Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2021 annual general meeting of GWA Group Limited. My name is Darryl McDonough, and as Chairman of the Board of GWA Group Limited, I'll act as Chairman of this meeting. As we have a sufficient number of members present by proxy, I declare this virtual meeting open.
Each of the GWA directors, being John Mulcahy, the Deputy Chairman, Jane McKellar, Alison Barrass, Peter Birtles, Stephen Goddard, Urs Meyerhans, the Managing Director and CEO, and Richard Thornton, who is also the Company Secretary, together with our Chief Financial Officer, Patrick Gibson, are in attendance for this meeting, as well as a representative of our auditor, Trent Duvall of KPMG. You'll hear from Urs a little bit later in this meeting so that you may be provided with detailed insight into the performance of the group in FY 2021.
Today's meeting is being held online, which is clearly obvious. Shareholders and proxies have the ability to ask questions and also submit their votes. As far as the questions are concerned, they may be submitted at any time. You'll see a speech bubble icon on your screens now. If you wish to ask a question, simply click on that bubble and a new screen will open.
At the bottom of that screen, there is a section for you to type your question. Once you have finished typing, please hit the arrow symbol to send the question. Please note that while you can submit written questions from now, I'll obviously not address them until a little bit later in the meeting.
For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio questions facility will be available during the course of this meeting, and that will be activated at the appropriate time. I'll require that all resolutions today be considered on a poll, and the voting will be conducted by a poll on all items of business at the end of the meeting. The notice of this meeting was circulated to shareholders registered on the 20th of September, 2021. We will take the notice of meeting as read and deal with the items of business in the order that's set out in that notice. The first item of business is consideration of the company's financial statements.
What I'll do first of all is address the meeting, and then I'll ask Urs Meyerhans, the Managing Director and CEO, to also address the meeting. Then obviously allow ourselves to be available to have questions asked of us. I just mention at the outset that we have received three questions from the Australian Shareholders' Association, which Urs will deal with as part of his presentation.
In relation to my own, there are four matters that I wish to address. I wanna just very quickly do an overview of our results. I wanna talk about the issue of sustainability. I also wanna mention remuneration and board renewal. As far as the results are concerned, look, the reality is FY 2021 was a challenging year. Everybody would accept that and due to the issues associated with the pandemic.
However, your group, your company did achieve revenue improvement of 6% with EBIT being up 13%, EBIT margin up 120 basis points, and that the EBIT margin was up in the second half by 120 basis points. That, I think, shows very strongly GWA's ability to capitalize on improving markets. The operational discipline, together with synergies derived from the Methven acquisition or within Methven, delivered AUD 7 million in cost out in FY 2021. In relation to cash flow, the FY 2021 operating cash flow was 16% with a cash conversion ratio of 117%.
Net debt was 28% below FY 2020, with the leverage ratio down to 1.4 x. I'll just pause for a moment so that the slides can actually catch up to where I'm on. Yeah, here we go. I'm just going into that second area under the heading of cash flow and now into that third slash point there. The strong financial position enabled payment of a AUD 0.065 per share dividend on the final basis, bringing the full-year dividend to AUD 0.125, fully franked.
There's been growth with our retail-focused merchants, partially though offset by continued decline in commercial. Product innovation, you know, the new product development attached showerware, the GermGard antibacterial glaze, and so forth has been very important for our business to date.
The New Zealand warehouse consolidation and the sale of our China plant is expected to result in approximately AUD 3 million of annualized cost savings from FY 2022. There's been positive momentum for detached housing in FY 2022 so far. The repair and replacement markets are expected to be positive, subject of course to the issues associated with the pandemic.
The commercial segment activity remains subdued. However, our order bank in respect of projects remains very strong, and we're very much very well positioned for a very strong recovery once that segment recovers. We've realigned our cost base and that's provided enhanced operating leverage to improvement in the building activity.
However, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns, particularly in Sydney, New South Wales and Melbourne, Victoria and New Zealand, create a level of uncertainty re potential impacts on the construction markets going forward. If we move on then to the next slide on the issue of sustainability.
Sustainability remains fundamental to the way we conduct our business. Our approach to sustainability continues to be based around the two central objectives identified on this slide. We operate in a sustainable manner across our business by managing our resources as efficiently as possible and by acting in a socially responsible manner.
Secondly, we provide leading-edge products and systems that contribute to sustainability by making life better through sustainable water saving solutions for the built environment. There's a number of highlights during the course of FY 2021, and you would have, I would have thought, already seen our sustainability report. If you haven't had a chance to read it, I'd encourage you to do so. It's available on our website.
