I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bruce Nicholson, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Bruce Nicholson, as you just heard, and I'm the Managing Director and CEO of Fleetwood. I'm joined today by Cate Chandler, our CFO, and together we'll take you through our full year financial results for FY 2024. You know, it's a busy-- We know it's a busy time of year for everyone, so we'll do our best to give you every piece of information you need, but not take up too much of your time this morning. I'll provide some introductory comments, Cate will go take us through the financials, and I'll look at the performance of our three business units and provide a strategic and outlook update. As we move to slide two, I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet today.
We pay our respects to elders, past and present, and Cate and I today are speaking to you from Eora Country, the traditional lands of the Gadigal people here in Sydney. Just before we flip over to slide four, I'd just like to point out the Mackenzie Special School on slide three. A school we built in Queensland, and it's a great example of the types of modern modular construction that Fleetwood is doing now, right across the whole country, and so the future is looking really bright as people start to accept that as the product of the future, so turning to slide four now. You've all seen this before.
It's our vision to be the leader in reimagining sustainable spaces, and we continue to make progress here, whether it's with our push into key emerging opportunities for the modular business in key worker and social housing market and building solutions, pressing forward with our Glyde technology platform in communities, or introducing new Australian-made structural products in our RV business. Moving to Slide five. This is a significant year for Fleetwood as we celebrate sixty years. This is not an insignificant milestone, as many companies in Australia can't boast 60-year operating history. It's something we're celebrating as we work hard to set the company up for our next 60 years. For those of you who are new to the Fleetwood story, I'll just summarize. We have three distinct operating segments: our Community Solutions business, our Building Solutions, and our RV Solutions businesses.
Community Solutions operates accommodation villages, including Searipple in Karratha and Osprey in Port Hedland. It's an outstanding business that generates very strong returns and gives us exposure to the huge growth that is anticipated in the northwest of WA. We're actively working to leverage our strength in modular construction for other opportunities in Community Solutions. Our Building Solutions business is the largest modular manufacturer in Australia, operating seven factories, national footprint, giving us significant manufacturing capacity. Building Solutions designs, manufactures and supplies modular buildings for education, custodial and mining, commercial and sporting facilities, as well as lifestyle, key worker and social housing. As many of you all know, we're in the midst of a turnaround in this business, and pleasingly, we've turned a corner, and our focus is on transforming that business, where we see enormous opportunity for the long-term growth and sustainable returns.
Now, RV Solutions is where it all began 60 years ago. For more than 60 years, we've been an innovator in the RV market. Today, we're a leading supplier of parts and accessories for the recreational vehicle, caravan and camping, and motorhome sectors, as well as the aftermarket caravan and recreational vehicle servicing. Moving to slide highlights on the progress we have made in improving our operating metrics. Our EBIT and net profit after tax are up 95% and 90%, respectively, on last year. Our free cash flow is strong. We've increased our dividend, reflecting the board's confidence in our outlook. Our safety performance has improved significantly for the third year in a row, and the outlook for Searipple is very strong, with 65% of our rooms contracted.
We also saw Building Solutions return to profit and a significant improvement in the order book coming through in the last quarter to set the business up for the coming year. Moving to slide seven, our people and safety performance. I've been with the business three years now, and while we've had some challenges, this is something I'm incredibly proud of. The health and wellbeing of our people is a core value. We've made step-change improvements in recent years. Everyone in the Fleetwood business deserves credit, but we won't rest on our laurels. A zero-harm environment is achievable, and that's ultimately our goal. With this improvement, we've also seen employee turnover halve in the last two years. We've started to invest in our frontline sales and leaders to ensure we equip them to deliver for our shareholders moving forward.
I'll now move to slide nine and pass to Cate Chandler, our CFO, who will take you through our financial results.
Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. In terms of our key numbers, Fleetwood has delivered an EBIT of AUD 8.2 million, 95% improvement on the FY 2023 results of about AUD 4.2 million. Driven largely by an improved result in building solutions and a strong Community Solutions occupancy. Net profit after tax was AUD 3.8 million, up from AUD 2 million last year. We are paying a AUD 0.025 final dividend, making it AUD 0.05, fully franked for FY 2024, which represents a 138% increase on last year. Cost of living pressures impacted RV solutions as people slowed their spending on discretionary items. Income tax was higher due to a prior year's tax adjustment. Moving now to slide 10. Our cash position as a business remains very strong.
