Over to yourself, Dennison. Yep.
Thank you, Janine. Thanks very much, everybody. Welcome to the first half 2026 IMG, Intelligent Monitoring Group, half-year results. Appreciate your time, particularly in reporting season in the first week. We'll just go through a presentation today. Obviously, the financials are the key feature of the day, but also we'll kind of have a discussion about the business. We'll go through the presentation, probably ask you to just hold your questions to the end if you can. Happy to take them, though, and in the event that we don't answer them today or whatever, we can happily take things offline. So kicking straight into the result, we're actually pretty happy with this result. I'd call it solid. Underlying EBITDA at AUD 19.2 million for the half. Underlying operating cash flow continues to improve.
For those that, you know, granularly watch us, the very last forecast we did was the first quarter, where we had just slightly positive cash. As we have said consistently now, you know, that first quarter sort of is the weakest quarter of the year for us, as it tends to be a rebuild after the end of the financial year for a lot of our customers and workbook. You can see therefore the second quarter being very strong cash again and tracking more, I guess closer to the P&L EBITDA stuff as we start to deliver on that work. Underlying earnings growth for the half, 9.3%. Obviously boosted by the acquisition of BNP and Western Advance, and then organic growth in Australia of 8.3%.
We'll probably talk about New Zealand a little bit today, but New Zealand did suffer a disappointing first quarter. And it surprised us a little bit in that we had a very good, and we have a very good pipeline there. We had the end of a large series of multi-year sort of government work roll off as we had expected. We had got some significant work starting, and then we got caught with a bit of a timing mismatch in that quarter. It did extend it longer than we thought. And ultimately, you know, we were running underutilized for a period there, through which is now normalized. And so, as we go now into the second half, you know, the both the pipelines continue to lift, but the work is actually tracking back to plan.
So, there's a slide later on that we can get into. New Zealand's back on track, which will be part of helping us, you know, through to the second half, and then ultimately on to the full year and guidance. I'd probably will park that. I'll come back to that when we talk about it explicitly. Pipeline, I mean, I think this is probably the real story. When we bought ADT two and a half years ago, you know, we wanted to return it to preeminence. We wanted to do that through commercial and enterprise work and leadership, and that pipeline just continues to build and build and build.
It is a combination of, you know, existing customers doing more work, you know, taking on more, more solutions and more sites, through to, you know, having new customers join us, new projects, and new service contracts. So, you know, up another 30%, 6% on the quarter. So I think it was AUD 36.6 million at the end of the first quarter, AUD 49.8 million at the end of this quarter. That pipeline as a revenue is effectively what we , the pipeline we see turning into revenue over the next 12 months that we have today. It's not a gross pipeline of what we, what we have won, in full. Acquisition of Tyco, like, as we move forward into this next year, this will be a major feature.
Managed to get that signed up before the end of last year. That's gonna be a fantastic addition to our business. I've just come off the back of a tour of those of both New Zealand, but also that organization. For those that don't know, we have to be a little bit cautious at the moment about using the name, but effectively that is Wormald New Zealand that we've acquired there, which is fire services and monitoring. And that is just an outstanding business we're looking forward to having settled. We do have, though, we've not yet got a final date on settlement.
It is determined totally by our counterparty, the seller there, who has a number of sort of legal structures and things that they have to deal with to move. We're pushing as fast and as hard as we can on that, but ultimately, we're at place and a time taker in terms of settlement. We fully expect to get it in this financial year, and ideally sooner rather than later. But we can't do better at the moment than to give an expected date. We finished with good cash in the bank. Obviously, we raised some money to make sure we stay really healthily funded. Yeah, plus, with the acquisition facility, we're in great shape financially. So summary, you know, as we'll work through this preso, you know, we're on- we're trading to budget.
We're on track, and we're on track to deliver that, you know, greater than AUD 0.062 per share of pro forma earnings. Obviously, pro forma is just gonna be impacted a little bit by what the timing - Well, sorry, the headline number will be impacted by the timing of when we actually get Tyco New Zealand on the books, but the underlying business is performing to plan on that. Quickly, just again, to reiterate, anybody new to the story, you know, this is a very just defensive, stable, cash generative business at an underlying level. You know, we are effectively a monitoring and service business, you know, doing what would equate to effectively repeat work. We now have, on the back of, you know, a couple of years of building this business, a scale platform.
We have both the platform internally in terms of the systems we're running, but also a reach in terms of the workforce that we have to deploy into work directly across Australasia. You know, and we're now starting to have a pretty robust financial profile. We just highlight the reach point here in the graph. While it looks like there's a lot of things, that's actually positive. Our customers at the big end of town, you know, who want security services and technical services, you know, want us to be able to service them in their entirety. And we're one of the few people, you know, very few people that can actually claim to be able to do that, and that is what is leading to our, you know, robust pipeline and growth that we are seeing come through.
Structurally, really, we are simple. It probably looks more complex there than it actually is or feels to us. Effectively, we've got on the security side, one direct-to-customer business, ADT. We have that in New Zealand and Australia, both running separately with their own general managers. We have a partner business and security, Signature Security, which is an old historic name in Australia, which runs standalone, and it sort of does deals with little security companies to help them grow. And we have a wholesale security monitoring provider, IMS, which is essentially the base business that this journey started from, the old Threat Protect back in the days, if you trace it right back.
Now, with the acquisition we announced to settle shortly, Tyco New Zealand, that gives us Red Wolf Security, which is a direct-to-customer high security business in New Zealand. I make the comment high security, so it works at the highest level, you know, in government, with government, New Zealand government, that is, around the world, which will fit into the ADT stable of businesses in New Zealand. And we have a direct-to-customer business, Tyco, which is obviously, you know, on the quiet, as Wormald. And that will sort of stand alone, but help us with commercial scale in New Zealand around our security side as well. I won't spend any real time today on our vision and values.
For those that wanna engage with me later or offline, they're very important to me, particularly around the kind of business that we're trying to build. So to go to the results, I'll hand over to Jason, and he can take you through the half, and I'll dovetail with him. Over to you, Jase.
Thank you, Dennis. Good morning, everybody. So as we called out in the headline number, you know, the underlying EBITDA is AUD 19.2 million for the half, with a margin of 20% and growth, on the prior half last year, of 9.7%. The key call-outs here are the profit before abnormal costs, amortization of AUD 10.6 million, up again on the first half, FY 2025, by 36%. Some abnormal costs in the EBITDA adjustment, which is the AUD 4.6 million, covering off some of the Tyco New Zealand acquisition costs, historic share, share-based payments, and, the impairment of receivables. When we look through sort of the key numbers, so revenue, strong growth on last year. Underlying gross profit up, again, versus the first half.
Underlying EBITDA up versus the first half. Depreciation and leases, the—so giving us an operating EBIT of AUD 16.6. And then, if we work back up from the reported profit and loss, adding back the amortization and the abnormals, we get to AUD 10.6 profit after tax there, which is a good, good result, strong result compared to the first half last year. Dennison, I'm gonna go to the next-
Sorry.
Slide. Yep. Sorry, yeah. All right, so, reported EBITDA, 14.7. So we had the impairment of receivables, something that we'll look in the new financial year to rework how we normalize that receivables sort of gap. No impairment of assets this year versus the first half of last year, which is strong testament that, you know, our financials are working well, and that all of our cash-generating units are the correct configuration and goodwill. Recurring business acquisition integration costs, AUD 2 million for the half, largely, acquisition activity and a little bit of restructuring, some of which in the New Zealand business. Interest, interest income, and then share-based expenses, which is historical shares, exercised there, giving us a underlying EBITDA at AUD 19.2 million.
Again, you can see that's up on the first half of last year, playing into our being on track for our full-year EBITDA guidance. Breaking out the depreciation and amortization. So in the stat reports, we've got AUD 11 million made up of AUD 9 million in cost of services costs and so, cost of services, and AUD 2 million outside. Slightly up on the half as a comparative number for the half. Business depreciation, which is really just covering off all of our core PPE, staying business items, business-as-usual items. Lease depreciation is up on the half, but it's comparable to the June number. We added in motor vehicle leasing under AASB 16 allowances in the second half last year. So you will see, if you compare this to June, the actual lease depreciation is not that different.
