Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the G8 Education Limited full-year results investor call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Pejman Okhovat, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning and welcome to the 2023 full-year results call for G8 Education Limited. My name is Pejman Okhovat. I'm the Managing Director and CEO of G8 Education, and I'm joined today on the line by the Group's Chief Financial Officer, Sharyn Williams. Sharyn and I will take you through the investor presentation that was released to the ASX earlier this morning. Following the presentation, we will open the line to provide time for some Q&As. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of Eora nation who are the traditional custodians of the land on which we are conducting this presentation today. We respect their spiritual relationship with the country and we pay respects to the elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.
I would also like to acknowledge the commitment, expertise, and passion for G8 of the entire G8 Education team and for the ongoing partnership with families to support children's outcomes. This morning, we will cover a summary of full-year 2023, update you on progress made outlining the operational and financial performance for the year, and we'll conclude with a brief current trading and an update on our view on a medium-term outlook. Turning to slide six, we are pleased with our year's achievement. I'd like to call out several key takeaways from where we have focused the group's activities over the past 12 months. Firstly, the group's financial results reflect solid earnings growth compared to the prior year, driven by higher revenues and margins. Pleasingly, both halves delivered growth year-on-year, which is also reflective of ongoing discipline in relation to costs.
During the year, we narrowed our focus on addressing our team's retention, lower agency usage, and reduced vacancies. While sector challenges around the availability of staff remain, we as a business are pleased to have continued to alleviate the impact within our network. As a result, there are no cap centers due to team shortages within our G8 network, and our usage of agency has significantly reduced. Occupancy continues to be supported by a positive trend in increased frequency, which measures the average number of days per week that a child attends a G8 center. Progress continues to be made towards improving the experience for G8 families. The always-on customer voice survey implemented earlier in the year continued to provide us with a regular, center-specific feedback loop that our team respond to, allowing improvements in our families' experience.
The decision to shift the external call center in-house has significantly improved our responsiveness to new inquiries. This has also been an important element to increasing frequency as they support our families to navigate the very complex CCS affordability improvements. Strong operational cash flow was a feature of the results and has been used to enhance shareholder value through share buyback, dividend payments, and further optimization of the network. The approach to CapEx was also more targeted. We continue to invest in center resources, IT, and property, but reduced the full-year CapEx to AUD 44 million, including software development, contribution to net debt levels reducing year-on-year. As a group, we are delivering on our purpose to create the foundations for learning for life while improving our business capability to continuously find better ways to execute.
Now turning to slide seven, which outlines the stronger financial performance versus 2022 calendar year. This is the result of a combination of 9% revenue growth and solid cost management, particularly in labor-related areas such as agency usage and network support office costs. From a statutory perspective, net profit after tax increased 53%, including non-operating items as outlined on slide 16. This improved earnings profile, coupled with buyback program, resulted in a 57% increase in earnings per share, and the payment of full-year dividend of 4.5% per share, representing 65% of reported NPAT. Occupancy for the year of 70.4% was flat on prior year. Pleasingly, this year has started stronger. Our spot occupancy as of 25 February 2024 is 6.3%, up by 1.7 points on prior comparable period, and the corresponding year-to-date occupancy is 66.9%, up 1.2% on PCP, reflecting a better enrollment and transition period.
Now on slide eight, we continue our commitment to drive a sustainable future through our GECS journey. G8 achieved an 8.4% reduction in the Scope one and two emissions, and the first phase of solar electricity installation in our network has commenced, with over 950 kilowatts of solar energy powering 45 of our centers, with an estimated saving of AUD 330,000 annually. Playing a leading role in the early childhood sector, G8 has the opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of our team and families, particularly in the areas of child protection, well-being, and reconciliation. In these areas, G8 achieved a number of milestones. Our Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan was completed and endorsed by Reconciliation Australia for publication in December. G8 Education Advisory Committee commenced, and G8 has in place extensive ongoing training on child protection and mandatory reporting obligations. Moving to slide 9, our balanced scorecard.
