Good morning and thank you for joining us for Lindsay Australia 's FY 2025 full year results presentation. I'm Clay McDonald, CEO Lindsay Australia. I'm joined today by our CFO, Justin Green, and our Chief Operating Officer, Craig Baker, who will be available for questions following the presentation. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are located today. This is traditional Turrbal and Jagera Country. I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past, present, and Lindsay Australia is a national leader in integrated rural services and refrigerated transport. We operate across Australia's major horticultural regions and freight corridors, delivering essential inputs, packaging, and logistics solutions to the agricultural, manufacturing, and temperature-controlled food sectors. Our mission is to be the first choice in refrigerated transport throughout Australia.
To achieve this, we need to create a compelling value proposition to our customers so they choose us, recommend us to others, and grow with us through the cycles. By building on 70 years of network development and providing customers with the benefits of our unique integrated operating model, we're able to connect more growers to markets, wholesalers to retailers, and exporters to international buyers. Our recent investment enables us to provide flexible road, rail, and trans-based shipping services while utilizing our depot and cross-dock infrastructure across 60 unique locations. At approximately 12% of the national refrigerated transport market, we have plenty of opportunity to grow and become the first choice for refrigerated transport services for many more customers. The operating environment in FY 2025 remains challenging, shaped by elevated cost pressures, flat consumer demand, and heightened competition, particularly in the transport sector where excess capacity continues to weigh on pricing.
However, as soon as this slides, we're seeing early signs of market rationalization with sector exits and industry consolidation increasing. In the short term, we expect both the operating competitive environment dynamics to persist, however Lindsay's scale, integrated model, renowned customer service level, and strong balance sheet position us to navigate this volatility. Looking further ahead, the long-term fundamentals of our core markets remain compelling. Population growth, evolving consumer preferences, and increased demand for fresh, high-quality produce, dairy, and protein are driving structural growth in both the horticultural and refrigerated logistics sectors. These trends, combined with our combined investment in the network expansion and operational transformation, provide a strong foundation for sustainable growth. FY 2025 marked a significant year of strategic execution across both network expansion and operational transformation.
Through targeted acquisitions, including GJ Freight and SRT Logistics, we extended our Southwest Western Australia and Tasmania, enhancing our national coverage and diversifying our earnings base. These moves strengthened our counter-seasonal capability and deepened our presence in the fast-growing horticultural regions and lower-risk areas. Our targeted geographical expansion lessens freight seasonality, improves freight balance, and reduces earnings volatility. As you can see by the graphs on the right, over the last few years, we've been diversifying our region and by region and by product, and we've had positive gains in both the commercial and grocery, plus the high-value protein and dairy categories. On the transformation front, we continue to embed efficiency initiatives across procurement, systems, and fleet utilization. The shift to higher capacity combinations will enhance capital returns, facilitate operational scalability, and bring transit volume benefits to our customers.
To support the larger combinations and future growth, we've continued to invest in and develop key flow connecting infrastructure. The Adelaide expansion has reached practical completion, and Perth's new 35,000 square meter facility will be operational by November this year, removing a significant growth bottleneck in the West. As the slide indicates, pursuing opportunities to move more freight more efficiently is a key pillar of our transformation journey. Work is underway to trial AB triples on discrete long-run corridors. These high productivity units can carry 56 pallets, 65% higher than the current B double industry standard. Constantly looking at ways to do things better is central to our long-term enabling Lindsay to deliver consistent, high-quality service, unlock synergies, and build a resilient platform for future growth. I'd now like to turn to the FY 2025 performance highlights.
Despite challenging conditions, Lindsay delivered a resilient full-year result. Revenue grew to $849.8 million, up 5.6% on FY 2024. Underlying EBITDA was $81.4 million, down 11.7%, and aligned to the midpoint of our guidance provided in May. The result reflects a combination of deliberate capacity and capability investments, weather impacts, and margin pressure from elevated costs and competitive pricing. Underlying NPAT was $22.3 million, down 26.6%, impacted by lower EBITDA and higher interest and depreciation charges following our recent investment cycle. The key safety metric of lost time injury frequency rate improved by 11%. However, we have significant opportunity for further improvement as our safety systems and leadership develop. The company's financial performance enabled the board to declare a fully franked final dividend of $0.015, bringing the full-year dividend to $0.038.
