I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ross Thompson, Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Morning, everyone, and welcome to the PeopleIN half year financial year 2025 results presentation. I'm joined by Adam Leake, our CFO. Our purpose: to inspire excellence in our people. The key takeaways from our results: our earnings are stable at AUD 19.3 million. Even though the economy continues to be tough, our momentum is slowly starting to build after delivering over AUD 10 million in Q2. Pleasingly, our charge rates are up 9% on last year and 3% on financial year 2023 when we delivered record earnings. This is due to the business maximizing our workforce where there is a high client demand and ceasing any underperforming accounts. We're now able to do this given that we have better visibility of our financial performance down to the client account level and location level due to our systems upgrade program.
Overhead is reduced by a further AUD 3.8 million, which is a total cost reduction of over AUD 15 million over the past two years. Again, we've been able to do this due to the improved systems, automation, and leveraging our scale to drive cost efficiencies. We exceeded our internal net revenue target by delivering over a 25% margin. This is well above our major industry peers, with most operating in the teens. Drawn cash collection at 117% of normalized EBITDA resulted in our net debt ratio reducing from 2.1 at the full year 2024 to 1.68 times, which is a fantastic performance from our operations and finance teams.
Overall, we're a sales-focused business with strong fundamentals that is poised for sustainable growth when business confidence improves. These trend graphs reinforce our stable financial position over the past 12 months, especially during the worst economy Australia has seen in the last 20 years.
We do not expect the situation to worsen, and we have started to turn the corner, albeit slowly. Our EPS in H1 FY 2024 was elevated due to a tax refund. If you normalize for this, then our EPS has been stable over the past 12 months. Obviously, this level is not good enough, and we are focused on growing our EPS. Now I will hand over to Adam to go through our results in more detail.
Thank you, Ross, and welcome to everyone. As Ross has outlined, the period has been one of focusing our key business fundamentals, building momentum, and further enhancing our balance sheet strength. Looking at the financial performance of the business for the period, total revenue was down 5% on the December 2023 period, reflecting the tight business market. This is due to a reduction in billed hours, some 12% lower than the December period last year and down 4.7% on the second half of last year. The economic conditions of our key sectors have been mixed, with some real standout performers in community care, while others, particularly in hospitality, are weaker. While hours are down overall, we have seen a mix from lower margin hours to higher yield customers. This has resulted in a marked improvement in bill rates, up 9.1% against December 2023.
Bill rates are now higher than those seen in the financial year 2023. A key business goal has been the continuation of our efficiency program. Costs are down 5.3% from last year, with savings particularly focused on staff costs. This has boosted productivity across the group, increasing billings and revenues per FTE. An integral part of the productivity uplift has been our Project Unite program. This is now really starting to show tangible efficiency benefits in all areas. As a separate program, Project Unite will conclude in coming weeks, and a transition into a BAU program on systems upgrades and deployment. Pleasingly, this has assisted in moving our EBITDA to net revenue margin to 25.9%, a level that is highly competitive against our international peers. A full reconciliation of our statutory results to normalized results is included in the appendix.
While the financial performance for the half was slightly below the December 2023 period, the business is generating genuine trading momentum. The Q2 result of AUD 10.2 million of normalized EBITDA is a 12% uplift on Q1 and steady with the Q2 of last year. This improvement in trading has been led by an increase in higher value work. There has been a strategic focus on quality, high-margin hours across the group. This shift in client mix has ensured we allocate candidates to growing sustainable partnerships. In doing this, there's been a loss of some hours, but overall returns have improved.
We have developed real strategic capabilities in technology and data analytics, allowing us to actively manage the candidate pool and allocating resources to the higher margin roles, optimizing returns. Permanent revenues remain steady with the prior year. First quarter activity was positive but did see some slowdown late in Q2.
Professional services roles continue to be active but remain slow across IT and other blue-collar roles. The work that the business has done in its IT platforms, sales, and client relationships and data capabilities have set us up strongly for the second half. An important part of the build-in momentum has been the shift in client mix and increase in billing rates. As many of you are aware, our business mix shifted in FY 2024, resulting in lower billing rates when compared to FY 2023. We did see a progressive increase in billing rates each month in FY 2024, and this has continued further into the first half of 2025. Billing rates on a per-hour basis were 9.1% higher on the prior December 2023 rate and are now 3% higher than in December 2022. This has come about in a couple of key areas.
