Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to join us today for this Investor Update. I've now been with Fleetwood for 4.5 months, and over that time I've been impressed by many aspects of the business, particularly the deep and trusted customer relationships we've built, the quality of the products and services we provide, and the expertise of our people in managing and delivering complex projects. I'm more convinced than ever of the enormous opportunities ahead of us. You will have seen the announcement that we made this morning about two important decisions. To streamline the business by divesting Camec and to reset our Building Solutions cost base by closing our facility in New South Wales and moving manufacturing for the New South Wales market to our sites in Queensland and Victoria.
These decisions are never easy, particularly for the people directly impacted, but I believe they are critical to improving our competitiveness and focusing resources on growing our core Building Solutions and Community Solutions businesses. We set up this call today to provide further background on these two decisions, outline the business and strategic focus, and give you an opportunity to ask questions. The market response this morning was clearly not what we wanted, and we'll take the opportunity to also clarify a few points in this presentation. Firstly, we've made the decision to exit the recreational vehicle segment by divesting Camec. Fleetwood has a long history in the RV segment, which has contributed significant value over time, but it is increasingly less aligned with our future direction.
Our view is that Camec, a leading distributor of RV parts and accessories, is more naturally aligned with other businesses operating in the sector. We will engage with potential acquirers and expect to exit the segment by the end of this calendar year. We expect restructuring costs between AUD 8 million-AUD 10 million, and we'll be treating RV Solutions as discontinued operations from FY 2027. These restructuring costs include cash and non-cash elements, and while we won't be certain until we finalize our divestment, we expect to liberate AUD 7 million-AUD 9 million in cash. We also announced that we are consolidating our manufacturing footprint by closing our facility in Smithfield, New South Wales. Importantly, New South Wales remains a critical market for Building Solutions and will retain local sales and project delivery teams to support our customers and grow revenue.
Fleetwood's modular building capability is well-suited to addressing high costs and lengthy building times in this large market. Improving manufacturing efficiency is a key strategic focus for Fleetwood. To support this, we centralized our manufacturing nationally a couple of months ago and brought in additional manufacturing leadership capability. This really enables us to leverage available capacity across our Queensland and Victorian sites to support New South Wales and to structurally lower our cost base. We expect to incur restructuring costs of between AUD 12 million and AUD 14 million to cover lease leases, asset impairments and redundancies, and to achieve annualized cost savings of AUD 8 million-AUD 9 million from Q2 in FY 2027. Together, these changes simplify Fleetwood's operating model into two core divisions.
Building Solutions, a more efficient and profitable division, and the leading manufacturer of modular buildings in Australia. And Community Solutions, which use our modular buildings to provide accommodation for transient workers in Karratha and key workers in Port Hedland. We gave a trading update in the announcement today, and to be clear, the underlying EBIT range we gave of between AUD 35 million and AUD 39 million does include results from RV Solutions and New South Wales. Building Solutions would have been profitable without the losses from the Smithfield operation. Looking at Building Solutions. I'm very confident in the growth potential of our Building Solutions division. We all recognize that housing and infrastructure supply is constrained in Australia, and this creates a significant opportunity for Fleetwood, given our scalable modular building capacity and national reach.
As the largest modular builder in the country with six manufacturing facilities and nearly a 250,000 sq m of production capacity, we have the scale and capability to deliver large contracts at speed. Our broad customer base spans education, housing, mining, infrastructure, government and defense, and we have long tenured, deep relationships with core customers. This gives a solid base volume and helps insulate us from sector-specific volatility. We are not just a modular builder. We also provide customers with turnkey solutions, from design to installation and site works. This is vital in many of the markets in which we operate, and we have high-quality trades with deep knowledge of local building standards and market expectations. All of this gives Fleetwood a clear advantage and positions us well for growth. Where will we grow?
This table indicates how much we currently do in each market segment and geography. The white space represents the growth opportunity for us. Our goal is to lead the market nationally in education, housing and defense while continuing to support other sectors relevant to each region. We are very strong in public education in Queensland and Victoria, and we make outstanding permanent and relocatable buildings for this sector. That gives us some opportunity to grow in regions where we are not yet as established. In Queensland and W.A., we build a significant number of homes for social housing and for private developers of lifestyle and build-to-rent communities. We also build homes for regional and remote areas where access to trades can be challenging. These are high-spec homes built in short time frames and at a competitive price point, which gives us confidence that we can do more in housing nationally.
