Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Acrow first half 2023 results presentation conference call. All participants are currently on mute. Following the presentation, we'll open up the call for questions. To queue for a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you all for joining us today. I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Steven Boland, CFO, Andrew Crowther, and COO, Matthew Caporella.
Thank you very much, thanks, folks for joining this morning as we present our first half 2023 results. Again, very proud of the results the company has generated for this period. In my view, it's, you know, the best and most balanced results that the company has presented in our history as a public company. Joining me today, Andrew Crowther, our CFO, and for the first time, Matthew Caporella, our COO. We'll talk about, Matt, particularly about the engineering focus of the company, which has obviously been one of the major factors in our growth story, and Andrew will walk through the financial results. Just walking through the investor presentation that we published last night. Firstly, great momentum in the business is continuing.
Record financial results over the 6-month period, all generated by our organic growth initiatives. We had a record higher contract win and also pipeline, which is extremely important as we continue to grow over the coming periods. To me, the most important and the best thing within this 6-month period is the return on equity, jumping to 26.1%, so more than doubling over a 4-year period. It's a great endorsement of our capital program. I'll talk more about that shortly. We're pleased as a result of these results and what we see in our forward pipeline secured work. We're pleased to upgrade our FY 2023 earnings guidance. The competitive advantages of the company continue to be what drives the profitability of the company.
We are proud of the position we've established, especially in the Australian formwork market, where we're the clear leader now, and it's driven by our engineering expertise, and the quality of our people across the whole of the business, not just in engineering, but in all facets of the Acrow staff. I'm really proud and of the position we've been able to get to with the quality of the people in the business. We do have an unparalleled product range in our industry, and we also have an unparalleled geographic footprint. The combination of those four factors is what's driving our growth and got us to the position that we've been able to establish in our markets. Key achievements for the first half. Firstly, the numbers I think pretty much speak for themselves.
Revenue up 14%, EBITDA up 38%, NPAT up 52%. I talked to a mix change there between revenue and EBITDA, that, you know, a lot more of the revenue in this half has been generated out of hire as a percentage of the total, and I'll talk through some of that shortly as to how that generates that EBITDA growth. As I mentioned, return on equity, 26%, the most pleasing aspect of this result for me. Our hire contracts secured up 28%. Pipeline has never been stronger, up 34% based on the same period last year. Within the business, I'm extremely pleased with the Natform growth.
We're now seeing the fruits of some very hard work over the last four years in getting that business into its position where it's producing the best ever results in that particular division's history. In the formwork area, Queensland continues to do extremely well off the back of a very high market share and actually market share gains and also strong activity. We're starting to see again, the New South Wales result similar to Natform. We're starting to come through definite market share gains in New South Wales over the last six months. Haven't mentioned WA there, but I should, and I'll look shortly as to see the numbers that are coming out of WA.
In terms of the long term, medium to long term growth, entering the Jumpform market and seeing the first revenues out of that particular product in Acrow has been very pleasing in this first 6 months as we seek to grow that will be a very significant part of our offering into the future. In terms of the safety results, again, very pleased to see that they're all trending in the right direction. In fact, in the first half of 2023, we didn't have any LTIs. We have had now 1 in these first 2 months. In January, February, we had 1. But for the first 6 months, zero LTIs in the business. Strong focus it has to be, and, you know, we're very pleased with the performance of the business in this category.
In terms of the key financial metrics, you know, I think again, they speak for themselves. I will talk here about the mix change. We've got a far greater percentage of revenue coming out of hire than we've had in previous periods. It's now, the total hire revenue as a percentage has grown dramatically from 50% to 60% of our revenue in this period. That's where, you know, I've mentioned in some previous sort of presentations, including at our AGM, but I've got a far better line of sight actually about EBITDA than I do around revenue because the EBITDA is being generated by hire at the moment and not really through our growth in sales.
That being said, we've got some tremendous sale of product opportunities that we're presenting ourselves at the moment that we hope to be able to secure in the next few months. NPAT 43% Statutory. NPAT underlying 52%. EPS now heading, you know, pushing up towards a 10% annualized EPS. Pleased to be declaring a AUD 0.017 dividend, 85% franked. As I mentioned, the return on equity. I wanna go into a bit more detail about the return on equity. I think, you know, those of you who've been following our story for the last few years would know we have been embarking on a very aggressive capital growth program, and this is the result of that program. All of the capital we deploy goes into generating higher revenue.
You know, we've gone from 10% to 26% return on equity over a 3-year period. You know, that 26% is obviously a very strong result in anyone's terms. You go to the next page of the presentation, you see what that generates. That's generated an improvement in higher revenue from AUD 17 million in the first half of 2020, up to AUD 36 million in the first half of 2023. That trend is continuing. If you go into the second half of 2023, the number will be higher than AUD 36.2 million again. I think all of this to me goes to answering any question there would be about the validity of our capital program and our ability to manage capital properly. We've always talked about 40% hurdle rate.
Andrew will show later that our actual achievement in return on investment on our capital program is now into the 50s. It's, you know, this is the result of that program. You can look at the sales contribution bridge over three years. 77% of the growth from AUD 23.4 to AUD 48.4 in sales contribution over three years, 70% of it has come from higher revenue. Again, you know, we are very pleased to be able to see the fruits of the effort that's gone into, you know, very smart, in my view, capital investment program. In terms of the, our favorite graph on transport infrastructure, it looks pretty much the same as it always has. Where the peak doesn't happen for a few years.
I'll say that I always say, it won't happen like this. The peak will be lower and longer, which is very, very good news for us. I think the, there's a couple of things I want to point out about the transport infrastructure projects. Firstly, Matt will talk a bit more about this shortly. A couple of our big projects, especially the Victorian CYP Rail project and the Western Distributor Road project, they're actually entering their peak period now. We've got packages that we have won that will start generating revenue in the next few months. That actually will be the biggest revenue we've generated from those projects. That's very pleasing to see. There is another generation of these significant infrastructure projects now coming through. I mentioned some of these here on the right-hand side of this page.
Suburban Rail Loop in Victoria, that's probably a 10-year project to generate that kind of revenue. North East Link is a far bigger road project than actually the Western Distributor is. We go to the Inland Rail in Queensland, that's gonna start probably in the next 6 to 12 months. A couple of these Sydney projects where we are already winning packages. Those projects will kick in and will replace things like the Cross River Rail in Brisbane that will probably be fully operational within a two to three-year period. CYP is probably 18 months to two years. West Gate is probably that same period.
