Well, welcome to the earnings call of GUD's results for the six months ended 31 December 2023. I'm Graeme Whickman, GUD's CEO and Managing Director, and I'm here with Martin Fraser, the company's CFO. As a matter of housekeeping, we'll have time at the end of the call for questions and discussions, so if you could hold your questions till then, and then there will be a recording of the call and presentation material up on the site later on. We'll start the call by Martin and I running through the key messages, the financial overview, and then I'll speak to our segment results. Then I'll hand back to Martin to cover the financial results in a lot more detail, and then we'll conclude with a quick trading update and outlook before the Q&A.
So let's turn to slide 4. Pleasingly, the results are very much in line with our expectations, and it sort of reflects the broadening earnings drivers, which we've been cultivating for a while, and the group's ongoing focus on margin management. APG achieved a strong level of growth, largely reflecting the improvements in the vehicle supply and also the associated fixed cost leverage from those higher volumes. Our manufacturing footprint continues to be optimized, we're leveraging APG's Melbourne and Thai facilities, and that drove a meaningful increase in Cruisemaster's capacity and improvements in cost. The automotive result, once again, demonstrates the resilience and the quality of those businesses. A fantastic result. Our cash flow was actually ahead of expectations, which Martin will cover later.
Our leverage ratio is well within our target range. This strong position has flowed through to the increased investment in the likes of product development, the offshore green field initiatives, selective CapEx and some bolt-ons, and we'll talk about that in a second or two. Adding further to the APG plant capacity and efficiency remains an ongoing part of our strategy and part of that investment, certainly to support the medium-term growth. Today we announced another acquisition of Caravan Electrical Supplies, so I'll call that CES, which, together with the Rindab acquisition, the Vision X Sweden acquisition announced in October, both are reflective of our global aspirations and also that diversification strategy we've spoken about in the past.
The fundamentals across both automotive and APG businesses remain strong, and these businesses continue to execute very well. In line with its strategy, APG continues to win OEM share of wallet, excitingly. And via the Infinitev business, we continue to position ourselves for that leadership position in the ANZ aftermarket for EVs.
Ultimately, the group strategy is focused on building that diversification, that resilience, all centered around an automotive pure play, and it has the support of a strong balance sheet to fund both organic growth and further compelling bolt-on acquisitions. So let's skip over to the next slide, in terms of group. I'll ask Martin to cover that, and then I'll come back in a few minutes. Martin?
Thank you, Graeme, and good morning, one and all. Slide five provides a group financial overview for the half year and focuses, wherever practical, on continuing operations by excluding Davey and CSM from half year results and prior comparable periods. On that basis, the group delivered 8.6% revenue growth and 11.6% underlying EBITDA growth.
As Graeme mentioned, APG experienced strong top-line growth as OEMs either experienced or positioned for improvements in vehicle supply. The operating leverage from high volumes drove a 28.85% increase in APG EBITDA to $32.3 million. The core automotive business once again delivered a solid result, reflecting strong execution and the robust end markets that we serve. The acquired automotive business was down a modest $ 500 thousand, largely reflecting business improvement actions and investment for midterm growth.
Pleasingly, we continued to observe a broadening of revenue drivers across the group as we continue to invest and diversify. We'll unpack the automotive and APG segments in greater depth later in the presentation. Investment efforts are also reflected in high corporate costs, mirroring the increased scale of our business in terms of size and geographical spread. Underlying NPATA a grew 10.5% over the PCP, reflecting a normalization of the tax rate following some one-off tailwinds in the prior year. As Graeme mentioned, the balance sheet is strong. Deleveraging continued in the half and reflected net debt to underlying EBITDA ratio of 1.7x , which is now well within our stated long-term debt leverage levels. All in all, a strong financial result in a volatile environment.
Finally, an interim dividend of $18.5 per share was declared, up 8.8% compared to the PCP. I'm gonna hand back to Graeme, and he will start to speak to slide six and strategic imperatives.
Thanks, Martin. Well, today kind of marks our inaugural result as an automotive pure play, given that the sale of Davey completed officially in H1. And this is really an important inflection point for us, moving from, you know, being an industrial conglomerate to a dedicated automotive company. A pivotal and yet energizing time for all of us, particularly me. We have six key strategic imperatives organized around four key areas of business. So the four-wheel drive, accessories and trailering, the auto elect and power management and lighting, the powertrain, both ICE and EV, and then undercar. And each of these four areas will play an important part in the next stage of GUD's ambition.
Importantly, we have strong expectations of growth in our four-wheel drive and our auto elect businesses, and you'll see later in the presentation more detail on the acquisition of two businesses which support these two areas. It will, therefore, not be a surprise that further acquisitions, along with disciplined greenfield growth opportunities, which I'll speak about a little more later, will be where the general allocation of our capital will reside. It'll be aligned to these imperatives. In terms of sustainability, on slide seven, we talk about the sustainability of our business and the impact we have on the world around us. It's articulated in six key impact areas, and importantly, there's some details of some of our outcomes achieved recently and what's currently in progress.
Since we had the opportunity to speak to you in late August, we released our 2023 modern slavery statement. Among other especially noteworthy events is the completion of our first solar installation commitment of scale on the roof of BWI, and we're studying other sites for potential expansion of self-generated power.
Other key initiatives that are currently underway or development include the development and rollout of a group-wide paid parental leave policy, and also, pivoting to a different subject, but the establishment of our China-based Asian sourcing office, which we've just established. The latter will bring in-house work previously outsourced by APG or completed on a FIFO basis by the other auto businesses, and it gives us the opportunity to improve and vet the performance verification of suppliers through a team of locally based China staff.
It also actually might expand our reach into China-based customers who are seeking world-class components for products that are exported to markets where our products are commonplace, and that might be of interest to both BWI and, I know it will be for Cruisem aster. Okay. Well, let's move from sustainability, and let's start to unpack some of the results. Let's get to automotive. Starting on slide nine. So, excuse me, revenue increased just a smidgen over 5.5%. Critically, the core auto businesses grew just under 7%, driven by both volume and price. Encouragingly, this continued to come from both new and existing customers, and some geographies and channels, which was very pleasing.
Acquired automotive revenue growth was more muted, supported by a couple of months of contribution from VX Sweden. Both VX US and ECB delivered revenue growth, but the organic revenue outcome reflects product line rationalization of [Bardin Unique] from the prior year, so that's why it's more muted. The underlying EBIT margin of our core auto BUs was slightly up year-over-year, which is an ongoing positive story as these businesses continue to execute well in the face of macro volatility. Price rises that were due to be implemented at the end of Q2 or the start of Q3 were actioned, and they've held, which is fantastic.