In Defense, we see significant opportunity to support the growing and changing needs of this critical sector, and we have recently started work with Defense in W.A. and New South Wales. To our Community Solutions division. Fleetwood Community Solutions has two key accommodation assets in the Pilbara, delivering recurring revenue and returns with high occupancy underpinned by critical accommodation shortages. In Karratha, we have Searipple, a 1,250-bed transient worker accommodation camp providing fully catered and serviced accommodation for workers on construction projects, major maintenance shuts, and FIFO workers. Searipple has high utilization due to the scale and diversity of operations in the Karratha region, including three Rio Tinto ports, Woodside Gas and LNG operations, urea and fertilizer plants currently under development, the Dampier Salt mine, and Sino Iron operations.
These operations also require supporting infrastructure, including water, power, and roads that must be built and maintained. All of this activity gives Searipple significant recurring earnings. In Port Hedland, we built and now manage Osprey, a 293-home community owned by the City of Port Hedland to house key workers such as teachers, police, retail, and hospitality staff. We effectively operate as the agent with all homes and communal facilities managed and maintained by Fleetwood on a management fee and cost recovery basis. Osprey, pictured here, is a highly attractive community with a large waiting list of tenants. There is very strong demand for transient worker accommodation in Karratha from a large number of major projects currently underway, with more in the pipeline.
Searipple is close to fully booked for the rest of this calendar year, and we expect high demand to continue for at least the next five years based on projects underway and planned. When it comes to our strategic priorities, I have three immediate areas of focus. Firstly, to drive growth in our target markets. The Australian building market is large, and we have proven capability in our key sectors of education and housing, where modular building methods solve real problems of speed, quality, and efficiency. We have strong relationships with our current customers, and we also need to build relationships with the right new partners to support our growth aspirations. Second is to accelerate excellence in modular manufacturing. The goal of modern methods of construction is to bring manufacturing efficiencies to the building process.
To do this, we've changed our manufacturing structure, brought in additional expertise, and we're developing plans to standardize processes, components, and sub-assemblies, better leverage scarce trades, and reduce labor and material waste. This will make us more competitive against standard building processes and support our growth. My third focus area is to lift capability and culture. We have many highly skilled and capable people at Fleetwood, and we are continuing to strengthen capability in areas that will be important for our next phase of growth. Capability is not just about people; it also encompasses the systems that support our work and equip our people with the information and insights they need to do their jobs well. We can do more in this space, integrating disparate systems across our end-to-end process and using AI to better support our teams, especially in our front-end scoping, design, and estimating.
I want to build a really collaborative and achievement-oriented culture where everyone can do their best work, supported by the right capabilities, systems, and ways of working. In summary, Fleetwood is Australia's largest and most capable modular manufacturer, well-positioned to help address the national housing shortfall and support rising government infrastructure spend. Our Pilbara position gives us sustainable earnings, with high occupancy expected to persist over the next five years. We operate in markets with a long, funded pipeline of activity, including more than AUD 30 billion of resources and infrastructure projects in the Karratha regional alone, as well as large national markets in housing, education, defense, and infrastructure. We are now a more focused business with a lower cost base, and we have a strong balance sheet with significant net cash and ownership of PWA assets. Thank you. We are now happy 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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Caleb Weng with PAC Partners. Please go ahead.
Hey, Andrea and Cate. Just on the restructuring cost, you mentioned there is some non-cash components. Of the AUD 20 million-AUD 24 million, how much of it should we think is cash versus non-cash?
I am going to let Cate answer that.
Caleb, it might be easier if I step you through them separately. Would that be easier? As it relates to our site impairment of AUD 5 million-AUD 10 million of restructuring costs, none of that will be cashed on this side of 30 June. AUD 2.3 million will relate to fixed assets, leasehold improvements, and assets we do not expect to sell to somebody else. As it relates to RV Solutions, there has been uncertainty, hence the wide range in the numbers, because we have not decided exactly the pathway to exit, these numbers can change based on that. Be rest assured, Andrea and I are trying to extract as much value as we can for shareholders and also for our employees on the way through.
