Yes, thank you, sir. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining today for our half year results. Clearly it's a pretty busy reporting day today, and there's actually a couple of things going on around the world, so we certainly appreciate your time. I'm sure you wanna keep an eye on the market, so we'll try and get through this presentation quite quickly. Guys, I might just start on page three, which is the investor presentation. There was lots this morning. Look, just some slight tweakings of the way we're grouping the business, which I've got a couple of slides on during this presentation around a new three-year strategy we've put together. Obviously very subtle changes, but just on page three there, the three core divisions of our group, Formwork and Commercial, around 26% of our revenue there.
The Building Trade Centers, 44%, and the Panels division around 30%. I'll come back to that when I get to the strategy page, just highlighting some of the key changes we've put together as part of that three-year vision. Now just on the segments of the construction market, guys, not a lot of change there from prior reporting periods. Obviously detached housing remains strong, so is a you know, significant percentage of our business, while the medium and high density residential markets certainly remain quite low, so single-digit percentages there for our business. They have been stronger contributors in the past when that sector is stronger, obviously.
Just worth noting, particularly when there's a little bit of press around the construction cycle and some collapses or indeed a collapse of a particular large builder worth noting there. On the bottom section there, we have around 9,500 active trading accounts. Our largest account that is only around 3% of our sales revenue. So we do have a very well-diversified ledger which certainly helps in that area of risk management. Just moving to page four, guys. Just really wanted to highlight our network around Australia, but particularly with the new three divisions that we've identified clearly as part of our strategy.
What it really does highlight is while we've got some good geographic coverage, and diversity there, that there's some clear market gaps and obviously that's one of the key things we're looking to try and improve upon in this next round of our strategy. Clearly there you can see, there's some major markets where we're really missing some of those particular divisions of our business. Yes, nice coverage, but you can see, for example, there's no Formwork or panels position in Adelaide as an example. We have two strong building trade centers there, but there's clearly some gaps like that that exist in our network and hence we really wanna focus on plugging those gaps, which will give us, you know, even further growth opportunities in the market in our view.
That also just gives you a quick feel for the mix of the business there on page four, guys. Just moving to page five, obviously the results. First thing to say is obviously a really good result. You know, we're particularly pleased with it on a range of levels, which we'll come to. On a sales perspective, obviously a strong period, AUD 194 million or thereabouts in sales in the first half was up 45%. Certainly importantly, organic growth or like-for-like growth up 14%. That's now 6 consecutive quarters of not just growth, but accelerating growth. Look, we've seen this in the two previous cycle upturns that certainly Steve and I have seen in the 20 years that we've been here at the company.
The growth period following the GST through 2003 to 2005, and then again after the GFC through 2013, 2014, 2015 or thereabouts, that we saw this accelerating growth coming out of the bottom of the construction cycle as we went up the curve. Our view is we're experiencing that exact same situation now, as we move towards the peak of the next construction cycle around 2024 or 2025 or thereabouts. That's certainly pleasing to see that accelerated growth. That translated through to underlying EBITDA of AUD 21.5 million, which was up 115% on last year. Strong results. Steve will run through those when we get to the financial slides. But obviously that translated to a, you know, tripling of the NPAT, of the underlying NPAT.
For those of you on the call, last year we realized we did the write-down of the Wagga assets in this corresponding period last year. The statutory net PAT last year was impacted by that, by that asset write-down as we announced the closure of that site. Obviously from a statutory point of view it looks even better. Even at an underlying point of view a really strong improvement in the bottom line, which was pleasing. Our working capital continued to be quite solid. You'll see a bit of a theme here around the growth in inventory. It was quite modest in our view, but certainly we did take the chance to increase inventory levels given the significant shortages and restrictions that exist in the market. That's crimped a couple of our measures.
Cash conversion there at 73%, a little below our average. Again, really just reflects that increased investment in inventory. Then the other final point on the financial summary, you know, I should say that we declared an AUD 0.055 dividend, which was more than double last year, so pleasing as well, fully franked. Just on a couple of the operating highlights, obviously, as I said, revenue growth strong across all geographies and across all three divisions. Queensland, South Australia from a state point of view, the strongest growth markets at this stage. Our gross margin continued to expand. That's something that's been strong over recent years. Good product mix, a disciplined pricing and the ability to pass through cost increases, which have been much spoken about. Everyone's aware we're in that type of inflationary environment.
