Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Big River Industries Limited FY 2021 half-year results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. I must advise you that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Chief Executive Officer, Jim Bindon. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning for the update on our half-year results. I'm here with Steve Parks, our CFO of 13 years. He'll cover off the financial slides a little bit later as we get through the investor presentation document, which is what I'm going to work through this morning. I realize it's a busy reporting day. It's starting to get to the pointy end of the season. I'm sure you got plenty on. I'll try and keep this to about 30 minutes or so. We'll try and get through it quite quickly.
Guys, I'm just going to start on page three, which is just Big River today, just going through a little bit of really brief background for those who haven't seen the mix of our business before. As things stand, there's not really a lot of changes here from last time we reported. The main change would just be a slight increase in our exposure to building products in the top right-hand corner there under our various segments. As we've grown in that building products category, it's clicked up a percentage point or two.
Plywood and specialty just down one percentage point or two on the last data you would've seen. Look, the general mix of our business, pretty similar there. Exposure to southern region or Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, just down the bottom right of that slide continues to grow. Not only because we've had several acquisitions there, but the markets in South Australia and Western Australia, in particular, starting to come back after some quiet years.
Really I wanted to point you to the next slide four, which just shows you how the mix of our business changes after the Timberwood. TWP at the top, I should remind you, is Timberwood Panels, which is the acquisition we're due to complete in a month's time. It just shows you a little bit of how the changing mix of our business once we include those pro forma numbers. Building products drops from 56%- 46% of our revenue. That's heavily exposed to the residential market, which you may be aware. plywood and specialty, our highest margin category, jumps from 20% up to 34% with the addition of the Timberwood business.
A pleasing rebalance in a largely differentiated product category. Formwork supplies drops from about 24% - 20%, obviously, just purely from the dilutionary impact, but certainly that's been an area that's actually grown during the last six months, which I'll come to. The other key note on that slide, folks, is the southern region, just down the bottom right there, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia exposure increases to about 40% of group revenue there. Obviously, this business, Timberwood's quite strong in the south. Good exposure to ACT and New South Wales as well.
You'll see Queensland comes back from 30% - 27%. Queensland's been historically very strong for Big River. That's where the company started. Prior to this acquisition, at 30% of our revenue, you could say maybe a touch overweight in Queensland, but I think that balance is starting to feel right there and certainly just the client mix there. There'll be 8,000 active repeat trade accounts as part of the combined business once we complete the Timberwood deal. I won't go through all the different asset mixes there, but you can just see the mix.
Probably the only other point to note there on slide four is that our exposure to the remanufacturing sector or what's sometimes referred to as industrial markets, increases with the Timberwood exposure. That business is well exposed to a range of manufacturers who use a range of plywood and panel products in manufacturing process, so not directly linked to the construction cycle. Again, that's quite a useful diversity away from the pure construction trends, to be quite strongly linked to the general economy, let's say.
That's just a little bit on the changing mix of our business as at the end of March when Timberwood completes. We're just moving on to page five, folks there, which is just the headlines from the first half we've just gone through. You can see there revenue up about 6% to AUD 133 million, AUD 134 million. Pleasing lease, we've got organic growth for the first time in a couple of years. Obviously, the construction cycle, particularly residential, has been trending down for a couple of years.
That's been a bit of a headwind on our business. Like-for-like sales growth of 1%, obviously headline growth of 6%, including some acquisition contribution, but 1% organic growth. Again, particularly pleasing 7% like-for-like growth in the second quarter. It was really a story of two quarters. You recall for those who saw our AGM documentation after Q1, we were down sort of circa 4%-5% on revenue like for like in Q1. Obviously that turned around to 7% growth in the second quarter. Far at the end of January, we're tracking at a very similar level to Q2.
There's been a clear change in the trend in our view, the worms turned in that construction cycle that's trended down for a couple of years. That's pleasing. EBITDA, obviously we're now fully post AASB 16, given the comparison period system two. AUD 10 million for the half up around 15%, underlying net PAT up around 38% to AUD 3.1 million. Working capital and cash conversion, Steve will cover that off in more detail, but right within the board's range there.
