Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Autosports Group Limited 2023 FY Results. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key, followed by the 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Nick Pagent; CEO.
Thanks, Amy. Thank you, and good morning for dialing in this morning. Welcome to the Investor Presentation for the Financial Results of Autosports Group for the Full Financial Year in 2023. My name's Nick Pagent. I'm the CEO of Autosports Group, and joining me today on the call is Aaron Murray; CFO of Autosports Group. This morning, we'll start with a brief presentation on Autosports, covering our FY 23 financial highlights, our FY 23 strategic highlights, and our outlook for the financial year 2024. I'll summarize the FY 23 financial results before handing over to Aaron, who'll provide a deeper analysis of the Autosports Group financial year 2023 financial metrics, including our revenue drivers, operating leverage, margins, and cash flows.
I'll then give an update on Autosports Group's Growth Strategy, and following the presentation, we'll open up the call for any questions that you may have. As we move through the presentation launched this morning on the ASX and Autosports Group's own investor site, I will provide, where possible, the relevant slide number to the accompanying investor presentation. Starting with slide three, the financial highlights slide. I'm pleased to report that Autosports Group has delivered another record financial result as the group's growth strategy continues to drive balanced revenue growth, stable margins, and improved shareholder returns. In the financial year of 2023, revenues grew by 26% to AUD 2.371 billion. Gross profit grew 27% to AUD 475.6 million.
Our normalized net profit before tax grew 33% to AUD 115.7 million, and our EBITDA grew 30.7% to AUD 198 million. The statutory net profit before tax was up 22% to AUD 66.6 million, and the combination of our strong operating profits, enhanced cash flows, and good outlook has allowed Autosports Group to further improve its dividend to shareholders. The dividend has increased on, on PCP 19%, and we're declaring today a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.10 per share. I'll move to slide number four to look at our strategic highlights for the year. The consistent delivery of Autosports Group's growth strategy continues to pay dividends. We as we grow, our consistent focus has strengthened the business, broadened our platform, and enhanced our resilience.
FY 2023 was no different in this regard. Autosports Group continues to grow by our acquisition in a fragmented automotive market. We continue to pursue organic growth through our existing dealership network. Where possible, we strengthen our position by controlling crucial retail properties. We stick to our core business of delivering high cash conversion, strong capacity to reinvest in growth, and to deliver shareholder returns via dividends. In FY 2023, we delivered quality acquisitions. Two large-scale, strategically aligned acquisitions delivered immediately accreted growth for us. Auckland City BMW Group added up AUD 167 million in revenue from settlement in August 2022. Motorline and Gold Coast BMW contributed an extra AUD 105 million in revenue from its settlement in just February 2023. Organic growth was also strong.
Organic organic growth saw us grow $223 million in FY23 as vehicle supply started to normalize. It wasn't just vehicle supply. Autosports Group grew its revenues organically in every one of its revenue streams. Our organic growth prospects are also well set up for the future, with new vehicle order banks continuing to grow in FY23, not just in pure volume terms, but also in revenue terms, in gross profit terms, and also the security of our underlying contract terms. Our high margin service and parts divisions continued above-trend growth, growing at 20.6% on a like-for-like basis. FY23 also saw us add to our strategic property portfolio with the purchase of the important Fortitude Valley site in Brisbane for $98 million.
The total property portfolio now stands at AUD 194 million at a written down value, and shareholders will note that as a result of the timing of our settlement on June 16th, we took the prudent approach of incurring the stamp duty and acquisition costs associated with that Fortitude Valley property. All this growth is supported by strong operating cash flows of Autosports Group. The business generated AUD 166 million in operating cash. We spent this cash to grow and on improving our shareholders' returns. AUD 116 million was spent on dealership acquisitions, which, as we have seen, were immediately accretive and on track to deliver a AUD 400 million annualized revenue growth for the business.
Dividends were increased to 19%, and we closed with a healthy cash balance of AUD 42 million, which brings us to a summary of our outlook for 2024. Our revenue growth will come from the full year cycling of the FY 2023 acquisitions in Auckland and in Brisbane. Our improved new vehicle supply and deep order banks support organic growth prospects in the year. Service and parts are expected to continue to grow above trend in organic, in organic growth. We expect our margins to remain stable through the period, and Autosports Group is well-placed to continue its growth by well-priced and on-strategy dealership acquisitions. If we move now to slide seven, to have a look at the normalized financial results.