The margin for the acquired businesses reflects a higher overhead in support of business improvement actions and some growth aspirations, and this investment is expected to drive future growth. I mentioned earlier about inventory, but if you look at it from an automotive point of view, it was stable versus June 30, and it's sort of now approximating normalized levels, which I think, Martin and I have been watching very carefully and have communicated as to when we felt that that was the appropriate time, and that's now rolling through. So that's, again, something in line with our expectations.
I'll turn to the acquisitions in more detail, but we completed the Rindab, so the Vision X Sweden in the half, and coupled with today's announcement of the CES acquisition, I'm delighted with the way in which our diversification strategy is playing out, as our lighting and power management categories now have a European beachhead, and now greater penetration of the RV market in Australia. I guess this also provides an appropriate segue to provide you an update on some of our greenfield growth initiatives with a different lens around investment. So on slide 10, the global ambitions of the lighting and power management businesses are clearly outlined in the slide, with early stages of the entries underway in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and a little bit into actually Southeast Asia.
You probably see that for the first time. Our approach will continue to be targeted and measured as we leverage the product complementation of BWI and Vision X, which will obviously give us new customer and new geography capability. Finally, the quiet. 'll call it quiet, because we're not beating our chest, but the quiet momentum of the Infinitive teams' hybrid battery program in Australia and New Zealand is encouraging, as we continue to position the business to capture a leadership position in the EV aftermarket. And again, just a reminder, for the full year, FY 2024, the investment in those initiatives in terms of OpEx and CapEx is certainly outlined. There's no new news there in that regard. So let's unpack the acquisitions just a little bit more.
I'm sure we'll have some questions over the course of the roadshow, but I'm really pleased, obviously, with the acquisition of Rindab, so Vision X Sweden. It's clearly aligned with our desire to build a global leadership position in specialist automotive lighting. The slide sort of brings to life where Rindab focuses, which is overwhelmingly in specialist automotive lighting. You know, Rindab are the distributor of VX products in Northern Europe. They sell a catalog of VX lighting products, and again, will be the beneficiary of the product complementation approach, which is in play in VX USA, using that base Narva lighting products. You know, products that are designed for one of the sort of four or five dark lighting markets in the world, being Australia, and expanding that out, that whole notion of product complementation.
Rindab also expands our reach into truck OEMs, which is pretty cool, where we've traditionally been less well represented in ANZ. It will also provide a potentially interesting access to some of the significant European car dealership groups. So that transaction completed on schedule, and the integration activities are on or actually ahead of schedule. Now to the acquisition we've just announced today, that's on slide 12, and it takes us to the acquisition of CES, which I'm delighted to announce today, and certainly at a compelling multiple. Again, another proof point in how we're rolling out our strategy and deploying capital in a meaningful manner.
CES will significantly improve BWI's customer reach in the caravan and RV segment, not just in Australia, actually have a bit of presence outside of Australia, but also our ability to sell complete power management solutions to assemblers from end to end, including pre-made looms, rather than just elements or components as we do today. In terms of diversification, quite compelling is that there's a significant new customer base that is new to BWI and new to GUD, and the share of wallet opportunities are strong. Finally, we're also very pleased that the management team will stay on with us, and we've incentivized over the midterm to make sure that we continue to see that growth in the business. Okay, so that's automotive. That's a couple of acquisitions which I'm really quite delighted about.
Let's now move to APG. So slide 14. APG's result certainly in line with our expectations, a pleasing outcome, given the supply and manufacturing challenges. I think I've said plenty of times before, I don't think that these will abate through FY 2024. So we are dealing with an interesting and quite challenging position, and yet they've come forward and delivered a good result. Revenue grew by just over 15.5%. And that largely reflects the improving new vehicle volumes in Australia. Underlying EBITDA grew by 28.5 to just over AUD 34 million pre-group, and just over AUD 32 million, post the allocation of the GD allocations.
Higher new vehicle supply in Australia drove a better higher plant overhead recovery in both Thailand and Australia, but the opposite actually occurred in New Zealand. Again, not any surprises, we've been talking about this, where new vehicle volumes declined significantly in anticipation of the repeal of what was termed the Ute Tax. This resulted in significant New Zealand factory inefficiencies in the half, particularly Q2, and I'm sure you were following that. The impact of this evidenced in a slightly softer half-over-half margin, as capacity was maintained ahead of the expected recovery in the volumes in H2. And NZ, noting that a repeal was effective on vehicles registered from first of January.
Now, while the broad OEM production volumes have improved, they still, they still haven't stabilized, which again, probably isn't a surprise. This is evident when we walk through the industry data on the following two slides. You've also got a bit of current port congestion and availability of roll-on, roll-off ships, adding to a bit of a complexity. It's extending a little bit into that post-production logistics area. Importantly, though, and very importantly, I should say really, the independent forecast of new vehicle demand are supportive of the continued strength. Notably, the corporate fleet renewals are still running behind natural renewal time, and that gives you another sort of fill up in terms of the support for the demand outlook.
So have a look a bit around the numbers, bit of data, and sort of unpack it a tiny bit. slide 15, you can see that new vehicle registrations have increased markedly in Australia over the past six months, with increases in pickups and SUVs in particular. However, when you reflect on the same data for New Zealand, it's a marked difference, right? It's, you know, quite a stark reduction in New Zealand. And importantly, we've done this for the first time for our investors' edification, kind of look at a blended view of Australia and New Zealand being the markets we sell into.
The blended numbers show a more muted increase, with pickups at a blended level across the two markets up by 7% and SUVs up by 8%, and then the top 20 for APG, up just over 12%, not far removed from our overall revenue, half-on-half increase of about 10.5. If you go to the next slide, and you can see that, that APG top 20 detail, it reinforces the volatility on the model-to-model basis. As I mentioned, the blended ANZ top 20 was up 12%. The different shadings... So a little bit more information for our investors this time around as well. The different shading color also highlights where we supply both functional accessories and tow bars based on the profile.
So you can sort of see a bit of a distinction and get a sense of the biggest share of wallet versus the others and the ups and downs in that regard. Look, at the end of the day, the slide simply reflects the continued brand volatility in terms of performance. My view remains unchanged, that it'll be more stabilized, more normalized, as we get into FY 25 and beyond. Encouragingly, on slide 17, and we've showed this quite consistently, is the wins. This company knows how to win in terms of what it's trying to achieve. And I'm super pleased just to take you through some of those wins in the half. About 20 million or so, incremental, sorry, $20 million worth of wins, which is fantastic.