The fact that we've been able to grow our gross margin by 200 basis points, again pleasing. Just worth noting there, just on a footnote there that, in the financial accounts or the Appendix 4D from last year, we've just changed the way we recognized the wages. So direct wages were in the below-the-line in expenses, whereas now for the period of FY 2022, we put them up into COGS for our three manufacturing businesses. Steve, can I just get you to take over for a sec, mate? I've just lost my computer, mate. If you don't mind just taking over, and I'll just get it back up, mate.
Yep, sure. Just following on there a little bit from Jim around that change that we've done there in the gross margin, just to explain that a little bit more. We've reported a 200 basis point increase there to 26.5%, up from 24.5%, last year in the same comparative period. That's basically because we had about AUD 5 million worth of direct labor in FY 2021, which was shown down as an employee expense benefit. Now we've put that up into basically a raw material cost. That's on a directly comparative basis, that gives us where that increase comes from. Hopefully that makes sense in terms of doing that.
We'll do that, continuing going forward, because obviously some of those manufacturing operations, a significant portion of that is direct labor. It's really more a cost of goods sold or a raw material cost rather than a an operating expense from employment. Yep. Just following on to the next little section there from Jim. With the changes in the supply chain, a little bit from the challenges we've had there with inventory. We've certainly taken that opportunity, as Jim mentioned, to increase our stock levels just to make sure that we're not caught short in any of that situation.
Obviously, there can be some lumpy deliveries and things that come through from time to time with some of those overseas shipping constraints that happen from time to time. Just moving into the strategic initiatives that we've got there in that third point. There's been a strategic growth plan that we've been going through. I guess the outcome of that is basically just to refocus on the business into a couple of categories there.
Steve, can I butt in there? Sorry about that. Back on the air now. I've had the tech let me down. I apologize for that, ladies and gentlemen.
Sure. Yep, just down in that bottom section there, Jim, in the strategic initiatives.
Yeah. Great. Sorry, on which slide are we on, Steve?
On slide five, Jim.
Got it. Okay. Right, guys, I'm back on board. Yeah, so then just touching on the final point that I raised around the Wagga consolidation project. That's just the last point there, guys. Things tracking well there, obviously. The plant's all closed at Wagga. All the staff have been terminated. We're just extracting the equipment there and the land and buildings. Sale process is underway. That's the last stage of the exit of Wagga. The project at Grafton, you know, putting the extra equipment in there and consolidating our plywood manufacturing onto that site is progressing well. Just putting a little bit more color on page six, guys, just on the operational results. Yeah, as I said, sales strong. The Victoria and New South Wales still lagging.
The first point there, just that it's not growing as fast as the other states. Clearly they were the most affected in the first half for some of the COVID restrictions and so forth. I think there's still upside there, and they're the largest markets, obviously come back on board. Queensland showing the strongest growth for us, in that 14% organic growth result. Yeah, certainly pleasing there and a strong pipeline of projects out of Queensland as well. Just on the divisions, the building trade centers are the ones the most leveraged to detached housing, which is obviously a very strong market at the moment. Like to like sales up 23% there in that sector, which is particularly good. Obviously tracking a little bit ahead of our other divisions there.
That certainly comes despite some of the well-publicized shortages in a couple of key structural building products. I think we've done well to edge out that type of growth in a constrained market. And the Formwork and Commercial sites and the panels growth of about 6% and 15% organically there, still pleasing growth. Just on the ops side and supply chain. Around a quarter of our business now is direct importation that we do from overseas. Clearly that's been challenging there. Freight rates have gone up, you know, five-, six-, and even tenfold in some cases from a couple of years ago. And certainly the availability of freight's been challenging too. Notwithstanding that, we've still seen that gross margin improvement. Obviously the imported products do come with good gross margin, slightly higher cost impact.
Sorry, cash impact, I should say. You know, playing on an FOB basis. Pleasing still to have edged out that improved margin on the back of some of those imports despite those challenges. We touched on inventory a little bit more invested in stock there, particularly with some of those disjointed supply chains. Just on costs. Look, I think costs have been, again, also spoken about quite a bit at the moment in this inflationary environment. Our cash costs or our total expenses are up 9% on the first half on a like-for-like basis. Again, a lot of those are variable in nature and linked to the sort of strong trading period. Obviously freight, a provision for short-term bonuses, and casual labor obviously as we flex up.
