Good morning, everyone. Yeah, my name is Grant Fenn, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Downer, and with me is Michael Ferguson, who is our Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'll begin with the highlights of the last six months and the priorities for the remainder of the year. Then Michael will go through the financials in more detail. I'll then discuss the outlook before we open up the call for your questions. Let's move to slide two, highlights and priorities. First of all, you know, it's hard to talk about the last six months results without acknowledging upfront, you know, the impact that COVID-19, and in particular Omicron, has had on all businesses, including Downer, and governments. Workflows have been interrupted, supply chains as well as large numbers of employees and subcontractors absent. You know all this.
There's been a myriad of different regulatory requirements that have had to be navigated. It's in this environment that we announce today's results. Now, we're all hopeful that, relatively soon, life will return to somewhat normality. Now, I'd particularly like to acknowledge the outstanding efforts of our people and our customers, and they've continued to put in an amazing effort. Remembering that the vast majority of Downer people don't have the option of working from home. They're out there every day making it happen. In summary, the results announced today are very good in a tough environment. We've been able to increase our core earnings and back it up with a strong cash conversion in the midst of widespread disruption. Of course, there are ups and downs within the portfolio.
Some parts of the business have been impacted more than others, but all are managing their service obligations very well, irrespective of what's been thrown at them. It's also clear to me that in times like these, the benefits of our diversification come into their own. For the half, we've delivered 4.4% growth in core earnings. We've normalized cash conversion of 91.2%. Our core revenue has increased by 13.3%, which just highlights the inherent growth potential of our core markets. In normal times, we should be able to convert a higher proportion of this revenue into earnings. The group has never been stronger financially, with gearing at just 16.5% and net debt at 1.5x EBITDA.
We're all but complete on the construction of the new Rosehill Sustainable Road Resource Center, and this will be the most efficient asphalt manufacturing and recycling plant in the country. We continue to fill out our asphalt manufacturing and services footprint with the acquisition of Fowlers Asphalting in Gippsland in Victoria. We've been successful in resetting the reviewable services at Royal Adelaide and Bendigo Hospitals. Now, this is an important milestone as the first long-term Spotless contracts to be reset at their five-year mark. With our pedigree in power transmission, renewable energy and battery storage, we are seeing substantial customer demand for decarbonization and New Energy solutions across our customer base. I'll talk a bit more about that as we roll through the presentation. Given the strength of the business, we've decided to increase the interim dividend from AUD 0.09-AUD 0.12 per share.
We've spent AUD 123 million so far on our market share buyback. The program's been suspended since 31 December just because of blackout with the results, but we'll now recommence buying back shares. Our priorities are straightforward. Navigating COVID-19 is still critically important. That means maintaining our quality service delivery, working proactively with customers, and minimizing the risk in new contracts. On the positive, COVID has accelerated technology development, communication capabilities and infrastructure investment that will drive growth in our markets for the next decade at least. We're setting up the business to take advantage of those changes. We've got to continue to drive our sustainability performance. We are a leader in ESG in our markets and have a lot to be proud of. If you haven't already, please have a good look at our sustainability report on our website.
As many of you know, Downer's urban services strategy delivers not only lower capital intensity, but also lower carbon usage. The divestments of our mining and laundries assets will reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 35% or around 206,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023. Importantly, the extensive capabilities we have across our group, particularly in HV power transmission and power generation, including renewables and battery storage, means we can help our customers decarbonize. The increasing focus on sustainability by our customers and capital providers is a real opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves, and we will be slanting the business to the massive decarbonization effort that is required across the economy. On value, the challenge is clear.
Now that we've finished our divestment of mining and laundries, we've got to invest in the right areas for competitive advantage and higher returns, improving our margins through technology and innovation and reduced costs, and of course, making sure that cash is king. We'll continue to grow. The revenue numbers and increase in revenue in these difficult times shows that we will grow organically through increased customer spend in our market areas. Also through strategic acquisitions like Fowlers, which we've done in the last six months. Just think for a minute of the size of effort required for the nation to meet its 2050 net zero target. The demand from our customers for decarbonization solutions has accelerated dramatically in just the last three months. All of our customers, private and public, have decarbonization targets. What do they do?