In the year, we generated AUD 5.7 million in free cash flow. Cash conversion was incredibly strong as well at 79%, and a working capital initiative almost offset the unwinding of a AUD 20 million prepaid contract at the end of last year. The closing cash position was AUD 39.3 million, and we had CapEx up AUD 5.4 million- AUD 12.2 million, as we conducted a range of refurbishments to our Searipple Village on rooms, gym, and general facilities to support the facility for the upcoming demands in the Karratha region. Moving now to slide 11 and capital management. We continue to maintain our dividend policy of 100% of NPAT into the future.
We bought just under a hundred and fifty thousand shares as part of a share buyback, which remains on foot, and pleasingly, our share price is considerably higher than in place back in May. We still have considerable headroom under our debt facilities, which maintains our balance sheet strength and flexibility. This is something the board continues to monitor with a focus on maximizing returns to shareholders. I will now hand back to Bruce Nicholson, who will take you through our segment results. Back to you, Bruce.
Thanks, Cate. This is our kickoff for segment results. I just wanted to point out the display home we've built in South Australia. We've built a range of display homes around Australia, so we can actually push into this social and affordable housing space, and this just builds on the quality, the livability, and the speed with which modular has moved in the last number of years. Kicking over now to slide 13 with Community Solutions. We've delivered a strong performance, especially in the second half, as we saw occupancy increase on the back of the Rio Tinto contract, which ramped up to 40% occupancy in the last quarter. As Cate has mentioned, we've been undertaking some capital works in this facility in readiness for the upcoming Karratha demand. Osprey Village in Port Hedland, meanwhile, remains fully occupied and with a wait list of potential tenants.
We've been also seeing an increase in the management revenue correlating to increased rental revenues up there. Turning to Building Solutions on slide 14, and pleasingly, we've seen a return to profitability with a positive EBIT margin. The EBIT of AUD 2.2 million equates to a very positive AUD 7.7 million dollar turnaround year on year. The second half was impacted by delays in key project approvals, as we flagged in May, but the outlook has improved significantly, which I'll touch on later in the outlook. The work kicked off last financial year to leverage our national manufacturing footprint, has captured significant savings through better procurement, and the challenging transition to the new ERP system in New South Wales is now complete and behind us. Moving over to RVS on slide 15.
Market conditions in our RV business have been very soft, and our gross margins have been reduced because we've not been able to pass on the full impact of high input costs. This poor performance is directly related to the cost of living pressures and is in line with the declines we are seeing in the manufacturing segment. The retail and online segment, which accounts for approximately 50% of our revenues, has been mixed, with a number of key clients destocking in the last quarter to reduce their inventories. The OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturer segment, has seen a market decline of 20% in the last twelve months, with a very pronounced drop in the last quarter of the year. Over this period, we've focused on improving our inventory and reducing our trade receivables, as well as introducing our new products.
We're seeing orders growing for the new innovative structural products, including aluminum wall frames, sandwich panel walls, and Invictus doors, while the uptake of our new washing machines and electrification products are also gaining momentum. Moving now to our strategy and outlook update on page seventeen. The strategy for Community Solutions continues to focus on Searipple and optimizing that facility to leverage the planned projects across the Karratha region. We're continuing to develop our Glyde technology platform and move to further commercialize the system as clients recognize the security and ESG benefits of a platform that provides seamless access, as well as substantive energy management benefits. We continue to look for opportunities to leverage our national modular business, where we are well positioned for build, own, operate, and transfer, or build to rent in the mining, key worker, and social housing sectors. The outlook for Community Solutions is very strong.
There are a range of projects across the mining and energy sections planned in the Karratha region that will continue for years to come. As we've said, the contracted financial year 2025 occupancy for Searriple is currently at 65%, up from 34% last year, with further opportunities to increase this with growing demand. Moving now to slide 19 in Building Solutions. Our build, transform, and grow strategy remains the focus, with with clearly the leader in modular manufacturing in Australia. As we've built capability, we've seen it stabilize and focus on winning, delivering the right quality work for modular, which has been a fundamental component of our return to profitability. Our systems and processes are improving quickly as we stand it across the entire network.
