Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cleanaway FY23 full year results. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Schubert, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, good morning, everybody, thank you for joining us on the call and the webcast this morning to cover our FY23 performance, our outlook for FY24, and excitingly, our new midterm financial ambition. Firstly, I'd 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. Joining me on the call today is Paul Binfield, our CFO, Richie Farrell, our Head of Investor Relations. The plan is I'm going to take you through our highlights for the period and the good progress that we have been making. Paul will provide you with further details on the group financials, then I'll walk you through the performance of each of the operating segments and the outlook for FY24.
This will be followed by a discussion of our midterm financial ambition, then we'll open the lines for questions. I'm going to take the disclaimer on Slide 2 as read, I'm going to turn to Slide 4. Let me begin by saying that it is once again a sincere privilege to report on behalf of the more than 7,500 strong Cleanaway team, our performance and our progress for FY23. I'm pleased to report that on an underlying basis, net revenue, EBIT and NPAT were all higher than the prior year, with higher revenue delivered across all 3 of our segments. Underlying EBIT of AUD 302.2 million, was 17.5% higher than FY22 and in line with guidance.
The actions we have taken to address the headwinds during the year resulted in AUD 163.9 million underlying EBIT in the second half. Pleasingly, that was AUD 25.6 million or 18.5% higher than the first half, with continuing strong momentum flowing into FY24. We have embedded safety and the environment as foundations of Cleanaway, that is showing in our results. On safety, with TRIFR reducing by 11.9% from 4.2 to 3.7, on the environment where we had 67% fewer regulatory direction notices compared to FY22. Our voluntary turnover is still higher than where we want it to be at 21.5%, which is in part due to the tight labor market and the high levels of vacancies we had earlier in the year.
That said, our successful recruitment process outsourcing program and our Women's Driver Academies have helped in tackling labor vacancies, and together with the easing labor market, we expect further improvement in FY24. I'm excited to report that our efforts to increase female participation across the organization was a further highlight, with a 200 basis point or 9.6% improvement to 22.8% over the course of the year. We have clear plans to improve this further again in FY24. From a strategic perspective, our IWS oil and gas strategy is developing well, and that was evidenced by the significant contracts we secured with Santos and ExxonMobil during the year. Through our new Container Deposit Scheme vertical, we are busy rolling out its Victorian CDS footprint ready for November 1, having successfully tendered for the Western Metro and regional zones.
We've been leveraging the recently acquired GRL business to accelerate our organics blueprint nationally, and our landfill gas capture program is delivering financial and environmental benefits, with our methane reduction for the year ahead of the 2030 reduction target. In early FY24, we completed the acquisition of Australian Eco Oils, which will provide us with a good platform to develop our renewable fuel strategy and to further aid our decarbonization and that of our customers. I'll now give you an update on progress on labor, health services, and the Queensland business. On Slide 5, we are seeing positive trends in vacancy rates and labor efficiency and productivity from the extensive range of initiatives that we actioned throughout the year.
These actions have resulted in vacancies today being about 40% lower than back in October last year, adjusted for unfilled growth roles, such as what we're doing at the moment for the CDS Vic. With retention being the focus now, we have ongoing initiatives in place across onboarding, closing our enterprise agreement backlog, and our culture refresh. We feel very confident that this vacancy trend will continue. On our health services business, we've installed our new autoclave units, replacing our hammermill in Victoria, and we're recovering the higher cost of autoclave processing through higher prices. Disappointingly, the recovery in the health services business is lagging from a timing perspective only, with a full reset of the entire health services business performance well underway.
The Queensland network is now set up to operate without New Chum landfill. Today the Queensland business has stabilized and is focused on driving productivity and efficiency initiatives. With a new management team and replacement fleet in place following the floods of early 2022, we are making really pleasing progress, and we're seeing that business performing and improving exactly in line with our plans. Now I'm going to pass over to Paul for the financials.
Thank you, Mark. Turning to Slide 6, we'll unpack the P&L from a group perspective. Unless otherwise specified, all the comparisons are referred to are going to be against the prior corresponding period.
Net revenue of AUD 2.97 billion was 13.9% higher, with higher revenues across all segments, driven primarily by recent acquisitions, contractual price increases, and underlying organic growth. This was partially offset by lower commodity-related revenue, primarily cardboard or OCC. Underlying EBIT of AUD 302.2 million was 17.5%, or AUD 45.1 million higher. This reflected the organic growth across most of the business, the contributions from SRN and GRL, and the benefits of significantly improved landfill gas capture. This was partially offset by the key headwinds that Mark talked to, as well as the higher depreciation and amortization. Net finance costs increased by AUD 43.1 million to AUD 96.1 million, due to higher interest rates.
The higher net finance expense largely eroded the operating profit increase, resulting in underlying NPAT of AUD 148.6 million, being 2.5% higher than the prior corresponding period. NPATA was AUD 160.1 million. Adjusting for minorities, the NPAT attributable to ordinary equity holders was AUD 146.7 million. EPS was 4.3% lower at AUD 0.066, reflecting the higher number of shares on issue following the equity raise at the beginning of the financial year. Pleasingly, net operating cash flow was AUD 481.8 million, up AUD 15.5 million from the prior period. The cash conversion ratio was very strong at 98.3%.