The first thing to note in the financial results is that it is well balanced between acquired growth and organic growth. New vehicle revenue was up 25.9%, well ahead of the market, with like-for-like growth, again, ahead of the market at 16.2%. Used vehicles were up 22%, with like-for-like growth at 8.5%. Service and parts were up 34.8%, with like-for-like growth, as I mentioned earlier, at 20.6%. Secondly, we held our margins. Gross profit grew 27.3%, and gross margins held at 20.1%, even though the mix drifted a little bit towards new cars with those high growth numbers in the second half of the year. We were hit by increased finance costs as interest rates rose.
Walk-in costs in the business rose by AUD 10.1 million on the prior corresponding period. We offset that by controlling our expenses, with expense rises coming predominantly in personnel-related costs, which were in line with the improvements in throughputs and gross profit generation. Thirdly, the combination of making gross margins and increasing throughputs more than offset the inflationary pressures and interest rate costs, and we were able to increase our margins at net profit before tax to 4.9%, and to increase our EBITDA margins to 8.4% as our operating leverage increased in the business. On slide eight, on a statutory basis, our net profit after tax grew at 22.1%.
Earnings per share grew at 22.6% and has a compound average growth rate of 16.2% growth in EPS since we listed in late 2016. Our dividend per share was up 19%, with our compound growth rate in dividend growth running at 27% since we listed in 2016. The normalizations in the accounts were related to our acquisitions, primarily the stamp duty on thetwo large acquisitions in Auckland and in Queensland. The property stamp duty impairment that I referred to earlier, and the reducing impact of acquisition amortization. I'd like now to pass over to Aaron, so that he can share some of the detail on our revenue growth, operating leverage, and cash flows. Aaron?
Thanks, Nick. Good morning to everybody joining us on the call. If you move to slide 10 and 11, I will talk you through our revenue drivers. Historically, ASG has achieved consistent revenue growth through a mix of organic and acquired revenue. In FY 2023, ASG achieved revenue growth of AUD 495 million on PCP, with AUD 223 million coming from organic growth and AUD 272 million coming from acquired revenue. The slow return of new vehicle supply has seen organic growth in new vehicles of AUD 184 million. This has also supported organic revenue growth in used vehicles through increased trade-in opportunities. The gradual return to business as usual after COVID saw motorists returning to work, and as a result, driving their vehicles on a more regular basis.
This supported organic revenue growth of AUD 51 million in our high-margin parts and service departments, up 20.6% like-for-like on PCP. Pleasingly, the significant increase in new vehicle revenue will continue to assist revenue flow through to the high-margin service and parts departments in the years to come, as our clients return to service their vehicles. ASG's FY 2024 revenue drivers will be supported by the strong underlying new vehicle order bank, cycling of Auckland City and Motorline BMW acquisitions. We move to Slide 12, unlocking improved operating leverage. ASG's gross margin continues to improve. Gross margin has been supported by historical and continued acquisitions of assets that presented high margin opportunities, increased revenue through high margin service and parts departments, and favorable new and used market conditions.
Margin has improved from FY 2019 of 16.3% to 20.1% in FY 2023. The depth and quality of our new vehicle order bank will prolong current margin conditions. Total operating expenses for FY 2023 are up AUD 278 million against a PCP of AUD 222 million. Acquired expenses make up AUD 26 million of this increase. Like-for-like operating expenses increased by AUD 29 million over PCP, with most of the increase coming from employee costs. Employee costs have been impacted by an increased headcount to deliver the increased revenue achieved. Higher commissions have been paid as a result of the increase in gross profit, and to a lesser extent, increase in minimum wages, Superannuation Guarantee, and inflationary pressures have also contributed to higher employee costs.
The changes we've seen to the Mercedes-Benz agency model results in both higher gross profit and operating expense margin percentage , has had a limited impact on our overall operating leverage. Historically, ASG has implemented disciplined expense reduction strategies through focused site rationalization, by property acquisitions, and dealership consolidation to reduce our occupancy costs. This discipline will continue across our recent acquisitions, and where possible, any additional property acquisitions that can be made. If you move to Slide 13, our margin overview. Historical EBITDA and PBT margins have been impacted by acquisitions that were running with higher OpEx margins than the wider groups. The OpEx improvements in acquired sites and the strategies implemented in improving our OpEx, has driven improvements in the group's EBITDA and PBT margins.
