Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the IVE Group FY 2021 results presentation. On the call today, Executive Chairman, Geoff Selig; CEO, Matt Aitken; and CFO, Darren Dunkley. Also assisting, Richard Nelson, Investor Relations Manager. I'd like to now hand over to Geoff to begin the presentation. Over to you, Geoff.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate you making the time to dial in for the IVE Group FY 2021 full year results call. We are nearly halfway through our centenary year. It doesn't quite feel like it. 1921, in March 1921, my grandfather issued the first issue of the local newspaper in Balmain. Hopefully, towards the back end of the year, we will appropriately celebrate our centenary year. Just before dialing into the investor presentation today, once again to introduce the team. With me, our CEO, Matt Aitken, CFO, Darren Dunkley, and Richard Nelson, who heads up our Investor Relations. Given the year of unprecedented volatility and uncertainty, I'd like to acknowledge upfront the capacity of our people to respond to the circumstances we found ourselves in by coming together as one company and committing to go above and beyond and to care for each other.
It was a huge team effort, and I think our results demonstrate this. Clearly, the entirety of FY 2021 year for IVE would best be described as COVID impacted. We provided quite some detail this time last year in our full year results presentation around our swift response to the impacts of COVID in Q4 FY 2020, and it's fair to say many of the impacts we touched on at the time prevailed throughout the FY 2021 year. That being the health and safety of our staff, managing supply chain issues, the tight management of working capital, the need to flex the cost base in response ultimately to what was huge volatility in revenues throughout the period.
We feel the solid financial performance of the business, our significantly strengthened balance sheet demonstrate the resilience of the IVE business and position the company well, which we'll talk a little later about, to deliver strong growth as we emerge from this period of disruption. With that preamble behind us, move to page 3 of the presentation that we lodged with the ASX this morning titled The Financial Performance Dashboard. Just make the point that all numbers are underlying on a continuing operations basis. We divested of the company throughout the year and are post AASB 16. We've also tried hard to be very clear throughout the presentation with our numbers, both including JobKeeper and excluding JobKeeper. If I just look at the eight tiles on the performance dashboard, we'll dive a little deeper shortly as we go through the presentation.
Revenue at AUD 656.5 million, a little off last year, which we'll touch on. EBITDA, excluding JobKeeper, AUD 85.3 up on last year. Gross profit margin increased, in a meaningful way above last year, sitting at 48.1%. Once again, net profit after tax up at AUD 19.9 million, excluding JobKeeper. That resulted in earnings per share uplift of 8.4% on PCP and the result of continuing strong operating cash flow. Our net debt landed at AUD 77.3, which was lower than expected a couple of months ago, with cash on hand at AUD 107 million. The final dividend of AUD 0.07 is the same as the half year dividend of AUD 0.07, which results in a full year dividend of AUD 0.14, obviously. That's the snapshot of the financial performance for the year.
I'll now hand over to Matt to walk us through, commencing with page 4, the key business highlights.
Thank you, Geoff, good morning, everyone. As Geoff has mentioned, earnings guidance has been met. Strong cash flows have delivered increased balance sheet strength, all of which illustrates the underlying resilience of this business. Earnings of EBITDA AUD 100.2 million was at the upper end of our guidance range, which was AUD 98 million-AUD 100 million. The margin growth continued to improve despite reduced revenue, with much of this achieved through flexing our cost base and the management of our supply chain. I'm also very proud of the contributions made by all 1,600 staff during the year as they responded to an unprecedented and volatile operating environment. We have an awesome team. During the year, we executed on two key strategic initiatives that were also communicated at the half year results.
The first being the divestment of IVE Telefundraising in October for consideration of AUD 16.5 million, realizing a profit on sale of AUD 4.2 million. The second being the commitment to a long-term contract with ACM, which included the acquisition of their production operation in Western Australia. This transaction was expected to deliver revenues of AUD 20 million per annum at a full run rate. I'm pleased to advise we have now reached that point. Since buying the WA operation, it has performed really well, and we have a great team over there. We've also been able to transition some volume from our East Coast operations to WA to better assist our national clients. Turning to page 5, the strengthening of the balance sheet is one of our real highlights for FY 2021, with strong cash flow generation and operating cash flow of 131%.
