I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Julian Russell, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining our FY 2021 results presentation. Today, we're presenting for the first full year of clean financials since simplification. It's a vastly improved story compared to where we were 18 months ago at the outset of COVID. We're not only proud of the strength of this financial result, but also the strategy rebuild that we've commenced, including our progress on ESG matters. I'll cover the FY 2021 highlights shortly, and then hand over to Damien to go through the detailed financials. We'll then briefly update on our strategic initiatives and outlook. First, let's start with the performance highlights over on slide five. I'm delighted to say that this is the best performance in our group's operating history. NPATA is up 110% to AUD 86.1 million.
Pleasingly, the group delivered positive jaws, namely 32% revenue expansion and 2% cost reduction. Cash conversion remained consistently elevated, allowing us to reduce net debt by 80%. Net debt today is only AUD 20 million. During the second half, we commenced an on-market buyback program, initially sized at AUD 20 million and subsequently resized up to AUD 40 million. Today, we're adding an incremental AUD 16 million to that buyback, bringing the total to AUD 56 million for FY 2021. That's roughly 65% of NPATA. We consider the 65% of NPATA as a proxy for the dividend payout ratio. The total return implies a yield at 7.2%. Going forward, we will be targeting a capital payout ratio between 55% and 65% of NPATA. This will likely be in the form of buybacks until franking credits allow for a return to dividends.
I'll address this in more detail along with the progress with Strategic Pathways. First, let's have a closer look at the results starting on slide six. The group EBITDA increased by 63% compared to FY 2020. The composition of this is outlined in the bridge here. NOI, pre-provision and EOL was at AUD 10.6 million despite a 4% reduction in AUMOF. This margin expansion was driven by our focus on higher margin products and from our treasury initiatives. The AUMOF reductions were a net result of ongoing vehicle supply issues and, therefore, book asset depreciation. These supply constraints continue to be a positive influence on the used car market and our end of lease income. This year we achieved average profitability per unit of AUD 6,558 compared to AUD 2,566 in FY 2020.
It's important to note that we expect this used car market to normalize as the supply chain is restored, and we go back to FY 2019 for what normalized EOL is expected to look like. While the timing remains uncertain, we feel well-positioned for the intervening period. Turning to slide seven, let's walk through the NPATA movements for the year. As I mentioned a moment ago, NPATA was AUD 86.1 million for the year. That's up 110% in the year. Our margin expansion and EOL profitability. We realized the full year benefit of a smaller property footprint as well as reduced interest costs on our corporate debt facility. You can see a summary of our FY 2022 expectations for these line items on slide 20. This expectation analysis includes interest costs on our corporate debt facilities, which I'll talk through on slide eight.
We couldn't be happier with what we've achieved with our deleveraging profile, and we've recently agreed a debt refinancing on a great set of terms. Back in FY 2019, at the start of simplification, these corporate debt facilities were highly geared and quite unstable. We were put under an enormous amount of pressure to take down the debt with dilutive equity, but instead we pushed through quite a challenging debt restructure and refinancing at that time. Six months later, after that restructure was locked away, COVID emerged. We were once again put under equity pressure. However, we aggressively pushed back on dilution in favor of another debt refinancing. As you'd expect, the commercial terms of these debt refinancings reflect the real and the perceived risks at that time.
Since those refinancings, we have repaid AUD 254 million of that gross debt, which is roughly 75% of the total facilities. Net debt today is only AUD 20 million. That's just 0.14 x leverage versus well average three times back in FY 2019. With our credit profile now vastly improved, we have recently refinanced the debt facilities, amending the terms to provide us with much better flexibility, improved commercial terms, longer tenor, and better pricing. This strengthened financial position and solid organic capital generation profile meant that we could commence the capital management strategy during the second half of FY 2021. This is outlined over on slide nine. We've now defined a medium-term capital management strategy, which will target a capital payout ratio between 55% and 65% of NPATA.
