducing the capital spend. Any CapEx expense became focused on delivering projects that eliminated operational risk to the business, and growth projects that exceeded the required hurdle rates. We are confident that a number of these actions taken have improved the performance over the second half, contributing to the overall full year result. This strategic review remains in progress, and we will look to formalize a more formal framework across the business. We will provide further updates on this review in due course. Notwithstanding this review, we are confident that our strategy remains sound, which focuses on driving revenue growth and increased returns. We intend to do this by growing and consolidating our core vertically integrated construction materials and services business in Australia. We remain committed to our strategy to achieve this through the expansion of our concrete plant and quarry networks in Southeast Queensland, subject to the prevailing market conditions. Growing our CFT business through product development, a focused marketing and sales strategy and the expansion of our manufacturing facilities domestically and internationally to support the market growth. We will continue to pursue major projects, whether that is domestically or internationally, utilizing the existing expertise and experience in our Construction Materials and Services business. Now moving on to the outlook slide on #15. If we look at the first half of FY '24, we expect the market conditions experienced in the second half, and more particularly the last quarter of FY '23 to continue. Cement volumes have started off strong for the year and are expected to remain consistent throughout FY '24. Some of the clinker and shipping cost increases experienced in FY '23, particularly in the first half are expected to soften in FY '24, coupled with a forecasted increase in volumes. This should deliver improved results in FY '24. We anticipate growth in concrete volumes to add value to our EBIT on the back of increased margins we experienced over the last quarter of FY '23. We remain committed to our concrete plant expansion strategy, with 2 greenfield sites under development, providing a critical channel to market for our vertically integrated supply chain. Precast segment production will continue for the Sydney Metro project from our Brisbane precast business in this first half. However, the project will complete in the second half. The business will pursue other opportunities to follow on from the Sydney Metro project, and we have a dedicated business development team working on this. The long-term contracts we have with our current customer base will continue to deliver full utilization of our bulk transport assets throughout FY '24. A number of projects that commenced during FY '23 will make a full year contribution in FY '24, which should deliver improved performance on last year's result. There's a strong pipeline of contract crushing opportunities identified. The business remains focused on securing a number of these opportunities to replace the long-term high-margin project that was completed in FY '23. We have one large crushing project already underway, and the timing of the award of other projects is key to the business, delivering improved performance in FY '24. Given the significant capital upgrades at our Wellcamp and Castlereagh quarries, improved margins are expected as the production capacity and efficiencies are realized. Moving on to CFT; in Australia, the focus for FY '24 is achieving improved margins from the crossarm product range, given the full utilization of our new automation line, meeting the increased market demand for composite utility poles and to continue with the disciplined approach to pricing in the custom build area, delivering improved profitability. In the U.S., we expect to see increased sales, as a result of the current marketing and sales campaign underway. To date, the focus in the U.S. has been on custom build projects or pedestrian infrastructure. The planned additional production line will provide the business with the ability to service new markets in addition to the custom-build area. For example, the supply of the utility poles into the electricity networks in the U.S. This will provide enormous opportunity for this business, which has not yet had any traction in these markets, like the Australian business currently does. Moving on to Slide 16. There is no doubt the last 12 months have been tough. While we've achieved significant growth in terms of revenue across the Group, we haven't delivered on our profit expectations. The first 6 months of FY '23 were particularly disappointing for us. However, we have seen traction over the last 6 months and particularly the last quarter, that provides a positive outlook for FY '24. We expect the improved market conditions to continue, which will deliver improved margins across the Southeast Queensland construction materials business. While we also expect volumes to continue to grow. Our bulk haulage business also remains well positioned to deliver improvement results from the prior period. The performance of both our CFT businesses in Australia and the U.S. must improve. We expect the focused campaign on sales and marketing to deliver a strong sales pipeline. We are also confident CFT custom build projects are now being priced and delivered at appropriate margins, which has [ plagued ] this business over recent years. We are well positioned to capitalize on opportunities across the construction materials and services sector, an industry that has demand for commerce products. We have worked throughout a really challenging period and we've had to make a number of difficult but necessary changes to ensure the long-term future and success of the business, and we acknowledge there is more to be done. However, we are generally excited about the next 12 months. So ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal part of the presentation. And as Sam mentioned, Fergus, Denis and myself are happy to take any questions. Sam I'll hand back to you to facilitate that process.