Taking a closer look at segment performance, transport delivered core revenue growth of 6% or $28 million, excluding the impacts of fuel. Growth with existing retail customers and new customer wins in protein and dairy categories helped offset softness in horticulture. Vile revenues grew by 2.8% and road revenue increased by 7.3%, supported by GJ Freight acquisition and expansion into regional Victoria. Earnings for transport decreased $7 million, with EBITDA margins tightening by 1.7%- 16.7%. Corridor imbalances in Queensland, weather impacts, and cost and rate pressure contributed to the result. Rural revenue rose 8.7% to $165.5 million, with EBITDA up 10.3% to $10 million, its second best year on record. Positive gains in higher margin categories, cost control, and market share gains underpin performance.
Rural business is an important part of our unique integrated operating model, and its performance this year has been very pleasing when considering the difficult trading conditions. China contributed $110.2 million in revenue, up 26.1%, with EBITDA of $3.6 million. While retail sales remain subdued, integration of the Ngambia and Seymour stores progressed well, and product diversification continues. Michael Moroney, the CEO of WB Hunter, announced his retirement earlier this year. I'd like to thank Michael for his leadership and contribution to the Hunter's business over many years. We've appointed the GM of our rural business, Chris Curtin, to oversee WB Hunter. We're confident that bringing rural Hunters and our transport divisions closer will result in improved outcomes in the Hunter business going forward. I'd now like to hand over to Justin to take us through the numbers in more detail.
Thanks, Clay. Welcome all. Clay touched on the market dynamics that have impacted our earnings, and you can see that impact flow through to a reduction in a number of our key metrics. On the next few slides, I will touch on key financial highlights and go into more detail on how we are well positioned to manage this current cycle. Firstly, I just want to call out on the earnings per share table that just under one tenth of the reduction in the EPS came from higher depreciation and interest costs. At the half year, we called out the accelerated depreciation on the second-hand assets we acquired in 2023. The higher depreciation will continue for the next six months, but will normalize in the second half of 2026. Recent interest rate cuts are a positive, and those cuts will flow to a reduction in our funding costs.
We anticipate the 2026 CapEx program will be funded on average around 1% less than 2025. Gross growth for the year is below our long-term target of 20%. We remain positive on this result given the long-term investments we have made. At the end of the year, we have $280 million in invested capital, which was an increase of $24 million. Invested capital has increased close to $100 million in the past four years. Taking a short-term focus by deferring investments until market conditions improve would have a negative impact on future profitability. Investments we have made will unlock future growth and drive efficiency and put us in a competitive position. You see here on the CapEx slide a breakdown of the $50 million we invested for the year.
Both CapEx focus on the larger trailer combinations as part of the transformation program, and $9 million we invested for the year in freehold facility expansions will unlock growth constraints and improve operational performance. Just a note on this slide that the 2025 CapEx spend does not include SRT Logistics. SRT's investment in fleet has been significant, coming to almost $31 million in the past three years. Investments made by SRT were a major attraction for that deal. We have included SRT in the 2026 forecast at a normalized $6 million per annum. Following on from the CapEx slide, we wanted to show how the fleet profile is well positioned. Advancements in safety tech, driver comfort, efficiency, and carbon reduction are all key attractions for operating a modern fleet. Fleet investment will continue to remain a priority, so we take advantage of those advancements.
We also want to highlight on this slide the facility expansions over the past few years, which have been significant. With Perth coming online in the next couple of months and Adelaide now complete, all capital city facilities have capacity for future growth. Investments we make in facilities do have a negative short-term impact on growth, but we look past that short-term impact as these investments drive long-term Lindsay's our customers, and our shareholders. For borrowings, you will see on the bottom table that our net leverage ratio finished the year at 1.53x , comfortably within our target range. On a pro forma basis, post the SRT Logistics acquisition, net leverage comes in at the top end of our range. A path back to the midpoint occurs over the next 18 months as the SRT earnings flow through.