Most notable was the win of the next generation Hilux, which is due 2025, where we'll supply the sports bars. Fantastic. Additionally, we managed to grow further share of wallet in the half, not for the first time, by the way, where we've seen another competitor fall by the wayside, in this case, a bull bar business, and we've been able to pick up all of that OEM business and take it from that company that was going out of business. Then, finally, with some satisfaction, the slide mentions that we've received an award in what we're terming a strategic new geography. Now, I'll apologize here for being so cryptic.
From a customer sensitivity point of view, we can't actually outline what that is, but it is part of that $20 million, and all of it is incremental, which is fantastic. So we will be setting up operations in a new geography. It is very much in line with the strategy we've been deploying. That'll come online in FY 2025. It's included in that latest dollar tally on the slide. And as I said, due to customer sensitivity, we'll cover that in a bit more detail in our Investor Day, by the way, which we're seeing that will happen in Q4. So pleasingly, like I said, it's part of our forward drive strategy centered on future international markets, and what I say internally is sweating our engineering assets.
So sorry for the guttural phraseology, but it is basically utilizing what we do at the core in terms of engineering, and then spreading that to different geographies. So it's a terrific outcome. On slide 18, we talk about APG's other strategic growth pillars. So in the half, we completed the expansion of the Thai capacity for trailering products, which has supported an expansion for the cruise master market share and sales. Great. We're now focused also on a new round of integration, including lifting the ECB [for activity] and capacity to address unmet demand through the Thai facility, as well, actually, as potentially more common sales and marketing resources, and actually product development cooperation.
There's a lot happened in that half, from an APG point of view, in terms of the continuation of the wins and the continuation of the momentum. Slide 19, the slide we showed previously, demonstrates the vast product suite, which supports the four-wheel drive and trailering addressable market. Truly superior, certainly in my opinion. I might be biased, of course. And the acquisition of CES will mean we'll have further addition to this slide, and we'll make that in the next round of reporting. So I'll pause for breath there. A lot of information imparted to you there, a lot of exciting information. I'll give you the mic, Martin, back to you, so you can cover off more of the financials in more detail.
Terrific. Thanks, Graeme, and I'll start us off on slide 21, which walks us through the profit and loss. As I've spoken much of that earlier, I'll not take you through that line by line, which would be a chore, but to really. I'd like to highlight a few key points. The first is, you know, our cash operating cost grew slower than the revenue, demonstrating the great leverage which you'd expect from a high level of self-manufacture in APG. Secondly, leverage is further evident with depreciation growing fast, slower than revenue growth. Our significant items were minor, and they mostly related to the sale of Davey, and were truly modest, given the size of the Davey transaction. Our overall financing costs are down. That reflects that we have yet to fully redeploy the Davey proceeds in new acquisitions. So that's very encouraging.
As mentioned before, the tax rate is back to more normal level, given the benefits of PCP have unwound. It also reflects the dividends received from abroad, and particularly Asia, are subject to withholding tax, and we are streaming dividends out of Thailand, 'cause we have a very profitable business there. By all measures, the result grew pleasingly at either an EPSA or an EPSA level. On slide 22, we outline the net working capital position, and as I mentioned, and Graeme spoke of earlier, inventories are now what we would call the sort of normalized run rate level. The level of debt factoring decreased in the half by $ 6.5 million, and we expect further reductions in H2 towards the more traditional levels that you've seen in years before 2023.
With normalized inventory levels, we've also seen a normalization of credit levels, and that's consistent with what we flagged to you previously. That also helps to translate through the cash conversion on slide 23, where we can see that that inventory normalization has really allowed the profits to flow through in cash terms, although the unwind of some of that debt factoring has provided a slight offset. We achieved a cash conversion of 93.5%, and that's well up from the 85% we'd flagged, as some debtor collections were collected ahead of our usual mid-year levels, and that's expected to reverse in the second half.
We therefore still expect a full year cash conversion of circa 85%, and this assumes no safety stock levels to offset potential elongated supply chains from Red Sea and Suez Canal disruptions, effectively taking either containers or shipping capacity, well, not out of the market, but just, increasing the cycle times for freight, and effectively creating a shorter supply. CapEx is up 20% to $ 8.6 million, but this still is below what we've flagged recently of our full year expectation of about $ 20 million. You know, Graeme talked about all the exciting things we've been doing in the last six months, and from that, we see very many compelling CapEx investment opportunities, particularly across BWI and APG. So we may see that level of $ 20 million be sustained or slightly increased into FY 2025 and maybe 2026.
On slide 24, you can see our cash, gross cash and debt balances at the half year, and you can see that on a net basis, the net debt is down $ 58.2 million on June, reflecting the sale of Davey, you know, offset by or principally the sale of Davey, offset by the acquisition of Rindab, as well as the growth in net working capital to support our organic growth. Net debt of $ 344 million represents, as I said before, a ratio of 1.7x EBITDA, and again, well within that stated, you know, long-term range of 1.6x-1.9x, pre-lease accounting. I'll now take us to slide 25, where we can speak a little bit about our debt profile, where you can see that we have really a heavy skew towards long-dated debt.
primarily fixed interest rate funding at what is, in today's market, extremely compelling interest rates compared to market rates. We also have an element of swapped interest and a relatively small percentage of variable interest rates. To the right of the slide, we've mapped out our debt facility profile, not the utilization, but the facility, and you can see we've got a mixture of tenants and lenders, and there's no real change to what you've seen last time, other than we've seen some facilities reduce. You can also see that we've got significant unused debt facilities, which positions us exceptionally well to support both organic and acquired growth. We've noted our all-in funding cost, which includes unused line fees and interest swaps. It's fallen over the last six months.
Although we have a relatively low floating debt, we have a high level of unused debt facilities, which have been included. We're currently reviewing whether we hand back some of our borrowing facilities a little bit earlier than their maturity in December 2024, given the level of unused debt facility costs, and we'll make a decision on that, I expect, in the next month. I'll now hand you back to Graeme, who will finish with both the trading update and outlook before we pass across to Q&A. Back to you, Graeme.
Yeah, thanks, Martin. Trading update. The automotive business has seen a strong start to the second half. Garages remain busy, lead times more akin to pre-COVID. Some garages are reporting a bit of a shift towards regular service other than major repairs, but not universal. We're certainly pleased with the carryover momentum as it stands, for the first part of the second half. APG had weaker revenues in January compared to PCP. We've got some closure of factories by Toyota, driving lower replenishment sales. We see it as a deferral. You might have seen in the news around some of the concerns around irregularities in their testing.
