Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ARB Corporation 2025 full-year financial results presentation. My name is Lachlan McCann, Chief Executive Officer at ARB, and joining me today is Damon Page, ARB's Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary. Today, Damon will take you through a financial update of the full-year results, and I will present an update on ARB's domestic and international sales and general business operations. Some housekeeping before we commence. During the presentation, questions can be made through the chat box. At the lower right-hand corner of your screen, you'll see a blue circle with a hand icon. By clicking on this, it will open a chat box for you to enter your questions, and at the conclusion of the presentation, Damon and I will answer as many questions as possible.
Now, before I hand over to Damon, this year we're proudly celebrating our 50th year anniversary. Humility and respect are values that are highly regarded at ARB, so this celebration is less about us beating our chests, but more an opportunity for us to say thank you. Thanks to our employees. Thank you to our valued customers. Thanks to our suppliers, and of course, thanks to our shareholders. Later in this presentation, I'll talk you through some of the initiatives we've undertaken to thank those who've supported ARB to build this great company. For now, I'll play a short video reel representing the 50-year journey at ARB.
Now, would you believe we've had a slight technical hitch this morning, so we're conscious that you can't hear the audio that goes with those videos, but we'll find a way to make those public so people can listen into them as well as see them. The ARB adventure, as most of you will know, started in the Brown family garage in Ringwood. In 1987, ARB listed on the second board of the ASX and is one of only a few companies from the second board or emerging companies listing that remains listed on the ASX today. From there, there is a story of expansion in product and distribution, and one that has been largely organic. From the 1991 establishment of Air Locker Inc.
in Seattle, U.S.A., to our manufacturing expansion in Thailand in 2005, and the progressive build of the Australian retail business and brand throughout all of these years. It's a history we're very proud of. As a leadership team, we're more excited about how we'll contribute and grow over the next 50 years. With an ever-growing portfolio of products and strategic planning of our newly acquired retail stores and emerging customers in the U.S.A. and beyond, we're excited with what the next 50 years holds. With that, I'll hand over to Damon to run you through the financial section of the presentation.
Thank you, Lachlan, and good morning and a warm welcome to everybody on the call as we present ARB's financial results this morning for the financial year ended 30 June 2025. Now, just to note that we have lodged all of our year-end documents with the Australian Securities Exchange earlier this morning, along with a copy of the presentation that we will talk through during this broadcast. All of the documents, including the annual report, the chairman's letter to shareholders, and the two dividend notifications for both a special dividend of AUD 0.50 per share, fully franked and fully funded from existing cash reserves, and the FY 2025 final dividend of AUD 0.35 per share, fully franked, can be downloaded from the ASX website. Commencing with sales revenue, to the left of slide seven, ARB achieved sales revenue of AUD 729.9 million for the financial year ended 30 June 2025.
This represents an increase of 5.3% or AUD 36.7 million compared with last year's sales revenue of AUD 693.2 million. This growth was achieved in a challenging environment, which I'll talk to further in the next slide. Export sales were the highlight of the result, with double-digit sales percentage growth achieved in each of the three export geographical regions. However, sales revenue was flat in both the Australian aftermarket and original equipment channels, with lower new vehicle sales in Australia and constrained consumer spending. The company's compound average growth rate achieved over the last 10 years is 8.3%. In the middle of the slide, the company's profit before tax declined 4.6% to AUD 134.9 million. This is a decrease of AUD 6.5 million compared with last year's profit before tax of AUD 141.4 million.
Profit before tax, excluding one-off adjustments which related to capital gains on property sales, transaction costs related to acquisitions, and in the prior year, the final settlement of the Truckman contingent acquisition consideration declined 7%. The decline in profits was a result of lower gross margins due to the weaker Australian dollar against the Thai baht, the introduction of U.S. import tariffs, initial equity-accounted losses of associates, and increased investments in people, marketing, and distribution for future growth. The compound average growth in profit before tax over the past 10 years is 8.4%, in line with the sales revenue compound average growth rate. Profit before tax as a percentage of revenue was 18.5%, a decline from 20.4% last year, but slightly ahead of 18.2% achieved two years ago in FY 2023.
Across on the right-hand side of the slide, the company achieved profit after tax of AUD 97.5 million, which compares with AUD 102.7 million last year. The decline of reported profit after tax of 5% and the profit after tax, excluding one-off adjustments of 7.6%, is broadly in line with the decline in profit before taxes just described. The effective tax rate increased to 27.7% from 27.4% in FY 2024. Earnings per share of [AUD 179.7] declined by 5.7%. Slide eight presents the sales performance of ARB Corporation Limited's three sales channels, being sales into the Australian aftermarket, export sales, and sales to the original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. Sales into the Australian aftermarket declined 0.2% or AUD 0.8 million to AUD 403.3 million. Australian aftermarket sales were impacted by lower new vehicle sales, which is a key driver of ARB Corporation Limited's sales to this category, and inflationary pressures which constrained consumer spending.