Net debt was reduced by AUD 59.8 million to AUD 77.3 million, with net debt pre-AASB 16, EBITDA, ex-JobKeeper Payment now at 1.3 times. Cash on hand at June 30 was AUD 107 million. Since year-end, we have repaid AUD 50 million of our senior debt facility. We have also continued to focus on improving shareholder returns with EPS growth over PCP at 8.4%, and the resumption of dividends in FY 2021, with a final dividend of AUD 0.07 per share, fully franked, taking the full year dividend to AUD 0.14 per share, fully franked. As you would also be aware, the company announced a share buyback in November, and as at today, has acquired 5.4 million shares or 3.6% of issued capital at a total cost of AUD 7.4 million.
As we have illustrated already, the company is in a strong position to fund growth initiatives with latent balance sheet capacity of AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million available to pursue earnings accretive initiatives or further capital management. We will pick up on this later in our presentation. Throughout the year, IVE has continued to benefit from its differentiated value proposition and a loyal, strong, and diversified customer base. We provided continuity of service and supply to all customers throughout the pandemic, with no COVID-related operating issues at any of our sites. We continued to grow our share of wallet across the customer base as we sell more of our products and services to our 2,800 customers. Our long-term track record of retaining clients ensured more than AUD 100 million in contract renewals was achieved during the year across a multitude of customers, big and small.
Some of these include the likes of Woolworths, Westpac, L'Oréal, and more. Importantly, there was no material loss of any client in FY 2021. From a growth perspective, there was continued focus on growing market share through harnessing the power and uniqueness of our go-to-market proposition. New business momentum across all parts of the business remained strong. Despite the challenges of COVID, AUD 58 million of new clients were onboarded during the year. Again, some fantastic brands, big and small, with the likes of Bunnings, Officeworks, Simplot, Colgate, and many more joining the IVE stable. Pleasingly, the strong new business momentum from Q4 FY 2021 has continued into FY 2022, with a number of key customers already secured in this new financial year. We're very fortunate to have strong, reputable customers, and we are very grateful for their ongoing support.
I'll now hand over to Darren and ask him to take you through the financial results in more detail.
Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'll now take you through the financial section of the presentation starting page 8 with the profit and loss, which is presented on an underlying continuing operations basis, excluding JobKeeper Payment. Improving metrics despite a full year of COVID-19 impacts. Revenue of AUD 656.5 million, a net reduction of AUD 20.9 million or 3.1% on prior period. COVID-19 resulted in reduced base revenue of AUD 75.6 million over prior period. Main sectors impacted were catalogs, travel, events, and exhibitions. This was offset by an increase in revenue of AUD 54.7 million over prior period due to the full-year benefit of the Salmat acquisition acquired in January 2020, and the part-year benefit of ACM acquisition November 2020.
Our gross profit, which is revenue less material cost of goods sold, that is, it excludes direct labor and direct factory overhead, remains very stable to historical levels and is assisted by the diversity of our revenue streams. Pleasingly, gross margin improved on FY 2020 due to a combination of reduced outwork and management of our supply chain. Improvement in EBITDA and NPAT margin driven mainly by increased gross profit as well as continued leveraging of our cost base, resulted in EPS growth of 8.4%, notwithstanding the COVID-19 impacts on reduced revenue. If you just move to page 9, this year we have included an EBITDA bridge. The main points I would just like to emphasize is EBITDA growth in a challenging environment, which was driven by net gross profit improvement despite a net reduction in revenue with overall gross profit margin increase on prior period.
Continued flexing and management of our labor and overhead costs with base business cost reductions of AUD 11.6 million over prior period, normalizing for the cost increases associated with the acquisitions. Our main point here is, as revenue returns, we are well-placed to continue to leverage our cost base, supported by a stable gross profit margin. Our balance sheet strength on page 10. Strong cash generation over the period has substantially reduced our gearing levels. Net debt down AUD 59.8 million from June 2020 take us to a level of AUD 77.3 million net debt, driven by significant operating and free cash flow, as well as the sale of Telefundraising during the period. Net debt of 1.3 times EBITDA, which is on a pre-AASB 16 and excluding JobKeeper basis, which is well below our stated target level of 1.5 times.