And we're just working to establish the shape and timing of the potential normalization, but that will just be a move to the right. Cruisem aster sales, slightly weaker compared to prior January, but it was very clear the assemblers took a longer shutdown versus prior year. In terms of the outlook, move to slide 28. So I'll speak to the outlook, probably in three parts. At APG, positively, the OEM demand backlogs remain elevated, although increased supply is helping reduce the backlog, but supply remains volatile across the makes and models.
This has been elevated with a disruption to Toyota's production, and consequently, we're expecting H2 a bit to be slightly below H1 before returning to a more normal shape, and as the tempo of supply moves into FY 2025. Pleasingly, the functional accessory wins and the geographic diversification I mentioned earlier on is supportive of the revenue growth into FY 2025 and, and beyond. So that's very positive, quite excited about that. Turning to automotive, the market is expected to remain robust through the year, and the car park absolutely continues to age in the background. We expect our investment in product development will support further our sales growth. Meanwhile, we're, we'll, we'll continue to invest in our greenfield activities, although we don't expect contributions ahead of FY 2025.
Across the group, we've largely hedged our FX requirements for the remainder of this financial year, and price increases are expected to moderate inflationary and spot FX pressures to support margin management in H2. We expect cash conversion to track to previously flagged levels, and expect to sustain a compelling balance sheet and funding position, really to support both organic and bolt-on acquisition growth. We're basically open for business for sure. Martin and I are looking forward to providing a further update, as I've just mentioned earlier, in a Q4 Investor Day, date to be specifically pushed out yet. As you might expect, though, we're not providing guidance today, given that many of the material moving parts are outside of our control, they continue to prevail.
However, we will provide a trading update at that Investor Day later in the financial year. Okay, well, that concludes the presentation of the results. I do note that in the appendices, we've also provided some additional material, including some automotive snapshots for your perusal. You'll see some very positive outcomes in that first half across many of our divisions and businesses, so congratulations to them. But before we go back to the moderator, I wanted to once again take the time to call out to the leadership team, who worked really hard on the two key themes we've had in the half: managing the macro and driving our automotive pure play.
Then to each of our employees across the varying geographies, we wouldn't have been able to deliver such a consistently good result without their diligence, commitment, and effort. Thanks to all of you, the board, Martin, and I certainly do truly appreciate your support. I'll hand now back to the moderator, and they will coordinate the questions you have. Back to you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. The first question comes from [audio distortion]. Please go ahead.
Morning, Graeme and Martin. Thanks very much for your time. Could I firstly ask you about APG? Thanks for the color there on the various disruptions to the cadence of the ordering patterns and replenishment orders, et cetera. Could you take that one step further and give us some insights into how that's working through each of the different channels, whether it's the factory-fitted orders up into Thailand or the dealer-fitted stuff here, or even the aftermarket? Is there a particular channel that's most pronounced in terms of that impact?
Well, it's actually quite varied, James, because the way we serve each customer can be slightly different. So you might find one customer has got a significant factory fit, and therefore, the reliance on the tire plant is very different than, say, the Australian plant. Whereas we've got some other, you know, OEM customers who actually do quite a lot of and finish at our Australian plant and ship to their parts and accessories warehouse. So there's not really a universal answer to that. What I will tell you is that we've seen for the first six months, we've seen some great utilization of both our Australian and Thai plants, for sure. New Zealand has been tough, right? Where you know that the pickups are down more than 50%, that plant has been working its head off.
As I look forward, we're seeing a bit of a mixed bag. We're also seeing, you know, port logistics play a little bit of havoc with us in more recent times, and that affects more our Australian plant. So it is a bit of a mixed bag, James. In terms of what we think we'll see going forward, it's probably a little bit more our Australian facility that we'll see an impact, particularly when you've got replenishment orders from one of our biggest customers, a little bit different than what we normally would see, given their issues around some of their production stops at their factories to solve their testing regime around emissions. So I think it's probably a little bit more Australia than anywhere else that we'll see in the short term. But yeah, definitely New Zealand has been the biggest one in the first half.
Thank you, and I'll just follow up on that. So I'm looking at slide 14 here. APG got revenue growth year-over-year, in excess of what the top 20 new vehicle sales data would suggest in terms of volume. So that, you know, that's a good outcome. But when you look half-on-half, APG delivered 10% revenue growth, first half 2024 versus second half 2023, but the EBITDA margin went backwards. Can you explain why that happened?
Well, primarily, it's the New Zealand situation, right? So, and particularly, we saw a real impact, more in the Q2 period, right? Where people really sat on their hands in NZ. That's why you saw the vehicle sales plummet. 'Cause the election period came in, there was a lot of, I guess, ambiguity as to who was going to get elected, first and foremost. You always get a bit of paralysis, but more importantly, they'd made a election plank pledge that they're gonna repeal the clean car, the clean car approach. And so when they got in, they said, "In 100 days, we're gonna do it." And so everybody stopped at that point, because they knew it was gonna be repealed, and why would you spend $ 6,000 or $7 000 more for a vehicle? We'd wait.
So that's why you saw the margin degradation in the half-over-half of particular attention in Q2.
I might just add to that, to James, that capacity utilization in New Zealand has been well under single shift capacity, and we've had a choice. If we moderated the costs anymore, we wouldn't be able to respond to a bounce in supply. So we've really had not only that sort of recovery gap in and of itself, in terms of overhead, but you know, that flexibility of the people cost in fixed overhead recovery gap, that we've effectively carried some people through. So we'd be able to bounce out the other side, and, you know, that's clearly less than the number of us have taken from COVID, and we took that tactical decision to be able to. We feel that's the right thing to do.
Time will tell whether that enables us to increase market share in New Zealand if others haven't sustained their organizations.
Thank you. And the second topic I wanted to ask about was the acquired automotive portion of the business. So earnings down modestly on PCP. And what I'd like to hear is just a little bit more color around whether that's purely a function of the reinvestment for future growth, which you elaborate on in the future slides, or whether there is underlying softness in some of those businesses, whether it's in VX, whether it's in some of those G4 businesses.
No, no, it's largely around cost issue, or pretty much all around that sort of cost of the future. You'll also see that our revenue was down by a bigger percent, and that's largely because we've worked through, in Unique Barden, a number of things where we were getting very little or no profit. And you know, want to in an environment, very tight blue-collar resource, resources have phased out a number of those products, so we can use those resources elsewhere. So a large amount of revenue has gone out compared to the PCP, but that revenue wasn't sort of generating. It was pretty much quite generating zero anyway. So that's a number that.
