Thank you for joining us today. I will now hand over the call to Steven Boland, CEO, Andrew Crowther, CFO, and Matt Caporella, COO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and thanks, everybody, for joining us this morning as we run through the FY 2026 Acrow results and also talk about the FY 2027 position as we go into a new financial year. I am joined today by CFO Andrew Crowther and COO Matt Caporella. I am going to walk through the investor presentation that was released on the ASX platform this morning
Firstly, just in terms of the overview of the business, I think the first thing to recognize is that this company was listed in April 2018 with an AUD 70 million turnover and an AUD 10 million EBITDA and was effectively a commercial scaffolding business. We have now obviously developed it into a market leader in formwork hire and sales. We are the market leader in the Australian market, and we have developed a significant Ind ustrial Access business over the last three to four years.
The cornerstone of all of that growth has been around the competitive advantages that we have in engineering, the general quality of our people, product range, and the geographic footprint of the business. I think we can add to that now innovation. Innovation goes hand in hand with our product development and our engineering area. Matt will talk about some of the new products that we are bringing to the market later on in the presentation. As I said, innovation is very much front and center of the Acrow way of doing business.
In terms of the FY 2026 highlights, we have now grown an AUD 200 million Industrial Access business in the FY 2026 period, up 53% on the prior corresponding period. Importantly, that growth was still about half organic and half based on the acquisitions we made at the end of the FY 2025 year. This is going to keep growing.
I will talk later about what our forecast for revenue is in this business in 2027. We have made two complementary acquisitions post 30 June that were part of a very successful capital raise towards the end of June. Both the Preston SuperDeck loading platform business and the Ausgroup Industrial Access business. I will give a bit more color about that shortly. We had a great year in both our Jumpform and Screens business. It is the best example of cross-selling we have in Acrow. They are both at record levels of revenue, and especially Screens now, we have grown a very significant national presence off the back of what was really only a New South Wales-based business a couple of years ago.
A great example of innovation is the column climbers Jumpform project we have got on the Gold Coast working with Meriton. It is the first of its kind in the country.
We will talk more about that project shortly, but a great indication, again, of engineering excellence and the innovation within Acrow. Probably the most important thing, I think, in this presentation in terms of the forward outlook for Acrow is the second half formwork revenue that we had for FY 2026. Again, I am going to go through more detail in relation to that, up 26% on the first half. But it is the most important thing, I think, in looking forward to what this is a significant uplifting result is that we are not just expecting, but will see in the FY 2027 year. Hand in hand with that is the equipment. Hire equipment pipeline is up by another 33% to AUD 290 million. In terms of secured hire contracts, that number was flat.
There is a timing issue there, especially with the size of the Jumpform and Screens contracts that we win in this regard now. A lot of the Screens contracts that we win in one year, you do not see the revenue until the following year. They are awarded sometimes 6- 12 months in advance of the job starting. So there can be a bit of a lag effect in there. Certainly, in terms of the revenue, the work in Screens that we won in FY 2025, we saw the revenue in FY 2026, and we will show that a little bit later on. Yes, so on to the next page around safety. So still, well, it has to be a really strong emphasis. We have increased the number of hours worked in the business by 60% from FY 2025 to FY 2026.
In some weeks now, we have well over 1,000 Industrial Access scaffolders working for the company. So I guess our risk profile is higher than it was when we were more purely a formwork hire and sales business. So to go through that whole year with only two lost time injuries, I think is still a good result. Albeit, as I say, you do not want any. You want that number to be zero. The recordable injuries number is relevant, I think, in terms of our ability now to capture and act on the injuries before they become LTIs. But it is going to continue to be, it has to be a strong focus. We have got a really good national safety manager who started with the business about 12 months ago, who is now getting consistency across all of our depots.
In terms of the financial metrics, clearly good to see the revenue go up by 27%, but the EBITDA was flat. That is relevant in terms of an increased profitability from the industrial sector of the business and a reduced profitability in the year of the construction part. So basically, AUD 5 million less in construction and AUD 5 million more in industrial. Importantly, over a third of the EBITDA for the business of the year was generated in the last quarter. Last quarter was the most profitable quarter in the company's history, and that is flowing into the new year. EBIT and NPAT were down based on obviously a flat EBITDA with more finance and more depreciation costs. That will stabilize itself now into the new year. And EPS was also down in line with the NPAT reduction.
Well, I'm going to talk about this again later on when we're talking about our guidance. We haven't given specific guidance for NPAT and EPS at the moment, whilst we have for revenue and EBITDA, but we are expecting our NPAT to be up over 50% this year, and we're expecting our EPS, despite all the additional shares on issue of the capital raise, to be up by over 20%. In line with our new dividend policy that we outlined a couple of months ago, the dividend for the final half of AUD 1.42 cents is actually at the high end of the new guidance that we've given. Look, it is something that can be tracked more accurately now, and it is fair to say it's a reset for Acrow.
