I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Carmen Riley, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Mel. Thanks everyone for joining the call. I am here today with Brendon Pentland, who is our CFO. I will take you through the highlights, and Brendon, of course, will take you through all the financial details. As Mel said, we will wrap up with some questions at the end. From an underlying position, our revenue for the year was solid at AUD 3.7 billion, EBITDA AUD 97.2 million underlying, and net profit after tax, AUD 26 million. From a statutory perspective, revenue stayed the same at AUD 3.7 billion, EBITDA AUD 50.8 million, and we produced a net loss of AUD 16 million. Obviously, the majority of that is from our write-down of Infinity, which we will take you through in a bit more detail later. If you just want to turn the slide, Mel.
As a recap, we launched our 3-2-1 strategy two years ago when Paragon merged with CH2. We also included Oborne Health Supplies in this at that time as well. That is now completed and closed. Firstly, before I get through that detail, I thought I would just touch on Infinity. At the half year, we did take a full provision for that. As you all know on the call, we have been working through the process with administrators as that was put into receivership and then administration at the end of the last calendar year. That is a long process that we are working through, and it is a very uncertain process through the administrators. They have been excellent to deal with, but we do have to work closely with them and other creditors as we draw that hopefully to a close sooner rather than later.
During that process, and based on the administrator's most recent report, we have taken the position to write back AUD 9.2 million. When we take that into account for the full-year, we have then provided AUD 38 million for Infinity, and that is net of the GST that we have already claimed. That said, even though that was a very difficult setback, and we will talk about it during the wrap-up, and obviously I will take any questions on that at the end. We are certainly not taking our foot off the pedal on what we can claim during the administration process. After that closes, we will certainly be going after personal guarantees.
That said, though, we do have to move forward as a business and make sure that we are driving the business forward, rather than continuing to look backwards with the Infinity overhang. On that, during the time of the 3-2-1, and particularly most of this was completed during FY 2026, we have merged all of the Australian businesses now onto JDE. That excludes the service business, which was moved on to NetSuite. We have consolidated all of that, and that includes consolidating all of the legacy Paragon Care businesses onto those platforms.
That does exclude manufacturing, and we have decided to keep that because it is a bit more complicated onto SAP. We did commission the new Brisbane site, and very pleased, even though that was delayed and caused us a bit of pain in the first half. We did open that site in January, and we then went fully live with that in June when AutoStore went live into place on that. That is our first fully automated DC. That also included us moving to a tier one WMS, Warehouse Management System, and that is Manhattan. We will continue to roll that out down the eastern seaboard into FY 2028.
We did realize all the synergies that we committed to at the beginning of the 3-2-1 strategy, and we have used some of those to reinvest back into the business. We have reinvested back into our sales team, our marketing team, and also some of our acquisitions that we have done as well. That is exciting for us because it is around the growth platform moving forward, as part of restructuring the business. We have also, based on that restructure, we have taken it a step further and also fast-tracked certain things at the beginning of the year based on our Asian footprint, and that included expanding our office in the Philippines and also opening a shared service office in Jakarta. We now have over 100 people in our shared service team offshore supporting the Australian business. Most of those are based in the Philippines.
We also have talked about and committed to taking all the cost out of the business with the exit of the Ramsay contract. I am pleased to say that we have done that, and that has been executed very well. On a more pleasing note, we have had a number of new contracts across all of our business units, which has been very good. Without a doubt, the most honorable for us has been winning the Australian Defence Force contract, which we did start a little bit in the end of June, but it fully starts FY 2027. That has been a great outcome. You will see also, as part of our reinvestment back into the business, that we have ramped up our digital presence.
If some of you jump online, we have just recently, in the last couple of weeks, launched our new website, which is great and certainly showcases the absolute breadth of the business that we have, and also our geographical reach. Without a doubt, since March, like all businesses, we have had quite a number of headwinds to do with the war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, we have had the impact of fuel costs hit our business like they have on all logistics business. We have been navigating that. We have tried and altered some of our freight to make sure that we have taken as much pressure off our cost base as we can. But we have had some challenges with that, particularly in the last quarter.