However, we believe ARB 's steady Australian aftermarket sales was a solid result, given new vehicle sales of key models, including the Toyota Hilux 4x4, the Ford Ranger, and the Isuzu D-Max, were each down 17% for the financial year. The highlight of this financial year is the company's export business. Its sales grew 16.4% to AUD 267 million in FY 2025, with gains recorded across all three export geographical regions. Export sales represented 36.6% of FY 2025's total group sales, up from 33.1% in FY 2024. Specifically, growth in the United States represents the successful implementation of a number of new initiatives which the board is confident would deliver long-term brand and sales growth.
These initiatives include the company's increased investment in its associate, ORW, which provides ARB Corporation Limited with access to all of the ORW and 4 Wheel Parts branded retail store network, the launch of a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site, and the expanding partnership with Toyota USA, including ARB-branded content fitted X-Factory onto the new Halo platform to TrailHunter. ARB 's international sales offices in New Zealand, Europe, Thailand, and the Middle East posted strong revenue growth in FY 2025, while the U.K. result was flat to the prior year, mainly due to pickup vehicle registrations being down 6%. To the right of the graph, to the slide there, sales revenue to OEs of AUD 59.7 million for the financial year ended 30 June 2025 was flat, following sales growth of 40.5% in FY 2024. Contracts for new model vehicles buffered the decline in new vehicle sales.
Spoken to earlier, noting that sales into the OE channel can be volatile depending on the timing of multi-year contracts. Sales to OEs now represent 80.2%. That's 8.2% of the total sales compared with 8.6% last year. Slide nine provides an overview of the company's profit and loss statement, including year-on-year movements against last year and expenditures shown as a percentage of sales in each year. Having spoken to sales already, I'll now focus on the expense line items, which have increased at a faster rate than the sales revenue growth as ARB continues to invest for future long-term growth, and noting that each of the expense line items consolidates costs associated with the three businesses ARB acquired during the year, which are now fully integrated into the company's systems and processes.
Investments include market salary and wage adjustments in vital areas, additional key resources in engineering, aftermarket, future e-commerce business, and in the U.S., and digital promotion of the ARB brand in key markets domestically and internationally. ARB continues to develop new products, increase its distribution partners and sales channels, and expand its store network. Specifically, materials and consumables used reflect margin pressure from the weaker Australian dollar, which now sits stubbornly at historical lows against the Thai baht, resulting in materials and consumables used increasing from 42.8% of sales in FY 2024 to 43.3% in FY 2025. Management decided to lift sales prices only once during the financial year to offset the margin impact of the Thai baht after a number of price increases taken in FY 2023 and FY 2024.
We note, though, that the company has already taken another price increase in the first half of FY 2026. Employee expenses increased 10.4% for the year. This reflects the 18.1% increase reported in the first half of financial year 2025 and a 3.1% increase in employee expenses in the second half of financial year 2025. The increase reflects market adjustments to retain key roles, including fitting technicians, the introduction of a long-term incentive plan, and the addition of strategic roles in the U.S., the Australian aftermarket, businesses acquired, and the development of the Australian e-commerce platform. Depreciation increased AUD 4.1 million or 14.3%, reflecting the capital expenditure program in recent years and the impact of lease accounting, recognizing depreciation on the right of use assets. Advertising expense increased AUD 2.9 million or 34% as the company increased its digital advertising presence in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K.
markets to drive brand promotion and e-commerce presence. Occupancy costs increased AUD 1.8 million or 10%, with a larger warehouse leased in Texas to facilitate the U.S. Toyota contracts, new sites including the sites of the three businesses acquired during the year, and an increase in power costs around the world. Equity-accounted share of losses relates to ARB shareholdings in ORW and Nacho Lights. At the time of ORW's acquisition of the 4 Wheel Parts business, it was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and making significant losses. ORW and ARB moved quickly to restructure the business and improve performance. The 11 original ORW stores and the acquired 42 4 Wheel Parts stores have now been rationalized to 48 stores, with three stores closed due to proximity and two stores closed due to performance.
Management and the board are very pleased with early progress, and the performance of the combined ORW 4 Wheel Parts business to date is well ahead of expectations and the original business plan. ORW importantly achieved small operating profits in five of the last six months of FY 2025, and the business is generating cash again, well ahead of the original business plan. Nacho Lights continues to grow and develop its product range as a startup company. Other expenses increased 7.8%, driven by IT costs related to security, licenses, and protection software, and also due to compliance costs, including the preparation for next year's disclosures around the sustainability. We've called out at the bottom of the slide there two non-operating transactions realized this year.