For a company that's growing as much as we are and has uses of capital that can return better than 40% for every dollar we spend, we believe that we've probably been overpaying in dividends for a few years, and this is a reset, and we don't apologize for that. I'm going through the operational update, the divisional breakdown. I think a couple of things that I want to point out here. Firstly, obviously, Industrial Access, AUD 200 million, we've talked about that. The margins, whilst you're seeing an EBITDA margin of 24% versus 34%, sorry, 30% the previous year, industrial division now contributes 60% of our revenue rather than 50%. I think, look, any business with as much revenue as we've got coming out of that sector now that can still maintain EBITDA margins in the mid to high 20s has got an extremely good margin profile.
We're looking at the moment at the new financial year, even with a stronger contribution again of Industrial, we think our EBITDA margins will probably be more like 26%-27% this year. In terms of the construction division, pleasing to say, and we'll go into more detail on the next page, which I. In terms of the, again, the margin profile, if you look at the chart at the bottom, we had a greater contribution of sale of product revenue of the total revenue this year compared to last year than we did in hire. And that just shifts the margin around. So this is not a reduced margin overall. This is just, again, a shift between hire and sales revenue. To page 12, which is the revenue by state.
As I said, I think this is probably, I think, almost the most important page of this presentation in terms of the future outlook. Firstly, I'll draw your attention to the national formwork revenue, where you can see that's the split we've got for FY 2026 between first half and second half. So the second half revenue of AUD 66.7 million is the highest revenue we've had in any half in the history of the company, and up significantly, obviously, from the AUD 53 million we had in the first half. And most of that growth came in the last quarter. So you can see that, and again, really pleasingly, that growth we saw in the last quarter is finding its way into the new financial year, which we'll talk about in more detail later on when we talk about guidance. A couple of other things in here.
Clearly, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia have had very good years. This is indicative of what happens when the market turns in our favor. I mean, you can't create work. We are very jealously proud of our market share in each state. Despite the reduction in revenue in Queensland, we haven't lost market share. It's purely indicative of the work in that particular market at any given time. I think I just also want to, I guess, reiterate here, we had growth over a three-year period in formwork revenue. You can see from 2021 through to 2024, our national formwork revenue went from AUD 60 million to AUD 121 million. We doubled it over a thee-year period. Our EBITDA over those three years went from AUD 20 million to over AUD 60 million in three years.
That was all off the back of the last surge of activity in construction activity in the country. That surge in activity has basically stopped for the last three years. Our revenue has stagnated. However, as I said, you can see in that last half how it's really kicked back in. That's really why three years ago, we decided to invest so heavily in our Industrial Access business because we didn't want to be this one-trick show based on civil infrastructure and general construction activity cycles. You can see again, a great second half result. It's going into this year already. If I look at Queensland more specifically, Queensland's coming off of the lowest six months they've had in three years to get to increasing for four. The prime example of cross-selling.
In terms of our Screens business, we are definitely the national market leader with over 100 projects going at any given time. Earlier I mentioned how the work that you win in one year in Screens, you really see it the next year. You can see in FY 2025, the revenue, whilst we won only AUD 25 million worth of work in FY 2025, the revenue was only AUD 16 million in FY 2025. That grew to AUD 23.5 million in FY 2026.
So we've got a great result in Screens. We've grown a very strong presence now in Western Australia, which we've done primarily off the back of our growth in Jumpform. You can see that W.A. continues to be the biggest state for us in terms of Jumpform, but you can also see that we've got 10 Jumpform jobs in W.A. We've also got 10 Screen jobs in W.A.
So it's fair to say at the moment that almost on every job that we're winning Jumpform across the country, we're providing the Screens as well. Project examples, Cypress Palms contract. This is the column climbers, first of its kind in the country. Again, a great example of innovation and engineering excellence. The job is now going at full tote. How many columns have we got in this project again, Matt?
There's 16 columns.
16 columns.
Yeah.
Okay. We have inserted a time-lapse video in here. I won't show that now, but you can access that at your leisure to show you how that's going. I think we've now jumped, how many?
The column climbers have done 10 jumps.
Right. Okay. All 16 columns have done 10 jumps. Working extremely well, very happy customer. This is industry changing. Moving on to Industrial Access. Look, very strong EBITDA margin for this type of business, making 18% on what is primarily a labor-orientated business. I would suggest if you want to double-check the strength of the Acrow industrial business, you check against the peer groups. There are other public industrial companies. I do not think anybody is making 18% margins out of their business. This is a very strong revenue and margin profile. In terms of the labor component of this business, the average labor margin is around 22%. However, the biggest contracts that we have got, which now contributed more than 43% in what they generated this year, the average labor margin for those biggest contracts is around 15. We will take 15 every day of the week.
If it is a clean 15, these are not lump sum contracts, these are do and charge. That is a very strong margin. However, they are becoming a bigger component of the total revenue, and they will again this year as a couple of them are growing significantly. That might reduce the labor margin to more like 20 across the group average. Some of the specific projects in this group. Look, you can see here, we are front and center on some of the most important national and critical infrastructure projects and industrial projects. Our industrial business you can categorize into four different areas: long-term maintenance contracts, construction-style industrial projects, ad hoc maintenance packages, and shutdowns. Each of these projects are covered by some of those. For example, Snowy Hydro is a construction-style industrial project. Ampol Kurnell is a construction-style industrial project, so is Perdaman.