We've made excellent progress in our manufacturing KPIs, and as we've said, our strategic procurement benefits delivered AUD 2.5 million in FY 2024, and there's more to come. Other areas of our strategy we're making progress include diversifying revenue, where we've pushed into the social, housing, and key worker accommodation markets, as can be seen by the recent QBuild housing announcement. Learning from overseas modular manufacturers, we're developing our design and manufacturing roadmap, which is focused on modernization, automating design, and reducing our manufacturing complexity. We're confident that continuing to Build, Transform, Grow strategy will meet our medium-term 15% ROCE within two years through a more simplified business model with improved utilization and productivity. The outlook for Building Solutions has improved significantly, and I'm very buoyed by that.
Our current order book is AUD 178 million, which compares with AUD 127 million in June 2023. This includes the recent contract with QBuild for 60 homes in Queensland, further key worker accommodation contracts, and a major project with Transport for New South Wales. In addition, we're deriving around 40% of our revenue in the business from long-term panel agreements, which we're confident will generate high single-digit revenue growth in FY 2025. Our brand is strengthening the market, and the acceptance of modular as a quality, cost, and time-effective solution continues to grow. We're pushing hard with various levels of government and private organizations to demonstrate the benefits of modular. Moving now to RV Solutions.
In RV Solutions, we continue to focus on our key strengths as we push our core structural products, sandwich panels, the premium Invictus entry door, and aluminum wall frames. We'll continue to bring new accessories and products to the market and push the service and repair offerings of our RV business. We're making improvements in our digital capabilities, having completed a brand refresh and introduced a new online platform. We've also kicked off a product and branch profitability review to ensure the business is right-sized and focused on the right product lines. Targeted price increases will help recover costs, and the ERP system upgrade should be completed by the end of the first half of twenty twenty-five, which will drive efficiency in that business. The interim outlook for RV Solutions remains soft.
Although we saw a small bounce back in July, the cost of living crisis is having a real impact on that sector. However, the medium to long-term outlook remains positive. Australia has a fleet of over 850,000 registered caravans and RVs, and there'll be a constant demand for aftermarket product service and support. Despite the headwinds, RV Solutions business is expected to remain profitable. In conclusion, I'm confident we established a solid foundation to deliver improved re-earnings. Searipple Village is on track for an excellent year with a base occupancy of 65%, and the northwest region of WA is facing a period of sustained construction and maintenance work. The order book for Building Solutions is strong at AUD 178 million, and we continue to make improvements, and that business will flow through to margins.
While the RV business is facing some headwinds, we expect the business to remain profitable, and we are focused on managing the business through the cycle. With that, I'll come to a close, and thank you, and I'd like to open us for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, 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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Gavin from Allen. Please go ahead.
Hi, hi, Bruce. Hi, Cate. Good morning. Just a couple quick ones for me. Just wondering how we might think of CapEx in 2025 , given the spend that you sort of took on in 2024 at Searipple? Maybe we could start with that.
We'll go back to more normalized levels of CapEx. We have no large CapEx demand in FY 2025 at this stage, Gavin. Something could change, yeah, but at this stage, we've finished the upgrades at Searipple that we intend to do. There is nothing currently planned for FY 2025, so we'll go back to more normalized levels you've seen previously.
Okay, got it. And just for a point of reference, so you talked about Q4 finishing at 40% utilization, which was good, and that you contracted up to 65% for 2025. Just wondering how we would think about occupancy Q1 to Q3 to put that 40% into sort of some sort of relativity.
Sorry, Gavin, are we talking about next financial year, or are we talking about this financial year?
The year just gone. Yeah.
The year just... Yeah, it's a bit hard to be really quite explicit here. Occupancy in Q1 was very strong last financial year because we had the major shutdowns of Woodside.
Yep
Rio and Yara. It dropped away quite quickly, though. It did flow over about two or three weeks extra. I would say on an averaging level, Q1 and Q4 were probably about the same if I looked at it that way, Gav.
Yep-
Q3 was significantly down. Yeah, yeah, sort of 20%-ish in Q3. Yeah.
Yeah. So you had a couple of good quarters, sort of 40%, so lower Q3, and then you take 65 sort of thing.
Yeah, in fact, we're having a very strong start to the year.
Yep.
Yeah, Gavin, just to clarify, we're not targeting. It's actually contracted.