Who do they turn to? Within our suite of technical skills, we are in a prime position to grow our business in what will be a massive transformation effort. Governments can't or won't put numbers to what needs to be spent. It's too large, and this all lies ahead of us. Now we'll move to slide three in our management of COVID in the last six months, just to give you a sense of how businesses like ours are managing. Despite the obvious challenges, I am very pleased with how our management teams have organized our labor availability and equally as pleased with how our workforce has responded. On the labor shortages side, we have seen significant variation in the percentage of employees in isolation by business unit.
Now, some of those are as low as 2%, and others at times have been as high as 40%, particularly where there's been a higher reliance on casual staff. On average, around 10%-15% are off at the moment, isolating for one reason or another. Now business continuity strategies have been generally well managed with percentage in isolation now stabilizing or declining in all of those areas, so things are getting much better. Pleasingly, we've had limited impact on our ability to service customers. This is customers. On the customer side, the labor shortages are impacting workflow and delaying new projects, and you can see that as we roll through the individual divisions. We think this will reverse as infection rates, as we can see, are in decline.
On workplace management, you know, the compliance effort has been quite complicated with different safe work requirements across each state and territory. Most states have seen multiple changes in rules, or most days have seen multiple changes in rules and requirements across the states and New Zealand. Unfortunately, it's just something that has to be managed. Thankfully, we are well-versed in managing through change. There is undoubtedly a productivity impact, increasing the cost of service, but we anticipate this will be temporary. Mitigating the ongoing risk of COVID is obviously key. Now we've long established safe, COVID-safe standards, practices and mature continuity plans which have held us in good stead, and we share those and coordinate with our customers. We are proactive with our customers, both on the service side, but also commercially.
We're focusing in on our supply chain management and are planning as far ahead as we can, trying to predict bottlenecks and future shortages. Our workforce is directed to priority works, continuity of critical regulatory roles, particularly where we operate customer infrastructure and smaller work groups that are more severely impacted by staff shortages. We're also using alternate contract partners or subcontractors where we need to. On the contract management side, you know, customers are generally supportive and are providing KPI relief where appropriate. In a number of cases, COVID-related variation claims over the last two years continue to progress. I would say that the volatility in materials and labor supply and pricing is making it difficult for everybody in the market to commit to cost and program timing for new contracts, and this is a key focus for our risk reviews.
Generally, the circumstances are requiring a more collaborative approach to risk sharing with customers. Now, that's not a bad thing. Now, given the understandable interest in the prospect of much higher inflation levels and wage growth on the businesses, like Downer, I thought I'd include the following slide, which you may have seen from the last full-year presentation. Now, I'm not gonna go through that slide in detail, but what you'll see is that long-term contracts adjust to the impact of cost increases, including wages. Now, over the past decade, these adjustments have been generally detrimental to margins due to low movement in CPI and wage indexes, in some cases being outstripped by actual costs. Now I think we're entering a phase where this could turn around, where higher CPI and wage indices provide price rises that exceed actual cost increases in some cases.
It will, of course, require close cost and labor management, but in my view, it is an opportunity that we haven't had over the last number of years. We'll now turn to the performance of our three core businesses, transport, utilities, and facilities. As you know, transport's the powerhouse of the group, both in Australia and New Zealand, contributing half of the group's revenue. Revenue was up 14.6%, AUD 359 million, with strong performances across the business units. EBITDA was up 15.9%, with increased contributions from rail and transit systems and projects. The results would have been better, but the roads business, which was having a cracking half, was unfortunately impacted by terrible weather in the second quarter.
Now, we commenced the operation of Adelaide's Metro trains and the Region 8 bus contract in Sydney, and both have started very well. I spent some time at the Brookvale bus depot last week and all looks very good. Now we're hopeful of being successful in other bus operations being tendered in Sydney at the moment. We've also recently picked up the Transurban CityLink Road Services contract in Melbourne, which is very pleasing. As I said, the new Rosehill Sustainable Road Resource Centre is in commissioning. Now it's a game changer for us being the most efficient asphalt and recycling facility in the country. We've also, as I said, acquired Fowlers Asphalting in Gippsland in Victoria, further strengthening our geographic footprint in bituminous products and services. Now to utilities.
Now it contributes 15% of group revenue, and we've got a well-balanced portfolio across power and gas, water, and telecommunications. Revenue was down 5.6%, AUD 51 million, due to lower volumes and a change in mix away from higher margin minor capital works. Now, these are all COVID-related. We think the change is temporary, but it certainly had an impact on the half. EBIT was down 26.5%, or AUD 12 million, as a result of the mix and volume change, with a more significant impact in New Zealand. On the bright side, we are winning good business in Australia and New Zealand, and our customer feedback is great. We've recently been awarded a key three-year Chorus field services contract in New Zealand, further extending our leading market position there.
