I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Cathy O'Connor, MD and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for oOh!media's full year results for the 2024 calendar year. As said, I'm Cathy O'Connor, the CEO at oOh!media, and today I'm joined by our CFO, Chris Roberts. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and we pay our respects to elders past and present and recognize their enduring connection to this land. Over to slide three. Today I'll begin with an overview of our investment case before recapping our full year result. Chris will then speak to the financials in more detail. Before I give you an update on our recent progress against our strategy, I'll then provide some detail on our outlook for the current quarter, and then we'll open for questions. So over on slide four.
Before we get to the results, I want to recap the reasons why oOh!media is a sound investment proposition. The media landscape continues to evolve, with many areas of traditional media in decline, and against this backdrop, the structural growth of the out-of-home sector continues to provide significant tailwinds for our business. And we see the proof of that in the chart on the left, showing the continued evidence of a growing share of the ad market for out-of-home. The long-term growth outlook for out-of-home remains highly attractive as one of the best-performing categories in media, having now surpassed 15% of the total ad spend in SMI, with expected growth of 8% this year. We at oOh!media are Australia and New Zealand's largest and most diverse out-of-home network, delivering mass reach of over 98% of metropolitan Australians weekly across 35,000 different assets.
This makes oOh!media a powerful proposition in a fragmenting media market, and as the market leader, oOh! is well positioned to leverage its scale and the capability of its experienced team to continue to innovate in the sector, and we have also constantly demonstrated a balanced and disciplined approach to delivering profitable growth and shareholder value into the future. Turning to slide five, our market leadership is underpinned by a more focused execution of our strategy, and we are making good progress to accelerate our growth ambitions in an evolving market. Our strategy includes energizing our go-to-market offering, unlocking the full potential of our significant network, and leading in the fast-emerging retail media space.
By making it easier for our customers to work with us, providing them with access to the best assets and audiences, and partnering with retailers to explore new revenue adjacencies, we will continue to grow our market share in an improving out-of-home market. I'll talk to this in more detail later in the presentation. Now, moving to an overview of our full year results on slide seven. After a first-half performance that was below our expectations and those of our shareholders, I am pleased that oOh!media finished calendar year 2024 with increased momentum, with decisive action taken to drive revenue and market share growth beginning to deliver as intended. As a result, total revenue for calendar year 2024 was in line with the prior year, despite negative growth at the half, with momentum returning in H2 across all formats.
We retained our strong contract discipline, maintaining robust gross margins while also achieving successful contract extensions and wins, delivering AUD 38 million of incremental annualized revenue from 2025 onwards, and pleasingly, our reo program continues its positive momentum, with three new contracts signed in the period with major Australian retailers, Petbarn, Officeworks, and a pilot with Australia Post. Further, the decisive action we've taken to right-size our cost base sets a firm platform for profitable growth in the year ahead. Looking more closely at our key financials on slide eight, where you can see we delivered revenue and adjusted underlying EBITDA at the upper end of our December 2024 trading update. The business improved gross margin through a continued focus on contract discipline, delivering a gross margin of 44.7%, which is an up 40 basis points from last year.
We remain committed to cost discipline, which saw the underlying OpEx growth ex- reo remain below inflation. On a statutory basis, the group reported a 6% increase in NPAT for calendar year 2024 and EPS growth of 9%. Our strong balance sheet enabled a fully franked final dividend in line with the prior year, and gearing remains below our target of one times EBITDA. Turning to the performance of our formats on slide nine, where you can clearly see that after an underwhelming first half, momentum accelerated in H2 as action taken to drive revenue and market share gains began to take traction. Underlying revenue growth of 6% was offset by the decision to exit the Vicinity contract and renegotiate non-media contracts to protect margins.
Road performance improved in the second half, but we acknowledge our performance in this channel did not meet the market opportunity, with a 1% decline for the year. Now, Road is a high-impact and attractive format for advertisers, and despite poor execution in the first half, we improved through the second half, and pleasingly, we are already seeing markedly better performance in Q1 of 2025, with Road already up double digits on the PCP for revenue booked every year to date. Street and Rail grew 3%, with strong second half growth of 8%, driven by the Sydney Metro launch and an enhanced Sydney Melbourne Rail offering with Metro Trains Melbourne.