It looks different to the half, but it's not different to the full year. Then that gives us AUD 2.6 of depreciation, important to think about for the future. And then in the intangible sort of amortization pieces, we've got the Subscriber Assets, they're AUD 2.8, and customer contract-based non-cash amortization, they're at AUD 5.7, so giving us AUD 8.4 there. So AUD 11 for the total. Again, up on the half, but not, but in line with the full year.
Right. I'll jump in on the divisional, Jase. So again, just breaking down the EBITDA quarterly, the data into the components. You can see on the chart there, seventeen, nine point two breaks to thirteen mil, that comes from Australia. So that's our real, you know, driving entity or has been to this point really. And underlying growth there at 8.3%, half on half organic. So that is us with the businesses we own and that we have owned for 12 months, and their success, and not, not including any of the impacts of the, acquisition. That's pretty consistent with the full year result, last year. So we're at 8.2% organic growth for the, FY 2025 year, 8.3% this year.
You know, ultimately, what we are looking to see is that number start to pick up over time as we drive, you know, video services, you know, and that commercial book and that pipeline, you know, translates through onto what is a fairly stable base. The acquisition earnings, you know, impact there is Wormald and BNP, but also just including a full period of DVL. So just had to also make sure we cover off the full annualized effects, so that added the earnings. And then New Zealand, which you can see, you know, was a very poor result in the first half of this year. I'll just talk to that.
So as I've said, you know, starting the year, the book was in great, in good shape, and it actually continues to be, and in fact, in provenly good shape. But we did hit the, with the wind down on a contract, and that contract is actually MSD in New Zealand, which is the largest government department. They've been doing a lot of upgrade work over a number of years, and you know, government in New Zealand has been very austere across the board, not just there. So we fully expected, you know, that work to sort of come to more of a tail, more back to more sort of service levels on an ongoing basis for a period. And as a result, we had new work coming through.
One of the big pieces of work, just to verify for you, is Auckland Airport, for those that do go to New Zealand and know much about what's going on down there. We've just suffered a slower start-up there. We expected it to start at this, come back from, from break and start this year, and it, sorry, from the journey that is and kick off, and it actually just got a bit delayed and delayed on top of a number of other things. You know, I kind of put that down to the economy, largely, like just decisions have been made, pipelines are being built, actioning and final sign-off to start delivering work is still a bit slow, in New Zealand, and I think that's what you see here. You know, not ideal.
In a business like ours, though, you know, and in New Zealand particularly, we have, we have a fairly shallow book of major work. Australia is very different. We've got a very wide, diverse book. You know, you kind of have to ride through it if you're trying to build a business, which we've done. And then now, you know, we've exited that, and the work that started as multi-year work, and ultimately will go on to improve and increase the size of our service book, you know, and ultimately pull the engine through. So, you know, unfortunate. We have, though, also been going through quite the review of the New Zealand business. Red Wolf coming in on the security side is a really positive thing for the whole business in New Zealand, the whole security business.
And then obviously, having Wormald further in the mix will allow us to widen our commercial reach in New Zealand. Wormald has about, you know, nearly 30% of commercial business in New Zealand. It touches with its fire suppression systems, which gives us a, a starting run at, you know, lifting that ADT commercial business, which would have a, a negligible market share in New Zealand currently in commercial enterprise. And so, as part of all of those things coming together, we have, you know, done a real assessment.
We have had a general manager change in New Zealand, too, which has taken place, and we're about to start a new person into ADT New Zealand, who has a much different skill set, much more attuned around the commercial enterprise, you know, high security market, which would align closer to the kind of skill set that we've had in Australia, which has allowed us to unlock that business. Other things going on in New Zealand, I mean, I think the economic environment is a bit important to tune out, but on top of that, you've had to add a 3G transition, which is, yeah, as we saw in Australia when we very first took over ADT two years ago, very distracting.
It means on a business like ours, you spend most of your time just focused on your existing customers and keeping them signed on and up to date with their technology, rather than being able to deploy your efforts to growth. That is now coming towards the back end. The first 3G networks are shutting down, which, you know, as we look forward, will be a very positive thing, as we've seen in Australia. We've also had our, you know, first crop of ADT Guard sales, you know, starting to become the rhythm. They're starting to pick up, and in fact, we had our first ADT Guard event in New Zealand. Archibalds, again, for anyone who knows New Zealand, Archibalds Motors on Moorhouse Avenue in Christchurch. We deterred a theft there two weeks ago.
It's the first time in New Zealand we've stopped a crime from happening, which is, you know, a key calling card for us to be able to deploy our advanced security solutions. So, yeah, not a happy sort of result for the New Zealand guys to be sitting on, but actually, ironically, a lot of optimism as we move forward. The February number, we expect to be up again on the numbers, you know, that you can see on the chart we've got here. And again, when you take the half on half, that will go, you know, quite some way to getting us w ell, it explains why we are on track to guidance and are happy with where we're at. Back to you, Jase.
Thanks, Dennison. So yeah, so balance sheet, obviously the key call that stable, strong. I think that's been true realistically since we refinanced, this time last year. The cash position, largely from, the raise, but also demonstrative of actually building cash back in the business and, you know, debt, net debt, to Adjusted EBITDA of the last year at 1.3x. Nothing really to call out sort of here. Core working capital lifted by AUD 2.2 million, but, you know, well-placed, you know, to charge on with our year this year. So the cash flow, table's a bit busy, but we wanted to just demonstrate that we are in a position of continuously growing our operating cash flows.
This is sort of representative of the decision that ASIC made to allow us to no longer have to present forecasts. I think that's a good mark of healthy cash flow in our business. You can see here that we generated an underlying operating cash flow of AUD 9.4 million before non-recurring costs, which is up on the half for last year. And it shows that we will be in good stead for the upcoming year. I think I made this point at the first quarter review. You know, this has been a cash-based half. Everything that we have done this half has been with cash.
Acquisitions have been made with cash, and that certainly shows that we will have been closer to EBITDA in our cash flow this half than arguably in the other half prior. So a little bit of abnormal. So acquisition and equity raise costs around AUD 1.5 million. A little bit of general restructuring costs of AUD 0.5 million. The investing activities at AUD 12 million, so we had AUD 9.1 million, which was the acquisitions in cash again, of Western Advance and BNP Securities, and then obviously that little bit of tidy up of Mammoth Security, getting the non-controlling interest out. And now Mammoth Security is a wholly owned subsidiary.
In the CapEx space, again, you can see in the slide that half on half, our CapEx is lower than the same half last year, and, you know, the mix is roughly the same. Stay in business CapEx is quite low. Our business doesn't have a lot of need for genuine CapEx. And then the subscriber assets piece, you can see that's actually lower than the first half last year, and on average is actually lower than the full year and is scaling down, again, in line with sort of the conversations that we've had around our CapEx outlook for a 12-month period. The only other interesting thing to call out, just to balance out the AUD 12 million versus what we spent, is we did receive as a one-off cash receipt.
We received money back from changing our bank guarantees out of a cash-out position into a NAB-based facility.
Yeah. And that's in our investing cash flow line, not our-
Yeah.
Our operating cash flow line, just to be super clear with people.
Yeah.
Great. Thanks, Jase. So look, we'll just go quickly through the corporate strategy and then open up for questions again. Appreciate your time. So look, obviously, we present this every time, but really, what we're doing is we're looking to create the industry leader, you know, with a comparative advantage. We're doing that right back at the start of this journey, you know, four, five years ago now, for myself and some of the team through today, is by actually investing in building a platform that's, you know, superior, leading in what we do. And then ultimately trying to get scale, which allows us, you know, to be the premium player and with brands that, you know, are superior and known by people like ADT.
In terms of the opportunity, what's really happening here by luck, if we're to be straight with you about it, is that we've arrived into a business that was fragmented, unloved, you know, with a pretty modest value proposition, in my opinion. Certainly, as you went down into more into resi-type security systems or basic intrusion systems, at a time when AI and camera technology and the underlying platforms have reached a level of maturity that they are able to be enabled, which is creating an entirely new opportunity set for us. And so today, we are able to, you know, effectively use a camera like you can use a security guard today. Because a security guard can't tackle, capture, capture people or do anything other than really verify an event, that is something that.
That's sort of by law and the way the industry works and has been regulated in Australasia. A camera can actually effectively do that at a significantly lower price if you enable it with Edge AI and the latest features. And so by realizing that, you know, and acting upon that first, we have effectively, you know, trying to drive ourselves into a position of scale and advantage to really lead the deployment of that technology. The opportunity set is significant, and the effect on society is even more so. And just to pause for a second and highlight an event. We had a residential event last week in Queensland. We had a lovely property based on the east side of Brisbane, where there was an 18-year-old child at home. The parents were away.