Yeah, I mean, giving a practical example as a good example, let's take that to, say, on a VX, right? In the half, we've installed a finance leader, a higher level sales leader. We've put two BDMs on for mining, so we're really leaning into the opportunities. And we have a good agreement with the founder that that won't impact his earn-out, because we actually see this growth opportunity, and we're not going to slow that down. So you've got, you know, practical examples of that nature, and then, as Martin said, you've also got some other costs that are driving through in some of those other businesses.
We've also expanded the team in Vision X, Korea to drive our Asian growth of Vision X right across Asia Pacific. It being responding to customer inquiries, and we've really sort of turbocharged that.
Thanks, Martin. And so just one final one to clarify there: last year, it had a very significant second half skew to earnings, that bucket of other automotive. Is that likely to reoccur this year, a large second half skew?
Look, I think the largest part of that will depend—I think we got some benefits last year from the timing of some of our customer direct initiatives. So, particularly some of our larger customers in Australia, we do some deliveries, you know, by the multiple containers of time with class movers. And last year's timing was pretty strong in December, so it may depend on just whether it falls in December. Sorry, yeah, in December. So, if you know, we'll—and June, so but June more fulsomely. So we'll have to just wait and see where that sort of customer direct business goes in June, to answer that, James. T oo early to predict.
Yeah. Understood. That's helpful. Thanks, Martin.
The next question comes from Russell Gill with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. A handful of questions. So, appreciate the New Zealand headwind, not just in APG, but across the overall business, which you called out at the AGM. Presumably, you're starting to see some recovery, you know, in this month and into the next month around the policy change. Can you possibly call out what you'd estimate that headwind, you know, I guess, at the EBITDA line you saw just from. Because it's, most of its generally deferral volume, what you saw as the EBITDA a headwind in the first half, just purely in New Zealand?
Well, you can sort of see the margin impact anyway, something we've got in the past. If you take it back to the brass tacks in terms of the volume, so you've seen it bounce back. That's absolutely accurate, which is very encouraging. You know, in the month of January, the sales, whilst they're actually not been analyzed properly yet, it'll probably come in as the, probably, well, certainly be the largest January for utes in the history of New Zealand. It might come in at, like, the third or fourth largest month in the history, but that's all stock that's sitting there, right? It's been sitting there for a while because the OEMs have been putting it on the fence, so to speak.
So what's more important to us is actually new stock arriving into now with the confidence levels that the OEMs might have. So then when that new stock comes in, that's when we get to activate the plant, per se, in terms of the accessories. And so we're waiting to see that, because we haven't seen that in January. We have yet to see that in February, either. It's more about the replenishment coming through. And so I would anticipate a better outcome, but it's reliant on that stock coming through, Russell. So that's how I'd sort of characterize it. We actually haven't separated out the relative revenue or indeed, EBIT contribution that the New Zealand has for APG, and we won't call that out for competitive reasons, Russell. It's not necessarily.
It's not, you know, we're not talking 50% here, but it's not 3% and 4%. So it is important to us, as you would expect, and it has a particularly disproportionate impact, given the margin component, when you're operating a plant at essentially full capacity, at static, sorry, static capacity, without actually the throughput going in.
I guess what you're saying is that even though the policy's changed today, you're not getting the fractionalization of the factory overhead just yet.
Just yet.
Even though the policy changed, so it could be a month or two away before that fully recovers?
Hard to say exactly, but I think that logic holds water, and that's kind of what we think will happen. But we, we're yet to see.
Great. And then, just, continuing on APG, appreciate there's a lot of moving parts with the timing of deliveries, and you're still calling out that you remain on path for hitting, I guess, the business case, for the business. It's. You've also called out, I guess, a lot of contract wins, a lot of competitors going out of business. Is it possible to maybe give a ballpark view on what revenue basically sits in front of APG today relative to when you bought it? You know, is it 105%, is it 120% in terms of the opportunity on the revenue side, albeit the timing's still uncertain, just on, based on structurally what's occurred over the last couple of years?
It's a hard, it's a hard question to answer, Russell, because so much has transpired since we purchased it, right? You've got revenue from pricing that's been driven by our cost positions, and we've had to reflect that, particularly domestic cost inflation since we bought, we, you know, priced. At the same time, we've also then had contract wins. Some of those contract wins come now, some of them come in the future, so it's hard to sort of divvy that up. And what we haven't done is we haven't scored up all the business contract wins and said, "In two years' time, we think it's this," because again, it's gonna move around. I think suffice to say, the revenue line, though, is moving in the right direction relative to our expectations.
It is reflective of not just simply pricing for margin maintenance in terms of the cost base, it's actually moving because there are genuine incremental wins. And so it's hard for me to say versus the original business case, where we'll come out, but I think we'll certainly be approaching the original thoughts around the revenue range of $ 313 million to sort of $ 320 million as we move into the back end of this year in terms of run rates and into FY 2025.
Maybe another way of asking it, Martin, you said you'd CapEx around $20 million and, you know, maybe a little bit more in 2025, 2026. How much of that would be APG, and what was APG's CapEx run rate in a couple of years prior, running into your ownership?
Quite a bit of that is actually Brown and Watson, Russell.
Okay.
So, you know, we've been spending pretty similar to what we called out in APG, in terms of CapEx. We've got some exciting prospects around potentially expanding the Thai facility. So that's what's behind, one of the things behind that comment. Graeme talked about the new geography, that would be an intermittent CapEx, but all the, you know, establishment, relatively modest in, you know, in terms, value. But, you know, it's not all about APG. It's a broader set than that, and we could pick that up a little bit more on Investor Day.
Yeah, well, certainly our investment, if it's a APG question, is actually relatively modest relative to the revenue opportunity. So the new geography we're speaking about, that's gonna be GBP single-digit millions in terms of CapEx to set up a manufacturing operation, as an example. And even the Thai capacity would be, again, low single-digit millions. And we will have to front up to that, Russell, because we've won enough business and we're on the cusp of winning some more, that will need more capacity in Thailand. Bearing in mind, we're also, as we're working harder to try to get ECB, Electra fully equipped, to start to drive actually capacity in the Thai plant to support those businesses, which means that we reduce reliance on some of the domestic operations.
So it's inevitable, and it's gonna be a good return as well, in terms of the investment.
Great. Final question. I can't remember a GED result where we haven't talked FX and gross margin. From memory, you rolled off the half at hedge at $0.69, and we're running pretty nude into the second half. Spot's around $0.64-$0.65. Can you just talk through, Martin, you know, where the hedge position for the book currently is at the moment? What you're seeing, I guess, on freight and things rolling off, and the benefits you'll get there, around there, and then how you're thinking about pricing, I guess, over the last past couple of months, but pricing going forward to maintain those gross margins?