You've got another whole iteration of generation of projects coming in that again, gives us the confidence of, you know, it's a 5-10-year outlook with very strong results in this area. On page 14, you can see the results we're now getting out of state by state formwork. Our actual national growth in formwork over a 2-year period is 57%. The growth in spend in the national infrastructure over that period is 24%. We continue to outstrip the growth with our growth across our entire business. Queensland clearly doing very, very well, both in market share gains, where they already had extremely strong market position, but they are winning more market share.
They are growing as well as the market share gains in line with the general growth in that activity in that market. New South Wales is a very good story for us. We've talked for some time that we would start to see growth coming through, it's all in, it's in market share. You're going from AUD 8 million to AUD 11.2 million year-on-year, very good result. Whilst Victoria looks flat, again, those who are familiar with the story, it comes off a very low base. 5 years ago, we had basically next to no revenue coming out of this area. We've now got it to a consistent level. Now, as I mentioned, we're gonna see increased revenues coming out of both CYP and Western Distributor in the next 6-12 months. That will lift that revenue again.
You know, we didn't mention WA earlier, but I probably should. You can see, Western Australia's formwork revenue has more than doubled over a two-year period, making it an incredibly profitable branch. In terms of higher wins in the pipeline, again, the trajectory continues 27.5% up from the same period last year. One of the absolute, it's basically all formwork growth. Commercial scaffold is a little softer in terms of wins because we're focusing now on dry hire, and I'll get to that in a second because that's a very good story within this six months. The pipeline is at record levels, AUD 108 million. Snowy 2.0 is one of the key drivers.
We have now got the first transparency over formwork packages, significant formwork packages for Snowy, that forms part of our pipeline. As I mentioned earlier, we've got really strong organic growth across most states, but we expect to see and we know we will see off the back of secured contract wins, really strong growth in the New South Wales and Victoria numbers over the next 6-12 months. I'll now hand over to Matthew Caporella, we'll, you know, give an update on engineering, and I think, you know, mainly, Matthew's going to talk about the evolution of what's been, you know, quite a journey for our engineering group over the last 4 years. Over to you, Matt.
Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone. As Steve said, first I just wanna cover sort of the transition the engineering team has really undertaken over the last four years from 2018 when we listed to where we are now. It's really just a pivot into these more complex engineering projects where the solution is definitely the driver. Where we were at sort of four or five years ago, we were more of a scaffold-focused company. The biggest change is really in the engineering team at the moment is the engineering split. We're now 70% engineers and 30% office people in the business. From that, we now have 10 chartered engineers, which is a great number.
It's nearly 25% of the engineering team is now registered chartered engineers, which is probably unheard of in engineering consultancy. From that, our expertise is now being valued by our clients, we're actually now charging for these engineering services. Where our engineering before was sort of a free service to buying the products, we're now more of a holistic approach. From that, we now have site engineers that are doing the inspections. We're providing certification from those 10 chartered engineers of the designs. We're offering the client the full solution turnkey with the equipment hire. We're really focusing now on those complex problems and solving the client's problems using these engineering solutions. The new product mix that we have as well has been a big change.
Looking at these tunnel projects, doing more complex stuff that I'll discuss in a couple pages. We've really now changed the outlook of the engineering team, where we've now got departments. We have a dedicated product development team now. We've got a couple people in this team developing products for the future, looking at the existing products, improving on our product mix, and we're doing all this internally now. What that's allowing us to do is developing our own IP. We own the products, we can decide where we manufacture the products, the data for the products, and control the future of those products. We also do a lot of testing internally now as well. We've developed our own internal testing facility.
As an importer of products now, we've taken that step of going a step beyond with the testing. We do that now on all the incoming shipments. We've now got ISO certification in the engineering team, which is a big change over the last 5 years. It's really a requirement on these tier one projects that we're tackling at the moment. Probably one of the biggest changes in the engineering team is the function of an engineer. That's changed over the last 4-5 years. Those engineers now are more customer-focused and customer-facing. Where those engineers 4 or 5 years ago were just a function of the sales process, we're now bringing them to the front of the business. They're talking to customers and selling the products.
Cover a couple of the current projects and where our engineering expertise has really come through. The first project I want to talk about is the Knaphill screen project. It's a curved tower, so not square, very unique. Where we were really able to differentiate and our engineers really shone on this project was using our system and using 100% proprietary items. There's no custom items on this project, even though it's not a standard building. It's curved. We were able to use different size screens, and we did a lot of work with the builder doing integration of trades.
You can see from the top image there's a lot of work done on the installation of the screens and how it's gonna mix in with all the other parts of the building process. A big part of this project too is the engineers have developed over the last 12 months some really good access solutions. On a lot of our screen projects now, we're putting on emergency access stairs, the stairs, which is just another buy to the to the screen product. The Metro Tunnel. A little intro. It's probably one of our marketing projects at the moment. This is a really unique project that probably haven't been done in Australia, if not the world before, where it's a concrete arch. Just to make this one difficult, it's 12-13 meters in the air. It's on an 11 degree slope.
The engineering team was able to integrate a couple of different systems, our Powershore 150, which is a new product we've brought in in the last 18 months, and our Universal Soldier System, and put those two together and created a bespoke solution using proprietary items with very little extra fabrication that jackets sort of up the up the arch. Big thing that we're doing at the moment as well, it's a really big focus of the engineering team and of our clients is offsite assembly. We're doing a lot of work on staging and assembly of these items. This particular project was assembled in Geelong, 1 hour outside of Melbourne, and then trucked in in modules.
Reducing that on-site labor and install time and giving the client a solution where the module just comes in, drops into the tunnel, and then they're working within a couple of days. Small library, this is a really a showcase of industrial scaffolding, how it really differentiates itself from a traditional scaffold or erection before. There's a lot more emphasis now on seamless engineering design and making sure that the solution we're providing is working for the trades on-site. We do 3D modeling, as you can see, working with the client to make sure the scaffold is exactly perfect and fit the use for the trades that we're using. And this project here uses our Ringlock system. We've been able to eliminate a lot of the anchors into the structure.
We've been able to create openings, allow for support of the ventilation duct, and also build in stair access. Very unique to the Ringlock product and able to tailor a proprietary system into a circular hole, which is a little bit unique. We really pride ourselves probably on using proprietary systems as much as we can, but when they don't work, we can definitely pivot, and we have the expertise to use bespoke formats. The project that we want to highlight here is the West Gate Tunnel. This is a project for Freyssinet. This project's been going on for nearly 3 years at the moment.