It's in contract.
Contracted, yes.
Yeah, which is different to targeting.
No, absolutely it is. Yep, no, that's good. And just last one from me. Just I did have the opportunity to see the Glyde system in action up in Searipple, which was good. I'm just wondering, did it gaining any traction? Because I quite liked it, like, gaining any traction with that tech in terms of, you know, selling, you know, selling utilization, selling room, selling opportunity?
Yeah, look, we've got a raft of opportunities in our pipeline at the moment that we're prosecuting. We've done a fair bit of work in the last twelve months on stabilizing that platform, getting it on the right, the right hardware and software in place, Gavin, so that we're confident as we sell it. We've obviously been using it at Searipple for a number of years, and we can actually see the benefits. So we have two decent-sized customers right now in the mining sector who are loving it and certainly promoting it.
Yep.
We're seeing service providers promote it, but I would say we've got three or four real opportunities in the pipeline that we're prosecuting going forward for Glyde.
Terrific. That'll do for me. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it, as always, and I'll hand it on.
Thanks, Gavin.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Matthew Chen with MA Financial Group. Please go ahead.
Morning, Matthew,
Matthew, if you can please unmute your line.
Matthew?
Is that better?
That's it?
Yes, it is.
Morning, morning, Bruce. Cate, how are you going? Just wanted to ask, what kind of more levers that can you pull in RV to kinda stay profitable for the year?
As I said in the announcement, we are doing a product line and a branch profitability assessment at the moment. Our branches are going okay, but as you can imagine, over many, many years, the product lines have grown and grown in that segment, and we're not convinced that they're all delivering value for Fleetwood. So there is a limited amount. You can't cut your way to prosperity in this business. There's a limited amount you can do with that, Matthew. But certainly we are looking quite detailed at the current product profitability by line in the business, and there's a lot of lines of products. Outside of that, there's not significant levers to pull out, if that makes sense.
And when I say that, you know, we are still committed to manufacturing in Australia, albeit we're offshoring some componentry, that's the other one. We're certainly looking at cheaper raw materials at the moment, to try and pull costs out of some of the structures that we make, Matthew. So there's a raft of things. There's a very detailed action plan the team's working on, but there's not one or two big silver bullets in that business. It's a matter of pulling all those levers, Matthew, to get the best out of it.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. And just wanted to clarify, I think you mentioned what 40% of the Building Solutions is from panel working, you're expecting high single digits growth there. In terms of the balance, is that the support from the order book, which has ticked up quite a bit?
So part of that will include the order book.
Yeah.
Some of that will be in the order book, but some of it won't.
Okay
... have landed yet. So we don't actually put it in the order book until we've actually got a contract for that work. So there's more work to come in that space. It's just us sort of making it clear to the market that that's part of our ongoing order book, and we know that's not necessarily been understood in the past, Matthew, so-
Yeah. Okay.
you know, what we are seeing now is the QBuild contract is transitioning to a panel, like we've got in other places.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, it's kind of a similar line of questioning that I'm trying to get to here in terms of the Building Solutions, just in terms of how you guys are thinking about maybe growth in that segment as a whole.
Sorry, I'm not sure. Are you asking us what revenue growth we expect? I'm not gonna get that explicit with you, Matthew, sorry.
Yeah. Okay.
We expect that business to grow both at the revenue line and at the margin line. Okay? So...
Yeah, that's very helpful. Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Pierre Prentice with Asymmetric Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, Bruce and Cate. Thanks for a good result. Just a couple of questions. One on Community Solutions. We haven't had to deal with such a significant increase in occupancy for quite some time, and so wouldn't mind a bit of a hand to work out the implications. Just in round terms, it looks as though you'll be based on the occupancy, expecting a AUD 30 million increase in revenue, and I'm interested in knowing how much of that would drop through to EBIT. You know, operating leverage suggests at least half of that or AUD 15 million should find its way through to EBIT. Is that in line with your expectations?
Sorry, I think there's that and more, if I could say that, because it's a highly leveraged business, as we said, that it's a high fixed-cost business, so as the utilization goes up, the EBIT margin does improve. Okay, so I think if you take that into calculations, I think there's slightly higher likely outcome as a result of the high utilization, if I can say it that way.
Thank you.
To your first... Sorry?