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Russell. I think, I think, the hedges we did, you know, to talk to $0.69, we're probably closer to $68.5 million We've got pretty close to 90% of this remaining financial year's US, you know, exposure at, just mentioned, over 66%, and 20% of, or 40% of H1 FY 2025 at sort of similar rates. And we've got RMB sort of hedged out at [$47.5 million]. Sort of consistent with that, we've got a pretty high Thai baht hedge position, again, at a favorable exchange rate. So they're all looking pretty good, and they, they very much fit comfortably within the assumptions we embedded in the price rises that we implemented either at the end of Q2 or at the start of Q3. So in terms of that position, we're, we're, we're well set.
You know, so, you know, we've got a view of, of currency. You know, we've tended to do pretty well at saying these sort of prices will buy, and 66, you know, we, we did that. You know, again, once again, we, we picked it at a moment of Aussie dollar strength. So I've got a view of when we'd jump in again. I don't think we'd jump in at these sorts of levels. I don't think we'd jump in again until we see 66% or north. Our P&L is protected for the rest of this year, partly into next year, which would. You know, if we have to reprice at that time, we would. So margin management, feeling quite comfortable, and-
I think you called it effective margin management, didn't we, Martin?
We'll let others judge that, Graeme, but, you know, we're very comfortable with what we've done. Moving on to freight. So just to remind everyone, we have a container contract in place that runs through to June 2025. The cost of that has been, you know, taken into our pricing as well. We've got a high percentage of containers coming through on the contracted rates. You're starting to see spot rates move up because of what's happening in the Suez Canal and Red Sea. People might say, "Help me understand that. I'm a financial person. How can that impact you?" Just to remind everyone, every ship that doesn't come through the Suez Canal from Europe to Asia adds two weeks there and two weeks back.
So that's one twelfth of the capacity of that line or that corridor that effectively comes out in terms of annual throughput and one twelfth less container availability as well. So it's starting to see impacts there. At this point, that's not encouraging for us to renew our or start to negotiate our contracts. We'll pick that up as we get a bit closer to June. So if there's a significant step change there, it won't come through to FY 2025. And if there is a significant step change, it's gonna be pervasive across the economy just because of our import reliance, and home brands proportionately impacted higher than us.
So I don't wish to sound smug or arrogant, but if we have to respond to that through pricing, well, I think we've got the scope to address that in FY 25 at the appropriate juncture. Our major concern on this point, Russell, at the moment, is that if you take that 1/12 of shipping and container capacity out of Europe to Asia, what does that mean in terms of global capacity? What does that mean in terms of shipping reliability? Do we get more - do we start to see the rate of canceled sailings sneak up? And therefore, do we need to assume, on average, a longer lead time to procure and import?.
goods, and therefore, do we have to effectively increase our cash commitment between, you know, order and purchase an d, you know, purchase to the point of being able to sell it, which is effectively seeing inventory sneak up? So we're cognizant of that risk. It's not at this point become overly evident. And I think the other thing we see around shipping to just complete that, round it out a little bit more, is containers are remaining tight globally. So you're seeing some ships come down to Australia just to empty, to load up and empty the containers and take them elsewhere. So, it's, and that's why Graeme said, you know, it's many things are gonna continue to remain volatile.
So just for clarity, can you give us, you know, the back end of 2Q and then the front end of 3Q, what sort of weighted average price you put through? 'Cause you've got a lot of moving parts around, you know, freight and FX. What sort of weighted average price you put through to maintain the margin?
By and large, 3%.
Okay. Great, thanks, sir.
Russell, obviously, at that profile of pricing changes from customer to customer and business to business. So it's probably 3%, 3.2%, 3.3%, something like that, so.
Sure. Sure. It's not a high single digit. You only needed 3% to maintain the margin. That's, that's, that was the question.
Yes, mm-hmm.
Great. Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from Tim Piper with UBS. Please go ahead.
Morning. Morning, Graeme and Martin. Just to follow up on APG, sorry to keep harping on New Zealand, but just looking at the volume decline, and we've seen a lot of operating leverage. Maybe can you tell us, does it make positive EBITDA through the half?
We're essentially almost breakeven in that sort of space. I don't have that number specific to hand, but that's the sort of area it would be. You know, when you're down so dramatically, and it increased actually as the half went through, and as Martin said, we held the complete workforce, right? 'Cause we know it's just a temporary phenomenon, so we're not gonna find ourselves like others, where they've actually made people redundant, and then they can't actually come back from the lull. So yeah, that sort of space it was in terms of its financial impact to us. And you know, we're still holding that, by the way.
We're still holding that workforce, and, you know, as I said, January, while was a very big sales month, we've yet to see the actual throughput come in at a new level into the country, where we actually get the activation of the factory.
We also do make some partially make some tow bars for New Zealand out of Thailand, so you get a little less recovery there. Some particular brands in New Zealand source their tow bars from our Australian operation. So a little bit of sort of cross-buy across Australia and Thailand as well.
That's helpful, thanks. And just a follow-up, if we're looking at sort of vehicle volumes over there in New Zealand, would there sort of be a typical sort of lag between volumes and revenue timing differential as the APG business in Australia?
Not quite as pronounced in terms of the configuration, meaning that, you know, you think about Australia, there's a good volume of those vehicles being sold in Australia on that, on day one registration. Some of that has obviously come from our Thai plant, because they're a factory fit. NZ's a little bit different. We still have more exposure domestically to that operation, but as Martin said, there is some tie, and there's a little bit of Australian manufacturing that's supporting the NZ operation. So it's a very hard question to answer. Probably a little bit more immediate in terms of revenue recognition, than say, some of the Australian registrations, depending on the brand.
You know, we, we do expect a lag because dealers have been sitting on stock, because no one wanted to pay an additional NZD 9,000-NZD 10,000 to register them. So the vehicles have already been, that you see registered in New Zealand in January, have gone through the pre-delivery last year, and including the installation of accessories and so on. So we will see a bit of, a bit more lag than we normally would do, because those vehicles have been in country for some time.
Got it, thanks. And just your outlook commentary of APG, EBITDA being slightly lower in the second half than the first half. When you look at that slightly lower figure, I mean, how material can Toyota be in the second half, and what kind of assumptions have you made around Toyota volumes coming through?
Well, the assumptions are frankly hard to get to on the basis that they're not actually in a position clearly yet to decide when their production halts might finish. They're working through at an OEM level, how they're handling some of their diesel powertrains out of Japan, then obviously into some of their Thai plants and other plants around the world. So I can't answer that on behalf of one of our bigger customers. We are seeing in the January period, in some of the forward orders, that there is significantly lower volume from that particular customer. And so we just reacted to that. What we don't know is we don't know the shape of that in the you know, the latter part of the half.