We have also had some challenges with our stock because we wanted to ramp our stock down, but as committed with some of our supply partners and the fact that they have had some shipping channel challenges, our stock ended the year a bit higher than we would have liked. I think that is prudent and in good faith of the Australian customer base and our suppliers to make sure that we have the stock available. We also did have some challenges around foreign exchange for the year. That should be no surprise to anyone on the call. That was particularly hit out of New Zealand, Thailand, and Korea. They were our most difficult challenges. As I said, should be no surprise to everyone here on the call, being a logistics business, but we are moving through those.
Nonetheless, ending on a positive on this slide, most importantly is around our people. I am really pleased to let everyone now know we have a full leadership team in place. As you know, from this time last year, Brendon is new. We have had a couple of changes in that team, but I am now very confident that we have got the bench strength in that team to drive the business forward, and also to lead the rest of the team at Paragon Care.
When I look at the team and the culture of the business, the team at Paragon Care should be absolutely thrilled at that underlying result that they have presented today, and they have done an exceptional amount of hard work to get there. We have got a great team to lead the business forward. Just turn the slide. Thanks, Mel. Just on to capital allocation. As I touched on earlier, and as you have seen, we have actually done six acquisitions this year. Three were based in Australia, three up in Asia. The Australian business really gave us a footprint into some of our new areas, particularly around dental.
The Asian acquisitions were not only around the breadth of supplier contracts that we could grab onto in those acquisitions, but also expanding our footprint out. We are now expanded out into Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia, and we have also set up our Asian head office in Singapore. That is all been established and is all in place as we speak. Our CapEx. CapEx was predominantly around our Brisbane site and the work that was done around our integration work over the last 12 months, and that will settle down and go back to a more normalized level in FY 2027.
Interest, a bit higher than what we would have liked, but some of that is aligned with our synergies when we did refinance the ScotPac facility. However, with the spend on some of our CapEx, that has increased it a little bit this year, and obviously with the increase in interest rates as well. Just turning over to the next slide. Thanks, Tian. Just running through our sales channels. Wholesale. Wholesale had a good year despite the loss of Ramsay and Infinity. If we normalize that, backing out Infinity and Ramsay, the revenue growth was 1.5%. I know some of you might think, "Well, that does seem a little bit low." There were a few drugs that moved back to compounders.
If you know the pharmacy channel, we had three or four high-cost drugs, just the three or four SKUs, high-cost drugs that moved back to compounders or went direct. We also had a generic drug enter the market with Prolia. If I backed those five SKUs out, our market rate growth was sitting between 8% and 9% in the pharmacy channel, which was an excellent result and really fantastic recovery by that team as well. From a medical technology perspective, double-digit growth. Without a doubt, I think Asia knocked it out of the park. We certainly held our own in Australia and New Zealand with some of the headwinds that we had in that space.
Contract logistics. We have talked about before, we had a refresh view of our sales strategy a couple of years ago in that channel, and that has certainly outperformed since we have relaunched that. That growth is out of both organic growth, but also new business wins over the last 12 -1 8 months, and we continue to pick up new business. Another great result. Clinical manufacturing, last but not least, had growth, underlying pretty solid growth. We have got a new QuidelOrtho contract that is now come into play, and we have started manufacturing in that process.
Our first lot of exports will be done up into Japan, and that contract will continue to grow scale over FY 2027 and into the future as well. There are some great opportunities inside our clinical manufacturing plant. I will just hand over to Brendon before you come back to me, just to go through the details of the financials.
Okay. Thanks, Carmen. I am on slide nine. Pleased to join this morning and take you through the financial results and financial position at the year-end. Carmen has talked to a few of the, I guess those normalized factors that we back out of our result, just to give you a sense of what the like-for-like performance of the business looks like. We have also included a couple of slides, which you are accustomed to now, around our revenue bridge. I will talk to those in due course. We have also included this time an underlying earnings bridge. Really provide you a look-through of the numbers, which I think we hope you will find useful. Just at a top line, that underlying revenue growth before the normalizations was 1.8%, and after the normalizations, 6.7%.