We had two people come and scout the property at about 12:30 A.M. ADT Guard reacted as it's paid to do and deterred them from breaking in. They left site and actually came back an hour and a half later and attacked the property from the other perimeter, out the back. ADT Guard also worked and did its job there and deterred them, and then ultimately the police came by and was checking on the property for the rest of the night. The property was safe and secured. That would never have happened in the past. They would have got in, and who knows what they would have done? They were clearly pretty intent on getting into that property.
I'm, you know, proud to have seen our team do what we paid to do and actually keep it safe, which is a great result and something that, you know, you'll hear more about, no doubt, as we go forward, with the events we have. So comparative advantage for us is our, is our scale. We've got a unique reach and scale now. Further than that, though, it's actually about using our scale to invest to make sure we're trusted. We have to really invest and be, you know, the highest certified, you know, best, best player, best credentialed player, with the most advanced, technology platforms and opportunities to, to add value. And so we're very focused on these things, and that is our essentially our business plan, so that we can build a really enduring leading business.
As you know, and this really speaks to valuation here, is you know, the point we keep trying to make is it's a very attractive business model. While a new customer does typically entail some labor, it would take us a little bit of time to come to your property and set up some cameras and, and the box and the AI to do it. Once you're a customer, if we do our job like that family in Brisbane, I'd expect they'll be a customer for a long time. And, you know, we'll need to service that system to make sure it works. It needs to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and as technology evolves and changes, you know, they're likely to stick with that too.
So it becomes a very, given it offers a real value proposition, it becomes a very long, sticky, stable and trusted relationship as we move forward, you know, which implies, you know, a business of, you know, hopefully quite some value. That's certainly what we see. Talking to the pipeline again, you know, we called out the pipeline for the first time in the first quarter at AUD 36.6 million. I'll probably step back for a second and just make the point that when we bought ADT, you know, the year before we bought it, it had done AUD 2 million of revenue in this space. So it wasn't just calling out a pipeline.
The size of that pipeline, given it didn't have a pipeline when we took it over, you know, was really the first point we were trying to highlight when we started to disclose this. You know, now what we're trying to make clear to everyone on the market is that that pipeline's growing really significantly, and it is diversified. And so a little bit distinct to what we've experienced in New Zealand in this first half, the actual wider group pipeline, particularly out of Australia, is much more diversified. Like, it's much wider spread, lots of industries, lots of players, lots of partners, and, you know, and it's continuing to build at a rate that, you know, is very exciting for the team.
You know, and the conversations are very serious ones with very serious counterparties. In terms of video, we also like to sort of disclose for the first time, you know, we've now, you know, been starting to deploy our ADT Guard. It's what we'd really refer to it as video, direct remote monitoring video service. If you call, ask for this service, you want this service, you'd ask for ADT Guard. Here you can see the sort of growth trajectory that we're on. For us, to this point, what we've really been focused on is the outcomes. And, you know, we've now actually made. We've arrested 44 perpetrators with the police in action, committing a crime, since we started this journey, you know, only really a year ago.
On average, we're deterring over 15 criminal, likely criminal attempts at burglary every month. And so as these numbers build, you know, the apparent-ness of what we are doing, the success of what we're doing, and ultimately the value of what we're doing, you know, will build too. At the moment, it is still relatively small in our base, so we're calling out, you know, it's less than, it's growing up towards 1% of our total, as we'll call them, lines or customers at the moment, but that is accelerating. And you saw certainly in that second quarter of 2026, you know, a significant acceleration in the growth rate. As we are learning, you know, tweaking, you know, focusing our sales, and getting our message out.
What I'm really pleased to see, too, are some of the commercial inquiries that we have started to pick up and engage with. And I suspect as they get into it, the deployment rates will, will pick up pretty substantially. Going, I guess, turning sort of towards guidance and then questions. We do have a, a skew in this business as it's, as it's turned out, I suppose. You know, when we first bought ADT, the first year, it, it sort of surprised us a little bit. Last year, it surprised us less, and this year it surprises us not at all. It's not a cyclical business. What it is, is just in our installation volumes, you know, customers do tend to work to a yearly cycle.
So certainly where it's a government, council, you know, state, federal, or otherwise, even large business, they tend to work to a June sort of deadline on their project installation, upgrade work. And so, you know, you have a very big push through about from now through to June. And, prior to that, you know, we're building, you know, we're, we're building that book. You know, we're, we're buying inventory. You know, we're having to buy servers in a lot of cases and be prepared to go through to June, where the push goes on. And so, for us, you know, if you look at the average of that, it's 43%, it's 57%. Certainly, we see absolutely that, you know, and again, the pipeline is really substantial.
So, you know, we're quite comfortable with where the business is at. To help our sort of track that guidance back from our journey, you know, we've really tried to spell that out as clearly as we can for you. So the underlying EBITDA guidance we gave at the AGM was AUD 43 million-AUD 47 million EBITDA. Given we've made the announcement of the acquisition of Tyco, pending settlement, in December, that's, which I should also comment, is performing. So that business itself, you know, as it's not yet in our hands, is actually still performing, though. It's expected to contribute AUD 10 million of EBITDA, Australian dollars, for a pro forma EBITDA of AUD 53 million-AUD 57 million.
As you track that from EBITDA to NPAT, that translates to about AUD 26 million-AUD 29 million, which is a AUD 0.062-AUD 0.07 per share pro forma EPS. And we are happy to say that we feel like we are well on track with those numbers. And I think, you know, I'd make a wider point, and I've been, I guess, at this now for three, three and a half years, is we are on track. We're very happy with that. But what we're actually excited about is as we continue to look forward, you know, that's just one moment in time that we need to hit. We understand that.
But, you know, as we're actually looking forward into 2027, you know, now, increasingly in our planning, you know, and then thinking about 2028 as well, you know, these, these numbers are—you know, we're expecting to continue to build. And I think the real question is, you know, is around that underlying organic growth rate and, you know, when we start to see that pick up, which, you know, we're, we're—we're, we'll be interested to see too. So just in summary, we'll go to questions. Solid half for us. You know, the, the New Zealand result, wasn't, wasn't ideal. I suppose the fact that we've offset that and still maintained, you know, on track is—tells you that, you know, the rest of the business is going, is going very well. And in the second half, I think we'll see that.
You know, I think the point is we're continuing to build our success in what we're actually doing with the customers and the work we're doing. And also, I'd say the people that are joining us, we are a growing organization with new staff members, you know, joining our team, and it's been really exciting to see some of the talent come in. And so, you know, to have over now 40, you know, criminals backed up with the police because of what we're doing, you know, is incredibly exciting at an organizational level. Pipeline, you know, I think that is, for me, the key for us. You know, we are winning work. It's profitable. We're very clear, you know, you can win work, but you have to win profitable work. We understand that, too.
You know, so to see that continuing to grow, largely in a lot of, in a lot of cases with existing customers, and, you know, increasing work we can do for them is very positive. And then, you know, we're on track, and so, you know, from our point of view, we're, we're pretty, pretty wrapped and pretty happy with where we're at, and we're very excited about the next year or two. So look, I'll pause there. Janine, I might ask you to come back on, and maybe you can sort of help act, moderate for us with questions. I can see a couple of hands up there, ready to go.
Yeah. Thanks, Dennison. I had Tom come up first. So Tom, can you please unmute yourself and ask your question?
Thanks, Tom. Thanks.
Morning, team. Just checking you can hear me.
Yep, gotcha.
Yeah.
Yeah, perfect. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple on the New Zealand business. Firstly, on the EBITDA slide you presented, I just want to get a sense for the second half performance there. Should we be expecting, you know, to hold that exit run rate or even deliver some growth on a monthly basis, for the second half FY 2026?
I'm very happy, and, you know, we're not looking to set ourselves unbreakable challenges in life in the short term. Tom, I like doing this, and I'd like to be around for a while. If you use that January number and sort of use that as your run rate going forward, I'm very comfortable with that.
Brilliant. Just on the review of the ADT Care in New Zealand, appreciate your comments earlier.
Yeah.
Just want to get a sense you know, when and if you come to a decision on that business-
Yeah.
What sort of timing factor, you know-
No, great.
Which should we be thinking?