What we were able to do with this particular project is offer the client a solution where they had to procure some custom steel, but we could see sort of that three years into the future and design the steel so it worked on multiple situations throughout the project, saving fabrication costs and procurement costs. Working with the client and developing that foresight into the project really saved them over 40% on the project, and they were well ahead of schedule. When the proprietary systems aren't exactly suited or the client wants to head in a different direction, we have that versatility now to offer multiple different options, even if it's a bespoke custom solution. The other thing that really sets us apart is our engineers design the system, we procure it ourselves, and supply it as a turnkey package to those clients.
Just covering a couple of these marquee civil projects that Steve's discussed before. Snowy Hydro is quite large. It's in its infancy stage at the moment. We did the first formwork package on this with the TBM 1, where our engineers really, we won this project based off not using any custom items. it was a full proprietary system to compare, which is really unique with the Universal Soldier System. Metro Tunnel. This is still, yeah, it's just peaking at the moment. We've got 13 packages at the moment that the engineers are delivering well into FY 2024. Bruce Highway Upgrade. this is 35 bridges that have been going for a couple of years, it's still coming out of the ground now.
We're working on that photo there is of bridge 3, which is one of the larger structures. We're coming up that ground and doing a very bespoke proprietary system to suspend these cables 30 meters up in the air. Of the 35 bridges, we've done all 35 bridges, and that's still a lot of work going well into FY 2024. West Gate Tunnel Projects. With the same thing, this is probably just peaking at the moment, but this has still got a good 2 years to run on this. We're now winning various structures directly to the CPB Contractors and to various subcontractors, including bridges, ventilation structures and access portals into the tunnel. Cross River Rail. This is, we've now got projects on all 4 station boxes, but mainly focusing on Albert Street .
We've got our Jumpform system and a hydraulic, single slide Jumpform system going to the four station boxes. Cross River Rail, we've still got a couple of good years to run on that, and we've been great to have a lot of different systems in this project, the Universal Soldier System to the Jumpform. Sydney Gateway. This is the connection from the M8 to the international and domestic terminals. We've just started sending gear out onto this project, and we've got 3 km. The first part is a lot of the columns using bespoke custom steel. So we've been able to design, supply that solution to the client. Now we're going into more of the proprietary systems. We're supplying 100% proprietary solution to their bridge decks.
There's over 3 km of this bridge deck to be installed. We've been able to offer the client a full proprietary system that they can reuse, and there's no custom items in it. Thanks, Steve.
Thank you, Matt. Just going through the segment breakdowns, page 22. Firstly, you know, the numbers again, I think they sort of speak for themselves. The revenue up by 14%, but the contribution up by, you know, so significantly greater percentage, so 29%. It is clearly, as you can see here, a function of the total higher revenue in the business, being actually going from 50% to 59% of our total, right? 60% pass-through of the sales contribution, EBITDA. We talk about that fairly regularly as being our target. Contribution up by AUD 10.7 million, overhead up by AUD 4 million. You know, we understand, you just can't expect to grow to that level and not have overhead increases, but the margin going up by AUD 6 million out of AUD 10 million.
We're getting that 60% pass-through that's so important to the business. Look, you know, a couple of things to highlight. A 61% sales contribution margin and, you know, I think more importantly, 29% EBITDA margin, which I think is quite a phenomenal number. Yeah, good numbers across the board here. The sales contribution bridge again shows that most of the profitability growth is coming out of equipment hire. 87% of the growth in this period came out of equipment hire revenue off the back of our capital program. We did get a AUD 1.9 million improvement in net product sales, but it is a combination of improvement in formwork and reduction in industrial, which I'll talk to in a second.
you see in the formwork division, hire revenue up, activity levels in Queensland, New South Wales and WA primarily driving that. Product sale growth of 41% is off the back of the hire revenue, really. It's like, it's a function of generating better hire revenue. It's not the sale of systems, it's sale of primarily consumables that go hand in hand with our hire revenue growth. The pipeline in this area is tremendous, especially in New South Wales and Victoria. We've mentioned, it's all off the back of those projects that Matt was just referring to. We'll talk about Natform because it's, you know, we've had that business now, you know, basically for all but 3 months of being a public company. It, it did have a slow start being Natform.
It took us some time to really understand what we needed to do differently to get to the sort of numbers we're now getting to. As you can see, we will get to AUD 11 million in revenue this year, which is, you know, over AUD 2 million better than that business has ever done in the past. The drivers of the growth in this business have been, number one, its national footprint. This was a primarily New South Wales business that we bought. The revenues out of Queensland now, going into this next 6 months, will be almost getting to the levels of New South Wales in some months. We've got business in Victoria, we've got contracts in South Australia, and we're just about to win our first job in WA. Very much now there's a national footprint.
The guys up in this division have done really, really well with product development. Matt referred to some of that stuff on one of the jobs we spoke about earlier. Their innovation and product development it's a strong part of the growth. It's cross-selling is now absolutely part of that growth. It's very rare now that we're doing screens on a job where we're not providing other products onto the site. We've got a lot of ambitions for this particular division, where, you know, we wanna grow it further across the whole of the national footprint. You know, it's now absolutely full steam ahead for the screens business as part of the whole Acrow offering.
In industrial services, whilst you can see we've definitely had a reduction in both in product sales over this period, which is really due to, you know, inflationary pressures. We are definitely seeing now that the cost of new material being sold is going up significantly off the back of inflation, which is driving people to hire more than to buy, which is pushing up our volume and our rates in hire. It's not a bad story for Acrow, but, you know, I make the point that if the reverse applies, we're in a great position that if the cost of new material reduces, we can sell it and make our marginal sales. You know, we've got that great flexibility to move between either kind of environment that we're operating in.
Irrespective of the fact that the revenue reduced by 7% in this period, the margin went up by 14%. I think it's very important that gets, you know, understood that, you know, we have a mixed issue here that's enabled us to get far better revenue out of hire, and it's pushed up the overall profitability by many dollars in this division over this 6 months. The labor hire, whilst the margin has reduced, the revenue's gone up, the margin has reduced. That's off the back of a lot of revenue now coming out of Snowy where the margin is lesser than it might be on some other projects because it's such a big project. We're still making an average of 18% on labor. None of this stuff again is lump sum.
It's all fuel and charge. Snowy's probably at the lower end of it, but for a project of that size, where it's important, we're prepared to take a slightly lower margin. We're still averaging 18%. The other thing with the industrial this period is the shutdown sort of cycle that works. We are in a regular cycle with shutdowns. In this six months, there's actually no shutdowns for the Mount Piper Power Station, and there won't be in the coming six months, and then there'll be a very big shutdown, if we're successful with it, into the next financial year. Last financial year, there were two Mount Piper shutdowns within this period. There is a bit of a flow that works in that.