There does remain a tight labour market across many sectors. We continue to see candidate shortages and a competitive approach to attract talent. Using data analytics, we are better able to place candidates into roles, maximizing returns and margins. This has resulted in a shift away from lower-margin clients, impacting total build hours but improving profitability. We've seen a shift in roles, particularly within our blue-collar roles in AWX and community care with Edmen. Each of these divisions, in particular, are showing increased bill rates due to higher qualified positions and higher margins. Our workers' compensation injury experience also continues to improve, helping to hold workers' compensation experience rates despite significant increases from all state workers' compensation authorities. I'll pass back to Ross to discuss brands.
Thanks, Adam. This is a new slide for us, and one of the key points of this slide is to clearly show we have resilience thanks to our leading national platform brands. Over the past three years, we've transformed the group from a roll-up of over 20 independent brands to a centralized, client-centric operation that has specialists leading national platform brands supported by PeopleIN. This provides a clearer sales message to our clients and enables us to secure large national contracts. This also supports our internal cross-selling initiatives, particularly making it easier to sell Perigon and Halcyon Knights services across our client base. There will always be sectors that are growing, are steady, or are soft. Given our diversity and our leading platforms, we're always able to pursue commercial opportunities in performing sectors and still deliver solid base earnings even during challenging times.
Looking ahead and as business confidence improves, we're confident that more of our brands will move to a growth footing, especially given our focus on sales and the improvements in our client and candidate-facing systems. We also expect our permanent recruitment revenue to improve going into the new financial year, which, as we've expressed in the past, really is in the cream on the top given its very high margin work. Now I'll take some time to run through each platform brand as it's important that you have a deep understanding of our diversity and future growth opportunities. Edmen is our community care business. It provides services into the NDIS and child protection sectors. It had growth in hours of over 9% in the prior year, and its rates have increased by 9.9%. Costs are steady, and productivity is improving.
We have confidence this business will continue to grow and take market share. Regional Workforce Management, RWM, is part of the FIP Group. This is operating predominantly in the agriculture and food processing sectors and includes our Pacific Workforce under the PALM scheme, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme. The team has managed a transition of our client mix to higher margin quality clients, which has reduced hours by 7.8%, and that accounts for some of our revenue decline. However, we've increased our rates by 18.3% on the prior year. This has resulted in a solid earnings growth for RWM, and we expect this to continue into H2. The business has grown by over 25% annually since we acquired it two and a half years ago. Our PALM workers are sending home around AUD 40 million in salary remittances each year, and this is something we're very proud of.
Techforce, which is our Western Australia and South Australia trades and labour business, has a focus on the resource and facility management sectors. They've experienced solid growth with hours up 10% and rates up 7%. They've also started to secure defence wins in South Australia, which is positive and bodes well for future growth opportunities. We expect this business to continue to grow in H2. Vision, this is our Queensland survey business focused on transport, renewables, and defence infrastructure construction projects. They've had extensive growth, which is fantastic, and we expect this to continue, especially with a new state government in Queensland focused on regional infrastructure projects as well as preparations for the 2032 Olympics. Now to our steady brand, AWX. It's one of our foundation brands and is focused on the Queensland and New South Wales markets, delivering trades and labour workers.
It has a diverse service offering that includes the resource sector, infrastructure, construction, and hospitality under our Tribe. The Hospitality sector has been impacted by the cost of living crisis, and as a result, the business earnings for AWX have been steady but not growing. However, we expect AWX to return to a growth footing early in financial year 2026, given infrastructure projects in Queensland are starting to ramp up. Vision is a good early indicator that this work is coming. Perigon. Perigon is our professional services recruiting business, which we acquired three years ago. The business continues to perform above pre-acquisition levels, which is positive, especially given most of our competitors are either in administration or their earnings are well down. It is also good to see that permanent placement is up on last year. This is very high margin work for the business. What has been softer?
We've had a few softer businesses due to market challenges, and we swiftly managed the costs in line with the decline in revenue and hours. Halcyon Knights is our technology recruitment business. Permanent recruitment is still challenging in this space as we bounce along the bottom of the cycle. However, similar to Perigon, many of our competitors in the technology recruiting space are now in administration given the significant market challenges. The business has done well. Continue to be profitable. We expect this will start to build in the new financial year, and pleasingly, our organic investment in government tech contracting is paying off with hours up 18%. Overall, we expect some growth in H2 and then further growth into the new financial year. First Choice Care is our national health and aged care business.