In FY 2023, EBITDA margin has improved to 8.4%. Despite rising interest rates and inflationary pressures, PBT margin has also improved to 4.9%. Margins have been impacted positively by favorable market conditions, particularly in the luxury area. Improved site utilization, improved property portfolio, lowering occupancy costs, and strong capital management, minimizing the impact of recent interest rate rises. As a result of ASG's strategy, we have seen an increase of EBITDA from AUD 86 million in FY 2019 to AUD 198 million in FY 2023, resulting in a combined annual growth rate of 23% over the period. If you move to Slide 14, I'll talk you through our cash flows.
ASG is a capital light business that generated strong operating cash of AUD 166 million, with a normalized cash conversion of 121%. The strength of the cash generation in the business allows ASG to follow its capital management plan by growing through focused dealership acquisitions, investing in facility improvements to capitalize on organic growth and strategic property investments, ultimately, strong shareholder returns. In FY 2023, ASG followed its investment plan and spent AUD 116.8 million acquiring on-strategy luxury dealerships in dominant locations. ASG has also acquired the Fortitude Valley property that houses our Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, and Maserati franchises in Brisbane, effectively removing the most expensive lease in our leased property portfolio. ASG continues to invest in dealership expansion and improvements to maximize productivity and customer experience, ultimately to support organic growth.
Lastly, ASG has declared a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.10 per share, bringing the full year dividend to a total of AUD 0.19 per share, which is up 19% on PCP. Moving forward, ASG investors can expect to see ASG apply the same capital management strategy. With that, I'll hand back to Nick.
Thanks, Aaron. Following that update on the capital strategy, I'd just like to take a few minutes on outlining Autosports Group's strategic advances as we look to continue to deliver high levels of scalable, repeatable growth, coupled with those shareholder returns that Aaron talked about. Autosports Group's strategic advantage is that we're a brand-focused business. We're targeted to high-margin brands with good future prospects and meaningful consolidation opportunities with multiple sites and high market share. That gives us an unrivaled position. We're dominant in the best markets. Our cost base and synergy advantages are clear and come through in our OpEx. Importantly, we have people, skills, and relationship advantages that come from being focused in one sector of the market and deep with the individual brands that we're with.
We're not just a sales organization, however, but all of our income streams have been improving. The front end of the business, the retail side of the business, improves in its sales and service side, but our service providers at the back. The more maintainable, higher gross service centers that we have, have been outgrowing the rest of the business, and will protect the business and make our margins more resilient as we move forward. The scope for, the scope for consolidation in our business is significant. We are currently just on 12% of the luxury market. The bigger the day, Autosports Group gets, the more scale drives faster consolidation opportunities, and indeed, faster consolidation capacity. We also have a proven track record that makes us attractive to the OEMs and to the vendors, quite simply because we deliver.
If I move to slide number 18, just to talk a little bit more about the luxury focus of our business. Autosports Group continues to be a luxury-focused business and a capital city-focused business. Why are we that? We're that because our customers are more resilient. We're that because there is a higher cost of sale, and with a higher cost of sale per car, there is an opportunity for higher gross margins per car. The luxury brands also have more price elasticity, so inflation doesn't hurt those brands as much as it hurts other brands. It's a tight market, and in a tight market, it means a couple of things. It's more difficult to disrupt the market, and also it's, it's capable of consolidation becoming meaningful in the share of each of the brands.
To give you a little market update on how the luxury market's going, luxury market continues to outperform the rest of the market over the last 12 months. It grew at 15%, and when I say grew at 15%, it's 15% growth, excluding the Tesla brand. If I include Tesla, luxury growth was 27% up. What that shows is the luxury brand, luxury brands are not being disrupted by new brands. Indeed, they are growing their share on an independent basis. As I said earlier, our order bank continues to grow here, and grows in volume, in revenue terms, profit terms, and importantly, it's more secure based on stronger contracts with higher deposits.
Our order rate continues to grow against the prior corresponding period, and as I said earlier, our production from the luxury OEMs is now normalized, although logistics and transport continues to be patchy. Another example on slide 19 of the Autosports Group strategy being fit for purpose is the development of the EV market. Quite simply, we don't need to pivot here, 'cause we're in the right place with the right brands and the right cost base to succeed. If I look across the scope of the market and look at the volume market, where cars are more price sensitive, there is fierce competition. There is a raft of new entrants entering the market, particularly in EV. There are uncertain outcomes here, uncertain volumes, and the winners are undecided. Our focus, the luxury brands, sees the traditional brands well-prepared. Brand-conscious buyers buying luxury and brand over price.