It's possible that we will extract somewhere between AUD 7 million-AUD 9.5 million, hopefully AUD 10 million in the first half of FY 2027. In terms of cash on that. Moving now to [FBF, there's a little bit more certainty there than there is on the closure of the Smithfield facility. The range is wide because we're still negotiating exactly the terms of our exit. We understand our employee redundancy costs, but they also won't happen until the first half of 2027. In fact, none of these costs will happen before 30 June. There is a non-cash impairment of fixed assets of between AUD 3 million-AUD 3.5 million relating to the Smithfield site. However, there is a range on that because we don't know how much we can actually recover from selling some of those assets.
Again, we expect the cash outflow for that to be in the range of about AUD 10 million, but not until the first half 2027. To some extent, the two of those, the cash inflow and outflow, we expect to almost offset in first half 2027.
Okay. Thank you on that. That's helpful. Just given, I guess, sounds like the balance sheet's going to be quite healthy by June 30th and also into the first half. Maybe color around thinking of suspending the dividends for the second half?
Look, suspending is just again, indicating that we won't have current year profit. That doesn't mean the Board won't resolve to do something else, but it's entirely up to them at this point. We wanted to signal that our underlying EBIT is exactly as consensus, and we're taking some material and very hard decisions relating to restructuring on this side of 30 June , to impair the Smithfield site and also to take the provisions for RV Solutions. That could knock out the profits for the second half, sorry.
Okay. Thank you. Just on Building Solutions, maybe some color on the order book, if you can?
The order book? At the moment, the order book is really strong as we go into the end of the year. Yeah, we're sitting at about AUD 170 million of work in hand at the moment. Said AUD 170 million. Yeah.
Yeah.
Caleb, just to round out your question on cash, on the year-end cash position, it's expected to sit in the range of roughly around AUD 45 million, somewhere in that range for 30 June.
Okay. Got you. You mentioned that excluding New South Wales, Building Solutions will be profitable for the full year. Is that for both halves?
That's for both halves, yes.
Correct. For both halves. If you think about it, for next year. We had significant de-pegging costs there, AUD 8 million-AUD 9 million which we won't have to carry into the future. When you think about the FY 2027 earnings, think about 75% of those. From Q2 2027, that will unlock about AUD 6 million-AUD 7 million of improved EBIT for 2027.
Yeah. Got you.
The decision on New South Wales, whilst difficult, is roughly a 1.5 year- 1.7 year payback.
Yeah. Got you. All right. Thank you. That's all from me. I'll jump back into the queue.
Thanks, Caleb.
Your next question comes from Tony Mitchell with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Thank you. You mentioned that the share market reaction hasn't been good. Well, it hasn't been. Really, the company's been appalling in the last year or so. I think I've taken a bath and my clients have taken a bath. There's no dividends. What I'd strongly suggest to you is this. You did a AUD 5 million buyback. You need to do one of AUD 13 million-AUD 15 million. If you've got cash, you've got to show the market you mean business. I applaud you on these decisions, the market's not buying it for some reason. I think the least you can do for the company and shareholders is to do a buyback of about AUD 13 million, because your market cap now is down to AUD 133 million.
Thank you, Tony.
Thanks, Tony. Just one point. We did indicate that it's expected that a final dividend will not be declared. Obviously, that's not a decision for us to make. That's a Board decision that they'll make once the year is finalized. We're just flagging that at the moment, given that normally the dividend policy speaks to the NPAT result. We absolutely are very cognizant of the need to make sure that we are maintaining the share price and handing value back to our investors.
Will you commit to doing another buyback, a decent amount?
Sorry, we're not able to do that, make that commitment, Tony. It's obviously something that will be discussed with the Board once we understand where we land for the year.
Well, the stock's in the toilet, basically. That's where it is. I think that the other thing that needs to be done is, can you give an EBITDA forecast for 2027 underlying at this stage?
At this point, Tony, no. The Board would have to approve guidance being published to the market.
Sorry, Tony, are you talking about FY 2027 or FY 2026?