The rollout of Sydney Metro assets is just over 50% complete, with 70% of the sites expected to be completed by the end of Q1, and the key sites within Gadigal Station in the heart of the CBD are due to be completed in the middle of the year. This will create further revenue upside for our exciting Rail portfolio, and the Street contracts that were won last year will also be rolled out over calendar year 2025, with Waverley Council expected to commence in Q2 and Northern Beaches Council, including Manly, in Q3. Retail revenue was down 9%, largely due to the exit of the Vicinity contract, although the accelerated digitization of oOh!'s remaining portfolio did help to offset some of this impact. Excluding the revenue attributed to Vicinity, underlying growth in retail was 10%.
The Fly and City and Youth formats both delivered strong double-digit growth, up 14% and 18% respectively, and are demonstrating sustained growth, and that's due to our work in both our go-to-market strategies and sales team effectiveness for these products. Our share of the Australia-New Zealand out-of-home market was 36%, and our performance against the market has improved since Q4, with February year to date and Q1 pacing at 14% growth. I'll now hand over to Chris, and he's going to talk about the financial performance of the group in a little more detail. Chris.
Thanks, Cathy, and good morning, all. Slide 11 illustrates in the top two charts that oOh! has grown gross profit and maintained gross margins notwithstanding lower-than-targeted revenue growth. As outlined in the first half results in August, gross margins benefited from the exit and renegotiation of lower-margin contracts and demonstrate the business's commitment to contract discipline. The bottom left chart illustrates oOh!'s commitment to operating cost discipline, with underlying OpEx growing at 2.1%, which is below inflation. However, the business has also invested in reo headcounts to win and grow our share of the retail media opportunity, which Cathy will address later in this presentation. The bottom right chart shows our adjusted underlying EBITDA margin of 20.3% is fairly consistent with the past two years. The 20 basis point decrease versus the PCP reflects the impact of the lower-than-expected revenues being partially offset through the cost controls outlined earlier.
With the focus on better sales execution that Cathy touched on earlier, I expect that oOh!media's fixed leverage should support steady to growing EBITDA margins from CY 2025 onwards. Now, going into some additional callouts on slide 12 in relation to items that have not already been covered by Cathy earlier. As I mentioned in the prior slide, operating expenditure before non-operating items increased by 3%. This was impacted by a AUD 1.3 million one-off penalty charge for the early termination of a lease relating to a single floor in our head office. The business does not require the entire footprint that it established when it moved into the site in early 2021. Non-operating items of AUD 3.5 million include AUD 3.9 million of one-off consulting costs associated with growth initiatives, mostly incurred in the first half.
Additionally, there's a provision of AUD 2.6 million for the restructuring costs outlined in December of last year that relate to the redundancies conducted largely in January this year. These costs were reduced by an AUD 3 million gain on the sale of assets to Auckland Transport, with the related Street furniture and digital screens transferring to Auckland Transport on 31 December 2024. Depreciation and amortization decreased as a result of the reduction in retail asset footprint following the removal of the Vicinity assets. And I expect this to increase modestly in 2025 as a result of the capital expenditure in 2024 and 2025 being higher than that during the 2020 to 2023 period. Net finance costs were up AUD 1.7 million or 20%, with increased CapEx, tax payments, and make good payments increasing net debt.
The income tax expense was lower due to a one-off benefit from the deductibility of employee share expenses from earlier periods. Going forward, a 32%-34% effective tax rate range is what I expect for the business, which is somewhat higher than their corporate rate due to non-deductible entertainment expenditure and the non-deductible upfront rent payments made in earlier years. As mentioned earlier, the board declared a fully franked final dividend of 3.5%, which is in line with the prior year. Taking a look now at our cost out and investment initiatives in more detail on slide 13. As announced in December 2024, we implemented a cost reduction program in early 2025 that is aimed at simplifying our operations and delivering improved performance.
This restructure is expected to deliver circa AUD 15 million in net savings in CY 2025, with the cost savings coming from reducing spans and layers in the organization, restructuring and aligning teams to better serve our customers and direct cost reductions. This decision improves the operating leverage in the business as it positions the business to deal with any macro or advertising market uncertainty on the downside and, importantly, sets up stronger earnings performance on the basis of current Q1 revenue growth persisting. As a result, we expect to have an operating cost base of approximately AUD 150 million-AUD 155 million in CY 2025. We have also made a number of strategic investments to drive growth, including investing in technology processes and systems to enhance our speed to market by making it easier for our teams to book and schedule campaigns across our market-leading portfolio.
