Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this IVE Group first half 2023 financial year results webinar. My name is Tim McGowen, and I'm your host for today. On the call this morning, we have Executive Chairman, Geoff Selig, CEO, Matt Aitken, and CFO, Darren Dunkley. The format is a 20-30 minute presentation, followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen and type your question in the Q&A panel. Without further ado, I'd like to hand over to Executive Chairman, Geoff Selig, to start the presentation. Geoff, are you there? Over to you.
Thanks, Tim, good morning, on behalf of the team here to everybody, and thank you for taking the time to dial in this morning. We will be reversing and walking through the FY23 H1 results presentation that was uploaded to the ASX this morning. Before we dive into that presentation, just a couple of opening remarks. It's just over six years since IVE Group listed, suffice to say it's been a period of significant growth for the business. Since December 2015, notwithstanding the impacts of COVID-19, which we managed very well as a business. We've consistently and effectively executed on our strategic roadmap that from our perspective has been well articulated and communicated. We've delivered on our financial forecasts with our growth underpinning a solid return to shareholders.
Throughout, we've continued to maintain a strong balance sheet, which continues to put us in a position to pursue future growth initiatives. It's been a very exciting and full six years, of which seems to have gone by very quickly. This morning, we're very pleased to present our results for the first half of FY23, and certainly a half of significance giving acquisition of major competitor, Ovato, and the results for the half being well up over PCP. If we can just look at the dashboard snapshot of the financial performance for the first half on page 3. I won't go through all of them in detail because we'll talk to them through the course of the presentation.
Suffice to say, across revenue, EBITDA, NPAT, EPS, and the dividend, all up significantly over PCP, which is very pleasing and encouraging. We'll spend the rest of the presentation, diving a little deeper into those metrics, and at the end, I'm happy to answer any questions people may have. At this point, I will hand over to our CEO, Matt Aitken, to take us through the financials and the P&L, commencing with page five.
Thank you, Geoff, good morning, everyone. Revenue, as you can see here, revenue has increased 31.4% to almost AUD 503 million, up from AUD 382 million PCP. The Ovato business that we acquired in the middle of September last year has contributed AUD 61 million of revenue through that three-and-a-half month period. The Active Display Group and AFI Branding acquisitions that we completed in November 2021 have contributed a further AUD 25 million of additional incremental revenue over PCP. Good organic revenue growth for the half, and that was around 9% and reflects a further incremental uplift in activity post-COVID-19, with strong new business momentum, fantastic high levels of client retention, and ongoing cross-selling across the group's very broad product and service offering. Revenue growth was broad-based.
Particularly strong growth was achieved through our brand activations business, which you may formerly have known as Retail Display, and our logistics and third-party logistics component fulfillment business as well. Revenue associated with travel and tourism and event-related merchandise sales improved further during the period. Still remains below those levels that we saw pre-COVID. Turning to page 6, talking about margin or looking at margin. Material profit margin was 44.2%. This is down from 47.5% PCP. That was primarily due to the business mix through the half, including the onboarding of the Ovato revenue at a lower margin and a higher proportion of outsourced revenue, particularly in our brand activations business.
Although the Ovato revenue generates a lower margin than the broader group, incremental Ovato revenue is expected to generate an uplift in EBITDA margin once operating synergies are captured post completion of integration. Increased input costs, including paper, freight, and consumables, also contributed to the pressure on margin. However, these increases are passed on to clients over time. Although margin decreased relative to PCP on an underlying basis and excluding Ovato, EBITDA and NPAT margin were broadly in line with PCP. Looking at EBITDA, this has increased 17.7% to AUD 65 million from AUD 55.2 million PCP. Excluding a AUD 4.4 million contribution from Ovato, underlying EBITDA growth was 9.8%, driven by the uplift in revenue.
Net finance costs were AUD 5.7 million compared to AUD 3.9 million PCP, or AUD 3.3 million compared to AUD 2.2 million PCP on a pre-IFRS 16 basis. Increased net interest expense reflects the higher net debt driven by our additional working capital through the period and the higher interest rates that we've experienced. NPAT increased 16.5% to AUD 24.3 million from AUD 20.9 million PCP. Earnings per share for the half was AUD 0.165, representing a 12.8% uplift from AUD 0.146 PCP. There were non-operating items of AUD 13 million pre-tax excluded from our underlying earnings, and these are noted in Appendix A of our presentation today if you wanna refer to them later.