The high cost of sale in these brands preserves high gross margin opportunities. The service plan offerings within the luxury brands and authorized panel allows back-end revenue streams to be protected. An indication of how strong this is, is the extraordinarily strong percentage of our business with our business' order bank, which sits in electric vehicles. I'll move to slide number 20, the growth opportunity for the business. I mentioned earlier that Autosports Group has 12% of the luxury market, but as we cycle the acquisitions through the next 12 months, that should rise to around 13% of the market. Our runway of opportunities to grow is secure, and Autosports Group is currently evaluating multiple on-strategy acquisition opportunities. The cash flows and the opportunity have us targeting AUD 250 million per annum in acquired revenue growth from purchasing new dealerships.
In 2023 financial year, we delivered AUD 271 million in growth from the two acquisitions that we made, which of course, as we've mentioned earlier, have a full year cycling effect of AUD 400 million in additional revenue. If I move to slide 21, why are these opportunities coming to us? Well, they're coming to us because we've got a proven track record of acquiring and integrating luxury dealerships. We have the trust of the OEMs, and we deliver for vendors. We deliver and we're capable of approval. We have the capital to make the acquisitions, and our improved scale means that our capability has increased. Since we listed in 2016, we've made 12 on-strategy acquisitions that have delivered us just under AUD 1.2 billion in revenue growth from acquisitions. Our track record here is extraordinarily good.
If I go to recap, and look at the outlook before taking questions, the business delivered last year, 26.4% growth in revenue to AUD 2.371 million. 33% growth in normalized net profit before tax to AUD 115.7 million. Net cash generated was AUD 166 million. Dividend was up 19%, with a final fully franked dividend of AUD 0.10 per share. This concludes our presentation, and I'd like now to open up the line for any questions that you may have. Amy, they are open up for call.
I'm sorry. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from James Ferrier at Wilsons.
Morning, Nick and Aaron. Thanks very much for your time, and congratulations on the result. First question I wanted to ask about was, just on your recent comments there at the end, Nick, around OEM production normalizing, I think was the reference. Is that essentially a message that supply is now equal to order rates?
Not quite. We're still, we're still exceeding our deliveries by a little bit, James, but we've got, we've got good supply coming through. You'll see that our stock rose by about 27% during the year. We're still running on a really, really tight stock turn of just, just on 52-54 days on stock turn, so stock's still quite tight, but we're getting enough production through, enough production allocation through. The only thing that's inconsistent for us at the moment is getting things on and off the docks. There's a bit of, a bit of up and down on a monthly basis, but we're happy with supply coming through.
Yeah, okay, that makes sense. You touched on the inventory. There's, there's an uplift year-on-year in terms of inventory and the bailment debt, that's partly associated with it. Is that back to normal? Maybe not, maybe not so much in absolute dollars terms, but maybe as a % of sales as a reference point. Are you back to normal there, or do you still have some more to go?
No I'd like it, I'd like it to sit at around that, about 55 days' worth of stock. I think that's a, that's a reasonable area. That gives us about 40 to 45 days' worth of trading stock and then our demonstrating stock on, on top of that, James. That's a, that's a, that's a comfortable level for us to be at. Of course, when I look through each individual brand, there are areas where I'm way under stock, and there are indeed some brands which have had plenty of stock coming through, and I actually need to reduce a little bit of stock in some of them.
Yeah, that, that makes sense. The final question is around gross margins. Half on half, gross margins declined. Perhaps just mix, but interested in the comment from you, from you there. Then your, your comment around stable margins going forward, is, is that a reference to growth, or is that a reference to PBT?
Right. I'll, let, I'll let Aaron take this one, James.
James, our second half margin was at 9.5%, that was impacted by just the shift to the new vehicles coming through at the end of the year. As usual, June's always a big month, so, so is May in terms of vehicle deliveries. They're the biggest two months of the year. That sort of shifts the gross profit margin a little bit because they've got lower margin than the back end of the business. Moving forward, we expect it to... We've got, we've got a strong order bank of high gross margin vehicles to come through in the first half and into the second half of this financial year.
We expect, it should hover around the 19.5% or the 19%-21%, depending on mix of revenue streams between new, used and service and parts and, and what actually comes through the system.
