Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Cleanaway FY 2024 full year results. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Schubert, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Cleanaway's financial results briefing for the FY 2024 financial year. My name is Mark Schubert, and I'm joined by Paul Binfield, our CFO, and Josie Ashton, Head of Investor Relations. Moving to Slide 3 . Firstly, I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the many lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. The plan this morning is I'll take you through our highlights for the period and the good progress that we've been making. Then Paul will provide you with further details on the group financials. After which, I will walk you through the performance of each of our operating segments and the outlook for FY 2025. I'm gonna take the disclaimer as read, and so please turn to Slide 5.
On behalf of the entire Cleanaway team, I am pleased to report that FY 2024 was a year of execution and progress. We delivered another year of double-digit EBIT growth, we improved returns to shareholders, and we beat our FY 2024 guidance. These results highlight the underlying strength and scale of our business and the increased operational resilience delivered through the execution of our Blueprint 2030 strategy. During 2024 , we delivered on our restoration plans with Queensland recovery completed and the business growing again, and our Health Services business has been transformed with both reduced cost and increased capacity, and the business on track to deliver its targeted FY 2025 earnings. We can see labor productivity benefits flowing through to our financials from reduced vacancies and lower turnover.
Our focus on operational excellence initiatives are gaining momentum as they shift from being plans and pilot programs to scaled ways of working, codified in our branch-led operating model. Our strategic infrastructure growth projects that are expected to deliver AUD 50 million EBIT in FY 2026 are on track, and we are progressing a number of opportunities that will deliver beyond FY 2026. Our progress over the past 12 months, coupled with momentum we've gained in executing our Blueprint 2030 strategy, gives us confidence in our ability to continue delivering results. In FY 2025, we expect EBIT to be in the range of AUD 395 million-AUD 425 million, and in doing so, we'll deliver shareholders another year of double-digit earnings growth and improving returns.
From there, we see a clear runway to our midterm ambition of more than AUD 450 million EBIT in FY 2026. Importantly, the growth we are delivering now and into the future is the result of our efforts to build a safer, more empowered, data-enabled, and branch-led organization that will underpin a sustainable future for the group. Turning now to the financials. We have delivered a strong financial performance and improved returns to shareholders. Underlying EBIT grew at a record rate of 18.9% to AUD 359.2 million, which was ahead of guidance. This was driven by the completed recovery of the Queensland Solids, the transformation of Health Services, and a solid underlying performance across the group, particularly in New South Wales, ACT Solids business. CDS and LTS also delivered strong financial results for the year.
Through the execution of our Blueprint 2030 operational excellence initiatives and disciplined price management, we increased our EBIT margin by 100 basis points to 11.2%. Net operating cash flow was up 12.5% versus FY 2023, reflecting growth in EBITDA and lower cash outflows as costs associated with the New Chum rectification were lower this year. Net profit after tax was up 14.8%, and our return on invested capital was up 60 basis points to 5.5%. Earnings per share grew 15.2% to AUD 0.076 per share, and directors have declared a $0.0255 per share final dividend, which will be fully franked. Moving now to safety and people on Slide 7.
Before I talk about what is on these slides, I do want to pause and acknowledge a tragic accident that occurred earlier this month involving one of our muni collection vehicles, where sadly, a member of the public passed away. Any loss of life is heartbreaking, and on behalf of the entire Cleanaway team, I offer my deepest sympathy to this person's family and friends. I would also like to thank those involved on the day responding to the accident. We are taking all steps to learn from this tragic event. At the beginning of FY 2024, we set out a five-year roadmap to drive improvements in our HSE performance and culture. Our roadmap is multifaceted, with a focus on risk prevention, capability building, and cultural transformation.
During FY 2024, we made significant progress on the plan, and in particular, in relation to how we manage our critical risks and critical controls. In FY 2024, we further strengthened both our controls and our assurance. We also benchmarked ourselves against comparable and available international and domestic peers in the waste and logistics industries. We found that our TRIFR, which has ranged between 3.6- 4.6 over the last five years, was among best in class when compared with our peer group. This led us to add serious injury frequency rate, or as we call it, SIFR, to our short-term incentive measures. Adding this metric aligns with evolving industrial best practice and helps us measure our progress in addressing critical risks and controls, while maintaining the focus on recordable injuries.
A key highlight of the result is the progress that we have made in relation to our team. Our recruitment processes have improved, and we've seen a significant improvement in voluntary turnover, which averaged 17.6%, down from 21.5% in FY 2023. Our vacancy levels have also continued to reduce and are currently below our historical averages. We continue to closely track first-year voluntary turnover, which is reducing, with the aim to get it down below 30% by the end of FY 2025. Female representation and female voluntary turnover also improved during the year, driven by direct initiatives to attract and retain female employees, as well as build a culture of respect, ownership, and connection. In the first half of FY 2024, we rolled out our mandatory Respect at Cleanaway training for all employees.
We followed this in the second half with the rollout of our five guiding principles. These principles, which build on each other, serve as a roadmap for creating a workplace where everyone feels safe, respected, and empowered to contribute their best every day and deliver outstanding results. As announced at the first half result, we introduced our Mission 500 Incentive Plan, targeting our 567 frontline leaders who don't receive LTI to align them to our stretch target of AUD 500 million of EBIT in FY 2026. Every month, we connect this group of leaders. We walk through how we are going, we share success, we ask for help, and we align around what happens next. Moving now to the environment. Every day, as our purpose states, we are making a sustainable future possible together.
In a world increasingly focused on sustainable solutions, we are well-placed not only to make our own future sustainable, but our customers as well. Pleasingly, we had no significant environmental incidents in FY 2024 , and we reduced the risk and severity of major fires through our efforts and investment in fire detection and suppression. We also reduced our methane emissions and remain on track to meet our one and a half degrees Paris aligned targets. We continue to seek out opportunities to accelerate the reduction of our own and our customers' emissions. We are particularly excited about the successful on-road demonstration of HVO100, a renewable diesel, which in our case is made from used cooking oil and has 91% lower greenhouse gas emissions than mineral diesel. As Australia's largest waste network, we play a critical role in driving large-scale circular solutions.
Over the past 12 months, we've expanded our resource recovery capacity with the launch of the CDS operations. We also commissioned two joint venture plants in Melbourne, which combined, will have the ability to process over 2 billion PET bottles, three hundred million HDPE milk bottles, and 200 million polypropylene ice cream tubs each year. We're also meeting the growing demand for FOGO through the accelerated transition of Eastern Creek Organics, the renamed GRL. During FY 2024, we also partnered with Viva Energy to explore an at-scale solution for advanced recycling of soft plastics. Our scale enables us to make a significant impact on addressing Australia's waste and sustainability challenges, creating a portfolio of circular infrastructure that we can integrate together for customers and help them solve their waste and sustainability challenges. I'll now pass over to Paul for the financials.
Thank you, Mark. So starting with the group PNL, when less specified, all the comparisons I'll make will be against the prior corresponding period or PCP. So net revenue of AUD 3.2 billion was 7.7% higher, with higher revenue across all segments, primarily driven by contractual price increases and underlying organic growth. Underlying EBIT of AUD 359.2 million was 18.9%, or AUD 57 million higher. FY 2024 is the second consecutive year in a row of EBIT growth in the high teens. This year, EBIT growth was driven by the restoration of Queensland Solids, the transformation of Health Services, and strong growth in the New South Wales Solids and Liquids businesses. 100 basis point expansion in EBIT margin to 11.2% was the primary driver of the increased profitability.
And throughout this presentation, you'll hear more on the benefits of our operational excellence initiatives, which are increasingly evident in our results. Net finance costs increased by AUD 19.6 million to AUD 115.7 million from higher interest rates and marginally higher average net debt. The strong EBIT growth largely dropped through to NPAT and EPS, which grew by 14.8% and 15.2% respectively. Currently, our underlying NPAT is AUD 170.6 million, AUD 12.4 million higher than the statutory NPAT of AUD 158.2 million, primarily due to the SaaS accounting software costs incurred as part of the Customer Connect project. The group remains comfortably with its banking covenants and has a leverage ratio of 1.89 times at year-end, in line with the prior year.