When we talk about the normalizations, again, you will see those on the revenue bridge. That is taking into account the impact of Infinity, Ramsay, and FX predominantly. One of the metrics we do look to is our organic growth after the normalizations. We think that is a really healthy number at 6.7%. There is growth across most of the channels in there. Contract logistics has been a really strong performer for us at the revenue level and also the Asian business, which we will get to in due course. Of course, we do have the contribution from our acquisitions, both in ANZ and Asia, which has contributed to our growth. Again, their contribution identified on the bridge. Along with the revenue contribution, what that does is broadens our geographical reach, our product range, our customer reach, and our capability offer.
What we are establishing now is a truly geographical and regional presence and focus in that area, and building out a team that has responsibility over all of the non-territories that we are in, and extending our capability across the countries rather than working in silos. So, really pleasing contribution from those entities. The unfavorable revenue impact from the translation of foreign revenues is also identified in the bridge, as Carmen said, is New Zealand dollar, Thai baht, and Korean won in that sense. I will just move on to underlying EBITDA at a growth of 2.1%. Just to, I guess, reinforce this, that number excludes the impact from the Infinity Group debt provision, the restructuring and integration costs. As Carmen said, they were associated with the 3-2-1 program, which is now complete. The M&A costs. We have had a busy M&A year.
I think it was seven acquisitions, Carmen. They obviously cost a little bit of money, so we isolate those. There also is the foreign currency impact and AASB to fair value of some share-based payments, which is an accounting, does not really reflect the underlying value of those equity instruments. So that has been identified, and it is particular to the integration period. I have mentioned the strong growth from Asia at a revenue level, but that is also coming through at the EBITDA level, and we will talk to that a little bit further. The exit of Ramsay, the Ramsay contract, which we announced would have no impact to our margin as we take cost out, so we can confirm that. T hat really characterizes our underlying results.
Turning the page now to 10. In our expenses, again, Carmen has touched on a couple of these things, but we did have the higher freight charges in the second half, and we would like to think that they would. We are going to incur the impact of those into the first half, and there is uncertainty around what that looks like beyond that period. So, offsite storage, I guess, is a bit of a good and a bad story in a sense that we have got volume that we need to find a space for. We do not often get a recovery of that necessarily from our customers. So there is an extra cost that we have carried through most of FY 2026 with the opening of Willawong and adding some capacity there. That will start to unwind in FY 2027.
Associated with that were also some, I guess, extra shuttle and IBTs, which we haven't normalized, but they're in our numbers, in our underlying numbers. Carmen mentioned we have made strategic investments across a number of areas, sales, marketing to foster, I guess, that long-term growth in the business. We are a growth business. There are particular channels that we are in, particularly in medical devices and aesthetics that we do need to spend to generate new leads and new revenues. The Infinity debt, the ECL that we booked in the period, just confirming that was AUD 38 million, before we took into account the GST recovery. The statutory EBITDA, again, the bridge or the reconciliation I'll take you through, but we've just listed those items that we separate out from our underlying result from our statutory.
Our net debt did come in in line with our target, at the top end of the range, which it was a heavy CapEx year with the investment in new businesses and also the Willawong site. So, keeping that to 2.5 x I think is a good result. We did enter into some new debt facilities in New Zealand and Australia to help finance our acquisitions. On slide 11, most of these items you'll be familiar with and are consistent with our half-year reporting. I won't dwell on them too much. I've touched on some of them. But if I just step through them from top to bottom, and I'll talk to our statutory EBITDA figure, but the rest of them all follow. We start off at AUD 50.8 million. We add back the impact of the Infinity debt.
We've got merger and acquisition related costs, which we spoke to. Restructuring and integration activity in there reflects roles that have exited in the year. The share base payments, which I touched on. We also take out the impact of FX hedges and other currency remeasurements, unrealized, to call that out. Also the amortization on the fair value of identifiable intangible assets through the merger and acquisition business combination accounting, including the discounting on deferred consideration. We backed those out because we don't consider those to be a reflect of performance of our operations. I think that gives you a really good look through of how we bridge between our statutory and our underlying result.