Yeah. And so just to clarify on the, on the PBT margin, we should be cognizant of the uplift in interest expense rather than just sort of extrapolating stable margins at that line?
PBT, has, has risked from interest rates, depending on the volume that gets through, gets through. If we get decent organic growth, which we're planning to deliver. James, the organic growth through the existing sites should offset the interest rates, and we should be able to maintain a PBT number like we did through the second half of this year. They're the two competing factors, interest rates on one side and additional three books per site on the other side.
Okay, that's great. Thanks again, James. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from Tim Usasz at UBS.
Good morning, Nick and Aaron. Just a couple of questions. Just following on from the margin question, just to clarify on the outlook commentary there in terms of margins remaining stable in 2024, are you sort of referring to the 4.9% PBT margin remaining stable in 2024?
I'm referring to all three margin levels, on the way through, with the net, Profit Before Tax margin being the most volatile, depending on throughbooks.
Got it. From now, we're calling normalized post AASB 16, are we?
Yep, we'll be doing that from now on, so you can expect the next results to be exactly the same.
Got it. Great. I just had a question on, on the OpEx, and I was just looking at the OpEx outcome. Looks quite good, compared to obviously growth across the business. I think you called out in this call there around obviously some labor and things like that. Where are you seeing cost pressures, and then you've clearly done a good job in containing those costs. How have you managed to keep a lid on them over the, over the FY 23 period?
Yeah, look, most of our costs have been driven up by the employee costs. It's revenue was up 26%, gross profit was up 27%, so naturally, we needed extra headcount to deliver that revenue. We also had commissions that were higher attached to the, the higher gross margin that's flowing through the business. Whilst it's controllable, it's attached to a good performance.
Got it, the view on order write rate in July of +7% year-on-year, is that a like-for-like organic growth figure?
It's not a like-for-like number, fair there, Tim. What we did see in July, first of all, was a record, a record outcome for us in terms of, order, right? Secondly, what we did see was the first time in quite some, in four years, that the seasonalization of July was a pre-COVID type seasonalization. We saw slow activity in the first two weeks and strong activity in the second two weeks as people, for the first time in three years, took some holidays. So what we saw actually encouraged us that we've got a post-COVID seasonalization again, but strong underlying demand continuing.
Got it. Thanks. Just one last one. Just around your targeted AUD 250 million of revenue M&A from here, sort of provided some detail, obviously, on how fragmented the, the dealer landscape is there. I guess that's a, a number of dealers, you're all talking about acquisitions. Can you provide a bit more context around? I think you've said you're in talks with a number of opportunities, so they had attractive multiples, between 250. In terms of balance sheet funding, I think on the back of my numbers, you sort of got 1.2-1.3x net debt to EBITDA explore plan financing. What, what sort of are you gearing with it on the balance sheet in terms of funding these acquisitions as well?
I, I'll just touch on the, on the gearing. We've obviously got strong cash generation, and when you couple that with our internal gearing policies and our balance sheet position at the moment, we're in a position where we continue to purchase similar to what we have over the last two or three years if the, if the right opportunity comes up. I'll just add to that, Tim, that level of growth that we're targeting in terms of acquisition lead growth should not change the gearing levels of the company.
That's great. Thanks for taking the questions.
The next question comes from Elizabeth Elder at Jefferies.
Good morning, gentlemen, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just on sort of scale benefits from these more recent acquisitions, there's a particular comment in the slide pack on page 23, referring to sort of scale based synergies to drive operating leverage. I mean, you've already made comments around 24 margins, saying broadly similar to 23, you know, then beyond that, is there any sort of benefit that we can assume or dollar synergies that we can assume from these acquisitions?
There's a couple of points that I'd make, make, Elizabeth first, the acquisitions that we've taken on in the last year are still trading slightly behind the core group in gross profit margin. We have some small improvements that we can make there, and we hope to make them through the, through the year. The second thing that we that we know is that we as we grow in individual brands like we have last year with BMW, what we find is management synergies, skill synergies, stock management synergies through, through the business, and also loading of our service workshop synergies. For example, if you've got a dealership next to another dealership, and you're full and booked out in servicing one, you can transfer work to another to unlock better utilization of your sites....