Adjusting for the cash flow associated with underlying adjustments, net operating cash flow would have increased by AUD 54.5 million to AUD 570.3 million. At year-end, the group had AUD 504 million of headroom under committed debt facilities, with a net refinancing not due until December 2024. The group remains comfortably within its banking covenants and has a leverage ratio of 1.89x its year end. Directors declared a final dividend of AUD 0.0245 per share, taking the full year dividend to AUD 0.049 per share in line with the PCP. Moving on, on the next couple of slides, we've bridged EBIT from FY22 to FY23, and then from the first half of FY23 to the second half.
The latter really highlights the building momentum that you'll see in the second half of the year. Starting with FY22 to FY23, where underlying EBIT increased 17.5% or AUD 45.1 million. Similar to when we discussed the first half performance back in February, we can see the improved or initial contributions from most businesses being partially offset by the headwinds from Queensland and Health Services business units and a lower OCC contribution related to the first half. Moving across the bridge, GRL made an initial contribution in line with expectations. Commodity prices partially recovered over the period, with lower rebates in the second half, restoring margins. Mark has already spoken to the Queensland and Health Services business performance.
The balance of the Solid Waste Services business benefited from a full year of SRN, contractual price increases, new customers, and the commodity and carbon credit benefits from the land, landfill gas capture program. The remaining businesses, being Liquids, Hydro, and IWS, all perform well in the context of ongoing inflationary pressures. As previously disclosed, we added capability to stabilize the core and deliver our blueprints, which has added to corporate costs. Moving to the next slide, where we can see FY23 second half underlying EBIT increased from AUD 138.3 million to AUD 163.9 million, representing an 18.5% or AUD 25.6 million increase. Again, moving across the bridge, we can see the extra two-month contribution from GRL.
Next, we see the impact of lower commodity rebates in the second half, leading to a recovery in margin versus the prior half. We're also seeing continued performance improvements in the Queensland business following the initiatives that we've implemented. The balance of the Solid Waste Services business benefited from organic growth, contractual price increases, and the benefits of higher landfill gas capture. In the health services business, half-on-half performance is lagging due to additional costs incurred in the second half in Sydney due to driver shortages, and also interstate and third-party treatment costs due to a planned replacement of the Sydney autoclave during May to July of this year. Also, seasonally lower cruise ship volumes and additional costs incurred as the Victorian autoclaves commenced commissioning and early operations.
The liquids, Hydro and IWS businesses showed continued progress as market conditions improved, all benefiting from more project-related work, together with the commencement of the new IWS contract. We carry great momentum from the second half into our new financial year. The next slide bridges our statutory to underlying profit for the year. We've had some significant underlying adjustments this year, which we've previously flagged. We spoke about the alternate disposal costs in health services following the loss of the hammer mill at the half year. They continued while the autoclaves were being commissioned. This was partially offset by associated insurance recoveries to date, with further insurance recoveries expected, which we will take below the line. The costs associated with IT transformation project relates to CustomerConnect....
When we announced that project, we indicated a capital cost of approximately AUD 100 million, and that's not changed. The final design, however, will see us utilizing software as a service in the solution. Accounting standards require us to treat that portion as an expense. The AUD 100 million total project cost, you should expect to see about AUD 50 million adjusted from underlying earnings over the course of the rollout. The final SRN integration and stamp duty costs and GRL acquisition and integration costs will also adjust it from the underlying result. The New Chum rectification provision and assets write-off were together the most significant adjustments, and I'll cover them in the next slide. As you're aware from previous disclosures, we are awaiting works approval from Ipswich City Council to complete construction of the final landfill cell at New Chum, Cell 3B.
The rectification of that cell is complex and remains ongoing until we complete the construction. The water table remains above the cell floor, with groundwater management ongoing while awaiting works approval. Once we get that approval, more intensive groundwater work is required to commence cell construction, as we will need to work below the water table. We have also been transporting leachate off-site for treatment, this will continue until we have commissioned the lower cost on-site leachate treatment plant solution. In June, we estimated the additional rectification cost would be in the order of AUD 40 million, following further work, we now expect this to be closer to AUD 62 million. However, this does include some contingency, so we expect that this should be adequate to close out this matter. In June, we also advised the market that the court appeal for the height extension was ultimately unsuccessful.
We're not pursuing a further appeal, and hence we've taken a write-off in the fall of the remaining New Chum assets, booking a AUD 74 million expense in line with our previous disclosure. I'll now move to Slide 11 on CapEx. Our first half CapEx was around AUD 200 million, and we indicated at that time that it would be likely to be about the same amount in the second half. We ended up a bit over that, with both maintenance CapEx and growth CapEx around a third higher than the prior year. Mark will speak to CapEx again when we come to our midterm financial ambition, but suffice to say, we do believe that the step up in maintenance CapEx is required to keep the business operating on a more sustainable footing.
From a growth CapEx perspective, so that element of CapEx, which is entirely discretionary, we continue to take a disciplined approach to making our investment decisions. During the year, we've made investments in several key and exciting initiatives that form part of the delivery of Blueprint 2030, and include capital expenditure on the HDPE and PP plastic pelletizing facility and the second PET plastic pelletizing facility, both of them in Victoria. The IWS-led Santos total waste management contract, our Western Sydney MRF, start of the rollout of the Victorian CDS network, and the acquisition of the Queensland Riverview waste site. Our Customer Connect project is also progressing well, as I mentioned earlier, there's both a CapEx and OpEx element to the overall AUD 100 million project cost.