The reported profit before tax includes AUD 3.6 million of realized profits on the sale of two retail sites and AUD 1.3 million of acquisition-related costs, including ARB's equity-accounted share of ORW's acquisition costs to acquire 4 Wheel Parts. Overall, the company reported profit before tax of AUD 134.9 million, declined 4.6% compared with the reported profit before tax of AUD 141.4 million. On to slide 10, we see that inventory levels increased 3.9%, slightly below the sales growth of 5.3%. Management made a concerted effort to reduce inventory levels during the second half of FY 2025 after inventories had increased AUD 38 million or 15.8% during the first half of FY 2025. We note, though, that the increase in inventory includes the impact of the weaker Australian dollar and the acquisition of three businesses, being ARB Toowoomba, MITS Alloy , and a stockist in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Cash flow from operations broadly equaled profit after tax plus depreciation, with working capital increasing only marginally from last year. Cash flow from operations generated AUD 128 million cash for the full financial year. The company spent this cash in a number of ways, including investing AUD 46.2 million in property, plant, and equipment, of which AUD 23.3 million was spent on property and AUD 22.9 million was spent on plant and equipment. The company paid AUD 23.5 million in fully franked dividends during the year. This cash payment related to FY 2025's interim dividend paid in April 2025, noting that the company underwrote the FY 2024 final dividend, which was paid in October 2024. The company has also announced a special fully franked dividend of AUD 0.50 per share. This special dividend will be fully funded out of existing cash reserves and paid in the first half of September.
The company has also announced a final fully franked dividend of AUD 0.35 per share, which will be paid in October, and this takes the total dividends for FY 2025 to AUD 1.19 per share, which is up 72.5% on last year. The company invested a further AUD 25.6 million in its long-term strategic investments in the U.S. The investments facilitated ORW's acquisition of the 4 Wheel Parts business, including its retail store network and e-commerce site, and ARB also injected further funding into Nacho Lights, along with other shareholders of that company. At the end of the financial year, the company held AUD 69.2 million in cash and had no debt. I appreciate your attention on the call this morning and hand the time back to Lachlan.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Damon. What you're seeing on screen here is just a quick video as to where some of our investments have gone. This is our Kilsyth redevelopment. On screen is our new head office complex, which was completed at the commencement of this year. We entered this site in 1999, and we'd been in quite an antiquated site for quite a period of time. The board had agreed to upgrade the site, which includes everything you can see on the screen. In addition to the upgraded head office, we also have a new retail store, which I'll speak to through the course of my presentation. Lastly, down the back is an upgrade to our engineering facilities, also on site.
We also, whilst not in the presentation, took the time to upgrade the facilities of the manufacturing operation for our manufacturing employees, shown here on screen as well. Okay, let's start with a look at the Australian vehicle sales and those core to ARB's business. This was an irregular year with a number of newcomers to the Australian 4x4 pickup car park, as well as a slowing of a couple of key models. In aggregate, ARB's A-class models declined material from FY 2025 with sales of the top three pickup vehicles, the Ford Ranger, the Toyota Hilux, and the D-Max 4x4, as Damon mentioned, declining by 17% each. Whereas in FY 2024, these models grew by 35%, 15%, and 32% respectively.
Additionally, the ` 70 Series declined by 12%, and the King of the Road, the 300 Series Land Cruiser, declined by 27%, which is more likely related to supply than demand with a model upgrade during the middle of the year. There are a couple of standouts in the 4x4 SUV class, where the Ford Everest had another strong year with 33% growth, following 88% growth in the prior year. After an anemic year with a constricting model change, the Land Cruiser Prado bounced back with 28% growth. Not represented in this graph are the newly entered BYD Shark and Kia Tasman. The jury is still out whether the buyers of these new models will invest in accessory upgrades, but despite this, the ARB BYD product lineup is available to order, and the Kia Tasman is proudly being worked on at the moment in our engineering center.
Looking forward, ARB is very excited for the imminent release of the Ford Super Duty, which is due to arrive in the coming months. We believe this is going to be a prolific model both through fleet and retail channels, and additionally, we're expecting an update to the new Toyota Hilux in the new financial year. Moving on to the domestic and international sales, ARB's aftermarket business in Australia is comprised of sales through corporately owned stores, independent ARB stores, stockists, and various forms of wholesale resellers, and new vehicle dealerships and fleet. Also included in these numbers are ARB subsidiary businesses, GoActive Outdoors, representing Tour of Sweden, Kingsley Enterprises, SmartBar in South Australia, and the newly introduced MITS Alloy business in Newcastle, New South Wales. As reported by Damon Page, the Australian aftermarket business was flat to prior financial year.