We generally have 2 months-3 months, depending on the customer, so in this case it might be 2 months worth of future view. That might develop differently than what we thought. It's just too hard to make that assumption at this point. What we do know, standing here today, is on the back of January and what we see in forward orders, that's why we're saying on the back of Toyota, we'll see slightly lower. Toyota are important to us. They're a great customer, first and foremost, but they are important to us because they're a high volume customer. They don't necessarily have, as you know, the share of functional accessories, so other customers such as Ford will obviously be more meaningful to us in terms of its share of wallet.
But no, by far, a very important customer. If you think about Hilux, Hilux is one of the best-selling vehicles in the country.
Thanks. That's helpful. I just want on the CES acquisition, customer crossover or lack of customer crossover between that and the caravanning businesses, et cetera, you have within APG. Maybe can you just outline a couple of the key, either customer cross-sell or new customer acquisitions you could get for the APG and maybe Cruisemaster business from the CES acquisition?
Well, it's kind of a two-stepper here. Tim, it's a good question, by the way. You kind of get the customer acquisition for BWI. So meaning that, you know, we're gonna double, as we say in the slide, we double BWI's RV customers in one fell swoop. So that tells you straight away access to people we're not getting. And, you know, BWI and the team, you know, St. George and Cable, the team there, they've taken the RV caravan channel at BWI from low single digits to multi-tens of millions in terms of the channel revenue, and this just opens it up just again. And also, at the same time, it's a business that doesn't actually take some of our own products, meaning CES.
So there's a lot of interest in terms of how we get that first stage of customer acquisition and crossover. And then secondarily, I'm quite pleased, because whilst we're working with, you know, separate divisions in terms of we have a four-wheel drive activity, and over here we have, you know, auto electric power management lighting activity, there are cross-divisional opportunities. So as an example, we are working, and actually have won recently, light bars, integrated light bars on functional accessories that APG has won with the OEM. And we've been able to actually win the light bar within the, the functional accessory. What I'm talking about there is nudge bars and forward lighting.
So if I take it back to your original question, Tim, we've got quite a number of caravan customers at APG, but it's off a low base. We're a supplier to some of the bigger ones. There's about 130 customers that we're slowly working, and I mentioned, I think in the last result, that we've actually put some BDM resource on ground in North Melbourne to start capturing some of those customers, 'cause we're now freeing up the capacity for the modular chassis, in addition to all what we do with Cruisemaster, which is obviously independent suspensions. So you could imagine that a modular chassis that actually came pre-wired, as an example, which is what CES do, could be of very interest to caravan manufacturers.
It might be that sort of space that you start to see us step into, but that's not the immediate first prize. First prize is actually the BWI new customer acquisition, and taking what our power management position in this market, which is really strong, and making it stronger again by accessing another doubling of customers that are new to us.
That's great. Thanks. Sorry, might I just squeeze one more really quick? In Vision X, sitting within that acquired auto segment, obviously a pretty decent chunk and, an exciting global growth opportunity. Can you maybe give a sense of revenue growth rate in Vision X at the moment? And the second question, obviously, there's been some reinvestment there, so how much of that margin dilution within the acquired auto part has been on the reinvestment side of Vision X, specifically?
So firstly, from a revenue point of view, they. ECB and VX grew in the acquired group. I'm talking top line now. Their top-line growth slowed a little bit, but that was more about timing than anything else in terms of customer orders. You might remember that, there's a good portion of their business that's very discreet in terms of customer solutions, and so their ordering patterns sometimes can move us around, so it can be a bit choppy in that regard. But, you know, we're seeing great strength in terms of mining. And as Vision X in Europe starts to spurt, 'cause they were actually a little bit slow because of some of the challenges in Europe over time, we're starting to see orders pull through there as well. So I feel confident in terms of the revenue there.
In terms of the reinvestment, I don't have a number in mind, Tim. I have quantity of FTEs and things like that, that sit in the back of my mind, and OpEx costs in terms of exhibition and stuff like that. So we've increased the workforce that are revenue generating, ultimately in time, by, you know, five, six individuals. And on top of that, we're reinvesting in some of the shows we're going to, because we have to actually get out there and demonstrate the product complementation opportunity, on the way through. So I'm not talking obviously CapEx there, because that's a different conversation, and we've upped that ante, by the way, and that's why we're seeing Omen light bars being launched at the International Fire Show.
So it's hard to give you a specific, you know, basis point number in terms of the reinvestment, but it's relatively material. It's not around the edges.
Are there any sort of small businesses in there that would be considered for divestment still?
No. No, we. If you think about the. You might have heard me talk about two thematics this financial year. One's managing the macro, and one's driving the auto pure play. If I go back last year, the two thematics were managing macro and delivering our portfolio vision, meaning that we wanted to get our portfolio in the shape that we felt was strategically sound and also aligned to where we see our future. Part of that was becoming an automotive pure play. We sold Davey. Part of that was exiting CSM. So what we've got left now is what we want, and now our job, with a high degree of confidence, is to start grow those businesses. Some of those have been hampered in manufacturing in terms of capacity or issues of labor.
Some of those are around product investment, some of that's about geography. So long answer to your question, what we have as it stands today, all represent opportunities for us for growth.
Understood. Thanks for taking questions.
Thanks, Tim.
The next question comes from Sam Teeger with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, Graeme. Hi, Martin. Thanks for the presentation. First question, given the APG outlook might imply it may take a little bit longer than expected for earnings to return to the business case, just keen to understand how that impacts your thinking around the right time to make transformative acquisitions, especially now, given your balance sheet is in pretty good shape.
Look, I mean, the situation with maybe a slightly lower H2 is related directly to replenishment orders, right? So that's not a drag on an investment case per se, if you think about it at a high level. We just need to react to some lower orders because of another issue sitting with one of our very customers. That'll just push it, maybe a little bit out, and maybe it starts to come back in a normal replenishment order cycle in the back half. But it really depends. It's very hard to predict at the moment. I'm not worried about that, and I'm certainly not deterred around our investment case either, Sam, given just how much we're winning as well.
In terms of how that relates to, you know, future transformative, look, we have been clear around our need to demonstrate that we can deliver that. Even if it was at the run rate, if something came that was, you know, strategically compelling, made a lot of sense, and our shareholders were supportive, then, you know, that's something we would consider. Does that mean we're gonna wait till we print an $80 million number at the end of the financial year and miss a strategic opportunity? We'd debate that, but we wouldn't debate that unless we felt that the run rate was where it needed to be. That's probably the distinction there.