The highlights include gender diversity improvement, with female composition increasing from 42% to 43%. Water efficiency focus with over 80% of Caroma taps, five- or six-star WELS rated, while 95% of Caroma sanitaryware products are four-star WELS rated. There's been a consolidation of the distribution network in Australia and New Zealand, which has resulted in a reduction in water, waste, and energy consumption.
We have implemented a policy against slavery and trafficking in persons, and we completed two audits of major suppliers with no ethical sourcing issues identified. We continued our partnership with The Smith Family to support 60 disadvantaged children in drought-affected areas in Australia with AUD 125,000 being devoted to The Smith Family over the past three years.
Moving to remuneration. In relation to the executive remuneration during FY 2021, they remained frozen. The executive team was eligible for short-term incentive payments to recognize their disciplined response to weaker markets in the first half of FY 2021, but an improved financial performance in the second half of FY 2021, together with successful execution of key business changes and general activities.
In relation to the framework for the remuneration going forward, for this and future years, your board has determined there should be a change in variable remuneration mix for FY 2022, with a greater weighting being placed on long-term incentives, coupled with a continued focus on short-term financial targets and critical non-financial KPIs.
This change applies to all members of the executive team for FY 2022 to better align executive remuneration outcomes and long-term shareholder wealth creation. The FY 2022 STI plan adopts EBIT as a single financial target. EBIT is an effective basis for STI financial targets as it is currently a key metric used in the business and aligns with the group's strategy.
For FY 2022, the board decided to retain relative total shareholder return as a single performance measure under the LTI plan due to the ongoing uncertainty caused by the impacts of COVID-19, which has resulted in difficulty in accurately forecasting the business performance for the next three-year period.
That decision was taken after considering a whole range of alternatives and incorporating independent expert advice which we have received. For the FY 2023 LTI plan and in following years, the board's current preference is to reintroduce a second performance measure of EPS growth in addition to retaining the relative TSR measure. More on that will become known as we progress through this financial year and get closer to the start of the FY 2023 year.
I then wanna talk about board renewal. The board has commenced a formal review which will consider board renewal and appointments. We've appointed external advisors, Hatton Neil, to assist us in this process. The board obviously will keep shareholders updated on developments as the process progresses. I'll now hand over to Urs Meyerhans, the Managing Director and Chief Executive, to address the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you, Chair. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm honored to have been appointed as Managing Director and CEO of your company. GWA is a company with a rich and long heritage and is well-positioned for future growth opportunities. Today, in my first AGM address, I would like to provide some further context to our financial year 2021 financial results and an outline of our revised strategy to capitalize on that opportunity for growth.
I will conclude with some commentary on our trading performance for the first quarter for this financial year and outlook for the full year. Let me begin with an update on safety across our workplace and some commentary about our continued progress with sustainability. First, on safety. During the year, we transitioned to ISO 45001, which is the global best practice safety standard.
All GWA sites have been successfully accredited to this standard. Following a decline from financial year 2018 to 2020, we experienced an increase in total injury frequency rate from 0.9 last year to 4.3 in financial year 2021. Mainly, that was due to injuries relating to manual handling. This is a disappointing result.
We have renewed our focus on behavioral issues and have implemented customized training strategies to address the root cause to reduce manual handling injuries going forward. As the Chair indicated, sustainability remains a core focus for GWA. We continue to make good progress and promote policies to encourage diversity and inclusion across the company. We remain focused on those areas of sustainability where we believe we can make the most impact. For us, that means providing innovative, sustainable solutions for the built environment with a clear focus on sustainable water solutions.
During FY 2021, we continued the rollout of our intelligent bathroom system, called the Smart Command. It has now been installed in 127 sites, up from 49 the last year. Bill has provided a summary of our financial results, and I would like now to provide some additional detail behind the numbers. This slide presents the results first on a normalized basis, which is before significant items, and then on a reported basis, which includes significant items.
For FY 2021, significant items were AUD 9.5 million pre-tax. This includes AUD 4.7 million related to our new ERP CRM systems and costs associated with the consolidation of the New Zealand warehouses, sale of the China plant, and Methven integration costs. On a normalized basis, group revenue increased by 2% to AUD 405.7 million, reflecting improved detached residential construction activities in Australia in the second half, and continued sales momentum in our New Zealand and U.K. businesses, partially offset by the decline in the commercial segment in Australia due to the delay caused by COVID-19.