Obviously we've got a slide on this, but obviously as a result of the announcement of us consolidating our manufacturing sites onto the one site as a result of the fires in southern New South Wales, there's a non-cash impairment on the Wagga Wagga assets of about AUD 9.4 million after tax. I've got some more detail on that later. That's obviously impacted our statutory results, but is clearly required given the change in manufacturing mix as part of that strategy. Just on the operating highlights, just running through a few of the points.
One trend that we've seen since we've listed in 2017, working hard on squeezing up our margin, our distribution level. It's grown every half year since we listed, up about another 54 basis points for the year, Sorry, for the half year. That was despite some pretty sharp product price increases and certainly material increases in international freight rates for the quite substantial volumes that we now import. That was a bit of a distinct headwind that's impacted the whole industry as well as ourselves, but we've still managed, I should say, to edge out a 54-point increase in our gross margin.
That's quite pleasing. Just grabbing a few highlights from a revenue perspective. The formwork segment, which the company's market leader in, grew 4% despite the fact that multi-res and the commercial segment is certainly quite soft still. Some good market share gains, and I think the strength of our supply chain, both local manufactured assets as well as importing out of both Europe and China, I think has put us in a very strong position, particularly when there's been some product shortages in the last six months.
That's what's really driven the revenue growth in the formwork sector, not so much the addressable market, in my view. It's been more about some of those positive initiatives around share. Obviously, manufacturing cost out, that will be a theme you've heard me talk about before for those who have been on other calls. As we wound back our exposure to commodity products in the manufacturing side of the business, focusing on higher value products.
We stripped another AUD 1.4 million of cash costs out of the manufacturing business in the first half, taking a total of around AUD 7 million since 2018 as we refined our manufacturing strategy, reduced output, and increased our import volume. I think that continues to be managed well, and that certainly helped to more than double our manufacturing profit contribution. That's a line that we've always identified in our P&L. Steve will run through that a little bit more later, but certainly a pleasing turnaround in the manufacturing business has been a real highlight of the first half.
Just quickly on a strategic perspective, here's a slide on the Timberwood acquisition. Yeah, I think that's a pleasing addition to the business that will be completed at the end of March, and the capital raise, which some of you will be aware of, was completed in December to fund that deal. The second, I guess, key strategic change is that consolidation of our manufacturing sites, which I referred to, and there was a AUD 150 million bushfire grant scheme, joint funded by the federal and state government.
Our company was successful in receiving AUD 10 million grant under that program to consolidate our sites. I've got a little bit more detail on that, but certainly quite a change in our business that whilst it can be viewed as negative in the short term, I think it creates some good long-term benefits for the company. The bridge system product, one of our highest margin products, really good growth during the year. We've expanded our product offer there to also include the full installation.
In some cases, our team of four people actually installed five bridges in five days, and those roads would have otherwise been closed for typically weeks, if not months, to install those bridges in situ. They were pre-manufactured in our factories and then installed on-site by our team. I think our offer in that space of regional bridge management is certainly improving every year, and it's added substantially to our bottom line in this half.
Our underlying EBITDA margin, something we've identified as one of our key financial goals, improving our EBITDA margin, which had dropped, certainly continued to improve in the first half, up another 60 basis points versus the same period last year. I think some pleasing results on the financial front as well as the strategy front there. Just moving on to slide six, folks, is just a little bit more color on some of those operational details I've touched on. Again, won't go through the headlines on revenue.
I've mentioned that, but just to break it down a little bit, it's always a mixed story, as is the case in construction all the time. We've got good solid sales growth, revenue growth in Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, and the ACT. Weaker results in New South Wales and Victoria. They were probably the two states most affected by the multi-res construction slowdown, where we've got a high share in that particular market segment, as well as some of the COVID restrictions that lingered a little bit longer in Victoria, in particular, compared to some of the other states.
Results out of New South Wales and Victoria are certainly not as strong as the other states. Certainly, overall, some good growth, as I mentioned on the introductory slide. New Zealand revenue is actually down a touch. They had a very strong half last year, just down a few percentage points there. Certainly, the businesses there have a significant exposure to commercial construction, things like airport, university, retail, and entertainment projects. As you'd be aware, CapEx into that segment was halted with breakneck speed during COVID.
Understandably, that's impacted some of those major commercial projects, but the business has done very well with diversifying into the other, certainly residential and civil, and there's still some commercial activity, of course. We're quite pleased with the result out of New Zealand, even though the headline revenue is down a touch. Formwork and building products, as I mentioned, good organic growth out of those segments again, which is pleasing, particularly on the strength of the civil market in formwork and also the renovations market in residential.