We expect our D&A for FY24 to be in the range of AUD 380 million-AUD 400 million, with the primary driver being the increased landfill amortization rates and depreciation of new assets related to new contracts that we've won. Passing back to Mark to take you through the segment results.
All right, thanks, Paul. I'm on Slide 12, which is that transition slide into the segment review. If you study that slide, you might have noticed that we've reorganized our strategic business units within the Solid Waste Services segment. What you should know there is, having established verticals for construction and demolition activity and Container Deposit Schemes, we took the opportunity to consolidate and streamline our smaller SBU, which was South Australia and Tasmania, under the WA/NT and Victorian SBU, respectively. Moving to Slide 13. Solid Waste Services net revenue increased 15% or AUD 273.1 million, benefiting from a full year contribution from SRN, price increases and increases in most landfill volumes and higher landfill gas capture. Growth in revenue was partially offset by lower OCC prices, and no waste was accepted at the New Chum landfill.
Pleasingly, we expanded underlying EBIT margins by 80 basis points to 13.3%, with underlying EBIT increasing 22.1% to AUD 278.1 million. Higher revenue was partially offset by the impact of general inflationary environment on operating costs and a greater use of overtime and subcontractors as we tackled the elevated vacancies during the year. Importantly, as described by Tracey Boyes during our June strategy session, as the numbers of vacancies reduced during the second half of the year, the solids team installed the visual performance system across the business to continuously improve the value drivers, including labor productivity. That has set us up really well coming into FY24. Depreciation and amortization costs reflected the increased SRN and GRL contributions and a larger fleet. We completed and integrated the acquisition of GRL on 31 August 2022.
That facility processes approximately 220,000 tons per annum of Sydney's red bin putrescible waste, delivering 30% landfill diversion. During the period, the GRL team undertook trials at the facility, with further analysis underway to determine the optimal transition plan for the facility, as it prepares to capture the emerging Sydney food organics, garden organics processing opportunity. Really excitingly, during the year, we won a few municipal FOGO contracts that will commence in FY25 and be processed at GRL. The TOMRA Cleanaway joint venture was appointed as the network operator for the Western Metro and regional zones of Victoria's Container Deposit Scheme. The joint venture is expecting to process 500 million containers per annum, once it ramps up to the initial target capacity. Moving to Slide 14, on Liquid Waste & Health Services.
Year revenue increased 10.9% to AUD 610.6 million, while underlying EBIT decreased 7.9% to AUD 48.8 million. The performance of the Health Services business weighed on the segment performance. Excluding Health Services, the segment expanded EBIT margins by 40 basis points versus the prior corresponding period. The LTS business realized 11.9% higher revenue than the PCP, predominantly due to a number of high-value projects secured during the period. The business managed increases in freight and labor costs through a combination of minimizing use of third-party contractors and contractual price increases. Hydrocarbons, which is one of our most circular businesses, increased revenue 16.6%, benefiting from favorable post collections price and volume mix, and higher Cleanaway Equipment Services revenue.
The growth in revenue was partially offset by higher natural gas and diesel input costs, and higher freight and labor costs. As a result, Hydrocarbons' underlying EBIT grew 8.1% to AUD 16.1 million. The health services business revenue was largely flat on the PCP, benefiting from increases in revenue from biosecurity and cruise ships following the rebound of the travel sector. This was offset by volume losses from lower network capacity and lower clinical waste from hotel quarantine, hospital, and vaccination clinics, and aged care centers. The challenges I spoke of earlier resulted in significant lower EBIT. In March 2023, we received the EPA approval for the business' two autoclave units, which have now been safely installed. I am pleased to report that they have reached initial target production rates, with several initiatives underway to exceed these rates and further increase throughput.
If we move to IWS now, where revenue increased 14.4% or AUD 47.2 million to AUD 375.8 million, driven by significant project activity across key contracts. The segment performed well in challenging external market circumstances, with underlying EBIT increasing by AUD 6.6 million to AUD 26.5 million. During the year, IWS realized a 92% renewal rate of available contract extensions. Just to give you an idea of the strategic growth we saw, new contracts signed in FY23 represent almost 3 times the annual value of contracts signed in FY22. The segment continues to deliver organic growth from its, its existing client base through contract renewals and increasing the scope of services, plus new business, with the outlook for sustainable growth over the next few years, supported by a very healthy pipeline of work.
This pipeline continues to be developed and balanced across the key sectors as the portfolio shifts from a historical general resources sector buyer to a greater share of the oil and gas sector. During the year, IWS secured significant contracts in the oil and gas sector with Santos and ExxonMobil. The ExxonMobil contract was followed by an earlier contract to undertake decommissioning tank cleaning work at ExxonMobil's Altona plant. The Santos contract spans WA, NT, Queensland, and South Australia, evidencing IWS's national capability. In addition, Cleanaway successfully tendered for the Snowy 2.0 contract with a further opportunity to extend the contract in the future. I'm gonna move to Slide 16 on landfill gas capture and greenhouse gas emissions. This is a fairly self-explanatory slide, so I won't dwell on it other than to highlight the great progress that we've been making.