Yeah, really good pick-up, actually. And I, you have to forgive me, I should have. I didn't think about including that, because it is something we've called out. We largely have done that, and I think that ties into the overall piece in New Zealand around what the style of management, you know, the way we've brought the business together. The outcome to this point has been we have had a significant price rise for new volume from our main counterparty, which is the New Zealand Government. So it is also MSD, which is a different part of MSD than what our security services work is for. MSD is the largest, you know, government department in New Zealand.
And so in the first instance, you know, the economics moving forward of that business, you know, we've solved by, you know, honest engagement with the customer. The second thing we've done is we've and we are seeking to really dig into the day-by-day, the construct of the way we've been doing business. And to call it out, like the biggest challenge other than, you know, I don't think the pricing was set, you know, quite right, which was under contract that we inherited when we took over the business from the prior owner, was also, each new customer often does come essentially from a third-party distributor, and we've been paying them a lot of money for that, but they also do a lot of good work for us in deploy.
Understanding those relationships and optimizing them, you know, for returns and results is also important to that. We did go out. I have talked to a couple of other players and interested parties. There absolutely would be interest in this business, and if we thought, you know, we could deploy the capital better or needed the capital, we would. Actually, at this stage, I think we've elected to run it effectively tighter in a new way, and I think that will actually get us a better result in our hands than, you know, sort of simply looking to move it on.
So we just wanted to be open about it though, and actually say that there's something—it's a piece of work that needed to be done and gone through, and it will also help us go down. I think now we'll park it. We'll see how it settles for the next year. It is an area with good growth, so, you know, as long as the marginal returns on that growth are high, we're, you know, we're, we're happy to have it. So we're, we're probably now just in a business-as-usual sense to make sure, you know, we can actually normalize out the economics and see where they come. So sorry, a long answer, but there has been a, there has been a lot of work.
Look, I lead that work directly, and I'm happy to talk about a lot more offline if people would like to engage in it.
I appreciate it. Thanks for the color, and thanks for taking my questions.
No worries at all.
Fantastic. Richard, do you want to just go off mute and ask your question, please?
Sure. Thanks, Janine, and morning, everyone, and thanks, Dennison and team, for a very comprehensive update. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions around the pipeline number. So did I hear you correctly, that the AUD 15 million, that's sort of what you're expecting over the next 12 months, is, is what you sort of expect as in terms of a win rate there?
No, that's, that's what we have one to be delivered.
Okay, so that's already one to be delivered and, that's over the next 12 months.
And it's yeah. So just to characterize it, a lot of these pieces of work are actually multi-year pieces of work, and so the judgment here against that number is, one is, you know, it has to be high. You know, like, it's a highly probable, really a matter of when does it start, and we're only booking the work that is going to impact our P&L in the next 12 months. So it's as I say, it's not a gross hoped-for pipeline or delivered pipeline. It's actually what we realistically think it adds, you know, with confidence, to our forward revenue forecast.
No, that's really clear and helpful. And do you have sort of a sense of, you know, how much of that hits in the second half of FY 2026 versus first half of FY 2027, or is it sort of evenly split?
I think, yeah. Look, Jason, I don't know if you'd like if you've got thoughts on that, but look, I think a lot's going to come through. I mean, we've got a very busy. This, the second half is going to be by far our biggest half, full stop. And with it, again, like, to the point about the seasonality, like, yeah, a lot of that work will go through, but you'll also get the work on top. So I'd say it's probably more in the second half coming up than the first half just because of the nature. But that being said, a number of these things are projects.
I mean, we're working with, you know, some data center builders, for instance, that those projects are going to take, you know, years, many months to years, actually, to deliver. And they'll be pretty consistent, like, they don't stop June, July. They only really stop for Christmas and New Year. So, yeah, I don't know. It's not a great answer, but my suspicion is there's just a lot in front of us in the next few months.
That's very helpful context. Thanks. And then just quickly turning to New Zealand, I think you've hashed out sort of the impact you had there, but just on the 4G transition in terms of completion as a financial impact, do you think that'll be done by the end of FY 2026, or is that sort of by end of calendar year?
Well, look, I think if our experience in Australia is it does tail, but just to call it out, like the impact, like certainly those of you that have been with us through this journey, like the Australian experience, which was not great, and there was capitalizations, a whole lot of stuff there because we walked into it, and it had a different thing. The experience here is a little bit different. So the financial impact is two-fold.
One is there's CapEx in our subscriber medical business, so our CapEx is a little bit higher as we're going through because we are effectively have been now for some time, it's not just happening now, it's been going on for, you know, been a part of 18 months to two years, reflecting, you know, our equipment that's in the field, you know, to be able to handle 4G. So that, I think we've almost made our last payment now, Jason, for the updated-
Yeah, we have.
4G equipment. So, effectively, the CapEx effect has actually ceased as of now, moving forward. The real impact is the energy and the effort in the business. So you have a lot of people having to do a lot of work, you know, either in the medical side, updating, sending back. You know, there's just all the work involved in effectively updating an existing base of business, and it just takes away from your ability. So, say, the inbound sales guys, and I was sitting with them earlier this week in Auckland, you know, they are on the phone taking 3G calls, calling out, "Hey, you've got a 3G. You know, you need to get on top of this. Your network's shutting in a couple of months," rather than dealing with an inbound, you know, new customer, "I'd like a new system.
I've got growth." So it takes away your growth, is probably the bigger impact because of the time and effort. And so, you know, in terms of when that washes out, you know, it sort of comes in waves. Like, at the moment, one of the networks in New Zealand has shut, and they are progressively shutting across the country. I think the big network or the biggest network stops in March, so that will kick in, but then you'll have a tail of people that haven't actually gone across that you're going to have to quickly shepherd through, so, and they come in fits and starts. It'll definitely be done by the end of this year.
So I guess working backwards, you know, I don't expect and we all will stop talking about it by the full year result in any material fashion. But, you know, it'll sort of bubble in the background. But as we're now exiting it, you know, we are now able to start to really focus our teams on growth for the first time. And in Australia, that was a very positive, you know, thing to do. Once we got out of that, we could breathe a sigh of relief and actually start to move forward.
Great. Thanks, Dennis, and really appreciate that call. I'll just ask one more before I pass it on to someone else. It looked like the ADT Guard is seeing some really positive momentum, especially in the big jump in the second quarter there. Previously, you sort of called a bit out, like talking about 300 sites that you had on the program. I just wanna understand sort of the right metric. Is that sort of still thinking of sites, or is it now the right way to think about it in terms of monitoring lines?
Yeah, look, it's both. It's a bit, little bit depends on who you ask and to be really honest, Richard, in our business. But, you know, primarily sites, if you ask our ADT Guard, you know, guarding team that we put together, the ADT Guard guys, and when they're focused really probably on sites, 'cause they've got a guarding mentality. If you ask the monitoring guys, they're focused on lines, 'cause that's the way they kind of look at the business. I think as we move forward, though, we will probably talk about lines, because that makes it consistent and comparative with what we've done in the past.
You know, so from a probably a reporting point of view, you know, we're starting the journey, and we're laying the foundations a little bit today, so we can start to track that now more closely as we move forward with you. And it will probably be around line. Truthfully, internally, we're probably focused on sites. You know, we just wanna guard as many premises around Australia as we can, whether that's a house, a business, you know, multi-site business, industrial, commercial, whatever. So, you know, but we'll report to lines. In terms of numbers, yeah, the numbers have grown from 300. I don't have an exact number in front of me, but it's consistent with that sort of growth profile that we put forward in the chart there.
Awesome. Thank you so much, and, thanks for taking my questions. Well done, guys.
No problem. Thanks.
Thanks, Richard. Nick Rawlinson?
Thanks very much, team. Sorry, I jumped on a little bit late, so apologies if you've covered this off already. Well done on the performance of the IT business. But for New Zealand, could you just expand on the growth drivers for that business, Dennis?
For New Zealand?
Yeah.
Yeah, look, I mean, the growth, so I'll answer the question, but I'll do it by way of sort of explaining where we're at. So when we took over ADT, you know, IMG bought ADT. It was like, "Here's ADT." I think they called it Pacific Region. Janine, you'll have to remind me, but, "Here you go.