Given the material reduction in A-class vehicles, we believe this is a strong result and one where we have grown market share in key models. Impacting the result, however, was the decline to a subsidiary business, which in aggregate negatively impacted the overall result. The flagship store development program remains a strategic focus. In the 2025 financial year, we saw the introduction of five all-new flagship sites in addition to four store upgrades. This exceeds our previously reported growth target for new stores. To help reconcile the store numbers, we did sell a very small branch operation in Burnie, Tasmania, in the 2025 financial year. It is important to note, though, that where we do upgrade a store, not put in an all-new store, but upgrade a store, we typically add fitting capacity.
On average, across those upgraded sites, we had an average of three additional fitting bays per store, which increases capacity depending on access to fitters and obviously demand. As the Australian aftermarket business now represents 55.2% of group revenue. Despite its historically strong performance, the Kilsyth head office showroom wasn't our proudest example of a retail representation. Along with the site development we just presented, we have an all-new 475 square meter flagship showroom in the head office. Now on site is the most contemporary version of an ARB retail representation for our enthusiasts and trade customers. Additionally, this site also gives a much better representation of product and brand journey to the corporate customers that visit ARB's head office.
Critically, Kilsyth also provides an opportunity for our marketing and visual merchandising teams to explore new and different ways to showcase ARB product and the brand, obviously for our layout for further stores where we see appropriate. A big call out to Ben and Clayton, formerly of Make Tracks 4x4, long-term stockist who built a stunning flagship ARB showroom in Rockingham, WA. Welcome to the family, guys, and to our long-term store owners, the Black family in Newcastle, and to Nick Manell in Penrith, New South Wales. Thank you for your efforts in upgrading your stores. They look absolutely stunning. Now on to the national sales and fitting performance. The 2025 financial year national sales yielded mixed results. Excluding subsidiary businesses, yes, we achieved, excluding subsidiary businesses, we achieved low single-digit growth.
The ARB corporate retail business performed well, offset by the clients in our wholesale business through independent ARB stores and stockists, who both grew in confidence in ARB inventory during the year, but also took a more conservative position on their stock management and watched their cash. The dealer channel naturally declined with lower new vehicle sales. However, the ARB fleet business continued the trend over recent years with strong growth. The significant effort to improve engagement and performance in ARB's workshops is an ongoing effort. The total number of fitter employees in the period actually declined, which did impact sales performance. In aggregate, however, turnover reduced and retention improved. Initiatives in all aspects of employment and retention of our fitters continue. However, the most consistent and reliable addition to the team have been our employees on skilled migration visas.
We have 12 new team members now actively working in ARB stores, 10 new employees imminent for arrival, and a further 12 employees during the next 8 to 12 months. Customer satisfaction at ARB store is a critical aspect of the business's success; it directly impacts customer retention, loyalty, and overall profitability. NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a commonly used means to measure customer satisfaction. The ARB corporate stores are now measuring NPS, and in the last 12 months, we've had 8,000 customer responses from specific transactions, reflecting a 24% response rate. Pleasingly, ARB's NPS score is 68, which by industry standards is excellent, representing high levels of customer satisfaction. With that, however, we have individual stores rank much higher than 68, and stores obviously rank lower, which will remain our focus.
The Ford Licensed Accessory Program is where ARB has partnered with Ford Australia and Ford globally to deliver in excess of 180 ARB branded accessory products for the Ford Ranger and Everest platforms available through Ford dealerships with a full five-year warranty. On a dollars-per-vehicle basis, the FLA program grew in the 2025 financial year. However, on a total revenue basis, the FLA sales declined as a result of the 17% reduction in Ford Ranger sales. All aspects of dealership ordering systems, dealership merchandising, and new product additions are being actively worked on and enhanced through the program. Both Ford and ARB are excited about growth in FY 2026, with the addition of the plug-in hybrid Ranger, as well as the previously mentioned Super Duty, which, if I didn't make it clear before, we genuinely believe this customer sits in the bull's eye of the ARB demographic.
Ford and ARB are very happy with the program and continue to look at opportunities at both sides to enhance the program, not only in Australia, but offshore, especially in New Zealand and the Middle East. We are in the final stages of a five-year extension to the FLA program, which will see us out to 2030 and hopefully beyond. Now on to the export business. ARB's export business was clearly the highlight of the 2025 financial year and really demonstrates our diversity and revenue resilience. Asia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands recorded increases of revenues of 15.3%. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa performed well in challenging environments, growing at 12.4%, noting that the Truckman revenues were flat-ish with marginal growth the last year, despite a 6% decline in total pickup vehicle sales in the U.K. We're delighted with the U.S.
result, as reported by Damon, with North American and Latin American sales growing by 21.4%, which is a fantastic result, especially given the political and economic headwinds we all read about in the news daily. Export sales channels now represent 36.6% of group revenue. On to some specifics in markets outside the USA. The New Zealand aftermarket returned a great result, growing 22.5%. Important to note that this excludes sales from manufacturing business Proform Plastics, which its sales are made mainly into company. Our previously announced Hamilton flagship store development, the acquisition of Peter Munro Commercials in Christchurch, and our continued investment in the ARB brand in New Zealand is bearing fruit, which is great.