It was also good to see the return on invested capital increase by 60 basis points to 5.5%. Turning now to operating cash flow, which was AUD 542.1 million, up AUD 60.3 million, up by AUD 60.3 million from the prior period, and with a cash flow conversion ratio of 97.6% remaining strong. Adjusting for the cash flows associated with the underlying adjustments, net operating cash flow would have been AUD 592.8 million, an increase of AUD 22.5 million. The strong net operating cash flow performance was driven by higher EBITDA and lower cash flow associated with underlying adjustments, partially offset by higher interest payments. In FY 2025, the net cash outflow associated with underlying adjustments will be lower by approximately AUD 10 million.
This net improvement is the aggregate position of costs associated with the continuation of the Customer Connect transformation program and the last of the New Chum rectification costs, which we partly offset by further insurance recoveries. Management of working capital continues to be a real priority in the group, and with the exception of the construction sector, where we have a minimal exposure, the quality of our receivables book is excellent. As Mark said, directors declared a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.0255 per share, taking the full year dividend to AUD 0.05 a share. The Commonwealth Government Instant Asset Write-Off program finished, and hence, Cleanaway will resume paying income tax. Tax payments during FY 2025 are estimated at AUD 120 million. That's approximately AUD 95 million related to FY 2024, and about AUD 25 million related to installments for 2025.
So as a consequence, for the foreseeable future, we expect dividends will be fully franked. CapEx for the year of AUD 446 million finished within the top end of our AUD 430 million to AUD 450 million guidance range, with approximately one-third of the total, or AUD 161 million, being growth CapEx. During the year, we've made investments in several key strategic infrastructure projects, and these include the construction of the Western Sydney MRF, which remains on budget and on time, with commissioning expected in October and first waste in November. It's expected to start positively contributing to earnings in FY 2026 as volumes steadily ramp up. The completion of the rollout of the Victorian CDS network was again on time and on budget, the scheme becoming operational from the first of November 2023.
Its contribution in FY 2024 was minimal but is expected to ramp up over FY 2025. We recognize the importance of cap allocation driving accretive returns, and we're always looking to strengthen our processes. So EBIT, rather than EBITDA, is used in our key performance metrics right the way through to branch managers, as it better aligns remuneration with returns on capital. We lifted our hurdle rates during the year, thereby making the capital approval process that much more demanding. We've started looking at the allocation of capital over multiple time horizons, and now we have tools and data analytics that help to optimize our spend, particularly in relation to fleet. We're committed to a disciplined, returns-focused approach to capital allocation. In our, in our current context of having more opportunities and organizational capacity, this sharpens our focus on selecting the growth opportunities with the highest returns.
We expect CapEx for FY 2025 to be approximately AUD 400 million, and this comprises approximately AUD 250 million of maintenance CapEx and AUD 150 million for growth CapEx. We expect our D&A 2025 to... Sorry, for 2025, to be in the range of AUD 380 million-AUD 400 million. With that, I'll hand you back to Mark, who will take you through the statements.
All right, moving on to Solid Waste Services on Slide 14. Net revenue increased 6.3% to AUD 2.2 billion, and underlying EBIT increased 18.3% to AUD 329 million. But most pleasing was the EBIT margin increase of 150 basis points to 14.8%. Net revenue growth was predominantly driven by price increases in the collections business, with support from volume growth in the CDS and Organics operations. Disciplined price increases and contractual price mechanisms more than recovered higher labor and fuel costs. However, the benefit of price increases was tempered by higher fleet repair and maintenance costs and the general inflationary environment. The improvement in voluntary turnover and reduced vacancies resulted in a reduction in subcontractor hours and supported an improvement in labor productivity metrics.
Underlying EBIT growth was driven by the restoration of the Queensland business, strong performance in New South Wales, ACT, and the realization of operational efficiency benefits throughout the network. However, this growth was moderated, firstly, by lower landfill volumes, resulting in a moderately lower EBIT contribution from this business line, and secondly, a weaker contribution from the construction and demolition sector, given ongoing market challenges.
The contribution from commodities and carbon was up year-on-year, predominantly because of the OCC price trending steadily higher over the period. EBIT margin expansion of 150 basis points is indicative of the benefits of operational excellence flowing through to the bottom line. The C&I business represents approximately a third of solid segment revenue. C&I revenue increased by 7.1%, with 6% of the variation attributable to price, more than outpacing inflationary pressures and volume contributing to the remaining 1%.
We have been highly strategic with our price increases this year, and have leveraged our data analytics capability to implement differential pricing across our customer base. As a result, our customer churn has been lower than it was this time last year. Furthermore, it also meant that we targeted large uprates for those customers that were least profitable and hence cut the tail and reduced volume. We move to Slide 15. Landfill EBIT declined by 2.4% year-on-year, as our teams focused on maximizing returns at each location by focusing on price, on mix, on compaction, and operational efficiency. This largely offset volumes being down 8.7% for the period. Now, each of our landfills have unique and regionally driven market dynamics. In Melbourne, MRL continued to operate in a particularly competitive market, resulting in lower volumes for the period.
The MRL team focused on extending waste codes to capture higher margin waste streams and operational improvements to maximize returns. Tempering these operational improvements has been the increasing cost of soils for cover, which impacted margins. We have installed a performance improvement focus on MRL, similar to what we used to reset the health business and the Queensland Solids business over the last year.
Lucas Heights and Kemps Creek, our two landfills within the Sydney Basin, were able to balance price and volume, resulting in profitability per cubic meter improving year-on-year. By remaining focused on maximizing returns, we ultimately benefit from a cash flow perspective, since we consume the airspace more slowly and hence have lower CapEx in future years, since we push out the timeline for developing new cells. The CDS business continues to grow.
Strong volume growth was driven by the expansion of the Queensland program to include wine and spirit bottles, and CDS EBIT was up year-on-year, even though it included the ramp-up costs of the Victorian CDS. Organics EBIT was up year-on-year, driven by New South Wales through better leveraging of the organics network. New South Wales FOGO market is expected to continue growing as a result of the state's policy to drive landfill diversion. And as mentioned earlier, we are accelerating the transition of our ECO site to FOGO processing to meet this demand. Moving to Slide 16, the Liquid Waste and Health Services segment revenue increased 13.3% to AUD 691.7 million, as underlying EBIT increased 38.7% to AUD 67.7 million, and underlying EBIT margin expanded 180 basis points to 9.8%.
The LTS business delivered revenue growth of 16% and EBIT growth of 35.4% when compared with the prior year. During FY 2024, the team delivered a number of large scale, complex projects safely and on time, including the remediation of a large mining site, as well as a number of hazardous soil projects. LTS's technical expertise and innovative solutions are increasingly being sought after over cheaper and potentially less environmentally friendly options, and during the year, we saw reputation as a contributing factor in securing an extension on a national product stewardship project and being appointed onto two statewide household community contracts. LTS continues to build capability to provide treatment pathways for hard-to-treat waste, including commissioning a PFAS wash water plant in Victoria. Similarly, the LTS team has integrated the Scanline used cooking oil business, positioning it alongside our grease trap business and readying it for growth.
Health services revenue grew by 14.1% in FY 2024. EBIT was significantly ahead of last year, as the transformation program turned this business from being loss-making in FY 2023 to being on track to complete its profitability restoration program. In FY 2025, health is expected to deliver approximately AUD 15 million in EBIT. Our health business is unrecognizable from a few years ago, and has been transformed in terms of a lower cost base and increased capacity. The comprehensive business transformation program, which used routines, value drivers, and data-driven tools to our branch optimization program, has driven EBIT margin expansion across all aspects of the value chain. Moving to Hydrocarbons, where revenue grew 2.9%, but with EBIT up 8.6%. This reflected increased deployment of parts washers to its growing customer base.