I'll just now turn to slide 12, which is our balance sheet. The call-out on this slide is the net working capital number, which you'll see a decline in that number of 25%. There is a little bit to unpack in that, so we're not going to pretend that that's all cash. We do get the benefit in that number of the Infinity provision. We also include in that number is deferred consideration, the current deferred consideration on the acquisitions we've made in the year.
I f you back those out, and then take into account the impact of acquisitions contributing to that number, it's largely flat. A gain, for the year, we think that's a decent result, and Carmen spoke to some of those supply channels and some customers and suppliers needing to, I guess, build stock due to some logistical concerns, has contributed to that number. You'll see a large increase in our goodwill and intangibles. Probably worth calling out that apart from a couple of smaller acquisitions, the acquisition accounting is provisional at this stage, which we will finalize some of those as we get to the half year.
Then those that were in the second half of FY 2026, we will finalize those at this time next year. T hey are provisional. It is all lumped into goodwill at the moment, but we need to go through the exercise of allocating those to the identifiable intangibles that we have picked up through those acquisitions. W e do note there, excluding the deferred consideration, the net working capital is AUD 116.3 million, compared to AUD 126 million last year. O bviously AUD 116.3 million includes the Infinity provision as well. Funds employed. Just on that, we did spend AUD 15.7 million of CapEx in the year on our new Brisbane site. We acquired AUD 4.9 million of fixed assets through the acquired businesses.
Our debt facilities are largely with ScotPac, which you are familiar with. Also, I mentioned the new facilities for New Zealand and Asia, which we took on in the year. Just, I guess, making clear our net debt figure there at 2.5x does include the full last 12 months of our acquired entities. I will just move on to slide 13, which is our cash flow. So really improved cash from operating activities at AUD 29.1 million, which was up AUD 42.5 million on last year or 317%, which is a pleasing result. I think if you characterize that with net capital expenditure, you will see the application or use of those funds. It is not all in Australia, of course. Then the proceeds from financing activities of the new acquisitions contributed to help to fund the acquisitions in the period.
We did receive a corporate tax refund of AUD 7.3 million in the period. CapEx, which I, or investing activities, I had spoken about the investment in Willawong DC, and PPE for the period was AUD 13.5 million. T hat was a big CapEx year for us, and we will get back to a normalized level next year or FY 2027. I think that is a pretty good story around the operating cash flows for the year compared to last year. I will just move on to slide 14, which the revenue bridges. Again, we have touched on these matters, but this makes it really clear around the impact of those businesses that exited, the impact on the COVID drugs and GLP-1 drug growth, contribution from the acquisitions. T hat organic growth figure is a number that we like.
H aving that at 6.7% after those normalizations gets a big tick from us, I think that is a really good story, which allows you to just join all the dots. I will just move to over the page. Next slide. Thanks. Around the EBITDA bridge. Again, similar, just presenting same information in here around Infinity Group contribution. No Ramsay contribution. That normalized out as we were able to take costs out of the business.
T hat normalized EBITDA growth of 7.4% after adjusting for the Infinity FY 2026 acquisitions, fuel, offsite storage, cost, and FX is a strong number for us, which we like. Yet obviously, we will look to the contribution from the acquired businesses, and we will get the full-year benefit of those as we move into FY 2027. I think just the other items on there which we probably touched on as well, which were the elevated fuel costs and the offsite storage.
That is all there for you to work your way through. We will just drill down a little bit into each of our geographic segments. Australia and New Zealand to start with, which was a reported ANZ total growth, revenue growth of 0.2%, which again, seems modest, but when we take out the normalizations, that is 6.1%. We think that is a solid number. Medt ech's market, it was a pretty solid result. There are a couple of businesses in there that face some challenges, especially in orthopedics and vision. We are really confident around that channel, and the opportunities that it does present. There are new products coming to the market, new suppliers that we are working closely with, and we are continuing to invest in the aesthetics business, which we see contributing greater in FY 2027 and beyond.