Here's your business." And we looked at that and went, "Okay, here it is." The first thing I did was say, "Right, well, New Zealand market conditions and Australia are different." So they'd kind of been meshed at a management level, and we unwound that straightaway and said, "Right, ADT is gonna run for New Zealand, and ADT Australia is gonna run for Australia, and they'll have their own GM, you know, finance, and we're gonna actually, you know, hold them to account individually to their own market conditions." From the IMG group executive leadership point of view, ADT AU was the big engine, and it had the most problems, if I want to call it out.
Like, ADT New Zealand actually looked and has been a very stable business, so this is, you know, partly why we were a bit surprised, you know, to have had this crossover that we've just gone through. It's like historically, it's just a very stable, you know, good, good business, essentially. And so we focused on Australia, and the way we focused on Australia, consistent with what we've been saying, what we've been trying to do, is, "All right, well, let's bring the ADT brand back, and we're gonna do that by becoming the finest, you know, provider security service, and we're gonna do that by going to the biggest customers in town with the most complex requirements and, and providing them the best services that are available.
And then we're gonna use that to have our name out there so that you know if you doubt we can look after your house and protect you, then we sure as hell can't be looking after Sydney Airport Terminal 3, right? Like, you have to know that we know what we're doing if we can look after Sydney Airport Terminal 3 and data centers and some of the highly secure facilities we look after. And then, and then we'll allow that to come through the business and, and use the technology stack to, to sell itself, which is where we're starting to get to now. In New Zealand, we didn't really do that. We had a couple of major commercial customers, and we had a medical business, and we had a traditional and we, we weren't able to really unlock.
Now, when I first got New Zealand, I thought it would be easy, because I was like, well, we're already starting with the biggest government department. We're already starting with the main airport, you know, the largest airport. We had a couple of other, you know, major things, like surely we just take that case study out and unlock it. And, you know, we got hit with a couple of problems. One was the economy and, you know, I do think New Zealand, you know, it's probably hard, I'm an Australasian citizen, to be clear to people. I live in Australia. I'm an Australian citizen, and I've lived here, I've worked here my whole life, and I'm not speaking on behalf of New Zealand, but I have a lot of, I've done a lot of business across both sides.
You know, New Zealand has had many recessions in my lifetime, and Australia's had zero. So, you know, it does show what a deep, sort of austere sort of environment can do. So customers weren't necessarily moving, and we also didn't have the technical base. The customers we had, even though they were big and notable, weren't using actually particularly advanced security solutions. It really was largely pretty much basic access control that they've always used. So fast-forward that to today, you know, what, what we've, what we've done to, to essentially put in place the same platform that we're seeing in Australia now, with the growth we're seeing in now, is we've gone, "We really need to get that commercial enterprise business moving forward." How do we do that? The answer is, well, Red Wolf is part of that because it has got, it has got.
It has got a much- it's probably got the greatest share of high, high-security work and/or security work at commercial enterprise in Wellington, which is the main, you know, it is the government market of New Zealand, which will allow us to use their expertise in understanding more advanced systems to help us drive those solutions across the rest of the business, and we haven't had that. And then we've also, you know, as I've noted, had a leadership change to allow us to actually have the skills in our business, which we have had in Australia, in terms of having some different, you know, characters, you know, and experiences driving the business to come in and do that.
So, we have moved forward, like the pipeline has grown, but it hasn't been the same type of experience as, you know, what we saw in Australia, again, for a couple of reasons. And I think as we now move forward, we are seeing that pipeline pick up. I actually had a weekly, you know, pipeline call with the New Zealand team this morning. You know, that pipeline, they've just had the best week, you know, they've actually ever had, and that's on the back of another good week. You know, we just got caught, unfortunately, with a handover at work issue that's, you know, made it look much more vulnerable than it actually is. So, you know, again, it. We're not. We suspect that pipeline will move forward.
As we move forward, we might start to disclose those pipelines differently, but the reality is the Australian pipeline is much, much bigger than the New Zealand pipeline. And so, you know, we'll work our way through it. I'm not sure if that actually answers the question, Nick, but it gives you some context and color around it.
That's helpful. Thanks. Thanks, Dennison. And just a parting question, maybe for Jason: How should we think about tax coming through in the second half and into FY 2027?
Yep. Great. Thanks, Nick. So the tax called out in the financial statements sort of roughly looks like about 21% tax. Given that the back half of the year, you know, arguably will be bigger and arguably more profitable, you know, I think that we should be looking to sort of start to build the profile out on tax up to sort of around the 28% mark. I think we will, you know, be in the pleasant and positive situation of making enough money that we have to pay tax, you know, this coming year and the following years. But I think sort of 28% is probably where, you know, 25%-28% is probably where we should be thinking.
So I'll make a comment on it, too, just for context. So the last 25 result, and I mean, you know, we're all aware of the noise that tax has created for this business. And I'd like to be clear, it actually hasn't been the company that's created the noise. It's been in the advisors' and auditors' opinions around it, rather than that. Our view of our tax situation has strengthened a lot in that we don't see a tax problem, you know, moving forward. We're going to lodge our taxes if we had the tax losses.
Now, that being said, we're burning them so fast, they cease to be an issue anyway, is really what, where Jason's point lands, is that, you know, we're going to have to start paying tax just because we're actually, you know, tax profitable. In this result, though, the first FY 2025, the auditors applied a 60% probability of the tax losses being available, and in this result, they've also applied a 60% probability of the tax being available. So this half's tax result is consistent with the 25, you know, results that we put out.
We believe that 100% probable, so it does mean probably, I don't know exactly how it works, but ultimately we'd probably restate the tax number down in the future as we actually lodge our returns and don't have any issues, 'cause we just don't see that there are any. But, you know, it's not our job. Our auditors are obviously our auditors, and, you know, we defer to their understanding of these things, as we move forward. But, you know, moving forward, you know, we've ultimately that sort of 28% tax rate, for many years, because the thin cap rules looks like where we shake out, you know, with the, with the profitability and the back history of the business as we go forward.
Great. That's it from me. Thanks, guys.
Yep. No worries. Thanks, Nick.
Thanks, Nick. I've got David. David, do you want to ask your question, please?
Yeah, David.
Guys, can you hear me?
Gotcha.
Yep.
Thanks. Just a clarification on the New Zealand CapEx. So what was related to 3G shutdown, and what was the New Zealand medical fleet CapEx? And from, if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, we should forget about that from, you know, the first half of 2027. Is that right?
So, the nature of the business of that medical business is it's a leasing business, so there's always CapEx just to sustain the business.
Yep.
At the moment, what happened is, over the course of about two years, you've had to refleet the whole fleet. So what would otherwise be about a five-year exercise, Jason, I think that's sort of the-
Yeah. Yep.
Timelines around the fleet size. You've had to, rather than over five years, replace the fleet, you're doing it in two years. So it's pushed CapEx up a bunch, you know, and then it's coming down. So it's profiling down now because we've made our last payment, you know, that's essentially brought it forward. On an ongoing basis, Jason, what's the sort of underlying level of CapEx post 3G for medical?
Yeah. So pre-3G, it was sort of around that 3.5 million-4 million mark, and that kind of, sort of lines up with what, what we've been saying, that we've sort of finished around the 6 million-8 million CapEx mark for this financial year. Sort of then coming down to sort of 4 million-6 million ongoing for as long as we are in the medical business in New Zealand, and bring customers on at the rates that we, we have been, plus, you know, additional, sort of, stay-in-business CapEx above that.
Just to be clear, AUD 4 million-AUD 6 million for the New Zealand medical CapEx as a maintenance CapEx number?
In total. No, no, no. No, sorry.
Yeah.
In total.
Yeah.
In total for the business, yep.
Great. Thank you.
So circa four million for New Zealand, that's sort of at a high end. And you know, max AUD 2 million in Australia on, you know, things that we need to drive our business.
Understood.
But even that's on the high side.
Thanks for the clarification. With that Queensland residential deterrence example, I'd have thought that that's an amazingly compelling story around the value that you offer. How are you getting that story out there effectively? Is there an insurance partnership to explore, to try and use their channel to get c ause I imagine for them, it's an amazing boon.
Yeah. Good, great question. So firstly, like, and, you know, it will sound a bit disappointing, as we're not really, and what we're doing is we've got a lot of inbound demand anyway, right? What we're doing is trying to just convert that inbound demand to our higher-value services. What we're focused on doing is trying to drive it into commercial and enterprise because, you know, more cameras equals more dollars for us, and we do have, you know, a fixed fleet of utilization. Well, fleet's the wrong word, but our technicians, you know, we only have so many quality technicians who can actually deploy. So, you know, we're still what I'd call yield optimizing at this stage, because we don't yet. You know, we haven't got enough people to go past that.