No, 2026 is irrelevant. It's gone, finished.
Okay. Yeah.
We want to know 2027. That's what we want to know.
Yeah.
Okay. Look, Tony, yeah, unfortunately, Andrea and I can't do that. We can certainly recommend to the Board and we'll have those discussions with the Board. What we can say is that Searipple will still remain very strong next year and 98% in the first half. It continues to be even strong. Starting the year with 71% occupancy, which is only a hair's whisker behind where it started this year, and we're going to close with incredibly high occupancies of like 96%, 97% for the year. We expect some really good earnings from Searipple. It might come off ever so slightly, but it will be strong earnings from Searipple.
Community Solutions again next year. Building Solutions will have the benefit of higher earnings from a lower fixed cost base. They'll be liberated from some of their fixed costs. We know that it'll be AUD 6 million-AUD 7 million higher by making this decision today.
Okay. See, again, these are all generalities. We can't operate off generalities. We need some specific numbers. I implore you to make an announcement what the underlying EBITDA is going to be for FY 2027. I think you owe it to shareholders to do this because this is not academics. I've lost money, and the shareholders have taken a bath, and I don't like it. Mining in Australia is booming, and I don't understand this, that given the occupancy you've got, why haven't you applied to the Karratha Council to increase the number of rooms at Searipple Village? You've mentioned all the developments that are occurring and will occur, and you said it's going to be strong for the next five years. Why wouldn't you increase the number of rooms? It's so obvious. I just don't understand why you don't do it.
Thanks, Tony. Obviously, we have been working with for some time on how we can expand our presence in Karratha, and you expect to have some updates in the future around that. That was not the purpose of this call today.
No, I understand that. Do you see where we are? As an investor, I've got clients ringing me up and abusing me because the stock price has collapsed. What do I tell them? What can I tell them? It's all generalities. You need specific numbers. I understand you're saying it's not the point of the call today, but it is. Searipple is the best asset you've got, and you should be able to tell people what it's going to earn in FY 2026, what it's going to earn in FY 2027. You should be able to give some color on the rooms. You should be able to talk about what the room rates are going to be. Why can't you do simple things like that? That is your best asset.
All this stuff here, I think these decisions are good that you've made today. The problem with it is there's no specific number. Many companies now in the mining space have made forecasts for FY 2027 and you know where you're at. With you have no idea. There's nothing you can hang your hat on.
Thanks, Tony. We'll take all of that on Board.
Yeah. We'll take that on Board. Searipple Village will be strong.
I hope you take it on Board early because my clients are seething, and so am I because I've lost a pile of dough and you guys should have been able to do a much better job with the assets you've got. You're talking about the fact you're the biggest modular player in Australia. Look at it. You had to close Smithfield. You're not making any money. You tell us the order book's AUD 170 million. Well, why can't you tell us what sort of numbers you're going to make for next year and the year after? You see, there's not enough meat on the bone. That's the problem.
Thank you for your feedback, Tony. We'll take it on Board.
Thank you. We will now pause a short moment to allow any final questions to register.
I have one via email, just one moment. Thanks. They couldn't register. What metrics have Fleetwood used to classify Fleetwood as the largest modular building in Australia? Over to you, Andrea.
I've got to say, one of the things that I've been looking at is comparing against some of our competitors and looking at what information I can glean out of ASIC reports and the information public on their websites about where they operate. Certainly, if I look at the revenue that we get from modular construction specifically, I can say that that is more than I have seen from any of the modular builders where I've been able to get their financial reports out of ASIC. That is, of course, everyone that's got any chance of being at the same scale because the reporting threshold is AUD 50 million. We definitely have the highest revenue from our Building Solutions. Our Building Solutions revenue is not just from our modular building.
It also does come from site works and other services that we do in and around that modular building. Even taking that into consideration, that is where we stand. Also, the number of facilities and the area of those facilities combined does make it that way. If you look at where we have these foundation panel agreements, we have very large positions with very large government authorities and private customers in the space. That gives us confidence as well in making that claim.