Great. Thank you, Cameron, and thanks, Fergus and Denis. As a reminder, research analysts can ask questions by raising your hand on Zoom, while the rest of the audience can submit written questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. We do have some pre-submitted questions before I open up the line. Firstly, just on CMS, the strength of the core business continues from the segment results, charts in the slide deck, it looks like the business is still inflected, can you just elaborate on how much was driven by the strength, specifically in Q4?

I'll jump into that one, Sam. In Q4, we had a larger contribution from the bulk haulage business, as we started off 2 more projects in Central Queensland. Our cement volumes and selling price both improved. We saw a real uptick in cement volumes throughout Q4, and we were able to increase selling prices through that period. We saw, as I called out in the presentation, a major uptick in concrete average selling prices, particularly in the last quarter. And then pleasingly, our margins in our CFT Australia-New Zealand business improved significantly across that quarter. So they're probably the key areas that we took significant benefit from in that last quarter.

Okay. Great. And on CFT Australia, you've highlighted the strength of cross-arms and utility poles. Can you just take a step back and remind the audience, how long you've been operating in this vertical, including the potential size of the opportunity?

Yes, Sam, I guess, from the crossarm perspective, it's quite a mature market for us. We've been supplying crossarms now for about 15 years, and we sell cross arms not only around Australia, but into New Zealand and other areas. I guess the real opportunity and the real excitement for the CFT business, is the recent ability to manufacture these polls and we've only been selling poles now for about 6 months. So the pole market is something that's really exciting to us, and it's a real add-on to our cross arms. And as we increase our capability, we've built the machines now. We've proven that technology works, and we now have a reasonably solid forward order book for poles. And as I said, we've only really been selling poles now for 6 months.

Okay. Great. And just on CFT USA, now that you're through the business establishment costs that you mentioned and commissioning of the U.S. machines, what are your expectations for CFT as a whole in FY '24, given that you were on the verge of segment profitability for this FY '23 results?

I'll hand over to Denis on that one, Sam. Denis has recently been over there and can speak to that.

Same, the situation is with their U.S. facilities, that we've got a cost base to service a much larger revenue stream. So we've gone at the expense of setting the facility up, putting people in places, both in the manufacturing facility and out in the field. We're starting to see the revenue come through. But with the U.S. business, composite business, it's largely a custom build business. So what we're finding the revenues have been sort of lumpy and we've been working on a number of projects for quite a long time, that we are now starting to see come to fruition. We would like to see a much improved performance, and I'm confident we will see a much improved performance out of the U.S. business this year. I think we've got the facility in place, we've got the skillset there and we've got the team in place to do it. So we're looking for a fairly positive outcome to FY '24 compared to FY '23.

Okay. Great. And the next question we have coming through is from Liam Schofield at Morgans.

Perfect. Just firstly, on the concrete business. As you progress through Q4, how did that sort of specific division perform? And was it approaching breakeven?

Yes, performed -- probably performed a little better than we had expected in Q4, and absolutely approaching breakeven. So it was probably one of the areas of the business that improved a little better than we had anticipated.

Yes. Okay. And just I think whilst you sort of touched on it there, CFT in the U.S., are you sort of expecting that given your kind of tender pipeline at the moment, could that wash its face in '24?

Liam, it certainly could wash its face. I'm a bit reluctant to sit here and give a guarantee on that, but that's certainly what we're aiming for. There is a strong pipeline. There is a large market, but the thing that we need to be mindful of, we're a new fire in that market. And we expect some fairly good market penetration, but it is one of those things, where we will just see what success we can achieve, both in getting our product awareness out there and then delivering on any work that we've taken on.

Got you. And perhaps just one final question, if I may, Sam, just on the refinancing. Can you just sort of comment on the margins? Did those materially change from what the previous facility was? Or was it -- were the terms fairly comparable?