We're also now converting decarbonization opportunities for our customers in what we are calling New Energy, and this will grow. Let's now go to Facilities. Downer is the largest integrated facilities provider in Australia and New Zealand, with strong positions in a number of government areas, including health, education, defense, and social housing. We're also the leading provider of asset maintenance and specialist services to Australia's critical economic infrastructure, including oil and gas, power generation, and industrial sectors. Facilities contributes about 35% of group revenue. Revenue for the period was up 22%, driven mainly by COVID related volumes in health and education. And as you know, there's been a lot more work in that area. Also industrial maintenance in Australia, compared to the prior comparative period, and building projects in New Zealand.
There was a strong earnings performance from most areas, but EBITA was up just 7.5%, due to COVID impacts on two areas, project volumes in asset and development services and in lower levels of work in power and energy. Again, the impact is temporary, it's COVID related, and the projects will return. On a positive side, we were awarded the AUD 1 billion New South Wales police property portfolio capital works contract during the period, and this was very pleasing. I'm also pleased to report that we've successfully renegotiated the Royal Adelaide Hospital contract and the Bendigo Hospital contract, and this is quite a milestone. We've also now exited the majority of our hospitality contracts. Finally, like Utilities, our Facilities business is very well positioned to meet our customers' requirements to decarbonize. Now to work in hand.
Downer's work in hand is a substantial AUD 35 billion, and 92% of this is government related. The pie chart on the right of the slide shows that 91% of our work in hand relates to services contracts, predominantly long-term contracts servicing critical infrastructure. Around 9% of our work in hand is attributable to construction, and only 1% of our AUD 35 billion of work in hand relates to what we'd call lump sum construction contracts. Of course, we manage the risk in those very, very heavily. The extended profile of our workbook, as you can see there, also provides stability and confidence, and our relative market position is strongly improving. I'll come back in a moment. I'll hand over to Michael now, who will present the financial results, and I'll come back a little later to talk about the outlook. Over to you, Michael.
Thanks, Grant. Good morning, everyone. Slide 10 provides a summary of the group's financial results, including statutory and underlying financial performance, cash flow performance, and key balance sheet metrics. I'll talk through the detail of each in the following slides, commencing with group underlying financial performance on slide 11. On a consolidated basis, the group reported total revenue of AUD 6 billion for the six months to 31 December 2021. This was 2.3% lower than the prior corresponding period, predominantly due to the impact of the divestment program. Similarly, EBITDA and depreciation have also declined 24% and 30% respectively due to the impact of the divestment of laundries and mining. Underlying EBITA declined 17.8% to AUD 182 million, with an EBITA margin of 3%.
There is a detailed breakdown between core earnings growth and the loss of non-core earnings set out on the next slide. Margin reduction has been driven by COVID disruptions and the losses incurred in the hospitality business. Net interest expense reduced by 11.6%, reflecting lower debt levels and an improved average cost of funds. We expect this to continue to trend down following the successful refinancing of our sustainability linked loan in November. The effective tax rate of 28% remains slightly below the Australian statutory tax rate of 30% due to non-taxable distributions from joint ventures at a lower corporate tax rate in New Zealand. Downer delivered an underlying NPATA of AUD 97.6 million, which is 18.1% lower than the prior corresponding period. Return on funds employed increased 1.4 percentage points to 11.3%.
The Downer board has declared an unfranked interim dividend of AUD 0.12 per share. While this represents a payout ratio of 87% of underlying NPATA, it is consistent with the final FY 2021 dividend and considered appropriate given the group's strong liquidity position at 31 December. Downer expects to return to frank dividends either for final FY 2023 or interim FY 2024. Moving now to slide 12, outlining the business unit performance. Downer's core urban services businesses delivered EBITA of AUD 238 million, up AUD 10 million or 4.4% on the prior corresponding period. Grant has discussed the performance of the core business in the earlier slides.
Consistent with Downer's new structure following the divestment program, and as flagged at our FY 2021 full year results, this is the first reporting period we have disclosed our core business under the simpler transport, utilities, and facilities segments. The most notable impact of this change is the inclusion of asset services in the facilities result and the transfer of Downer's defense consulting business from utilities to facilities. We have also adjusted the comparative periods for consistency with the reconciliation included on slide 25 of the supplementary information. Non-core business EBITA resulted in a net loss of AUD 4.4 million for the half. This includes the contribution from the mining businesses, Open Cut Mining East and Otraco, up to their divestment dates of AUD 8.1 million, offset by the loss from hospitality of AUD 12.5 million. The result reflects...