We narrowed our focus on improving operational execution, initiatives relating to our team, and further enhancing the quality of the network and services we provide to enrich our families' experience every day. In five out of our six strategic focus areas, we have made positive progress through the year, with early positive signs on occupancy in Q1, 2024. We are pleased with our solid team retention outcomes, up 4% to 74%, and a 29% reduction in vacant roles across the G8 network. On the back of these significant improvements, we were able to reduce our cap centers to zero and reduce the use of high-cost agency fees down to a more normalized level of 1.8% from 4.6%. Quality assessment ratings of meeting or exceeding have increased to 90% for G8 long daycare centers, now 1% ahead of long daycare sector average.
From a family perspective, NPS has increased to 44% following the implementation of an always-on NPS and family voice survey. These surveys provide us with regular feedback center by center, thereby providing real-time visibility on performance of our centers. Now slide 10. Our results on our team metrics have been a highlight for the year, from our reduction in vacancies, our strong retention improvements, and enrollment participation numbers in our development programs. While the early childhood sector is still experiencing challenges, there have been easing of this pressure across the G8 network during 2023. G8's efforts to be an attractive employer through team recognition, flexibility, benefits, professional development, and incentive programs, as well as incremental recruitment resources, have yielded results with vacancies significantly lower than the prior year. G8's talent strategy is also yielding results, with enrollment numbers across all programs increasing year on year.
The multifaceted approach to improve our team experience is showing in positive retention outcomes. Achieving a 12% lift in early childhood teachers' retention and a 3% increase in our center manager results versus CY22 was particularly pleasing against the sector backdrop. Turning to slide 11. The experience of our families is critical for improving our occupancy performance. The trend in NPS has been positive since the inception of our always-on NPS program in June 2023. Weekly surveys of families enable constant incentive-specific feedback to be leveraged to improve the experience, focusing on new families' experience through the enrollment and settling-in period, both critical moments that matter to our families' journeys with us. Supporting occupancy this year has been an increase in frequency, particularly noticeable post-implementation of higher childcare subsidy funding for the sector aimed at improving affordability for families.
The G8 team has worked diligently to help families understand the CCS changes and also on improving the everyday experience, both factors that have contributed to this result. The final experience measure is family retention, a key reflection of our families' relationship with G8. Family retention is an outcome of a number of focus areas such as improved team retention, high-quality and educational programs, all enriched where our team is stable and relationship with our children and families can deepen. Now slide 12. Delivering better outcomes for our children, families, and team is critical to our being and success. Our continued focus on quality has resulted in another year of improvement in our national quality ratings to 90% of our long daycare centers, meeting or exceeding NQS, which is now 1% better than the long daycare sector average.
Our team's dedication to safety saw a 10% reduction in child safety incidents in CY 2023. Professional development of our team is critical to delivering high-quality execution and team retention. We continue to strengthen this support through our Study Pathway program, where over 1,500 team members are studying towards their next qualification, and through our targeted support for our ECTs and educational leaders across their network. We are committed to establishing Australia's early learning framework across our network while delivering differentiation and inclusivity programs and digital literacy. Slide 13. Group occupancy gained momentum late in the year as we focused on retaining our families leading into the enrollment and transition period. This saw us close the gap to CY 2022 in December. This momentum was a key to the strongest start we have seen in Q1 to date.
Our CY 2023 occupancy finished at 70.4%, flat or minus 0.2% on PCP, and 2.2% down on CY 2019. The increased frequency throughout the year helped our occupancy growth, and we observed that our largest states finished the year in line with or above CY 2022, with opportunities in the smaller states remaining. Assisting our team's ability to execute better, we worked on a number of fronts, simplifying work routines, providing our operation leaders with more time in centers, introduction of digital tools for our CMs and AMs to assess the performance in real time, and improved workforce planning, delivering better team utilization and reduction in agency reliance. Slide 14. Our financial stability. We are pleased to have finished the year with a strong operating cash flow and balance sheet. Our capital allocation framework resulted in reduction of CapEx year-on-year.
We aim to maintain a lower capital envelope for CY 2024 of circa AUD 40 million to AUD 45 million. Our disciplines in cost management, particularly in variable costs, combined with our procurement strategies and initiatives to lower CODB, resulted in delivering better earnings for the year. Optimizing the center network remains an important element of the group's strategy and is a fundamental basis of creating a profitable portfolio for G8. We exited 11 underperforming centers and opened three new ones in CY 2023. In Q4 last year, we indicated our intention to divest 31 of our centers through a sales process. This exercise has been slower than anticipated due to the complexity of multiple landlords and state-based regulators, plus a significant holiday period in the middle.