EBIT margin also benefited from improved pricing discipline and a focus on selling a higher grade of re-refined base oil. As well as improving customer service and margins, our Hydrocarbons business is incredibly well-positioned to capture the exciting opportunities presented by the evolving low carbon, high circularity lubes and fuel oil market. Moving to Industrial and Waste Services, IWS, where revenue increased 7.7% to AUD 404.6 million. EBIT was AUD 26.5 million, in line with FY 2023, and the EBIT margin declined 60 basis points to 6.5%. Revenue growth in the first half was strong. It was supported by price increases, volume growth, and the start of the multi-year national Santos service contract. In the second half, softer market conditions led to customers deferring or canceling projects.
This impacted IWS's financial performance due to operating leverage, where profitability is optimized when there is a high utilization of assets and staff. The second half was also impacted by the announcement of the upcoming closure of the Alcoa Kwinana site and the progressive scaling down of activity at that location. Given the current market softness, we've taken the opportunity to further align and streamline the business to future opportunities. We have restructured and simplified our East Coast IWS operations to directly support large-scale customers and contracts, while pooling our assets and resources centrally to efficiently and programmatically be able to support these customers' turnarounds and project work. The opposite is happening on the West Coast, where growth in recent years and an attractive outlook have led us to realign our Western Australian operations so that we can focus on key customer segments and continue to grow in that way.
Over the last two years, IWS has successfully rebalanced its customer book to focus on larger Tier One oil and gas, and mining customers who value our systems and our capabilities. With the evident point of this rebalancing being that we have doubled our oil and gas revenue over the period. This is important because building our reputation with these customers is an important first step in securing a foothold in the decommissioning and remediation services market, which we see as an attractive long-term growth sector. Moving to Blueprint 2030 growth strategy. By now, you will be familiar with our value creation staircase, which captures our Blueprint 2030 strategic pillars combined to deliver shareholder value. The way you read the slide is we start on the left with the footprints of our prized infrastructure assets and our people, which, given our scale, grows as the economy grows.
We then apply operational excellence initiatives to continuously improve our three hundred and thirty branches, including programs such as branch optimization and fleet transformation. Then, in addition to improving how we operate, we use the stronger cash flow that this generates to add value accreted infrastructure. Recent examples here would include developing FOGO processing solutions for the Sydney market through transitioning ECO to FOGO, or our new Western Sydney MRF, or our new IWS contracts. We then integrate our infrastructure together to provide our customers with high circularity, low carbon solutions in the form of scale, end-to-end customer solutions across multiple waste streams, with great customer service at a value for money price. We think that when that's done well, it'll be hard to replicate and will support market share growth in an increasingly sustainability-focused economy.
While today we've talked about our staircase as a series of steps we are taking to achieve our midterm ambition, we see this as an iterative and ongoing process that repeats itself and becomes an ongoing value creation staircase, delivering sustained growth over time, well beyond the midterm ambition of greater than AUD 450 million in FY 2026. Let's move to Slide 21, which provides an overview of the initiatives that are driving our ability to achieve double-digit EBIT growth this year, next year, and again in FY 2026. Starting at the top of the slide, with restoration. We have delivered approximately two-thirds of the expected AUD 50 million forecast to be realized from these activities, with the final third to be delivered in FY 2025. The operational efficiency bucket are those initiatives focused on helping the business work smarter.
By successfully executing these initiatives, we see the potential to exceed our AUD 50 million estimate and take our FY 2026 EBIT beyond AUD 450 million. Along the bottom of the slide in bright blue are our strategic infrastructure growth projects, for which the capital has been deployed, and they are on track to contribute the forecast AUD 50 million in FY 2026. As you will have heard me say before, our EBIT results are the sum of the combined efforts of our 330+ branches and our more than 7,790-strong team spread right across Australia. The branch optimization program is a key part of our improvement journey, bringing together three elements. Firstly, the performance improvement of underperforming branches through high-intensity improvement plans, SWAT teams, and lean. Secondly, creating high-intensity alignment, routines, and ownership through our branch-led operating model.
Finally, by unlocking the power of working smarter through programs such as fleet transformation. Together, these three elements will create not only a significant performance improvement but importantly, build a strong platform for future continuous improvement and a growth that lives on long after we've delivered on our midterm ambitions. In FY 2024, our solids business delivered a 150 basis point increase in EBIT margin. A sizable portion of this expansion came from New South Wales, ACT, and Queensland Solids, adopting various elements of the branch optimization program. A good example of the opportunity through our branch optimization program is the doubling of EBIT margin between FY 2023 and FY 2024 at a large regional New South Wales branch through the use of SWAT teams. Now, importantly, this isn't a SWAT team takeover.
It's the SWAT team having the time to help unpack what's going on at the branch and then equip the local leaders and team with the tools, the processes, and the operating cadence to turn their own performance around. Another example is the 200% improvement in Queensland Solids EBIT, which is a testament to the commitment and effort of the team. Embracing the data-enabled tools such as labor dashboards and route optimization, the team improved their service levels, which then enabled price increases. They were also amongst the first to adopt our branch-led operating model. Today, across the Queensland Solids network, visual management boards and a daily meeting are business as usual, and they're in the process of adding all hands monthly meetings into their operating cadence.
One of the key strengths of our Blueprint 2030-led strategy is our recognition that for it to succeed, branches must be enabled to make decisions while being supported with the necessary standardization of tools, resources, routines, and capabilities to do so effectively. This is where our centrally led programs come in. When I spoke about branch optimization earlier, I mentioned the layering in of centrally developed branch-led programs. As some of you might have seen, we detailed the fleet transformation initiative back in May. But to recap, our goal is to optimize running and capital costs and maximize returns by implementing a data-enabled multi-year strategy that will transform every aspect of fleet management. This includes evaluating the use of third-party providers versus owning vehicles, exploring new in-cab technologies, centralizing fleet lifecycle management, and incentivizing asset pooling when vehicles are not fully utilized.
We expect this strategy to deliver significant benefits through and beyond FY 2026. We're also at the halfway point of our four-year, AUD 100 million business transformation program, Customer Connect. Through this project, we're upgrading our infrastructure and digitizing our call to cash process, thereby creating a foundation for our advanced analytics and AI initiatives, as well as creating a better experience for our customers and our customer-facing teams. During the second half of FY 2024, we completed the first of two releases of Customer Connect on time and on budget. Customer Connect is due to be completed by the end of FY 2026 and expected to deliver more than AUD 5 million in EBIT in FY 2026, and more than double that in FY 2027. Turning to the strategic infrastructure pillar.
Even though projects on the slide have already been mentioned this morning, we've brought them together here as they are the foundation for this pillar to deliver around AUD 50 million by FY 2026. I do want to highlight a few points. With the opening of Vic CDS last November, our CDS vertical, in partnership with Tomra, has cemented our position as the leading CDS operator in Australia. The transition of our ECO site in Western Sydney from diverting red bin waste to also be able to process FOGO, will be completed in FY 2025. Investing in our ECO site not only increases our exposure to the growing New South Wales FOGO waste stream, it will also increase the site's capacity by approximately 35%, underpinning growth from this site for a number of years to come.
I'm looking forward to our Western Sydney MRF starting commissioning in October this year. We have used the learnings from all our other MRFs to design this one. And given the lack of MRF capacity in Greater Sydney, we expect it to start filling in FY 2026. And as you know, we've completed the first year of our National Santos contract and continue to see opportunities in the sector. Finally, before I move on to our scorecard and outlook, I'd like to provide an update on the strategic infrastructure projects that, while not contributing to our FY 2026 midterm goals, are poised to deliver significant value creation for shareholders in the years beyond. In June 2024, we announced our agreement to acquire Citywide Service Solutions' waste and recycling business for AUD 110 million.