A lot of those costs can be switched off if indeed, the market was to ease a bit. I think we've had good strong cost control as well. Stock, as Steve touched on earlier, our inventory is up about AUD 7 million on a like-for-like basis, which is 12%. You know, I think a well-made investment obviously has helped underpin the strength of the result. Around half of that is price inflation, the other half's extra volume. Then just on the final box there on the acquired businesses, certainly strong contribution. We've got a little waterfall chart later that breaks out the improvement in the EBITDA result.
The long and short of it there is extremely good contribution from the three acquisitions that weren't there in the prior period, and certainly tracking well above the earn-out targets and indeed the financial metrics that we based those acquisitions on. That's been pleasing. We think some good synergy opportunities there, particularly with the grouping of the business under the new strategy. We think we'll be in an even better position to start to extract those synergies from those new businesses. Just quickly on page seven, folks, it's just a little bit of a summary on the strategy. Really, it's a really minor tweaking, really. The same three core markets are our focus.
We've really done a management realignment to group our common businesses, and we believe we'll extract, you know, much better focus in the market accordingly. The three-year plan, which will involve, you know, significant revenue and profitability growth and looking for those sustainable EBITDA margins of around 10% in the long term. Obviously, we've done well in the short term to grow our EBITDA margins substantially. We still think that's a good medium-term target to have. What it identifies is the strong growth opportunities across all three divisions in various geographies. I touched on that earlier when we look at the maps. I think there's, you know, there's a lot of markets we need to round out our positioning to really capitalize on the, on the core competencies the company has.
That really comes about from a little more specialization rather than trying to be all things to all people from, you know, from each of our sites. We wanna specialize a little bit more on those core markets, and we believe that will give us greater market penetration. Certainly, we can identify those clear gaps we've got there, you know, accordingly and obviously through our acquisition plan, look to plug those gaps and improve our market position. Clearly, the customer types are quite subtly different across those three divisions and hence need to be treated accordingly. I've talked about the synergies and look, we'll do some further details when we have the investor strategy day coming up, which we'll obviously inform the market of once all that's finalized and in place.
In simple terms, two business units and three divisions. Construction products, which will be made up of the building trade centers and the Formwork and Commercial sites, and then the Panels division, which incorporates, you know, a lot of the new acquisitions, including New Zealand Timberwood and Revolution, as well as the craft and manufacturing side. John and Craig, already key executives in the business, have been appointed as the executive general managers of those two business units. Steve, who's on the call, will stay in the business, you know, in a key executive role, but we will be recruiting a new CFO as well to improve the strength of the executive team and improve the succession options within the business.
Obviously really pleased that Steve keeps an executive role and we can all feel very positive about the financial shape of the business with Steve's, you know, long experience in the company and continuing to add value in that area. Just onto page eight. Guys, it really just summarizes what I've said there, but just highlights the construction products division. I won't go through it all, but it sort of talks about the focus, the market segments, and the types of customers in each of those core three divisions. You can see some of the asset mix we've got there, you know, across each of the sites.
You know, as I've already touched on, it really, really does identify that we've still got some significant gaps and hence that consolidation opportunity in the fragmented industry is even sort of more marked when we look at it through these three divisions as such. Right. Steve, I might just pass over to you to run through the financial slides, if you don't mind, mate.
Yep, sure. Thanks, Jim. Obviously very pleasing that we've got some strong numbers to present for the half year. Just on page nine there, the earnings summary. Headline revenue AUD 193.8 million, up 45% on the previous financial year. That does include contributions from our recent acquisitions, United and Revolution, towards the end of the half and a full six months from the Timberwood acquisition, which we completed in April last year, but obviously wasn't in the previous year's financial numbers. Those like-for-like sales up 14% as a result. Still a very good number in relation to that. Strong cost control, improved gross margin percentages, that 200 basis points increase on last year that we talked about.
Along with that revenue growth saw our operating EBITDA up 115% from AUD 10 million last year to AUD 21.5 million for the half this year. Breaking that down a little bit, we've got the panels category of EBITDA there up 147% to AUD 10.9 million on the back of some very strong results from our existing branches, especially in New Zealand. Then we've got the full 6 months of Timberwood in that contribution as well. The construction category, our building trade centers and formwork branches that Jim mentioned there, operating EBITDA up 73% to AUD 13.1 million, mostly from the revenue growth and margin improvements from our existing branches there.