Additionally, with the new reo partnerships, which Cathy will talk to later in this presentation, we are investing in expanded sales teams to monetize and develop the revenue opportunity across in-store digital panels and broader omnichannel media sales, and extending campaigns onto our existing retail network. We will remain disciplined with our cost moving forward and continue to invest in growing the top line. Moving to our cash flow performance on slide 14, where you can see that CY 2024 saw a free cash flow decline of AUD 38.2 million, impacted predominantly by a short-term drag on working capital from costs that were recognized in CY 2023 but paid in CY 2024. These included concession rents that moved from variable rents payable in arrears in CY 2023 to fixed rents paid in advance in CY 2024. The settlement of tax liabilities and the make good of exited contracts also contributed.
The bulk of this drag was in the first half, where operating cash flow conversion was 12.5%, with the stronger second half generating a 51.1% conversion ratio and contributing to an overall operating cash flow conversion of 37.1% for the full year. The free cash flow outflow of AUD 18.3 million in the first half was more than offset by an inflow of AUD 26.3 million in the second half, noting that the second half typically has stronger seasonal cash flows. Capital expenditure increased by 13% to AUD 45 million as the business continues to invest for growth, with a range of digital panels launched during the year. Gearing decreased in the second half to 0.8x at the end of December versus 1.0x at June. Looking at our contract profile on slide 16, you can see that oOh!
maintains a diversified long-dated contract portfolio with 50% of CY 2024 revenues expiring from 2029 onwards. As a reminder, our track record for contract renewal is above 95%, and we continue to bid rationally for high-value strategic contracts. It is also worth noting that no individual contract is worth more than 5% of our CY 2024 group revenues. The Auckland Transport contract, which was scheduled to expire on the 31st of December 2024, has been extended to 30 September 2025. This represents 4% of group revenues and is included in the purple-shaded larger contracts components in the first column. We understand that Auckland Transport is currently intending to issue a new RFP in March this year. When excluding Auckland Transport, it is clear that the business is transitioning to a more benign key lease expiry profile.
Projected FY 2025 and beyond, incremental revenue from the AUD 38 million of contract wins during CY 2024 further de-risked this profile versus what is illustrated in this chart, as do the balance of Sydney Metro and Woollahra Council assets yet to be rolled out. Our focus remains on maximizing network revenue while achieving sustainable margin, earnings growth, and importantly, returns on capital. With that, I'll now hand back to Cathy to take you through our strategy.
Thanks, Chris. We'll now move to slide 18. When thinking about our strategy, it's important to consider the performance of the out-of-home sector, which remains the best-performing category in media since 2021 and is projected to grow another 8% this year. Data supports the sustained spend shift from other channels toward out-of-home, and there are several compelling reasons for this. Firstly, due to fragmentation, it is increasingly hard to generate mass reach quickly in mainstream media. However, in out-of-home, our ability to do this grows as populations increase and cities and infrastructure continue to develop. And with that, out-of-home delivers mass reach at a lower CPM, generating higher ROI per dollar of advertising. And I'm also very pleased to say that improvements to our measurement system are close.
MOVE 2.0 is expected to arrive in Q2 this year, and this will provide improvements in audience capture across all formats in metro and regional out-of-home for the very first time. The industry's new investments in digital assets, they are driving growth, and this will continue. Programmatic trading now provides a new way to buy out-of-home, capitalizing on the real-time nature of digital out-of-home, and the quality of creative in out-of-home continues to rise, with increased innovation around dynamic creative campaigns and data-led targeting, and this provides highly impactful opportunities for advertisers in all categories, so it's all of these factors that are resulting in the significant transformation of the out-of-home sector, and they are what's leading to the record share of advertising that the industry is now achieving, so to capitalize on this structural growth and cement our market leadership, our strategy is laid out on slide 19.
We've renewed our focus on execution, and to accelerate our growth ambitions, we're focusing on three core pillars: energizing our go-to-market, unlocking our network potential, and leading in retail media. So let's look at these in more detail, beginning with pillar one on slide 20. By energize our go-to-market, we mean making it easier for our customers to do business with us, and that will ultimately drive revenue and market share growth through better use of those 35,000 assets and faster client response times. We've strengthened our senior sales leadership with deeper out-of-home experience and restructured our teams to better align with our customers' needs. We're investing in tools that will help our sales team unlock the best use of our diverse portfolio of assets, and this will enable them to respond to client briefs faster and more effectively.