Pending necessary approvals, including from the ACCC, Cleanaway will acquire Citywide's Muni and C&I collections business and enter a 35-year lease for the Dynon Road Transfer Station, which currently sends approximately 90% of its volume to MRL. As part of the purchase agreement, we will undertake a AUD 35 million redevelopment of the transfer station, with the City of Melbourne contributing an additional AUD 10 million. Once complete, the new site will have nearly double its current capacity, enabling future earnings growth and supporting volume expansion in our post-collection infrastructure. Moving our focus to Sydney, where we are progressing our Lucas Heights landfill extension plan.
As the only addressable landfill in Greater Sydney, and at current annual volumes, Lucas Heights airspace will be largely depleted in the early 2030s. To address this projected shortfall in airspace within the Sydney Basin, we are proposing an extension to the current landfill footprint, which would increase its operational life by an additional eight to ten years. Our scoping report was recently submitted to the New South Wales Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. Capital expansion expenditure isn't projected for several years, as the planning and approval process will be synchronized with the projected consumption of existing capacity at the site. And lastly, on energy from waste, we are progressing our role as an originator of energy from waste plants as we leverage our ability to de-risk these projects.
In FY 2024, we continued with our capital-light approach, continuing with the long lead time work required to complete the elements that must come together before reaching a plant's FID decision, which for any of the projects we are assessing, is at least we think, two years away. Our capital investment to date has been relatively modest, and we remain committed to only deploy capital with a clear path to an appropriate rate of return. Moving to the scorecard, which we launched in August last year alongside our midterm ambition. We have talked about most of the items on the scorecard already, and so I'm not going to go over them again now.
The key takeaway from this slide is that our must achieves, which are listed on the top half of the slide, are on track, with one yellow being labor productivity, which we debated the color of, but decided to show as yellow. We expect it to turn green during FY 2025, as lower turnover, particularly first-year turnover and lower vacancies, further translates into improved productivity. We are going after the financials in the right way, with our foundations largely on track. We marked safety as yellow because we want to see the lagging indicators of TRIFR and our new metric, SIFR, follow the strong progress we're making on our five-year plan. And finally, looking at the right-hand side of the scorecard, we're on track to deliver our midterm ambition of greater than AUD 450 million EBIT in FY 2026, while steadily improving ROIC.
That brings me to our final slide this morning, which is the outlook. We are pleased to have delivered what we said we would in FY 2024, and with the momentum of the business into FY 2025, we remain on track for our midterm ambition. In terms of guidance for FY 2025, we expect EBIT to be between AUD 395 million and AUD 425 million. D&A is expected to be between AUD 380 million and AUD 400 million, and net interest expense, approximately AUD 130 million, assuming current cash rates. As noted by Paul, total CapEx for the year is expected to be approximately AUD 400 million.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our more than 7,900-strong Cleanaway team, who together, every day, serve our customers and communities around Australia. FY 2024 was about execution, it was about progress, and it was about delivering another year of double-digit growth and improving returns to shareholders. Equally important, it was about doing what we said we would do. Our FY 2024 results demonstrate the underlying strength and scale of our business, the increasing resilience and value creation being delivered through the year on the execution of our Blueprint 2030 strategy. I'm now gonna open it up for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type your question into the Ask a Question box. Your first question comes from Jakob Cakarnis with Jarden Australia.
Hey, Jakob.
Morning, Mark. Morning, Paul.
Hi, Jake.
If I can just start on the solid waste business, please. It looks as though EBITDA margins in the second half, off a net revenue basis, were down thirty basis points, and the rate of growth across both the EBITDA line and the EBIT line flowed materially relative to the first half. Can you just talk us through some of the competitive dynamics that you're seeing, whether or not some of those irrational pricing that you've been talking to, particularly in the Victorian market, is playing through? And I guess give us an update where Veolia are with the internalization of the SRN volumes, please.
You want to do this?
Yeah.
I'll do the last part, and then I'll throw to Paul.
Sure.
SRN volumes. Veolia is internalizing the SRN volumes. We always said that was gonna happen, and so the way it worked, Jakob, was that we went and won a large customer in Sydney that previously was supplying Veolia. We took that into our SRN, obviously, and that gave them the capability on the train line to take the waste that was going to our facility down to Woodlawn. We kind of took control of our destiny in some ways. Do you want to cover?
Yeah, sure. So, in terms of the competitive landscape, perhaps if we sort of focus on a key segment of the market. So C&I, metro, regional C&I represents about 40% of solids on a revenue basis. As you can see, we've seen revenue growth over the period being just over the 7% mark, roughly 6% price, 1% volume. So the focus we've taken here, Jake, is all about EBIT and not about chasing volumes. So we've been very focused in terms of our price increases. And again, this is one of the real benefits we've seen coming through in terms of data analytics, in the sense that we are now able to really focus our price increases on reflecting the profitability of the customer.
So where we've got a particularly profitable customer, we may give them a very modest price increase. Those that are less profitable, we'll often give a significantly higher increase, and thereby that naturally results in a degree of cutting of the tail. So again, we probably lost some volume in that regard as well. Importantly overall, though, in terms of that business, fair to say that churn, so customer churn, was actually down year on year. So again, testament to the fact we're being far more targeted in terms of our upgrades. In terms of landfills, I think we've, you know, I think Mark's comments pretty extensive. Similar story to what you saw in the first half in terms of New South Wales performing really well. So essentially using price as an important lever.
Yes, we've seen volumes come off there, but frankly, it's volume we didn't want. It was not profitable volume. I think Vic probably intensity in terms of MRL has increased. So, the team have been focused very much around mix. So again, trying to bring in a greater proportion of that, the tougher to treat waste codes and therefore improve profitability. We really have suffered in terms of, so project volumes are down a bit, too. We're seeing some of our soils volumes coming off as store washing facilities elsewhere in the city are taking some of those volumes. And obviously, Vic is probably a bit further progressed than other areas around FOGO, so we're seeing greater FOGO diversion coming in there as well.
We have seen increased costs around landfill materials. That's absolutely impacted the profitability of MRL. In fact, to the point we've seen MRL, you know, profitability, it has come off. We're really not happy with what our assets are performing right now, and put a very thoughtful focus in terms of a performance improvement plan in place, not dissimilar to what you see us do with Queensland and health over the prior year.
Thanks for that, guys. That was a very detailed description. Just two more for me before I hand it over. If I just go back to Slide 17, Mark, you said that you're expecting an EBIT contribution of AUD 15 million in that Health Services business?
Yeah.
I think some may have misread prior statements where you've said by the fourth quarter of 2024 you'd be at that AUD 15 million run rate.
Yeah.
Can I just confirm that that fifteen is an annual number?
Yeah.
Am I right in stripping out that the rest of that liquid waste and health EBIT that you've reported in 2024 is related to the liquid waste business standalone?
Yeah. Well, the way you should think about it is, we hit the run rate in FY 2024, in the fourth quarter, so we were running at an annualized rate in the quarter of AUD 15 million. That doesn't mean we delivered AUD 15 million in the quarter, it's the annualized rate, right? In FY 2024, health delivered sort of, you know, 5, 6, 7 million dollars, something like that. Have that in your mind. And in FY 2025, that number will become 15. So you're seeing AUD 10 million clear air between the health performance in FY 2024, and what should be expected in FY 2025. You're correct to then basically say, well, if health delivered, you know, say AUD 7 million, whatever it is, in FY 2024, the rest comes from hydro and liquid and the technical services, liquid technical services business.
Cool.
Is that okay?
One-
Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for that, Mark. One final one, just for Paul. The net interest guidance of 130, does that include anything for Citywide? Obviously, you guys are still subject to ACCC approval there. But just noting, is there some upside risk if that ACCC approval is granted to that net interest guidance, please?