That being said, you know, we are, we are learning and targeting, and so, you know, we're going to, for instance, you know, run some community sort of marketing around that area and really target in on it and, you know, and do that just, just because we need to learn our lessons around it as we go, and build that capacity. Ultimately, you know, it's why we have the business model we have. So, you know, when people look at us and go, "Oh, you've got these, all the y ou know, Signature, what's that? IMS, why bother?" You know, it's because what they will allow us to do, as this technology gets better understood and we do hit that penetration point, we can deploy using our partners' labour, you know, and they will tie to us and/or, you know, our monitoring room.
So we get a share of, hopefully a really big share of the growth of these sort of services, and lock them into us, but in a much less labor-intensive way. So at the minute, you know, we're, we're using these stories to try to just upsell our inbound customers, and we are taking all of our stories. And we look, there are many of them now. I mean, we've over 44 arrests. We've got a lot of video. We've got a lot of footage. We can't use much of it, and, you know, a lot of it's subject to confidentiality, and, you know, I need people to know that, you know, we, we watch your perimeter, and we don't show everybody yet the outside of your house, for instance.
But it's an amazingly powerful thing, and our conversion rates are very high when they see it. So we'll learn it as we go a little bit too, David. Like, we've just got to keep building scale, and as we scale, we'll invest back more into marketing more generally. Really important, though, I want the ADT name to represent, like, the premium end of the market, right? Like commercial enterprise premium. But if you call us and want us to look after your property, your holiday house, your, your parents, your whatever, yeah, we absolutely do that, and we will do that.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would've thought that, you know, a testimonial would probably be reasonably easy to get from that family. And-
Just a lot like-
you know-
The comment-
You'd blow the doors off.
Yeah.
Use your installation partners, and then you guys just keep the high ROI, you know, monitoring business.
No, exactly. But the challenge here, and I mean, if I just go back to why we have the shape and why the journey's unfolded as we have, is fundamentally it's a very slow-to-change industry. And so, you know, when we started with IMG, back in the Threat Protect to IMG days, you know, we were just a monitoring station, and we thought we could go out, you know, link all this technology to us, and all the other security companies would be so delighted and run with it and go for it. And they, they just yo u know, I think structurally, but partly because of their own economic business models, didn't.
So really what we're doing is we're showing the industry what good looks like with ADT, and ADT can be a huge and successful business, but ultimately, as they see it, get jealous and will want a piece of it, we're their partner. You know, "Come and deal with us," and to your point, that will drive, you know, the much more scalable ROI. And we're working hard on influencing that. I should actually call out, we've just signed a partnership agreement with Jim's, Jim's Group, so Jim's Mowers, Jim's Security, and they will be starting to resell effectively our, you know, video guarding product through their network. And we have a financial model with them to try to start to do this, David.
So you might hear about this type of thing more through Jim's than you may through ADT, but effectively, we're the beneficiary at the end of it.
Great, I'll hand it back. Right.
Thanks, David. Foti, do you wanna ask your question, please?
Hey, guys, can you hear me?
Gotcha.
Brilliant. Thank you. Congrats on the result, despite the NZ pullback. But, just a quick one on, two quick questions if I can, please. On Tyco, has it seen any impacts given the NZ economy and what's happened recently?
Looking backwards, they did see, s orry, I'll step back. In fire services, what happens in a tough economy is there's less new project work, and so again, with a fixed pool of sort of technical labor, what can happen is, you know, if then everybody suddenly decides to try and lock into the service contract. So a fire business, a fire services business is very regulated around Building Warrants of Fitness, signing off that fire system every year. Like, it's a much, it's an even higher certified industry and, and serious industry than, say, the security industry, as you'd expect with fire. And so in a slower economy, you get a lot more price competition for service work, and they did see that back six months or a year ago.
Now, they themselves have gone through, had already, prior to us obviously being involved, gone through essentially a new lease of life, a new reinvestment, and they, they're actually exiting all that with, with real momentum and actually picking back up, in that area. Wormald, again, just to use that name, whisper that name, rather than shout that name, t hat is what the name you'll see, by the way, if you were in New Zealand trying to find Tyco New Zealand. You would never find it. You'd see Wormald. You won't see it as much as, as you'll see it in the future under our ownership, but, but it is the name you'd see.
They have their business is really focused around service, and so yeah, they've got price competitive, but that has abated, and they've actually been pulling back some major work. I probably aren't able to disclose, you know, what's been going on there yet and some of the success they're having, but, you know, I'm really excited about getting them into our business, what they mean for us in terms of leveraging both our footprint in New Zealand and also, you know, their relationships. But, but man, we've been lucky. You know, great, great timing to be picking it up, certainly coming out the back end of the recession.
The cycle, sort of for the business, you know, what it does and, you know, and then ultimately, you know, again, whispering it quietly, the price, you know, that we're able to achieve, which has come about 'cause of years of relationship work and I guess pre-seeding. You know, I think we're gonna look back on that, you know, very, very favorably, you know, in the future when we look back as a major milestone for our business.
Okay, brilliant. Good to know. Thank you. That's really helpful. And, on the video guarding piece, when does o bviously, it's got great growth rates, but coming off a really low base.
Base.
When does it become a really, like, a substantial part of the business? At what sort of numbers, customer numbers or revenue you're looking for?
Yeah. And look, that is sort of a key piece to the business, if I'm to be straight about it, in the moving forward. You know, the situation we have is you have an intrusion base that we still sell a lot of intrusion alarms, and we will. There is a value to them, but they are much lower value relative to this product. But largely, it's hard to maintain that base going forward. Like, people are falling away and have, you know, for some time away from intrusion alarms. They don't see the point or value, particularly when they go to Bunnings or, you know, like Ring or whatever and get a camera. These solutions are much different, though, right? What we are offering, this solution is actually proactive security.
Effectively, you're putting a security guard, you know, on your property wherever you want it, 24 hours a day. The proposition for us is the value proposition is about three times plus higher than an intrusion alarm. So effectively, what that means is, you know, we only have to sell one of these for every three intrusion alarms for it to be equivalent. And to your point, we need to, you know, we need to get over the wave, effectively, of the old intrusion alarms to get ahead of it. You know, we're, we're forecasting for that to happen, you know, this half, frankly, and where we see it is in monitoring revenue, and so monitoring revenue starting, you know, to go up and then start to accelerate is, is sort of where you will see it at a, at a group, you know, group level.
We've had- we do have months where that happens, but we're still a little bit sporadic at the moment. At the moment, it's depending on, you know, timing of bringing on some of the industrial commercial sites that we've, you know, picked up and been picking up. And so we need a bit more breadth and, um, cadence kind of in that portfolio for it to be consistently through, but we expect that to kind of happen in the next period. It's another one of those ones where I don't want to be overly specific, only because I like my job, and I don't want to overpromise on a particular date that we may or may not be able to control precisely, but it, it's certainly this year.
And then from there, you know, we look to accelerate it, and then as sort of to the point that we made in David's question, we'd expect to see that also accelerate out across our partners and channels, too, and ultimately really pull us forward. You know, monitoring in our partner businesses is actually going up, or revenue is going up, albeit still modestly at the moment. So it's a really important question. You know, our expectation is this year, and that's why we expect to see organic growth accelerate, you know, as we look into the future from here.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Dennison. We've got a few questions in the Q&A section. So I've got Stella's question. Stella, you're welcome to go off mute and ask your question. Otherwise, I can read that out. So Stella's question is, "FY 2025 exit EBITDA on pro forma basis was the AUD mid-40s. FY 2026 based on a higher H2 is about the same level. What's the outlook on the organic EBITDA growth?" That's the first half of the question.
Sorry, I'm not sure I totally understand the question, but underlying organic, you know, growth is sitting at a bit, well, sorry, in Australia, obviously, this half, the New Zealand business has pulled the group level back, but it's running at about 8%. So, half, half-on-half, that's sort of where we sit, and we, I mean, that will normalize out, we think, with the second half of New Zealand back on track. So, you know, question is, when does that go forward? I think last year, I won't be able to exactly remember, but I think EBITDA was about AUD 36 million for the full year, around that number. So, you know, we're talking about, we're forecasting a sort of a AUD 43 million, you know, pre the Tyco acquisition this year, with, you know, not actually that substantial.