The hospitality result reflects the significant impact of COVID during the period at a number of venues, most notably the prolonged lockdown affecting the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Included in the result is approximately AUD 8 million of monthly minimum guaranteed customer payments that were paid under the MCG contract that were not incurred in previous lockdown periods. Downer has now completed its contract at the MCG and hands it over to the new catering services provider at the end of January 2022. Downer has now exited all but a small number of hospitality contracts, with the remainder expected to be sold or run off before the end of FY 2022. Corporate costs rose by 8.8% to AUD 52 million.
While we have reduced our head office costs during the half as part of the divestment program, the full benefit of these reductions has not flowed through the first half as yet. We have also seen continued increases in other costs, particularly insurance and IT security costs. Slide 13 lists the five items that reconcile Downer's statutory result with the underlying result. The net impact of these items results in the statutory profit exceeding the underlying profit by AUD 1.4 million. The first item relates to the non-cash fair value movement on the Downer Contingent Share Options liability arising from options issued as part of the Spotless minority acquisition. The fair value of these options are required to be recognized as a financial liability at issue date, with the future movements being mark-to-market through earnings.
As a result, we have recognized a non-cash charge of AUD 5.4 million for the half year. The second and third items relates to divestment and exit costs and portfolio restructure costs incurred as part of Downer's divestment program, totaling AUD 51.3 million. Divestment and exit costs include the difference between the proceeds received and the carrying value of the divested assets, including an allocation of IT systems and property costs. Portfolio restructure costs include redundancy costs incurred as the group reduces its management layers and corporate headcount as part of its post-divestment restructure. It is expected that the write-off of these costs will lead to future annual savings of approximately AUD 8 million through reduced amortization, leasing, and employee costs. The fourth item relates to bid costs relating to Queensland's Rollingstock Expansion Program.
AUD 2.8 million in bid costs were incurred during the period, and we have highlighted this item as we expect total bid costs to be material for FY 2022. The final item relates to the compulsory acquisition of land by Sydney Metro at Downer's Rosehill Asphalt and Recycling Facility. The transaction has resulted in Sydney Metro reimbursing Downer on a like-for-like basis for the actual costs incurred on the construction and commissioning of a replacement facility. Downer expects the compulsory acquisition and reinstatement of operations at the new site to be cash neutral in net terms. The replacement facility is expected to be completed by May 2022, with no expected disruption to operations.
The AUD 60.1 million after-tax gain during the period is reflective of the difference between the historical written down book value of the existing facility and the reimbursement of costs for the replacement facility and relocation costs. Turning to cash flow on slide 14. Total operating cash flow was AUD 270.4 million, resulting in a statutory cash flow conversion of 85.1%. Adjusting for the remaining payments recognized in FY 2020 and funded as part of the July 2021 capital raising, underlying conversion was 91.2%. Pleasingly, Downer's portfolio transformation continues to drive lower capital intensity with net capital expenditure for the core business of AUD 65.2 million. Downer has also invested AUD 22.8 million in IT-related capital, with just over half of this focused on improving Downer's cybersecurity. Total funds from operation were AUD 78.7 million.
Below funds from operations, proceeds from divestments totaled AUD 247.6 million for the period, whilst the repayment of borrowings relates to the early repayment of Downer's Medium Term Note due in March 2022. Cash applied to the share buyback program was AUD 99 million. The group also acquired Fowlers Asphalting during the period. Cash held at 31 December was AUD 676.7 million, which when combined with undrawn facilities of AUD 1.4 billion, provides us with significant liquidity of AUD 2.1 billion. As Grant indicated, Downer's balance sheet is in good shape with net debt to EBITDA of 1.5x , well below our target range of 2x-2.5x .
The successful refinancing of our sustainability-linked loan during the period and prudent debt management has seen our weighted average debt duration extend from 3.8 years at 30 June 2021 to 4.2 years. We have included further details on cash flow, debt maturity, and balance sheet in the supplementary information on slides 21-24. Thanks very much, and I'll now hand back to Grant.