For FY 2021, this ratio will be equivalent to 65% of NPATA or AUD 56 million. We consider this capital payout ratio as a proxy for a dividend payout ratio, which implies a yield of roughly 7.2%. Given the group does not expect to start accruing franking credits until late FY 2024, we believe a return on capital is best achieved through an on-market share buyback. However, if an alternative use of capital arises that would otherwise generate better return for shareholders, the group will seek to reallocate the capital accordingly. An example of this could be an acquisition opportunity or a new business growth that's in excess of our internal expectations.
Before I hand over to Damien for the detailed financials, let me summarize FY 2021 achievements on slide 10. One year post simplification, the group is in good shape, which is evident in this set of clean financial results. Despite 18 months of COVID-19, we've seen strong financial outperformance, including some temporary benefit from EOL income. Organic CapEx generation has allowed us to accelerate corporate debt deleveraging and has enabled us to commence our capital management strategy. I'll expand on the direction of the strategy from here after Damien talks us through the detailed financial performance for FY 2021. Over to you, Damien.
Thank you, Julian, and good morning to everyone. I want to set the scene up for the next few slides by first addressing some key themes that reoccur throughout our presentation. Namely, an expanding order backlog, elevated lease extensions, and end of lease income at record levels. All three factors can be linked back to the global shortage of new cars. With respect to the order backlog, business confidence is up and customer demand is back. However, the supply of new cars cannot meet this demand. Delivery time frames have blown out, resulting in an order backlog that is at two times pre-COVID levels. Compounding the issue is that customers are now anticipating longer lead times and are ordering cars up to 12 months in advance, further increasing the pipeline beyond normal levels. We don't see a catalyst for normalization until the end of calendar year 2022.
Given the delivery delays, we have of course, been focused on lease extensions as our customers wait for their replacement vehicles. Accordingly, lease extensions were AUD 164 million at the end of FY 2021, compared to AUD 98 million during pre-COVID times. Extended leases typically generate higher returns, so the elevated level of extensions in our portfolio today is contributing to increased income, which you'll see in the slides to follow. Again, once new car supply normalizes, extensions will also normalize, and we expect to see the yield in our income statement reduce as a result. Finally, due to the shortage of new cars, we are seeing increased demand for used cars, which is driving incredible prices in the second-hand car market.
This translates into end of lease income increasing an impressive threefold from pre-COVID levels to an average of AUD 6,558 per unit today. However, clearly this is unsustainable. Therefore, as new car supply comes back online, we expect end of lease income to revert closer to pre-COVID levels, or be cushioned temporarily by an increase in the number of vehicles we sell. Eclipx has navigated these three factors in FY 2021 really well. Let's start with new business writings on slide 13. The group continued to recover back to pre-COVID levels of 1H 2020, and if not for the recent lockdowns in Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne, we would have exceeded that benchmark.
At AUD 224 million for 2H 2021, Corporate and SME was up 22% TCP, and on track to exceed pre-COVID levels until the level four lockdown in Auckland slowed momentum. At AUD 110 million, Novated was up 17% TCP and only 3% short of eclipsing the 1H 2020 result. Similar to what we saw in Auckland, the recent lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne created enough decision inertia with our customers to hold Novated just short of pre-COVID levels. With that said, delivering double-digit growth in the current environment provides great confidence. Further confidence comes from the robust tender pipeline we currently see, the expansion of our SME distribution network, and the rollout of Novated's digital platform. The business has created strong tailwinds once new car supply comes back online.
This will in turn lead to AUMOF growth, which takes me to slide 14. The conversion from new business writings growth into revenue growth is not something clearly understood with our business. Therefore, I've changed the format of this slide to better illustrate the interplay between new business writings and AUMOF. That's important because AUMOF is the ultimate driver of our NOI pre-EOL. In FY 2021, we ended the year with AUMOF of AUD 1.927 billion, down just 4% from FY 2020. As previously indicated and illustrated on the slide, the business normally needs approximately AUD 720 million of new business writings in order to hold AUMOF flat. Therefore, despite the fact we achieved new business writings growth in FY 2021 at AUD 644 million, it was still about AUD 80 million short of resulting in AUMOF growth.