We have completed 8 divestments to date, and additional 8 centers have an in-principle agreement with the landlords, 12 of which will complete on 1st of March, with the remainder awaiting New South Wales government approval to transfer the approved licenses. All other states have given their approvals. We will provide a further update at either the half-year results or at our AGM. I will now hand over to Sharyn Williams to take us through the financial performance information.
Thank you, Pejman. Focusing now on our financial performance. Increased revenue, disciplined cost management, and lower net finance costs resulted in operating and statutory NPAT growth and margin expansion.
We delivered growth in earnings and margins in both halves, with the first half substantially stronger, cycling the impact of the 2022 Omicron and flooding quarter, and the second half benefiting from lower agency and wage costs as a percentage of revenue, a consequence of improved team retention and lower team vacancies. Support costs were well managed, being lower by circa 2% than the prior year, even after inflationary impacts in compliance, cyber, and risk-related costs, reflecting reduced headcount from 2022, procurement benefits, some easing in insurance pricing, and cost disciplines. As flagged previously, the temporary government funding stream relating to apprentice wages reduced during the half during the year by about half. The combination of stronger center performance and lower network support costs resulted in a 25% increase in operating EBIT and further recovery of margin.
Net finance costs were circa AUD 10 million and a reduction on the prior comparative period as net debt levels were lower based on strong cash conversion of 108% and lower CapEx spend. In terms of our non-trading items, they predominantly are driven by software development costs, portfolio optimization-related movements, AASB 16 carrying value adjustments, and provisions for restructure and historical, regulatory, and legal matters. Firstly, the net impairment reversal. We regularly review our carrying values on our centers and investments, including AASB 16 right-of-use assets on a center-by-center basis. You will recall in 2020, we undertook an impairment on a number of assets, which resulted in the right-of-use assets being written down.
Given the portfolio optimisation work being undertaken and improved performance in a number of those centres, some of these centres have been reversed and were netted off, resulting in almost AUD 9 million after tax in non-trading income. These movements in the right of use assets will be a continuing theme post the implementation of AASB 16. Offsetting this are some loss on disposals and surrenders, where we exited 11 underperforming assets during the year and incurred a loss on the right of use, leasehold, or PP&E assets in those centres after we paid a surrender fee in some cases. We also increased our provisioning for a number of restructuring and historical, regulatory, and legal matters, resulting in a net expense of circa AUD 7 million.
Software development costs reduced in the second half as expected and reflect the development costs for cloud-based software as a service programs, which are now expensed and not capitalized following an accounting interpretation clarification. We're pleased with the completion of our procurement system, which is providing benefits in terms of visibility of our supply chain and unit costs and are providing a better experience for our center managers.
Software development expenses were AUD 5 million after tax, but they are expected to be minimal in 2024 as the HRIS and procurement systems exit their development phase. The result of these net non-trading expenses is slightly below the prior year. Turning to slide 17, where we focus on center performance. You will note, similar to the first half, this is reported on a total center basis, including new centers, and the prior period has been restated to allow for a like-for-like comparison.
This is the format we'll adopt in future reporting periods. The center network delivered a higher revenue and earnings than the prior year and experienced some recovery in margin. While occupancy was flat, revenue increased circa 9%, largely reflecting the January and July fee reviews, both a necessary response to considerable inflation within our cost base, particularly in our wage rates. The impact of this inflation is most evident in our employment expense, where we saw an increase on the prior comparative period of circa 8%. However, this was partially mitigated by the lower agency usage costs.
This 8% uplift reflects the annual award increase of 5.75 that was effective in July 2023, increases in pay rates as our team increased their qualifications, and additional on-costs such as a superannuation rate increase of 0.5%, and certain state-based payroll tax increases such as the Queensland Wellbeing Levy and the Victorian temporary payroll surcharge of 1%. A highlight of the year, as Pejman outlined, was the reduction of agency usage to 1.8%, down from 4.6% in the prior year, a 2.8 percentage point decrease offsetting some of the internal wage rate increases. This result is an outcome of a range of factors, including those touched on earlier, relating to improved team retention and lower team vacancies.