This has been impacted by the challenges in the private hospital sector, which are well documented, and I'm sure no surprise to everyone on this call. We've reduced costs accordingly and improved our rates by maximizing our resource pool on higher margin accounts where there is still a strong demand for health workers. We expect hours to pick up in Q4 as a result of recent wins in Western Australia, as well as systems improvements. Lastly, Expect A Star, which is our exclusive early learning brand. The private early learning sector has experienced a slowdown due to our clients navigating significant cost pressures. However, on a positive front, we expect hours to improve over the coming months due to the recent introduction of new government incentives, as well as our new systems now being fully operational. We're also expecting improvement in permanent recruitment revenue for Expect A Star.
Now I'll hand over to Adam.
Thank you, Ross. As we look ahead now to our cash flows for the period, there's been another strong period of cash inflows and collections. Net inflows of AUD 22.9 million for the period were 117% of normalized EBITDA, and we're slightly ahead of the strong second half of FY 2024. The collections rate of 117% is higher than our targeted range of 80%-90% of normalized EBITDA. The second half of the year is generally the better performing collections period, although our goal still remains to stay around the 80%-90% range. Debtor days have increased slightly, up just half a day. We have seen some defaults across the portfolio. Our trade debtors are insured, ensuring that any potential losses are limited. An outcome of this positive cash collections and working capital discipline has been the deleveraging of our balance sheet.
Total net debt has reduced by AUD 17.4 million in the six months to AUD 61.9 million in total. This is better than our forecast given at the full year. With our stable earnings and the reduced level of net debt, our normalized EBITDA to net debt has reduced from 2.1 times in June to 1.68 times. January cash collections have also started in a positive way, with this ratio reducing even further. While acknowledging that our cash position remains strong and our balance sheet is in a healthy position, the board has maintained the pausing of the interim dividend. This continues to allow us to have capacity and flexibility for the future. Our forecasts for the rest of the year are for a further reduction in net debt. These forecasts include a payment due in March to settle FIP earnout matters.
This has positioned the company in a really positive balance sheet position with the ability to fund future growth. Finally, back to Ross.
Thanks, Adam. We have a strong, efficient platform and a commercial team that is focused on growing the business and achieving our goal of being the largest and most efficient workforce solutions business in Australia. I highlighted the following key PeopleIN growth initiatives during our FY 2024 presentation last year. We are confident these initiatives will assist the business to accelerate its organic growth over the next few years, and I wanted to take the opportunity today to provide an update on these initiatives. On the cross-selling front, we continue to sell our professional services staffing solutions to our existing client base, and we have made some good headway in the health and community sector with several wins, and we expect this to continue throughout H2.
On the federal government spend space, and we've talked a fair amount about this over the past 12 months, it was great to see the federal government add investigating Pacific recruitment to the ADF's workforce plan, which is a real positive step, and PeopleIN is well positioned to support the federal government with this investigation and run a pilot program given our PALM experience. Also, on the defence front, we're continuing to pick up construction work across Queensland and South Australia, including Vision in the survey business and Techforce in the provision of trades and labour, which is also a positive development. PALM diversification continuing to grow our aged care workforce. PeopleIN has submitted a proposal to extend the scheme to the metropolitan areas, as well as diversifying into early learning, infrastructure construction, and cleaning. We will provide more of an update in the future on that.
To the Olympics, the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. We will continue to provide resources to the delivery authority. PeopleIN is well placed to support infrastructure construction as it ramps up over the next 6-12 months, and AWX and Vision would be the brands that will benefit from this. While economic conditions remain challenging for the remainder of FY 2025, we have turned the corner, and momentum is starting to build, albeit slowly. We remain confident our efforts in driving sales and cost efficiencies, as well as our key strategic initiatives, will enable PeopleIN to grow sustainably and provide long-term value for shareholders. Thank you very much indeed for your time this morning, and we will now open up to questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.
If you wish to cancel a request, please press two. If you're on speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask a question. We have the first question on the line of Ben Wilson from Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, gentlemen. Well done on a resilient result there. Just my first question relates to FIP or RWM. Just two parts there. Was there changing client mix relating to the entry into aged care, or was it also relating to, I guess, a bit of a mix with clients within the food sector?
Yeah, more the latter, Ben. So clients in the food sector. As we said in the past, it's good we're in aged care, but it will take some time to build up those numbers given the size of our meat processing, so food sector work.
Okay, got it.
Then secondly, just on the earnout with FIP. Just confirming, is it sort of about an AUD 6 million payment in total, AUD 3 million in shares, and AUD 3 million cash? I had thought that they had just missed the hurdle, so has something changed there, which means you are paying that earnout?