With that said, although AUMOF declined, the business still generated NOI pre-EOL growth of 8% during the same period. I'll elaborate on how we achieved this in the next few slides. With respect to UMOF, it ended the year at 93,000 units, down 2% PCP. We stuck to our strategy of not participating in low profit managed-only fleets. Finally, NOI pre-EOL provisions have gone from AUD 1,412 per unit in FY 2019 to AUD 1606 in FY 2021. That's 13% margin expansion in the last three years and an appropriate segue to the income statement highlights on slide 13.
The headline I wanted to leave you with for this slide is that irrespective of the positive impacts from the current trading conditions that saw higher end of lease income and provision releases, the business still oversaw double-digit EBITDA growth. At the top line, net operating income pre-EOL provisions is AUD 151 million for the year, up 8%. A good way to think about this NOI growth in the face of declining AUMOF is that for every AUD 1 the business lost due to lower assets, it manufactured an additional AUD 3 of margin to offset that decline. 67 basis points of new expansion, higher maintenance profits, and higher management fees all represent the key revenue levers pulled by the business to deliver this strong outcome. With respect to provisions, the net movement in FY 2021 was a favorable AUD 2.6 million.
The business released approximately half of management overlay that was first recorded last year in the response to COVID. At the end of FY 2021, the business still holds AUD 2.4 million of this overlay on the balance sheet. Moving to end-of-lease income, and the impressive performance in FY 2021 is obvious in the third row of the chart, with this year's result being greater than the past two years combined. Profit per vehicle was 2.5 x higher than FY 2020, which meant although we sold 19% less vehicles in FY 2021, the business still generated AUD 69.2 million of end-of-lease income, which was up 108%. Finally, operating expenses were AUD 79.9 million, down 2% versus FY 2020 and demonstrating the business has maintained its disciplined approach to cost management.
The sum of the parts gets you to an EBITDA of AUD 143.4 million, up 63% and a very pleasing result for FY 2021. Completing the income picture on slide 16, NPATA is AUD 86.1 million, up 110%. In addition to the 63% increase in EBITDA discussed on the previous slide, the other key drivers of the NPATA results include share-based payments at AUD 4.5 million, which is down 25%, and interest on corporate debt at AUD 9.6 million, which is down 36%. This is the tangible benefit of the corporate debt reduction that Julian already mentioned. Finally, although not included in the NPATA number, non-recurring items were AUD 7.6 million this year.
The key items driving this amount were redundancy costs, along with costs associated with the early repayment and refinance of our corporate debt. By reducing our corporate debt, we achieved greater flexibility, significantly reduced refinancing risk, and a lower expense run rate. Moving now to slide 17. The takeaway here is about the strength of the balance sheet today. Net assets ended the year at AUD 576 million, which is a 13% increase on FY 2020. Other highlights worth noting include cash at AUD 76 million, which is up 37%. This is after using AUD 26 million for the share buyback and AUD 59 million to repay corporate debt. You can see in the liability section that corporate debt now sits at just AUD 96 million. Inventory's at AUD 25 million. This is up from the record lows of FY 2020, however, still sits below pre-COVID levels.
Finally, the last item to call out is the deferred tax liability at AUD 36 million. This has increased by AUD 26 million due to the tax shield the business receives from the instant asset write-off. Returning to my earlier comment about cash, we now turn to slide 18 and the business' cash flow. Another pleasing aspect of the business' strong financial performance in FY 2021 is its cash generation. Net cash flow for the year was AUD 16.9 million, and after adding back non-operational items such as proceeds from the sale of non-core businesses, CapEx costs, corporate debt repayment, and the movement in share capital, the organic cash generated by the business increases to AUD 112.5 million. Comparing that against an adjusted NPATA of AUD 93.3 million and the cash conversion for the year equals 121%.
As we saw in FY 2020, the main driver for cash conversion being north of 100% is the tax shield driven by the instant asset write-off. This temporary full expensing legislation is expected to provide a cash flow benefit to the business until late FY 2024 at the earliest. Before I close on our expectations for FY 2022, I get a lot of questions about, now that we are through the transformation, what our business looks like without the impact from COVID. In other words, what is the new normal for Eclipx? Let's have a look at slide 19. On this slide, we have taken the time to model out an FY 2021 pro forma scenario for net operating income. That is FY 2021 NOI without the impacts from COVID.