We have safely drilled more than 250 wells. We've delivered 15% improved gas capture efficiency, and we've reduced actual greenhouse gas emissions by 8% on a like-to-like basis. If I move to Slide 17, which is the outlook for FY24. Now, there's a key word when we talk about FY24, and that word is momentum. Because we have strong momentum and good stability in the business as we head into FY24. In addition, we are expecting the impacts of inflation and higher interest rates to taper over the year. Operational excellence has been embedded across the business. This is important because it's symbolic of Blueprint 2030 coming to life. Additionally, with good progress being made across our key headwinds, we are seeing improving operating efficiency emerging.
We expect earnings growth to continue in FY24, driven by further operational efficiency improvements, including through data and analytics and our fleet optimization blueprints, revenue growth as we continue to recoup higher costs through our different price levers, organic growth in each segment, the contribution from the Victorian CDS, a partial recovery of the health services business and the full year contribution from contracts secured by the IWS segment in FY23. We will provide a trading update at our AGM on the 20th of October this year. All right, let's get into Slide 19 and the midterm ambition that we are setting out today. Starting with the financial metrics and the headline. We have set an FY26 EBIT ambition of greater than AUD 450 million.
This ambition comes from a bottom-up build of the range of initiatives and opportunities that we have line of sight to. We then risk-adjusted the total opportunity, knowing that while we will work hard to deliver them all, some might not come through in terms of timing or value. The next part that I'm gonna say is actually really important because it speaks to ambition and it speaks to confidence. We are aligning the executive long-term incentives, which are both EPS, CAGR, and ROIC, to the greater than AUD 450 million ambition, with 50% vesting at the AUD 450 million level. For incentives to fully vest, we will need to deliver on more of the initiatives and opportunities within the three-year period and achieve a significantly higher EBIT.
I will touch on the CapEx assumptions aligned to the ambition and that we have mapped to the blueprint aligned priorities on the scorecard in a moment. We will maintain an investment-grade credit profile through the period, and we will continue our dividend policy of 50%-75% of underlying NPAT. Our ambition is built around what we've labeled internally, our Must Achieves . Let's walk through our must achieves, starting with the foundations. On people, we will deliver a cultural shift by embedding our new values and behaviors, leading to improved engagement and employee retention. Michele Mauger took you through this back at the June Strategy Day. We know our people are the lifeblood of our organization, so it's critical that we get this part right. On safety, we will execute our detailed 5-year strategy that Deborah Peach spoke to back in June.
This will lead to lower injury frequency and severity, and fewer significant process safety related incidents. On the environment, we will aim to have no significant environmental incidents, and we will continue to reduce our carbon footprint in line with our stated targets. We believe that there is a significant prize in getting our foundations right, from lower recruitment and turnover costs, and lower workers' compensation claims to lower insurance premiums, outage costs, fewer notices, and other costs. We are doing that work now, and it will pay off in time, but the exact timing is challenging to predict, and for that reason, we have not factored this into the greater than AUD 450 million ambition. Moving to the top of the scorecard, these are our Blueprint-aligned priorities. This is not an exhaustive list in terms of what will deliver the ambition.
They are, however, our priorities today, and as we action and deliver them, you should expect them to see them drop off the list and be replaced with new priorities. Pleasingly, there should be nothing surprising on this list. Over the last 18 months, we've taken you on the blueprint journey. We've deep dived on the types of activities that each of the blueprints is focused on. Like I said earlier, importantly, operational excellence is now embedded in our SBUs, and we expect to deliver group-wide efficiency and productivity improvements. Alex Smith took you through the continued success of the data analytics program in June, and we're seeing significant earnings coming from that. You will recall the Lighthouse branch work that we spoke about during the operational excellence deep dive session.
This is where we set up four similar types of assets or facilities to share learning and aggressively implement best practice across similar assets or operations Cleanaway-wide. As illustrated by the recent tender wins that I called out earlier, our customers are increasingly recognizing our improved capability and performance, and strong alignment with their sustainability goals. We will continue to tender and win new contracts, which will drive further investment in our core infrastructure. The monetization of our landfill gas capture program will be important in delivering both the shareholders and the environment. CustomerConnect, although not delivering financially until the back end of the ambition period, is critical to our strategy and our customer value proposition.
As excited as we are about what's included in the ambition and the fact that most initiatives are capital light, we are equally excited about the opportunities that sit outside of it. We have no doubt that significant strategic infrastructure growth opportunities will present themselves over the course of the ambition term. We will seize the value accretive ones and add their contribution on top of our stated ambition. As we stand here today, we don't control the timing of those, so we've not made assumptions about the potential contribution of such opportunities. In terms of how we see the scorecard working as we move forward. Firstly, you would expect most things are green today. From a foundations perspective, most of the key metrics are aligned to the short-term incentive scheme. Through that, we will report back on how we are progressing.
We will also report on relevant non-financial measures that drive these, including but not limited to, things such as injuries, employee engagement scores, regulator direction notices, and gas capture efficiency. We'll use these metrics to evidence our degree of progress and scoring. With respect to the priorities, as I mentioned earlier, we expect to report against this list and tick them off as we deliver. As we deliver on the initiative or we resolve a headwind. We will identify the appropriate metric or value driver that illustrates the level of progress and report back on that. The way to think about it is, the overall financial scorecard should remain on track if we deliver on our priorities, and the reported financial outcomes each period will be evidence of that progress. Let's move to Slide 20.