Thank you. Yeah.
To your first point around, so we, we've spent around AUD 6 million up there upgrading the older parts of the camp that had been closed for a long period of time, and so we've been preparing for some time now for the increased occupancy. We've known about the increased occupancy. We've signed a contract with Rio Tinto back last year, in June of last year. We've also been in negotiations with a number of key clients for a period of time, so we've, we've had good insight into the future demand. So we've actually been preparing for this for a year now. So we're quite comfortable that we've resourced it right. We've got the rooms to a standard that meets the expectations of our clients.
And so we're quite prepared and ready, and you know, our partner up there, who runs the facility for us, the service provider, is geared up and ready for it as well. So we're being quite prepared for that.
Good to hear. And does that extend to readiness for full occupancy? And practically speaking, what is that? Can it be as high as 100%?
So we've geared up to... I mean, there's no point to gearing up to 80% occupancy, 'cause you turn it on, you turn the whole thing on. So just to be clear on that. So it is ready for full occupancy, and there are potential periods next financial year where it could be 100% occupied. In fact, we're in the final negotiations for a shutdown that could mean at least one month is fully occupied quite soon.
Okay, thanks for that. Just moving on to Building Solutions. It's good to see that you've driven a stake into the ground on return on capital employed. But your 15% target on the book value of capital employed translates into a margin on revenue of only 3.3%, which, you know, even though 15% ROCE sounds good, 3.3% of revenue sounds pretty soft. Is that because you're doing your calculations on the sunk capital in here, not the book value, in other words, before write-offs?
I'm not sure what write-offs you're talking about. Sorry.
Yeah. We're not really sure-
I'm talking about the write-offs, Bruce.
It is on the current working capital. You're right, we did write off a significant amount of the business back in 2022 . And remember, this ROCE number, and the one you've calculated back to an EBIT margin is a two-year goal. That's not our ambition; it is to get a higher outcome than that in Building Solutions, but we are doing a transformation of that business. It's coming off the back of a turnaround, so we'll grow from there. So we think that's a fair and reasonable expectation to get that business to in the next couple of years, Pierre.
Right. So but you're saying it that 10 million EBIT on the present capital employed of AUD 68 million is not the end game?
It's not the end game. It's not our ambition. Our ambition is to do better than that.
Correct. And Pierre, it's not a particularly capital intensive business, so we will be seeking greater returns over time. Correct.
And I think the other point to make out, which is in the annual report, in the letter, is we don't expect significant CapEx spend in that business. Our manufacturing and our design roadmap for transformation is underway, and we are taking a lower CapEx, higher flexibility approach to that. So we don't expect significant CapEx in that business going forward.
Okay. And final question, given the breakthroughs that you've been making in terms of new work, can you describe a little bit for us the competitive makeup of the modular housing and modular building industry generally? It's a little bit opaque and, you know, a lot of privately owned businesses, and so it's hard for us to get a good, clear line of sight.
But, I think it's a... You're right, it is quite opaque. We have fairly detailed information. Look, if I just talk about the social housing piece, and it does vary very much state by state. We're the only national player here, Pierre, so we would have a very different competitive environment in Victoria, where there is a larger number of modular manufacturers down there on a historic basis, and most of those are privately owned and much smaller than Fleetwood, even in Victoria. In New South Wales, a different competitive environment, less competitors, but a growing competitive base, again, all state-based. And then Queensland is different again. So it varies state by state, quite significantly.
I think the standout point for us is we are the only national player, and we're the only ones with the size and leverage to meet some of the demand of this need in the social housing demand that both state and federal government's talking about. It's not unusual, however, for us to be on a panel to supply either education, work, or social housing with four, five, maybe six people or six other companies, and that's really about a couple of things. It's about the client defraying some risk, and it's also about the client allowing the industry to try and grow. So it's, I think that's healthy for all of us. And so, you know, we, as an example, we're on an education panel with six different people. We know what proportion of that work we get, we know what...
We don't necessarily know what everybody else gets individually, but we have a sense of what everyone gets. And then you're held to KPIs on those things. So depending on how you perform, whether you stay on that panel or be removed from that panel. Does that give you a bit of insight? As I said, the modular is growing. What points us out very differently from our competitors in that market is our national footprint, our scale, our design and estimating function, and ability to execute, which is not necessarily something our competitors have, and most of our competitors don't have the working capital or the balance sheet we have either.