Turning to the Middle East, ARB is now in our third site expansion from the original 1,500 square meter DC to the newly built corporately owned 5,000 square meter site in the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai. Since 2016, when ARB first introduced our corporate office in Dubai, the business has gone from strength to strength. From a modest base, from DC sales, we grew 45% in the financial year, and we're confident for this to continue in the 2026 financial year. The thorn in the side at the moment is China, and China remains an incredibly exciting opportunity for ARB, with a range of current challenges that have caused consistent year-on-year revenue reductions for the business. We must arrest the slide of declining sales to the market and resume control of ARB's destiny. Despite our challenges, the brand remains very popular amongst the Chinese 4x4 community.
To arrest the slide, and with the support of Chinese-based tenured employees, ARB has established a wholly owned foreign enterprise, or a WOFE, in China to import, market, and distribute ARB products. This entity has only just been established and will only commercially mature in the second half of FY 2026. Now on to the U.S. business. While we've been laying the strategic foundation for growth in the U.S. for a number of years, the results hadn't necessarily materialized, but this year they did. We are delighted to see the excellent growth from the USA of 21.4% in FY 2025, especially given the current market dynamics. All channels perform well, which I'll speak to shortly. A brief mention to our Latin American business, which has again outperformed year after year. The e-commerce business had a full 12 months of trading and made strong contributions to the result.
We continue to tune the e-commerce business as it matures, and we learn how to digitally optimize specific product groups and regions. Recently, we added a program called Locally, which provides an opportunity for brick-and-mortar wholesale customers to fulfill ARB e-commerce orders, particularly where there is a requirement for the ARB product to be fitted. Our engineering center is now in full swing. The small team is connected with the Australian engineering team and are busy on range expansion to popular U.S. models, especially those built by Toyota. The team are also supporting the product validation from our impending Poison Spider release. Early days, but the localization strategy seems to be working with impressive sell-through of those parts, which the U.S. engineering team have helped expedite to market. Now I'll go through ORW and 4 Wheel Parts.
Off-Road Warehouse is a joint venture that originally 4 Wheel Parts accessory retail stores in California and acquired a further 42 stores in October 2024 across nine U.S. states for a total of 53 4 Wheel Parts business, as Damon mentioned, was acquired out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In the eight months of trading, ORW 4 Wheel Parts has successfully integrated over 500 employees to the business, transitioned an ERP system, closed a total of five stores, three of which were geographically close, and the other two stores underperforming. The business now has a total of 48 stores, which we've restructured, a loss-making e-commerce business back to profitability. As a result of all of this, the business has achieved small operating profits in five of the last six months, and as Damon mentioned, is significantly outperforming the original business case.
As of June 30, 2025, ORW has a positive cash balance of $7.7 million U.S. dollars and has repaid the ARB debt in full. This puts us in a great position for growth. A lot of work still needs to be done in the original business, as many organic opportunities still exist. However, we're off to a great start. A strong shout out to Greg Adler and the team on a job very well done so far. A lot of exciting times ahead. A lens now onto ARB products through the 4 Parts channels, and again, it's a good news story where ARB products have achieved excellent sales through this channel. ARB product exposure and education through both retail and e-commerce sites have significantly improved.
On a like-for-like store basis, ARB product sales through ORW 4 Parts are growing very well, in some months up to double the corresponding period. Store-in-store ARB displays as the first trials are now going to two stores. After a thorough review of the pilot program, ARB will roll out these displays in the remaining stores. It's a pleasure today to just share a quick reel for those who follow 4 Wheel Parts socials may have seen this, but this one's hot off the press. It is only 90% finished, but the first store in Gardena next to the new ORW 4 Parts head office is just finished a couple of days ago. I thought it would be worthy to share today. It's just a quick video of the store-in-store display in Gardena, LA.