Other factors driving the lower agency outcome were the central roster management support and the new HRIS system, also pooling our team resources to create efficiencies across local areas and providing our team with flexible working arrangements. Rent is another material cost base for our business. Rent expenses increased 5% on the prior period, reflecting the composition of our network, where we have a combination of CPI and fixed annual increases and our active approach we're taking to rent reviews and renewals. Depreciation increased as expected, reflecting CapEx investment in the prior year, where the spend was above depreciation. Other costs, such as direct costs of servicing our bookings, were managed well and in line with occupancy levels, while lower expenditure in property, utilities, and maintenance reflected positive procurement initiatives. With overall center expenses increasing 7.6%, center margins improved to 16.6%.
Similar to the half result, the full year continued the benefits of reduced external labor usage, effective cost disciplines, and an active response to inflation. As a group, we will maintain cost focus and disciplines, particularly given that inflationary pressures are expected to continue, not only for our cost base but also for our families who are feeling these pressures. Turning to capital allocation on slide 18, the group declared a AUD 0.03 final dividend, resulting in a 50% increase in the full year dividend to AUD 0.045. The group has a strong balance sheet with a conservative leverage level of less than 1x and ample liquidity. Cash flow generation was strong, with cash conversion of 108% and free cash flow of AUD 58 million after interest, tax, CapEx, and dividends paid. These funds were used for debt reduction, share buybacks, software development, and leased surrenders to exit loss-making centers.
The group maintains a strong balance sheet, with net debt coming down in the second half from AUD 103 million at June to AUD 59 million. We have access to a further AUD 171 million of committed bank debt facilities. Capital and cost management discipline will continue to be a focus as the group builds capability towards a more consistent and efficient operating model. Pejman will now talk through the current trading and outlook.
Thanks, Sharyn. We are pleased with our improved occupancy at the start of this year as a result of better enrollment and transition from Q4 last year to Q1 this year. Our spot occupancy of 66.3% is 1.7% higher than PCP, with year-to-date occupancy of 66.9%, up 1.2% on PCP. The frequency continues to be positive, and further three to five-year-old fundings will assist with the affordability of kindergarten programs for parents.
We have implemented a 4.5% fee increase to address cost inflation across the areas of control, while we await the outcome of MEB to see when the federal government will work with the sector for any support for a wage subsidy later in the year. Our disciplines in operational effectiveness and cost control continue to be maintained. Now turning our attention to the medium-term outlook. Overall, the sector fundamentals for long-term remain as strong as we have indicated previously, reflecting mainly on women workforce participation, growth in net migration, and liberal policies working towards a universal access for all. We are optimistic looking ahead. At the same time, we remain cautious on the macro environment, particularly while inflation is easy enough, cost of living is a real issue for our families, challenges with the workforce, and a high level of regulatory interest in the ECEC sector.
Demand has encouraging trends in the early part of the year, supported with further funding in the three to five year-old kindergarten programs such as the new free kindergarten program in Queensland. The regulatory focus continues. The ACCC final report had a more balanced outcome in establishing no price gouging, no excessive profiteering, and no real requirement for price regulation. The Productivity Commission interim report has many positive aspects that we support, and we remain very engaged in working with them whilst they're finalising their report and recommendations over the next six months. Multi-employer bargaining has continued to progress, be it slowly, and the federal government is working with the involved parties, and we continue to advocate for a government-funded wage subsidy. In the meantime, we at G8 continue to do a good job in addressing workforce challenges that the sector faces.
We have a clear strategic focus on delivering a fit call for our business. Our operational execution and rigor in cost and capital control remain firmly in our sights. Now, I'm going to pause there and open the lines for Q&As.
So there's a question from Tim Plumbe.
Moderator?
Sorry. If you wish to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And 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. We ask that participants limit themselves to asking one question per turn. If you do wish to ask further questions, please rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from Tim Plumbe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. How are you going? Can you hear me?
Good morning, Tim. Yes, we can.
Excellent. My one question is around that agency spend. So reduction to 1.8% is pretty impressive. Sorry, I was trying to multitask badly during that call. Was that the fourth quarter exit run rate as a 1.8%? And I guess, how should we think about agency as a percentage of revenue in a business-as-usual environment, and what sort of EBIT benefit would that have given if it was down at that level for the whole of the year?
Please. So, Tim, that number is a full-year number, that 1.8%. So if you just focus on employment costs as a percentage of revenue, we are, as you say, at a more normalized level now of agency.