I'll now ask Darren, our CFO, to step through the n ext few slides of the presentation.
Thank you, Matt, good morning, everybody. If you now just turn to page 7, starting with the balance sheet. Increase in net debt primarily reflects working capital seasonality, coupled with the impacts of the Ovato acquisition. Net debt increased to AUD 97.5 million at 31st of December, up from AUD 76.8 million at 30 June. This was mainly driven by an increase in working capital. Cash at bank of AUD 56.2 million, with undrawn facilities of AUD 25 million. During the half, the group undertook a share placement and retail share purchase plan, issuing a combined total of 8.587 million shares at an issue price of AUD 2.25 each. Which raised AUD 18.6 million net of related transaction costs.
The capital raising was undertaken to preserve the balance sheet capacity for IVE to pursue previously announced growth initiatives, including further organic growth initiatives. For example, Lasoo eCommerce Marketplace. Support further opportunistic bolt-on and strategic acquisitions in the adjacent packaging sector. Strengthen and deepen IVE's institutional shareholder base, increasing liquidity in the market for IGL shares. Proceeds from the share issue and a AUD 10 million drawdown of the group's loan facilities were more than offset by a AUD 15.6 million Ovato purchase price, including related transaction costs, associated restructuring costs, a targeted increase in inventory and Lasoo launch costs. Capital expenditure. Our operational asset base remains in excellent condition. Total capital expenditure for group-wide investment and maintenance CapEx was AUD 4 million in H1.
This included outlays associated with the completion of Victorian Braeside site consolidation, fit-out of the new Erskine Park New South Wales logistics site, and the digital print fleet upgrade and expansion. There are currently no major capital expenditure programs anticipated across the remainder of the financial year, with full year FY23 capital expenditure expected to be around AUD 15 million, which excludes Ovato. If you now move to page 8, cash flow and interim dividend. Operating cash conversion of 57% to EBITDA on an underlying basis was lower than 78% in PCP. This was primarily due to the increase in working capital, again reflecting higher activity levels and a targeted increase in inventory paper holdings to ensure continuity of supply across the expanded post-Ovato customer base, and to capture further growth opportunities.
Aside from the targeted inventory increase, continued disciplined management of working capital, including reduced debtor days and increased debtor collections over the period. Reflecting the strong uplift in earnings per share, the board declared a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.095 per share, up 11.8% from the AUD 0.085 per share of PCP. The Group's dividend policy remains unchanged, targeting a full year payout ratio of 65%-75% of underlying NPAT. We will now move through to the business update section of the presentation. Turning to page 10. Ovato acquisition. Reconfirming the integration, timing, and cost, revenue and earnings remain on track as previously forecast. IVE completed the Ovato transaction on the 13th of September 2022. The integration timetable and expected financial metrics are unchanged from those previously announced.
The integration of an estimated AUD 160 million of Ovato revenue into IVE's manufacturing footprint remains on track for completion by June 2024, is expected to increase the group's underlying annual EBITDA by AUD 20 million and NPAT by AUD 15 million. The integration and associated capital expenditure costs are expected to be around AUD 22 million excluding redundancies. Included on page 10 is a summary acquisition table. A more detailed breakdown is included in Note 13 - Acquisitions in the financial statements. In summary, this, for consideration of AUD 13 million, fair value of net assets acquired are AUD 10.3 million, resulting in goodwill on acquisition of AUD 2.7 million. I will now hand you back to Matt to take you through the balance of the business update section.
Thanks, Darren. Just turning to page 11, and continuing on the Ovato integration piece and update. During the half, all major Ovato customers were successfully transitioned across to IVE, with no significant client loss during that period. As we've already discussed, we've had to increase inventories throughout that period to ensure continuity of supply as well. Staff have transitioned seamlessly, with many of their staff now stepping into broader leadership roles as we look to complete the integration over the coming 12 months. We've been really pleased with the people that have joined our business from Ovato. They've got some fantastic people. The expanded business is performing well, meeting all customer expectations. All core business functions within the broader business have been integrated under one leadership structure, including sales, finance, estimating, and inventory management.