BMA and Glencore are long-term maintenance contracts. Sydney Harbour Bridge are basically ad hoc maintenance packages. But they are all indications of the sort of work that we do in these areas. I am going to go into more detail about a couple of these later on. On the next page, we give an example of a shutdown project. This is the first one of this nature where we were the principal contractor. We took principal contractor responsibilities. Over a six-week period, we mobilized up to 98 personnel, 14 different trade groups. You can see in this number 37,700 man hours. It was a massive undertaking, and we pulled it off incredibly successfully. Very happy client, just under AUD 8 million in revenue.
A good contract for us in terms of margins and an indication that we can pull this sort of project off, and we will be looking to do more of this sort of project into the future. Effectively on this project, the cooling tower for the power station needed significant rectification work done to it. We came up with a plan to be able to support that work. Again, very happy customer and successfully completed. Over to you, Andrew, on the financials.
Great. Thanks, Steven. Hi, everyone on the call. As Steve's already said, our revenue was up 27%, but we had a relatively flat EBITDA. As discussed, the predominant reason for that is the revenue split between construction and industrial from 50/50 to 60/40 Industrial . With that came the lower EBITDA margin. Essentially that was brought around through Queensland formwork delays, and other sort of increase in certain costs. One of the costs you will see in the P&L there was a AUD 1.5 million increase in bad debts during the year. That does not mean our debt is out of control. There was quite a few things bubbling away, and the decision was made to provide for these in this second half. That flat EBITDA then translated to an underlying profit after tax of a 20% decline.
From 34 .5% to 27.5% . The reason between that flat EBITDA and the lower underlying NPAT is essentially increases in depreciation and interest that were brought about through increased CapEx and working capital. Basically, we have been preparing for a strategic expansion for a while now, and I suppose Construction, as Steve's already talked about, just was not what we expected in 2026, but that is all basically been delayed and moving into 2027. Moving on to that depreciation. Depreciation was higher. You will see from 2025 to 2026, and that was basically just our average PP&E has increased from 189 to 226. Our average depreciation rates are essentially the same at around 8%. It is just an increase in PP&E. Interest, likewise, our average debt went from 95 to 144, and our lease liability also increased.
Therefore our interest increased by close to AUD 3 million. Our tax actually increased. You will see that our statutory rate of tax increased from 33% to 38%, or the tax itself went from 11.5 down to 10.8. The reason for that increase in statutory tax, there was two adjustments for essentially previous period income tax expense of about AUD 500,000 each. That AUD 1 million translates to about 3.5%. Our statutory tax rate will revert back to around 33% next year. That gets us down to an underlying of AUD 27.5 million. Our underlying earnings per share, you will see as well is AUD 8.86, down 20%. That EPS reduction is purely from the underlying NPAT, because our weighted average shares basically stayed relatively flat. Obviously, it increased 32% after share raises at the end of June and in July, but for the year, it was relatively flat.
Getting between underlying NPAT and NPAT reported. NPAT reported likewise reduced by about 24%, down to AUD 17.8 million. The difference between those two essentially were all our growth initiatives. Significant items of AUD 4.5 million. That was predominantly on restructuring and integration expenses as well as depot moves for future growth, plus some advisory fees. Amortization of intangibles are the same as previous. We have had to value our customer relations and certain brand items for some of our acquisitions, and that will amortize over 10- 12 years. As Steve's already talked about, our dividend, we announced a dividend of AUD 1.42 final. That brings us to AUD 3.42. The way we calculated that dividend was on the second half. Our underlying NPAT on the second half was about AUD 14.7 million, and basically, we are paying out the high end of our new policy of 50% of that.
Now, moving over to the balance sheet. The FY 2026 balance sheet includes around AUD 31.5 million that we received in the first tranche of our institutional placement. The second tranche and the SPP came in after year-end. Net debt, including that AUD 31.5 million, was up AUD 9.8 million to AUD 133 million, and that increases predominantly from all of our growth initiatives, and we will get onto that in a moment in the next slide. Net debt to EBITDA increased from 1.8 to 1.9 at 30 June. Our headroom essentially stayed the same at close to AUD 40 million as last time. Total assets were up by AUD 76.7 million. That was from CapEx. We had AUD 36 million of CapEx, AUD 31 million of growth, plus we had quite a lot of probably record sales in May and June, and likewise, I will get onto that next.
Our average sales for May and June were about 38 per month. For the balance of the previous year, it was about 26 per month. Our receivables basically had an increase of AUD 20 million for the end of the year. That basically was one of the big reasons for our assets up. Working capital to sales, almost the same as last year, 26.5%. As previously said, that was impacted by the May and June invoicing as well. Cash conversion, likewise, almost identical to last year, 72% versus last year's 71%. That variance, if we wanted to get to 100%, it is very difficult for a business like ours because we are in growth mode, particularly in our Industrial Access division. As I said before, our working capital or particularly our debt has increased by AUD 20 million. That is about 20%.
That is sort of where our impact on our cash conversion is. On our pro forma column on the right side, what that takes into account is the second tranche of the institutional placement plus the SPP. It is about AUD 51.2 million, less the acquisition costs on Preston's and what will be Ausgroup, which is AUD 47.8. We have also taken into account what we expect around AUD 13 million of contribution from the acquisitions. We have different views of that will probably be higher. With that pro forma, we would be roughly the same, debt and debt headroom, but our net debt to EBITDA would be about 1.6. As we said in the raises, we are still forecasting that our net debt to EBITDA at the end of this year or 2027 will be around 1.3, so we are making good headway.