I think just to start, just to clarify.
So how should we think about sorry, Pejman. I was just going to say, how should we think about that was a progressive improvement throughout the course of the year, right? So how do we think about business-as-usual?
It's hard to predict the future while the sector still has challenges, Tim. It hasn't alleviated. We believe we've done better than the sector quite a bit in terms of actually reducing our team vacancies. What I would like the number to be for this year is sub 2%. Now, we'll continue to do our best to manage it as best as we can. But while the sector has still significant workforce shortages, I think we just got to kind of be a bit balanced in our view.
Understood. Thanks, guys.
No problem.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Manny Lysett from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Pejman and Sharyn. Thanks for taking my question. I just became just focused on early calendar year 2024 trends. So as you've pointed out in the slide deck, the reduced agency usage and some of the other streamlining you've achieved, and also reducing capped centres. Kind of could you maybe provide a bit more color on what's driving the early calendar year 2024 occupancy growth, considering that this time last year you were cycling like flood, the Omicron impact, which provided you with a pretty easy base?
Good morning, Manny. A couple of things to perhaps maybe just establish first. The Q1 impacting Omicron and flooding that you're talking about is actually two years old now, not last year.
Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But you were cycling that.
We are not cycling against the soft quarter.
Yes. That's what I mean. This time last year you were cycling that, and then you've obviously put yourself you've reduced the capped centres. There's been some, you call that, improvements in process. And this is despite lowering agency usage. Because just be good to have some color maybe on what you've been seeing in enrollments and other in the uptake with the subsidy, etc., to drive the early calendar year 2024 expansion in occupancy versus the prior year.
Yeah. It's a combination of all of those, Manny. If you recall, as we spoke a little bit in October and then a little bit towards we had a small update in December, we put a lot of focus in ensuring we get our team situation more stabilized.
What I mean by that is recruiting and reducing our team vacancies because that's one of the key critical factors in having a stable team that families can then engage with. A number of other factors that we've talked to as part of the presentation, bringing our call center in-house so we're able to deal with our families quicker, faster, and we're owning that relationship end-to-end now. Putting more focus and rigor around our operational execution, providing our center managers and area managers with better information, real-time digital tools so they can see their performance on a daily basis, and reducing some work routines so they can actually focus on running their businesses better.
The other areas where, as part of this culmination of activities or initiatives, Manny, have been more focused and targeted marketing activity in ensuring we are kind of delivering inquiries that are of higher quality that allows us to also improve what we call our conversion. So better quality inquiries that come through our network, we're able to convert at a higher level. The other area that we have been focusing in making sure the experience of our families, particularly the new ones because that first three months is really important for our families. As child settles, their parents are happy and engaged and feel trusted and confident in what we do is really important. There's a lot of things that have gone into having that continued improvement.
As we came out of November, we were really pleased with how we finished December, and that was our aim, to finish December quite comparable to actually slightly over 2022, which has now let us have a really good start in early 2024.
That's clear. Thanks for answering my question. I'll pop back in the queue.
Thanks a lot, Manny.
Thank you. You have a follow-up question from Tim Plumbe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Back to me. Sorry, guys. My follow-up question, and apologies if you answered this already, but when you look at your existing customer base, your families, can you talk about any trends that you're seeing in terms of average days per family this year compared to last year?
Yes. If you kind of look at same time last year, like January, February, the average was 3.04. The average now is about 3.09. So we've seen, Tim, almost right the way through 2023, that frequency continue to steadily increase, and we're seeing the same patterns this year. Part of that, I think, if you recall, we talked at H1 a little bit at Q4, was around the fact that the impact of the CCS changes always takes a better time for families to really evaluate what does it actually mean to them, to their pockets, and those who have evaluated their own individual budgets and going, "Actually, it's probably better for me to increase my child's frequency and probably work."
So we've seen some of that come through. Certainly, some of the states, typically the ones who are more generous, like Victoria, New South Wales, and now Queensland, putting more funding for families into three to five year-old programs, they've started to see an increase in that space too.
The nursery rooms, so the birth-to-threes, continue to be really popular and continuing to have that early growth. So therefore, our focus is trying to really ensure that we bring in children as early as possible in those birth to threes whilst working in our specific estates to also increase that kindergarten programme. Hopefully, that answers the question I made.