We were comfortable to go to the higher end of the range for such a quality asset. Post the SRT acquisition, the group still maintains ample funding capacity with over $100 million of headroom across our funding facilities. We remain well positioned to move swiftly if opportunities arise, which is really important in the current trading environment. I want to spend a little time on the cash flow slide as there are a few moving parts I want to call out. Capital-intensive businesses, the COVID-related tax incentives meant businesses were able to accelerate tax depreciation and defer cash tax payments. You'll see here the Lindsay's example, no cash was paid between 2021 and 2024. The initiative only deferred those tax payments, though, with a catch-up due in future years.
In 2025, we see the first year of Lindsay's with $22 million in cash. Lindsay's prepared well and kept sufficient cash reserves to meet these obligations. We'll see further unwinding in 2026, but not to the same extent as this year. This all means that our operating cash has fluctuated a bit over the past few years. Historically, our cash conversion is around 80%, and we expect that conversion rate to continue in future years. On the free cash flow table on the right, we have normalised this year's cash tax payment. This is a better indicator for free cash flow for the year. As Clay mentioned, the board has declared a final fully franked dividend of $0.015 per share, bringing the full-year dividends to $0.038 per share fully franked.
Post three key acquisitions in 2025, we retain a disciplined approach to capital management. A strong, resilient, and flexible balance sheet provides confidence to continue to invest for growth, transformation, while balancing our shareholder expectations. Thank you, and I'll hand back to Clay.
Thanks, Justin. Before I go to closing remarks, I'm pleased to provide an update on the acquisition of SRT Logistics that we announced in May and completed on the 1st of July. As outlined in o[ur announcement, SRT offers a range of positive benefits to Lindsay customers and shareholders. These include attractive financial outcomes, the ability to extend and connect Lindsay's network, geographic and service diversification, and synergy and capability benefits. SRT's scaled platform provides a compelling entry point into the attractive Tasmanian road freight and trans-based shipping markets.
The transaction is expected to deliver positive financial outcomes for Lindsay and its shareholders with 15% EPS accretion on an FY 2025 pro forma pre-synergies basis. SRT's FY 2025 results finished in line with our due diligence expectations. The consolidated logistics network unlocks opportunities to offer existing customers transport and logistics services on a national scale, enhancing the value and competitiveness of Lindsay's service offering. Geographic and customer diversification achieved through the acquisition increases operational resilience and reduces exposure to high-risk regions. In addition, SRT is a renowned secondary freight carrier. Incorporating this capability into the Lindsay business will enable us to develop secondary solutions for our customers in a market we have previously not competed in. In our announcement, we identified $1 million of synergies that could be delivered in FY 2026, and we remain confident of that number.
Most importantly, we've been impressed with the performance culture, capability, and professionalism of SRT's people and leaders. The cultures feel very aligned, and early integration has been positive. Bob Miller and the SRT leadership team bring tremendous capability to the Lindsay organisation, and we look forward to creating value for customers and shareholders as we bring the businesses together. FY 2025 has demonstrated the strength of our unique integrated operating model, the resilience of our diversified operations, and the execution of our strategy through key investment decisions. This year's progress adds to the 70 years of continued investment in the network, and the additions of GJ and SRT enhance our operating reach and capability whilst delivering strong earnings per share growth to our shareholders.
We continue to evolve from the regions we service to the products we carry and the customers we serve, and whilst conditions are expected to remain challenging in the near term, we continue to make strategic through-cycle investment decisions. We focus on no regrets, key value creation levers, servicing the customers, building capability within our people, cost control, and transforming our business to be as productive and efficient as possible. Our focus and how we create value in the near term will be to integrate quickly and effectively, to grow sustainably, and to utilise our unique operating model to become the customer's first choice in refrigerated transport throughout Australia. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Our first question comes from the line of Ben Wilson. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. Morning, gentlemen. Well done on a fairly solid result there. Just first question, a simple one. In terms of CapEx, I think you laid out $6 million in maintenance CapEx for SRT Logistics in FY 2026. Can we take that as sort of the level of sustainable CapEx required for that business going forward? From a growth CapEx point of view, you mentioned they've obviously made quite an investment in recent years. Are they fairly done in terms of growth CapEx requirements for the foreseeable future?