Whilst there's been lots of talk about residential and HomeBuilder schemes , most of that work in our experience has not started yet, and we'll obviously be the strength of the second half, and indeed all of calendar year 2021, but the improvement we saw in our building products category in the first half was probably largely about the renovations market, not the construction of new homes. Just that final point under the sales revenue slide there. Certainly a trend, a swing back towards locally made products. There's a couple of reasons for that.
Perhaps there was a small amount of Buy Australia sentiment, which comes in from time to time, but I think a larger impact was the substantial international shipping restrictions, restraints, whatever words you want to use, that certainly everyone has experienced as a result of some of the capacity being taken out of that international shipping and some other COVID-related port disruptions, etc . That's certainly impacted a lot of the imported products. We've seen good, strong growth for our locally manufactured products.
That's been a pleasing part of the first half result. As I mentioned earlier, certainly including our new bridge system range. There's some of our headlines or highlights on sales revenue. On the operations side of the business, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I think we've grown our share in formwork and we've grown our distribution gross margin despite some of those challenges around costs. We'll have to continue to watch those closely because there's certainly been some sharp increases in Q2 and at the beginning of Q3.
The manufacturing efficiencies, as I mentioned, even though we've trimmed back volumes again another 5% compared to the prior period, so just continuing to refine what products we make and focusing on the top end. Labor savings and energy savings are what drove that AUD 1.4 million cash cost reduction, which was pleasing. Yeah, that certainly helped get that profitability outcome. Certainly inventory's been tightly managed like many companies during this COVID period. Our overall inventory reduced by about AUD 1 million on the prior period on a like-for-like basis.
Yeah, there's been some pretty tight supply of raw materials and indeed some of the traded and imported products, as I've mentioned earlier. They're some things to watch, but certainly has helped the working capital picture in the first half. On the acquired businesses, a few things to note. Interesting, the frame and truss plants we've got in both Geelong and South Australia, and a smaller one in Western Australia. That product or that particular category for us has the single largest exposure to HomeB uilder.
Obviously, the frame and roofing trusses is the key structural products within detached housing. Our businesses in frame and truss have actually had quite a challenging first half. As I mentioned, some great numbers coming through on housing approvals, but that hasn't flowed through to housing starts yet. Those businesses have probably lagged the rest of our group in the first half, but they also have the strongest pipeline for the second half without a doubt. We've been doing materially larger amounts of quotes for our key HomeB uilders.
10 of our largest 20 customers in our project HomeB uilders and their pipeline of work and their requirements for design and takeoff work from our team has grown exponentially. That's certainly for us a very positive sign about what's to come. We've seen that early signs in January and February where those two businesses in particular, which are heavily exposed to project homes, have had good, strong sales growth versus the prior period.
That trend is starting to flow through as we would expect that usual four to six month lag time between approval and construction starts is proving to be on the money again. I think that usual lag time. New Zealand tracking solidly, as I said, and we expect a good, strong second half. This was the period last year where we had the 30-day lockdown in the second half in New Zealand. We'll be cycling against a slightly tougher period last year. We think there'll be some good results come through there. Formwork certainly continues to grow nicely through our acquired site.
That's a key part of our strategy when we acquire a new branch within our network, is to roll out our specialty formwork products and we continue to get really good penetration there, particularly Canberra, Gold Coast and Adelaide. Just quickly moving now, guys, to the slide seven. Just a couple of slides on some key strategy themes that have come up during the year, and particularly if you hadn't seen some of the capital raise documents which were in the market in November and December. Just a quick summary on the acquisition of Timberwood.
Look, it's a good scale business in our highest margin plywood and specialty segment. As I mentioned earlier, takes our exposure to over a third of our revenue in that category. That takes our business to over AUD 100 million of revenue in that particular market segment. Makes us one of the leading players in the Australian and New Zealand market. A really well-diversified paneled business with good exposure to commercial, industrial, residential markets.
