Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Bapcor Ltd. business update and FY26 guidance. This is a briefing for analysts and investors. We will not be taking questions from the media. For media, please direct your questions to the contact details on our ASX release. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be some opening comments by Executive Chair and CEO Angus McKay, 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 number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. McKay. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Alberta.
Good morning, everybody. Let me just start off with just a little bit of an apology. We've delayed the call to 9:40 A.M. because we were conscious that our release, in spite of being with the exchange for nearly an hour, only made it to you at 9:25 A.M. So with that, I will just spend a little bit more time running through what you have no doubt read, but just to make sure that everybody comes up to speed quickly. From a business update perspective, we continue doing the work that we've described over multiple quarters. In the first quarter of this year, particular emphasis has been placed on how we consider pricing within our key Burson categories, ensuring also that our ranges are correct for both our trade and JAS businesses.
We've been utilizing specific promotions to target new and also lapsed customers, and that flows from what we talked to you about at our full-year results, where we acknowledged that we had lost some customers due to the transitions that we were undertaking. We have changed our retail world to make sure that they have demand and merchandising specific to the business that they run. There's been a lot of training done with our sales team members. We've been recruiting staff quite frantically, and that predominantly has been into our front-end organization, stores, etc. We continue to optimize our store network, so that includes opening new stores, closing stores as required, and refurbishment activity across the board. And then finally, we talked about NPS being launched in the business.
We're now live for some two months, and we're utilizing that data to truly understand what our customers are telling us real-time. In Q1, and it'll flow through into Q2, we continue to invest behind our brand and product marketing activities, and we've spent some incremental AUD 3 million in that particular space, predominantly in our retail and JAS world. Investment has also occurred versus the prior corresponding period in technology, and that's at around AUD 6 million, and we've invested about AUD 7 million as we just ensure that supply is accurate and available as we continue the embedding, that rationalization of the network supply chain that occurred last year. We've initiated a number of cost-saving initiatives right across the group, so firstly, we are now optimizing that supply chain structure and its associated costs.
So if I take you back, it obviously had to absorb multiple DCs, dozens of DCs over the course of last year. We were of the view that, therefore, that now needed to be optimized, and that work is underway. We are simplifying our support offer structures, and that is in line with the operating model that we've outlined over the past months. And we're prioritizing people and technology spend accordingly, but particularly making sure that it doesn't get in the way of any customer-facing activities. And finally, we will be changing our New Zealand distribution footprint to ensure that it is one fit for the size of the organization that is there, but equally fit for the two islands that make up that country.
That set of work, or that program, we expect to generate around about AUD 20 million in pre-tax savings that will flow through into the second half of this fiscal year with an implementation cost of about AUD 4 million that will hit the first half of this year. As part of the work to get across this organization, we've also done a significant review of our tools and equipment business that sits within the trade segment. We have identified some practices there that we are not even close to happy with. Those issues that form or manifest themselves in terms of inventory and margin issues will negatively affect our first half earnings on a pre-tax basis by AUD 12 million. Whilst individually, many of those issues are small, in aggregate, they actually add up to obviously a large number at that AUD 12 million level.
We're still satisfied that the tools and equipment business is a fundamentally important part of trade, but frankly, it just has not been managed correctly. From a Q1 perspective, we've announced that our sales revenue quarter one of 2026 over quarter one of 2025 is adverse by about AUD 13.8 million or about 2.7%. Just quickly to run through, the trade segment has declined relative to Q1 2025 by about 0.9%, and there is an element of market share, albeit very market share decline, albeit though very slight. There's a modest decline in parts revenue, and that's due to market competitiveness and some of the customer discounting that we're undertaking as we look to rebuild that business.