We've got United Building Products there in the Illawarra, that acquisition that we had towards the end of the half, contributing there for two months. Most of those corporate cost increases is high bonus provisions on the back of the very strong first half results. No sort of underlying further increases coming through outside of that. The amortization increased, and that's due to the amortization of the intangibles coming from the acquisitions. We acquire some customer relationships as part of those acquisitions as an intangible that need to be amortized. If you wanted to pro forma that out to just the customer relation component, that's roughly about AUD 1 million per annum over a full 12-month period. With all three of those, all of those acquisitions going through there.
There's been no further costs associated with the Grafton, Wagga site consolidation incurred in the half. And the significant items that we reported down there for this half are just the share-based remuneration and acquisition costs. And we've just pointed out in those acquisition costs, they look a little bit high for a couple of businesses, but AUD 400,000 of that was in relation to Queensland stamp duty, one of the few states where we still have to pay that, unfortunately. Even so, our net profit before significant items ended up at AUD 9.9 million, so over 200% increase on that corresponding period of 3.3. You know, very, very pleasing result for the company. On to the next page.
We've just included a bit of a waterfall chart there to give a bit more of a breakdown on where that increase in the EBITDA has come from. You can see there, the right-hand side, green acquisitions contributed AUD 5.7 million for the first half, and that was from the Timberwood, Revolution, and United acquisitions that went there in the previous corresponding period. We've got some revenue growth from the existing branches and margin expansion that we talked about, you know, from product mix and pricing improvements. Both of those components contributed close to about AUD 4 million to the result. Some higher operating expenses, as you would expect on such an increase in the volume.
Most of that, those increases are volume related, and that's total 2.2, so that gave us our overall operating result there of 21.5, up 115%. Just moving now on to page 11, the balance sheet. Trade working capital is always a strong focus for Big River. We mention that every time, and it's, you know, pleasing to see that we still managed to get 17.6% despite those increases in inventory and a little bit of working capital requirements for the acquisitions that we have in the half as well. You know, that like for like, as Jim mentioned, about AUD 7 million or 12%, so pretty much in line with the revenue increases or the like for like revenue increases.
Debtor days continued to improve, which is very pleasing. 45 days over the half compared to 49 days for all of FY 2021. We did have some increase in provisioning, but you know, our expected credit losses that we've put through the P&L represent about 0.4% of sales, which is basically no change from last year. Some of the other larger movements in the balance sheet just related to the acquisition of Revolution and United. There's an additional AUD 1 million of stock coming from that acquisition, AUD 1 million of fixed assets and quite a large amount in terms of that intangible component, up AUD 16 million, split between customer relationships that we acquired there, about AUD 6.5 million, and goodwill of about AUD 9.5 million.
Our net bank debt, we finished up the half at AUD 34.7 million. That's a gearing ratio of about 24.9%, so still well within, you know, where we're very comfortable to be. Most of that increase is of course a result of the acquisitions that we paid the cash component during the half. Just moving over to the last of the financial slides there, just on the cash flow. Operating conversion, normally we'd expect that to be a little bit higher, but particularly good, I think, given the growth in stock and some of those first year working capital requirements for acquisitions, and probably helped a little bit by those improvements in debtor days as well. Overall, let's call that an acceptable result for the half.
You know, better for us to have that stock to be able to sell it rather than the other way around. In relation to the Grafton Wagga site consolidations there, just point out there that we had received AUD 3 million, a further AUD 3 million from the AUD 10 million government grant in the half. That still leaves about AUD 3 million to be paid out by the government, as we go through the various milestones that are part of that project. That was offset by a similar amount in cash payments for redundancies and closure costs that were expensed during the half or paid during the half, I should say.
There weren't actually any additional charges to the P&L, so we've provided for all that in the 30 June 2021 numbers. As per the plans, just on the CapEx side of things, there's about a further AUD 3 million worth of CapEx that's forecast to be undertaken in the second half of this year just to complete that Grafton site expansion. A couple of other lumpy numbers there just in terms of the business acquisitions, the payment AUD 13.5 million, that's representing the cash component, of course, for Revolution and United. Both of those deals have got earn outs included in them related to profit targets and both vendors book some Big River equity as part of that payment. That's good to see.
Always try to look for that sort of thing to try and underpin their commitment to the future success of the businesses that we're acquiring. There was a payment there you can see for contingent consideration, which was a good thing for us to have to pay 'cause it basically meant the acquisitions that we've acquired have been meeting their earn out targets. I guess also just worth noting that the acquisitions that we've taken on board recently are all currently on a run rate to meet their current year earn out targets as well. Finally, reiterating the dividend that we've got there for the year that's been determined for the half AUD 5.5, fully franked, and payable on the 6th of April.