I think it's a good balance for Big River's overall sector mix and certainly adds to that diversification story, which has been a strength of the company in my perspective. A diverse client base, the same as Big River. 1,500 trading accounts from that business. Really good diversity and certainly no single account that's wholly dominant or anything like that. That's the strategic reasoning from growth options and synergies. The Timberwood business operates sites in Canberra and then in Dandenong and the main manufacturing site in Campbellfield, as well as a joint venture in Adelaide.
Good opportunities for us to leverage other parts of the Big River network, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, where we've got assets, we've got infrastructure in place. Timberwood haven't. Obviously, good opportunities for us to use our existing sites to help expand our Timberwood business too. Good two-way product opportunities. Some key differentiator products in the Timberwood portfolio and in the Big River portfolio, with certainly lots of cross-selling opportunities to leverage our combined 8,000 clients with a greater product range.
That's pleasing. On the supply side, again, some good supply crossover between Big River, our New Zealand business, and the Timberwood business, where we should be able to extract improved purchasing arrangements and indeed some reduced working capital. I think there's good synergies on the supply side as well. The other thing that this creates for us, which is not something I've talked about much before in the past, is that it really starts to strengthen our differentiated product offer, which does open up the opportunity for greenfield expansion of the Big River network.
Not something we've looked at before, particularly in building products. We believe acquisition of longstanding businesses with very sticky building customers is the right strategy to expand. In this case, some really good differentiation between Big River and Timberwood, which does, I think, present a much better story to consider greenfield expansion. That's, in my view, a tool we haven't really had in the past, but it becomes now a genuine opportunity for us to consider that in the future strategy. From the financial side, look, it's a good solid business.
It's over AUD 50 million of revenue, AUD 6 million of EBITDA last year under the new language. Sales growth last year, despite the challenges of COVID and sales have grown in the first half again this year. Despite the business having a reasonable exposure to commercial construction, which is one of the weaker segments, the business continues to expand. Good EBITDA margins in excess of what Big River has. That will certainly help improve our overall financial metrics. Working capital of the business is very solid there.
As you can see, less than 20% working capital to sales ratio. Big River tracks about 17%-18%, it's very similar. The overall EPS accretion of the deal, which was detailed in the capital raise documents, around 17%. We think that makes really good financial sense, really good sense from a strategy perspective and from a diversity point of view. Yeah, it's a good deal and we're due to settle in a month's time. Just quickly on page eight, it's just a little bit more color on the manufacturing consolidation strategy.
Obviously, that is linked to the government funding, which I touched on earlier. Clearly, the fires in that region where we source our logs for the Wagga plant have stripped out about 40% of the long-term wood supply. Obviously, there's wood in the short term through until the end of this financial year for us, and certainly some ongoing logs, but the fact that there's been a major reduction in the overall pool certainly questions the sustainability of that site, which is why we've pushed for this consolidation strategy.
In Grafton where our other factory is, there is actually excess pine logs available. That's a bit quirky where there's a bit of a deficit across the whole of Australia. In that particular pocket, there is some excess pine, so it's a good basis of which to build a sustainable investment as our single site. We think that's particularly compelling. Good core competencies exist between the same sites who do the same thing, so we don't lose anything from a capability perspective. Obviously, the AUD 10 million we've received is important to execute the overall project.
That's funding that's much appreciated. The plants, as I've mentioned before, were both operating well below their nameplate capacity. We don't believe there's any loss of fundamental capacity to supply our market. We'll be doing some relatively minor capital investments compared to the scale of a plywood factory, and that will certainly well and truly satisfy the markets that we've got. Clearly, removing all the duplication of having two sites operating at 50% capacity is pretty compelling from a financial perspective.
That's the strategic reasoning. As for the group strategy, as I've mentioned, I don't see us losing anything with respect to that. We've moved to the high value products and reduced our exposure to commodity manufacturing for the last three years. That doesn't change. Grafton's a very differentiated site there with a range of log species available, which is where a lot of our focus is. Certainly, we don't lose any capability to produce anything, as I mentioned. Some new equipment will just increase efficiencies and the product range we can manufacture out of Grafton.
Again, that's pleasing investments to make to improve our long-term profitability. Some of the key assets out of Wagga will come up again, just to ensure that there's no competencies lost. Certainly, the enhanced capacity of our specialty product range, that's where most of the new investments are going to be and that's where the growth's come in the last years and that's where the profitability improvement, in particular in this financial year, has come. Makes sense, obviously.