The most significant variance, though, is in that tools and equipment category, which has been adversely impacted by, one, the review that we've just talked about, or that I've just talked about, but also very specifically the implementation of much tighter credit management and a reduction in discounting activity over that quarter. If I look at that total trade segment, Q1 2026 versus Q4 of 2025, so the run-in to the quarter that we've just completed, there is clear growth in parts, but there is a decline in that tools and equipment business, which is in line with what I've just talked about. I would just also note that we are lapping some non-recurring provision releases in H1 of fiscal 2025 that amount to some AUD 4 million. The network segment has grown earnings, and that reflects the activity that was undertaken in 2025 around warehouse rationalizations.
The wholesale and our commercial vehicles business are improving their competitiveness, and they are retaining the cost benefits associated with that activity of last year. However, revenue and earnings in our electrical business, JAS, continues to be impacted by what we did last year, and while there is improvement, and that is clearly evident, the rate of progress is slow given the changes that we made last year. The retail segment, it continues to be impacted by just the retail environment, and that is very specifically in the Autobarn business. However, the overall rate of sales decline has slowed, and we are seeing that change that we've spoken about in the promotional mix and supplier funding benefit the overall profitability of the business. Gross margin is improving, but we've chosen to reinvest some of that into our brand and promotional activities through what will end up being H1.
New Zealand, the economy here continues to do us no favors. We've been very clear on that. While we remain competitive, what we are seeing is our customer base shift to lower margin products and equally a rate of competitive intensity increasing. Therefore, the balance here between making sure we're competitive without diluting our margins. We also highlight that just given where we see this business today, there is a risk of impairment in the New Zealand segment. We'll assess that as we go through the half and play that back to you as we close our half results. H1, specific to guidance, we've put a very specific range for statutory impact for H1 in the range of between AUD 3 and AUD 7 million. This excludes any potential impairments in New Zealand.
If you add back the one-time impacts associated with the tools and equipment category and the restructuring costs, that would give you an underlying impact for H1 of 2026 of a range between AUD 14 million and AUD 18 million. On a full-year basis, we've given guidance for impact on the full year to be in the range of between AUD 40 million and AUD 50 million, again excluding any New Zealand impairment, with underlying for that full year therefore being in the range of AUD 51 million to AUD 61 million. We have significant confidence in our H2 performance. That's driven really by four key areas. One, the operational improvement that we see beginning to emerge today. We see the benefits of the pricing realignments that are occurring, particularly in trade.
The realization of the benefits that I've previously talked to, that AUD 20 million in pre-tax savings, and equally the non-recurrence of the AUD 16 million worth of one-offs that I've also talked about. We're providing you with a capital expenditure range for the year of some AUD 32-AUD 38 million. That is largely focused on branch expansions and technology investments. I would note that many of the technology investments that we continue to make are also subject to being expensed rather than being capitalized. And we make a note that we will remain within our debt covenants and have access to significant debt facilities on an ongoing basis. So my policies are sort of read through an announcement that you have no doubt read, but just given the delay in the exchange releasing our release, I wanted to just make sure that that was as clear as it could be.
So with that, Operator, I'm happy to just move now to questions and answers.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. And if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Craig Woolford from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Morning, Angus. Yes, obviously I want to digest in a short space of time. Can I ask firstly, just to clarify this AUD 12 million impact on the trade segment from the tools, can you give us an understanding of what's gone on and what we're trying to get to the bottom of? Is it essentially a segment of the business that now has AUD 12 million less in earnings power, or should we interpret it a different way?
So what has gone on is we've identified what's set off with some stock-taking variances, and we're obviously recognizing those. That has been, I suppose, as we've checked into that, that's been unraveled, just operational practices that we just don't think are appropriate for the business. The AUD 12 million we'll recognize in the current year, it doesn't go to the first quarter earnings. It actually is of a longer period of time, and it relates to practices that stem from a business that has not evolved at the speed it needs to. The underlying business, and I don't mean that term cutely, but the profitability of that business remains relatively healthy. These are issues that we need to clean up that relate to our past.
But what is the drop in the earnings? Essentially, prior year's earnings have been overstated. How do we think about the AUD 12 million in terms of how much prior year earnings were essentially overstated?
So this goes back over numerous years. It is margin and it is stock losses.