Thanks, Ben. Yeah, really great question. We wanted to call out that go-forward CapEx for SRT because they have invested materially over the last three years with that $31 million for growth and for their maintenance. It was really pleasing when we picked up that business that they had gone through this massive investment profile, similar to how Lindsay's approaches its CapEx. $6 million is a normalized CapEx for the SRT business, normal maintenance CapEx for the SRT business. Our benefit with these two businesses now, we've got obviously scale Lindsay and SRT with unique equipment that will be able to be shared between those businesses. Growth CapEx, first of all, internally makes sure that we've got our existing assets working optimally between the two businesses and we will be able to share equipment between two businesses.
Yeah, it's really positive for the business with that $31 million that had already been invested for growth.
Great, thanks very much, Justin. Second question, Cain to ask about the competitive environment and your Slide 5 is really helpful in terms of showing the number of road and rail insolvencies and prime mover registrations. That prime mover registrations, I'm guessing, is sort of across the entire country, across all industries. Just wondering, in terms of the sort of refrigerated food and beverage freight market, what are you seeing specifically there in terms of capacity increases or decreases?
Thanks, Ben. I think what we're trying to draw out here is the industry is in a dynamic state, and we've highlighted that throughout the presentation. I think we've highlighted it leading into this presentation, certainly over the last sort of 12- 18 months. Lindsay's been through these cycles before. I'm going to ask Craig to give us a little bit of color in a second, but Lindsay's been through these cycles before. The graph on the left really is to highlight that we've seen a peak in new truck registrations. I don't think we break those down specifically into dry and refrigerated freight, only to say that those prime movers, those heavy prime movers, the new registrations have peaked and come down. If you look at that line, it kind of corresponds with the same line on having to pay now tax on those assets.
There's a corresponding line with, they all kind of line up with prime mover registrations and insolvencies, right? We've been through this cycle before. I'll probably just throw to Craig on how that's playing out. Thanks, Ben.
Morning, Ben. Yeah, look, I think one thing to highlight is Lindsay's, we continue to gain market share in multiple categories and customers, particularly those who value safety, service reliability, and more importantly, some of the recent times as a financially stable provider. That's become a real tick in the box for large companies when they look for a provider. Obviously, we've touched on the voluntary administrations and the registrations that are in decline. Why Lindsay is a little bit different is it's probably a unique integrated model offering choices in road and rail. Now that we have the SRT acquisition, we can now do that sea across basque freight. I think all these solutions give our customers a broad range of services to choose the best fit for their requirements.
You roll in the Lindsay rural side of the business and we are very flexible on our solutions into the marketplace and that sort of differentiates ourselves a little from our competitors. I've been in this business for 27 years and we've been through this cycle multiple times and I think we're in a great position currently, the best I've ever seen with our, you know, we've got a really diversified portfolio today in multiple categories and the range of services we supply. Plus, with all the new locations we're in, we're certainly in a great position to take advantage when this tide turns.
No, it's really helpful color. Thanks, Clay and Craig. Just one last question, if I may. Just interested in terms of outlook for upcoming weather conditions over the coming summer. Are you seeing any sort of reliable forecasts yet as to whether we're likely to see another [La Nina] or, you know, touch wood, some dry conditions?
Craig, what's the weather doing? What are we seeing around?
I can tell you what the tide times are . I'm pretty keen on that, just when the best fishing times are. I haven't looked that forward, to be honest. We've had two tough years in North Queensland in particular. I think that's our strategy of being in Tasmania and to the west, so we diversify our risks. For us guys, yes, it's an important part of their business, but the go forward is to not make it the heart and soul of their business.
Yeah, no, well said. All right, thanks gentlemen.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ian Monroe with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning guys, thanks for taking my question. The first one is just on commercial freight, so second half relative to the PCP looked like it's picked up a little bit. Can you perhaps provide any insights as to whether that includes kind of the full run rate of customer wins during the half? I think there have been a few to call out. Secondly, and maybe related just on the performance of the rail business, we're kind of up to a, I guess, a kind of operating rhythm that we'd expect to continue into FY 2026. How should we be thinking about that relative to the border transport business? Thank you.
