Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, Lauren . Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Darren and I are pleased to present IVE Group 's FY 2025 Result, a strong result that meets all key guidance metrics provided throughout the last 12 months, including an earnings upgrade in June. Turning to page three, the key highlights, just touching on financial performance. All key profit metrics were up significantly on pcp, with strong margin expansion. We had strong operating cash flow and stable working capital. The balance sheet's been further strengthened, with gearing sitting well below our internal target of 1.5 x pre-AASB 16, and Darren will have more to say on this in the upcoming slides. Operationally, we have realized the full synergies of Ovato, and so that run rate has been fully realized as we've gone through the FY 2025 year, as the same has happened with JacPak.
During the year, we commissioned extensive consumer research to understand the role catalogues play in today's omnichannel marketing landscape. Whilst this is not the forum to present all of the findings, what I will say is that after surveying thousands of consumers and analyzing over 65 million scanned product records from retailers, 83% of catalogue readers take action after browsing, and retailers on average earn $14.50 per dollar invested in catalogues. Our research proves that the catalogues truly belong at the heart of modern marketing. This isn't about being nostalgic for print; it's about acknowledging they drive results, sales, and market share. That research has been extremely well received by the retailers who work with us today.
In relation to sustainability, we're closing out phase one of our ESG strategy, which we've been executing on for the last three years, and I'll have more to say on that later in this presentation as well. Turning to the growth initiatives, the JacPak acquisition continues to proceed well, with meaningful new business secured for commencement during FY 2026, and the expansion to New South Wales is running to plan and will take its course in conjunction with the new super site. The relocation into our new 3PL site in Dandenong, Melbourne, is running ahead of schedule, and the Sydney super site built at Kemps Creek is running to plan and will be ready for early calendar 2026. Both those last two initiatives, I'll talk further about later in the presentation.
Finally, Lasoo continues to perform to expectations, with all metrics on track and consistent with our business case and prior communication to the market. As we turn to page four, just touching on some of the metrics in the dashboard against pcp, as foreshadowed at the H1 results and investor strategy session in June, revenue is $955 million, slightly down on pcp, EBITDA of $136.7 million, with 7% up on pcp, and, pleasingly, a strong material gross profit margin result of 49.3% against 46.7% pcp. NPAT of $52 million was 21% up on pcp, and the IFRS NPAT of $46.7 million was 69% up on pcp.
EPS of $0.337 was 20% up on pcp, strong operating cash flow, the net debt at $114.4 million, which Darren will touch on further, and a fully franked final dividend of $0.085 per share, taking the full year dividend to $0.18 per share, being consistent with prior advice to the market. We can turn to page five of the investor presentation, just touching briefly on our customer diversity and longevity. No one customer dominates the customer list, with the top 20 customers making up 40% of our revenue. Strong long-standing relationships with the average tenure of the top 20 customers exceeding 10 years. This has been a consistent metric for this group for many, many years, and 79% of all of our customers buying two or more products or services, which helps drive customer value and stickiness.
This pie chart on the bottom left also illustrates there's still plenty of opportunity to sell more products and services to our existing customers as well. I'll now hand over to Darren, and he'll step you through the financial section of the presentation.
Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'll now take you through the financial section of the presentation, starting with the underlying profit and loss, pages seven and eight. Strong profit growth underpinned by expansion and the delivery of promise. Revenue down 1.6% on pcp to $954.8 million. Base revenue was down circa 3% relative to pcp, which was impacted by the softer economy and uncertainty surrounding the federal election, as communicated at our June investor strategy session. Brand activations, 3PL, and packaging enjoyed new client business wins, including household brands in FMCG and the pharmaceutical sectors.
Material gross profit margin, or MGM, which is revenue less material cost of goods sold, MGM improved to 49.3%, up from 46.7% in pcp. The material gross margin improvement reflects input cost relief, as well as business mix changes. Underlying earnings, EBITDA up 7% to $136.7 million. EBITDA margin up strongly to 14.3%. That's up from 13.2% in pcp. EBIT up 15.3% to $92.4 million. NPAT margin up strongly to 5.5% from 4.4% in pcp. The strong margin expansion reflects improved MGM , a full period of Ovato integration benefits, JacPak synergies, as well as ongoing operational synergies. Non-operating items during the period, non-operating items of 9.1% pre-tax include $6.2 million Lasoo operating loss, consistent with guidance, or circa $4.3 million after-tax loss, and $3 million of restructure costs mainly relating to relocation costs and redundancy costs.