New Zealand in here is impacted by the FX, which we have called out there. Contract logistics at a revenue line, really strong growth from both our existing customer volumes, which is a testament to the execution in that business and also new customers and pipeline in that space looks pretty promising for us as we continue to expand and grow that particular channel. Clinical manufacturing was benefited from the acquisition of Fisher in the second half, but that did post some really good numbers for us at both the revenue and the margin line. The margin we talk to on the next slide, on slide 18. At ANZ, it remained steady at 8%. Wholesale grew a little, up from 6% to 6.3% as we exited some low margin business in that space.
Med Tech was marginally lower, but that is on the back of some FX impacts and also as we invest to enter in those new markets and products that we spoke to. In Contract Logistics, the pleasing result in the revenue line is it actually grew at the margin as well. So, profitable revenue growth is what we love to see. Clinical Manufacturing margin was up as well as we just established what the right operating cost base was for that particular channel. The Asia segment is a really good story. It continues a good story from prior periods as well. It continues to be a growing contributor to the group at a good margin. Organic growth and acquisitive growth is strong. I will not go on them. I think it is pretty evident from the numbers themselves, and that is despite the FX impact on that particular business.
On a like-to-like basis, those numbers are a lot stronger. Thailand Aesthetics, which a lot of people are interested in, continues to perform strongly. There is a little bit of margin decline in here as we enter into the new markets, introduce new products, but it is also reflective of the investment also in those marketing activities and the investment in our people, and the shared services costs, which are also now in this particular segment. I think that is, again, a really good story. I think that the expansion of our multidisciplinary shared services team, to complement our regional focus, makes sense to us and there are still some opportunities to put more roles over there in that region. That finishes my part.
Great. Okay. Thanks very much, Brendon. If we just click over to our acquisitions. They are all performing well. I will not go into the detail of those at the moment. I will use that for Q&A. If you look at the presentation on the left-hand side there, the businesses that we acquired in Australia, which is around, you can see two of them, particularly around the dental, helping us expand into that portfolio and allowing certain supplier access into that space. We were really pleased to finally launch our dental division last year, so that has been great. On the right-hand side, our Asian acquisitions. Haju's a very similar business to our Thailand business, and does exceptionally well based in Indonesia.
We are pleased to bolt that on, and obviously Pacific Medical's Hong Kong and Somnotec is based in Singapore, but again, spreads our reach across Singapore and Malaysia as well. Early days, but we are really thrilled with all the acquisitions that we have got on board, and they are working collaborative with the rest of our team to, not only actually bring some of the existing Paragon business into their business, but also, help us with their expertise in getting their portfolio into other regions. Just turning on to page 24. I will not go through all of that. Our strategy is not changing. We are continuing on the same path. We want to be making healthcare simpler across the region, and we do want to be across all of APAC.
The only country we are not in at the moment that we would like to be, would be Taiwan, but we will wait and see when the right opportunity presents itself. Last but not least, for our FY 2027 outlook on page 25. Turn over for that. I will not touch on every point, but I did want to highlight that we are now fully focused on driving the business forward. As I said at the beginning of the presentation, we have had, a black mark against us on the Infinity. I understand that. We are not shying away from it, but I know that the underlying business has some bench strengths that we are pushing through, and we are focused on our forward trajectory now, not looking in the revision mirror. We are going to leverage our market presence. We are now across 11 countries.
Our team is aligned, w e are all working very closely together, all of our country managers, all of our channel managers, and we are seeking the opportunities to really expand in each market and each channel. Yes, we are going to continue to do the right M&A opportunities, but we will focus this year just on consolidating our most recent acquisitions and making sure that we are bedding those down as well. But we will always continue to look for, and take advantage of M&A as it presents itself. FY 2027, organic growth is our key focus. We will settle down on our capital spend, and we will focus on the business that we have at hand. We have got the range, we have got the footprint, and we have certainly got the team. I am very excited about FY 2027, and to turn that page.