I might give an overview, then I might throw to Craig, and thanks for your question. First on the transport revenue by industry, and you can see we've had a real intentional focus on growing our commercial and grocery and our protein and dairy, and you can see the impacts of that over the last couple of years. I think you should model in that that is the full run rate of those customers coming through, although we haven't got any of the kind of combined run rate of SRT obviously coming through at this point in time. We'd expect some integration benefits to come through there and some extend and connect opportunities to flow through. On rail, I think I actually thought that our rail division performed well with those recent wins offsetting the exit of that large account that we highlighted and flagged last year.
You can see we've got new equipment, the Perth facility upgrade, and the fungibility of that equipment that can be used both on the mainland and in the trans-based operations. We think we'll drive greater opportunity and growth going forward. Is there anything else I'd miss there on the commercial side, Craig?
I think on the rail piece, Clay, we've been constrained with our east-west growth, and I think you've hit the nail on the head where we said we've lost one major customer, we've lost part of that work, but we've managed to fill that gap. We haven't been able to grow our east-west network for the last few years. We're facilities at capacity, but shortly in Q2, we'll have our new facility open in Perth, and you tie that in with our GJ Freight acquisition at Southwest Western Australia. We've now got open access to a larger customer list in that Southwest region, which will be, there's a lot of uptake for us, and some of those customers have never seen a rail offering in their marketplace.
I think for us as a business, it's a great opportunity for us to leverage up our rail business and start to get those sort of turns of our rail box on a little higher.
Very good. Just one follow-up, if I may, please. Just on the WB Hunter business, looks like our second half kind of returned to growth on the PCP from a top line perspective and also at the earnings line. Is it kind of reasonable to assume that, you know, I guess the hardware construction kind of component of their revenue and earnings has bottomed? Are you seeing sort of green shoots in that component? Thank you.
You can see that kind of Hunter's group, if you want to go to that slide there, yeah, Hunter's group $20 million. Half of that's from the extra month's trade and $5 million from Ngambia and Seymour integration. I think our view is that it can't get any worse as far as the construction industry goes, and there's possible green shoots down there.
Obviously, we have a Director that's involved in construction as well, and their indications are that there are signs of growth starting to come out of that Victorian market. The focus for us in the next sort of 12 months on that Hunter's business is to integrate it more closely to the rural business. Looking at those packaging lines, greater wholesale focus on the Horti side and get our transport offering tied in. That's where we'll be focused, and you've got Chris Curtin going down there to lead the Hunter's business, replacing Mark Moroney. He will be very connected into the rural and transport sides of our business.
. Thank you.
Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Philip Pepe with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi guys, thanks for taking the question. Yeah, good result, good second half here in tough conditions. You mentioned a few times some of the smaller competitors going out the back door, probably more to come. As you negotiate with your larger customers and you demonstrate your broader network versus, I'll call them, mum and pop shops that may not be around in the future, are you winning market share now or can you win more market share now, or are you waiting for them to fall out of it before that gets put out to tender again?
Thanks. A good question. Again, I'll try to Craig, but if I give just the top line number, the transport business grew 6% or around $28 million. Some of that was market share gain, some of it was growing with customers. I'll ask Craig just to comment on kind of that market dynamic around smaller operators, subcontractors, larger customers, what they're looking at. Thanks, Craig.
I think there's still plenty of opportunity around in the marketplace. Tender activity is still, I'd say, very high. Pleasingly, we've got a positive conversion rate, but some lanes there's certainly equipment oversupply that still exists and where volumes are for Lindsay to balance our sort of network lanes, we need to meet the market to retain the volume. I think transformation is really for Lindsay where we look for those larger combinations. That's something those mum and pop companies will struggle to invest in that capital. I think for Lindsay we need to remain competitive in that space by completing that transformation project we're working hard on.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. McDonald for closing remarks.
I'd like to thank our staff, customers, and shareholders for a successful FY 2025, and we look forward to providing you with an update on our progress within the business at the AGM in November and there at half a year again. Thanks very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect your line.