Turning to page nine, the balance sheet, gearing well below target, resulting in significant debt capacity, cash at bank $50.1 million. Net debt decreased to $114.4 million from $131 million in pcp, reflecting stable working capital and greatly reduced restructuring costs, partially offset by CapEx associated with the packaging capacity build-out. Gearing is well below the group's internal benchmark of 1.5x pre-AASB 16 EBITDA or less than 1.2x post-AASB 16 EBITDA. Undrawn debt capacity of $72 million at 30 June. Senior debt facility was refinanced for a further four-year term in May 2025. Capital expenditure on page 10, packaging capacity build-out underway. Capital expenditure was $25 million net of disposal proceeds, including $18.2 million related to the packaging capacity build-out, largely for the purchase of replacement sheet-fed presses capable of printing on board for packaging as well as finishing equipment.
The finishing equipment is die cutters and folders and the like. Due to timing, aligning equipment delivery with the Sydney super site, circa $7 million of CapEx relating to sheet-fed packaging equipment has moved from FY 2025 into FY 2026. Cash flow and dividends, operating cash conversion remains strong with operating cash conversion of EBITDA at 101.9%. The high cash conversion reflects stable working capital levels, mainly due to continued lower inventory holdings. Working capital is expected to remain relatively stable hereafter, broadly in line with revenue and seasonality. Fully franked dividend of $0.085, taking the FY 2025 full-year dividend to $0.18 per share, stable on pcp and consistent with guidance. I will now hand you back over to Matt to take you through the balance of the presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, Darren. Just turning to pages 13 and 14 to provide an update on the expansion of our 3PL business. An area of the business has continued to grow strongly in recent years. With the upcoming expiry of our 3PL warehouse leases at Braeside, Victoria, we decided to take a lease on a brand new building in Dandenong South and relocate into that site accordingly. That site is 33,000 square meters. It's the largest 3PL site we now have in the country. It provides an additional 60% of storage space for our business and our clients in Victoria and increases our national footprint capacity in this part of our business by over 30%. Handover of the site actually occurred early. It occurred in late July, and we're finishing the relocation into the site currently, and that will complete by October. Ultimately, six weeks ahead of schedule on that entire project.
As you turn to page 15 of the super site, again replicating what we did down in Braeside and Victoria several years ago, we have committed to a 42,000 sq m super site in Kemps Creek in Western Sydney. It's consolidating multiple sites for us, multiple existing sites for us from our Western Sydney locations, and it's helping mitigate the full impact of rising industrial rents in Western Sydney and will deliver meaningful operating efficiencies and capability expansion, all of which is consistent with our strategy. It also facilitates the group's strategy of expanding into horizontal adjacencies, such as packaging, as we've spoken about, to drive further revenue growth and operational efficiencies.
Four main business units are relocating to the site, one from Silverwater, one from Granville, one from Homebush, and one from Warwick Farm, along with the build-out and establishment of a brand new Greenfields packaging facility to support the growth of that strategy. The site is close to key transport hubs. It's close to our other facilities in Eastern Creek and Huntingwood, and thereby brings together the majority of our Western Sydney staff within about a 10-minute drive of each other. The groundworks commenced in December 2024, and we are on track for completion of this building per plan, which will be the end of December 2025 or early January 2026, and would expect to have relocated our businesses into the site by March 2026, everything running to plan with that project as well.
Just touching on sustainability on page 16, in FY 2025, we continued our strong progress against the 47 initiatives that we captured within our 2025 sustainability strategy. This included strengthening our reporting frameworks, scaling initiatives that reduce waste, driving social value, and improving environmental performance. We also advanced social procurement, deepened the partnerships that we have in play in this space, improved leadership diversity, and launched core database lines across energy emissions and waste. These actions build on the key initiatives that we had already undertaken in 2023 and 2024, bringing our strategy to life and laying the foundations for continued impact as we move forward to our calendar 2025 goals. It also sets us up well for the years ahead as we look to establish our 2026- 2030 strategy by later this year.
You'll see on page 17, we provide a little bit of insights into the FY 2025 progress against some of those initiatives that I've just mentioned. If we turn to page 19 and then move on to outlook and guidance, the group's FY 2026 underlying impact guidance range is $50 million- $54 million. This includes a $2.5 million adverse after-tax non-cash AASB 16 timing difference due to the assumption of significant new long-term property leases at the two sites I've already spoken about, Dandenong and Kemps Creek, and this will reverse over the life of the leases. It's nil pre-AASB 16 impact in FY 2026. Our result or our guidance, sorry, also excludes the expected Lasoo operating loss of circa $4 million post-tax, which is an improvement over FY 2025 and sets us up to see significant further improvement FY 2027, as previously foreshadowed to the market.