Yeah, so essentially, that assumes nothing from Citywide, and again, I think as we've been fairly clear, it also assumes just no rate increase, no rate change either, so if there are reductions towards the tail end of the year, that obviously will give us a bit of uplift as well.
Am I, am I right in thinking, though, the delta from Citywide is still that AUD 8 million mark, please?
Well, in terms of the interest rate, a bit less than that, Jake. So you're talking average sort of cost of debt around the 6% mark, consideration. We paid a deposit of AUD 5.5, so we've got about another AUD 104.5 to go, should we be successful?
Thanks, guys. I'll hand it over.
Your next question comes from Amit Khanzode with Jefferies.
Hi, Amit.
Good morning, guys. Congrats on the solid result. Just thinking about fiscal 2025, and maybe if you can talk to key elements around revenue growth, and then also just you've got a wide guidance range for EBIT. Maybe if you can talk to swing factors within that guidance range.
Sure. So I mean, the building block. I think you're talking about what are the building blocks that you get to the FY 2025 number. So again, I'll sort of talk about them in the three buckets. I think it's the easiest. So in terms of the restoration bucket, obviously, that'll deliver the remaining. And if you remember what I said, we said two-thirds of the resto bucket got delivered in FY 2024, so it's one-third to go. So I think AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million of resto, of which, like to, the previous question, I said about AUD 10 million of that is health, so the remainder is labor. In the ops efficiency bucket. Actually, maybe I'll come back to that one.
In the strategic infrastructure bucket, you'll start to get, what you'll see there is you'll see the full year of the Santos contract, you'll see big CDS ramping in, whereas it was really only starting up and had startup costs in it in FY 2024. Same with Scanline. Scanline kind of had costs offsetting revenue because it was a startup year. And so that'll contribute in FY 2025, and then you'll just see, you know, contract growth coming through in strategic infrastructure line.
And then ops efficiency is the balancing one that will really be the one that sort of delivers a lot of the range. And really that's the momentum from branch optimization and the fleet strategy will be the big drivers in there. So that's how you get to that range. We don't really think that range is really that big, I guess, is what I'd say. You know, I think, you know, a sort of a AUD 30 million range on sort of AUD 300 or sorry, AUD 400 odd million dollars is not, we don't think, overly outstanding.
Thank you. Very, very useful. Just, just a couple more from me. Just on the contract pipeline, and appreciate you've got longer dated muni and C&I contracts, but maybe if you can talk to your contract activity during the period, and also give us a sense on the key upcoming contract renewals, but also some of the key tender opportunities you see in the market.
Yeah. So, in terms of the tender year, pretty fair to say it was fairly muted, Amit. I think in terms of muni in particular, you've seen us talk about the focus that we've got around returns and capital allocation. I think we're looking at our current muni portfolio feeling that we've probably got a good balance of muni. There's no need to sort of go out there and chase new contracts. So we're being very selective in terms of what we're looking at in that space. In terms of national accounts, again, a fairly muted year in terms of no sort of significant major accounts, albeit we've won probably more than we've lost. So again, a pretty good year in that regard as well.
Right. And just a final one. Just on the corporate cost, I see in second half that that is up around AUD 9 million. Maybe if you can talk what's happening there and how should we be thinking about that for fiscal 2025?
Maybe in terms of corporate cost, what I'd say is the benefit is the midterm ambition and the year-on-year EBIT growth, and that requires a capability to be invested in to deliver it. So you're right to say corporate costs have increased, and they've increased as we look at investing in that capability. Easy examples there would be things like the investments we're making in data analytics, the investments we're making in carbon, the investments we're making in decommissioning service to seed those, to sort of seed those businesses and bring in real capability that can manage and grow those businesses in a pragmatic and practical way. Is there anything else we add on that?
No, I think that's pretty-
Yeah, I think that's probably it, Amit.
All right. Useful. Thank you.
Thanks, man. All right.
Your next question comes from Lee Power with UBS.
Hi, Lee.
Hi, Mark. Hi, Paul. Mark, just following on from Jakob's question, like, how far away do you think we are from the end of this kind of dynamic in muni of volume erosion as you kind of hold the line on price? And the reason I ask is Veolia, at their result, obviously talked to strong contract wins, but they also seem to be pushing more around, you know, strong pricing and kind of some of the same kind of discussion around pricing that you are as well.
Yeah, I mean, I think if I look at what Veolia was saying, I mean, Veolia seems to be on a revenue bend, you know, with this, you know, X% compound revenue growth target over the next three years. That's not our bend. That's old, that's old days. We're focused on EBIT and EBIT growth. And, you know, like Paul said, you know, we're very targeted on the returns. We just don't want revenue for the sake of revenue or volume for the sake of volume. I think similarly what Paul said around, like, for example, muni, I think we feel like we've got a good balance of muni contracts. We're very thoughtful about any new muni contract.
You know, just imagine a new muni contract that is simply set up a branch, run some trucks for ten years and serve a community. You know, it's probably relatively, you know, relatively speaking, on what we could invest in low return, probably relatively low risk as well, and we've got a portfolio of projects that we could otherwise invest into. And particularly if that muni contract doesn't have sort of a C&I branch that we could attach to it, because we might already be servicing that area. So we're very thoughtful about muni, and getting that capital allocation piece right, given our current portfolio of muni contracts.
Cool, thanks. And then, just on the OCC contribution into the result, is there some idea you could give us around what that actually contributed, this year?
Yeah, we've not called it out, Lee, but I think fair to say, if you look at what happened in 2023, you know, you had that significant volatility in OCC price, and that resulted in, at some points, the rebates we were paying to customers at a higher level than the price we were getting in the market. 2024 for us was actually exactly the reverse. It was a really good year in the sense it was a year of steadily increasing prices over the term, which typically works best for us.
The focus that we have is we're trying to avoid price risk, avoid the market risk, and our focus is on volumes. So we saw a period where we had relatively flat OCC volumes over the year, but steadily increasing price. So it made a good and stable contribution and more akin to what we would expect to see in future years relative to 2023, which was a bit of a rollercoaster.
Yeah. So the net, I think you called out net 14 in negative impact in 2023, so we should just be thinking that's the opposite into 2024?
Yeah. I think we gave you figures for 2023 for both first half and second half. I think that'll give you a pretty good indication as to a bad year for us. And obviously, so we've delivered a better outcome in terms of 2024.
Okay, perfect. And then, finally, just on IWS, like the second half was obviously impacted by some stuff in WA with deferred projects and Alcoa. Do you like, how do we think about that into FY 2025, given that kind of East-West dynamic that you talked about, Mark?
Yeah, I mean, we're not, we're not guiding IWS by itself, we're kind of guiding Cleanaway. But what I'd say is the guidance assumes, you know, sort of a, you know, I wouldn't say it's a strong improvement in the IWS business. We're pretty conservative there. That said, we're doing a lot of work on the IWS business. We've already completed a lot of work, and there's more to go around restructuring that business appropriately for the future. I think, you know, this thing that we saw where sort of major projects and turnarounds were deferred by major customers, I think my view would be that can only occur for a period of time after which that work will need to be done. So, I think it'll come back.
It's just a matter of exactly when, and in what form, so I think, you know, what we're doing, what we're focused on is right-sizing IWS, and I think really getting thoughtful about how we approach that, the ability to do that major turnaround piece, and I think simplistically, in the past, each branch would hold a surge capacity in order to complete project and turnaround work. Now, what we do is we centralize that surge capacity in one place and program it in a really efficient way, and the branches just hold what they need for the baseload, if that makes sense, and of course, that leads to a lower cost approach and one that we can really manage the operating leverage of.
No, it makes perfect sense. Thank you. Appreciate the color.
Cool. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Nick Day with RBC.
Hi, Nick.
Oh, thanks, guys. Good day, how are you going? Yeah, just a quick question, just on margins. Obviously, was at 11.2% for the growth for the full year.
Yeah.