Yeah, thanks Michael. The key message is in outlook. With the arrival of Omicron, it's been a tough six months to navigate, or tougher six months to navigate than we expected in August 2021. Despite the challenges, Downer has delivered solid earnings and strong cash conversion for the first half of 2022. Our market positions and diversity give us strength that others don't have and confidence through to the other side of COVID-19. Our brand and our relationships are very strong. The financial capacity of the group has never been so robust, with gearing at just 16.5% and net debt to EBITDA of 1.5x . In August 2021, we predicted that our core urban services revenue and earnings would grow in FY 2022.
In the first half, our core revenue was up 13.3% and earnings were up 4.4%. The impact of Omicron on the supply chain, work volumes, and mix is difficult to predict and presents risk for the second half, so we'll not be providing specific earnings guidance. We'll do our best to manage that risk with our customers, and we'll provide an update at our Investor Day in April. Thank you, and that's the end of the formal presentation, and I'll hand over to the moderator, to organize the questions. Thanks.
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 then two. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Rohan Sundram from MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks. Grant, I'll start with a question just on the environment. Labor supply issues and COVID impacts aside, how would you describe activity levels in the half? Taking on board your comments, but would you expect material improvement in the second half, and are you seeing that pick up from rising government spend in your activity?
Look, I think what I'd say is for the particularly the second quarter, so this is the second part of the first six months that we've just seen. You know, Omicron and just the impact of that on sort of customer outflow of work, et cetera, you know, had quite an impact. I sense from each of the businesses that's starting to turn around, and we see it in our own business. The issues related to you know, absenteeism because of COVID, et cetera, and isolation seem to be changing. There's no issue with the underlying demand for services. It's really being able to get it out the door, and I think that's starting to come back is what we're seeing.
Thanks, Grant. One final one for Michael. Post the reset in the Royal Adelaide contract, are you able to provide indications around the cash burn monthly or annually for that contract?
Post the reset?
Yeah, post the reset.
Yeah. It'll earn money. It'll be cash positive for us.
Okay.
Yeah, we should see normal returns off the back of those resets.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. The next question comes from Adam Martin from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Just around the labor shortages, can you just elaborate on that a bit more? I mean, you talked about it sort of varying quite a bit.
Yeah.
Can you just talk through, you know, why it does vary a lot and just give us some context around some of the business units in play?
Yeah, sure. Where you've got a more significant number of casual employees, it seems to be more pronounced in those areas. If we look at utilities, which has been our most impacted, you know, outside of hospitality, in the metering services there, you know, that's where at times we've been 40% short of where we would normally be. Now of course, we rearrange our work, et cetera, to manage that, but it's generally where that's the case. It can be more acute where you have smaller work crews.
If you think you've got work crews, you know, maintenance work crews on whether it be power lines or whether it be, you know, even pavements, when you've got six or seven people and two or three are out, then that's where the impact has been. But generally, we've been managing this very well. It's, as I say in the presentation, we've not really seen service degradation from those. We've been able to manage, you know, in large part with our customers to make sure that everything's run well. Of course, as I make clear there, it is starting to turn, and that started, you know, two or three weeks ago. We've stabilized and those issues are declining.
Okay. That's good context. Just in the second question, just regarding the transport division, you sort of called out, I think, customer volumes across the east, eastern states. Can you just give us a bit more context on that one as well and just whether there's signs of that improving over the next six-12 months?
On transport, I think I said transport generally was very good. You know, I called out there that our roads business, our road services business was having a cracker half, but it did get impacted by a lot of weather which we've all been experiencing in the second part of the half. That's just been the case of it, and that's been in the eastern states. Now all that will return. The work doesn't go away. It's gotta be done. You know, if we end up with a good period between now and the end of June, that'll be great. Our rolling stock business did well and our projects business did well in there. I'm not sure where.
You know, it wasn't disruption, it was really weather in those areas.
That should really improve going forward, you know, assuming the weather's not too bad going forward. Is that your sense or?
Yeah, well, you know, I just look at, you know, our roads business is doing very well, and we were in for a very good half. We don't call weather out very often. You know, we've probably had seven or eight full years where we've not been calling weather out, but it just was such an issue for us in the last. We just, you know, it's off quite a bit as a result of that. We'll just see what happens in the second half.
Yep, okay. All right. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Shaurya Visen from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, Grant Fenn, Michael Ferguson. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to get some more color on your guidance. You have mentioned that the new COVID situation poses risks to 2H, but again, 1H you have delivered, right? Both core earnings and revenues were up year on year. Is it fair to conclude that your prior guidance on year on year increase of earnings and revenues still holds?