Financially, as I mentioned, the first half results we've impaired predominantly the plant and equipment assets, which was to the tune of around AUD 9.4. There was a small allowance there in terms of the land and building and some remediation costs required, obviously to bring the site up to a saleable level. There was a small amount of that, but most of that write-down was in fixed assets. The impact on manufacturing in future periods, obviously whilst you've seen the impact on the statutory results this half, in future from both a profitability point of view and a cash flow point of view, it will be positive in the future.
Whilst there's still some cost to be incurred in the future months with respect to that project, obviously There'll be government income coming in as revenue to offset that. From both a P&L and a cash flow perspective, after this first half 2021, it'll be a positive impact on the financials until that project is completed. As we noted in the capital raise documents, around 20% EPS accretion at the end of that project is a good financial outcome for the group.
I might just pass over to Steve now just to run through the Q3 financial slides, and then I’ll just sum up at the end on the outlook. Thanks, Steve.
Yeah, thanks, Jim. Yep. Just looking at that next slide number nine. We've got the earnings summary. Headline revenue, as we've pointed out previously there, AUD 133.5 million for the half, up 5.9% on the previous period, with same store revenue growing at 1% within that. The EBITDA contribution from distribution was up 1.8%, helped by that increase in the gross margin. As you can see there, a good result out of manufacturing with EBITDA up 180% to AUD 1.9 million.
Thanks to that growth in the company's manufactured bridge systems, along with some improvements in some of the costs, with energy costs a bit lower and some good labor efficiencies there as well. Corporate costs were pretty steady with previous years, no big increases there. Basically, AUD 2 million compared to a similar number last year. That led to an overall increase in EBITDA of 16.6% to AUD 9.8 million after acquisition costs.
As Jim detailed there in relation to the government grant, that successful application for the AUD 10 million back in November, gonna see that site consolidation of the manufacturing down to one site in Grafton. I've just detailed there in the table below on that slide, just the components as to where that asset impairment comes from. We've got roughly AUD 1.2 out of the buildings and AUD 10.6 out of the plant and equipment. Some allowance for some site restoration costs and the like, obviously the tax credits on that as well.
Overall, that's that impairment of AUD 9.4 that we're looking down there. I guess just around that, after that's complete, there'll actually be a cash surplus in the order of around AUD 10 million, after allowing for that government grant utilization of that expected future tax benefit, some release of working capital, sale of the land and buildings Wagga Wagga, which we won't need anymore. Some of the closure costs or less of the closure costs and the capital investment that we're going to make in Grafton to improve that site. Netting around AUD 10 million +.
Once we've got that one-off impairment, there'll be some good cash generated and give us a good platform going forward as well. Just moving on to the next slide there on the balance sheet. Trade working capital for us, as always, is a strong focus. For this period that we've just gone through, 17.7% as a percentage of revenue, compared to 17.2% for FY 2020. As Jim's mentioned there, our range is around that sort of 17%-18%, so we're right in the mark there. Pleasing to see a strong improvement in the debtor days. We averaged 50 for the six months compared to 56 for all of FY 2020.
We've seen some good debtor payments coming through despite the whole COVID uncertainty that was around through probably the last 12 months or so. Fixed assets, you can see there dropped obviously with the impairment that we've got on there, but as I pointed out, there's some positive cash that comes with that in the future. The capital raise in December of AUD 13.8 to support the acquisition of Timberwood Panels that resulted in a quite low bank debt position for us at the half of only AUD 9.2, and a very low gearing of 10.5%.
That's only a temporary measure if you like. Obviously, that money is slated for part settlement of the Timberwood acquisition at the end of March. If you exclude those things, our gearing ratio there on a bank debt basis is closer to 26%. I just want to also point out there that in addition to that cash that will come through, we've actually had some approval from the company's banker to give us an increase of AUD 10 million in the company's acquisition facility to support some future growth. Those two things combined give us a little bit more in the kitty to support the company's growth.
Just moving on to the next slide there. The final one on the financials is the cash flow. Operating cash flow at a headline level was 77%, so pretty reasonable result there, but that also included about AUD 2.2 million worth of deferred payments from FY 2020, which were all allowed deferrals around the whole COVID and government support around that period of time. When you adjust for that, our actual operating cash flow before interest and tax was closer to 100%. In fact, it was just over 100% for the period, so really good result there.