We will have the DRP in play with that 2.5% discount as well. You know, very pleasing to be able to pay out a dividend that's 112% up on last year's interim of AUD 2.6 per share. Over to you, Jim.
Yeah, Steve. Thanks, mate. Okay, just on the final slide 13 there, guys, the outlook. Look, we see the market still being strong, obviously, and fundamentally in line with the first half. We don't see any major changes there. As I mentioned, we're still going up the growth curve of the construction cycle in our view. Obviously that, you know, that growth's expected to continue. The construction starts certainly still lag the approval. That's been well documented as well. We think that just further underpins particularly the detached housing market right through 2023 as that catch-up occurs. At the same time, some good improved approvals happening in both multi-res and the commercial markets. Multi-res in particular, that's still 50% below the 2017 peak.
Obviously there's some good large Tier one projects on drawing boards, just starting now, which will flow through into next financial year as well. We think those particular segments that have been weak, the outlook's much stronger. On the civil construction, obviously, particularly strong, major pipeline of large infrastructure projects there and certainly some large new announcements in Queensland in particular to add to the already strong pipeline is what we're seeing on the civil market. Certainly all things in the market in our view are very positive. Just on the strategy side, as we've touched on, you know, we think, you know, the restructure will give us greater operational focus, will drive some improvement in the business.
The acquisition pipeline is still solid, so both small bolt-on and some larger opportunities are being considered. We're working through quite a long pipeline there, so that's positive for the continued expansion of the group. On the financial side, we have sort of fast-tracked our financial improvements, particularly around EBITDA margins. For those who recall, we had 8% EBITDA margin last financial year. Obviously, the first half is closer to 11%, but you know, that long-term sustainable improvement towards 10%, we believe we're well on track with some good operating leverage, you know, and solid cost control which Big River Industries' always had, and that continued gross margin improvement, all builds for a longer sustainable improvement in our overall financial metrics. Obviously the finalization of the new equipment at Grafton.
We haven't really seen any of those operational benefits yet. They should start to flow from Q4. That'll be a positive component of that project too. On the financial side, look, as I've said there, we expect the market to be very similar to the first half. It is worth noting that there's seven less working days in the second half. That needs to obviously be taken into account. With the gross margin growth in the first half, we don't think that will be quite repeated in the second half 'cause of that, the fact the higher cost inventory now cycles through the business. When you put those things into the pot with a few less working days, our view is the second half EBITDA won't be quite as strong as the first half, but certainly well ahead of last year.
Obviously we also have the fact that Revolution, which we had for three months in the first half and United Building Products just for two months in the first half, we'll have them clearly for the full six-month period. That will plug a little bit of that gap in terms of the second half just being a touch below the first half in our view. Strong outlook still is the summary of that, ladies and gentlemen. I won't go through the appendix. It's just there for your reference really. Sir, I might hand it back over to you just to start the questionnaire part of the call.
Should we open the floor for questions and answers?
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question comes from Sean Kiriwan from MA Moelis. Please go ahead.
Yeah, Jim. Congrats on a very strong result, and thanks for taking my question. You've flagged clearly some of the supply constraints and labor constraints means that strong demand may extend well into FY 2023. Conversely, are you seeing any indirect impact from your customers because they can't staff up or start projects that demand? There's a risk to that demand maybe being weaker than expected?
Sean, no, we don't think that's gonna drop demand at all. You know, we just think that they're falling behind, which has been, again, well-publicized, I think, as that labor availability frees up and indeed the material supply improves. Although I don't believe the lack of materials fundamentally holding back the market. I think it's, you know, perhaps been, you know, access to labor and restrictions. No, we don't see a fundamental drop in demand at all. What we're doing is smoothing the curve in our view, and there's still that catch up where quite a few of those HomeBuilder stimulus as part of the federal government that ended in March last year, started in July of the previous year. Many of those jobs have not started.
You know, I guess it's that reason why we're very confident about that demand profile and the approvals numbers that have come through, you know, post the end of the HomeBuilder scheme. They continue to be very solid, Sean. We just don't see any major drop or blip in that pipeline for detached housing, albeit that we expect it will ease over time, you know, beyond 2023.