Yes, you're right, Ben. Post year-end, there were a couple of late adjustments that mean that they were eligible for this payment. There's a final payment to be made in coming weeks, which will be AUD 3 million in cash and AUD 3 million in shares.
Okay, thank you. Maybe just in terms of permanent volumes overall, I think you mentioned just then they softened a little bit late in the second quarter. Ross, I think you said you've got confidence volumes will improve starting in FY 2026.
Just wondering if you can kind of talk to the softening and then what gives you confidence that they'll pick up?
Yeah, the pickup piece is really with the rate increase last week. We'll get through a federal election in the coming months, at least by mid-May, the deadline there. Our view is there'll be more confidence in the market. Clients will be more confident to take on permanent roles and make that investment. Our expectation is then we'll go into the new financial year seeing a pickup. As we highlighted before, Perigon in the half delivered a solid result, and their perm recruitment was up, which is positive. It is really in that tech space where we're bouncing along the bottom. We have a good month, and then it will be a slow month.
We just saw that slow month as we were coming into the end of the calendar year.
Okay, thank you. Maybe just the last one from me. Firstly, appreciate the slide running through all the brands. That's very helpful. Look, obviously, it's hard to crystal ball case. It's always mixed, I guess, across the brands. If you look at an overall portfolio level, do you have confidence at this point that you can maintain your second quarter EBITDA run rate through the second half, or is it too hard to say?
Yeah, we've given all the commentary on that in the presentation. We're not going to give guidance at this point.
Okay, thanks, guys. I'll pass over to the next questions.
Thank you. We have the next question on the line of Liam Schofield from Morgans. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Can you hear me there?
Yes, got you, Liam.
Perfect. Just, I suppose, two quick questions. Just on that strategic client adjustment that you referred to, can you just sort of talk us through what happened in prior years? Did that contribute to the margin degradation? As you then start to do this strategic adjustment, can we expect margins to improve? Also, just on billing rates, obviously, that was a big step up. How much of that is just mixed shift? You did touch on it, but if you could just sort of clarify those two points, that would be great.
Yeah, and we'll do a team effort on this, but the big part has been our visibility with systems. We've been very, obviously, upfront about that over the past couple of years with our investment in systems. We had a big systems deficit through our acquisition program.
The investment we've made is giving us far better visibility down to the client level, location level, and that's allowing our leadership to make commercial decisions around the utilization of our candidate pools, but also the probability of accounts, etc. That mix is flowing through to an improvement in our rates, as Adam went through in detail. We've done a lot of the heavy lifting on that anyway. We always were focused on improving our net revenue margin. We're at 25.9%, I believe. That is industry leading. It's well above our major peers, sort of large peers, but we're continuing to focus on that to try and improve it. A lot of the heavy lifting has been done already to get it to that level. Adam, did you want to add anything?
No, I think you're right, Ross.
I think we've been very—it's a very competitive market. I still see us being able to maintain our rates. Workers' compensation is a big part of that. Our safety teams have met that our rates have been quite competitive. I still see that as being reasonably permanent, but it's still a hard market.
Does that mean that the cost out is mostly done now? Can we sort of—is there much more incremental benefit to come through?
Yeah, look, I think the bulk of it's done. When you look at that AUD 15 million over the past couple of years and the additional AUD 3.8 million, half on half.
Yeah.
Yeah, good one. Just finally—sorry. Finally, if I may, it looks like in the presentation you've shifted away from that NPATA sort of discussion to just sort of straight NPAT.
You talked about more of a focus on EPS going forward. Can we read anything into that and just the way that you're going to approach, I suppose, what you're going to focus on?
Yeah, I think we're trying to stay a little bit singular focused, if that makes sense. Very much focused on our normalized EBITDA, much more focused on our EPS on a long-term basis.
Good idea. Cheers, guys.
Thanks, Liam.
Thank you. We have the next question on the line of Liam Cummins from Petra. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. I took myself off mute for the last round of questions. Got the wrong lane. But look, on the multidisciplined contracts, could you give us a feel for who might the other service providers be that are sort of vending in services to some of these hospital groups in particular?
Sort of your views around how you would sort of hold the margin. I mean, typically, I would have thought a hospital operator, if you're getting a few bites at the cherry on a range of different contracts, they'll probably want a little bit back on the other side. How you think about the margin differences there, and then, yeah, just some of those smaller groups that you might be able to displace along the way.
Yeah, absolutely. Look, hospital's the key one for us, and we have a leading brand under First Choice Care, but it's extending that service in that a hospital requires catering staff, requires facility management teams, requires accountants, requires HR staff.