That, you know, that just again goes to, you know, an FY 2024 confidence about further growth. Commercial scaffold, similarly to industrial scaffolding. There's a bit of dearth of material in the market at the moment, which is brought about by people not buying gear. Scaffolders are not buying equipment because of the price, which is pushing up the price of hire, and we're taking advantage of that. You can see hire revenue going up by 54% over this period. Whilst the revenue was flat to down 6%, the total pro-profit contribution for commercial scaffold went up by 29%. Again, really important to understand. The move into more dry hire, as you can see, labor and cartage, margin, and revenue, significant reduction, more than offset by the significant improvement in scaffold hire.
We've been questioned in the past about, "Well, why do you stay in this division?" Well, here's why you stay in this division. Because in times of inflationary pressures, you'll get really good margin growth out of this division. Going on to our people and culture. You know, again, we've, we're very proud of the work we've done in this space, and in the last 6-12 months, we've actually evolved this quite significantly. Really strong emphasis on employee development. I'll talk to you about more of that in 1 second. Again, attracting the best new talent. 3 examples there of people who have come into the business in the last 6 months. A new Victorian GM with great credentials from, you know, previous experience.
Our National Business Development Manager in Jumpform, Kim Brown, he comes from one of the major Jumpform providers in the country, now come to work for us. Peter Ryan, who's been really crucial to our Learning and Organizational Development, which I'll touch on in a second. We continue to attract really high-quality people into the business. The culture of the business is well established. We're proud of the culture we have established. It's ingrained in the business now. It's how we operate. Which is coming right through through an exercise we are doing about refreshing our brand. We're going through quite an intensive program at the moment about refreshing and relaunching our brand, which we will do in the FY 2024 period.
It's been really pleasing, I think, for the team that's involved in sort of steering this, that the research that we're doing and both with clients, and you know, the stakeholders, the clients and employees, is actually really re-emphasizing that what we want our culture to be is actually how people are seeing our culture. That will come through in the way we relaunch this brand into the next financial year. I've mentioned learning and organizational development. It's an incredibly important initiative, and the recruitment of Peter Ryan as the manager in this area has been the driver of this. You know, really focusing on developing the internal staff capability, training, coaching performance, and have a much far broader graduate program.
We've had a pretty good, in fact, we had a very good graduate program in our engineering function over the last three to four years. We're now broadening that across all aspects of the business. Succession planning, we have, and we'll have about to roll out now, a complete full talent and succession plan for roles one or two levels below the CEO. It's based on individual development plans for the key talent. Importantly, you know, the values and support that we now offer the people within the business, including having a mental health champion program for those that need it.
You know, this is, we have to understand we're, you know, it's an environment, not just in our business and our industry, but in life at the moment, where people are challenged and we're proud to be able to provide them assistance if they are in a challenging situation. I'm very passionate about this program and the value it's gonna create that ensures the long-term stability of our culture and success of the business in the future will be about the people and how we develop the people. Now pass over to Andrew to run through the financial performance.
Great. Thanks, Steve, thanks everybody. We talked about 2022 year, the year-end results of how in that year we achieved scale. You know, it took a while to get there. This year, or this half year, it's continued. The combination of the high the large hire mix that we've had in this six months, the cost management and the scale, we've seen the 64% of revenue is actually flowing straight down to our EBITDA. As we've already talked about, our revenue, AUD 79 million, up 14%, contribution up 29% to AUD 48 million, and EBITDA, AUD 23 million, up 38%. Let me get on to depreciation.
Depreciation is obviously higher because we've made AUD 15 million of capital expenditure in this half, and that was in addition to AUD 21 million in the last year. Net interest increased by AUD 692,000, that's AUD 2.2 million. Now, that increase was a combination of both volume and rate. We all know that rates have gone up. On a PCP basis, our rates basically increased by about 2%. And our average debt for the PCP is about AUD 12 million higher. That sort of explains that difference. From a dollar perspective, the interest was up by about AUD 0.3 million on volume and AUD 0.4 million on increases of debt itself. Pre-tax profit, AUD 13.3 million, up 52%.
From a tax expense perspective, obviously we have carry forward tax losses that we've talked about before. Our profitability is increasing quite dramatically, did last year and it's continuing to this year. Our tax expense has remained steady at about 9%, and we've seen no reason for that to change too dramatically for the rest of the year. 9%, however, because of our profitability, there's probably at most about 2 years left of tax losses that we'll be utilizing. That's changed dramatically, as I said. NPAT underlying, AUD 12.2 million, up 52%. Significant items and share-based payments go through to NPAT reporting, 43% up for NPAT reporting to AUD 10.5 million. Earnings per share, 4.72%, up 44% PCP.
It's pretty good outlook. As Steven Boland's already talked about, we have made an announcement of an AUD 0.017 interim dividend, which is up from the final last year's from AUD 0.015, and also up from the previous interim of AUD 0.012, and that's 85% franked. We see that will start heading towards more of 100% franked dividend as the next 12 months moves on. Over to the balance sheet. You can see our balance sheet it continues to improve. Net debt has actually increased by AUD 4.6 million. That's compared with AUD 15 million capital investment. Net gearing was up 0.6% to 28.9%. However, we've kept net debt to EBITDA at 1.1 x.
There was an improvement in net current assets during the period by AUD 1 million, up to AUD 4 million. Working capital did actually increase in this 6 months by AUD 4 million, up to AUD 36.9 million. That's about a 23% working capital ratio of sales. June was about 22%, so it hasn't changed a huge amount. We see that starting to reduce back down towards at least 20% by the end of the year. One thing that's a talking point in the industry at the moment is bad debts. Obviously the situation in the industry is changing with increased interest rates and labor costs and so forth. Our bad debts was 1.5% of half-year revenue in this half.
About AUD 1.2 million expense. Now that we're not immune to the rest of the industry, this is sort of across the board. The one thing for sure is we are, we're very focused on this, and this situation is being managed very closely. One of the things which Steve talked about, or Matt talked about before, we're making all the opportunities we can of having our arrangements directly with builders, which will take away potentially some of the risks within our direct customers. We're actually doing a lot of deals where we're securitizing directly the debt against the equipment. The credit team has obviously changed focus now that the situation's changed. We're in relation to getting security directly from the customers.