Understood. Obviously, the sort of margin guidance going forward 10% is very a lot stronger than historically sort of been around the 8%. Clearly that expectation that, you know, volumes would be continuing to be strong and the operating leverage that's coming through is sort of, like, underpinning those assumptions.
That's part of it, Sean. I mean, obviously in the early years of being a small-listed company, there was a range of things. You know, we had to take on some additional costs. As we listed, we didn't really get the payback there. We'd certainly modified our manufacturing strategy and we'd increased much larger quantities of imported product and we scaled back our own manufacturing plant. That was some key issues in the early years of being listed and my view was we hadn't had our payback for some of those things that we'd done and clearly now that we've got good organic revenue growth, we're seeing that payback come and some economies of scale are working as you'd hope.
Got it. The final one from me, M&A strategy. Is that still, I know you've just done two in the last half, but is that still on the cards for future assuming when the right one comes across your desk?
Yeah, absolutely, Sean. You can see from that, you know, that map of Australia. See, there's plenty of markets where we don't have all three colors and we don't have all three dots. That's obviously fundamentally our target is to find those dots in all of those large markets where there's a significant gap still. Yeah, look, all the same drivers exist. It's a fragmented market. There's aging owners without succession plans. That same thesis holds true. In fact, it's truer than ever at the moment, you know, post-COVID, where people are reassessing their futures and their lives as well.
We think there's lots of opportunities and yeah, a critical part of our growth over the next three years, Sean, obviously along with the organic growth, but certainly, you know, expanding our network is a critical part of that three-year plan.
Nice one. All right. Thanks, Jim. I'll pop off now.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you. The next question comes from Owen Bruce-Gregor, Private Investor. Please go ahead.
Hello, guys. It's my first year looking at your results. Just a question around the panels business. Firstly, what proportion of that business materials is dependent on panels fully constructed overseas that have to be imported? Secondly, with the panels you construct here, how is the big wet in Queensland, northern New South Wales affecting conditions for the raw materials and bonding of panels and so on?
Yeah, thanks, Owen. Yeah, I might just take that second part first. The Grafton manufacturing plant, which is the plywood factory, yeah, certainly is affected by extreme wet weather. We have contracts with the government for our log supply. Obviously, the government does all the harvesting and the forest management. They just land the logs at our front gate as per our long-term wood supply agreement. Of course, when it's very wet, we sometimes struggle to get logs. We've certainly never ran out. We've got good stocks in the yard, so we don't see that impacting our business in the long term. Obviously, it's been quite wet for the last couple of years, and yet we've had no outages or anything there. Fundamentally, we can always manage our way through that.
Yeah, good long-term supply of both the hardwood and the softwood logs that we process there at Grafton. The first part of your question, yes. The percentage I haven't got quite off the top of my head, but in the order of 25%-30% of our panels business would be fully imported panels out of Europe, and some out of Asia. Yeah, we are reliant on those European markets for some of our finished and final end products. Combine that with the three panels manufacturing sites we have in Campbellfield, Grafton, and in Auckland. We're certainly, you know, at least in part, self-sufficient there where we ultimately manufacture the product. Yeah, around 25% would come out of Europe.
The bonding of the plywood in the factories, is that affected by the humidity conditions?
No, no, it's no problem at all.
Okay. Thanks.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Alastair Campbell from CCZ. Please go ahead.
Good day, Jim and Steve. Great results. Just a couple of questions. Thanks for fleshing out the EBITDA margin there. That was gonna be my first one. Out of interest, do you have any planned price increases in the second half across any of your product lines?
Short answer is yes, 'cause we've been very disciplined, and you can see in those gross margin results, our ability to pass through cost changes. There's certainly further price increases from some of our key suppliers that it's already been communicated to us throughout the second half. Yes, we'll be passing those price increases onto the market as you know, as our suppliers, you know, lift those prices on our manufactured products. You know, at this stage, only subtle price increases to account for some of the increase in raw materials, things like resin and so forth, which are based on global commodity prices. There's been some pressure there, but yeah, certainly much less in terms of our manufactured products.
Certainly that cost pass-through will occur on any of our traded products with our local supply partners.
Okay, fantastic. Beauty. Just last one for me. Do you guys have any exposure to Probuild? Obviously, tough to see that news the other day.