We'll continue to drive performance excellence, now that we've closed out our 3-2-1 strategy, which was an incredible amount of work. You can see the detail that Brendon went through, and I touched on earlier, that the team have done a lot to bring this business together. Now we can really also drive that next level of efficiency throughout the business. Just on our capital management. We do believe that we need to reduce the number of shares on issue, and also that the share price is undervalued. To these points, we are going to commence a share buyback in FY 2027. We think that we need to reduce the number of shares to a level considered more appropriate, basically with Paragon Care's market size and our market position. As you know, there are some LTIs that are vesting in FY 2027 or at the end of FY 2027.
Part of that initial buyback will be held in trust for the issue of those performance rights. Regardless of issuing more shares, we'd prefer not to do that and to do a buyback just to consolidate that register. At today's value, we certainly believe it's not only more appropriate, for the share register, but an economic benefit for Paragon Care as well. We won't be on the dividend. Unfortunately, we won't be declaring a dividend for FY 2026, but we will review this, in the first half based on trading performance. I do understand, and particularly for our retail investors, understand the question on why a buyback and not a dividend. As I've said, we do see the share price is undervalued, and we do need to step through all of this in a pragmatic process.
Number one was to transition and realign the underlying business, which I believe that we've done, and I think the team have done a good job. Two, we wanted to ensure that we have the appropriate level of shares on issue and to fix our register. Three, we wanted to make sure that we've got the right business structure and platform in place. As we do that, and we have done that, we'll assess the dividend stream, based on trading performance in FY 2027. Just stepping through, because once we start a dividend program, we certainly don't want to switch it off. Thanks for that. Noel, if you don't mind, I'll hand back over to you for any questions that the listeners might have.
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. Your first question comes from Tom Godfrey with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Carmen and Brendon. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you hear me okay?
Yep. Hear you good. Thanks, Tom.
Great. Thanks very much. Just picking up on the comment around expecting ongoing revenue and earnings growth into next year and maybe just looking at some of the features of the EBITDA bridge on slide 15.
Yep?
Obviously, a significant volume of acquisitions executed this year. Just wondering how that acquisition delta annualizes into 2027. What can we expect the contribution to be?
Tom, Somnotec we acquired on mid-January. Sorry, mid-December. We will get a further, I guess, five and a half months from Somnotec. We have disclosed in the, I guess, our 4E, what the contribution or the revenues were from each of those. Haju Medical, we have only got three months of that in FY 2026, so we will get a further nine months. And Pacific Medical, I think we had five months on Medical, so we will get a further seven months of that. Look, that number will be higher as we go into FY 2027, just given the timing of those, where most of them were in the second half of FY 2026.
That is helpful. Thanks, Brendon. Then just in terms of the, one of the bigger negative wedges in that bridge was just fuel and offsite storage. How does that dissipate into next year or unwind? How should we be thinking about those costs on an ongoing basis?
Yeah. It is a good question, Tom. It is a difficult question. Offsite storage, we are comfortable around because a lot of that was in the first half of the year, and we have backed that out. And that was particularly, caused by our delay to our Brisbane site. T hat was difficult. The fuel, has certainly got us all by surprise, and we are trying to negate some of that, but it just depends on the fuel prices as they work through. What I do not want to do, I think like all of us, we are hoping that that war will end at any time soon. W hat I do not want to do is disrupt our customers and suppliers, because hopefully it is more short-term than long-term.
It is a difficult one to put a number on at the moment, and that is why we are a bit cautious of giving an outlook, because we are not sure around how fuel is going to go. In saying that, I would like to obviously give a full update by the time we get around to the AGM as well, based on the Q1 result.
Understood. That is helpful. Thanks, Carmen. Maybe just one on your balance sheet. I mean, you gave us some net debt to EBITDA guidance in the prior period. Is the goal to get that towards the bottom end of the range? I noticed you spoke to quite a few cash flow initiatives for this year.
No.
Where do you see the balance sheet settling in FY 2027?
At the moment, if we continue around the 2.5 x, I am pretty comfortable around that. I do not want to sit there and give us a target to wind that down to 2x, particularly the market that we are operating in at the moment, and we do want to continue to invest in the right areas. A t the moment, I am pretty comfortable where that is sitting.