When we built up our financial ambition, we examined in depth the various types of CapEx the business needs. Growth CapEx is only one of the potential uses of our excess cash flow within our capital allocation framework. We do not have a fixed or target amount, but we feel that around $150 million per annum or one-third of our total CapEx is the right amount on average. Importantly, we don't distinguish between assets purchased out of cash flow and assets purchased through finance leasing. They are simply different funding solutions. To be really clear, in the unlikely event that we don't have attractive opportunities to pursue, then capital won't be allocated. Equally, we are not going to put an artificial constraint on it and pass on accretive growth opportunities.
We will ultimately spend within our means and always assess the opportunities relative to a return of capital to shareholders. If you refer back to the mapping of CapEx on the scorecard page, you can see there are reasonable portions of this expected annual spend spoken for through projects such as CustomerConnect, landfill gas, gas monetization, our Western Sydney MRF, the Vic CDS , the FOGO transition, together with the pipeline that the IWS business has developed, growing opportunities to process more complex waste streams in the LHS business, and a growing collections business. We are not anticipating any material growth CapEx for energy from waste in this timeframe. Moving now to maintenance CapEx, which comprises HSE, stay in business, and cell development CapEx. Looking at our historical maintenance CapEx, this has been running at about 65% of D&A on average over the last 5 years.
That is simply unsustainably low, and I'll explain why. We believe 75% is required to keep our assets operating safely and reliably. We are Australia's leading waste management and resource recovery business. Our regulators look to us to meet or exceed the standard, and it becomes very visible when we don't. It is central to our social license to operate, and our customers expect this of us also. The capital expenditure attributable to landfill gas capture, which is separate from the growth CapEx associated with anything beyond the flare, has also increased as we ramp up our gas capture efficiency. From a stay in business CapEx perspective, we are seeing inflation is driving up equipment and material costs. Our operations are also growing, creating a natural demand for more sustaining CapEx.
The step up in cell development CapEx is consistent with what we said earlier, as a confluence of factors has resulted in a requirement to develop further airspace at most of our landfills. Further to that, we're also seeing higher labor and material costs to develop that airspace. We will seek to recover this through the price we charge at the gate. A key point in relation to cell development is that the airspace is amortized on a unit basis as it is consumed. Put simply, there is a limited ability to sweat that asset harder. Once the airspace is gone, it is amortized, and it needs to be replaced with new airspace that requires new CapEx. We've also spoken in the past about the transition from landfills to more resource recovery.
As the transition occurs, we expect to see a gradual slowing of volumes into landfill, and this will result in an associated reduction in amortization and landfill cell development CapEx. The total CapEx envelope, however, will likely remain about the same as we invest further into infrastructure to sort, process, and recycle the recovered resources. The key takeaway I want you to be left with here is that through our actions and investment, we are creating a safer, compliant, more reliable, growing, and sustainably profitable Cleanaway. That's it in terms of the formal presentation, and in a moment, I'm gonna open, ask the operator to open the lines for questions. Just in terms of the process and to ensure everybody gets an opportunity to ask a question, the operator will try and limit you to one question.
We'll try to get through as many as we can and come back around for supplementary questions if time permits, and I do recognize it's a busy day for a lot of you. For those on the webcast, please send in your questions, and we'll address as many of those as possible, too. Operator Zach, can you open the line for questions, please?
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the headset to ask your question. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the Ask a Question box and click Submit. Your first question comes from Peter Steyn from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mark, Pau l, Paul, Richie, appreciate your time. If I may, just on your ambition, appreciating that it's a bottom-up process and then risk-adjusted, could you give us a sense of how you've thought about the economic environment within which you'll be delivering that ambition over the next 3 years? You know, presumably that's played into your risk adjustment, but really just keen to understand how you stratified that in coming up with the target.
Yeah. Thank you, Peter. I guess in terms of our, our thought process on this, we see, I guess we see, see a relative level of, of volatility in the economy, in the sense that we're seeing potentially heading into more difficult times. We're certainly looking at, at prior experience in terms of how the business has performed through through those times, and I guess we, we believe that we've got a good degree of robustness there. In terms of, of, you know, key factors like interest rates, we basically assume we're pretty much at the top of the increasing cycle, but again, assume that those rates will stay relatively stable during the during the ambition period as well.
We, we try to reflect the fact that we are probably heading into a more difficult time economically, albeit we also see inflation abating somewhat, and we also too see the labor market probably loosening up somewhat too, as we progress through that ambition period. Does that help, Pete?
I appreciate that, color, and I'll stick to my one.
Thanks, Pete.
Your next question comes from Russell Gill from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. It's hard to be limited to one, but just focusing on the Solid Waste Services division and that second half result. Firstly, on the revenue side, revenue came off in the second half. I appreciate there's three less trading dates, but if you can also give some commentary around that, because I would have thought some pricing would have rolled through as well. Then the, the exit margin. The margin went up a lot in that second half, and should we be using that, I guess, exit as a run rate guide running into 2024?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Russell. I guess what you saw as the year played out, you saw the first half was pretty tough in terms of OCC in the first half. Clearly, that recovered into the second half, which helped the margin expansion in that regard. Some of the landfill gas activity also basically improved in the second half as we saw a bit of a lift in ACCU pricing going into that period. We're also very thoughtful, too, around our landfills, particularly our New South Wales and Kemps Creek Landfill in particular.