Ovato's estimated first half contributions to the group were AUD 60.7 million of revenue, as I refer to earlier, AUD 4.4 million of EBITDA and AUD 1.6 million of NPAT for the three and a half months that they were part of our business during H1. Around AUD 11 million of revenue was transitioned into existing IV sites during that half, paving the way to close down and relocate key production assets from Ovato sites into IV sites. Notwithstanding equipment and revenue movements, the sites are working closely to ensure optimal efficiency is maintained daily across all production assets, and the business will progressively realign its operational cost base with revenue and asset transfers to IV sites as we continue to work through the integration.
We know at the bottom of the page here a range of key integration milestones, and I'd look to assure you that we are right on track for where we, where we indicate we are here. Getting into March 2023, we will have exited the Brisbane and Clayton sites accordingly within the time frame that we stated with all key asset transfers done. We continue to move at pace through the balance of the key integration milestones and are very confident that we will deliver per the plan we've outlined here and communicated to investors in the past with full integration complete in 2024 and full acquisition metrics delivered from FY 2025 onwards. Turning the page to page 12, just talking about Lasoo. In October, we launched or relaunched Lasoo, Australia's leading e-commerce marketplace dedicated to retailer specials.
Independent feedback on the user experience and the Net Promoter Scores is encouraging and reflected in the unique user visits, significantly above ex-levels we've experienced before on the old platform. The pipeline for new retailer integration remains strong, with a number of significant retailers having deferred integration from the key Christmas trading period to the first half of calendar 2023. You can see that in the graphic on this page 12, the bar charts. In addition to the platform in January alone have been Carlton & United Breweries and Lincraft. Lasoo contributed an FY23 H1 loss of AUD 2.4 million pre-tax, reflecting costs associated with the consumer go-to-market campaigns, the marketing, and the build-out of the Lasoo team.
Due to a likely increase in FY23 H2 marketing spend following promising early platform activity, Lasoo is now expected to contribute a FY23 after-tax loss of AUD 3.9 million. Over the remainder of FY23, the management team will focus will remain on bedding down the platform, including completing re-scheduled retail integrations, successfully rolling out FY23 H2 conversion optimization roadmap, and continuing to convert a strong new business pipeline of retailers who want to join the platform. You can see from the tiles on page 13 the categories of the products that are sold on Lasoo and which of those are our 10 most popular categories as well. It gives you a feel for the broadness of the product available.
As we turn the page to page 14, you get a very good feel for the type of brands that are available on Lasoo and that customers are going to shop for deals and specials every day of the week. If we turn to page 15, touch on electricity, energy, and gas in our business. IVE is a significant user of energy across its operations, with gas only used in one part of our business being the web offset printing operations of the group. The group continues to have an acute focus on energy, both from a market volatility and cost perspective, and more recently with an ESG lens, as we develop our targets in line with internal and external stakeholder expectations for the business to transition to 100% renewable energy in the future.
We're pleased to announce today that IV has recently executed a heads of agreement with Iberdrola, one of the largest renewable energy companies globally. We expect to finalize that contract with Iberdrola in the coming 4-5 weeks. The 7-year partnership with Iberdrola will commence on January 1, 2024. From this date, IV's electricity will be generated from a renewable source, primarily wind. The review and negotiation of the group's new power purchasing agreement or PPA comes at a time of well-publicized and unprecedented increases in the cost of both electricity and gas. In our 2022 calendar year pre-tax energy cost, excluding any energy associated with Ovato revenues, was approximately AUD 9.4 million.
Given the 31 December 2022 expiry of our existing energy supply agreements in the volatile spot markets, our FY23 guidance released at the conjunction of our FY22 full year results allowed for an AUD 1.25 million increase in the cost of electricity in H2 FY23, giving rise to an FY23 budgeted energy cost of around AUD 10 million. In light of continued increases in the cost of electricity and especially gas, the original FY23 H2 allowance was insufficient. Accordingly, IVE Group's upgraded FY23 guidance, which Geoff will step you through in a moment, now includes an additional AUD 3.3 million allowance for increased FY23 H2 energy costs. We've given you a split there between gas and electricity, giving rise to an unexpected FY23 total energy cost of AUD 13.4 million.
From 1 January 2024, the group's new long-term partnership with Iberdrola will provide stable and consistent electricity consumption pricing for IV. The total price of electricity under the contract will partly be dependent upon the price for LGCs or large-scale generation credits if and when they are sold. Importantly, pricing under the Iberdrola contract, assuming available LGCs are sold at today's market traded price, would see the group's rate for electricity return to around calendar 2022 levels. While there can be no assurances around the timing of eventual gas price relief, there's a prevailing expectation that the gas market will improve in the near term. If so, depending upon timing, this may deliver further upside relative to IVE's upgraded FY23 guidance that Geoff will talk about in a moment.