Got it. Just last one from me, just around the first pharmacy wholesaler agreement and how that is rolling through. I realize it is only a couple of months in, but do you guys have an estimate at this point in terms of how much of this CSO uplift in terms of your market share you will see this year? Just any other changes in line with expectations?
Yeah, sure. I do. I do not want to be too cagey about that either, Tom, because I do not want to give away a number when we have basically only got one month's trading data around it. The modeling is in line with our expectations when we had the first CSO payment come through, so that was a relief. L ook, we will just wait how that extrapolates out over the year anyway. I do not want to give a number to it at this point.
Got it. It was worth a shot. Thanks, Carmen.
That is okay.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John Hester with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Carmen, perhaps if you could talk in a little bit more detail about the clinical manufacturing business. You mentioned a Japan contract?
Yep.
What is that worth, and tell us more about it.
Yeah, sure. I cannot give you the value of the contract because they are commercial in confidence, but the majority, well, that is actually around a contract that we have with QuidelOrtho. T hey are-
Sorry, who are they?
QuidelOrtho. They are closing some of their facilities, and they are looking obviously to put their footprint into Australia with the opportunity to expand out to the APAC region. Look, it is early days. It is a lot of work to get those contracts up and running because of the TGA and everything that you need to go through, and you can imagine. We have a team of scientists that actually work through that process, so it is very complex. But we are working very well with that contract. Really pleased with it. It is a year-on-year step up as they roll certain products and portfolios out, and they will obviously expand into different geographical regions as well.
Is it for a single product or is it multiple products?
No, it is multiple products.
Is it a multi-year contract or?
Correct.
Okay.
Yeah.
Could you estimate what the total contract value might be worth over a few years?
I couldn't, John, because I'd probably get in a bit of trouble if I said that one.
I'm sure you could, but-
Yes, definitely. I do know it. So, yeah.
And, just what else are the highlights there? Contract logistics was really good.
Yeah.
Good margin, good growth there.
Yeah.
Looking at the margin now on that business, you talked about fuel costs and so on. That would be impacted, one would gather, by those events?
Which one are you looking at for the-
Contract logistics. I am just looking at the slides.
Fuel is not impacted in their gross margin. That is an expense on there. I t is not on their gross margin side of things. A little bit of a double-edged sword at the moment. I am absolutely thrilled how we are doing with contract logistics, and we have got a lot in the pipeline on that space. I do think that that is a subscale business for us. A bsolutely pleased on where it is going. Problematic at the moment when fuel prices are going up because it is logistics, but I do believe that to be a bit more short-term and the cost pressure will come off. We will have some benefits in fuel. I know Tom asked, as he mentioned the question before.
We will have some benefits in the future with fuel because we will not be running so many IBTs that we did with the reshuffling of Brisbane, and that had a bit of an impact. A lot more impact actually around contract logistics than any other division. The growth side will continue to grow there, but we will have that short-term fuel pressure, although not as much as what we had in FY 2026.
Okay. Just one additional question on acquisitions. Obviously, you have been very active this year. Six acquisitions.
Yeah.
Your balance sheet is reasonably geared there. Now, you said you are comfortable with 2.5 x debt.
Yeah.
How does that leave you positioned now to fund acquisitions? Because I gather you have more in there. Are you going to issue more paper or are you just going to ramp up the debt, do you think?
If the right acquisition came along, the right debt does not bother us, because we see that adding longer term value for the shareholders anyway rather than raising equity, because that is just not something that we are interested in doing. Look, I would be shocked if we are sitting here this time next year and I tell you we have done six acquisitions anyway. I would like to have that settle down a little bit, but it would be around the right acquisition. I t is a hard question to answer without something short-term in sight, but yeah, we would use that facility if we had another acquisition that we wanted to go after.
Yeah. Just perhaps one final question for Brendon, if I may. This is sort of what Tom was asking as well. What do you believe is the full-year impact of the six acquisitions you completed for a full 12 months EBITDA?
Oh, EBITDA?
Yeah.
No.