Normalized group EBIT was down 5% to AUD 68.5 million. Mainly, that reflects the first half market decline and ongoing weakness in the commercial segment, partially offset by strong cost control. Normalized net profit after tax was AUD 42.3 million, down 6%. On a reported basis, net profit after tax for the year was AUD 35.1 million, which includes significant items of AUD 7.3 million after tax. Our continuous strong cash generation and robust balance sheet enabled an increase in full year dividend paid to shareholders to AUD 0.125 per share, fully franked.
This slide contains a waterfall chart to set out the key drivers of earnings over the year. These are normalized results. They exclude significant items that I detailed on the previous slide. Volume and mix were impacted by COVID-19, largely in the first half, and from the full year impact of negative sales mix from the continued decline in the commercial segment in Australia. The commercial segment is generally a higher margin segment for GWA. Price increases of approximately 5% were implemented from August 2020.
Through our foreign exchange hedging, we were able to mitigate some, but not all of the impacts from the weak Australian dollar, compared to the prior year. Net cost changes reflect our continued strong operational discipline, which mitigated a significant amount of the earnings decline for the year. The final red bar represents costs for staff incentives accrued for in financial year 2021, but not in financial year 2020.
This slide demonstrates the improvement in revenue in the second half across all of our markets. In Australia, we saw a recovery in builders and merchant sales in the second half. However, this was impacted by the slowdown in the commercial project segment, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria. In New Zealand, we benefited from the integration of our sales team and strong stock availability during most of the year. In our international business, we continued the sales momentum in the U.K. We continued to grow market share and improved our EBIT margin.
Turning now to cash flow. This was a very strong result. Cash flow from operations was AUD 103.1 million, compared to AUD 88.6 million in the prior year. Cash conversion remains excellent, with a cash conversion ratio of 117%, reflecting our capital light model. Our capital expenditure program remains focused on growth initiatives to drive revenue-enhancing opportunities and cost efficiencies. This includes continued investment in new products development. GWA remains in a strong financial position. Net debt as of end of June was AUD 104.8 million, which was 28% lower than the prior year.
Our credit metrics remain solid, with an improved leverage ratio of 1.4 x compared to 1.9 x at the end of June 2020. Our total group facilities of AUD 220 million were successfully extended last week, and they provide sufficient financial flexibility to pursue growth initiatives. As shareholders will recall, GWA acquired Methven in April 2019. The continued delivery of integration synergies and enhanced geographical revenue and earnings differentiation reinforce the success of the acquisition.
Methven sales were up year-on-year with strong growth in the U.K., providing further earnings in revenue diversity and enhanced scale. Cost synergy targets have been realized with AUD 3 million achieved during the year. That brings total synergies achieved during financial year 2020 and 2021 to over AUD 6 million and exceeds the original target.
As we mentioned previously, the New Zealand distribution network was consolidated from two warehouses to one, which will improve customer experience. The Methven China plant was divested in March 2021. Our Center of Excellence in New Zealand is building a strong pipeline of new products. The market-leading Methven Showerware intellectual property is being used in Caroma's new shower launches this year.
A key focus of our growth strategy remains product design and innovation. We have established Center of Excellence in Auckland and Sydney to leverage our local technical design and sourcing capability in taps, showers, and sanitary ware. Our focus on hygiene and touchless solution is important, especially in the current environment. For example, we launched GermGard, which is an antibacterial glaze for our sanitary ware and toilet seats. This is to capitalize on current consumers' heightened concerns over safety and hygiene following the COVID-19 outbreak.
Our local design and technology expertise continues to be a key point of differentiation for GWA. Our innovation and distribution center at Prestons in New South Wales is a good example of work we are doing to create truly innovative products and systems focused on water solutions in the built environment. The picture you can see on this slide is of the new vertical and horizontal test rigs. These enable our team to model the hydraulic impacts of water in commercial buildings, assisting us to develop new water-saving solutions and products.
That, of course, includes our touchless intelligent bathroom system, Caroma Smart Command, which I mentioned earlier. As I said at the beginning of my presentation, GWA has a significant opportunity for growth. As we build and refine our next five-year strategy to improve shareholder value. Over the next two slides, I would like to highlight how we are evolving the current strategy to grow the business. A shareholder question was received regarding this, so I will answer that now. Let me start by outlining the key elements of our strategy.
Firstly, as a business, we are committed to making everyday water experiences extraordinary today and for tomorrow. We respect that water is a precious resource with our long and demonstrated history in the delivery of market-leading innovation that has helped to support reduced water consumption in bathrooms.