With that, I'd like to say thank you to all of our staff and customers and partners for their contribution towards what has been a very strong H1 result. I'll hand back to Geoff to walk through the outlook and guidance ahead of us taking any questions.
Thanks, Matt. Just further to the slide we just went through on page 15 on energy, we just felt it was really important to provide as much visibility and clarity around electricity and gas, given the focus on it by investors and within the business, which is why we essentially spent so much time on it in the investor presentation, given the importance and its impact on future years, certainly from 2024 on when the new agreement kicks in. To finish off with the outlook and guidance on page 17, suffice to say, a strong interim result, continued momentum across the business and the emerging synergies from the Ovato acquisition put us in a strong position to deliver a healthy full year result.
Albeit, as you can see from the waterfall chart on the right, and also the comments on power, albeit tempered by a temporary but significant increase in energy costs. We felt it was important in providing this outlook and upgraded guidance to firstly show the uplift in base earnings over our previous guidance that we provided at the AGM in November, excluding any contribution from Ovato revenues. We wanted to clearly demonstrate or illustrate the contribution to NPAT and EBITDA of the Ovato revenues, which is what we've done. We wanted to clearly illustrate the impact in H2 of the energy costs that Matt has just outlined earlier. The combination of those three things are well illustrated on the right-hand side of that page.
Also we provided the starting point for FY22 full year in the context of the revised guidance for FY23. The net result of that is a revised full year underlying NPAT guidance of AUD 41 million. CapEx, as Matt said, expected to be AUD 15 million excluding Ovato and restructure and acquisition costs predominantly related to Ovato of around AUD 9 million-AUD 10 million. Darren touched on the interim dividend of nine and a half cents being 11.8% up on PCP and once again, like we said previously, wanted to restate our dividend policy, which is the payout ratio of 65%-75% of underlying NPAT.
That brings us to the end of the formal part of the presentation other than to thank Matt and Darren, and as Matt did the entire 2,000 IVE staff for once again a huge effort over the last six months to deliver what the business has delivered, both at an operational level and the financial performance. We'll now open the meeting up, Tim, to any questions that anyone may have.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks, Jeff. Now a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, click the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen and type your questions into the panel. We may, any of the analysts online, you can put your hand up and we'll ask a question, but we might just start, Jeff, please, with the Q&A button. Hang on. We've got a question here from Jonathon Higgins. Jonathon, over to you. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, guys, thanks for taking my question. Congratulations on the result. Obviously a lot of things coming together with the acquisition of Ovato and the half and a lot of work being done. Congratulations to the whole team. I've got a couple if I might run through them. I think firstly just around, can you just give us a bit of an idea? Revenues have been coming back sort of very strongly, sort of ahead of expectations. You're not far off sort of that billion dollar revenue mark actually. Congratulations on that. Can you talk about your customer appetite for products and services, Geoff and Matt, just sort of what power you have sort of competitively at the moment?
Yeah, I mean the customer momentum, Jono, has been really strong right through H1, particularly in and around the retail clients, if we drill further through that into the retail experience in store. We've seen fantastic, you know, activities right in and around that in-store experience, campaign kitting, fulfillment. Our logistics businesses have been extremely busy. The amount of product that they've been onboarding and delivering out on behalf of clients. It's not showing any change in momentum at the moment, Jono.
The other point, it's Geoff here. The other point we'd make to the competitive landscape point is we clearly have talked at length about the competitive landscape changing quite dramatically in the web offset space. Equally in the other parts of the business sector in which we operate across the diversity of what we do, we have far less number of competitors now than what we did 10 years ago, and we hold very strong market positions in each of those respective parts of the market that we operate in. When you combine that with the integration or the level of integration of our offering, in terms of the number of clients engaged with multiple parts of our business, it puts us in a very strong competitive position.
Great. I'll just might ask... Oh, sorry.
It's all right, Jono. Go, continue, please.