There's a hell of a lot going on in this slide, so it's helpful to read it in conjunction with slide 37 in the appendix. Instead of stepping through the slide in detail now, I'll happily take questions about this analysis during the Q&A section of today's call or, of course, when we meet in the coming days. Therefore, hitting the highlights, we see an incremental AUD 130 million of new business writings, which you can see in chart one, excluding the impacts from COVID. Jumping to chart four, the FY 2021 pro forma NOI is AUD 180 million. It compares to our actual NOI result in FY 2021 of AUD 223 million.
I hope that this analysis is of some assistance as you begin to think about our simplified business when conditions normalize, which we currently expect towards the end of calendar year 2022. Let's turn to slide 20 on our FY 2022 expectations. Consistent with past presentations, we don't provide guidance on NOI. We expect NOI pre-EOL and provisions to directionally follow the same trend of average AUMOF. Acting to partially counteract the drag from lower average AUMOF will be the tailwind driven by the recent warehouse renewals in Australia and New Zealand. End-of-lease income is hard to predict. Once new car supply begins to normalize, used car prices should begin to fall. However, end-of-lease income will be somewhat cushioned by an increase in the high number of used cars we sell. With respect to provisions, the business currently holds an AUD 2.4 million management overlay.
Absent of a material deterioration in economic conditions, we do not expect to increase this amount. OpEx is expected to be flat. It is something we are committed to, while AUMOF is also flat. Of course, as we continue to generate better productivity across the company, we intend to reinvest those savings into parts of the business that will drive further growth. The items below EBITDA are expected to be relatively stable with the exception of interest on corporate debt, which is down due to the reduction in borrowings. As you can ascertain, with the exception of EOL, we expect results to be relatively predictable. My closing comment is that the business has produced a strong financial performance in FY 2021. This is undeniably fueled by the positive impacts from the current trading environment.
However, do not let that distract you from how well the business executed its strategy during the year and how well it is set up for the future. The Eclipx team grew revenue in the face of lower assets. This was made more notable by the simultaneous reduction of OpEx. We continue to deleverage the balance sheet and started a share buyback. Eclipx is very well positioned for the year ahead. With that, I'll hand back to Julian for an update on Strategic Pathways.
Thanks, Damien. Look, we're really happy with the progress across all the aspects of the strategic pathways plan. Let me turn to slide 22 to start with the ESG components of our strategy. There are a number of important initiatives summarized here, including the achievement of some very important milestones during FY 2021. Following some recent director appointments, Eclipx has become an ASX leader for female board representation, something which we're incredibly proud of. Another significant moment for our group during the year was becoming certified carbon neutral by Climate Active, which is a partnership with the Australian government. That makes us the first and only player in the fleet and Novated space with this certification. This is a really critical step, not just for our own corporate responsibility, but from a commercial perspective.
We intend to lead the EV space in the years to come, and having tangible environmental alignments with our customers is a very powerful commercial proposition. ESG is a core underpinning of Strategic Pathways, which is summarized over on slide 23. To recap, Strategic Pathways is designed to grow new business in three under-penetrated target markets being the corporate, SME, and Novated leasing markets. Implementation includes the development of digital origination platforms, while at the same time reinforcing our traditional sales and operational capabilities. While we're only 12 months in, we've made really good progress in each of our core target markets, which I'll go through on slide 24. In Novated, new business write-ins grew by 17% on a PCP basis despite the ongoing supply chain issues. Order pipeline is currently at 2.8 x pre-COVID levels, that is, the 2019 financial year.
The Novated digital platform has matured from its initial release and is now being used by over 130 corporate clients in Australia, with more organizations being onboarded weekly. In corporate and SME, new business write-ins grew by 22% PCP. The supply chain issues remain very challenging. That's why our order pipeline remains above 2x . While all of this disruption has happened, we've made a number of strategic sales hires, including Daniel Thompson. Daniel is widely considered as one of the best operators in the fleet space and will lead our front-end sales and relationships team, further driving our commercial intensity. Our digital tool for corporate customers called Nitro has continued to evolve and has seen a 16% increase in active users year-over-year. Turn it over to SME. This is outperforming our initial expectations, albeit off a lower base.