On to ARB's OEM business, which recorded a record year in FY 2024 with sales revenue just shy of $60 million, representing a 44.5% increase. In FY 2025, revenues were flat to prior financial year and represent 8.2% of group revenue. This result and numbers exclude the business and sales to Toyota USA. Looking forward, sales to OEM customers are expected to decline in the first half of the new financial year, but expected to recover in the second half with a small increase in the full year, largely dependent on new vehicle sales in this time, which we have some visibility to from OEMs, but they are ultimately forecast from OEMs and can somewhat be unreliable. New contracts to Toyota USA will be announced in FY 2026, hopefully at the AGM. The wheels are now in motion on the Toyota TrailHunter, a defining partnership for ARB in the U.S.
market. This partnership represents Toyota's vision of future growth in the overlanding market and also their belief in ARB as an overlanding partner of choice. In late April last year, ARB commenced the supply in limited volumes of products of the Toyota Tacoma TrailHunter through a combination of inline, port-installed, and dealer-installed accessories. These accessories included ARB branded rear bumpers, recovery points, bed racks, sports bar, and aluminum suspension. More recently, Toyota has launched the 4Runner TrailHunter, which includes an ARB branded roof rack and aluminum suspension. Toyota has over 1,200 dealerships across the USA, and feedback from this group so far has been overwhelmingly positive. ARB hopes the success of the TrailHunter program will lead to further opportunities with Toyota USA. On to product and operations. As always, pictures and videos are an excellent means to present new products.
Unfortunately, we don't have the audio today, but we've queued up a brief reel for today's presentation to give you visibility to some of those products we've worked on in the last 12 months. Excellent. At the back end of that reel, you could see some of the video highlights from the 50th year trip. The engineering team have indeed been busy at both platform developments, such as the new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado and Toyota Tundra, BYD Shark, and most recently the Kia Tasman. Not only platform, but dedicated product evolution happened in the 2025 financial year, headlined by the release of the ARB Brushless Compressor. Already category leading in its brushed form, the ARB Brushless Compressor is a technological leap for this product that gives users much higher airflow from the same compressor footprint, speeding up times to inflate tires after a long day on the track.
In FY 2025, we also integrated MITS Alloy business to ARB and gave us a great back-of-view solution and access to Australia's best 4x4 retail distribution network. The integration put the handbrake on driving sales for a few months. We're very confident MITS will be a meaningful contributor to ARB's growth in 2026. Given the significant investment and brilliantly engaging marketing campaign launched by Kia on the Tasman, ARB decided to release early renders of our view on how this vehicle will look once modified. We were surprised by the engagement and the diverse feedback from the ARB community to the vehicle, which both demonstrates the connectivity of the ARB community and interest on how we evolve product. We can also get great strategic insights, not only for our own go-to-market and product strategy, but also provide some interesting insights for the OEMs, which they actually interestingly took up.
The final slide on our marketing content. In the earlier presentation, I mentioned the 50th year celebration as a way of thanking employees, customers, and suppliers. To do this in a manner that best represents the lifestyle of our products and the company, we prepared nine separate trips, both in Australia and internationally, that celebrate four-wheel driving and gave us a great opportunity to explore globally iconic four-wheel drive locations with customers, staff members, and suppliers alike. It was a quick video, but in the essence of time, I will skip through it and move straight onto the outlook. ARB's aftermarket business performed well in Q4 FY 2025, despite challenging market conditions. The order book and order intake remains healthy despite weaker sales of those models key to ARB. ARB's export business continues to trend positively.
Growth markets such as New Zealand, the Middle East, and Europe are performing well, which we expect to continue into FY 2026. The business is putting the structure in place to return to growth in China. The U.S. market outlook is very positive. The strategic foundation laid in prior years to grow ARB USA's business are now materializing and are sustainable. The ORW 4 Parts business is outperforming expectations and is anticipated to provide a stable growth platform for ARB product sales in FY 2026. Sales to OEMs are forecast to be down in the first half of FY 2026, but return to growth in the second half of FY 2026 for overall small growth in the financial year. We continue to work on the OEM pipeline on both new customers and new products for future growth.
At this year's AGM, updates will be provided on key initiatives, including the Australian e-commerce launch, new Toyota USA product, the Poison Spider relaunch, and the ORW 4 Parts growth strategy. In summary, the board believes the company is well positioned to achieve long-term success through expansion to the Australian and New Zealand aftermarket with new and upgraded retail stores and stockists, strategic partnerships with key OEM customers in Australia and the USA, the continued growth of ARB's export business, in particular through owned channels in the USA, a strong balance sheet with AUD 69.2 million of cash, a pipeline of new product developments and releases, and a well-balanced management team with a blend of long-term ARB experience and external executives.
Before finishing up, I'd like to take the time to thank the entire team at ARB for their efforts in the 2025 financial year, particularly the Senior Leadership Team, our State Management, and International Business Unit Managers. We remain very ambitious for continued growth, which comes with hard work, some laughs, and some great engagement. We have a very capable leadership team that our values leaders in the organization are motivated to contribute meaningfully to the next 50 years at ARB. That concludes today's presentation. We'll now move on to our Q&A session for questions raised through the chat box during the course of the presentation. I'm preparing the questions now, and I hope to hand it straight over to Damon to start answering the questions that have come through.