Over the next slide, this is our net debt bridge that we always have. I will not dwell on this, but what you will see is our debt. This is the debt increase from AUD 123 million to AUD 133 million, so around AUD 9 million. The vast majority of the outflows are investment related or future growth of about 62% and Dividends you will see was AUD 14 million for the year. It is worth a call-out there. That will start reducing under our new dividend policy. As Steve said, it is relatively clear that we are probably overpaying dividends with the amount of growth that we were doing.
Over the next slide, capital expenditure spend. You can see from this that our investment in CapEx this year were very much into profitable growth areas, in particular Jumpform and Screens, which by far have been record levels of revenue for the year.
Looking forward, these are very much strategic opportunities for the future years. This was money very well spent. On top of that, you will see that the Uni-Ring Layher was AUD 1.4 million. Most of that went into our organic growth areas, being South Australia, New South Wales, and North Queensland. We probably under-invested in other areas of formwork, which will be adjusted in the following year. You see FY 2027, our CapEx budget and forecast at this stage is AUD 30 million. However, opportunities may show themselves with extremely high returns. We may make decisions, but our budget at the moment is AUD 30 million.
Over to you, Steve.
Thanks. Sorry, folks. We have just been told by one of the participants that the call sort of drops out every now and then for 10 seconds or so I apologize for that. Not sure why that is happening. We will do the best we can taking that into account. If there is anything that needs clarification through the questions process, please make sure that you ask those questions. Moving on to growth opportunities. Firstly, we have completed the acquisition of the SuperDeck business effective on the 3rd of July. It has been already well integrated into Acrow, works in conjunction with our Screens and Jumpform business. It is the market leader in this area in the country. Excellent early results. We have already obviously had the July result, strong forecast for the next few months, performing at the levels that we expect it to.
We have got great ambitions for this business on a national basis in conjunction with our Screens and Jumpform offering for high-rise, commercial, and residential developments. The Ausgroup acquisition. I can report that today is effectively the final day for ACCC sign-off. All indications are that we will get that. We actually had the ACCC approval two weeks ago, but you then undertake a two-week cooling off period. That cooling off period completes today. We understand that there has been no adverse commentary in relation to that acquisition over that two-week period. So we will be going ahead with completion of this acquisition, be effective on the 31st of August, so 1st of September for us. Look, this business provides great scale for that Bowen Basin region for us in terms of equipment and manpower, totally complementary to the MI Scaffold business.
Gives us a wider service offering in the region with the paint and blast and engineering services that Ausgroup have, which is a relatively small part of their revenue. But it is important part of what we see as the future growth of that region. I am going to touch on that in a second further. Integration planning is already well underway, even though we are still a week and a half away from, effectively a week away from settling. There are meetings going on today between the senior management of MI, Ausgroup, and our industrial business to get the integration planning well underway.
Moving on to product development. Look, it is one of the forefronts of our strategy. We have been talking about innovation as one of the strong points of Acrow, and I will let Matt talk through some of these opportunities we have got in front of us.
Thanks, Steve. One of the things, like Steve said, that differentiates Acrow is our ability to continually innovate and develop proprietary solutions. But over the last two or three years, what we've really done is to solve problems with our customers and to suit the Australian market, and creating new opportunities for the business. I'll just cover a few things, products that we've launched in the last 12 months, plus a couple of exciting opportunities that are about to launch in the first half of this financial year. First I'll cover is Powershore 60. We launched this in February, and we've been working on this for the last couple of years. But this product is entirely developed in-house. Acrow own all the IP for the product and the manufacturing ability.
This product, we're delivering around double the load capacity of a comparable product in the market, but we're only about 20% heavier. Quite innovative and really well received in the market. We've successfully commercialized the product basically across every state in Australia. That's in higher end sales of the product. And it's really expanding our foray into the temporary works propping segment I'll cover a bit further on. The next product is our Uni-Ring. Uni-Ring is our version of a Ringlock scaffolding system. The same here, we've now got projects across all of Australia, so Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and W.A. Most importantly, this is supporting the growth in our industrial division, and opening up new opportunities in the infrastructure and civil markets. Also seeing an increase in product sales of this product now. We've got multiple sales in Queensland and Victoria.
We're benefiting from owning the IP here as well and the manufacturing capabilities, and this primarily was shown on the project in Perdaman, where we had to mobilize thousands of tons of materials in a really short timeframe. We could spread it across different factories and deliver quickly. One part of the business we're getting into now is propping. Strong demand for engineering propping solutions. This is not just the traditional formwork sort of packages we're doing. It's standalone propping. We're supplying the propping in. We're also doing labor in some positions where we're installing the propping. This is using our extensive fleet of systems that we've already got in our formwork business. And we're continuing to invest into these sorts of product lines, much like the Powershore 60 I mentioned before.
One thing that we've always done in the past is bespoke formwork, but it's really ramping up in the last 12 months. And this is where proprietary systems remain. They remain core of our business, but with complex projects now becoming more and more prevalent, customers require a more tailored solution. We've always offered this, but now we're getting into it a lot more. Ultimately, this is like bespoke formwork capabilities using our design engineering and supply chain. And basically offering a standalone model for the customer where it's a single point of contact where we're leveraging our engineering expertise and also our manufacturing capability.