The new business pipeline is growing, as is our preferred distribution partnership channels. We expect this will be enhanced further as we roll out our integrated credit and quoting platform to our partners. Putting all that together, we're seeking to drive customer engagement, advocacy, and ultimately profitable new business write-ins through both our digital and traditional channels. This will place our business in a strong origination position as we return to a more normalized operating environment. To support sales growth at scale, Strategic Pathways is also focused on operational enhancements, which I'll talk through over on slide 25. Here, our task is to deliver operational intensity to support the scale expected from our front end over the future time. Each of the initiatives we are running is about scaling our business for growth. There are many highlights, but we've outlined three here.
During the year, we consolidated three CRMs into one single source of truth for our customer records. This gives us a more holistic view of our customers. As it relates to data insights, we have consolidated our data warehouse into a cloud-based tool, enabling on-demand data insights for our customers. This provides the customers with far more detailed insights into their fleet in near real time. Lastly, over the coming quarter, we will finalize the migration of our infrastructure from physical data centers into the cloud. This will provide a superior and more scalable approach to our infrastructure. Let me turn to slide 26 to run through our near-term objectives for each of our core target markets. With the foundations of the Strategic Pathways platform now in place, our focus is on full activation, ultimately driving commercial intensity to a new level.
In Novated, our near-term focus is rolling out the digital experiences to all offline corporate customers. In corporates, with Nitro and our new sales leadership in place, we are now stepping up our commercial intensity. Lastly, in SME, now that we have a proven digital quoting capability that is being integrated with our digital credit experience, the task now is to roll this out to multiple distribution partners. Let's turn over to slide 28 to wrap up this morning's presentation before taking your questions. Above all, we are really happy with the strength of this result, the group's financial position, and the direction of our capital management strategy. We have all the foundations for Strategic Pathways in place, and the task for the team now is to deliver sustained, profitable growth while lifting our commercial and operational intensity.
We feel very strongly about our ESG obligations, and we're very proud of the direction we are taking, be it from board diversity to becoming the first player in our sector to be certified carbon neutral by Climate Active. As it relates to vehicle supply disruption going forward, our best guess is that supply constraints will continue on till the end of FY 2022. In the interim, our order book continues to build. As supply is restored, this will convert into new business write-ins and therefore recurring NOI in due course. The key points to leave you with today is that while our group has seen a major turnaround in the last two, three and a half years, we've got some great opportunities in front of us through Strategic Pathways. While it remains early, we are seeing really good signs of momentum building.
Now with that, I'll pause and pass across to the operator to take questions.
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 handset to ask your question. The first question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. You've been quite clear on your intention to move away from the sort of managed vehicle space and focus on funded. Can you talk about the success you've had in that area? I don't think you're giving the funded units separately anymore, but I'd just be interested to see how you've been able to convert any managed units into funded.
Yeah. Hi, Tim. It's Damien. Yeah, so in terms of our strategy forward, effectively what it is when new tenders come up where they're fleet managed only, we simply don't participate in that. If it's a customer that has a combination of the two, then we will, but for managed only, we won't. What we've seen. You know, what we'll see is over time, our proportion of fleet managed versus funded will decrease, and that will obviously lift the yields.
Yeah. Okay. Just on the end of lease income, I mean, the second half, based on your disclosures on the full year and the first half, looks even to be over sort of, you know, AUD 7,000 per unit. What's the sort of best go forward thinking? Is it the full year number, the average across the year, or should we be actually sort of pegging to the second half while we've still got these supply constraint issues?
Yeah. It's hard to predict at this stage. What we have seen in terms of used car prices is they have plateaued. They peaked halfway through the year and then held that level. As new car supply comes back online, which it sort of seems based on the commentary coming out of Detroit, that it'll start to happen midway through next calendar year and then get back to normal at the end of next calendar year. At that inflection point, halfway through next year, is probably when you start to see used car prices taper off. You know, it's probably.