As at 30 June, our working capital facility of AUD 30 million is fully undrawn and remains undrawn as at today. Given our strong cash generation during the period, the board decided to repay AUD 50 million of senior facilities on the 6th of August, meaning reduced finance costs in FY 2022. Our senior debt facilities expire in April 2023. Our balance sheet strength cornerstones our capacity to execute on growth initiatives in FY 2022 and beyond which Matt will touch on shortly. Page 11, capital expenditure continues to normalize following the completion of major investment and expansion initiatives over recent years. As a result, we have an operational footprint that is in excellent shape. Full year capital expenditure of AUD 8.7 million, excluding MIS upgrades of AUD 4 million. FY 2022 capital expenditure is expected to be circa AUD 10 million, excluding AUD 3.5 million to re-platform and transition the Lasoo business.
Matt will touch on this shortly also. We often get asked what is our CapEx spend relative to our depreciation expense, and it's important to note that the ongoing base business CapEx is expected to be approximately 60% of depreciation, excluding AASB impacts. Cash flow generation and dividends. Continued strong free cash flow driven by operational performance and excellent working capital management. Strong operating cash flows of AUD 97 million with 131% operating cash flow conversion, 110% in prior period. Discipline management of working capital, including reduced debtor days over the period, debtor aging improvement, and reduced inventory levels. Dividends. Reinstated dividend in H1 FY 2021. Final dividend of AUD 0.07 per share fully franked, taking full year dividend to AUD 0.14 per share fully franked. Return on funds employed increased from FY 2020 of 12.4%- 15% in FY 2021. Share buyback update.
Matt has already touched on previously, but as of today, the 25th of August, the company has acquired 5.4 million shares at a total cost of AUD 7.4 million. The average buy price per share is AUD 1.37. This represents 3.6% of issued capital and shares on issue now 142.8 million. Lastly, but importantly, in recognition of the extraordinary efforts of all of our employees over the last 18 months, the board intends to issue 500 shares to every employee of the company in FY 2022. This concludes the financial section of the presentation. I now will hand you back over to Geoff. Thank you.
Thanks, Darren. I'm now talking to page 14 of the investor presentation titled Strategy, Diversification, and Growth Opportunities. Prior to talking about the right-hand side of that page, it's important for us to just reflect on the journey the company's been on. This is not a five-minute roll-up. It's a company that's been around for a long time, and it's been a very deliberate strategy for a long time, for a long period, certainly over the last 20 years, to diversify the offering of the business. That has certainly been the cornerstone of our strategy. Certainly since listing in late 2015, strong free cash flow combined with access to capital really has enabled the company to successfully execute on a more transformational investment and growth program that further expanded our integrated communications offer to our customer base.
The result of our long-term strategy, essentially diversification and growth, has delivered today what is, in our view, a highly resilient business, which has been demonstrated by our performance and our metrics over the last 18 months. Some of the slides coming up that Matt will talk to, illustrate exactly that point. From our perspective, the strategy that we articulated and the course we set 20 years ago has served us very well. If we then turn our mind to where we are today, this really is a continuation of our strategy through actively pursuing the current growth opportunities. As both Matt and Darren has said before, we have the capacity in our balance sheet to fund AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million in growth initiatives in the foreseeable future.
We have a minimum ROFE target of 15%, and it would be our intention, to invest wisely, but to not leave the cash sitting in the bank. We need to be disciplined about it, but there are a range of initiatives and opportunity in front of us today that the company is actively pursuing. Matt will talk shortly about the Lasoo investment, which I'll skip over, but certainly there's a couple of complementary adjacencies, and we have a long track record of moving into complementary adjacent like we did in retail display in 2014, and premiums and merchandise in 2015. This time around, and in front of us at the moment, is expanding our fibre- based packaging presence, both organically or potentially through acquisition in that sector.
We have a very extensive integrated logistics operation across New South Wales and Victoria, 45,000 sq m under roof for our existing logistics customers. We're looking to expand that into a pure more 3PL operation as well. We also, as we come out of COVID, see a number of opportunities in the competitive landscape for us to look to a number of bolt-on acquisitions over the next couple of years. The type of acquisition that we have executed on multiple times over the last 20 years in terms of low risk, low multiples, and a nice earnings kicker for the business. Really, from our perspective, it is a continuation of the strategy that has served us well up until this point. I'll now hand back to Matt, and he'll just walk us through some of those initiatives, starting with our investment in Lasoo.