Some of the other bigger items on there. We've got minimal CapEx for the first half. We do expect much more in the second half, just with some of the mobile plant and equipment and some of the projects that we've got slated for the second half, as well as some of the expansion that we're doing into Grafton that will come through in the period as well. I guess finally, just at the bottom there. We had some part of the capital raise coming through to support the acquisition of Timberwood Panels.
That was completed in December, the second part that was just approved at last week's EGM, which will raise another AUD 6 million for the company. That will be all ready to go. Lastly, just the interim dividend that we've determined there of AUD 0.026 per share. That's got a record date there of 18th of March, with a payment date of 21st April. We've got the DRP applying to that at a 2.5% discount. That's, I guess, the key financial things there, Jim.
All right. Thanks, Steve. Just finally, guys, we've gone a touch over time, but I'll try and scoot through the outlook. Look, the broad summary on the outlook is we see the second half being largely similar to the first half, with the exception of some improvement in detached housing construction. Those approvals, which spiked, particularly in Q2, have clearly got to come through and be built now. That's certainly a positive tailwind for the second half. The rest of the market, we expect to be largely unchanged.
You may have seen some of the data, obviously there's been approvals and hence expected starts in detached housing of around 130,000 starts for the calendar year 2021. Whilst that's up a fair bit, it's only up at about where the market peaked in 2017. It's still a touch below that. I don't think it's an excessive spike. Certainly, when you look at the multi-res as well, there was only in the area of 185,000 starts approved in the calendar year 2020, which is still 20% below the peak of the residential cycle, which was around 2017.
I'm certainly not in the gang that subscribe to a residential oversupply or anything like that. I don't think those numbers support that. It certainly does give us good tailwind for the 2021 calendar year. Yes, commercial and multi-res continue to be the softest, but of course, there's projects being tendered and there's considerable projects under construction. Many of those last several years, as you may be aware. I've just listed a couple of the projects that are already up and going.
The Queen's Wharf project in Brisbane is obviously a very large project, as is the Star Casino, the Gold Coast, and city and the Melbourne Quarter in Melbourne, and hospitals in four states, all under construction, which is good business within that commercial segment. Civil remains strong, particularly in Sydney, the Metro Rail System is really getting going, multiple sites, eight, nine, 10 different stations there where there's a significant amount of formwork attached to those. The Melbourne Tunnel.
There's some bypass work being done in the Illawarra and some civil work in Perth on both road systems. We've been supplying to one of the Fortescue construction of their new mine. Some good civil projects there as well in the pipeline, as they've been for some years, by the way. On the strategy side, I've already talked about Timberwood. The three months that they'll contribute to the second half, that effectively adds 10% to our second half revenue on a sort of a usual run rate basis.
The consolidation project, we'll be working through all of that, obviously in the second half, and planning that as we step down production at Wagga and step up production at Grafton. As has been the case since we listed, plenty of other acquisitions that we're considering and we're looking at. Kind of that's normal. There's been some increased sign of vendors considering selling as a result of COVID. I think I mentioned that on the last call. Certainly, we've seen that happen.
I don't think there's any stressed sellers out there yet. I don't think the drop in the market clearly happened as everyone expected, so I don't believe there's stressed sellers out there. I think plenty of people have reassessed their future, and we're following up on a range of those leads. Scale advantages, which is a key part as we've grown from a very small public company. Clearly, we're getting those benefits, with respect to a dilution of our corporate cost expansion and margin, and just growth in the revenue of the business.
I think that strategy is rolling on, and I'm pleased with the progress there. Then financially, obviously, when you include the other sales growth, we expect the second half sales to be circa 15% above the prior period. Look, there's some disruption to manufacturing profit as we get close to that exiting of the mainstream back-end manufacturing at Wagga Wagga. We'd expect that to start to impact efficiencies in the second half. Gross margin, as I've mentioned, is under some pressure there. There is some sharp price increases.
Obviously, we need to ensure we get those through to the market. Certainly, in broad terms, we expect the EBITDA to be in line with the first half. No material change in the market conditions is our summary. Finally, I won't go through the appendix slide, but that just gives you a bit of reference across a series of periods for those who want to spend the time to study it. I might just pull up there. That's 35 minutes, folks. I appreciate your attention, and perhaps we open up for some questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and with your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel the request, please press the pound or hash key. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one
All right. Well, we might leave it there, folks, if there's no questions.