The BNP and recent Western Advance acquisitions were not actually that substantial at a group EBITDA level. So, you know, that is far more organic, you know, pickup than acquisition pickup. And then obviously, as we go into next year, and yet Tyco and that will be a material pickup, you know, via acquisition. So, not sure I'm answering the question exactly. So I'm happy to take it offline, but, you know, yeah, we're expecting 43, of which a fair chunk of that from the 36 is organic. You know, that 8% kind of growth rate underlying and then looking to accelerate it, you know, as we move forward, is probably the best I can do. But-
Second half of Stella's question, Dennison, is more relating to our latest acquisitions. What she's asking is if we've seen any significant national accounts growth, I mean, after acquisitions.
Oh, no, for sure. So look, I made the comment before, but it's consistent today. Every business that we've bought, actually with the exception of one, which I can call out, but I won't spend a lot of time on, has actually grown the year after we have taken control, and that's been growth in their, largely in their existing books and us saying yes and being open, you know, to growth. Often it's, you know, helping them in different geographies where they weren't before or with some, you know, useful services or access to new products, like maybe, you know, accessing our Gallagher channel, channel partnerships and things like that, for instance. So absolutely, seeing commercial, national, you know, growth, you know, year on year, you know, frankly, quite substantial.
National, you know, we have a large customer in the mining sector who's effectively starting to bankroll us off their own back into a geography that we've historically been strong in but don't really have a presence today because they want us to be their preferred, you know, security partner certainly in Australasia, you know, to grow. So just as an indication, but yeah, no, growth around that, and around that is where, you know, a lot of our growth is coming from.
Thanks, Dennison. Got another question from Cliff Garner. Cliff, I'm happy for you to go off mute and ask your question.
Equal to Adjusted EBITDA. Yeah, I can see your question there, Cliff, if you're happy. Yeah, it's operating cash flow will never equal Adjusted EBITDA, because in operating cash flow, you've got interest and tax. So operating cash flow, pre-interest and tax, is actually very close to EBITDA now. Like, this is largely a cash business, and that is why we use Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is trying to get, you know, one, is a sense of, you know, truly recurring. You know, what is actually underlying this business, you know, produced consistently in a recurring fashion? And it's, you know, it is pre the interest and tax, and so, we haven't actually done the sort of calculation here.
I think we did do it, you know, a year or so ago once, you know, to make the case that, you know, Adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow, you know, less interest, tax, is pretty consistent. Then obviously, the only other thing is working capital. And so, you know, in this half, you know, we had AUD 2.2 million increase in working capital for the half on June, and that's the investment in inventory that we expect to see at this sort of time of year as we look to deploy into the second half and that growth, you know, that we've got, you know, coming through in the pipeline. So, yeah, we can take it off notice.
Look, our discussion, and we had this discussion actually yesterday, is, you know, probably for the full year, we'll do again, as we have done before, just another chart just to add the, to show the, the cash conversion, tracking back to the P&L. We just ran out of time, this half to get that done. I guess I'd actually probably just second that, just for the avoidance of doubt, Jason made a point when he was talking about cash flow. You know, this half, we bought over AUD 8 million of acquisitions, which were completely cash-funded, right? So, you know, the business generates good cash.
Certainly, you know, the first quarter doesn't feel that way and probably won't ever feel that way, but certainly, as you go through the full year, the business does. And even in this half, you know, we've deployed over AUD 8 million of cash into acquisitions pre the Tyco, which is when we did raise some money because we wanted to keep our balance sheet, you know, you know, I guess, in a conservative setting. So, you know, that's probably the other way I'll put to you just as a pre-statement about the cash generation. You know, we've deployed a lot of capital in this half, you know, and our cash did actually still, you know, hold together and go up effectively underlying.
Thanks, Dennison. I've got David back. David, do you want to go for me and ask a question?
Yeah. Go, David.
Yeah, sorry, and sorry to harp on about it.
No, it's good.
Just thinking through, when you made the big acquisition, the big initial acquisition, from Tyco last time, there was a bit of CapEx you didn't expect, I think, to see.
Yeah, yeah.
I imagine that you've been much more, rigorous around the, you know, thinking about those issues with this acquisition. But, to cut to the, to the chase, was the AUD 6 million per annum total maintenance CapEx number, that you gave, is that including the Tyco acquisitions, as well?
No, it's not. So, but I guess just to step back again. So underlying everything in this business, if we're lucky, we've got AUD 2 million of standard business capital, and that, even with the acquisitions we've made in the last, you know, since ADT, has hardly shifted. Like, it's, you know, it probably has, but it's, I'd call it relatively immaterial. These are service businesses. The challenge we had with ADT was, well, numerous, but one was it was just this. We had no systems, process, insight. You know, we're really buying a really hairy one to fix, and that was the journey we had to go on to get to where we are today. This time around, we're buying a fully serviced business, so there's no self-subsidization, capitalization.
It is literally a pay-for-service business, and it's very clean. So, you know, one of the things and sorry, I'll say it for a sec, it sounds like I'm harping a bit, but since we've bought ADT, like, everything we've bought is quality. Like, we're not out looking for really dirty things that we can do a lot of work on. We're now in a position where, you know, we're really strong, and if we do something and/or it has to add value, it's opportunistic and it's quality. And so, you know, I'll go back to why I'm so sort of, I guess, "proud" is a funny word to say, but so proud to be able for us to pick up and have Wormald in our business.
You know, again, the price is, you know, something I never thought we would achieve. I didn't actually think it would be on our radar. So the underlying stand business CapEx will go up a bit, David, but given it, it's a, you know, and I don't mean only, but AUD 10 million EBITDA business, you know, it might be AUD 200,000-AUD 300,000 a year type of thing. It's not going to be millions of AUD. You know, it's a very good cash business.
Yeah, got it. No, I mean, it's an amazing acquisition. It's amazing to hit the same seller twice for at amazing valuations. Next question, it relates back to that, which is the M&A landscape. It's, you know, forgive me, but it's probably been a primary driver of growth over the last few years.
Yeah.
What's left out there, and, you know, it seems to me like M&A probably goes into the backseat now.
Yeah, it's, I mean, a great, great question. Much appreciated. You know, we've used M&A to build a business, right? And just to make it very clear to those that haven't heard me say this before, like, whilst we look like a roll-up, like, we've been doing it to construct the business in a very clean business, and that's been the focus. You know, that's why, you know, I would spend a lot of time with people interested on our values and what we're actually trying to do. We've now built that business, so we actually have all of the pieces we really need.
From here, you know, there are things that can add value that we could do, but you know, if I got hit by a bus today, you know, we've really got the business we need to now go on and do. So it has very much been about building a business. We've got the business. Now we've got to drive the business and, you know, prove it up. That being said, you know, to answer your question, there's heaps. It's a very fragmented industry, like, yeah, and it's also an aged one. So I think over the next couple of years, there's just going to be, you know, repeatedly and ongoingly, lots of opportunities. They're various shape from.
You know, there are a couple of potential big ones out there through to, you know, ones that will be immaterial, that, you know, probably don't even necessarily get fully disclosed because they just more like run a business. Obviously, we'll disclose, like, everything, but, you know, they're not that material. From here, my feedback to the business in Australia particularly is, you know, we, we don't, we don't need anything, but there are opportunities for us to try to enable, to accelerate growth. And to call it out, and I'll be, you know, very open about it, now we're in a situation where a nd Janine actually directly runs the inbound sales team at ADT. In the last sort of six or seven months, she had a sort of job variation.
Our inbound sales guys, we're very good now if you call up to where they can quote from a desk. So if you call, you know, if it's a house, a residence, a single slot, you know, we're good at that, and the guys can do that, and, you know, we've come a long, long way and, you know, try and sell you up to guard level services, ADT Guard, that is. We're if it comes through as a small business, sort of multi-site, a little bit complex, might need to see, yep, we can absolutely do that. We've got, you know, incredibly talented engineers, technicians, what have you.
The problem at the moment is they are working on AUD 3 million, AUD 4 million, or AUD 5 million deals over a long time, so it tends to get a little bit lost in what we're doing. And so we've actually got a bit, you know, quite a gap in our business around, you know, what I call sort of SME, small business and deploying, but we've got a lot of demand there. And so that ADT Guard business, so we bought BNP was the last acquisition we made, that business effectively evolved, even though BNP still has its presence to be ADT Guard, where David Medhurst, who was one of the founders of Southern Cross Protection, runs.