Thanks, Geoff. Look, Geoff has just outlined the company's intention to pursue a range of strategic initiatives. One of those is the expansion of our existing digital offerings, which are already broad and significant. Over the next six to nine months, we'll be investing AUD 3.5 million in enhancing and amplifying the Lasoo platform that we acquired last year. Lasoo is one of the largest digital catalogue consumer platforms in Australia, so both apps and website. It has a loyal and active consumer following, as you can see from the metrics displayed on this slide, along with a diverse and growing base of Australia's leading retailers. This provides a solid foundation as we invest further to improve the consumer experience and work with our retail clients to unlock opportunities to drive further revenue for their businesses.
We will have more to say about this in the coming months to investors ahead of our relaunch in early 2022. In relation to the market positioning slide on page 16, we provided this information last year in the FY 2020 results deck. This is being restated for you based on FY 2021 data. The slide really reiterates the strong market position IVE holds across a number of its key sectors and the diversity of the sectors within which we operate. This is some new data. This year, this revenue diversification slide really illustrates the execution of our strategy and how it's resulted in an increased diversification of revenue streams, broader client relationships, and also provides for margin protection. Quarterly ongoing sustainability of our business is the value proposition we take to market, ensuring we remain relevant by closely aligning to our clients' evolving requirements.
A large proportion of our clients engage us across multiple parts of our business, and you can see how the product and service capability on the right-hand side of the slide illustrates the natural connection between our value proposition and a client's marketing needs. We expect revenue growth across all parts of the business in a post-COVID-19 environment and are ideally positioned to capitalize on opportunities to grow market share across multiple sectors. As we consider organic and inorganic strategic initiatives, I would expect you will see further diversification of our revenue mix moving forward. As you can see from this slide, margins have been resilient despite COVID-19 impacting revenue over the last two financial years. Stable margin in the face of these revenue impacts, supply chain challenges, and the broader macroeconomic climate illustrates the strength of our business fundamentals.
You can also see how balance sheet flexibility increases as operating cash flows increase and capital expenditure normalizes. The business has the capacity to generate high levels of cash, which supports our capacity to invest and pursue the strategic initiatives we have touched on in the previous slides. It also supports our dividend policy, as well as allowing for our share buyback. From my perspective, the business is clearly match fit, has a strong balance sheet from which to execute growth initiatives, has great operating leverage, and is ready to benefit from the improved trading conditions as the economy re-emerges from these lockdowns. I'll now hand you back to Geoff to take you through the outlook statement and provide some closing comments. Thank you.
Thanks, Matt. Certainly, those four slides around market positioning, revenue diversification, margin stability, and cash flow, really, from our perspective, validate the strategy and highlight the resilience of the business, as I said before. Just turning to the final slide, 20, being the outlook page. From our perspective, the solid underlying fundamentals of the business, combined with the strength of the balance sheet, place us in an ideal position to deliver strong growth as we emerge from this period of disruption. If we look at FY 2022 more specifically, we're not able to provide guidance at this time, but we do point to the resilience of the IVE business over the last 18 months, which is important, and we would expect that resilience to continue through this current period.
It is fair to say that the August 2021 is very different and very much an improved operating environment to what it was this time last year, with even more uncertainty around. Yes, we are seeing some short-term impacts to revenue as a result of the current lockdowns. In saying that, we're not geographic-specific business. We have a national client base, and we have dual operations, so we don't really think about any impact to revenue in terms of specific geographic lockdowns. We are seeing some short-term impacts to revenue across the existing customer base. However, as Matt pointed to previously, good new business momentum in FY 2021 has carried over to H1 this year, and we've certainly had solid growth in our retail distribution business with some very meaningful wins over the last three months.
Our view would be that post the vaccine rollout, which is in sight, which wasn't in sight this time last year, and as the country opens up, as they say, we would expect to see a bounce in clients spending to drive consumer sales and to pick up on Darren's point before, on a reduced cost base that we now have. As revenue returns, we certainly have the potential to leverage that reduced cost base and improve margins further. Just looking a little more forward, we would expect revenue growth across the business over the next 24 months, driven by the post-lockdown recovery, as I've just touched on, and further improved market positioning in key sectors. We've come out of COVID in a very strong position. We operate with multiple competitors across the landscapes we operate in, the sectors we operate in.