That implies quite a strong second half. I think my math gets me to eleven point seven. I think historically, you've spoken to a 12 point o business as usual margin. Can you-- I know you're not guiding to our margin for FY 2025, but could you give us some feel for the, the things that we should be considering heading into FY 2025 as it relates to margins, please?
Yeah, sure. I mean, it's not, it's not gonna be a dissimilar answer to what I've answered before around the building blocks. But I think, you know, what will help margin in FY 2025 will be obviously the health business having a full year of the Q4 run rate. It'll be the labor improvements that we continue to see. You know, that I've sort of talked about piece in that EBITDA bucket, but that will then obviously continue to flow and improve beyond the EBITDA bucket size. I think the entire ops efficiency bucket is very high margin work because there's virtually no CapEx or OpEx associated with that work. You know, it's all about working smarter as opposed to new equipment. So I think that will continue to flow through.
And then you'll see, you'll see over time, you know, some of the margins will improve through things like, you imagine, like a big CDS starts up, but it's only starting up and it's got its costs, its startup costs embedded, so it's not as high margin as it will be during FY 2025. Scanline, similarly, stuff comes in, we've got integration costs, which are all sitting in the results. Again, it'll be free of that in a full year, those sorts of things. So those will also contribute.
I think, you know, what will drag margin down, for example, in FY 2025, will be two things, and I think it's worth understanding this because that will reverse out in FY 2026, and that'll be, the Western Sydney MRF will come on, and it will have startup costs, and a ramp-up, so it won't have as high margins in 2025 as well in 2026. And similarly, ECO, otherwise known as GRL, is again, will have the transition costs associated with it in 2025, but then you'll start to see it really ratchet in 2026 as well. So hopefully that gives you some color as to how the margins will continue to improve.
Yeah, very much so. Thank you. The only other one was just the landfill dynamic. I mean, you've covered it to some degree, but I'm interested in. Sounds like Melbourne is a very competitive pricing market right now, which you're comfortable letting low returning volumes go. I'm just interested in the compaction comments and profitability in New South Wales. Is that a case of bringing those sites up to standard, in your view, or is that over and above what your other landfill assets are performing at in New South Wales, specifically?
I think the New South Wales assets are performing to standard. And I don't think, I mean, they were, they were well operated. They're even better operated now. If you remember, the compaction comment in the past around the SRN assets was the fact that we had a contractor there who was motivated by saving fuel. Yep.
As opposed to what we were motivated by, which was burning fuel to get compaction, and those two were horizontally opposed. We got rid of the contractor, and now we do it ourselves. So we internalized that work, and therefore they're not earning a margin or paying a margin on that work. I think the New South Wales story is that we keep pushing the pricing frontier there, so we know exactly where volume goes to different locations.
We push price, that's that has, you know, reduced volume. Like Paul said, unprofitable customers, we're not interested in. It's improved EBIT, but it's also improved EBIT per cube. And so we're pretty pleased with the way New South Wales is playing out, and of course, that has the benefit of then improved cash flow because we don't need to build the next cells as soon.
Yep, got it. Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you as well.
Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald with E&P.
Good afternoon, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. So you called out just on land, you know, the landfill side of it. Are we right to sort of say that, given those comments, all of the headwind is actually MRL, and Sydney is not any sort of drag at all?
I think what I'd say is, you know, definitely the drag is in Victoria. I think, you know, it's kind of like, if you look at our landfill portfolio, we have, you know, three really large landfills, and then the rest tend to be almost what I would class as a regional landfill, where we've got a landfill, say, in WA, but it's, you know, it's at Dardanup, which is near Margaret River. We've got one in Adelaide, but again, it's an hour's drive out of the CBD. So again, they tend to be more regional. So therefore, we kind of focus on New South Wales and Victoria. That'd be the first comment.
I think in Victoria, what we're saying, just to be crystal clear, is what the team is doing is the team is working on mix, which is, you know, making sure we've got the toughest forms of waste coming in there that obviously then have the highest price. We are seeing the impact of project volumes coming off, just where, you know, the big build and some of those stuff just has been deferred or slowed down. We're seeing less soils because of less C&D activity, and we're seeing the impact of FOGO, where, you know, councils are switching to FOGO, that comes out of the red bin and obviously then doesn't go to the MRL landfill. With a bit less volume, then you're seeing a bit more competition for the lower volume that's available.
I think then, at the same time, we're seeing some costs go up around sort of soil supply costs for daily cover, and that leads to a decline in overall EBIT from MRL. That said, we have a pretty deep experience around landfills, and we've got a lot of ideas as to what we might do and what will work. I think, you know, hear it from Paul and I, we're dissatisfied with MRL performance, and so therefore, we've put a team in place and a program of work that has the same intensity as what we put in place for Queensland and Health Services. So that will yield some benefits, and we'll talk you through as we go over the coming sort of sessions where we get together.
And just on that, I mean, you know, you've said Queensland's now back to profitability. What's the delta on Queensland from the low?
Well, it's about AUD 15 million would be the contribution of the restoration of the Queensland business, is the way you should think about it. So if maybe I'll help you. If you want me to help you in this way, Paul said something like two-thirds of the AUD 50 million in resto has been delivered. The way you get to that is you go, AUD 10 million from health, 15 from Queensland, and AUD 5 million- AUD 10 million from labor. That's how you get to that two-thirds.
Okay. Yep. Okay, and so that's basically locked in now for FY 2025?
Yep, and then we build on that.
Yep.
Yeah, that's right. So then during 2025, we'll get the full year benefit of health. Yeah. We'll get Queensland, and Queensland will then just switch to sort of underlying growth because that business is now poised for growth, where they've lowered the cost base and got the capacity, they've got good pricing, they understand what they're doing, and they've reset the business.
Yeah. So sorry, just to be clear, though, that sort of 15- 10, and 10-15 that you've highlighted, that, that is incremental in FY 2025 on an annual run rate basis?
No, that's the two-thirds that was delivered in FY 2024.
Okay. Yep.
So that's locked in, yeah?
Yeah.
Because it's done-
Yeah
- again in 2025, but it won't be new, and then what you'll see-
Yeah, yep.
You should get the upside. Exactly. That's right.
Yeah. So there's another third to come?
That's right.
Yep. Okay, and then, you know, in terms of the building block out to 26, interested as to, you know, you've gotten all of these programs, and you can talk very articulately around, you know, getting to the greater than the four fifty. What are you waiting for to actually sort of guide to a more specific sort of headline number, given that, you know, all of the internal targets are actually five hundred?
Well, that's a good question. So, well, I think what we're saying is today we installed another step on the staircase. Yeah? So if you remember how this has worked, we had 302 in FY 2023, 359 in FY 2024, and FY 2025 we're saying 395-425, and then in FY 2026 we're saying greater than 450, externally. Internally, the team is focused on Mission 500. I think what we're just saying is what will swing that number from 450- 500 will be how hard we can get the branch optimization and the fleet strategy rolled out, and the associated advanced analytics.
You know, really, you know, if you wanna build that staircase, you know, you've got things in that ops excellence bucket, like, fleet, data analytics, Customer Connect, branch optimization, decommissioning services, landfill gas capture. And those are all those things on, we call it the Chevron slide, but it's the three rows of chevrons that move across the page, which are trying to give you the clues as to what's in that supersized bucket, which is the middle one, that gets you in that 450-500 range.
Just to be clear, though, Mark, you've basically got AUD 50 million in each one of those buckets.
Yeah.
Is that 50 incremental over FY 2025?
No. No, no, it's fifty. If you look at the slide, it started at 302, yeah? And it's three lots. It's basically two buckets of AUD 50 million, plus one bucket that's greater than AUD 50 million, that gets you to the greater than AUD 450 million in FY 2026. Yeah? So it was off. It was all, that whole slide hangs off AUD 302 million in FY 2023. Last year's result, the FY 2023 result, August, where we launched the midterm ambition to translate Blueprint 2030 into a financial set of numbers that shareholders could follow.
Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you.
All right.
Your next question comes from Scott Ryall with Rimor Equity Research.
Hi, thank you. I was wondering, you've talked a lot to the focus on EBIT as opposed to top line, which is great. One of the things that I try to do always with Cleanaway is look at the, the organic growth versus acquisition-led. And, I don't, you know, I don't expect you to necessarily quantify it, but is it, is it fair to say that the, the EBIT growth delivered in Fiscal 2024 is probably got the, the greatest mix of, of organic growth, that, you know, for, for quite some years? Is that a, a fair comment? I mean, obviously, prior to both your times, but I'm just wondering if you can. You've obviously looked at financials longer term, so I'm just wondering if that would, would be a reasonable reflection, please?
I think it's fair to say 2024 compared to 2023, and we've got two additional months of the ECO business, which is frankly pretty small. And then Scanline, I think we said the contribution to Scanline in 2024 was pretty much nil because the integration cost pretty much wiped out any of the underlying EBIT. So essentially, all of that growth was organic.
Yeah, but looking back, it looks to me like, you know, quite a standout year in terms of organic versus acquisition. I take what you said, that all the growth is organic, but if you look back kind of five to ten years, I can't remember a year where organic growth has been anywhere near it, near that. Is that. I don't wanna piss in your pocket, but that feels to me like, you know, like a bit of a step-out year to me.
I think, I mean, we think maybe we'll agree in part. I think we think it is a standout year in terms of delivering what we said we were gonna do. I think, and beating guidance, I think we don't think about the business as, you know, let's look at what we acquired and how that's performing versus, you know, the organic business, because we kinda go, as soon as we've acquired it, it's organic from that point forward. It's often, if it's infrastructure like the SRN assets or whatever, it is so then integrated into the business, it's actually quite hard to strip it out and see it.
Okay. Then hopefully two relatively easy ones. On Slide 17, you're talking about the Hydrocarbons business and the refocus. How big can that business be, you know, in terms of the ambition? And I'm talking three to five years out, not in the next 12 months.
I think good question. I mean, it's kinda, it can be bigger than it is today. Yeah? That's it, it's a relatively small part of Cleanaway at a scale level. I think, you know, we've got plans that see, you know, that business grow by a third in terms of EBIT over the next couple of years. We are really excited about this global vector, which you'd like, Scott, around like, you know, circular lubes, low carbon lubes.
You only need to look over to the U.S. to see what major companies are doing, acquiring businesses that look like our hydro business, because of the life cycle analysis that's been done on the lubes, that then allows major blenders to be able to package that up as low carbon lubes for mining customers. We're really excited about the vector, and we're preparing the business line for that future.
Okay, great. And then, the Western Sydney MRF that's coming on this year, can you just remind me of the process that it has taken, you know, in terms of approvals and all of this, just how long that's taken to come into operation by the time it opens in the second half?
I think approvals would have been about a year of approvals, and then I mean, these things are not that complicated from, you know, it's not like building energy from waste. You know, it's probably a year to build it. You build the shed, and then you put the equipment in, and then, you know, a lot of fire systems and, and that sort of thing.
But it's all within a fairly nondescript shed. It's a really great location, and we will get investors out there ultimately to see exactly where it is, because kind of like as the traffic comes in from the west of Sydney, we're kind of at that, Blacktown turnoff, which is really neat, before you have to get into the real traffic to find other people's MRFs. We're excited by that, and it is the MRF that we have put everything we know about MRFs into one place.
So the attraction of the asset is more location as opposed to the ability to replicate it elsewhere?
It's the location is very powerful. It'll be the yield from that facility. Its yield will naturally be higher because of the equipment that we've installed. We'll also connect it to the circular plastics facility, so we will channel very high quality commodity streams straight into the circular plastics plant in Albury, but also the HDPE and PP one in Laverton.
And so it'll have this really neat circular solution where you'll be able to say, "Hey, if we do your C&I waste in Sydney, it'll go, firstly, it'll go through that facility. So bring your school kids, and we'll do a school tour around what does recycling look like? But secondly, look at this circular solution where you can guarantee this is what happens to your PET bottles, your PP ice cream containers, and your HDPE milk bottles, which will then go food grade. So it'll be a fantastic offering to, in particular, councils in Sydney.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's all I had.
Great. All right.
Your next question comes from Peter Steyn with Macquarie.
Morning, morning, Mark.
Hey, Peter.
Thanks very much for your time. Just two quick questions for me. Mark, could you elaborate? The last time we spoke, there was pretty meaningful change indicated by the Victorian government around landfill levies. How has your thinking around the economics of energy from waste evolved? I appreciate it's longer term, but just keen to get a bit of an update on what that's done to your economics in the context of where things are at in that market.
Yeah. Well, I think, maybe... Is that a specific Victoria question, Peter? Does that help?
Apologies, didn't catch that.
That's a Victoria question, I'm assuming.
Yeah, exactly. Just Victorian energy from waste in the context of the levy move.
Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I think what we said last time holds true, that we think the levy move, which was on the day of, I think, Macquarie conference. It. That's a big help. It gets, it gets levies, you know, very close to making energy from waste work. I think we'll see the Victorian government continue to increase levies up to New South Wales levels. That's certainly, what we think. I think probably, you know, every time we seem to talk, there's some good news.
I think the good news yesterday was that, the SEMAWP group of councils, which is nine councils that attended back in, before mine and Paul's time, back in 2018, for energy from waste services, signed up to the Maryvale facility for 25 years, and also with minimum volume contracts. You take those two, that's really set a benchmark for councils in Victoria. You're seeing, you're seeing, you know, that benchmark get set. You're also seeing Veolia's facility now is pretty much full, we think. And so that puts us in a really good position for sort of a full build of councils for the. I think that's, I think that's exciting, and that also kind of says that the economics are starting to work.
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, that's great extra color. And then, just, on your voluntary turnover, so that we can delineate a general loosening of labor markets-
Yeah
From what you're doing, could you give us a bit of a sense of engagement scores or any other indicators that really point to some of the cultural evolution that you're trying to inculcate, Mark?
Yeah. Yep. So, I mean, obviously, we've been using voluntary turnover as kind of like a proxy for engagement because we didn't do an engagement survey until last year.
Yep.
We're seeing voluntary turnover dropping. Overall, voluntary turnover is sort of down below, sort of at 17% level. We wanna get it down to sort of 15%, not because there's a particular science around that number, we just think that's a, that's a good number, and seems to be where, where we've seen it at historical low in the past, but also, where others tend to get to. We're seeing vacancy levels are down below 200, sort of, Pete. If you remember, you know, wasn't that long ago where we were at sort of 1,000. You know, that's just indicative.
We're seeing productivity improvements, so we're seeing the benefits of that are that the team is reducing the use of expensive subcontractors, and we can see what this metric that we call shifts greater than ten hours declining. That's an important metric because at ten hours, when the clock clicks over ten hours, we pay for a break at double time, and we also start paying double time. And so we really want our shifts to be less than ten hours. We don't want them to be seven point six either. We kind of want the team to be working sort of nine and a half type hours because we understand the impact of that overtime on people's take-home pay at the end of the week. So we design it around that.
So when we've seen shifts greater than 10 hours declining. So that's really good news as well, and that's what we're using to underpin that productivity piece improvement. So, I mean, all of that says, you know, we're managing to maintain the workforce, and less people are leaving. It's good, good thing. In terms of engagement score, it's difficult to benchmark engagement scores between years at Cleanaway because in the past the approach was it was compulsory. Sorry, it was not compulsory. It was, how did it work? The engagement score was part of STI, and so therefore-- A nd this year it's not part of STI.
So you can imagine the approach that might be taken if engagement is part of STI versus a year where it's entirely voluntary and we just say, "You know, if you have time and you're inclined to, we'd love to hear, get your feedback in the engagement score." So we saw engagement score got down. It's not a secret. I think we put it out in the sustainability report. It was 62. It was a bit below the average.