I just wanna add two things to that, Sam, it's Martin. Just two things to add. In terms of managerial bandwidth, APG, fully integrated, yes, we've got some short-term operational challenges. They don't need Graeme and I and our key lieutenants to roll up the sleeves. So we've got bandwidth for further acquisitions, whether they're bolt-on or transformative. And on your second point, you know, one of the great things about a roadshow is it gives us an opportunity to get some feedback from shareholders. So we're very much gonna listen to shareholders as we go around in the next week and get feedback from them of their point of view of whether they think, "Hey, guys, you know, you do- you've proved you do acquisitions well. We're comfortable with the balance sheet. Don't get head up about publishing a certain number or a certain run rate.
“Get on with it.” So we'll be very much listening to that feedback from our shareholders over the next week.
Excellent. That's clear. Do you mind please helping us understand, just when you say you're seeing a bit of a shift from service to major repairs, you know, just what you mean when you say major repairs, you know, what are you, you referring to? I guess, as that kind of shift plays out, you know, how should we expect that impacts sales and margins going forward?
Look, I mean, we just made that comment because that's some of the anecdotal feedback. I mean, a major repair, like a complete engine overhaul, as opposed to, you know, a normal service in terms of wear and tear. So, you know, and it's around, around the edges, Sam. So I'm not really sitting there, too concerned about that as it stands today. You might see, you know, some of our businesses, like maybe AA Gaskets, that perhaps in the past have been a recipient of, you know, an engine block replacement, so you've got gaskets and stuff like that. But really the nub of our businesses, as you know, are very much in that service and that wear and tear space, and as you know, heavily, non-discretionary.
So as I said in the outlook, I'm feeling very, very comfortable with the automotive businesses, and, and I wouldn't say anything different. So feeling positive.
Excellent. And then last question, just in terms of the geographic expansion for APG Supply that you mentioned on slide 17?
Yeah.
Just keen to explore this a little bit more. You know, how much of this is a function that Thailand is running at capacity, or how much is a function that you wanna move closer to the end consumer? And then as you're starting up in the new geography, you know, what impact would that likely have on margins and overhead recovery for the broader APG business? And do you have customer commitments in whatever region you you wanna go into, already, or is it more you build the plant and then, and then you try and get the customers?
So we have some customer commitments, but we have to be very sensitive around that. This, this is something that, right from the outset of the business, I've been very keen to investigate, and it's very straight bang in the middle of the wheelhouse around what we said around taking future international opportunities. That, that guttural term I mentioned earlier on around sweating the assets, we are engineering products for global programs, and often, Australia and New Zealand are often some of the first launch markets in, in terms of the plants. And therefore, we have a, a sequential advantage versus other competitors around the world because we've actually designed and engineered the product, and it's in situ before it's even in, in these other markets.
So to my mind, it's basically engineering, sweating those existing assets, in this case, engineering, and we're putting the plant in place in a different geography, where we already have secured a customer contract, and that will then become a springboard for actually replicating what we do in Thailand in another geography, where we have other major customers there that we may be able to capture some business. So, it's an exciting opportunity. I know we're being a bit cute and being a bit cryptic, but it is something that's quite important in terms of what, the way we see the business going forward. And then in terms of margins, the startup CapEx is not, it's not horrible. So that's obviously not a margin comment, but I just wanna get that out there.
In terms of the general margins, there should be no reason as the business kicks into gear, remembering the first part, that the margins shouldn't be in a similar sort of space. We just need to make sure that the productivity and the throughput is of a level we're satisfied. That first little period, obviously, it'll be a bit lower. That's understandable, but then I think we'll get more productivity there anyway. So all in all, quite compelling from a strategic point of view.
Yeah, it won't take any volume out of our Thai plant or Australian plant. This is incremental volume and therefore, no impacts on overhead recovery elsewhere globally.
Okay. And should we be thinking about it as you would be locating yourself in a lower cost developing country adjacent to a developed market?
Look, if we answer that, we, you know, as we said before, we're not in a position to talk about the customer. If we started to, you know, answer that, you're smart enough to probably get it down to two or three scenarios. So unfortunately, we're not gonna do that, but it's certainly not gonna be, you know, in a country with Australian type labor cost for direct staff. That much I would say.
Yeah, got it. No, that's fine. Thank you very much.
No problems. Thanks, Sam.
The next question comes from the webcast. Alex McLean asked: How material is the NZ market to the APG business under normal trading conditions?
Look, that obviously was a question asked a little bit earlier, and we haven't broken out in the past, the direct contribution that NZ provides, and we won't. But I can give you some sort of context. You know, if you looked into our accounts in the past, you could see that, you know, the NZ revenue in an automotive context was generally between 7% and 11%, 7% and 12%. That's an automotive context. The New Zealand contribution for APG probably lives in those bounds of its contribution. But obviously, when a plant. So that's at the top line.
If you think about the bottom line, though, if a plant's operating at deeply poor recovery, then you know that it's got an over-indexing situation as the recovery is pushed through, or don't push through, so to speak. And so that 7%-12%, obviously, will be amplified at a revenue level down to the bottom line. So that's probably about as comfortable as I wanna get in terms of the direct contribution, but hopefully it gives you a sense of its impact.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Whickman for closing remarks.
Look, I'd like to thank you for the questions. I look forward to the roadshow and sharing in more detail some of the good results from the first half, particularly some of the strengthening fundamentals and also some of those wins we've spoken about, because this all augurs very well for the business going forward. I'm really satisfied at our efforts in terms of margin management, some of the growth in the core automotive, the way we've been able to respond to so many of the macro challenges, and yet we still keep our heads above water in terms of, you know, managing the business effectively, and at the same time, not diverting away from, you know, our strategic initiatives and strategic imperatives. You can see evidence of that in some of our acquisitions.
We spoke about acquisitions. You know, clearly, we'll be deliberate and we'll be very cautious around our acquisitions. Bolt-ons are definitely on the table. And we will deliberate about anything transformative because we need to make sure we honor our commitments in a way that we feel that we walk away with credibility. At the same time, the product development activity yields results, and we're seeing benefits in terms of some of those new customers through product development. So, you know, I'm very satisfied with the way the first half has gone. Yes, we have movements up and down, which we have to sort of bolster against, but fundamentally, the business is in good shape, and fundamentally, the business is pointed in the right direction.
Fundamentally, I see all but upside as we go forward. So with that, thank you for taking the time to listen, and we'll chat with you on the way through in the next week or so. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.