And we are reducing the complexity in our business, simplifying our product offering, and preparing for the launch of MOVE 2.0, which will be integrated into our pricing models, and this will ensure we can optimize pricing more quickly and effectively across the network in real time, increasing the ease of buying, reducing response times, and increasing effectiveness in meeting campaign objectives. On slide 21, our second pillar is to unlock our network potential, where our priority is to pursue the right mix of high-value contracts at the right price. Our aim is to build a strategic portfolio of high-impact advertising assets that maximize audience reach while delivering strong value for investors. And our priority focus in terms of network is to deliver the number one position in our largest formats, Road and Street and Rail, in the key media markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
This means that we'll be the first out-of-home company that our customers turn to to reach their audiences. In calendar year 2024, we cemented and expanded our presence in these key markets, securing the rights to the West Gate Freeway billboard and a further eight road digital sites in Melbourne. In Street, we won Waverley Council to further build out our reach in the lucrative eastern suburbs of Sydney alongside Woollahra Council, and we expanded our Northern Beaches reach to the highly desirable suburb of Manly. In Rail, we are partway through rolling out premium assets in the brand new Sydney Metro line, with the Melbourne Metro Tunnel coming online later this year. In retail, we already maintain a portfolio of centers with the highest overall footfall in Australia, despite exiting the Vicinity contract.
We are continuing to expand our digital footprint in our existing centers to ensure that we maintain this strong position in retail. And finally, increasing the digital penetration of our Street furniture portfolio remains a priority as it will be a driver of growth in this format. Our final pillar on slide 22 is to lead in retail media. We're committed to building a market-leading independent retail media business that taps into new revenue streams. We're doing this by partnering with retailers to establish and operate their end-to-end retail media network, both in-store and online. This includes establishing and maintaining in-store screens, but also a retailer's entire omnichannel market offering, including the monetization of digital and e-commerce assets where requested.
This leverages our expertise not only in screen rollouts, but also in deep media sales experience, and it also leverages access to a broad range of advertisers, and that's not something that is easy to achieve as a standalone retailer. And why? Well, retail media is a fast-growing market and is projected to be worth AUD 3 billion in Australia in 2027. reo presents us with an opportunity to participate in this growth channel and thereby create a new annual recurring revenue profile for oOh! with long-term service revenue contracts with major businesses in an attractive emerging category. Our new long-term partnerships with well-known Australian retailers Petbarn, Officeworks, and a pilot with Australia Post validates our offering and our point of difference in this new channel.
So across our three strategic pillars, we're confident that our renewed focus on execution will enable us to drive continued revenue and market share growth by providing innovative solutions for our customers and making it easier for them to work with us in multiple ways. Which takes us to the outlook for the year ahead on slide 24. As both Chris and I have said, we are pleased to see the action we've taken in the second half drive momentum for the business in calendar year 2025, with 14% growth year-to-date to February and Q1 media revenue pacing up 14% on the PCP. This is an acceleration of the 2% growth we saw in Q3 of 2024 and the 5% growth we saw in Q4 of 2024.
This outlook will be complemented by the rollout of new assets over the remainder of the year, and we expect our focus on execution to drive further revenue and market share growth. The calendar year 2025 adjusted gross margin is expected to be broadly in line with calendar year 2023-2024, and our restructuring initiatives will deliver net cost savings of AUD 15 million. This lower cost base sets a strong platform for the year ahead. Calendar year 2025 CapEx is expected to be between AUD 45 million and AUD 55 million, largely funding new advertising assets and contingent upon development approvals. Gearing is expected to remain below one times adjusted EBITDA. So before handing over to questions, I am encouraged by the progress we've made in the second half and into Q1.
The business is carrying strong momentum in a rising market, with the actions that we've taken in the second half driving better performance and double-digit revenue growth in Q1. We've delivered gross margin growth through strong contract discipline and the right sizing of our cost base, coupled with growth investments, set a strong platform for 2025. Finally, the out-of-home sector will continue to experience structural tailwinds, and as the leader in this sector, we will benefit as out-of-home performs against other media. And in closing, I would, of course, like to thank our team at oOh!media for their ongoing dedication and effort, and our shareholders for your continued support. So with that, we'll now open the line for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Entcho Raykovski from E&P. Please go ahead.