In terms of very comparable, Liam, we actually had a slight reduction on some of the facilities and a small increase on some of the line fees like 5 points . So nothing that was going to create any sort of major impact. Nothing compared to what happened with the underlying BDS [ boiler ] last year.

Okay. A couple of submitted questions coming through on EFC. Understand the strategic review is still ongoing. Can you give us a sense of how you're thinking about EBIT or EBITDA targets or profitability in general, as it relates to FY '24?

I'll take that, Sam. As Cameron sort of previously mentioned, nothing has really changed in our confidence in the product. And the reality of it is, our EFC technology for zero cement contract is really in our belief, the only technology in the world that's actually been proved commercially. So we've done some fairly large projects both here and in Australia and in the U.K. And we've had some challenges with some of those projects. It's a new product into the market and getting that market acceptance is not for the faint heart. As Cameron sort of also mentioned, we've really had to work with our cost base and if we look at the U.K., the intention is we've got a facility, we can produce the product. We've now got a number of customers that have expressed sort of strong interest in it. but we are going to curb our costs to meet market demand, and if the market doesn't take it up, we're going to sort of scale it back, until such [ time ] as the market is prepared to take the product on and actually [indiscernible]. Similar thing in Australia, we've scaled back our cost base again until we could put more product into the market. We know that there is a couple of projects coming up. What that's going to mean to the bottom line at this stage still really remains to be seen. But there is, in some respect, some sort of really positive outlook. We're still committing funds to R&D and again, as we progress over the next few months, we're going to assess sort of how much R&D we're going to put into that business with product development, we are going to put into that business, until we get a much clearer picture of what we are going to take-up in the market.

Okay. Great. That's helpful, Denis. Just on FY '24, a question coming through around forward order book. Can you just elaborate on the comments made on that slide?

Look, I guess if you look at the business, the precast factory is fully utilized through until -- halfway through the second half. So it's a maximum capacity. Our bulk haulage forward order book is excellent. I don't think it's ever been better in our history, and that's expected to deliver strong results. We've got 100% utilization of every truck, but we don't have a spare truck to deploy anywhere. Our contract crushing business has just kicked off one large project that's underway now, and there are numerous opportunities out there throughout the year for that business. And it won't take much to get that business back to full utilization. Our cement sales forecast is expected to continue in line with concrete -- with our concrete plant growth. As I mentioned, the last quarter saw some very solid cement sales, and that's continued on to the start of this year, so we don't expect that to change too much at all. And then I just -- our forward order book in our Australia and New Zealand composite fiber business is also very solid on the back of that strong revenue performance last year. And with our focus on high margin work in that area, we see much better results coming through. So we look forward to that continuing [ all year ].

Okay. A couple of questions coming through on dividends. How long do you think until dividends might be back on the agenda?

Sam, I'll take that one. I guess what we're seeing is that, the business has really turned the corner. As far as dividends into the future go, we will assess that situation towards the end of the first half FY '24, this half that we're in. If things are going well, we would like to resume dividend payments, but it is a balance between capital spend, debt, dividends, but we're confident the results are sort of heading in the right direction. And the reality of it is, we've just come through a really sort of tough year and as Cameron sort of alluded to, we're not really proud of our results, but we are confident the worst is over, and we are seeing things improve. So hopefully, that will flow into the payment of dividends going forward.

Okay. Great. And just turning to CapEx. What's the budgeted CapEx for FY '24 or anything you can elaborate on that?

We're expecting the CapEx spend to be higher than what it was this year. Most of that -- there will be a fair bit of replacement CapEx that we will have to do for things like loaders and mobile equipment, [indiscernible] quarries and some of our fleet will need to be upgraded. We're expecting it to be more in line with the historical sort of depreciation numbers, excluding the AASB 16 depreciation, so more in line with the underlying depreciation of our fixed plant assets.

Okay. Great. And I think we've got a couple more questions from Liam.