Yeah. So on that, it is fair to say this product is sold onto the project.
Sold onto the project.
Single use, sold to the project.
Yeah.
There are some very large examples. One example at the moment, Matt, of equipment for the Western Harbour Tunnel in Sydney.
Yeah, which is the photo in the report.
Yeah.
And we're doing a similar sort of project we'll be doing in Melbourne as well.
Great.
Large bespoke tunnel formwork is probably where that is primarily seen.
Okay. Thank you, Matt. Just keep going. On the industrial business, building sustainable earnings. It's a business that has allowed us to have far more confidence about what the picture of the business looks like going forward. You can see what we've developed over a three-year period. We've gone from an AUD 40 million turnover to an AUD 200 million turnover between 2023 and 2026. This year, we came into the year with AUD 180 million of secured revenue, and that was before the Ausgroup acquisition. We're forecasting this year to do AUD 280 million in revenue, up AUD 80 million for the year. About half of that would be Ausgroup and half of that still will be organic. So it's not just an M&A story. Every year, we get at least about 50% of our uplift in revenue coming out of organic initiatives.
One example that is now working strongly, if I go to the next page. We won the Perdaman contract 18 months, two years ago. It has been operating at a reasonable level of around AUD 2 million to AUD 2.5 million a month of revenue. We are now winning more packages. In the last three months, we have won another AUD 1 million odd dollars worth of work overall, just over a three -month period on really strong margins. We expect that will continue. There is a lot of discussions going on about broadening the scope of the work that we currently do on that project. We are getting the benefits of scale. Matt talked about the Uni-Ring product. Uni-Ring product has a lot of flexibility, and one of the things we are moving into strongly now is an application for Uni-Ring on civil infrastructure projects.
It looks like we are going to be winning quite a lot of packages for this kind of work on the Rockhampton Ring Road project as an example. Central and North Queensland. Clearly, with the acquisition of Ausgroup and the existing business of MI , we have got a very significant business in this area. If you take into account Gladstone and Townsville, we have got about AUD 100 million region of revenue. It is almost 25% of Acrow's total revenue. We have got great scale. It is in an area, it is a critical region for Australia's met coal export market. We have done a lot of research on that market before we bought the Ausgroup business. It is clear that that market is not deteriorating anytime soon. Big training and development focus for us to try to breed our own to develop even further scale.
What we are really trying to do in this region is build a moat, put ourselves in a position where we are very strong in terms of capability. We have got the scale, we have got the manpower. From a capability perspective, we give ourselves a really strong position.
Next one, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I will go out on a limb. I will say that the Sydney Harbour Bridge project for us has a bigger growth opportunity than the Brisbane Olympic Games does. We have got over a decade of relationship with the Transport for New South Wales on the bridge through our Above Scaffolding division. Established a high level of customer service and reputation. The combination with Acrow enhances that capability significantly. We have recently submitted in July an expression of interest for a lot of work on the bridge leading up to the centenary of the bridge opening in 2032.
There is a lot of work there. We have said AUD 400 million to AUD 600 million worth of revenue. I have heard other numbers floated around a lot more than that. It is a lot of work. We are a proven partner and service provider for Transport for New South Wales. We have got the capability to tender and deliver services on all packages. We are probably the only company in Australia that can actually do that. There are parts of it that companies might be more specialist in, but in the expression of interest, you were required to nominate whether you needed to have a subcontract partner for any packages, and we do not need that. We can provide the services for all of the packages that will be let.
In terms of the construction division, strong pipeline across all sectors now. It is probably the strongest it has been for at least three years. A couple of examples.
Snowy Hydro, which is at the moment for us, an industrial project. In FY 2026, that project generated around AUD 16 million of revenue for our Industrial division. That will go to in excess of AUD 25 million in 2027, with the already accepted pipeline of work and the rates that we are getting for that job. Now we move into the formwork focus. At the moment, there is upwards of AUD 50 million of specialized formwork packages under live tender. This project, which at the moment is a strong industrial one for us, we have done formwork. We have probably generated maybe AUD 5 million-AUD 10 million of formwork revenue over the last three years. There is a significant increase opportunity for us on this project. Queensland infrastructure. We have rolled this out before, but it is accurate. This is the project spend or prospective spend for infrastructure in Queensland. It is not directly Olympic orientated.
You can see that between 2026 and 2030, it is going to double in size. It is a key market for us. It has been soft for some time, and it is really now starting to kick in. Some of the examples on the next page are the types of projects, and they are not just in transport. There is a lot of utilities, water treatment plants, et cetera. The Chambers Flat Wastewater Treatment Plant is one example that is going to kick off in the next few months. Coomera Connector continues to roll. Rockhampton Ring Road is kicking in now at a reasonably good level for us. One of the major projects going forward in this area is The Wave, which is the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane rail. Overall, we expect to see significant uplift in activity in infrastructure.
Touching on the Olympics, and look, it is real now. There are tenders being let.