I'll just ask, two more if that's okay. Just, just secondly, just on Lasoo, like, that's been relaunched. That looks good. Obviously, it's loss-making at the moment just with the promotional activity and the like that you're doing. Can you sort of talk towards what you sort of expect out of Lasoo and some of the investment you think you'll have to make in that business or wanna make over the next couple of years?
Yeah. Look, from a, from a CapEx perspective, other than tweaking or refinements to the platform, there's no intention and no need from what we can see to invest any more money at this point, because what we have and what we've invested in is completely scalable at this point. I think the question for the business is, as we're tracking the early momentum of Lasoo, is to the extent to which we deploy our marketing goals. We may, in fact, make a decision to drive the marketing spend harder if we feel we're gonna get bang for our buck and the timing's right. It's still fairly early on because we only launched it in October.
Yeah.
We've had, you know, Christmas, New Year's mixed in there as well. There's a lot of moving parts. I think early indications are encouraging. We continue to monitor it closely. If that means throwing some more AUD from an investment perspective to amplify the brand in the market, that's something that we would certainly consider if it was worth doing.
Jono, we've got a very clearly defined roadmap for that platform as we look out over the next 12 months, and all of the development requirements for that platform can be dealt with by the existing team that we already have in the business today. To Geoff's point, it will be literally about marketing dollars if we continue to double down deeper on it because of how well it's going.
Can everybody on this call please go on to Lasoo this afternoon and buy something for us just to check out the user experience and help the, help the daily numbers?
I will do that, Geoff, as soon as we go and grab the Coles magazine first. Just last one from me, then I'll join the queue again. Just on the gas and electricity point, appreciate the disclosure on that, for the full year and for the half. You sort of referenced that you potentially could see some upside risk to guidance on that number. Are you just referencing what you're currently sort of seeing in stock markets at the moment?
I think the main piece of that component that's still quite fluid for us, Jono, is in and around gas. You know, the reluctance of retailers to contract in on gas at the moment, the impact of the government putting that AUD 12 wholesale price cap on actually seems to have caused more chaos in the market. The regulator has not stepped in yet, we would expect the regulator to step in soon if we don't see retailers back in the channel, providing certainty and contract terms to customers, 'cause it's not sustainable long-term for Australian manufacturing to be writing the default rates that are in the market today.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thanks, Jono. Next question from Chris Savage from Bell Potter. Over to you, Chris.
G'day. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Sure.
Thank you.
Great. G'day, Geoff, Matt, Darren, and I'm guessing Tony as well.
Yep.
Just around that elevated working capital level, can you give us an idea how long you expect that to be maintained, or should we be thinking about that just as the new norm now going forward?
Thanks, Chris. At the moment, I wouldn't say it's the new norm moving forward, it is early days post our acquisition of Ovato. We've had to, as I've outlined in the acquisition table, the amount of inventory that we acquired at Ovato was relatively low, given the size of the business. We've had to elevate our inventory holdings to make sure that we support and service the client's inventory needs as we do. At the moment, in the short to medium term, we would expect a elevated working capital level. Longer term, we would hope to be able to bring that working capital level down once we get a better understanding of optimum inventory holdings for the new client base.
I think the other thing, Chris, is, you'd be aware that last year we chartered 2 ships ourselves and brought in.
Yeah
... AUD 20 million-AUD 25 million per shipload of paper to ensure continuity of supply to clients. If I look through calendar 2023, I think supply chains are starting to return to a level of reliability and normality, where maybe we don't need to take those sorts of extreme measures moving forward, and that will allow us to better manage our working capital position as well, if we've got more confidence in the reliability of the supply chain.
It's interesting you say that, Matt, 'cause I was just gonna raise as a follow-on that news of the Maryvale mill closing. I thought that might be a reason that would, you know, cause you to maintain this sort of level of working capital inventory going forward. Is that the case?
We didn't take too much out of that mill, so a little bit, but it wasn't a major supplier to IVE, so it doesn't have too much impact on us.
We still should be vigilant on our supply chain. It's only five minutes ago, really, that we had a supply chain crisis that we managed incredibly well, that Matt just referred to. For investors that haven't heard us say it before, paper is as good as cash. We can hold paper for two or three years if we want to, and we can still use it.
Mm-hmm.
That's not our intention, but we're in a really solid position at the moment. As Darren said, it will step down, and we'll step it down at the right time.
Mm-hmm.
We don't wanna compromise the capacity of the business to deliver in doing that. We're in a solid position, and we're monitoring it really closely.