Oh, look, I think you can imagine as you roll through into these presentations and the words that you put them have all been well worked. I think what I've got there is really what I wanna say, and that is that, you know, the facts are that our first half has been a good performance in the core business. All right. We've had good revenue growth. Look, the revenue growth in here just shows in those core areas that, you know, we often talk about growth here. There is a lot of organic growth. There's a lot of money being spent here. There's no doubt about it. Omicron has had an impact, there's no doubt about that either, right, productivity-wise.
Now, just how all of that comes together for the second half, you know, we've sort of put in those outlook statements. I don't wanna go any further than that other than to say that of course there's risk depending on what happens and it's been a volatile situation over the last number of months, and let's hope it's not in the next six months. You know, you'll have as good an idea as I do on the.
Yeah.
Volatility of you know government decisions and the like. All right. We'll see where we go.
Thank you. Thanks for the color. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Andrew Hodge from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, gents. I just had a couple questions.
Morning.
First one, just around the reconciliation from underlying and the portfolio restructure. Would you just talk me through. I just think a big cost for a contract or an underlying part of the business, just wanna understand why you've excluded those as a reconciliation.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Can I take that, Michael?
Yeah, you wanna do those?
I mean, I think it's just the size of them. The majority of all the Downer bid costs that we spent across the group, which is obviously, you know, many millions of AUD, has just flowed through the underlying result, where we're bidding this major rolling stock program. It's gonna have a material amount of bid costs that's unusual to any other project that's going on in the group. We're just flagging that the impact of that on the full year is gonna be much higher than AUD 2.8 million.
Okay, great. Thanks. Then just in terms of the portfolio restructure costs, I think you alluded to it, but can you confirm that all of those were in businesses that are outside of what you consider the core urban services business?
The corporate restructure that we've done to rightsize the business to deal to a more refined portfolio.
Yep, thank you. Then just one final question, just in terms of the buyback, AUD 150 million consistent with the previous half. I guess just going forward, we figure you do AUD 100 million for the next couple of halves to finish out the stated level that you've got in the market?
Yeah. Somewhere around there. I mean, the volumes vary depending on, you know, our decisions to buy and due diligence in the business and all of those things. That would be a reasonable run rate, you know, assuming that there's not something more accretive that we would apply some of those funds to.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you once again. The next question comes from John Purtell from Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning, Grant, Michael. How are you?
Hey, Johns.
Just have a few questions if I can. Maybe just the first couple for Michael.
Mm-hmm.
Just in terms of the amortization add back, it's a bit less this period.
Mm-hmm.
What was driving that, and is that now sort of a go-forward level?
Yeah, it'll diminish slowly, I think, from here, John, but the majority of that a number came about following Spotless. We allocated the intangibles to customer contracts and brands and whatnot, and the front end of the significant amount of that was allocated to the contracts on foot, you know, has wound down over the sort of five years or so between now and then. There was a big step-off for the first round of the intangibles that were attached to those contracts that we acquired.
Okay, thank you. Second question, the AUD 12 million loss there in hospitality, obviously you flagged that you exited a range of contracts. Should we expect to see a much lower loss in the second half?
Yeah. We're out of the MCG from January, so there'll be a little bit of drag into the January results. The biggest contribution to that, John, is the minimum guaranteed payments that we are required to pay, whether the contract operates or not. There's about AUD 8 million of that relating to the MCG in the half. We'd been, you know, fortunate enough to have that relieved during previous lockdowns. We weren't for this period, so they will go and they'll be sort of trail losses which we would expect to be minimal in the second half.
Okay. Thank you. Just a final one. Grant, you mentioned that you're entering a phase where, you know, CPI rises, you know, potentially allow for some you know, pricing improvement maybe, I suppose on top of the inflation there. Really two parts to the question. Firstly, you know, the contract structures that you have in place which you've called out have good CPI recovery. Are they working as they should based on everything you're seeing at the moment? Secondly, that opportunity that you see, I mean is that more around a rational, a more rational environment in terms of, I suppose labor being a bit scarcer so you know, the participants such as yourselves are pricing that a bit more rationally?