The first tender that is being let is to BMD for the early works on the stadium. We are in heavy engagement with BMD in relation to works. That is not a significant amount for us, but there will be work. The next big thing is the awarding of the contracts for the building of the stadium, which is down to two consortiums. If one of those consortiums wins that project, we will get a lot of formwork, primarily Jumpform revenue from that project. Brisbane Showgrounds, which is the redevelopment of the technically the Ekka site, is kicking in now with Hutchinson Builders. We have given them quotes for a range of work there that we expect to be well in the game for. Then you move into the Athletes' Village, where between Lendlease and Hutchies, there are six 30-story towers that will be developed over three stages.
We have had early engagement in terms of the sort of offering that we can have there. Some example, there is now real meat on the bones in terms of the Olympic venues. The National Civil Infrastructure Project pipeline, just to give some examples there, we have got across the country. We have got a very strong presence on all the projects that we have mentioned here. I mentioned the Western Harbour Tunnel, where the bespoke formwork systems that we have designed, and we have now sold two of those systems. The other ones that I am going to call out are Torrens to Darlington, which has been a good project for us, but is about to go through its most significant phase.
In the next three to six months, there is a couple of million dollars worth of work in hire that we expect to win on Torrens to Darlington.
At the moment, probably, well, not probably, but definitely our biggest civil infrastructure revenue-generating project in the country is North East Link. We are probably doing AUD 600,000-AUD 700,000 a month of revenue on that project, and we are winning more packages as time goes. We continue to be the go-to company in terms of this space. Specialized services cross-selling. Along with product development, one of the absolute strengths of our business these days, our cross-selling. The best example of that is Screens, Jumpform, SuperDeck, and probably other formwork products for high-rise. Other examples are the propping and shoring that Matt talked about, and then how that works in with general formwork. Another great example is how the civil formwork, such as Rockhampton Ring Road, now also brings Acrow access equipment via Industrial Access .
There is a range of areas now where our product range is enabling us to cross-sell very successfully. Finally, with our guidance. Firstly, you can see we have given first half guidance of AUD 195 million-AUD 215 million in revenue and AUD 50 million-AUD 55 million in EBITDA. You can see they are up significantly on the same period last year. We are already up in the first month of the year. We made AUD 3 million more EBITDA than we did in the equivalent month last year. Our forecast for the first quarter is that we will be AUD 8 million minimum better than we were for the course first quarter last year. There is a clear picture now that shows that the turnaround has happened and that we will be able to be achieving the types of results that we are mentioning here.
At the AUD 110 million midpoint of our full year guidance of EBITDA, which is AUD 30 million up on the previous year. FY 2026 year. As I said, we are going to do AUD 8 million in the first quarter, and that is with only one month of Ausgroup, with only kicking into September for that quarter. I did mentioned earlier that we have not specified NPAT and EPS numbers in our guidance because there are a range of moving parts. This is not just going to be about revenue. This is not just going to be about EBITDA. As I mentioned earlier, the underlying NPAT for this year will be up more than 50%. We know that you roll through the EBITDA guidance and you roll through what happens with depreciation and finance and tax, it will be up by better than 50%.
Despite having 32% more shares on issue this year compared to 2026, we are going to be better than 20% up in EPS. This is a year, 2027, where we have stagnated for two or three years now off the back of restrained construction activity. We have been able to maintain our results off the back of our growth of our industrial business. This year, we are going to get both. This year, we are going to continue to grow industrial, and we are already seeing, and it will continue, the growth in the construction division that we have been looking for the last two or three years. That is the presentation as we have at the moment. Thanks. Open to any questions that we have from the participants. Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on the speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question comes from Philip Pepe with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Guys, thanks for taking the question. Yeah, great job on starting the year strong. Yeah, I was cutting in and out a bit earlier. Just on the guidance, you touched on it then, assuming symmetric first half, second half, but almost a slowdown in the second half given how you have started. I am assuming you are being conservative. Can you elaborate on the swing factors? You have talked about the first two or three months, how that is traveling. How much are you factoring in in terms of assumed contract wins and how much is in the pipeline, for want of a better phrase there, where you could be actually updating the guidance as the year progresses?
I am sorry, Philip. We have lost the presenter connection for a minute.
Okay.
Please hold on as we try to reconnect them.
For some reason. Phil, we did not get your question, if you would not mind repeating, please.
Missed out on my Wi-Fi. No, fair enough.
I know, mate, it was probably fantastic, but anyway, if you could repeat it, that would be great.
I can only do it once. I will paraphrase. Just on the guidance. You have given us how the first month started and your budget for the three months. What are the swing factors that you take into account when you give the longer term guidance, and at which point do you anticipate updating the market? Is it AGM or is it the half year result?
Look, the major swing factors always are product sales that we do not budget for. There is a lot of big packages of work out there at the moment that we put out for bespoke formwork. Also our product sales that we cannot budget for and we cannot forecast for. We would be very conservative on that. Our guidance numbers. Certainly first half, as I said, the EBITDA for July was AUD 3 million better than the EBITDA for last July. We are almost at the end of August. We know the result for this month. We have got a very strong forecast for September. It is going to be up AUD 8 million compared to the same period last year. For the first half, we have got a relatively strong degree of confidence. We have got a very strong degree of confidence about that result.