Sure. Thanks, Geoff. Just a second question. Forgive me for being the analyst. I know the ink's only just dry on Ovato. You've well and truly flagged that, you know, M&A is still on the agenda, particularly in the paper. Sorry, in the packaging sort of area. What sort of timing should we be looking or expecting there? Something this financial year, or should we only be thinking about that next financial year?
Yeah, that's somewhat of a leading question, I suppose. I think, we haven't seen.
Just asked about future M&A.
Yeah. Look, we haven't referred to a specific-
I think I turn it on.
I know where you are.
Sorry, Stuart. I think you got your microphone on. Please mate, if you don't mind, using that. Thank you. Sorry, continue.
Yeah, no. Look, we haven't specifically talked about packaging or necessarily growth initiatives in the deck that we've just been through. Certainly we are mobilized, and we're thinking in the next 6-12 months we'd be out the gate on, you know, hopefully a big hit acquisition in the packaging space that we've talked about before. We've certainly been distracted over the last six months with Ovato capital raise and other priorities for the business. We are mobilized on it now.
Okay. Thanks, Geoff.
Thanks, Chris. next up we've got a question from, Shane Bannon from PAC Partners.
G'day, Shane.
Good morning, guys. Thanks very much. The only volume coming off the market in retailers particularly, and even some of the marketing group, is just like caution going into the next 6-12 months. Matt, I heard what you said earlier about everything's being quite robust and there's no real sign of any sort of temerity on the part of the client base. I'm just wondering what noises are you getting off your client base with respect to looking out a bit for a while and what are you seeing in terms of the sort of, you know, wave in demand, that sort of thing, and how that's likely to translate back to your business?
When I look across a number of the sectors that we have customers in, Shane Bannon, I think about some travel and tourism, exhibition events. You know, we've seen awesome rebounds on that over the last sort of two to three months. I think some of those sectors are performing very, very well. We're not seeing retailers, as they think about their next financial year plans, talking about pulling back on activity at the moment. I think part of that's driven by the fact that we are seeing a lot of consumers flock back to stores. It's also partly driven by the fact that some retailers are carrying more inventory than what they'd probably like to. They know they've got to keep their foot down on that marketing spend to push that at the moment.
Obviously there's a lot of the retailers, like the supermarkets and so forth, they're enjoying good momentum and good results and continue to invest accordingly in that in terms of the way they engage their consumers. There's no indicators at the moment, Shane, out of any of the clients about any apprehension or slow up as they look out over the coming few months.
Great. Thank you. Can I also interpret the passion in your commentary about the energy impost going into the next sort of 6-12 months ahead of your adopting the renewable platform. The suggestion implicitly is that you're not going to be claiming that back off the market and that you're not going to renegotiate with your clients. From some of the commentary earlier, that you were trying to mitigate the margin pressure you faced over the last 6 months going forward. I'm just wondering how that translates.
I suppose, it's Geoff here, Shane. We are committed to trying to deliver a consistent margin at the bottom line. We've got, you know, a lot of moving parts in terms of the costs in our business. Some are more predictable than others like rent, but whether it be labor or energy costs or material, you know, costs, at the end of the day it's in the wash-up, we're trying to deliver an EBITDA and NPAT margin that is sustainable and that we're comfortable with. Part of that includes, clearly increasing pricing to maintain a material gross margin along the way. And obviously with labor, a gross margin. I think, I don't think it's necessarily about answering the question to say we're going to recover every single AUD.
It's a complex answer to what would appear to be a simple question.
Would you also get that, your position in the market is strong enough to be able to put through price rises without having a lot of pushback from the client base?
Yes. We've had to put prices up because we have had certainly material increases in some costs over the last 12 months. We'd like to think, with improvement in shipping, for example, coming out of Europe and other and what we just talked about in relation to energy, that we might see some of these costs that we've incurred, the increases in costs that we've documented over the last 12, 18 months, us see them come off.
All right. Thanks, mate.
Thanks, Shane.
Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. Stuart Turner from Blue Ocean Equities, do you have a question here? I saw it in the chat. Would you like to ask a question?
Thanks, Tim. I'm a tragic of the energy market, obviously this is a critical issue for you guys. I noticed that the dispatch prices have come down rapidly in New South Wales, even more so in Victoria lately compared to their previous peaks. What sort of flow through are you able to discuss with your suppliers? Also, the LGC market. I don't fully understand it. Look, I'm not suggesting that you can answer detailed question on it. Given that's a key component of the price, what's your experience as a user? Like, what are they telling you?