I know it is last year, but it's probably a similar type of pattern as it was this year, but in reverse order, so high end of lease early on and then starting to taper off towards the end of next year.
Yeah. Just in terms of your cash flow measure with the buyback, you're obviously giving a sort of a range there against the sort of cash NPATA number. You're not paying cash tax, so just thinking about how that comes into your thinking with the ratio and how those funds are being managed in the business, those excess ultimately tax payments in, you know, 2025 or whatever, whenever it'll be.
Yeah, sure. As you'd appreciate, Tim, in the modeling, when we look at our internal sort of treasury requirement for cash, obviously we're expecting supply of cars to come in. When they come in, we need to fund those new business write-ins. That takes up some of the cash going forward in our forward modeling. The second part is we need to make sure we have the right balance in place so when cash tax eventually comes in, it's a smooth sort of entry in terms of the repayments profile of that tax installments.
Yeah. Okay. I guess while you're not paying tax, you've effectively got an interest-free loan from the government to you know fund that new vehicle growth.
That's correct. Obviously you have to pay it at some point in the future, but that is correct. We've factored all that into our modeling.
One of your competitors talked about higher Novated conversion as we come out of lockdown. I'd just be interested to sort of your comments on sort of post-lockdown experience both in the fleet and the Novated business in terms of particularly conversion around Novated.
Yeah. Look, on Novated, certainly lockdown impacted, as Damien mentioned on the call there. It certainly tempers consumer confidence, but consumer confidence moves very quickly, as you know. The lockdown was very unhelpful. As we were coming out of lockdown. It's pretty early to call. Right, obviously, New South Wales only a couple of weeks, and Melbourne's barely out of lockdown, so it's probably too early to call. You can see there's an increased inquiry level coming through. Naturally, this is a busy season as well, because we're coming up to Christmas, which is usually a time of higher demand for Novated.
You know, we are seeing a pretty big pickup in the inquiries at the moment, but it's probably too early to call that, given Melbourne's still in a pretty fragile state, as is New South Wales.
Yeah. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask the question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Paul Buys with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Oh, morning, guys. Quick question on Novated. I guess, Julian, just thinking of your comment for potential other uses of capital other than the buyback, and you mentioned, I guess, potential acquisitions. Just interested to hear how you think about Novated in terms of, I guess, your organic growth capabilities, versus is there anything that you don't have or scale that could be accelerated with a potential acquisition?
Yeah, look, in terms of acquisitions, I think we said this before. I mean, there's a few small bolt-ons out there that are sort of interesting. The reality is, I think, you know, we're not in the game of bolting on earnings necessarily. It's bolting on capability, which I think is where you're getting to, Paul. Certainly there's a few capability enhancements we can put through, but certainly the organic or the sort of capital investment that we put into Novated and their digital platform is interesting, and we're looking forward to seeing the fruits of that come through. We'll always keep an eye out for opportunities at the right time, as long as they meet our returns thresholds.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. A quick one on the SME side. You know, I guess you guys have been talking about the sort of increased focus in that area for a while and obviously, another area where COVID and the lockdowns have impacted. I guess just kind of wanna get a sense of when you do you see the next sort of 12 months as providing some sort of clear air now to really accelerate that and get an idea of, you know, I guess your medium-term aspirations for how meaningful SME could be for your overall business?
Yeah. In terms of last question first, I think we do think SME can be meaningful over time. What we need is cars, a normal operating environment so we can see what the true meaning of that book looks like. But certainly the SME business outperformed our expectations in the first year in Australia. We've seen that obviously over the last few years in New Zealand. I think as we launch our digital platform with the credit underwriting attached to it into our sort of network of distribution partners, and then we expand those partners, we'd like to think it can really put a meaningful contribution into our business over the medium and long term.
SME is a risk profile that you don't wanna dive headlong into, and we've spent a lot of time refining the scorecards. Certainly we feel, from what we see from early days of a low base, we feel that there's a good opportunity there. I look back into the European market for confidence. Certainly the SME operator lease market over there is on fire at the moment.
Okay. Thank you. That's all for me. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.