The short answer, directly, no. We don't trade with Probuild at all. Indirectly, some of our subcontractors will naturally be working on some of those projects because they're Tier 1 projects. But our quick assessment after only a day or so is there's very low risk for our company associated with the range of subcontractors who would've done work for Probuild and who may still be owed money by Probuild.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Great. Thanks, guys. Cheers.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Eric Roles from Moelis. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks, Jim. Jim and Steve, congratulations on a great result and thanks for taking the question. You mentioned a little bit about the cycle and your view of the cycle that we're only, you know, still not even, you know, halfway or still, you know, progress to go in terms of detached housing market given your experience in previous years. Can you just extrapolate and you know, what gives you the confidence, you know? Again, I think you mentioned in passing about the extension of home building approvals and, you know, deferrals and what have you. Can you just add a little bit more color there on, you know, where do you see this cycle going and when do you see this cycle peaking potentially?
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Eric. A few things. I mean, one is us just basically reviewing the cumulative average forecast from the main forecasting bodies, and there's a range of those who forecast all segments of the construction market, so civil, commercial, res, and the alterations market. If you look at those five main forecasting bodies, all of them have got the peak in terms of cumulative total construction in around FY 2024 or maybe FY 2025. The first part of the answer is that that's what the experts are saying. Secondly, on our view, you know, obviously with closer contact with our customers in each of the subsegments, you know, that also lends itself to a very similar kind of conclusion. We know detached housing.
My view is that lag won't be caught up until 2024. Last year, FY 2021, starts or construction significantly lagged approvals. This year, FY 2022, my view is they'll still lag approvals, a cumulative of about 15,000 starts across those two years. Lag in terms of starts versus approvals, which will then be caught up in 2023 and 2024, in my view, Eric. That's the detached housing side. And then, yeah, we've seen good, strong trends, good, strong data in commercial and indeed multi-res. That's where we get the confidence around. Remember, it's picking up out of a low point in the cycle. It's not coming off its.
Yeah.
Infrastructure I think is very clear and public, you know, the massive infrastructure spend from all governments, and that pipeline is very long and strong as well. You know, the alterations market is expected to dip a little after a really strong year last year. Look, fundamentally, when there's good equity in people's homes, our experience is they wanna continue to invest in improving their homes. We just don't see any weakness in the alterations market whatsoever. Last year was a solid spike and some of that was linked to the stimulus package. Even if you take that out, there's gonna be good, strong demand in the renovations market going forward as well. We haven't seen for a long time when all segments are looking very positive.
Certainly in the case of New Zealand, all three segments are very strong as well. It's not like one's coming out of a significant dip or one's on the way down. All three segments appear to be quite strong. Yeah, that's probably the main reason why we're confident about not just this year but, you know, looking forward for the next few years.
Got it. Thank you. Again, you mentioned in the answer to the previous question that some of your key suppliers, and we've seen it in their results, whether it be James Hardie, CSR and so on, you know, continue to pass through price increases. Can you just expand a little bit, you know, on the leverage that you get and the economies of scale, you know, that you get, you know, from being able to pass that through, you know, and the impact it has on your business?
Well, yeah, I mean, gross margin percentages, as long as we're disciplined in maintaining gross margin percentages, clearly the higher the price, the higher the gross profit dollars. Obviously, like most businesses, you know, you do better in a period of higher pricing than you do in a period of lower pricing.
Mm.
Yeah, same cost base. Even if we maintain the same percentage margin, obviously there, Eric, that translates to more GP dollars. That's where obviously you gain, as long as you've got that discipline and the ability to pass through costs, cost increases that are passed on to us, which we do because we don't have fixed price contracts with our clients.
Right. Just final question. You obviously, you know, correctly probably, you know, built up your inventory and that's totally understandable. Is that a trend that you expect to continue in the second half in terms of, you know, inventory build or what we should be looking for for that number, you know, in the second half of the year?
Yeah, no, we don't think we'll repeat that. You know, obviously that was a period that was quite disrupted in our view. Whilst it's not fixed, I wouldn't say it's fixed, but we don't think the supply pressure is getting any worse. You know, we think we can trim it back a little bit, perhaps towards the end of the half. But certainly we wouldn't be expecting continued ongoing growth in our inventory levels, Eric.
Got it. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Steve.
Thanks.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, you may press star and one. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Jim Bindon for closing remarks.
Okay. Thanks, everyone. We'll let you go. Appreciate your time. My apologies earlier when the screen went black and I sounded a bit vague, but you know, Steve, thanks for stepping in, mate. Hopefully we can leave that with you there and the continued strength in the market. We'll enjoy that in the second half. Look forward to talking again soon.