We're following more security with payments type deals as well when customers start having a bit of a slowdown. Obviously the whole pivot towards higher quality customers with pivot towards that's been continuing on with formwork will cushion us quite a bit as well. Moving over to the funding and the cooking. Consistent with June 2022, we've got good headroom in our funding, which we've still got a very good partner with Westpac being our banking partner, and they've got continued confidence in us and where we're going. We took the opportunity to increase our trade finance facility from AUD 8 million-AUD 12 million during the period, just because of our increased volume of sales, labor, et cetera. We also took.
made the opportunity to buy some Ringlock scaffold that came as a bit of a surprise. We got an additional loan of AUD 4.1 million, which is an amortizing loan over 3 years during the period. Headroom, we've got AUD 15 million of headroom. That's at the end of December compared to AUD 13.2 million at 2022. At the end of December, We have an overdraft facility of AUD 6.6 million. That was totally untouched during at that period, and we had AUD 1.7 million of cash. As I said, net debt increased AUD 4.6 million, basically from capital expenditure of AUD 15.1 million. Pleasingly, all of our covenant type metrics are well haven't changed much.
28.9 securities, 1.1x debt service and interest cover at a very healthy 13 x. Over to cash flow. Our operating cash profit, which we define as pre AASB 16 EBITDA less cash tax and maintenance CapEx was AUD 16.6 million up from AUD 10.2 million, which is a 63% increase on PCP. Our cash flow from operations, which is our, per the financial statements, our operational cash flow plus the cash from sale of our XI gear was AUD 19.6 million. That's translated in an 85% cash conversion rate, which is a pretty healthy percentage.
If you remember in 2022, that was a 52% conversion that got impacted by an AUD 20 million working capital impost in the 2022 year. Moving down to the net debt bridge. We started the period at AUD 32.8 million, we finished at AUD 37.4 million, up by AUD 4.1 million. As you can see, basically, in fact, we had AUD 23 million of EBITDA, and the big impact was essentially the CapEx of AUD 15.1 million, and then those claims of working capital. This graph really shows you now what happens when you do decide to pull back on the CapEx. Cash will really start pouring out of this business. Over to the next slide, the capital expenditure. This shows you just where we're heading for the full years.
We'll spend AUD 15.1 million up until December. We've basically front ended a lot of our, all of our CapEx this year because of the amount of work going on in the first six months and moving to the second six months. Our forecast currently is AUD 21 million of full year CapEx, which is almost right in line with the previous year of AUD 21.1 million. Now, it's worth saying, even though it's relatively elevated CapEx, from a percentage of EBITDA, this year's will be around 43% compared to 58% the previous year, 66% the previous year before that. Even though, yes, we've got elevated CapEx, when you put it into context, it's actually getting smaller and we're getting more return out of it. Important as well is the, our hurdle rate was 40%.
This is almost changing a little bit. We're continuing to get more out of these assets. At the moment, we've got a 52% return on these assets on an annualized basis. From a capital perspective, we're definitely managing the capital and it's being shown in higher revenue flowing all the way down to NPAT. I'll...
Thanks, Andrew. Okay. Just to wrap up with our sort of short to medium term opportunities and our outlook. These are the sort of items that I think are the most relevant to what will happen in the second half of this financial year, but then also provide a springboard to another year of growth in FY 2024. We will be expanding our Jumpform business across a national footprint. We're confident of picking up some contracts in a couple of states at the moment that will keep us into FY 2024. New South Wales Formwork, as I mentioned, will have definitely growth. There's two very significant projects at Sydney Gateway and M12, where the one project is probably the biggest the New South Wales business has ever won.
Their revenue will start to kick in from April 2023. We're currently tendering for the first significant formwork package. As Matt mentioned that we did our formwork package a couple of years ago. These are significantly bigger packages and the first relevant ones that are rolling through Snowy. Victorian Formwork, again, we've talked about it a couple of times about the work we've secured on West Gate and CYP. That is probably the peak of what we've secured on this project. That revenue will kick in from March 2023. Natform is headed towards its best ever 6 months, I would think that the FY 2024 year will be a stronger year again for Natform.
Whilst our product sales have been relatively slow for the first 6 months, there's a couple of really big opportunities out there at the moment, that we're, you know, we're in the midst of seeking to secure. Mentioned Snowy, and there's, like some various, partly New Guinea based Australian government backed projects that are on the agenda and that we're right at the sort of the pointy end of seeking to win. Pleased to provide an updated guidance off the back of the results of the half year and what the forward forecast looks like. We're not, we're not forecasting a better revenue number than we previously had because of the mix change.
We've got a strong, far stronger higher revenue outlook that gives us the confidence to be able to increase our EBITDA number up to between 48%-49%. That will be a 34% improvement on last year at the midpoint. NPAT again, up by the similar sort of percentage to what we to previous, sorry, number. AUD 2.5 million effectively NPAT upgrade. You'll see a 46% jump on last year and we're headed to AUD 0.10 EPS. The, you know, business 2 years ago was running at roughly AUD 0.05. We've doubled the EPS in around about a 2-year period. Say again that this forecast is underpinned by work that we won in FY 2022, work that we've got in the first half of FY 2023. We've got great visibility over these results.
We've got detailed forecasts on high review at least to the end of April, and then May, you know, sort of May and June are on a similar trajectory. Again, we put this forecast out with a high degree of confidence that we'll be able to move this guidance level. You know, I wanna thank you all. Thank you for attending the discussion today. Thank all the staff at Acrow. Again, tremendous 6 months from everybody. You know, you guys continue your amazing performance that you put in. We've just need to keep up our momentum, keep the foot down, and we're, you know, confident we'll continue to provide improved results over time. That's it for the presentation. Happy now to take any questions from the participants.
Thank you. We'll now give our participants the opportunity to queue for a question by pressing star one on the telephone keypad. If you'd like to cancel your question queue, please press star one again. Our first question comes through from Rushil Paiva, from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead, Rushil.
Morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on the result. Thanks for taking my questions. Can I just start off with guidance, the updated earnings guidance in particular? I just wanted to find out what your thoughts were in terms of what drives both the bottom end and the top end. You've obviously mentioned a couple of contracts that are potentially gonna be won in the, in the second half of the year, which I assume aren't included within the guidance. You know, if you can drive a little bit of color on what you think might drive results towards the top end and conversely to the bottom end, that'd be great.