We will look to further these commitments so the water experiences customers happily enjoy today can also help better preserve this resource for tomorrow. In living this commitment, our strategic mission is to confirm GWA as the respected and leading partner in delivery of sustainable water solutions for bathrooms, kitchens, and laundries. We have identified five key strategic pillars to deliver on this, which I will discuss on the next slide.
Firstly, given it is at the heart of what we do, we start our strategic focus area with the needs to deliver great customer experience. Our customers want us to be easy to do business with. We'll be engaging in new approaches as well as digital tools and services to better enhance and enrich the purchase journey of our customers.
Our second strategic focus respects the need to better connect with an industry group critical to our business, the plumber. Commercial and residential plumbers are the link between our products and our customer base. We will be engaging in activities to strengthen relationships and improve our support in this key industry.
We had a shareholder question regarding this pillar and what initiatives will be implemented. These will include increasing the number of plumbers that we are currently engaging with across both commercial and builder segment, engaging with training institutions to educate young plumbers, and providing plumbers tools to make their job easier, and introducing a form of loyalty program.
As mentioned, GWA already has a strong heritage with innovation, and we will continue to innovate through design and partnership, hence our third strategic focus. We will not only use our internal expertise, but also leverage the strong capabilities of our supply partners to offer advanced products in our markets. We also see increased opportunity in supporting customers with comprehensive aftermarket offerings. Our fourth strategic focus, therefore, involves leveraging current expertise and extending this to grow our support of products and services throughout the entire life cycle.
We had a shareholder question regarding this pillar and what initiatives we will implement. We get clear feedback from our commercial clients that there is a need for support throughout the life cycle of our products. This will include spare parts and service arrangements so that our installations function and look as good in year five as on day one.
Finally, we will look to accelerate our business growth by leveraging strategic growth opportunities that expand our capability and strengthen our overall market presence. There was a shareholder question on this, and while I can't go into specifics at this time due to confidentiality, I can say that it will include evaluation of products and solutions that fit with our overall strategic mission to be the respected and leading partner in delivery of sustainable water solutions for bathroom, kitchen, and laundry.
Such opportunities could be in Australia and New Zealand and/or in our international markets. I look forward to sharing the progress on this strategy with shareholders as we seek to deliver further sustainable value over the medium term.
Let me conclude with an update on our first quarter trading and an outlook for financial year 2022. Moving now to the results from our first quarter trading, and we have certainly seen a challenging start to the financial year. Along with many of our customers, there has been a large impact resulting from ongoing restrictions to trading in Australia, with both New South Wales and Victoria facing prolonged retail closures and many stores needing to operate on a click and collect basis only.
The situation was also heightened in New Zealand, with Auckland facing five weeks under level 4 lockdown and only able to trade in strictly essential sales. The outcome of this has been a 32% shortfall in sales for our New Zealand business during quarter one. While a sizable impact has been felt across our market over this past quarter, our Australian sales numbers still saw a gain of 6% on the prior corresponding quarter.
With restriction lifting in late September, we have seen strong momentum in sales, both in Australia and New Zealand, and would expect to recover the shortfall in Q1 in New Zealand due to the lockdown in the course of the full financial year 2022. Notwithstanding the challenges of various lockdowns and trade restrictions, total group revenue for the first quarter of financial year 2022 was flat compared to the first quarter of last year. Encouragingly, our commercial renovation and replacement sales strengthened in Q1, with projects being drawn from our order bank.
We expect our order bank will be in growth at the end of December 2021 compared to June 2021. In terms of overall market activity, we expect a continued momentum in residential detached in financial year 2022 from the improved consumer sentiment, increased trading approvals, new housing loans, higher housing turnover, and the impact of government stimulus flowing through to the building completions.
Renovation and the replacement, both on the residential and commercial side, is also expected to be positive for the year as approvals convert to completion activities and as confidence and activity increases in this segment. We remain well-placed to capitalize on that improvement. With regard to new build in commercial, this is likely to remain subdued and multi-residential will continue to be impacted with lower net migration from international border closures and travel restrictions. Note that this segment represents only about 8% of our group revenue.
As we progress into financial year 2022, our focus remains on strengthening revenues through new product development across our bathroom ranges for Caroma and Methven Showerware. We have also implemented a great business plan with major merchants targeting enhanced product ranging across our core categories in bathroom, kitchen and laundry.