Yeah. First on the contract structures. Look, you don't enter into long-term contracts without being covered for cost increases, right? You'll see in that slide that I put up there, the very vast majority of, in fact all of the longer term contracts have these types of mechanisms and they range from general CPI to other more targeted indices. On the wages, similarly, sometimes wages will go up by CPI and sometimes they'll go up by wages indexation and that's a matter of negotiation at the times that the contracts are formed. All of them adjust the prices to these things. You know, with low inflation, low wage growth over the last periods, you know, that's been quite difficult to manage, right?
You're constantly under the hammer to make sure that you're getting more efficient in the way that you operate, et cetera, during periods of low price increase. I'm really just saying here that with a higher CPI and likely higher wage index, you know, we will see higher prices now, you know, for our services. What that does mean, though, is that you've got to manage your costs. Often, you know, the basket of costs that we actually have is different to CPI. You're managing those things. Also the basket of wages, you know, is different to CPI. You've also got, you know, potentially three-year enterprise agreements that won't get renegotiated for, you know, quite a period of time.
It's those arbitrage positions that really I'm talking about here, and I'm hopeful that while it's been difficult over the last number of years with low index increases, that may change. Of course, it's got to be managed, John.
Sorry, just a final one if I may. Just harking back to a few of the earlier questions. Essentially, Grant, you're sort of viewing a range of these impacts as temporary. Is that the correct read? In terms of your ability to source labor and retain labor in a tighter environment, you feel comfortable around that?
Oh, absolutely. Look, I do think it's all this is temporary. You know, it's hard right now when you're putting results out of the past six months. It's hard to look forward. If you look forward, you know, we look at the opportunity that's been created here. You know, there's that much that's going on in our markets that you know, if we hadn't had the Omicron and we were all sitting back here in sort of July without that and we thought we were through, everyone's vaccinated, then we wouldn't be sitting here talking about the issues. We will get through this. The underlying demand for the services and the amount of money that's being spent is very positive.
Right now, the cost to serve and the issues around labor and supply chain, they will ease. It's already easing on the labor side, and I think the labor, the supply chain will ease as well. It is temporary. You know, we can already see that in what's going on. You know, I'm very positive. I'm not negative at all. In fact, I'm very positive and I do believe that a lot of the changes that have occurred with COVID are a net benefit, right? It's gonna drive our markets over the next decade and we'll be, we're right in the thick of where we should be.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you very much. Grant, I was hoping to focus on the utilities division, please.
Yeah. Yep.
Could you just talk a little bit more about the well, reconcile maybe the comments about the mix changes that have impacted earnings. The fact that you think that's temporary, but then cross-checked with the work in hand, which is that's the only division where work in hand's fallen quite significantly between the end of fiscal 2021 and December. So can you just talk about that firstly?
Yeah. In utilities, we do a lot of maintenance work. This is maintenance on, you know, poles and wires. We do a lot of work in telco. A lot of work in water, right across the country. Those contracts typically have a base maintenance level. You know, you're doing certain things out in the across the operations to maintain that. Coupled with that, you have a lot of what we call small capital works, right? In some comps, not that small, right? And they're typically higher margin parts of that work. Now, you get that work because you've got your base contracts, and you're sitting on those panels.
We've seen with Omicron, in particular, as the issues of that, and it's not really our issues, but certainly in the flow of work, we've seen that mix change, right? Less work in that minor capital works across most of that, and in particular in water. All right? What that means is that, and it's temporary, right? It will change as you know, labor shortages, particularly in our clients and also our own, subside, which we think will happen relatively soon. That's the situation.
Just jumping on the.
It's not just in Australia, it's also in New Zealand. We've seen the same impacts, right? A lot of the water authorities, you know, off the back of government positions on workers have pulled back quite significantly, right? They've done it specifically to support the COVID push.
Reconciling that with the work in hand fall as well?
Yeah, I think if I can jump in on that one, Grant. The segment reallocation we did, we put the, you know, the defense consultancy business out of utilities into facilities, and so there's been a work in hand transfer. We can come back to you with the details of it, but that's part of the reason as well.
Yeah, there's nothing.
Right.
I'll just say that our utilities business is going very well. I know it being down in earnings by that amount, you'd say, "Oh, gee, it's not that well," but they are not permanent issues. They will be temporary. We're winning very good work, right? Our customers are telling us we're doing a very good job. I'm very happy with the way that business is going.
Okay. Can I just ask a follow on then? You talk about the significant growing opportunities in energy transition and decarbonization, which, you know.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I get the tailwind there. But when do you think in the Australian and New Zealand market, this actually becomes a meaningful, you know, work in hand and earnings opportunity for Downer? What’s the kind of timeframe you’re thinking about? Yeah, I know you.