Thanks, Rushil. Look, I think, as I mentioned, we've got very, very good line of sight around hire revenue. The current guidance is basically based on what we see as the hire revenue taking us through to the end of June. What we know will happen with some product sales, but not , you know, it's not the full potential, but you can't forecast for that. I would, you know, caution against being too aggressive about factoring in the product sales of a great level. When they happen, they're nice, but they're not as nice as they happen. There's certainly some opportunities there at the moment, but they're nowhere near secured. We're gonna push for those as hard as we can.
That will drive more revenue and probably a better EBITDA result. Right now, you know, we are, you know, guiding to what we know will happen with some sales that are already locked in and a very strong forward outlook on our hire revenue that takes us to that number.
Great. Thank you very much for that. Just sticking with the hire revenue, you mentioned earlier in the presentation that hire revenue is around about 60% of total revenue for the business. Just wondering if you had a target over the next couple of years as to what they could get to and consequently, what that translates into from an EBITDA margin target over, say, FY 2024 and 2025?
Look, again, it's very hard to forecast that number because it depends on what happens with sales. We just know the trajectory of the total hire revenue of. We're talking about as a percentage of revenue, and this six months is really relevant because it's been such a bigger percentage of the total revenue that it's really, really driven the sales contribution margin and the EBITDA margin up. You know, we're in an environment at the moment where there's not as much activity in selling, but that could change. You know, we could be talking about significantly higher revenue off the back of product sales. Hire revenue. Sorry. Yeah, so total revenue because of product sales, that will then look like the hire revenue is a lower percentage of the total.
All I'm focused on and all the team is focused on is keep growing that number. You know, so you can see it's, you know, when we talked about it earlier, how much the hire revenue has gone up every single six months for the last three years, especially the last 18 months. We're totally focused on continuing to grow that number. Now, what that becomes as a % of the total revenue is really dependent on what happens with sale of product.
Understood.
I'll make that point really strongly, Rushil. It's easier for me to forecast EBITDA than it is to forecast total revenue.
Yeah, no. Understood. Thank you. Very clear. That's all from me for now. Thank you.
Thanks, man.
Thank you, Rushil. Our next question comes through from Graeme Douglas from ESAN Investments. Please go ahead, Graeme.
Hi, guys, and thanks for a great result. It's really pleasing to see. I've just got two questions, if I might. Firstly, I know the loans are going up, and I understand the reason why, and it was explained last year, and you can see clearly that the saleable products like the wood and everything else that you said that there was a gap in the market for, and you're clearly filling that gap in the market, it's great to see. I'm just wondering, at what point will you start to repay the debt?
Well, I mean, we are repaying debt all the time, so there's a lot of shifting around with. We're drawing down the debt. We're paying it back all the time. If we stopped, obviously, if we stopped acquiring CapEx like we are now, that debt would fall off extremely quickly. it's a hard question to answer because as we're growing, the reality is we're still gonna draw debt. I mean, it'd be crazy not to with our cost of equity. I mean, even though interest has gone up by 2%, say, and it'll probably continue going up by, you know, if you listen to the banks, another 0.5%, probably.
You know, who knows what we're gonna do with e-equity and so forth in the next 12, 24 months. One thing's for sure, debt is still cheaper than equity, and our debt is still at a level that's extremely manageable.
Okay.
I think, yeah, Graeme, I think the... We've spoken about this before. One of the keys to this business that we're in is cut your investment back when you think you're getting towards the top of the cycle and then watch the cash just rip through. We're not at the top of the cycle yet, and we certainly still have. We've got a lot of growth in our Jumpform business, which is, you know, and that's gonna be capital driven, but it's huge returns. It's 50%, 60% return on investing on growing that business. You know, whether we can continue to manage the cash as well as we are and the growth is generated like you can see it has over the last couple of years.
You know, I think it would still be not right for us to say that we're gonna be pulling back dramatically on our capital spending over the next few years.
Okay. That's great. Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate that. It makes sense. A lot of sense. I just wanted to get it right in my own head because you can see the growth going all the time and the discussions that I've had with you guys before, in particular, Andrew, you can see it's going exactly to plan. I just wanted to get an idea myself going forward to say, "Well, yeah, that makes sense." Now, this next question, look, it's not a big one, but you talked about bad debts and stuff like that. I'm just wondering, a very simple thing really, and you probably got it, but is there a Romalpa clause in the contracts that allows you to take back the product if somebody's not paying the bill?
Yeah, there's absolutely.
If it's a sale product.
If it's a sale product. We've got PPS A in the gear. If on sale, if they haven't paid, yeah, we go and get it back.
Okay.
The other thing we're doing is actually extending that growth. We've got some higher revenue customers who have also got equipment that they bought from us maybe in the past, and now they're hiring from us. We're now getting security over the previously sold equipment against the higher revenue.
That's nice. That's great. Thank you so much. Once again, thanks for the great result. I really appreciate it.
Thanks, Graeme. Cheers.
Thank you, Graeme. Our next question comes through from Alex Liu over at Morgans Financial.
Morning, guys. Just a couple of questions from me, please. Can I just ask, firstly on the Jumpform business? I think you won a few contracts in Queensland about six months ago. I think there's a few in the pipeline as well. I just wanted to just, I guess, get an idea of, you know, how those are going and I guess what gives you the confidence that Jumpform can generate that, I guess, AUD 20 million annualized revenue within the next 30 months, please.
Yeah. Might hand over to Matt. Matt's been the driver of the Jumpform business in the company, so yeah, over to you, Matt.
Thanks, Alex. We sort of took that approach with the Jumpform that we did secure a couple of those projects six months ago, and we have just been in a little bit of a holding pattern while we get those projects off the ground and sort of prove the concept a little bit. I'll be happy to announce we actually did do our first jump last week with one of the Jumpform projects. The success is there now. We've got a good pipeline now. We've got a good business development manager in place in Kim. The next step now is to really grow that business. We've delivered these couple of projects quite successfully.
Okay. I guess the AUD 20 million number within the next 30 months, I mean, I presume that's based on the pipeline that you can see at the moment.
Two things. I think it's the pipeline and just our general understanding of the market, Alex. You know, this is a big national market. And now that, you know, basically now that we've got the system, you know, Matt's got the confidence, the system works the way we expected it to. That's, and that level of confidence is evolving all the time. We're rising all the time. It's just a function of our of capital and then the structure that we put into place to be able to service that size of business. I mean, look, Matt is well down the track with what a national Jumpform business looks like doing that level.
It's just right through to, you know, where we would locate the main depot, how we would staff it, the whole thing that we expect.
Yeah. It's, so it's definitely a national thing as well. We've got these projects in Queensland, where our pipeline has projects in every state, including Adelaide and Perth. It's all over Australia. It's spread out, and it's the pipeline is not just centric on Queensland. It's across a range of geographies.