Right. My second question, the comments is lots of questions, but I'll just stick with two and let others ask. But the sense that you've given in the trading update is that performance was below expectations. I mean, second half 2025 sales were down circa 6%. You're trending it down 2.7. I'm surprised the expectations were for something better given the trend line. And how do we have confidence on the second half earnings unless we can have confidence on a stabilization in sales? How do we know that sales are, in fact, going to stabilize anytime soon?
Yeah. So Craig, I think we've been well, I think we have been clear that we see quarter-on-quarter movement. So the movement out of Q4 into Q1, we see an improvement there, and we can see that being driven by our parts business, which is the core of that Burson trade organization. The issue in Q1, predominantly on revenue, is around equipment. We've just talked about that. So we see the underlying parts business actually showing quarter-on-quarter improvement. The headline performance that we've talked around the decline is actually quarter-over-quarter prior year, Q1 to this year's Q1. But momentum coming out of last year, we think, is good, and we're expecting that to grow over, call it what is the H2 period.
But that's specifically related to trade, when you say that?
That is specific. What I've just said is specifically relating to trade, yes. If you like, I can then now talk to the other segments, but that's specifically relating to trade.
Yeah. It'd be great to hear on the other segment.
Yeah. So from a network perspective, the wholesale and commercial vehicles group, we're absolutely pleased with the progress they're making in the quarter relative to where they have traded, particularly coming out of Q4. Both of those businesses were disrupted with the changes we made in FY25, and we expect that momentum to grow. What we've called out in the release is that the place that we are still not happy with performance is that electrical JAS business. It is progressing slower than we would like, but we have confidence in both wholesale and the CVG group. From a retail perspective, a little bit more mixed. We see good earnings momentum in the organization, although I've said that we have chosen to reinvest that into H1. Revenue remains challenged in the climate that's in, and specifically in the Autobarn business.
And then from a New Zealand perspective, we're not expecting a massive turnaround in the New Zealand business in H2. There is some, but it is heavily economically dependent. We're not putting our lot at the rate of the recent 50 basis point cash rate decrease. We've been pretty clear that we haven't seen the benefit of that flow through our industry over the course of the last nine months.
Okay. Thanks, Angus. I'll let others ask some questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from James Bales from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks, Angus. Maybe just to start with the balance sheet, can you help us understand where net debt to EBITDA lands for this year? And how should we think about the leeway you've got versus covenants which you said were okay?
Yeah. James, so we haven't given that information. Right now, we remain comfortable on where our covenant position is. I don't have in front of me those covenants, and so I haven't got that to give you right now in terms of an overall net debt to EBITDA.
Okay, so maybe to help us get a sense of where you're thinking about the earnings trajectory, the second half implies about AUD 40 million NPAT at the midpoint of guidance. If we take into account typical seasonality, is that where we should think about the new sort of rebased earnings for the business as a starting point for 2027?
So it's approaching a guidance. I'm hesitant to say that it's the, call it the new base. That's not the high or the low I'm trying to pick here, but we believe that our earnings momentum in H2 will be more reflective of what this business should be generating. I still don't think that will be the right level. I think it should be higher. But given what we've done to the organization and what we're correcting for, it certainly starts to push us towards that right, call it baseline. But I would be hesitant to simply say that's the baseline because I just don't think that's a satisfactory outcome for the organization. But it is where we are forecasting at the moment for H2 relative to what we are doing.
Okay, and I guess the other sort of big swing factor on cash earnings and where the balance sheet lands is working capital. That has swung around pretty materially in recent years. How do you expect the first half to land in terms of cash conversion of the EBITDA guidance or the impact guidance you've given?
Yeah. So I haven't specifically given guidance on that. Well, let me just describe what we're doing. Working capital is a focus for us. A lot of work being done around, particularly, ensuring that our debtors are current. We've talked about that over time. Payables, there'll be some hopefully modest improvement, but I wouldn't really describe it as modest just given our payment terms and the length of our supply chain here. The focus is on stock and how we can reduce that over the course of the fiscal year. I wouldn't suggest you're going to see any material stock decreases at H1. Why? While we've taken action, it takes four to six months for that to work through our balances.