Again, the focus, as you've heard us talk many times with the team, is around EBIT, not EBITDA, and therefore, basically making sure that we maximize the return from that landfill as opposed to maximizing EBITDA was again, a real focus, and that helped drive margins. Again, you heard Mark talk about the improving vacancy situation as we went through the year, and the focus really switched from, you know, first half, which was all about getting, you know, getting bums on seats, getting people in the door. The switch to the second half was really about, about retention, and it was about improving productivity and efficiency at those sites again, so you'd expect to see a degree of margin uplift coming through due to that.
That extra couple of months of GRL in the, in the second half.
Yeah, that's also true. Yes, he had 6 months of GRL in the second half and 4 in the first.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald, from E&P. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Can I just ask about, you know, Mark, you've mentioned the step up in CapEx. You've also said you anticipate a sort of a stabilization in the interest rate environment. How do we think about the net interest exposure into FY24, given sort of the run rate at 51 in the second half? Just, you know, in particular, interested around how we factor in the discount unwind impact on that at net interest number. You know, presumably with interest rates not anticipated to move as much as they have in the last 12 months, there should be less of an impact on that front.
You're right. Essentially, with the stabilization of interest rates, I guess, at a higher level, you would expect to see the non-cash component, you know, the unwind component stabilize. Clearly, in terms of the cash interest rate, yeah, we started the year at relatively low levels and increased during the year, and obviously, our expectations were probably gonna be looking at that higher level for, you know, for the duration of 2024. There will be a bit of a step up in cash interest you'd expect to see going into 2024. I think we provided you sort of some, some,
Details.
details, yeah, on, on
On 2024.
Yeah, one of the later slides.
Your next question comes from Jakob Cakarnis from Jarden, Australia. Please go ahead.
Morning, Paul. Morning, morning, Mark. Just wondering if you could talk to the pricing environment in Solid Waste Services, particularly around customer acceptance of higher prices and then maybe the competitive response, please?
Sure. I mean, I think way we sort of think about that is obviously with the uni contracts and the national accounts, we put through the contracted price increases. There's not much customer response there because they're contracted and they're contractual price increases, and that's the classic rise and fall that we've talked about at length over the last year or so. In the SME segment, which is obviously, you know, quite, quite large, in that C&I market, we've put through, you know, double-digit increases into that segment. We've tended to do that, if you think about it, because those other price increases lag, we've tended to put those through quite proactively and quite regularly, so that we can sort of get that revenue up in line with costs going up.
That's been generally pretty well, pretty well accepted. I think also what we're doing probably in a more sophisticated way now, is the data analytics program is really sort of paying dividends in that we know how and where to put those price increases through, and we know the customers that we want to keep. We also know the customers that we're, we're okay to lose as well. We're really sort of, dealing with that tail end as well, quite, quite, aggressively. In terms of competitor landscape, it hasn't changed much. It continues to be, you know, the same, the same players, you know, each with their, each with their different, their different strengths and target areas.
I think, you know, certainly at the large, the large end of town, in that sort of sustainability pioneer group, we're definitely seeing that group of customers really wanting to get aligned with us, around, you know, what can we do together as they go on their sustainability-led, circular journey. The strategy is really paying off in, in that sort of area particularly.
Your next question comes from Nathan Lead from Morgans. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good day, gents. just a quick question, I suppose, in terms of the impairment testing note within the accounts, I understand that sort of aligns with your, your, financial ambitions for FY26, even though it's a 5-year forecast versus a 3-year. I suppose just within that note, there's, there's not the, the corporate cost, element. I was just wondering what you're thinking that is gonna happen to that line item over the next sort of 3 to 5 years within the P&L.
I, I guess, firstly, Nathan, thanks very much for having a close look at the impairment note in the accounts. You're probably one of the few that have, so that's, that's, that's great. In terms of, of our approach there, again, recognize that clearly impairment testing has probably a more conservative lens. Clearly the standards will basically influence what we can and can't include in terms of that future financial forecasting. Essentially, we've taken, we've been consistent between the midterm ambition and that impairment testing model for the first 3 years. I'd say consistent, not the same. In terms of corporate costs, we basically assume the relatively modest increase, those sort of CPI, thereabout for that 5-year period.
Your next question comes from Reinhardt van der Walt from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mark and Paul. Thanks for taking my question. Just conscious that we've got the FY26 aspirations now, but still no quantitative FY24 guidance. Can you just maybe give us a sense for what the, the key sort of uncertainties are that's holding you back from giving us that quantitative number now, as opposed to in October? Maybe just to put it a different way, what's, what's the main question that you want to have answered by October in order to give us that guidance? Thank you.
Well, yeah. There's no question to be answered. We, we know exactly what we're aiming for for FY24. I mean, I think the way I think about it is in FY23, we provided quantitative guidance. The reason we did that is this time last year, we were raising AUD 400 million of equity to fund the GRL acquisition, there was significant moving parts because of, you know, the health business and Queensland and, and labor and whatever. We wanted to give the market some clarity on what they were investing against, which was approximately AUD 300 million, which we delivered. That, that we hadn't previously necessarily given quantitative guidance. Now we can-- we've ramped forward to where we are today, we've given you midterm ambition of north of AUD 450 million.