Okay. That's helpful. Just my second question on Snowy Hydro, please. I think you're currently tendering on the first formwork packages for the project, but obviously there's been a bit of noise around, you know, the collapse of Clough and cost blowouts over the past few months. Just wanted to hear what you guys are seeing on the ground there.
Well, Clough has been bought by Webuild. That's happened. The Clough business in Australia, which included Snowy, I think the Inland Rail project as well, Matt.
Yeah.
Also some Papua New Guinea projects, which one of the major ones being a Australian government-funded defense base on Manus Island. Webuild bought that business. They're full steam ahead with those projects. You know, there's certainly site issues at Snowy, but for us, it's a bit of a so what. You know, that's a problem for Webuild, it's a problem for the site. It's probably a problem for the site budget. It's not an issue for us.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Thank you, Alex. Our next question comes through from Tina Wilson at E&P Capital.
Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask whether you think about the utilization rate for equipment hire? Whether that's like a measurement or consideration in how you plan the budget.
Thanks, Tina. Look, absolutely. It's fundamental to the way our business operates. I have to say, you know, Matt, there's a Chief Operating Officer. He's, I guess, the keeper of equipment utilization and what we need and what we locate in each state, and what we then need to purchase to make sure we can meet the, you know, opportunities in front of us. We're running at a really, really high utilization rate on our general scaffold equipment at the moment. It'd be in the 80%-90%. Matt, wouldn't it?
Yeah, correct.
It's incredibly high utilization in scaffold. Across formwork, it's more difficult to talk about a number because there's 20 odd different systems. You'll have a system that's got really high utilization and others that are more specialized that might only go out once or twice a year. But generally at the moment, you know, we're very highly utilized across almost every system that probably also is unparalleled position for the business.
Yeah, correct. In every state as well, not just in Queensland or Sydney, every state has got high utilization across the business.
It's really important. It's one of the advantages of being a national business, and that's, you know, again, it's Peter Metro with the CIO. He sort of is the ticker of the box when gear gets moved from one state to another, based on-
Yep.
You know, the market conditions and also what we need to be investing in capital.
Sure. You're saying free for at the moment almost, that's why you've got to orange CapEx to buy new equipment is sort of what you're...
Tina also we're improving rates all the time as well. We've still got revenue growth opportunities just in rate improvements, because, you know, across most categories of the whole industry at the moment, equipment is very highly utilized.
Yep. Fantastic. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Tina.
Our next question comes through from a private shareholder, Michael Munson. Please go ahead, Michael.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. I had a couple of questions. The first one was regarding growth CapEx. Looking ahead, can you give us an indication of how you see the spread of growth CapEx between your various segments?
Yep. Maybe Matt can also chip in on some of it. I would say, Michael, that it's going to be highly geared towards the Jumpform business, I think over the next 2 years. You know, I don't ever want to say that we're not going to be still growing our meat and potatoes stuff. There's a prime example right now where our soldier equipment, which is probably our most, well, it's most versatile, but sort of meat and potatoes formwork bit of kit. We're just doing what, Matt, another AUD 800,000?
Yeah. Not AUD 800,000-
Yeah.
To do these projects in New South Wales and Victoria, we have kilometers and kilometers of bridge work to do.
That came up. We won some contracts, and it's magnificent payback. It's like 75% to 80% payback.
Exactly. In the one project.
In the 1 project. Yeah, I would suggest, though, that in the next couple of years, it'll be very highly orientated towards growing our Jumpform business.
Okay. Just perhaps following on from the question on AUD 20 million revenue, can you give us, and I know this is hard because it depends on the building, but what sort of scale of revenue do you get from Jumpform per building, roughly? Like in, what's the order of magnitude there?
It's a good, it's a good question. I mean, the two projects we're on at the moment, one's around AUD 600, one's around AUD 3 million.
Yeah. There's a very big gap.
Yeah.
The bottom line is around that AUD 350,000 mark for a very smaller 20-story type building. Then you go well into the AUD 2 million-AUD 3 million for these larger 30- to 50-story type towers.
There's an example. The two we've got at the moment, one's AUD 600 and one's AUD 3 million.
Yep. Okay, good. No, that's helpful. The last question I had is, there's been a lot of talk about, you know, labor shortages, staff retention and so on. What can you comment in terms of those sorts of factors on your business?
In terms of white collar stuff, no issues at all, really. I mean, there's the odd person that leaves either by choice or by our choice. You know, there's not a lot of turnover in our white collar staff. In terms of our blue collar staff, it's actually starting to ease a bit. It was very difficult over probably, you know, three or four-month period leading up to Christmas. The feedback I'm getting from our guys in the depots is they're starting to ease. We don't get a lot of people leave in general, even in our blue collar staff. It was getting hard to replace them for a period of quite a few months.
After Christmas, for whatever reason, it seems to have eased a bit.
Okay. No worries. Look, thanks and well done.
Thank you, mate.
Thank you, Michael. Our final question comes through from Danny Younis at Shaw and Partners. Go ahead, Danny.
Hi, Steve. Hi, Andrew. Look, congratulations on a fantastic result. I've got, you know, 3 or 4 questions, if I can. The first one, just, you know, ripper result from formwork. Across the group, you know, your sales are up 34%, your EBITDA was up 38%, and your margins, which you described as phenomenal at 29%. What's the long-term EBITDA trajectory? I mean, is this as good as it gets?
Well, I think if you're talking about percentage of EBITDA to revenue, Danny, it goes back to that mix question we got before. You know, the way the numbers flow is that higher revenues are basically a half, 100% pass through almost, right? Sales revenue is averaging somewhere in the sort of the 30%-35% pass through. Labor revenue, which is just in our industrial business, is around 18%. It does depend on the mix, in terms of the percentage of EBITDA to total revenue. In terms of the trajectory of the total EBITDA, look, you know, my view is, and we've known now for 10 years in our career, I've been running this thing for 10 years in May. Every year, we've improved our profitability from the previous year.
We've found a way to do it, even through whatever cycles people think are there. I don't see any reason in the next few years why that should change. You know, I'm not gonna say we're always gonna grow by 35% every year. That's pretty ambitious. I didn't think we'd grow by 35% from last year to this year. Look, I'm very strong to the guy, to the management team that we always need to find a way to grow our profitability every year. In terms of the percentage of that to revenue, it really gets back to that mix, that mix point.