Right. Okay. So, what you're saying is that there's nothing to suggest that it's anything but competitive pricing-wise, but your advantage is essentially economies of scale.
That's the work we've been doing around the One Fleetwood transformation. Build, Transform, and Grow is about getting that leverage on a national scale, simplifying the business, as I talked about. So yeah, look, I the other thing is we're far more disciplined in what we bid for now, so we actually don't necessarily bid for everything. So we'll play in the space we're strongest at. And we've also got some gates we've defined about what gross margin we're prepared to go to before we'll walk away from a job, and we've been very disciplined in that in the last two years. So that's one of the reasons we've turned around. There's more work to do there, but that's how we're driving the improvements and the turnaround and transformation in Building Solutions.
Okay. Thanks, Bruce and Cate.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Caleb Wang with PAC Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, Bruce and Cate, congrats on the solid results. Just,
Thank you.
The 65% contractor occupancy, is that just Rio, or does that include some planned shutdowns? And for planned shutdowns, they normally contract, I guess, quite last minute, or are they quite advanced in their contracting?
So it, it's not entirely Rio. There are other clients in there, and some of that is shutdown work. Most shutdown work, we get a fair bit of notice, three, four months at least notice, sometimes six months, Caleb. So that includes other clients. I mean, the bulk of the demand is, so, excuse me, Rio, but we have, can't say the exact number, but it'd be three or four other major clients that are going in there, either for shutdowns or to do maintenance projects up in, in the region, and we're still bidding on a number of projects up there as well.
Yep. Thank you. And can I assume that average of 65%, that's gonna be more, second half weighted, or?
No, it's not second half weighted. That's the average for the whole year, Caleb. Hang on, and it does ebb and flow.
Yeah.
But, I wouldn't be balancing it one way or the other.
Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. And just on the building solutions business, now that you guys are well advanced in the transformation journey, and that you guys got a bit more color, I guess, on factory utilization rates and how that kind of correlates with margins, I guess, is the medium-term target of EBIT and long-term targets still kind of relatively the same?
It hasn't changed, Caleb. We haven't changed it. We're still quite strong ambition for that business. You know, whilst we've had some headwinds in that business, we still believe we're on target for those things.
Perfect. Thank you, guys.
Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Lachlan Rogers with One Fifteen Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I just had a question regarding the recent Queensland housing contract. So AUD 40 million for 60 homes. Could you be more specific, what works that includes? And is that a sustainable per home value going forward?
Yeah, so that's not the price per home, that's the price including a whole bunch of other things. So about half of that contract value is the price for the buildings being built in our factories, and the other half is for transport to site, site works, and installation. The contract is whilst it's one contract, there's two components. The building in the factory, which is what we do every day, and we're very comfortable with, is a fixed price contract. That's half of it. The other half of it was provisional sums provided by the Queensland government for the estimates to do the site works.
We won't know what the total price of that is, and we won't submit the final price of that to the government until we've been allocated the site, and therefore, we can go and do a proper estimate on the site works. There will be minor site works, including the installation. The contract's split two, half of it's fixed price, and the other half is provisional sums that will change as the sites are allocated to us.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
I wanna point out, just to build on that, it is actually a relatively low risk contract because of that.
Your next question is from the line of Alan Mills, an investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Bruce. Thanks for taking the question. I just noticed on RV Solutions, you guys are guiding for profitability for the year ahead, but if we take the first half results in the second half, it was a AUD 500,000 loss, RV Solutions. So how do you see that you're able to have visibility on profitability for the year ahead?
So, as I pointed out in May, we had a significant drop in our order bank that meant decisions weren't being made by our clients, and projects were being delayed. The significant uptick in the order bank in the last quarter, and the ongoing increase in the order bank moving forward, is how we're confident that we've got enough. We don't have any projects running through the business that are losing money, as we had in our past life, and so I'm confident the projects we've got going through the factories now are profitable. I'm confident in the quality of the contracts we're winning at the moment, and therefore, it's really about making sure that we're utilizing and optimizing our factories. That's how I'm confident we've got a profitable business going forward, if that answers your question.