Is it the case that there's only, say, 10% of power generated is green, so only those guys can issue certificates and therefore the demand is gonna exceed the supply and the price is going up? How do you sort of see this in terms of from a risk point of view to your business going forward?
You, you come in at any point, Matt. I think in terms of the numbers in this calendar year 23, which we've tried to illustrate, dealing with gas first, we feel we're at a high tide mark when it comes to gas. We've illustrated. That could change in 2 weeks. It could change in 3 months. Clearly, there's a lot of political pressure on this whole gas situation 'cause it is a crisis for households and it's a crisis for a number of businesses. Gas is pretty fluid. It'll sort itself out through the course of the near future, is the term that we use. When it comes to electricity, we're basically locked into a position for calendar 23 on electricity.
Outside of our consumption of electricity, which is not really the issue, we're locked in on our rates for calendar 2023. We've got a clear line of visibility on that. To the third part or first part of your question, whatever it was in relation to the new contract with Iberdrola. Yes, there's a consumption base price in there, and then there is a price that's notionally allocated to the value of these LGCs, as you refer them to. To be quite honest, and we've done a lot of work on this, we could sit here for one hour and talk about the LGC market and the LGC scheme, and the suggestion that it may expire in 2030 or the government replacing the LGC scheme with an alternate scheme.
It seems like from our perspective, and you think about it intuitively, it's 2023 now, and 2030 is not very far away and this country has to transition by 2030 to a renewable footprint. You get the sense that these LGCs and the value of LGCs, the value of those and the demand for those as companies are running behind the eight ball in making the transition to renewables, that will underpin the value of the LGCs, if I've tried to explain that in the simplest way, something that is quite a sophisticated, complicated market that I think a lot of companies are trying to get their head around.
You know, then you overlay that with your ESG, you know, journey that many companies are, you know, on the runway with. I think we're early movers. I think we've got out of the gate, we wanted certainty. We're partnering with one of the largest global players, which is important. We're a good counterparty for them in terms of the profile of our business and the spend. I think gas come off. Electricity, we're locked in for calendar 2023, and I think we've got a pretty clear line of sight from calendar 2024 on, albeit the LGC market will remain fluid and the forward market for LGC will remain fluid over the coming years.
Yeah, I mean, Stuart, the beauty of the Iberdrola deal is that certainty for the business on our electricity spend, or rates we're gonna pay out to 2030, over the next 7 years, notwithstanding the LGC situation. The optionality for the business to decide at what point over the coming 7 years do we wanna transition to fully renewable energy and relinquish those LGCs accordingly on that basis. Whether that's a stepped up process out to 2030 or whether that's a big bang at a particular point in time. That's the optionality that this PPA gives the business to decide on that ESG front, as we move down that journey further.
The project, Iberdrola, have got 7 wind farms in Australia already, so they've got a proven track record in this market with delivering renewables. The project that we've committed into is the Flyers Creek Wind Farm out in Orange in Western New South Wales here.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Stuart. Is there any further questions from the analysts online? Otherwise, I'll pass back to Geoff, so there's a written question in the Q&A box.
Yeah. There is one written question which is regards all the moving parts of Ovato energy costs and Lasoo. I think. Restructuring costs. I feel in what we've been through and in the outline of the guidance, we've done our best to unpack the moving parts as best we could. The question in relation to seasonality, we're always more heavily weighted to H1 from a revenue perspective than we are to H2. That, once again, has changed over the last five years as we've become more heavily weighted in the business to retail. It's probably-
Fifty-five.
55, 45. Yeah, 55, 45. That's dovetailing in with the emergence of synergies. The complexity of shutting down on the major site in, of Ovato and relocating equipment. This year has a lot. It just has a lot of moving parts. We try to unpack them as best we can. That's roughly the weighting between H1 and H2.
Yeah. Correct.
That's.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. That's probably time now to finish the Q&A. Thank you for being online. If you have any further questions, please reach out to the team and they will be happy to help. Copies of this webinar will be available on the IVE Group and Finance News Network websites over the next few days. Thank you all once again, and have a nice day.
Thanks.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, everyone. Good morning.
Thank you.