I have one final question from email. Sorry, I've got more coming in via email now. What impact do you anticipate the government's recent changes to the CGT may have on Fleetwood modular sales? I'll help you with that, Andrea. I don't think that they will have a large impact on Fleetwood modular sales. The composition of our revenue comes from commercial on-site codes, those types of customers, and also from mining, and those customers won't be necessarily impacted from this, neither will education. Where it relates to housing, a vast majority of our housing is done with government agencies, and then a smaller extent is done with housing providers. We have little impact or exposure to be direct to investors. I don't think that we're going to have a material impact from the changes in the recent CGT legislation.
The final question is, RV industry is in the media with caravan businesses failing, falling over regularly of late. How confident are you of a sale?
We've made the decision to definitely divest the industry. We're hopeful that we will do that through a sale to other trade operators. I think the scale of the restructuring costs that we've announced really indicates that we're taking a very realistic view of what that could look like. We do have other avenues that we are looking at taking in the event that we're not able to get a trade sale away. It is a difficult decision to sell what is, I think, a really good business in a tough market. The decision was taken because really there is just it doesn't really belong in our portfolio. It doesn't make sense for us. We thought we can liberate the cash and spend it on other things more profitably than retaining that business.
Yeah. Look, I might just build on Andrea's answer there. How confident are we can get a sale and liberate cash? Really confident. I think Camec is a very good brand. We've had a number of interested parties over time talk to us about wanting to acquire Camec, so that's certainly really encouraging. Today's decision was a little bit nuanced in that we've decided not to operate in the RV Solutions segment. So what does that mean for Camec? That means that we will find somebody to buy part of it or all of it or cease operating it at some stage prior to FY 2027. We have looked and examined all of those options meticulously over the last number of months.
It's time to stop looking at them and to start doing them and to start unlocking that cash and moving on to the other great parts of the business. Because it's very hard to grow a business and save a business all at the same time. I think Andrea and I just really want to get on to the business of growing Community Solutions and Building Solutions together.
Pardon me. We've had another phone question register. This one is from Tim McArthur with Asymmetric Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Morning, Andrea and Cate. Just one little question from me. Just on RV, when you sell that, what corporate costs are allocated to RV that you'll have to reallocate across Building Solutions and Community Solutions, please?
I'll take that to say that we have been cognizant as we've looked to shrink the business to make sure that all of the shared services are also proportionately managed. Those restructuring costs do incorporate the appropriate reductions. For Camec specifically, they have operated as a fairly distinct business unit for some time. There's not a huge amount of overlapping support. There is obviously some, and we are taking a look at that. I think the Smithfield site closure involves a bit more rationalization of our central overheads as well. Is there anything you want to add to that, Cate?
Yeah, look, I think that's fair. I've been looking at it as well. I think these two decisions came a little bit late in the year, but I have been looking at ways to rationalize IT and tech costs, licensing, and all of those other things that need to shrink on the way through as well as the expensive cost of head count to support. I'm expecting that we will have a little bit of shrinkage. Camec business is 60 FTEs in total. I am expecting to see some shrinking of those costs corporately that were supporting that business. I've had another question in from, one second. Do we have an update on Rio negotiations?
Rio have only just put out their tender for their next contract areas. We're obviously engaging very closely with them on that process. The fact that it is now when there is very limited accommodation gives us great confidence that we will be able to negotiate a good outcome with Rio. Obviously, how much that is will depend on what their forward projections of demand really are. We're working through that with them at the moment.
Yeah. Look, I guess the really interesting thing about Karratha is forward bookings were happening to us two, three months in advance. Now we're seeing the camp get filled up seven, eight months in advance. For Andrea and I, it was pretty pleasing for us going into the start of the year knowing that we've got no more rooms to sell, and we've also got a tender to respond to. Yeah, I wouldn't like to be buying rooms in a market where there are no rooms left. I think we're really keen to work with Rio Tinto because they're an excellent counterparty that we'd like to have a long-term relationship with.
I hope that answers your question. Hopefully, we've got an update for you in a couple of months.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'll now hand back to Miss Pidcock for closing remarks.
All right. Well, just to finish up, today we announced two difficult decisions. I think that generally speaking, people understand that these were necessary decisions, difficult decisions. I hope we've been able to give a bit more clarity on what the financial impact of those decisions will be in the short and medium term. Thank you very much for your attendance today.