Hi, Cathy. Hi, Chris. My first question.
Morning.
Good morning, so my first question is around the outlook and the Q1 pacing and double-digit growth, for the year to date, you've given us some very useful color on roads, but I'm just interested in whether you're seeing that growth across all categories and whether, well, from your perspective, it's driven by market share gains, or is it just the market picking up into the start of calendar year 2025? and then as part of that answer, if you could give us some perspective on what has changed in roads, because that is obviously a pretty big turnaround from where you were tracking over the course of calendar year 2024, and then I've got a couple of others, but I might wait for the answer to this one first.
Sure. So thanks. In terms of the outlook, it's certainly a broad-based recovery. We have across all the markets and territories that we operate and across a range of products. So it's not driven by any one dynamic. That's the good news, and also a broad range of categories. So we've seen a lot of category growth in some key areas and also big categories like food and retail continuing to grow. So that's good. It's a broad-based outlook. I think the market in terms of growth is strong for out-of-home, but increasingly we are moving closer toward the market, and we actually had a share gain in January. So feeling very good about both the out-of-home trajectory, but also our competitiveness within that. In terms of roads, executing the basics is what it's all about. We have a compelling portfolio of large road assets.
We're adding to it all the time, particularly in Victoria, where historically we've been somewhat weaker, and that's really starting to pay dividends for us. We think road is the new replacement for free-to-air television. It's high impact, it's mass reach, and it builds reach very quickly for a cost-efficient price point. So I think we're seeing all those things play into the outlook.
Okay. Thanks, Cathy. And then secondly, on the gross margin guidance for 2025, what are the dynamics which are impacting the expectation for flat margins? I mean, I'm sure that the temporary extension of Auckland Transport is helping, but then within that, can you provide us with a little bit more color on the profile of new contracts, the gross margin profile of new contracts? I assume that's somewhat dilutive, and if it is, where do you see better gross margins to get to that sort of flat margin outcome?
Sure. Thank you for that, Entcho. Your assumption is correct. Certainly, the retention of Auckland Transport for at least nine months. Obviously, we're confident in the bid that we'll be putting forward when it's ready, but the rollover certainly helps. As we said clearly in the past, these significant high audience contracts such as Woollahra, Sydney Metro, etc., that we had announced last year are at a gross margin that is lower than the group average. So that does put some pressure on the margin downwards. But the critical thing with our business is with a 70% fixed cost base, which is roughly the split in our rent as well, it's all about leverage. So where we generate strong revenue growth, that is very supportive of our overall gross margins.
The second aspect is there is opportunity within mix to also support strengthening margins, particularly in road, which Cathy touched on earlier. That's a very important gross margin contributor for us. While it's still small, hopefully we can continue building out oOh! and reo, and that is also very useful from a margin perspective.
Right. Thanks, Chris. That's really good color. And then the final one, I mean, I just noticed you mentioned the asset sales to Auckland Transport, which drove a AUD 3 million gain. Can you give us a little bit more color on what drove those asset sales? I mean, does this suggest that Auckland Transport are looking to reduce reliance on OML and other external providers ahead of the re-tender?
Excellent question, Entcho. So I'm going to answer that in two parts. As a general thematic, what we've seen both in New Zealand and in Australia, councils are increasingly moving to separate ownership of the fixed assets to the lease of the media. So what is increasingly more typical is at the end of a lease, the assets will transfer over to the council for a nominal dollar. Auckland Transport, as is the case with other legacy contracts, that's generally not the case. It was provisioned under the original contract that was written around 1998, 1999, that there was to be at the end of its existing term a mutually agreed negotiation for the transfer of those assets. And so we judged that was in our commercial best interest at the end of last year to follow through with that, and we duly did so.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jamie Laskovski from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Cathy and Chris. Thanks for the questions. Just firstly on the Auckland Transport, just any update or color you can give on the RFP process and how that's tracking. Then just relative to the guidance, it would be good to know what you guys are assuming beyond the September period in that GP guidance for FY 2025. Then just on the Petbarn Officeworks and Australia Post partnerships, if you could provide some color on why they choose to work with you. Then finally, just on Sydney Metro, if you can provide some update on how that rollout is progressing versus six months ago. I think the commentary was for first half of 2025 compared to late 2024 to early 2025 previously. Thank you.