Yeah, thanks, Lachlan. I'll perhaps kick off and respond to the first few questions that have come through. I think I'll start with the questions revolving around the margins in the second half of 2025 in comparison to the first half of 2025, and then questions in relation to the margins as we move forward into FY 2026. The key driver on margins has been the weaker Australian dollar in the second half of FY 2025. When we started FY 2025 back in July, we saw the Australian dollar was sitting at about 24 Thai baht to the dollar. Through the course of the first half, the Australian dollar weakened down to 21, which is, you know, three on 24. It's, you know, over a 10% increase in the Australian dollar cost of our Thai baht factories where we produce a lot of our products.
We entered into the second half at about 21. The Thai baht sat stubbornly at around 21, dipping down to 20.5 at times through the second half, and it sat stubbornly at this historical low. Whilst it has dipped to 21 at different times over the last few years, it's only ever dipped there and not sat there, which it seems to have done over the last seven to eight months. That's the key reason for the declined margins in FY 2025 second half. As to where we see it going in 2026, ARB is currently unhedged in relation to Thai baht. Given the Thai baht sitting at the Australian dollar's at its weakest point against the Thai baht, we haven't gone in and locked in rates, expecting it to bounce or to come back from these lows.
We're currently unhedged and our margins continue to be impacted by the Thai baht Aussie dollar conversion. We expect the margins of FY 2025 second half to continue into the first half of FY 2026. In terms of how we can improve those margins, really the only lever, really the key lever we have is to take price increases, and ARB has just taken another 2.9% price increase in August, earlier this month. That will offset some of the deterioration in margin that we've experienced from the Thai baht. Our intel from FX advisors and from those that we deal with is that there's an expectation that the Australian dollar will strengthen against the Thai baht in coming months.
At this stage, I guess we won't speculate on that and we'll suggest that the second half margins will continue into the first half of FY 2026. There are questions around the employee expenses, which dropped from 25% in the first half to 23% in the second half. A lot of work's gone into managing the employee expenses in the second half of the financial year. We expect the second half ratio to sales to continue into the first half of FY 2026. We have had a number of headcount reductions, particularly in relation to factory staff, both direct and indirect, as we've worked to reduce our inventory levels, which of course has impacted on our factory manufacturing levels, resulting in lower overhead recoveries through the factories in the second half. We have sought to offset that by reducing headcount.
We expect employee expenses to continue at the same level as the second half of 2025 into the first half of 2026. The question as to whether we're currently hedged Thai baht to Aussie dollar, no. We're sitting at, as I mentioned earlier, we're sitting at the lowest, at historical lows. We haven't locked in and we don't expect them to fall lower, but we of course can't control that. A question then around the expected range of equity-accounted losses for FY 2026. We expect Nacho will continue to make relatively small losses through FY 2026 as it seeks to establish its product range and its position in the market. ORW, which includes the 4 Wheel Parts business, as mentioned earlier on the call, has made small profits in five of the six months between January and June.
We expect those small profits to continue through FY 2026 as we continue to consolidate the business and to drive the cost initiatives and the margin improvements and the sales levels that we've been trying to drive over the last 12 months. We expect our share of profits or losses from associates to be relatively marginal over the course of FY 2026. Lachlan, I'll hand back to you and I'll review a couple more of these.
Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Damon. There's a, surprisingly, there's a fair couple of fairly common themes, so I'll try to answer some of those common questions as best as possible. There was just a question that has been asked around the update to the sale out of ARB products through ORW 4 Parts. In the presentation, I had mentioned that we saw up to 100% uplift in sales in some months. Over and above, you guys are onto it. I'd obviously previously said a 25% increase, which I don't have on record, but it's well and truly north of there, which is fantastic. There was a question that actually came through just for clarification around the difference between ORW and 4 Parts sales. The entity that acquired 4 Wheel Parts was ORW, so you can consider those interchangeably.
On the facial of some of these businesses, the ORW sides actually still have ORW branding, but the corporate entity that owns 4 Parts ORW business is called Off-Road Warehouse. The results that we speak of in those presentations are interchangeable and common. They're not one set of results versus another. Clearly, a lot of questions and interests around tariffs. One of the benefits of having access to information on 4 Parts ORW business is that we can actually see what everybody else is doing. We took in the order, and it was depending on the commodity type, and it was obviously a blended rate, sort of around 7.5% to 8% price in the U.S. on ARB products through to market. We believe that is a well-positioned number reflective of our business, and something that would allow us to mitigate most of the change in tariffs.
On the product that we sell to Toyota North America, Toyota at this time are paying us back in full for the tariff impact, which is fantastic. In terms of the mix of tariffs, it's obviously complicated. We have a combination, depending on the country of origin, but a combination of the steel and aluminum tariff, the automotive tariff, and the reciprocal country tariffs, which is a bit of a moving feast. I think the best way to answer the questions that are coming through is that we believe that we've largely mitigated the tariffs.