But that said, that was at that point in time, we hadn't rolled out guiding principles, and we were still in the middle of Respect at Cleanaway. So I think, you know, we'll see that trend up, but we're not. It's not the number one thing we use to judge whether it's happening. And it can be also quite time-based. You know, you do it once a year at a point in time as opposed to pulsing it on a regular basis.
Yeah. Yeah. And fundamentally, it sounds like you're really comfortable with the direction, though, so we don't need to worry that it's just a labor market dynamic that's playing out for you?
No, and I think the other thing is we've seen a lot less sort of IR style action as well. You know, and whereas in the past we had that large backlog of expired enterprise agreements, which also meant, you know, we're having protected action, and our teams don't like protected action, just like we don't like it, and that was driving turnover as well.
Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks. I'll leave it there. Appreciate it, Mark.
All right, thank you.
Your next question comes from Rob Koh with Morgan Stanley.
Hi, Rob.
Good day, guys. Good afternoon. So I joined your call late 'cause I was on one of your customers' calls, and so if I'm asking a silly question, just let me know and move on. I guess my first question relates to PFAS, which is, I guess, sadly close to all of us. Can you maybe give us a sense of how much technology evolution you're looking at? And are you looking to get ahead of policy here, or are you following policy?
I think probably a little bit of both would be the honest answer. So, we have PFAS treatment capability today in two locations. One would be likely three. We've got PFAS contaminated soil capability at Inkerman Landfill in South Australia. And that, that's really good if you're dealing with a Department of Defence or airport-contaminated soils, so stuff where you can take large volumes into there and manage it in a really thoughtful way. In Campbellfield, which is here in Victoria, we've built and recently commissioned a PFAS ozone fractionation plant. Won't do the chemistry lesson with you, but can do.
And that, that plant is there to treat the wash waters that we would naturally process through that facility, but it's been sized in a way that it can process third-party wash waters as well. And so the game there is kind of do it for yourself, for your base business, and then grow it, grow it for others. And that's a, that's a plant that certainly the Victorian government is keen on ensuring that others use, now it's available. So that's the kind of game there.
And then, you know, interestingly, up in New Chum, where I was the other day, you know, we've got a water treatment plant there to deal with surface water and whatnot that has also got PFAS treatment capability embedded into it. So, you know, a range of technologies available. That space is moving pretty fast. Our intention is to have a portfolio of equipment that we can use for ourselves, but also, offer throughput for others.
Okay. Many thanks. Yeah, yeah. Honest and thoughtful seem to be the watch words for these answers, as always. Appreciate it. If I can just clarify my understanding of your maintenance CapEx guidance. You're kind of looking at around the AUD 250 million mark this year, versus AUD 283 million last year, minus the AUD 50 million benefit from fleet. Does that imply that you're seeing a bit of cost escalation in your maintenance expenditure, or have I misunderstood the numbers?
You know, I think, Rob, if you look at the math, it literally, it's sort of almost in the rounding in a sense. I think our guidance was, ... the D&A is 380-400, so the midpoint there is 390, so 75% of that. And then if you subtract AUD 50 million, I think you end up with something like, it ends up being about a AUD 42.5 million-dollar reduction. So, we're keeping the numbers simple. In terms of CapEx, a lot of it depends on opportunity at the margin, so we're giving ourselves some flexibility. But, as we said back at the Macquarie conference in May, our focus is keeping maintenance CapEx AUD 50 million lower each and every year going forward.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, and I appreciate you keeping the numbers simple, 'cause I'm a simple man. Maybe if I can also just double check my understanding of your growth CapEx guidance, because I guess if you get approval for Citywide, that's 110+ the extra development. If that. That's additional to the 150 that you're.
Yeah.
You're guiding to for growth? Yeah, it is. Okay.
That's right.
Because if you remember the footnote in the scorecard, Rob, that says, Major M&A, greater than AUD 50 million, is additive. So it's additive to everything, additive to EBIT, additive to all parts.
Yeah.
Because-
Yeah. Okay.
and get Blueprint 2030 done by M&A that you didn't see coming.
Yeah. Yeah, understood. Yeah, no, that, that, that's good. So I guess, and I've done it back of the envelope, but it looks like in your Rimor report that your ROIC targets are staying the same for your FY 2025 scheme. And but that does kind of suggest with your current EBIT guidance that that you'll be at the top end of that ROIC range, which would be a great outcome and good problem to have. But is that roughly how you're thinking about it?
I've not seen the back of your envelope, Rob, so hard to make that judgment. I guess the key thing is, if I look at this time last year when we set the LTI targets for the three years to FY 2026, I think we were pretty clear then that the ROIC target there for the top end of that range, so around the AUD 500 million mark, or the top end of that range reflected hitting that AUD 500 million. So the payout was the stretch target reflected AUD 500 million of EBIT, roughly.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I guess I've got a five billion denominator and four hundred numerator. So that's where I'm coming out. But, yeah, we can double-check that offline, if you like. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
And that's it for me. Thank you.
Thanks, Rob.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from Nathan Lead with Morgans Financial.
Hi, Nathan.
G'day, Mark and Paul. Two or three questions from me, if you don't mind. Just first on cost of capital. I just noticed that you've got your net finance costs guidance of AUD 130 million, so it's up quite a bit from the hundred and fifteen, sixteen for FY 2024. So just wondering what's causing that, particularly given there's no material refinancing exposure until looks like FY 2027.
Yeah. So, you've got a small increase in average net debt forecast over the year, and clearly a key driver of that is that we're resuming paying tax. So again, I think we've been fairly clear saying we're paying all of FY 2024 tax in 2025, and we're recommencing installment payments as well. So our tax payments for 2025 are a little elevated. And that's again, obviously a reflection of the cessation of the international write-off scheme. We also had an interest rate increase in the prior year around October, November, so we'll obviously have a full year of that because we've taken the very conservative assumption that basically rates will stay on hold at their current level for the full year.
You also get a bit of a natural tick-up in terms of interest expense too, because you have a number of leases, and of course, as those leases roll off, you typically have lower interest rate leases rolling off, being replaced by leases at higher rates of interest. So again, that gives you your natural sort of tick-up. But we've tried to give a fairly conservative view in terms of our expectations for interest expense for the full year. And obviously, you know, if the RBA reduces rates earlier, then we'll benefit both in terms of the actual cash interest rate, but also non-cash as well.
Yep. Gotcha. Okay, second, I suppose a bit of a nested question here, but, your FY 2025 guidance, and then obviously you've got your FY 2026 targets, you're laying out some pretty strong growth expectations, and you've got a bullish story beyond FY 2026. But if I look at the EBITDA or the earnings growth forecast you've got for the next five years that sit in the impairment testing note, it looks like they've been pulled back reasonably materially.
Seems like they're implying now, like EBITDA CAGR, so through to FY 2029 or something like mid-single digit. So my question for you is, you know, what caused the reduction in the growth? And secondly, if we've got strong growth in the short term, but like only mid-single digit for the five years, what's sitting out further in the outer years that causes the lower growth levels?
Yeah, okay. A couple of things, well, more than a couple of things. I could go on for a while here, Nathan, but to keep it short, if you're comparing that note disclosure this year to the prior year, you've also got a situation where you've had a really substantial step up in EBIT in the current year, so the base is that much higher, so obviously, future rates are that much lower.
The other key point, too, is obviously we have really substantial headroom when it comes to impairment testing, and therefore, sitting down with an auditor talking about relatively modest rates of growth for impairment testing is a whole heap easier than sticking in what management's, you know, sort of detailed long-term plans are. So we'll naturally take a far more conservative approach around impairment testing than we would when we're sitting and looking at our business plans.
Okay. All right. Thank you. That's it.
Thanks, Nathan.
Thank you. That's the end of the questions.
Yes, there are no further questions at this time. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Thank you.