The brand that we would propose would be Perigon and Halcyon Knights under the professional services, AWX for those in New South Wales and Queensland, Techforce for those in Western Australia, and South Australia for that facility management and sort of catering teams. That is the proposal, but the bid is under PeopleIN. There would be a PeopleIN account manager that would then coordinate across those three brands to keep it very simple for our clients so they are not having to go to each brand individually, and then having an open discussion about the different rates, whether it be in the perm recruitment space or the contracting space and the different rates. So far, those discussions have been done in a transparent way so that we can manage the margin side.
We're a volume business, so the benefit to our clients is one point of contact for all of their needs, but also the more volume they put through us, then looking if there are discounts for those volumes as well. That's the proposal. It's something that we are pushing with clients and hope to provide more updates on that in the future.
Fantastic. Looking forward to hearing about that. I think it's pretty exciting. Sorry, I jumped on the call a little bit late, so sorry if I missed this, but the cash conversion in the first half, another really strong result. Just thinking back to the last half, I don't think it was too far out of whack.
I'm just trying to get a sense of how much was sort of catch-up on the last half versus potential pull forward or maybe what the second half might look like just on that number.
No, there's no particular pull forward or delays. As we've talked about in previous periods, we let cash lie where it comes. Our second half is generally better. We do have some front-end loaded outlays that happen. That being said, I still continue to look at our 80%-90% of EBITDA target as being the sort of optimum range. I'm still hopeful that we'll continue at current rates, but 80%-90% is our long-term range.
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Maybe finally, just on the cost, I mean, another really strong result from you guys. It was, yeah, a huge number.
Just thinking to sort of better times ahead when things start to rebound, how much of that you think you can hold versus how much you think might need to creep back just to expand things out. I suppose the structural element to the cost outs that we've seen in recent halves.
I think a lot is structural. Project Unite has unlocked efficiencies and gains all the way across the group. We're able to use data and our technology much, much better. Particularly, it is structural. As we've probably discussed with you previously, as sales and particularly permanent really rebounds, there will be some additional commissions come out of that. I particularly see that our teams are operating at amazing increases in productivity of revenue and accounts per person. I would see that only continuing with our continued investment in tech.
Awesome.
Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah, well done. A great result in light of the continued environmental headwinds. Yeah, thanks. Well done.
Thanks, Liam.
Thank you. We have the next question on the line of Ollie Burston from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Yeah, just filling in for Ian Munro here. Well done on the result given the tough industry conditions. Just regarding the PALM scheme, it looks like the total number of workers has leveled off recently. Just wondering how PeopleIN's market share is tracking on the scheme. I guess sort of following on what the sort of broader margin profile looks for the FIP business. Then just secondly, how are you seeing the broader conditions for permanent recruitment into the second half? Do you think there's any level of risk in regard to tightening of demand around that federal election?
Thank you for that. Hopefully, Ian's all good. Just on the market share, you're right, there's been a leveling. We're maintaining our market share. We're still the largest provider of Pacific Labour. That's continuing. We've seen an improvement in margin for the FIP Group or Regional Workforce Management. We're focused on improvements in that space, just efficiency improvements with our cost base, but also, as we've talked about today, the client mix as well. There are not going to be rapid improvements in the margin, more incremental over the next 12 months or so, but it's something we're very much focused on.
Then how things will change post-election.
I mean, geez, that's very hard to predict, but we certainly believe that both sides of the aisle are committed to the scheme and understand the important nature of the scheme, one, to provide workers into these regions, particularly the roles that they are performing, and two, as a foreign affairs commitment to these islands. We are very proud of the sort of work that we can give these groups and the funds that they can send back to their communities. We continue to be actively talking to both sides of government to make sure that this scheme is committed to.
Great. Thanks for that. Maybe just finally, just regarding seasonality, I know you do not give any quantitative guidance, but looking at the second half, do you think the first half is sort of repeatable with the EBITDA line, obviously subject to the usual business risk?
Yeah, without giving guidance, as I said before, probably worth noting, though, that January is always a challenging month with people going on holiday. It's the major holidays here in Australia. With that slowdown that we experience every year in January, that Q3 from an earnings point of view is normally our lowest earnings quarter in the year.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back over to Mr. Thompson for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Just thank you again, everyone, for your support and also your time this morning, and look forward to catching up with you one-on-one over the coming weeks. Have a fantastic day. Cheers. Take care.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Thank you.