Just picture if we gave you FY24 and then you had FY26 ambition, then you can't. Everybody would be starting to draw straight lines. It's not a straight line. It's not, not even necessarily, we're not. We're saying the midterm ambition is AUD 450 million. Our internal ambition is well north of that. That's why, that's why we haven't given quantitative guidance for 24. There's no, there's no questions that we need answered. There's nothing going on. There's no silly business. It's just we've decided not to give quantitative guidance in 24, and we won't be giving it necessarily in, in October at this stage.
Your next question comes from Amit Kanwatia from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mark, Pau l, Energy. Just got a question on EBIT margin. If I look at your EBIT margin in second half, that's at 11%, which is a significant improvement from 9.4% in the first half. I mean, you've highlighted strong business momentum heading into fiscal 2024. Maybe if you can give us a sense of how should we be thinking about first half 2024 margins relative to second half 2023, please?
Yeah, I'll have a bit of a go. Second half 2023 margins were obviously impacted by OCC recovery. That was a key difference between first half and second half, and I think we went through that journey with you, explaining about what happened in the first half of 2023 versus the second half recovery. Obviously also had, you know, landfill gas capture ramping up during the course of the year. In terms of sort of EBIT margins, we're not providing EBIT margin guidance or targets. We're providing an absolute EBIT ambition. You know, in terms of the, you know, we talked about the 10.2% versus the 12% back in whenever it was earlier, earlier this year, this year in May. That was really illustrative to say ...
Just remember, it was saying margins were at 10.2 at the time on the group level. The underlying margin, we thought if you could, could recover the three health, the three businesses would be sort of 12%. We were just really trying to give you clarity that we understood that underlying margin of where it could be, and that we would take that into account when we set the midterm ambition, which is what we have. To answer your question, you should expect to see EBIT margins improve over the course of the period of the midterm ambition. My view would be, you know, I mean, that will be well above that 12% level to hit the north of AUD 450.
Your next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. just a quick question on energy from waste. I noticed you didn't put any, you know, clear slides in the deck. I'm wondering if you can give us an update on how that's progressing, any particular things around the, I guess, the CapEx requirements that you've, you've previously guided to?
Yeah. I mean, we didn't put anything because nothing really had changed, and I guess we spoke about it at length in June when we were out together at Perry Road . That's sort of, like, the latest, the latest information. We're continuing to develop the capital light options to execute those projects at the time and place where it makes sense and when customers will pay the return that we need to invest in them. I mean, that's, that's sort of, that's sort of the bottom line. But again, in terms of, you know, Yeah, no major capital assumed in the midterm targets, and there's no benefit from energy from waste in the midterm target.
We would expect to spend, you know, AUD 2 million of CapEx over the course of the years ahead, just getting those capital light options ready.
The next question comes from Rob Coe from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I've joined the call a bit late, so I do apologize if I'm asking a question that you've covered. I wanted to, well, I've only got one question, and I thought I'd ask it in eight parts, but You've mentioned you've had some wins in the oil and gas industry. If you just give us a bit more color, are those maybe growth projects where you're taking waste from construction, or are they decommissioning projects, or, or are they a bit of both?
The way, the way I think about it, Rob, is if you take Santos as an example, we've won using the IWS business as the spear tip. We've won the Santos sort of national business. The only piece. I say that just slightly carefully because I want to caveat it. The only thing we're not doing is we're not doing the waste services to Santos in the Northern Territory because they do that with an Indigenous company, and that's awesome. We're not doing that, but we're doing everything else for them across the country, where IWS takes the lead, and then but it does involve liquids, and it does involve solid waste services, but, but IWS leads it out.
You know, if you remember what we're trying to do, we're trying to get on the oil and gas sector, and we're trying to use that to get on the oil, oil and gas decommissioning vector. We hope that by being part of their business on a day-to-day basis, then we'll be naturally the partner to help them on the decommissioning side as that starts to evolve. That's generally how it happens, because, you know, you sort of expand by those contracts. Similar, similar story for ExxonMobil, but I guess on a more limited scale, so it's got a more limited onshore footprint.
Your next question comes from Matthew Ryan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Matt. You're on mute, Matt. You might be on mute, Matt, if you're listening.
Sorry, there?
Yeah, we're here, Matt. If that's you.
Great. sorry about that. I just had a question on labor availability. I think you've talked about that improving over the course of the year. Can you just sort of paint the profile of, of how that might change over this year and whether you think you'll be back, I guess, to normal or some, some type of normal by the end of the year?
Yeah, sure. I think the numbers, the number that you sort of have in your, your head, remember the peak September, October last year, was sort of a number like 950 vacancies, and it was going up. That was sort of the high point. Today, that same number would be sort of 400, 450. The reason why we say it's a range is because, you know, what we've got also is some vacancies associated with growth, where you take, for example, Vic CDS , and, you know, we might be recruiting 50 or 60 drivers. So, you know, they're new roles, and so they're not really replacements, so they're not part of that sort of underlying vacancy issue that we've had.