It also excludes costs of around $10 million post-tax, primarily associated with the Dandenong and Kemps Creek relocations, including duplication of rent until expiry of the old leases during calendar 2026. Before I go on to the slide, I might just pause and ask Darren just to touch on the AASB impact to the leases so that everyone's clear on what we're communicating here and how that's playing itself out.
Yeah, thanks, Matt. As Matt stated, guidance allows for an adverse non-cash AASB 16 timing difference of circa $2.5 million impact loss due to the assumption of significant new long-term property leases of Dandenong and Kemps Creek. This is due to rent expense being replaced with depreciation and interest expense in the P&L, with larger negative impacts in the early years, which reverse in later years due to taking into account annual lease increases and the present value of interest payments over the life of a lease. That is, interest expense reduces as the lease unwinds. AASB 16 impact is nil and is a non-cash over the full life of the lease.
Thanks, Darren. Capital expenditures, as Darren's mentioned, will be circa $42 million in FY 2026, reflecting the remaining packaging capacity build-out. This also includes $7 million that moved from FY 2025 into FY 2026, as well as $18 million relating to the Dandenong and Kemps Creek fit-outs. The group's annual dividend is expected to remain steady at $0.18 per share. Diversification remains a core element of our growth strategy in FY 2026. Our strong balance sheet supports further acquisition capacity, and the group is actively looking for strategic, attractive, and accretive acquisitions, particularly in 3PL, merchandise, and apparel, as well as in creative and content. In closing, I'd like to thank our 2,000 staff for all of their contributions to delivering a very strong FY 2025 result that achieved all key guidance measures provided to the market during the year. Thank you for joining our call this morning. We are now happy to take questions.
Thank you, Matt and Darren. A reminder that if you'd like to ask a question, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and type your question into the panel. We'll first take some questions from analysts who are covering IVE . Just a reminder for the analysts, please click the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Our first question comes from Chris Savage from Bell Potter. Please unmute your microphone and go ahead, Chris.
Thanks. Hey Matt, hey Darren.
Go back, Chris.
Hi, Chris.
Forgive me if I'm diving into this non-timing difference thing. If it's $2.5 million after tax, I'm guessing it's $3.5 million before tax.
Yes, I mean, you've got to.
It's in D&A and interest.
Yeah, it's mainly the main impact is interest.
Okay, so it's $3.5 million roughly this year. Can you give us an idea how it decreases in the subsequent years? I'm guessing it doesn't drop.
I haven't got the full amortization schedule in front of me, Chris, but basically what happens is we value the lease liability over the term on our balance sheet. It's a 15-year lease. We present value that, and then that unwinds over the life of the lease. In the earlier years, there is an impact loss related to the lease, and in the later years, that reverses and interest expense reduces, and there are no impact losses in the later years. Over the four-year term of the lease, there's no impact of AASB 16.
Sure.
Okay, zero.
There will be another impact next year. It'll just be a bit less in subsequent years.
Correct, that's right. Yeah, we take it up on the balance sheet, and it unwinds over time.
Yeah, cool.
Yep.
Just a follow-up question, gross margin. I know you don't, I mean, great result obviously in 2025 up at 49.4%. I know you don't like us analysts to get too excited about that gross margin, though, Darren, should we, can we maintain that level going forward or you'd rather it be a bit lower in our models?
At this stage, I don't think there's any reason that the gross margin can continue to remain stable. We haven't seen anything in our purchasing that suggests that that would decrease over time. Partly, our gross margin also reflects our work mix, and as our work mix changes as well, that has impacts on our gross margin. If anything, it definitely will remain stable, moving forward as far as we can see.
Okay, good one. Thank you.
Thanks, Chris. Next up, we'll have a question from Abe Akra from Shaw and Partners. Abe, if you'd like to go ahead.
Thanks, Lauren. Hi, Matt. Hi, Darren. Just a few quick questions from me. Firstly, I suppose you outlined revenue growth, I guess, declined a few percentage points due to a softer economy. How are you guys feeling about FY 2026, either day? Do you, I guess, suppose that revenue growth will resume this year with no more elections, I guess, having gone off impact?
Yeah, I mean, we're always wanting to grow the baseline organic revenue, right? That's the aim. As we noted at our strategy day, as we look out over years to come, we expect, you know, print to sort of hold steady, if not have a small decline. The economy at the moment, we've found, we've felt it's been pretty soft since the election from an economic perspective and somewhat subdued, and that would be our thinking right now. Ultimately, we've still got a very, very strong pipeline of new business that we're converting. I'm really pleased with how the team has started the year on that front and the wins that we've got on the board. It's absolutely our expectation that we want to keep pushing that revenue number up. Yeah.