The second half is based on our expected run rate, for the construction divisions. What we already know is basically in the order book for the industrial businesses. The swing factors will be, as I said, primarily, winning some of the bespoke packages that we currently have on tender that we do not put into the forecast and large product sales, then obviously better activity than we anticipate. I think, look, the main thing that we wanted to do here is obviously we have stagnated for three years. We have been hovering around between AUD 75 million and AUD 80 million of EBITDA for three years and looking for that to get into the 90s. Without the acquisitions this year, it is into the 90s. With the acquisitions, it is pushing up closer to AUD 110 million.
This is the year that Acrow's EBITDA starts to lift again after three years of stagnation.
Excellent. I think you had mentioned earlier, but cut out. Obviously, cash has come in the door July, August from the raises. What is the gearing, as we stand today on a run-rate basis?
On a run-rate basis, the gearing, I think I have got it on the pro forma right now. If you have a look at the balance sheet, the net debt to EBITDA, the pro forma is 1.6 and the net gearing will be down by about 5%, 35.6% .
Thank you.
The next question comes from Alex Lu with Morgans Financial. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. I just had a question on underlying EBITDA margins, please. Maybe just one for Andrew. Margins were down 640 basis points. You have talked to some of the key drivers of that, just around the change in mix towards Industrial Access versus Construction. Sounds like there is more equipment sales and also there is a bigger contribution from some of your larger customers in Industrial Access. Just wondering, can you just break down some of those contributors to that margin decline, please? Just noting that, you have said that most of that is due to the change in mix. Just wonder if you can help out there, please.
Hey, Alex. I think you actually answered that question with your question. It is literally the 50/50 to 60/40 change between construction and industrial . There was actually a mix of more sales than I during the year as well. That is because of the mix of Construction to Industrial . As Steve pointed out, there was quite a large difference in revenue between our five largest customers this year to last year which has a lower labor margin. I do not have the actual.
You can work it out. Alex, sorry to butt you, but you can actually work it out. The EBITDA margin in construction is 42%. The EBITDA margin in industrial is 18%. I cannot do the maths that quickly in my head.
If you work out the difference between a 60% contribution from industrial to a 50%, I am not sure that you will not get to that number.
Yeah.
You will get.
No, exactly.
Yeah.
Yep. Outside of that, was there anything else that contributed or those were the main things in terms of.
Yeah. Look, nothing material.
Or were there main-
Yeah, they are the absolute main things. One of the things I did mention was about AUD 1.5 million of extra bad debts. There was yard increases and so forth, but that was because of our expansion. That is your only sort of one-off. The bad debts is still- It is not big, it is like less than 1% of revenue, right? Yeah. It is not big. It was more than the previous year, which is always disappointing. You do not want to have a bad debt, but it was AUD 1.5 million more than the previous year. We had had two years of a relatively low number there, and hopefully we will return to that this year. As I said, it is still, well, less than 1% of revenue. Yeah.
Okay. What was the bad debt last year, Andrew?
It was it 1.2, I think it was. The total bad debt for previous year?
No, 800 actually. Last year was 800, this year is 2.369.
Okay.
Last year was abnormally low.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Maybe just on the upgrade, please, on FY 2027 guidance. What's gone better than expected for you to upgrade the guidance versus when you gave guidance a few months ago?
The start of the year.
Okay. The pipeline's increased as well?
Yeah. We exceeded our budget in the first month by over AUD 1 million. We'll exceed our budget in the second month by over AUD 1 million. We've already seen straight up an improved result on what we were forecasting at the time we did the last guidance, which was when we did the CapEx raise. I've mentioned that earlier, Alex. We're going to be up AUD 8 million compared to the same period last year for the first quarter. That only has one month of Ausgroup, which is around about a AUD 500,000 to AUD 600,000 a month contributor to EBITDA. We're AUD 8 million better for the first quarter, and we're forecasting to be AUD 30 million at the moment, at the midpoint, better for the year. I think, again, you can see how that all comes together.
Okay, great. Just to be clear, Steve, the guidance doesn't include anything that you might get for Brisbane Olympics, is that right?
Well, put it this way, there is zero revenue in our forecast for FY 2027 for Brisbane Olympics. What we think will happen, we will be doing some work for BMD on the civil works for the main stadium. It's not a lot of revenue. We'll be doing some revenue there. Sure, we will be, Matt, right?
Yeah.
It won't be a lot of revenue.
No.
The first big package that we would be hoping to win, and this is totally in the hands of which builder wins the main stadium. That's going to be announced in the next, I don't know, six to eight weeks call it, maybe even shorter timeframe than that. If one of the two consortiums wins it, we will have a significant package of work. If the other consortium wins, we might not. It's that simple. That revenue, you won't see till probably maybe the absolute tail end of this year or the end of the following year.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Benjamin Yun with Ord. Please go ahead.
Good day, gents. Well done on the results. Just looking at FY 2027, that split of revenue between Industrial Access, that looks to be jumping to about, call it 65%, 66% of revenue. Just trying to get an idea of what's your ideal balance there in terms of revenue mix?