We would expect that our market position will improve in some of those key sectors. The heightened operating leverage, as I just referred to before. The AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million that we have available while still preserving a strong balance sheet to drive earnings accretive and strategically aligned growth initiatives, which we've talked through, will be a very important part of the next 12-24 months. In terms of capital management, the share buyback remains in place, and the dividend policy remains unchanged. Finishing on CapEx, as Darren said, AUD 10 million for FY 2022, excluding the Lasoo phase I investment of AUD 3.5 million. That is on top of an excellent operational footprint.
I would say in conclusion, before moving to Q&A, my thanks to our board, our CEO, Matt Aitken, for his outstanding leadership once again over the last year, our CFO, Darren Dunkley, for his ongoing invaluable contribution to the business, and the entire IVE team of 1,600 for their skill and continued commitment over what has been a most challenging year. Thank you again for making the time to dial in for the call. If there are any questions further to today's call, we will respond within 24 hours, and please feel free to make contact with any additional questions or areas you would like to discuss further, and we look forward to providing a further update to shareholders at our AGM in November. Thank you. On behalf of all of us here this morning, thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Geoff. We're now opening up for Q&A, as Geoff mentioned. Some questions have been sent in ahead of time, but there is also the chat function on the webinar, which is accessible from the bottom right-hand side of the screen. Perhaps, Richard, I'll hand over to you to start with some of the questions that have been submitted ahead of time.
Thanks very much, Clive. We've got a couple of questions that have come in through on the Q&A panel. I'll take the first one. Lots of well-known household names have come on as customers in the last 12 months, such as Woolies, Westpac, IAG. What services are you providing for them?
It's Matt here. I might take that question. Just to give you an example across two of those brands raised, Woolworths. We provide a lot of data and 1-to-1 communication services for them in relation to their Everyday Rewards loyalty program. We provide a significant amount of product in relation to point of sale and retail display throughout their supermarkets nationwide. We provide uniforms for Woolworths, and we also distribute all of their letterbox catalogs nationwide. For Westpac, we provide creative services. We have, in pre-COVID times, a significant number of our staff embedded in Westpac facilities across Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. We service all of their five brands. When you think about Westpac, it's also St.George, BankSA, Bank of Melbourne, and BT, RAMS, and so forth.
We provide a lot of work for them in and around their data-driven communications requirements, both physical and digital. Really the transformation of their customer engagement strategy into a more digital world, digital environment. A lot of consulting and working in and around their Salesforce Marketing Cloud platforms with them. We provide premiums and merchandising. We warehouse all of the product that's required to support their branch networks around the.
Country and their merchant networks. A lot of logistics and a lot of product sourcing. That would be consistent across many of our other customers like IAG and others. Hopefully that gives you a flavor for the types of products and services that we're supplying these companies.
Thanks, Matt. Okay.
Okay. Richard, we've got a question from Hamish Murray. Hamish, please go ahead.
Sorry, guys, I couldn't work out the chat function, so I just raised my hand. Maybe just, and I know we touched on this earlier, but could we just touch on, I guess, the current trading conditions that you're seeing, as we enter into this first half 2022, and maybe how any of your customers are approaching this differently to the last lockdowns we saw? I guess, given the vaccines and there's less uncertainty about how this plays out than there was at the peak, I guess, this time last year.
I think that's probably the answer. There is less uncertainty and less volatility and less fear, in the Australian economy and across the country than there was notwithstanding this Delta outbreak and the current lockdowns than there was a year ago. The vaccine targets are now well on track to being met. I think despite where we sit right now in terms of people feeling and looking at daily case numbers, that there is a clear view that the end is in sight in terms of lockdown, and to that extent, in the low interest rate environment and still with reasonable levels of household liquidity, that the economy will bounce back post the pandemic. I think our customer base is a rock solid customer base. They will be, and have the capacity to spend, to drive consumer sales, and we have every expectation that they do that.