Guys, just on the completion of the precast concrete contract. So that finishes in the third quarter of FY '24 and that was a $140 million contract. So call it, $85 million yet to be earned. How do we sort of think about the pipeline of additional projects beyond that? Are you looking at projects that could fill that hole or is that just too far out, at this point in time?

Liam, we are looking at a number of projects there at the moment. We've obviously got the Olympic Games coming to Southeast Queensland, and there will be some significant precast concrete opportunities on the back of that. That being said, there could be a gap between the commencement of that work and the completion of the Cross River Rail project. But now that we've sort of proven that carousel down at Wacol's ability to manufacture segments and then our ability to manage the logistics to get them through to Sydney, we've cast the net now a lot wider in our search for precast concrete projects, and I don't mean sort of that larger project size. There is plenty of prestress type concrete work around that we traditionally have performed in that business. But our focus has really turned to that sort of much larger infrastructure type work that we can get really, really efficient manufacturing processes out of our carousel. So we don't have an identified and contracted opportunity to fill that void, but it's certainly a focus for us, and we are aware of a number of opportunities that we're working on there, that could dovetail into the back of that precast job. But we need to be very, very aware that 2 years ago, we effectively mothballed that site, waiting for the next piece of project to come along. So it is a lumpy business, and we need to understand the fact that it's very, very lucrative when the work is there. But when the infrastructure work is not there, it's something that we wind back, we still operate the concrete business from that site, but we wind the holding costs of the precast side of the business write-back and wait for the next project type opportunity to come along.

Got you. And probably just 2 more very quick questions for Ferg, maybe. Can you just talk me through the gross debt balance change? Like I'm just looking at -- gross debt went up but, call it, net proceeds from borrowing looks fairly unchanged in the cash flow statement. What constituted that increase in debt? And then just also, there's a note on the disaggregation of revenue. What's the difference between point in time and over time?

With the debt, Liam, as I said, it was mainly working capital-related debt that we incurred. Most of that increase in the net debt, we have since 30th of June reduced, based on that late receipt of cash. With your second question, I'm not quite -- I didn't quite catch that one, disaggregation of revenue?

Yes, there's a note just in the accounts on disaggregation of revenue, that refers to revenue recognized at a point in time, as opposed to over time?

Okay. So most of the revenue we try to recognize over time. So for things like the Sydney Metro project, we recognize the revenue as we're producing the segments, rather than waiting until we invoice for the segment per se or something like that. So most of the time, any project work we do, is over time. So our custom build business, any of our project [ install ] work revenue is recognized over time. Point in time is when we sell a ton of cement or we sell a cubic meter of concrete, so mainly around the materials business, we recognize it when we sell it. So that's a point in time. Over time is on most of our project businesses.

Okay. Great. I think there's just one more question just on net debt that has been submitted here. You mentioned some of the receivables paid shortly after the 30 June balance. Moving forward, is there a targeted normalized level of net debt?

So we would aim for a leverage ratio of around 1.5x to 2x. This is where we would mostly be comfortable. And that might increase if we have a major project that comes on board, and we have to gear up straightaway, but we would normally aim for somewhere between at 1.5x to 2x on a leverage ratio, that's pre-AASB 16 EBITDA too. So a slightly lower number than what you would see now with AASB 16.

Okay. Great. Thank you. That's all the time we have for questions today. If you do have any follow-up questions, please feel free to send them through and we'll try and get back to them via e-mail. Perhaps I'll just pass it back to Cameron, Fergus and Denis for any closing comments.

Thanks everyone for joining us. We still have an [ August ] conference in this business, in our management team and the way we're going. As I sort of mentioned before, we have got some work to do, to get into a position where we will be comfortable. But I can assure you it's all hands on deck, and we are working fairly hard to achieve that.

And I guess just in closing, the last quarter that we've just seen in FY '23 is certainly really encouraging and momentum has really sort of kept up into the start of this year. So really excited about the volume of work out there and the level of activity in the business, and even more pleasing is the return to much more enjoyable margins that we're seeing. So that probably wraps our presentation up. Thanks very much, everyone, for dialing in and listening to us today.

Okay. Thanks. That concludes today's Wagners' FY '23 results call. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.