Yeah, no. Understood. Thanks. Maybe just going back to the step up and the guidance, clearly there seems to be a big opportunity with Natform and Jumpform. You've talked about the revenue opportunity. Can you maybe talk about sort of the returns or the margins you're getting in both those businesses?
They're highly profitable profit to revenue businesses. Both Jumpform and Natform, very similar in dynamic in terms of you know, you get You're making 50%-60% margins on those, on contracts on those, in that business. Look, they've got very, very strong pass through of revenue to profitability.
Yeah. Okay. With regards to the CapEx, you know, you said the last couple of years have been around AUD 20 million. We're already close by FY 2024, and you've already said, you know, you're geared towards the Jumpform business. Can you maybe quantify, you know, what FY 2024 and beyond is likely to look like on an annual basis? Will it be well above the AUD 20 odd million?
look, I say again, it's a function of how quickly we want to grow our Jumpform business. That's really what it is, Danny. I mean, if we didn't have the Jumpform business this year, our CapEx would have been AUD 15.
Fifteen.
Right. We spent AUD 5 that.
Yeah. The Jumpform business and the Ringlock business really-
Yeah.
progressed this year.
Yeah. We were opportunistic to buy AUD 4 million worth of Ringlock scaffold because somebody was selling a package of gear secondhand cheap, which we wouldn't have otherwise bought. We bought that opportunistically, and that was AUD 4 million. Jumpform accounts for AUD 5 million. That's AUD 9 million out of the AUD 20 million coming from those two categories. You know, if we were really, it's hard to answer your question specifically because it gets back to how quickly do we wanna grow the Jumpform business. If it wasn't for that, we'd be running probably now, I reckon, Matthew Caporella, somewhere between AUD 10 million-AUD 15 million thinking for next year. Right? That's really the only way I can answer that, Danny Younis.
Yeah. No, that's fine. In the industrial services division, how long do you reckon on the product sales of things in terms of the new raw materials, how long do you think they'll be elevated for? Are we talking 6 months, 12 months, 18 months? Do you have any visibility as to, you know, what the trajectory there looks like?
It's been quiet in that area for the last six months. That's the one area that's well down in terms of total revenue for us in the last six months has been product sales in that area. We've got a couple of very big opportunities at the moment, but who knows whether they come off or not. Right? I think at the moment, whilst every inflation is where it is and there's pressures on prices of new material, you know, I think that area of product sales will be in a general sense, will be under a degree of pressure. I think you're relying on the odd very big project that comes in that wants to buy gear, and there's a few of those at the moment that we're working on.
I think in general sense, there's less day-to-day buying of gear in that area than there was 12 months ago because of inflation. That's just, that's helping us on the higher rate end. Right?
Yeah. Yep. Okay. It's the final one. Look, well done on Queensland and New South Wales, particularly New South Wales in terms of the market share gains there. Are you picking up those gains at the expense of other competitors or you picking it up just from new opportunities and new customer wins, et cetera, et cetera?
I think we're definitely picking up contracts that competitors would have won 12 months ago. There's no doubt about that. We're winning projects, we are picking up market share because we're beating competitors in Sydney that we weren't previously beating. I think the market in Sydney has been good for a while and will stay at this level if not better. I put our growth in Sydney as a market share. Our growth in Queensland is a combination of market activity and market share.
Excellent. Well done. Thanks again.
Thank you, Danny. We have had another question come through. Do we have time, team?
We're happy, yes.
Our final question comes through from a private investor, Rebecca Song. Please go ahead, Rebecca. Rebecca Song, your line's now open. If you'd like to ask a question, please go ahead.
Gents, can you hear me?
We can.
Yeah, sorry. Ed Woodgate from CCZ. I'm not sure what happened there. Just be useful to. Congrats on the result, by the way. Very, very good result. Just be useful to quickly talk about the bad debt expenses and how they're ticked off. I'm just not sure. Sorry if you've already touched on this because we've, we're jumping between calls today. Yeah, can you talk through how you're managing that? Also, it was pleasing to see your receivables come down. Is it, is that, was that in any one segment contributing to that decrease in receivables?
No. The decrease in receivables was sort of across the board. From a bad debt perspective, I suppose if we look at it in context, it's 1.5% of the half year revenue. I mean, that's. It's actually not that bad. I mean, it's. We would obviously rather zero like we did the previous period. That, I mean, it's not an outrageous percentage of revenue, that's for sure. The environment has changed quite dramatically, and we've changed very dramatically with it. A lot of these, the customers that have gone bad, these are customers that were going to be impacted in the environment, and that's exactly what's happened.
What we touched on before with the, with the call is what we're doing at the moment is where we can, we're securitizing debt against already sold gear to customers. We've actually got security over their gear. From a credit point of view, from a credit team point of view, there's a much higher focus, although there always was.
Security, particularly for new customers, but also on existing customers. One of the big things we're doing as well is particularly with the tier one sort of work, we're doing, we're hiring directly to the large contractors rather than the subcontractors. You know, the big builders and so forth. That'll cushion a lot of this. The fact is that obviously, like everyone in the industry, there's a much greater focus on this. We can't say it's gonna happen in the next 12 months. You know, we've probably got another two interest rate rises, but as Matt mentioned, the focus is pretty immense across the board in Acrow and particularly for our teams.
I think, the other thing to mention is about just our heightened awareness. Again, you sort of touched on it, but on these big government projects, our ability, and in some cases now we're talking directly to the state governments about making sure that the government is ensuring that you get paid on a government-funded project. We've got some, a couple of examples at the moment where we're right in with state governments about this. You know, I think on big government-funded civil infrastructure projects, they've got to make sure that there is direct ability for all people participating on a government-funded project to get paid.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Well, that I mean it's a cracking result. Really pleasing to see you guys, like, joining up the free cash there you are ex the growth CapEx. Look, we're catching up with Sava, I'll leave the rest of the questions to across.
Thanks. Thank you. Cheers.
Thank you. As there's no further questions, I'll hand back over to the team for any further or closing remarks.
Okay. Thanks everybody for participating and especially thank you to those that asked questions. They were always, as usual, they were very good questions, and we're pleased with how we answered them. We look forward to another strong six months and in six months' time talking about a full year result that again will be, you know, the best that Acrow's recorded in its history. Thanks to Andrew and Matt for their participation today. Again, just thanks to all the Acrow team for, you know, an unbelievable effort over the last, you know, period of years, but certainly these last six months. Thanks again, and look forward to talking to you all again in six months' time.
Thank you for joining, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you to the team for our presentation on the Acrow first half year financial year 2023 results call. All participants may disconnect.