We might even see a little more this year than last year because there were a lot of people, consumers that bought stuff last year that won't be looking necessarily to buy the same thing this year. That may actually result in retailers driving hard to maintain or match their revenue, on revenue or sales numbers from last year. We're seeing, as I said, Hamish, pockets of impact in relation to revenue. Equally, we've secured some good new business wins through the back half of FY 2021, which has certainly put us in good position relative to any short-term revenue impacts as we approach the ending of lockdown and the final rollout of the vaccine.
Thanks. Thanks, Geoff. I've got a couple. Just the other one was just going to be quickly on that new business wins. You guys highlighted that momentum has continued going into this half as well, which is good to hear. How do we think about those AUD 58 million of new incremental wins? I know there are a lot of moving parts in the business, but is there a sense that once we get normalized earnings, this should give you guys a normalized base higher than what we entered COVID in? How do we think about that?
Well, look, if revenue were to come back, yes, would be the answer. You'll remember in August last year, Coles made a decision to cease the production of their letterbox version of their catalog, which was not an insignificant revenue spend. We can't ignore that was the case. Equally, if revenues return to pre-COVID levels in addition to the revenue that Matt outlined previously, and you combine that with the lower cost base or the recalibrated cost base that the business is operating in and the work that we've done internally in terms of bringing businesses together and so on, that we outlined at the full year last year. I think that goes well for both revenue and for EBITDA. That's before you overlay net profit.
That's before you overlay the incremental earnings from strategically investing or investing wisely the AUD 30 million-AUD 40 million that we referred to before. We put ourselves in the position to do that. I have the capacity to do that because of the long-term strategy that we've outlined before and the cash that we generate. Does that give you a little bit more color on that, Hamish?
Yeah, it does. The other one, just on the other side of this coin is inventories came off reduced just slightly. Your net debt's way down under your target. Just understanding, I guess, the paper costs and freight costs. My understanding is that U.S. is up, but Europe paper prices are okay, but just, how you guys are managing that freight that we're hearing about and inflation?
Yeah. Hamish, it's Matt here, it definitely is something that the team working hard on every day. We've got really strong relationships with our mill partners throughout Europe and America. We do source still quite a lot of product out of the Australian market, particularly out of the Tasmanian mills. The product, I guess, and the paper coming out of that mill is not as heavily subjected to the shipping delays or the increased shipping costs that we're seeing come from overseas currently. Definitely sort of navigating our way through it reasonably well at the moment.
Yeah. Thank you. Just one more for me. I guess the AUD 30 million to AUD 40 million capital you have to deploy, I guess, no doubt you're surveying the market for acquisitions. Are multiples looking more compressed given the environment out there, and does it look like a good hunting environment? Maybe just talk us through the strategic rationale and behind the fiber-based packaging and 3PL and what that could mean.
Geoff here, Hamish. I think, as I said, we're coming out of this period of disruption in a strong position. We don't have one headline competitor and we have multiple competitors, but we do have an active pipeline of opportunities. There are a number of competitors that have come out of this in not a strong position, in part because they don't have the diversified offering that we take to market and some of the things we pointed to before. We have a track record on acquisitions of buying well. Some we paid at the full end of the multiple range around the 4x, but then there's been many that we've settled on that are post synergies around the 1x .
I think one of the other questions that's popped up on the screen today is managing our acquisition program. We've undertaken over a long period of time a disciplined acquisition program. It's been an important part of broadening our service offering over the years. It's been an important part of our growth. Historically, we've used a combination of internal and external resources. On some acquisition, completely internal, put aside the law firm. Completely internal. Other times for larger acquisitions, we have partnered with an external advisory firm on an as-needs basis. Ultimately, there's dual work streams for us. There's the due diligence on the business that we're actually acquiring. Then there's the work stream, which we call the synergies work stream, how that business and that business's revenue would look inside our IVE business or businesses.
Once integrated, they sort of go hand in hand and ultimately at the tail end of the question that's been posted on this call is how do we know that we don't overpay? I think it's a function of the two. There's the validation that the material that's been provided through due diligence stacks up and we're comfortable with it and it's real. Then we overlay that with ultimately a view on revenue retention, and our customers would respond to an acquisition by IVE and validate the synergies number and those two work streams ultimately inform the purchase price. In saying that, a lot of the acquisitions we've done have had an upfront component, and then there's a third component which also brings another level of protection to IVE, that we're not overpaying.