Okay. Let's take that from the top. So Auckland Transport, we were advised that it will be a brand new RFP that will be issued. The original guidance was February, March. We've now been told it's March. So at this point, at some stage in the month of March, we expect a complete new process to commence for that contract. It's probably too hard to predict what happens from September 2025, if I understand the question.
Broadly, we expect at this stage a blended outcome. So based on our 95% retention of contracts, our assumption is we retain that, but at a margin that won't be similar in the fourth quarter to what we're currently earning under their short-term extension.
Okay. I'll just talk briefly to Petbarn and Australia Post. What we're finding in our discussions with retailers is there is, in fact, a real need at that small to mid-size retailer to be able to solve for what they all see is a growing potential revenue stream in a retail business. Because we are already in the media space, because we can do things like deploy assets quickly as part of our core capability, the opportunities for partnership are proving very real, and we can get a retailer to market very quickly and stand up a network very quickly. So we do see a role for ourselves with both Petbarn and Australia Post, Officeworks as an independent player in this space. At the very big end of town, you'll see big retailers will do their own things in stores, you would imagine, given their scale.
But it's in that mid-range of customer that most of the furtive conversations are going on, and there are several more in train at the moment. So it is an independent enabler of a media strategy, not just in store. Where we started with this was screens, but in fact, the need for the average retailer is much greater. So our sales capability and our access to customers, it's not really something they can get to easily as a standalone retailer. So it's a great example of us leveraging our strengths into their needs and developing good partnerships in the process. So in terms of Sydney Metro, we are about 63% built in terms of the assets that were originally planned as part of that initial contract, and we expect to have that completed by mid-year.
We have some very exciting assets in the Gadigal station going in, and they'll be live in the Sydney CBD mid-year. It's all tracking ahead of expectation. Metro has been a fantastic new asset for us. I think you can see in our transit revenues, and that will continue that we are performing well ahead of the market. The demand is strong, and we'll continue to monetize those well, both in terms of yield and occupancy, and also the new assets coming online.
Perfect. Thanks, guys, for the color.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Brian Han from Morningstar. Please go ahead.
Thanks. How much reinvestment is included in your cost guidance for this year?
Do you want to take that, Chris?
Yeah, sure. So it's not a—so there's two parts to that question, Brian. We predominantly got the leadership team and all of the BAU costs already embedded in our business. So now it's just going to be a question of basically a full 12-month run rate versus we had last year. So a modest step up in OpEx in terms of fixed costs. Where there is additional cost that will come into the business is a function of specific client wins. So you can think of it as variable costs of basically revenue that attaches to that. So if the cost is increasing, it's because we've had more wins, which will be driving more revenue, which obviously pays for that cost. And all of that is embedded in the AUD 150 million-AUD 155 million OpEx range that we've provided.
Okay. Cathy, what is your digital penetration in Street furniture now, and where do you think it's headed to in three years' time?
Yeah, very good question. It's in the single digits at the moment. We have a very large footprint. It's a mass reach product. And the digitization is really driven by the contract renewal. So we've come off a heavy renewal cycle in Street furniture, and we've added to that. And the new contracts that we've added are strictly digital only. So you're going to see that tick up gradually over the years. But as a percentage of the overall portfolio in Street, it's still very low.
Do you have an idea of where it's headed to in the next two or three years?
Yeah. We definitely think it's going to get into the teens. One of the difficult, and it will in that time frame. It's hard to be precise around timing because what we've consistently seen, especially with Street furniture, is there's two aspects. You win the contract, but then you need often the DAs at the individual site level. And so that sometimes, certainly in recent history, is taking longer for us to digitize than we would have liked.
Okay. And my last one is, when you guys say energizing your go-to market, was the issue with your previous go-to market more people-related or systems-related? And was that mostly in roads?
That's a very good question and quite intuitive of you there, Brian. So look, the reality is it's both. So I think the feedback we had from the market was we were slow to respond and that our sales forces weren't as quick to get to decisions as other operators in the space. So to be able to put more autonomy and more decision-making power and more responsiveness into your frontline teams, you need to give them the tools to do that. So we have developed things like pricing calculators that take the decisioning away from other tiers of management and put them in the hands of the frontline sales force. And we're building technology all the time that's going to just continue to help us optimize across our broad portfolio a lot more quickly.