Yeah. We're being a bit cautious on our look at the moment, John, just as they settle down. Early days when you read the 4E, they're delivering on their results, but we just need to make sure that we're getting through that first quarter. Once we're through first quarter, we'll be a bit clearer on making sure that we're giving the right number out to the market as well.
Okay. That is it. Thank you.
Yeah. That is okay.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from James Tracey with Blue Ocean Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Carmen, hi, Brendon.
Hi.
Go, James.
Yeah, the first question I have is just around the pro forma EBITDA. If I take the net debt and divide it by 2.5 x, it implies that pro forma EBITDA was AUD 113 million in the year just finished, which is considerably higher than my expectation for 2027.
Yeah. I think, James, I mentioned this, when we calculate it, we include the full, last 12 months of the acquired businesses in that calculation.
Yeah.
So that-
I guess the point being is that you have 12 months, in FY 2027, so I guess it is a question around, you have given guidance for earnings growth, revenue growth in 2027. The base level is considerably higher than the number reported. I guess, is there anything big that you would call out to take out of that pro forma number to help give us a sense of what we could see in 2027?
No. I guess the way we present that on an underlying basis, because we want to give you a look through of what has impacted FY 2026 of a significant or nature or that we just want to make sure that you have got a clear line of sight of what our underlying business is doing. But I am not quite sure I follow that you said we are giving guidance for 2027 because we gave, obviously, guidance for 2026. And we clearly stated when we gave that, around the 2x-2.5x on the gearing that does include the full-year contribution or last 12 months of the acquired businesses. So, looking at something-
Yeah. The point I am making is that the pro forma numbers for FY 2026 is possibly a better guide to FY 2027 than the reported number because you are going to have the full-year contribution of those acquisitions in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is there anything that I note in the slide that everyone has been referring to, the EBITDA bridge, that there is something like AUD 3 million of the Infinity Group sort of coming out, which presumably will not recur.
On the other hand, you have got a whole bunch of other things like the CSO funding, which is a positive. The defense contract, which is a positive o rganic growth.
Yeah.
I am just wondering with respect to setting my forecast for 2027. I am not asking for guidance, but is there a big number, for instance, for Ramsay in that pro forma number, which is AUD 113 million that does not occur or should some of these other factors-
No.
No.
No, there is not.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, that is good. The second question is just around the buyback. Could you just give a bit of color? I have not seen any detail on the number of shares that you would be authorized to buy back and could you just talk to your intention of actually fulfilling it? Because a lot of companies will authorize a buyback and then not actually execute or buy a meaningful number of shares back.
That is the case, James. It is a good question. As I said, there is a step through approach. There is some in the employee incentive plan that we think based on the price now anyway, it is better to buy them in the trust rather than to issue those shares. We will be doing that. Then we can in a general buyback and under the general rules, we can buy up to 10%. That is not saying we are going to do all of that. W e just want the flexibility as the year rolls out and based on our trading, based where we get on half year and on our dividend policy as well on where we sit with buying those shares over the course of the 12 months.
Yeah. Okay. That is perfectly. Just final question from me around cash conversion. There was a big improvement from the negative operating cash flow in the first half to close to AUD 30 million positive in the full-year. Obviously, the operating cash flow is still well below the EBITDA. Do you expect to see the operating cash flow to be a higher percentage of EBITDA over time when you do not have as many issues around-
W ithout a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt.
Yeah. Look, being transparent as we always are, James, that AUD 29.1 million for the full-year, also included in the second half the corporate tax refund. There is a benefit in there. We are working hard around working capital management to always improve the cash flow. We will obviously be looking at ways we can do that.
Got it. Thank you, Carmen and Brendon.
Thanks, James.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Ms. Riley for closing remarks.
Okay, great. Thanks very much, Mel. Hopefully, we have given everyone some color around the business. We have closed out some major issues that we have had, but giving you the confidence that we are fully focused and ready for FY 2027 and the years to come. I look forward to catching up with hopefully most of you as we do the roadshow. But if you have any questions, feel free to give myself or Brendon a call anyway, and hopefully we will see you all face-to-face soon. Thanks very much.
Thanks.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.