I think traditionally, you know, what we'd aim to have is because, because we clamp, we clamp numbers in Cleanaway in terms of overall number of roles and people, you can never go above the number, and so you'll always be below it because there'll always be turnover. We'd expect to have sort of at normal, would be 300-350, and so we're sort of 100-150 off that level now. We're expecting to see if we can get that to recover over time. Obviously that'll be a more steady state. Again, we're spending less time on that now and more time on labor productivity, retention, and sort of cultural refresh.
Your next question comes from Scott Ryall, from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you very much. My question is around Slide 16, so landfill gas capture. And I was wondering if you could just be a bit more specific about the financial benefits that you saw from landfill gas capture over the time. I noticed a comment there around maximizing value by selling domestic credits and acquiring international credits, which sounds like just a arbitrage or trading strategy to me. Is that, is that where the financial benefits have come in from selling ACCUs, please? Are all your comments around the landfill gas capture that you control as opposed to Lucas Heights, please?
When we talk about landfill gas capture, we talk about all our, all our facilities that we, that we control. What I'd say on that Slide 16 is, just we need to be really clear, that our focus is on reducing our actual physical emissions, and that's, and that's the blue line on that graph. With having met what we wanted to do there, we then maximize the benefit for the environment, we then go and maximize the benefit for shareholders. We're finding that benefit, that, that point between we maximize the environment, then we'll go and maximize shareholders. What we're saying there is, we sold ACCUs, and then we bought back some, some equivalent international carbon credits that were landfill gas capture, very high-quality credits, and we pocketed that differential.
Where, for example, you know, you might see ACCUs at sort of, you know, AUD 35-ish a ton, and then we're buying them back at sort of AUD 10, AUD 10 a ton. They're the same type of ACCU, very high quality, landfill gas capture. They're just cheaper because they're done in a different setting to the ones that obviously we've created in Australia.
Just to be clear, too, Scott. Clearly, you know, as Mark said, the focus here is, is about reducing the emissions. You've seen really significant step up in terms of activity around drilling additional wells, wells that are offline, getting them back online again, getting ring mains in place. That's where the focus is, and that's where, frankly, too, quite a bit of step up in CapEx has gone as well. What you've seen is, is getting a return on that investment, has been the ability to generate additional ACCUs that we've that we've sold on the market. We've, we've not actively traded per se. We're not, we're not out there taking positions. We're simply trading those ACCUs that we basically generated.
To end up in a net position, which is directly back on our line that we wanna be on.
I will now hand back the call to the speakers to handle the webcast questions.
All right, Richie, any webcast questions?
We have one webcast question: What is the hurdle rate of return on growth CapEx? Paul?
Yeah. The so the baseline hurdle rate that we have is post-tax of around, around the 12% mark. Essentially, that does vary, and it varies in a couple of reasons. Firstly, it depends on the opportunity set that we've got ahead of us. Again, if we've got lots of great projects with higher returns than that, then essentially a 12% project won't meet the mark. We also too, have regard to, to the risk associated with certain elements of CapEx deployment as well. Again, we wanna, we wanna be in a situation, if there is a, a great project which is low risk, it may have a lower return than the 12%, and that could well be an attractive project for us to undertake.
We actually want a portfolio of projects that are on the go, that reflect different risk-return characteristics across the spectrum.
Okay. operator, I can see there's a few more questions in the queue. We might go back around a second time, I think, Peter, to top it all this.
Your next question comes from Peter Steyn, from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Thanks, James. Actually, very much a related question, and perhaps just want to get your sense, Mark, on, you said AUD 150 million in growth CapEx felt like the right number. You know, is that sort of embedded in your ambition, and you've essentially built a curve of returns associated with those investments into the ambition?
Yeah, Pete, that's exactly the right way to think about it. The way I think about the ambition is you can sort of break it. You can break that AUD 150 million EBIT uplift into three parts. Sort of one third of it is just what you said there. If you invest AUD 150 million a year for three years, you generate sort of AUD 50 million of incremental EBIT. There's another AUD 50 coming from the recovery of the three businesses, and there's another sort of AUD 50 odd coming from operational excellence getting delivered. That's how, that's how, you know, you should think about the very basic building blocks of the AUD 450. That said, I'll just say, remember, it's greater than AUD 450, and we're gunning for more than that.
Your next question comes from Amit Kanwatia from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks again, Mark. If I can just ask on the Industrial & Waste Services business, and you've highlighted good contract wins. You've commented that the contract wins are 3 times in FY23 on FY22. Can you give us a sense of the CapEx for those contracts that's going to be deployed over the next 12 months?
You got that, Paul?
I understand the key point is that that CapEx has been built into the guidance we've given you in terms of expectations for future CapEx going forward. I guess the, you know, the key thing, if you think about how this business works, essentially, essentially, we are basically hiring staff and acquiring capital to provide an industrial service to the client base, and off the back of that, generating, you know, generating a strong margin, strong return. I don't really wanna give you a specific CapEx figure simply because, you know, there are three other projects on the go, too, that might, that, that might well come to pass, and happy to talk about those as they, as they come through.
All right, operator, I think we're gonna call it there, given the time.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Schubert for closing remarks.
All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for your time this morning. Obviously, I know it's busy for each of you. We'll look forward to catching up with most of you during the course of the next couple of weeks. Thanks again. Talk soon.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.