They're the sorts of things that we're looking on a, on a preliminary basis. The second thing that we're able to do is partner with our OEMs to bring in more technology. We're partnering with our major OEMs on bringing through technology, principally in our digital space, principally also in our CRM space, thirdly, in the area of delivering better service bookings and better service outcomes, where there are bottlenecks in our business at the moment. Those, they're the areas. I'm not, I'm not probably prepared today to put a number on the synergies that we're looking for, but we do know that as we grow, the overall percentage of OpEx drops inside the business.
Yeah, got it. Thank you. Just my second question, just around consumer sentiment and, particularly the resilience of your customer base. It does seem that it's, it's fairly resilient, and I imagine it would be, despite sort of the, the broader inflationary pressures we're seeing in the market, across the whole economy, plus also the higher interest rates. Can you just confirm those comments? Are you seeing any sort of headwinds from a volume side, just because of the current macro environment?
So far, we're not seeing any headwinds in terms, in terms of volume. The higher the price item that we're seeing, the less resistance we are seeing to the purchase of it. Those things are good. We are seeing, there's improvements in our business, in our Finance and Insurance penetration, which is good and probably goes to the fact that the OEM financiers that we look at, are delivering better product at the moment. Those things are positive for us. Overall, we're, what we're pretty solid with our customers being high, highly resilient and our order bank being very strong and demand continuing to grow.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Brendan Carrig at Macquarie.
Good morning, everyone. Just a few follow-ups from me. I think it was Tim's question, just on the order rights, Nick. Did you say that it wasn't like for like, so that 7% up, is, is that partly due to the benefits of, of acquisitions? Is that?
It's, it's not like, for like, so it is, it is partly because of the benefit of the acquisitions, yes.
Yeah, okay. As you said, there was more seasonality with more people potentially-
Yeah
... being on holidays anyway.
First, first two, what, what we saw during the month was first two weeks being quite weak, the second two weeks being very strong. We saw very, good levels of customer inquiry. In fact, our inquiry rate was substantially higher than that 7% through the period. People were inquiring with that, with our products, are engaged with what we were doing. They were interested in our brands. They were just having a holiday for the first time in three years, we've seen the, seen the closing ratio improve dramatically in the second half of July and through the month of August.
Following on from those comments and your answer to the previous question, it, it sounds like cancellation rates, you know, there's no suggestion that they're trending higher. Are you able to just provide a bit more color on, on where those sit? At, at last update, I think you were sort of talking about, at normal levels of sort of mid-single digits, 4-5% range. Is that still where we're sitting?
That's exactly right. There's no up, there's no upswing. As I said during the presentation on a couple of times, the good thing about our order bank now is we've, spent a lot of time working on it over the last 12 months, and we've made sure that the order bank has substantially increased in the deposits and the quality of the contracts that we've got behind the cars. So we feel more secure than we've ever been with the value and the solidity of the order bank.
Cool. Then on the OEM rebates side of things, that's sort of been trending higher as supply has normalized and sitting just below 6% of new car sales. Is that the level that we should be sort of expecting going forward, given, you know, we've sort of seen the reset and the supply normalization? Then maybe just a follow-on from that, what should we be thinking about in terms of the OpEx that goes concurrently with that? I mean, I think you made a mention on the call earlier about commission rates being higher. Yeah, there's obviously a linkage there. Yeah, interested in any further comments you've got on that.
I'll start with the OpEx. Naturally, if the gross profit margin and the volumes remain, then the commissions will continue to trend on the same pattern. If it maintains level, then the commissions are gonna be a maintainable level as to what they were this year. Then just back to the first part of the question in relation to the OEM rebates, it's partly return of supply, in particular, the models that come with the OEM rebates were at 5.8% this year, were at 5% last financial year. We've also slipped in an extra BMW dealership this year, which also come with significant OEM support in terms of target achievement bonuses and other associated bonuses.
Okay. That, that would mean if you've got a, you know, so partly the mix, of the BMWs helped this year, and so then that would suggest that we should be staying at, at, at around these levels going forward?
I think that's a fair assumption, assumption, Brendan. Also just to reiterate, we, think our commissions will track gross margin improvements, and if gross margin reduces, God forbid, commissions will reduce.
Okay. Then 1 very quick final question: Do you have any EVs across your brands that are below the Luxury Car Tax threshold that would be benefiting from demand through novated, given recent tax changes, or you don't have any that sort of fit within that price point?