I think that adequately answers that question that was posted earlier, or maybe I've answered a couple of questions there at the same time.
You asked.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Geoff. Just the fiber-based packaging, is that something that would be organic? This is the last one from me. Would that be organic with the facilities you have, or how do we think about that?
It's Matt here again, Hamish. We've got an open mind to that one. Both, we do provide some capability in that space already through one of our plants in Melbourne, and we would look to organically grow that further. If the right acquisition came along, we would definitely be interested in considering that route as well.
Thanks, Dan. That's it for me.
Thanks, Hamish.
Thank you.
We have one more on the Q&A chat. There are some high-profile competitors experiencing some serious challenges at the moment. Would you care to comment on how you view this in terms of the wider industry?
Yeah. Look, I know we've talked about our structure of our sector previously. I mean, we have a vastly improved structure, from an industry sector perspective than we had just 10 years ago. We don't have one headline competitor. We have multiple competitors, and there's less competitors, far less competitors than what there were 10 years ago through sector rationalization and consolidation, of which IVE Group has clearly been the leader in that area. I wouldn't consider we have any high-profile competitors, really. I'm not quite sure what the term high profile means. We have, as I said, a proliferation of competitors and from business unit or areas of our business to business unit, we are focusing quite deliberately on specific competitors, and it may be that a competitor we compete with may bridge a couple of areas of our business.
Ultimately, I wouldn't consider that any of our competitors would be high profile. Albeit our top 50 customers are all high profile and rock solid. I think a proliferation of competitors, but as Matt said before, we're in a strong position from which to compete with those competitors, certainly based on where we're sitting at the moment in terms of our financial position, the underlying fundamentals of our business and the broad and diversified value proposition we take to market.
Okay. Richard, are there any more questions or shall we wrap up the presentation for today?
There are a few other questions that we can certainly come back to, specifically to the people that have asked the question.
There's one here. To what extent is the increase in inbound shipping costs and difficulties at ports due to COVID an opportunity insofar as curtailing offshore printing and bringing it back to Australia?
Yeah, it's a good question. It's certainly something that we are seeing in the market over the last three to six months, or the last three months in particular. Large Australian organizations or multinational organizations in particular that have been working with some of the global print managers. Those print management companies don't own any operations here in Australia, are reliant largely on offshore supply chains to service these large multinational clients here in Australia. We've seen them experience significant supply challenges, both in terms of timeliness of supply in their go-to-market strategy and increasing costs in their ability to execute campaigns in market. That definitely is seeing an uplift in engagement from those companies back into exploring local manufacturing options. We think IVE has a really good fit for them there because we can cater both with offshore requirements if they require it.
We clearly have substantial onshore requirements that can help those large multinational FMCG companies expedite their campaigns into market.
Okay. Next one is about cybersecurity. Can you outline your cyber strategy and if you've had any risks emerge on this front?
I think the company, and certainly it's outlined in the risk section of our OFR, has both through external advice and internal work that's been undertaken, very conscious of the increase. If I can broaden the answer, the increased exposure to both cybersecurity and also the management of data for our customers, because we are, given our DDC operation, very large users of personalized data. Having the right accreditation with tier 1 customers is incredibly important. Certainly in the area of cybersecurity, generally, I think we've significantly increased our spend and undertaken a range of initiatives to put ourself in a position that, from our perspective, adequately protects the company from a cyberattack.
Correct.
Okay. Back on acquisitions. When making an acquisition, what thought do you give to integrating culture when making acquisitions?
Culture from our perspective in an acquisition is. It's right up there in terms of the key considerations for us. It's all very well to pay a fair price and get some revenue or a new capability or change the competitive landscape. Culture for me is really key. I want people to come into our business, be part of the IVE culture, add value to what we do, and for them to have a long and flourishing career in our business. I think as we look back over the 40-odd acquisitions we've done over many, many years, we've had some fantastic people join our business, who've gone on to have a fantastic career in our business and actually holds very senior positions in parts of our business today. The culture is incredibly key to any acquisition that we decide to make.
All right. Well, that's probably it for the moment. Thank you, Clive. Okay, good. Thank you everyone. That concludes the presentation. Thank you, everyone.
No, thanks again, everybody.
Thank you.
Okay. All the best.