The current forecast is basically 50/50. So it goes from 60/40 back to 50/50. The current forecast at our midpoint of our guidance, which is AUD 420 million, is AUD 280 million Industrial, AUD 140 million construction. So that's the way you would work it out. I mean, we put a number on that, Benjamin, earlier in the presentation around what our expected revenue is for Industrial, which is AUD 280 million. So yeah, that's the split that we're looking at at the moment, AUD 280 million and AUD 140 million. AUD 420 million.
Understood. Just jumping off across to the column climbers, taking that Meriton Cypress very much as a proven concept of your innovation there, can you give us an idea of how that interest in that product has grown following its 10 jumps?
Go on, Matt.
We've had maybe three separate clients now. We've toured them on the site and shown the site. This sort of system is suited for towers over about 50 stories. There's a few in the pipeline coming up. It's just a matter of one of these projects coming off and then getting onto another site. But yeah, so far we've actually been touring customers to the site and showing them, and there has been a lot of interest, people inquiring, seeing it on social media and stuff. So, it's been positive so far.
Thanks, Matt. Maybe just one last one. In terms of M&A, what type of businesses or geographies are you interested, going ahead into FY 2027?
We're not looking at anything at the moment. We've just done two. We did two this previous year. I mean, we said this last year, and then some opportunities presented themselves, but I can say at the moment, we're not actively looking at any M&A. We've had some approaches, and we said the timing is not right for us to look at that at the moment. So we really need to bed these down. It's still part of our business' strategy, and we'll revisit at some point, but I don't think this year, and I might be then held accountable for that if we come up with some wonderful opportunity. But at the moment, I can say we're not actively looking at anything. We'd love to get some industrial business in Western Australia, but there's nothing that's presented itself that's been of interest to us.
Understood. Thanks, gents.
The next question comes from Peter Moller with Blue Ocean Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Well done on the result.
Hey, Peter. How are you?
And the outlook. Yeah, good. Yep. I was going to ask, the Sydney Harbour Bridge contract, that seems much larger than or the potential expansion is much larger than I thought. Can you talk about whether you have advantages of being there on-site already and whether, I suppose, a competing player could enter that, given, I suppose, your already position?
Yeah. Let Matt talk through this. Matt's pretty close to what our sort of opportunities are there.
Yeah, 100%, Peter. The actual package we are on at the moment is maybe 5% of one of the 10 packages, for example. It is just basically when the centenary is in 2032. So at the moment, they are basically letting each portion of the bridge off in little chunks. They need to fast-track, effectively. So instead of doing one cord out of the 20, they want someone to do all 20 cords at once. So, out of the 10 packages that they have released, we have probably already done those sorts of works on five or six packages. So, we are one of only three scaffold rope access providers on the bridge at the moment. So yeah, definitely, we are in a good position.
Matt, talk about the innovation, Matt, just that innovation with the loading platform.
Yeah. For example, we have spoken about this before, but the loading, the HLD we call it, on the bridge at the moment, that is on the current package. If you actually drive along Sydney Harbour Bridge, you will see it. We have had basically ability now to supply. They had issues with road closures. So we gave them a solution, to put a deck over the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge, so they could basically work at any time during the day. So the current scope that is out now is actually looking at covering the entire bridge, so they can do all the work above. We were the ones that sort of come up with that innovation in the first place, so definitely in a good position.
Peter, look, who knows? All we can flag here is that it is a big opportunity where an existing service provider that I know is very well-regarded. We have got the capability of doing all of the work they need to get done by ourselves without needing to use subcontractors or have a JV partner. I think, we are just flagging it is a big opportunity. They want to fast-track the work. They are running out of timeframe. This is a bit like this happens to be 2032. That is the centenary. They want the bridge to be lovely and shiny and they do not want any scaffolding on the bridge in 2032. They need to get it all done. Right.
Yep. Thanks for that. Yep. With the Brisbane Olympics work, if you do miss the stadium piece, just given the size of the sort of overall construction, does it put you in a better position to pick up a lot of other work across the athlete village and the other sections?
It does not matter. There are a couple things here. We have said pretty regularly that the stadium is obviously the showpiece. It will look great on the front page of your annual report, but it is not the main game. We just happen to be in a position where one of the builders that is quoted to this in one consortium and their chosen form worker, if they win it, will work with us most likely. We just happen to be in that position. But it is by no means the be all and end all. My experience with this stuff is it is all the other ancillary work that the closer you get to the thing that where you get the best returns.
I think the other important thing to say about this, and I have read some narrative around this from people at different times, and we have said this, you do not gear up for 100% of this work. You just do not. Because you will be left with gear after 2032 that you do not need. The key here is to pick the right amount of gear and leave the last 25% or 30% to somebody else. This business will be actively having that strategy. You do not want to be too late, and we will not be too late, but you also do not overcapitalize into that.
So it is a big opportunity. I have lived through Sydney. I know what will happen, but it is going to be really critical to Acrow that we are very smart about how we do this, and we target the work with the best returns.
We do not overcapitalize into that cycle. We will just make sure that what we are doing leaves the last bit for somebody else and happy days for us going forward.
Yep. Thanks for that.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand it back to Mr. Boland for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you again. I am sorry for some of the technical hitches. Hopefully it was not too bad. Again, we look forward to talking to you again at the AGM, at the half year results. I thank Andrew and Matt for their participation and thank all of the listeners for taking the time to listen to our presentation. Thanks very much.
That does conclude the conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.