Awesome. I've also noticed, I guess, the buyback program, less than $2 million has been bought back. Just, I guess, how are you thinking about that moving forward out of the blackout period?
Yeah, so, I mean, our buyback's still in place, but obviously, yes, we have been in blackout. I think we mentioned that at our investor strategy day as well. The buyback is still in place, and we still will be looking at doing share buyback throughout the period. I guess it just comes down to whether the board feels the stock is too cheap, or represents, you know, good value. That'll be an assessment the board sort of continues to make from meeting to meeting.
Yeah, makes sense. Lastly from me, how are your conversations with some of the corporates that are looking to return to print, like Coles and Bunnings? Do you have any updates regarding those two customers?
Oh, look, both those have been good and positive, Abe. Coles, you know, remaining committed to the decisions that they made prior to Christmas or on Christmas last year, so during FY 2025, by getting back into printing catalogues and putting them in the letterbox, and they're seeing great results from that. We're not seeing any change from Coles' commitment to that channel or plan. As you mentioned, Bunnings have also made the decision to come back into that channel, and we have a number of campaigns to execute for Bunnings as we go through FY 2026. I think some of those decisions from key retailers further support the work that we did in and around the catalogue research project to prove up the value of that channel amongst other channels that customers use to market their business.
Yeah, great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Abe. Now, Matt, I'll hand back to you to answer some of the written questions. We've had one come through.
Sure. We've got a question here around, which is, given the interest rate is reducing, does this flow through to the recent refinancing and how much are we expected to save from interest? Luckily, the CFO's sitting next to me, and I'll refer to Darren.
Yes, if in a reducing interest rate environment, we would expect to see interest rate savings moving forward. I can't tell you the quantum of what that interest expense savings should be, but we should see benefits of that in our FY 2026 interest expense P&L impact.
How is Lasoo travelling?
Yeah, so we have a question here around how is Lasoo travelling in this environment? Have your expectations changed in any way for the business in terms of positioning or profitability? Thank you for the question. The Lasoo business has been travelling very well. It's to plan and/or ahead of plan, depending upon which metrics we look at for that business. In terms of where we expected it to be, based on the guidance we've provided to the market and an outlook over the next couple of years, we have definitely benefited from Catch closing down and also from Ideal closing in terms of the number of new retailers that have onboarded with us over the last six months. It's been very busy and very good. In July, we have seen gross transaction value through the platform.
The number through the platform has only been superseded on Black Friday sales last year. That revenue or that GTV number is growing month on month as we expect it to do, but certainly picked up quite significantly in July. August is running to a very consistent similar number right now, and we would expect to have a very strong Black Friday, Cyber Monday period as we head into Christmas too. All in all, we are comfortable with Lasoo's running to the plan that we have discussed with the market. As I said earlier, when we put through the FY 2027 forecast for that part of the business in 12 months' time, you would see, or we expect you to see, a significant step down in the loss that part of the business is making as we head towards a break-even point in FY 2028.
Obviously, quite significant profit as we head out to FY 2030. Is there any update on the apparel business? Has McDonald's made a decision? This is a question we've got. This question came up at our H1 results release. We had just, or the strategy session, one a little bit earlier in the year. We had just found out at that time that we had not been successful in securing the McDonald's contract. They had remained with their incumbent. I think it was a good testament to the quality of the pitch from the business that McDonald's spent almost $1 million with us live trialing our uniforms in 16 restaurants across Australia and New Zealand. They are very loyal to their partners, and we are a benefactor of that today because McDonald's is a very good customer of ours today as well.
In this instance, they chose to stay with the incumbent, having gone to market and started with 15 potential providers at the start of their go-to-market exercise. With regard to your inorganic growth ambitions, what is the landscape like in terms of attractive acquisition opportunities? Yeah, there's a number of opportunities around in the market at the moment, across a wide range of sectors that align with the strategy that we've put together. I'm confident as we go through FY 2026, this will become a more active component of our strategy, but there's definitely a number of opportunities out there right now if I'd want to engage.
If there's no further questions, it doesn't look like there are any others that need to be answered. Matt, did you have any closing remarks?
No, just again to thank everyone for their support through FY 2025. If anyone has any questions post today's presentation, please contact Tony Jackson, who's our Head of Investor Relations. We're more than happy to chat further or catch up.
Thank you, Matt. That brings us to the end of the Q&A session. Thank you, everyone, for making the time to listen to the call today. Like Matt mentioned, please reach out to the team if you have any further questions, and they will be happy to help. Copies of this webinar will be available on the IVE Group and Sharecafe websites. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.