That's really important with MOVE 2.0 coming because that's going to give us so much new data to be able to advocate for the scale and the campaign objectives that we can achieve really quickly. It's people and probably systems constraints. One leads to the other, but we've also been very firm on driving an uptick in activity levels and market coverage. We've got a lot to advocate for in our network, and our sales teams with the current momentum in the revenue line have responded to that really well, as you can see. I think the trend in revenue growth in the second half was 2% in Q3 to 5% in Q4, moving to 14% in Q1, year-to-date of February and pacing. You can see the acceleration of the momentum, and so we're going to keep that going with high accountability and high productivity.
And Cathy, just to finish off, was that issue mostly in roads or was it across the board?
No, across the board. Across the board. I mean, we have seven different out-of-home environments, and they'll all have their own competitive positions within the channel. So that's part of the simplification objective, is just to really put simpler tools into the hands of the frontline and to lead the market more in how to buy. So it's a combination of how we productize and also how we engage externally.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Fraser McLeish from MST Marquee. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. And great to see some really strong metrics coming through. So yeah, I've just got three. My first one would be on the 14% track you're pacing for Q1. Is there much in there at all from the AUD 38 million of new contracts? That's my first one. Second one, Cathy, I think you talked about Sydney Metro being ahead of expectations. Does that mean you now expect more than AUD 35 million? Your previous outline from Metro and Woollahra. And my last one, half year, I think you were talking about AUD 13 million-AUD 33 million in potential new contracts. I didn't see that repeated in this presentation. I might have just missed it. But can you just update us if that's still the case or if there's any others as well that have sort of come up since then that you're bidding for? Thanks.
So in answer to the first question, there's virtually none of the AUD 38 million in that Q1 pacing number. So we are still yet to deliver on that, but the builds are progressing, as I mentioned, in the prezo. In terms of Metro being ahead of the pace a bit early on the Street furniture front, we think Woollahra is probably slightly behind where we thought it would be at this point, and thus the importance of getting Waverley and Northern Beaches up and a lot of our new systems and processes in place so we can leverage that Sydney premium footprint and sell a blend there as well. So there's probably some ups and downs within that number, so we're not looking to upgrade the AUD 30 million.
In terms of your third question, Fraser, no, there's nothing untoward from the fact that we haven't called out new projects up to when. As we said, we are now moving into a benign period of defense. That is the opposite for the other major market participants, in addition to greenfield opportunities. We just haven't specifically called it out, but there are sizable opportunities out there in the next three years that we'll be competing for.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Evan Karatzas from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Nice work on that. So those market share gains and that 1 Q number, that's really pleasing to see. I'll just ask one on the operating cash flow through the second half. Can you just sort of go through that working capital build? Has that been, I guess, unwound now? Or I guess, how do we think about that operating cash, EBITDA, conversion in CY 25? And then just final one, just on the lease cash payments, obviously took a decent step up in the second half. Is the annualized run rate of that a good proxy for calendar year 2025 as well? Thanks.
Sure. As we said on the call, one of the key drivers for our cash flows, other than the tax payments and just timings around receivables collection, is in relation to contracts that were variable rent moving to fixed rent. This is just a consequence of we had some arrangements as a result of COVID where two very big lessees in the transit area, so think airports and train operators, we had moved over to a variable rent arrangement. Subject to certain revenue thresholds being met and performance of the overall industry, we reverted back to a fixed rent payment plan, which was what the case was before COVID hit us. What that means is it's more just timing. The fixed rent arrangements for those leases, we pay in advance typically for the quarter where previously in 2023, we had been paying in arrears.
It doesn't necessarily indicate a significant step up in the rent per se. As a general proxy, work on the basis that our fixed rent, excluding anything that's obviously new or something substantial like Metro, something like that, we're probably stepping up at around 3%-4% per annum.
Okay. That's great. Appreciate that, color. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. As there are no questions at this time, I'll now hand back to Ms. O'Connor for any closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone. I trust that you've got the information you need on the headline results for our calendar year 2024 performance, and we look forward to those that we are meeting with to going into more detail in the days ahead. Thank you for your time.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.