They are perfectly positioned to be able to go out, you know, on the street around these, you know, multiple car dealers, whatever, and pick up that work where there's a lot of demand and a lot of value. I think if we could pick up more scale in that area, we would be able to accelerate our growth even faster. And so again, you know, opportunistically, we may still do things, but we're not in a position of going, "Oh, we've got to do something in the next year to solve some sort of problem." We've got a really good business now. We've just got to make sure we use the capital really well. I will be crystal clear, too, though, you know, we haven't paid above 3.5x multiple for a security services business.
We did pay 4x for Wormald, which, by the way, last transacted the Wormald portfolio in Australia in 2016 for above 10x EBITDA. I don't know the exact number, but I know it was above 10x, so, you know, incredibly good value, you know, pick up there. I'm not intending to tip anybody just because our business has got better and the industry looks more exciting. So our criteria around valuation is, is non-negotiable. If people ring and want to are interested to sell or want to have a discussion, there's no price conversation to be had here, but there might be value propositions and things we can do. So, from here, it will be interesting, David.
We'll just have to, you know, sort of see how the next six months to a year sort of progress, but we're very focused on delivering, you know, increasing growth, you know, increasing cash, and then increasing returns. That's our real focus.
Thanks. And, just back, I touched on insurance. Are your clients seeing a benefit from insurance companies yet? Are they recognizing the value?
Yeah. Thank you.
In premiums?
I know you asked another question, I missed it. A great question. I mean, the challenge with insurance is absolutely. So, like, for sure, I mean, we can show you case study and say, "This business did not get ripped off. It would have lost AUD 30,000, AUD 40,000 of product if we hadn't have been deployed to site to stop that from happening." That has to come off. You know, if you're an insurer, that is, that is a claim not made, you know, money not spent. You know, it, it is a slam dunk, economically positive proposition for insurer. Challenge is the insurers are all massive, right? And, and even though we might be large and have large aspirations, we're still relatively small.
First problem, so just getting into them is difficult, and I think you could invest a lot of energy at the moment. I have tried, and it's hard to get cut through. So I think seeing is believing. We need to get ourselves in a position where they see us, and they actually go, "Oh, we should do that," and come to us, and we'll keep trying to open those doors. Second problem, though, is they've kind of heard this before, right? And the security industry variously, I mean, early in my time here, I reached out to one of them, unnamed, sat down, they said, "Oh, yeah, you're just the next guy.
Like, we've all heard about this insurance thing, and it should be good, but, you know, everyone always says that nothing happens." I think fundamentally, ultimately, it broke down because there wasn't really value in the proposition. So, you know, there wasn't that actual imperative to drive. So a little bit like your question around marketing, like, we're, we're trying to find our way, like, how do we open that door? Who realizes? I mean, on an economic, industrial logic basis, if I was the largest insurance company in the land doing property, you know, insurance, I would buy us today, right? Because you could turn around, own the service with a brand and, and cross-subsidize it.
You will lower your claims probably by. I don't know what the exact claim dollars are for burglary and theft and car theft on property in Australia, but if you halved that, you know, you're talking about AUD billions of value. So, you know, are they smart enough to do it? I don't want to be bought, just to be clear. That's not something I'm looking for. But, you know, at this point, you know, we haven't yet registered enough, you know, I guess, they can't see us yet to go, "Oh," for the penny to drop.
But we'll keep trying to open those doors, and to the extent that anybody on the call has insights into how to do that at the right level, to the right people, you know, we're totally open to do that and to make our case. Somebody, and whoever picks it up first, will get a real advantage, and we look forward to working with them.
Perfect. Thanks. I'll hand it on.
David. Andre, do you want to ask your question, please?
Thanks, sure. Just checking you guys can hear me.
Yep. Got you, Andre. How are you going?
Great. Well, thank you. My question is, how much more room there is to run with growing your business with existing customers? It's been, for me, that's been one of the themes of this call, both companies or, or, you know, government or whoever, saying, "Okay, let's expand geographically with you as the, you know, national Australasian vendor." But also, you've mentioned around, you know, maybe starting with install work and then going down the value chain or, you know, down the pyramid, you had it, and getting more recurring revenue. So, yeah, just interested in any color you can give on how much further room there is to run with existing customers, growing with them, and doing more value for them.
Yeah. Good, good question. There's sort of two different existing customers. So there's the traditional ADT. I'll call them security customer. Again, I'll use the word intrusion alarm customer. I'm not optimistic that there's a lot of value there. Those customers historically have been subsidized and with cheap alarm systems, you know, and, you know, I'm not sure they are the go-to. I think the risk with those customers, if we highlight that what they have is not necessarily as valuable as they might have thought, we'd probably just run the risk of increasing churn in the short term. In the commercial side, I think it's very different.
I think the commercial side is, you know, where we have relationships, you know, we absolutely can grow it because it largely is a cost saving at the very least for them. I mean, if we are taking out guarding and/or patrol work that they might be paying for today, and/or response work, you know, at the very least, we can be a pretty decent cost saving, which in today's world is a positive. But better than that, it's a positive cost saving. It actually adds value and does a better solution for them. So I think there's a lot more we can do there.
The reality is, though, this is an adoption type of exercise, and so typically, even in those customers, you know, while there's very smart people, they've largely probably been in security services for a lot of their career, and/or they're in procurement, maybe IT. And so, if you've come from security and somebody comes and pitches you video, video itself has been around for a long time. Like, we've all been able to put cameras in our houses and up and down the street for many years now. The change here is the AI and the use of technology. Now we're in a world where some people still run their businesses on paper and doves, and some people are using AI and Claude and all these things.
It's a very, very wide world we're operating in today, all of us, and very few of the people that are using AI and having their cars drive them to work are actually, you know, 25-year veterans of the security industry, so their confidence in early adoption is relatively low. So there's quite a bit of trial work, and I'll call it a better example. I mentioned when I talked about New Zealand, the first deterrence in New Zealand, that actual site was a trial site. So we've yet to really charge them any real dollars because we said and I said to the team, "Just go and find someone and put it in and show them that it works," which we've done.
You know, from now, I'd expect hopefully over the course of this next six months to a year, they will realize that we've probably saved them, in that one event, more money than it will cost them to deploy that service across all their other car yards in New Zealand. And so it's a bit of a penetration game. It'll take time. Our existing customers, you know, we can move at the rate they can move, is probably the way I'd put it, and then ultimately, though, it's still gonna be about widening. So, you know, I think in reality, the way I approach this is it's almost just a new customer.
It's a new conversation we are having with the world about what electronic security can do, and we have to approach it like that, and we have to find the people that are, that are ready to go and want to go. Not sure if that answers your question directly, but hopefully it gives you a flavor.
It does. Thanks very much, and congratulations on the half.
Thank you. Cheers.
That's it for all the questions, Dennison.
Great. Look, I'll—I won't. I think we've had a chance. Really appreciate your time. Sorry that we've overrun, but, but appreciate the questions and enjoy the questions and, and are thankful for your, your interest. Again, you know, if anybody does have incidents, I'll finish with a story. One of the people I worked with, have worked with over the years there, they have a person in their business who had someone arrive at their house, in Melbourne, but, rang, rang a Ring doorbell at three in the morning, a couple of Sundays ago. Three people with masks on. Pretty terrifying thing to have happen. You know, pleased to say that today they have ADT Guard, and they've been able to sleep, you know, really soundly, now, since then.
But, and no sense of irony in this comment, but a week after that event, someone was actually killed in that suburb with some violent sort of criminal activity. And so, you know, what we've got here is a real opportunity to do some, you know, some fundamental good and add value and create a really great business. This half was a solid half. I know the New Zealand bit weighed us down a bit, but we're pretty confident that that reverts and then moves forward.
Fundamentally, this business has got the wind up and, you know, if you come across the business, you'll see a lot of people that are excited about what we're doing, excited about the conversations we're having, and we're excited to see the financials continue to clean up, improve and ultimately, you know, drive us forward to be a really great, you know, cash generative, successful business. So thanks for your support. I'm sure I'll see some of you around over the next couple of weeks. If you do have any questions, Jason, Janine, and I are available. Come through. I'm happy to take them and, you know, look forward to the journey in the next couple of years ahead. Thank you.