From a cash perspective at the full year, while we declared a pre-dividend free cash flow, which was great, we did say that we were targeting a free cash flow in that range of above 80%. That hasn't changed. That's what we want to do. So our focus is on managing specifically stock within our working capital along with the generation, if you like, of free cash to drive a better overall utilization.
Okay. Great. I'll let someone else have a go. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Hodge from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Morning, Angus. I know given that you've answered the question on the not having the net debt to equity or the leverage ratios in front of you, I guess I'm sort of extending that idea. Have you started looking at changing the payout ratio given I mean, I know the dividend will be lower given the lower earnings, but have you started to look at how you manage the balance sheet at this stage?
No. I'm going to say, Andrew, not at this stage, no. I mean, H1, clearly, the dividend will be very low relative to statutory impact. You guys know that. In terms of an overall decision to reduce our payout ratio, that's not a discussion that we're entertaining right now. And why? I'll go back to the last question, which does go to our focus is on driving free cash flow. But we're going to be sensible on any dividend.
Got you. And then just a second question. It's going to be tricky because you don't know what you don't know, but when we saw you with the full year, you talked about sort of the review of the business, Kim had come in, gone through accounts and a range of different things. So this feels a little bit surprising in that context, and I expect it probably surprises you a little bit. So given that you can't answer where is the next problem that you don't see yet, I guess I'm asking how far through are you reviewing everything at this point? What is still left to go and look at thoroughly where you might find something that you didn't expect?
You sort of have almost answered it for me, Andrew, and I'm not being flippant. Yeah, so I will be clear. This was a surprise not only to me but to us, and I'll give you some other words around it. We're not anticipating finding things. The issue on this particular one was what was a modest issue has now unraveled into a more significant issue, and that's where we've dived in, and as I said, this actually goes to our operational methodology inside that business that just have not changed probably since it was acquired in that sense, so part of what we're doing here is just going back and trying to make sure that we do this the right way once. I'm not going to sit here and say that there's a laundry list of four, five, six things that are in front of us to still review.
That's not the case. We literally are now trying to build positively from it, but this started with the stock take result, and that's where the thread started to unravel. I appreciate I'm going to be the first to say that what I've just said there will not give anyone any confidence. All I can say is that as we discover these things, we're going to knock them over. Where they're material, of course, we'll tell you about it. Where they're not, we'll just deal with them.
All right. Thank you. And then just last question from me. I know we spoke about this previously on a public call. You had that bid a little while ago. You said when I asked you last time that the price for someone to look at the books hadn't changed, even though some of the board members had changed. Does this change anything? I mean, you're always in play because you're listed, but does the price to get a look at your books in terms of an offer change from where it was previously?
Well, I'm going to say no. I mean, I go back. This is fundamentally a great business that I just don't think has been managed appropriately. Part of what we're dealing with here is just I will say it's the sins of our past. So these one-time adjustments are just that, but they should have been recognized earlier. Some of the things that we're doing, particularly within that trade business around just making sure our pricing is right and our ranging is correct, these go back to many, many years of just enjoying price increases, frankly, that we shouldn't have taken. So we'll unravel that as required and bring the business back to where it needs to be. If someone wants to have a look at us, by all means, but they need to pay for what are great assets and underlying great cash flows.
You wouldn't expect me to say anything different.
Thanks for that. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one. We'll pause a moment for any further questions to register. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. McKay for closing remarks.
Thanks, Alberta. Look, I suppose just for those who may pick the recording up a little later on, I completely get that many people might not have even seen the announcement yet, and therefore we'll make sure that we give you the appropriate amount of time to walk through things in detail. But with that, I'm going to close the meeting down. Thank you for your time. And as we speak, we'll speak over the next sort of 24-48 hours.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.