We got one question, and your first question comes from Mark Skocic from Kinetic. Please ask your question.
Hi, Jim. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Mark. Loud and clear. Hi.
Oh, good man. Yeah, good result. Well done. You just mentioned on the call a few moments ago, considering doing organic expansions post the Timberwood acquisition. Can you just sort of explain or just put some color around what the thinking actually is there and why the Timberwood acquisition was actually quite important for a bit of a change of heart, I guess?
I think the key thing is that the product range offered through Timberwood, in particular, is quite differentiated. It is a specialty offer. That business has been very successful in growing via organic greenfield sites because there is quite a niche product offer there. You're not competing against a whole range of similar players with exactly the same offer. When you combine some of the specialty side of Big River, which is a couple of the key formwork products and some of our architectural plywoods and specialty industrial plywoods.
I think we've now got a portfolio there, Mark, that really does start to justify smaller greenfield expansions to sort of tap into those more specialty segments within construction. Obviously, the general building products, which has been the majority of our acquisitions so far, that is, we would buy from the same suppliers, and there's hundreds, if not thousands of players around Australia play in that space. I think greenfield's very challenging there because we buy the same products from the same suppliers.
S cale helps, but our experience is customers are very sticky to their existing local traders. In this case, with a real specialty product offer, Mark, I think it really does open the door for some specialty panels outlets that leverage the best of our collective product range.
Yeah. Right. Okay, no drama. You mentioned on the call as well about higher freight costs. Another company we listened to recently was talking about almost tripling of freight rates. Are you seeing increases of that magnitude? I thought it was quite high.
Absolutely. In fact, I don't want to scare you with some of the peaks, but certainly in some cases it was more like four or even five times the historic rates, Mark. We've got a significant amount locked in at some base rates, but then obviously paying some spot market rates for other containers. That's certainly been a challenge. Absolutely no doubt it, tripling, I'd say of recent times, if it's only tripled, you've done quite well. Starting to trend back down, Mark, so it's probably past the worst of it, and we're starting to see rates come back down, but it probably spiked. It was at its worst in December and January.
I presume you just have to absorb that. You can't pass that on. Is that right?
Yeah, that's true. I mean, the only flip side to that, which has been a slight positive, Mark, is obviously the Australian dollar strengthened at the same time, largely so. That's at least been able to, in part, offset those increases in the freight component of the product.
Right. Cool. All right. That's good. Thanks, Jim. Well done.
Okay.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. The next question comes from private investor John Lorente.
Steve, yeah, good result. Probably question to Steve, the CFO. Regarding placements and capital raising, like in the future, I'd like to sort of get a message across that I'd like retail investors to also be included in some of the capital raises, if that's possible. What sort of limitations are there? I mean, for example, a share purchase plan would be a reasonable way of offering retail investors the ability to get in on some of the capital raise. Is that a possibility?
I think that's a fair point, we have done that in the past, when we had a little bit more time up our sleeve to get that all organized, if you like. We did actually do that for a previous capital raise and certainly would consider that for the future as well.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, just that, yeah, sometimes, we don't quite qualify for these type of placements, etc . Although we vote them in in the end, we don't feel that we get to participate. I know sometimes time is of the essence, but a share purchase plan certainly would be helpful. Even if it was a limited one at an AUD 15,000 limit or something like that, or scaling it back or something like that if you had to. All right. Thanks.
Yep. Yep. I appreciate that.
Certainly in the case of New Zealand, as Steve mentioned, we did do it to be honest, that there was a pretty small uptake, so the extra cost, time, and paperwork was probably, and our lack of time for the Timberwood one is what determined us not to do an SPP. Certainly, really that's what we'd like to do. Hopefully, as we broaden the register and get more interest in the company, then obviously it'll be a good tool to use in the future. Unfortunately, last time we did do that, there was a very small uptake.
That was why the board opted not to do it with respect to the Timberwood one. All your points are valid, sir. We appreciate that.
Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to the management. Please continue.
All right. Well, we might leave it there, ladies and gentlemen. That's the end of the presentation. We appreciate your feedback and questions, and I look forward to chatting again in six months' time. Okay, thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.