The only tariff that at the moment we believe is stackable is from China, and we've done everything we can to resource and move whichever products we had being built in China outside of China, but conscious that the majority of the products flying into the North American business are either made in Thailand or made in our Australian factories, which really helps and gives us a, yeah, puts us in a good position. Now there's a lot of questions about the first period of trading in eight weeks, which I'm going to respectfully avoid. The question was, appreciate ORW is profitable in five out of the six months, but what 4 Parts? That question is answerable by saying that they are interchangeable. Consider ORW and 4 Parts one, and that consolidated entity was profitable in five out of the six months.
A great question on the Zenith Bar. Thank you to that question coming through. How's it been received? Are you finding it's an opening for a new customer segment that may be after something more aesthetic? We firmly believe that the user customer, which is most of the people driving outside metropolitan cities around Australia, actually needs the protection, and certainly the demand for our product reflects that. The Zenith Bar, we think, is a highly stylized bar that was originally designed for international markets, but we've adapted it here to Australia. I certainly wouldn't say that it's the majority of the customer base. The majority of our customers actually realize that they do need a full bar protection, but there is a demographic that takes that.
Sales have been very strong so far, great, but certainly the leading product in our lineup is the Summit Mark II bull bar. Another great question that's come through with respect to our dealer services business. There are a lot of exciting initiatives. One of the initiatives I haven't spoken about is our DSI business through 4 Wheel Parts ORW. DSI have around 15 to 16 dedicated employees that are in close proximity to the stores and what their job is to go to car dealerships in the U.S., present our product offering, both ARB and non-ARB products, and create work for the workshops within the 4 Parts ORW business. That business is going from strength to strength. There are a lot of vehicle upfitters in the USA that have a market. However, geographically, after they've upfitted the vehicle, they have to move them around.
One of the benefits of our ORW 4 Parts locations across the 48 sites is that we can do that work and be close to the dealership, so people aren't paying for vehicles to be shipped around. There's just one final question about what portion of the export business did sales to Toyota make up? Thankfully, due to our contractual relationship with Toyota, I don't have to answer that.
Yeah, Lachlan, maybe one for you here. Can you talk to which new vehicle models excite the team and whether the BYD Shark is something that should be tracked?
We will track it at some stage. We understand the volumes of vehicles. The jury's out, absolutely. It's an interesting, it's a very interesting model. The question that I've consistently spoken to is whether or not a customer who's buying a lower priced pickup vehicle is going to invest in accessories for their vehicle. We've had products for the BYD Shark available for a little while now. The initial take-up has been limited for the volume of vehicles out in the market. Certainly, from a car park driving around the road standpoint, you actually see a lot of unmodified BYD Sharks. Maybe that will change. Maybe that's the aftermarket picking up. We're hopefully not stupid enough to say that there's not a market there. I think it's a reflection of our movements to design and develop product for that vehicle.
Tell a story about, we see that there could or should be opportunity there. At the moment, it's a real watch and see. The build quality of the BYD Shark in some aspects is questionable for who want to use that vehicle for genuine off-roading, as is the payload. It's a watch at the moment. I think it's probably just a bit too early to tell.
Okay, Lachlan, I'll just take a couple of questions here, and then you can have a look at whether we close out. The question is whether the ORW repayment of debt to ARB required them to take a loan to repay the debt. The answer is no. ORW is cash positive, which includes the 4 Wheel Parts businesses Lachlan mentioned just a minute ago. ORW is generating cash. It's cash positive. It had AUD 7.7 million cash at the end of June 2025, and it has no external debt. There's a question around whether the number of fitters declining in Australia is a leading indicator of lower volumes or a function of the clearing of the order backlog. The answer is we can't get enough fitters. It's an industry-wide problem, not just an ARB problem. It's an industry-wide problem. We can't get enough of them.
There's not enough fitters to satisfy all of the demand across the industry. We're looking overseas, as are many other players in our market, to bring fitters into Australia to try and increase the supply of technicians in Australia. Our sales order intake levels are still at high levels, record levels really. There's a strong demand for fitters rather than it being an indication that volumes are dropping.
It's not a reflection of the demand. Certainly, if we had more fitters, we think we would have achieved a better result last year. It seems to be the piece of the puzzle that we can't quite get to drop in this market, but it's a constant focus for us. Excellent. To everybody on the call, thank you very much for taking the time to join us this morning. We hope the presentation was interesting, and no doubt there will be more questions coming through in the next 24-48 hours. Enjoy your morning, and if you have an opportunity, jump online, have a look at the 50th year celebration videos. We think they're fantastic. We recently dropped a video on South Africa, which is a real interest point. Again, have a great day, and thank you very much for joining today's presentation.