Yeah, it'll depend. It's different depending on the business unit, right? If we look in our transmission business, you know, it's already becoming. There's a lot of transmission work that's starting to come on deck, right? There's a lot of stuff that we're bidding and that will just get bigger over time. We're talking, you know, there's billions of dollars of projects. I don't know whether you saw in the paper this morning, you know, we've got quite a push that it's too slow. That will be very quick.
In our customer base, whether it be in facilities or in utilities, you know, we're already seeing a lot of attention being taken to reducing their carbon footprint. Now, what we really mean here is that they're using their estates to generate power, right? Already now we're starting to build, you know, solar farms, et cetera, on our utilities customers and facilities customers' estates. Now, you know, that's early days. If you think about the fleets, you know, we're starting now to be developing electric vehicle facilities. We're doing that with Keolis Downer in our buses. All of this is to come. You know, we're at the start of this. Just exactly how quickly it moves, you know, we'll need to see.
We've got to build the transmission and the power infrastructure first, I guess. There's no doubt about that. But it's starting to happen. You know, in three years' time, I'd like to think it's a significantly larger part of our business than it is now. It certainly will be in our projects business in transmission.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.
Thank you. The next question comes from Nathan Reilly from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Just picking up on the, I guess, the core urban services revenue growth. Yeah, 13% revenue growth there and what sounds to be a very tough half. Just can you give us a sense of, you know, I guess, what level of revenue you couldn't service, just given your own labor availability challenges? Trying to get a sense of, I guess, the underlying run rate and growth there, just absent any of the challenges around labor that you've seen.
Yeah, look, I haven't done the alternate position, but if you look at utilities, we're down AUD 51 million in revenue there for a start, right? We would have expected an increase. We've had weather impacts in our roads business. We would have expected more out of that, right? So just for a start.
Got it. Okay. I guess the extension of that, just given you've. You know, had a pretty challenging margin outcome there, and that's a reflection of the productivity challenges you've faced with, you know, both your own lower labor availability and also client availability. As you say, as the workers do come back to work, is there anything that gives you cause for concern around your ability to, I guess, recover on the margin front? Is there anything, I guess, permanent around, you know, productivity or the cost base, which gives you some concern?
Look, there's nothing that I can point to, but it, you know, it'll require management. You know, we need to get back to making sure that all of our operations are as efficient as they can be. You know, that's just the way it will need to be, and that'll be where the pressure is applied.
Nathan, the hospitality result had a pretty significant impact on the margin. That business did about AUD 90 million of revenue for the AUD 12.5 million dollar loss. That's 20-30 basis points explanation as to the difference in margin period to period.
Yeah. That's right. Even in Facilities, our asset and development services, right? It's got a lot of revenue and it was impacted very significantly. It's a business that does a lot of small work, particularly in air conditioning and you know, it suffered very significantly with lockdowns, right, just productivity-wise. That will return. That will improve.
Okay. Finally, look, this is a question around sort of corporate overheads, but I think it also extends to, I guess, business overheads at the segment level.
Mm-hmm.
Michael, you called out there that there's been some inflation around, you know, IT and IT security and also some insurance charge inflations. I think that's probably masking a little bit of, you know, cost reduction in that corporate line. Are you at a level now, you know, post the divestments that you've undertaken where it's appropriate to maybe go and have a look at the overall cost base?
We started doing that, Nathan, and we'll. You know, we're still providing transitional services to the majority of the divested businesses, and so we're recouping some of that, but we're not recouping all of the cost of that. We've done some reduction at the corporate layer, but I suspect in the second half, once the majority of these transitional services are behind us, we'll look at that again. There's a few, you know, sort of IT security costs, and you know, cyber insurance and the like are going up pretty significantly, and they're obviously critical costs for the business. There's been a little bit of turnaround or sort of negative impact for us, the way you account for some of these IT projects now with the expensing of it.
You know, you save some more, but we've had a bit of a turnaround or a negative impact to that as well. Yeah, to answer your question, we're certainly gonna continue to look very closely at overheads.
Okay. Thanks for taking the questions.
Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Mr. Fenn for closing remarks.
Well, thanks very much for the interest in Downer's results and please, if you have further questions, if you can pass them through to our investor relations team, and we'll do our best to answer them as soon as we can. Thanks very much.