Yeah, that does. And then in terms of the ROIC target of 15% for Building Solutions, you mentioned the balance sheet is one of your advantages that you wanna use. How do you think about capital allocation between the businesses, and do you have that ROIC target across all segments, including RBS, or is that just for Building Solutions?
Look, all businesses are targeting a ROIC of 15%. I mean, Community Solutions is well above that, as you can imagine, with its returns. Capital allocation, as I just said, we don't have any significant spend in our RV business. We don't have any significant capital spend in our Building Solutions business. We've just spent about AUD 6 million in the Communities business. Where we may commit capital in the future is when there's an opportunity for a build, own, and operate, or build, own, to rent, or build-to-rent opportunity in communities. That's where we may have capital demands, and how we manage that capital will depend on the type of opportunity it is for us. Charlie?
Yeah, absolutely. And then with that ROIC target of 15%, with the, obviously, so I noticed the CapEx is around AUD 30 million, so we're presuming that we need to get a return of AUD 5 million for that part going forward. When do you think that, what type of timeframe do you feel like is reasonable to hit that kind of ROIC target for that kind of return on that CapEx?
Yeah, a good question. A bit hard to speculate on. The market is soft at the moment. The near-term outlook looks soft. As we've said, we believe we'll be profitable this financial year. I think it's gonna take a couple of years for that business to recover to those sorts of numbers, Charlie.
Okay, that's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Charles Kingston with K Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, and sorry if this has already been covered. I jumped on the call late. But just regarding the free cash flow, why do you report that free cash flow before leases, when that's obviously a significant cost? I assume you don't actually think that that is free cash flow, given a lot comes out below that, please?
Thank you for your question. Yeah, look, I think we just report it that way because we, we've always reported similar, in a similar way, attached to the cash flow. And I acknowledge that, yes, we do have leases that come in after that. But notwithstanding that, I think, we have made a significant inroads into generating more cash out of the business and returning, and the ability to return it to shareholders this year. We acknowledge that our, our net and closing cash position was down, but partly because we invested in Searipple and, we've returned to paying dividends. But I think what the point we're trying to make is that we're actually generating more cash on a like-for-like basis, out of our operating business.
Okay, but this year, I'm not sure if you've given any sort of guidance, but do you think on a genuine free cash flow, post-lease costs, you'll be positive in an absolute free cash flow sense?
We should be. We'll always be targeting. If I think about the big lever there that you're really managing, is our cash flow conversion in some respects. We will be trying to target 100% wherever possible. It probably will be closer to more like 90% in some instances, mainly because things like our inventory will grow in value and our receivables grow in value, but we will be seeking to do that wherever possible, and we've done a really good job this year of managing our receivables and our inventory to return more.
Okay, thank you. And then just on... Sorry again if it's been covered, but the CapEx going forward on Karratha, I think you said you spent AUD 6 million this year, but how does that look over the next two to three years? What's the CapEx required there, and is it essentially just, you know, refurbishments and keeping the asset relevant, or are you adding any sort of new rooms, or is it all essentially sort of replacement to CapEx? Thanks.
All just replacement CapEx, and we expect capital CapEx in the coming years to just return to normal levels, which will, you know, blend across the three divisions. And, you know, as a proxy for that, I think about it, sort of almost 50% of depreciation pre-AASB 16. And that number is quite close to what we... Our run rate.
Okay. So the AUD 6 million you've spent this year on Searipple, that will decline over the coming years?
Absolutely.
We don't need to repeat that.
We don't need to repeat that. Also, we won't be spending that capital on it if it's full for many months, and it's going to be busy for a couple of years.
Okay. Well, what do you think the useful life of Karratha is? Is there gonna be a big lumpy CapEx spend at some stage, or is the work you're doing maintaining it, and it's got plenty of years left?
That's a work in progress. We're focused on the next three years. There's no significant CapEx in the next three years. Obviously, that'll be determined by what happens with the market up there, and that we don't have any line of sight beyond what you and I can see today. So we don't anticipate anything at this stage. That could change in two years' time. It'll depend on negotiations with clients up there as we get to the end of these contracts we've got now.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back the conference to Mr. Nicholson for his closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Thanks, Cate, for joining us, and your first one with these. Congratulations. Look, obviously, Cate and I will head off on a roadshow and meet many of you in the next few days. We look forward to that, and we're really pleased with the results we've delivered this year. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your line.