That's helpful. That's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Tim.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Drew from Carter Bar Securities. Please go ahead. Pardon me, Peter. Your line is now live.
Good morning, Peter.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron Bell from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, guys. Apologies if you've already touched on this, Sharyn, but could you just take us through the cash tax result and, I guess, the cash tax outlook for this year?
So in terms of cash net debt or just specifically related to tax?
The cash tax paid. Yeah, specifically tax.
Okay. So our cash rate usually is a tick over 30%, so a very vanilla tax approach. In terms of the tax position at the end of the year, last year it was a receivable. Now it's a payable. That's just simply our PAYG installments, etc. We did have some tax refunds during the year, Cam, related to wage remediation, where we were able to get the tax receivable back for those payments with some adjustments to historical returns. But for the coming year, a fairly vanilla approach with quarterly installments and the tax rate a tick over 30%.
Yep. Okay. Perfect. Then I'm not sure if you can do this just yet, but so at the start of the year, the occupancy gain versus last year, that's a really positive number. Can you maybe I think the number you've given is a group occupancy number. Is there a like-for-like comparison that takes into account the divested centres but with a lot lower occupancy?
I think it's too early to call it really, Cam, because the number of divestments has been small. What we have indicated is roughly about half a percentage, but I think what we like to kind of see a few more months through so we can complete a few more, and we'll probably provide a better outlook in terms of the impact of those divested centres, probably at AGM or maybe even at the half one.
Yeah. Okay. Sorry. That 0.5%, that's the gain in occupancy you'll get from divesting the centers?
That's on slide 14, the 9 that we have exited.
Okay. All right. Perfect. Thanks, guys.
No problem.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Drew from Carter Bar Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Pejman. Hi, Sharyn. I'll try again. Can you hear me?
Hi, Peter.
Good morning, mate. Yeah, yeah. We can.
There we go. Yeah. Congratulations on that result. I guess I'll keep my question on costs. Just the support costs in the second half, Peter have stepped down relative to the first half. I'm wondering if you could maybe provide some sort of an indication of what we should expect this year for support costs and similarly for interest costs, which also came in lower because of the cash flow result.
Sure. So in terms of support costs moving forward, inflation just needs to be factored in there, Peter, for the coming year. But we certainly, in the second half, as you called out, the disciplines around headcount really leveraging off the support cost is evident in that second half. In terms of interest, there's no change to our margins, etc. So it's really BBSY plus margins, so fairly similar to this year you'd expect with maybe as net debt did perform quite well at the end of the year, maybe a tick under, but just the conservatism probably repeat this year until we give a better update at the half.
Yeah. Great. And I mean, if I can just sneak one extra in, I just sort of missed the update on the Genius transaction. Could you just go back over that for my benefit?
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Of course. Peter, it was a little bit slower than the progress had been slower than we would have loved it to be. A couple of key reasons. Hindsight is a great thing, but 28 landlords, 28 agents, and 28 lawyers involved in all of this, we would have hoped or we were hoping they would be there faster, but it's just been quite slow going on forward or backwards. And kind of we've really lost about three to four weeks during that Christmas and January period too. So with that backdrop, we have completed eight so far and one surrender, so nine have been dealt with. We have another eight in principle agreement between landlords, us, and Genius.
Majority of those eight are in the New South Wales territory, and we are waiting for the regulator or the Department of Education in New South Wales to provide their approval for us to be able to transfer the license. All other states and territories have provided their approval, so we're just waiting for that one. There will always be a few that perhaps would never go through, but that's where we are currently. We are working very hard. As we said to the rest, we're trying to provide more update at our AGM and perhaps even at half one.
Yeah. Great. Thanks, Pejman. Thanks, Sharyn.
Thanks, Peter.
Thanks, Peter.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Manny Lysett from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Sorry.
The previous question beat me to it. I just had some questions about the landlord process and with the Genius exit. Sorry about that.
No problem.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll pause for any further questions to register. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Okhovat for closing remarks.
Thank you. In closing, I would like to once again thank the G8 Education Team for their outstanding work that has delivered these results and outcomes. Our team's everyday work results in supporting thousands of families and their children with high-quality education and care. Their passion and dedication and hard work allows us to live our purpose, creating the foundation for learning for life. Thank you for your time joining us on this call, and we will now close the call.
Thank you, everyone.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.