We continue to manage our cost base closely, and we expect to deliver AUD 3 million in supply chain savings in financial year 2022. Meanwhile, our supply chain remains robust and despite some intermittent supply delays, we remain well-placed to service our customers in financial year 2022. There have been some increases to freight on the back of global supply interruptions. We will increase price around 4% in Australia from first of December, related primarily to these freight cost increases.
Overall, a challenging first quarter given the restriction in force, but we are seeing positive signs as the market starts to regain momentum. As GWA, we are well positioned to leverage as the market improve. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes my presentation and I will now hand back to the chair.
Thank you very much, Urs. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now deal with any questions from shareholders on the financial statements in any aspect of the business or management of the group or questions for the auditor. As I mentioned, there were questions from the Australian Shareholders' Association for which I thank them for submitting those before the meeting, which Urs has just dealt with in his presentation.
We're open, ladies and gentlemen, for any other questions that anybody would wish to ask. We have not received any written questions, so it's really a matter of anybody wishing to ask a question verbally. The slide on the screen then just now sets out how you could actually do that. You actually need to pause the broadcast on the Lumi platform and then click on the link under Asking Audio Questions.
A new page will open where you'll be prompted to enter your name and the topic of your question before being connected. You will listen to the meeting from this page while waiting to ask your question. If you have any issues using the system, you just return back to the Lumi platform.
Does anybody wish to ask any question? I'm assured by the technical people that nobody has even attempted to ask a question. Look, ladies and gentlemen, I can I say to you that this is a less than satisfactory way to open, to have an annual general meeting. The reality is that we must do it because of the reality that we face today.
I can assure you that myself and all the other directors look forward to actually having a face-to-face meeting this time next year and not having to go through it like this because it is, I think, a very difficult thing, both for obviously the shareholders, but also from our point of view as well too. Certainly there has been some press coverage in relation to some companies amending their constitutions to enshrine the ability to have effectively virtual meetings going forward.
That's not something that we currently intend to do, but obviously we'll make use of whatever technology is available in addition, though, to having actually having a face-to-face meeting. In view of the fact that I am aware because of the technology that there are only a very few number of shareholders that are present.
I'm also aware, which I'll put up in a little moment, the slides in relation to the proxy votes that have been received. There is no doubt whatsoever that the resolutions that are before the meeting today are gonna get passed. I thought what I might do is just giving people an opportunity, having spoken enough, to give you more of an opportunity to ask a question if you wish to. Please feel free to do so. By all means, I'm happy to take questions on any of the items that are before this meeting, including the re-election of the directors, the approval of the performance rights.
In respect to my own re-election, if there were a question to be asked, I would ask the deputy chairman, John Mulcahy, to then take charge of the meeting whilst that was dealt with. I again ask if anybody has any questions on any matters that there are before the meeting. I'll just pause for a second or two. No, the indication is that there are none.
What I'll do is I'll ask our moderator if they could go to the proxy results, which are slides 32 and 33, just for the benefit of shareholders. That's the proxy results in respect of resolutions one and two. As you can see, there is a significant number. Then to resolutions three and four, which is the next slide, and five.
Again, numbers are significantly in favor of the approval of those particular resolutions. I'm still informed that we haven't received any written questions or anybody's attempted to ask a verbal question. I propose then that what we'll do is we'll move to the conduct of the poll in relation to each of the resolutions.
If you're eligible to vote at this meeting, a new polling icon will appear on your screen. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of the resolutions with voting options on each resolution. To cast your vote, you simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare the voting closed. What I'm going to do now is propose that I'll just leave the meeting open for about the next five minutes to give everybody an opportunity to vote.
I've just been asked. We have actually received a question from a shareholder. The question is, "Why was the Methven China plant sold?" Perhaps I could ask Urs if you could answer that question, please.
Yeah, thank you.
Why was the China plant sold? Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, Chair. The reason we considered to sell the Methven China’s plant is probably a number of reasons. First of all, we had concerns in regard to the health and safety in regards to processes. Secondly, we saw great opportunities to consolidate some of our volumes with existing Caroma volumes, which would give us better product availability and product pricing.
Thank you, Urs, and thank you, Mr. Carr, for that question. If anybody else wishes to ask a question while we're doing the voting at the same time, please feel free to do so.
Well, thank you very much indeed, ladies and gentlemen. I declare the voting closed. The results of the voting will be uploaded to the ASX platform later this afternoon. Look, can I just say thank you very much indeed for your attendance. I apologize that it is this way, but that's out of my control. Certainly, I'll look forward to seeing shareholders on a face-to-face basis next year for the annual general meeting. I thank you for your attendance and your ongoing support of the company, and I look forward to catching up with you. All the very best.