Yeah, well, first we've got quite a bit in New Zealand, and we're running at nearly 50% of our order, right, being EV in that, in that jurisdiction. We've got quite a bit of supply running through below that limit in our Volvo business. That is, and, and that has very strong EV order banks behind it as well. Early next year, or actually, actually probably towards the end of this financial year, we will have some more product coming through with Audi, which will be sitting around that limit, and under that limit. There'll be more and more coming at that crucial LCT.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question is from Sarah Mann at Moelis, Australia.
Morning, guys. First question from me, which, it's kind of been asked, but, I'll ask a bit more directly. The implication is that demand or order, right, is kind of broadly consistent on a like-for-like basis, and supply looks like it's improving and probably will improve going into the rest of this calendar year and next year. Is it fair to say that you're now starting-- you've had some months where you're like, delivering into your order bank? Is it fair to say that, you think you're gonna still have orders exceeding deliveries?
Well, let's try and be super specific for you, Sarah. In the last four months, our order bank's gone down by 40 cars, we have had a couple of months where we've delivered into it, but our revenue on orders has gone up by more than double digits. Our gross profit in our orders has gone up more than that, and our deposits in our orders has gone up more than that. As we look forward at our order bank, we're just on 21% of our order bank as EV.
Got it. Okay, the other question I had was just on, I guess, F&I and how the financiers are responding. Like, I mean, are you seeing any impact from, I guess, tighter lending criteria or people not being able to, like, service their loans or anything like that?
Aaron, I might let you talk about that one.
I'll talk about where we're sitting in terms of last year, and happy to talk about what the lenders are doing.
Sure.
Sarah, our, our like-for-like finance result has been very, very strong. We're up 24% like for like on last year. Our, our OEM financiers are supporting the businesses as we expect they would. They've got great product out in the market.
Right. From the other side of it, on an offer basis, we're not seeing any tightening of lending criteria. In fact, what we're starting to see is the OEM financiers support our business by starting to bring some, some good rate-based campaigns into the market, and you will see those out in the marketplace right at the minute. What we, what we anticipate is further improvements to our finance penetration as we go through this financial year, Sarah.
Got it. Thanks, that's helpful. Lastly, just a question on agency. Do you have any updates in terms of when the court case is gonna have an outcome for Mercedes? More broadly, what the other OEMs are thinking or saying to you around the transition to the agency, more given lots of them for you in Europe, particularly the European automakers, are all shifting over to agency.
Yeah. Firstly on Mercedes-Benz, we're, we're not, we're not a party to the case, so there's no information flow that comes our way, so there's nothing I can update you on that front, unfortunately. I'm waiting to look at that the same way that everybody else is. The second part of it is, the only change that we've seen in Australian terms, in terms of agency, is actually Volvo moving away from the effectively having an agency model in their electric vehicles to transferring back to a dealership-style model. That's occurred in the last month.
We're actually seeing a shift back towards the dealership model, and we've got no other indications from any of our OEMs that they are planning to move to agency in the Australian marketplace, Sarah.
Got it. Thanks, and sorry if I can just squeeze in one more question on, I mean, M&A and vendor expectations, and I guess just recent, pricing in the market. Like, what do you define as kind of, well, you know, well-priced acquisitions, and do you think the vendors are being reasonable, given that clearly market conditions are really good and, you know, margins are fairly well ahead of historic levels?
That's a difficult question, 'cause some, some vendors are reasonable, and they'll sell their businesses, and some are unreasonable, and they won't sell them. The way that we see it is, and I, and I've said this to you before, Sarah, is we look at what we think the future maintainable earnings are, and we'll look through a four - or five-year cycle. We think if we can pay, depending on the asset, between four and six times, depending on how maintainable, how exclusive the asset, what it does for the rest of our business in terms of share, we think we've done a really good job for our shareholders if we can buy it in that, in that range, as a multiple of profit before tax.
There's acquisitions out there that are transacting at, at those kind of multiples?
Yeah, for several years.
All right. That's all for me. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Sarah.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Panget for closing remarks.
Thanks. Amy. Thank you, thank you all for taking the time to listen in to the 2023 full year financial year presentation for Autosports Group. I'd just like to take, in closing, like to thank the Autosports Group staff for the tremendous result for the last year. I'd like to thank our OEM partners, for their partnership during the year, our customers for buying the cars, and of course, our investors, for trusting us with your money over the course of the last 12 year to 12 months. Thank you very much and look forward to any further call, questions that you may have over the next week or so.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank You for participating. You may now disconnect.