I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Declan Sherman, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Thanks everyone for joining us on our Annual Conference Call to go through our FY 2021 annual results. I'm joined by our CFO, Megan Just, and by fellow Executive Director, Tom Reardon, as well. Before I get into the results, I'd just like to make a special mention to all our employees, many of which are investors and shareholders in our company, for all the work they've put in throughout the year. They've worked tirelessly to produce such a great result, and as a company, we thank them especially for that. I'm going to run through the presentation today that we uploaded onto the ASX website. Just starting with the highlights for FY 2021.
There were a number of highlights and when we think back to where we started the year and the uncertainty faced around the lockdowns relating to COVID-19, we look back and we think this is a tremendous result to produce the set of numbers that we've produced for the year. One of the themes that I'll talk about is not just the growth that we've experienced in FY 2021 versus FY 2020, but the growth that we've experienced throughout the year. The second half was a much stronger half from the first half, and it's meant that we're starting FY 2022 in a very strong position, and that's really been consistent across all divisions throughout the business. In terms of some of the headline numbers, our revenue for the year was AUD 444 million, which was an increase of 19%.
Our underlying normalized EBITDA was AUD 38 million, which was an increase of 33%, and our underlying NPATA was AUD 25 million, which was an increase of 37%. That translated into growth in our EPS of 33%. We finished the year with AUD 0.27 as our EPS. As a result, we declared a dividend of AUD 0.06 per share, which takes our total dividends for FY 2021 up to ten and a half cents per share. In terms of the highlights across our customers, people and community, there are many. I've chosen to just call out a few of them, it was terrific to be able to respond to all of those stakeholders in such a positive way throughout the year. We employed over 13,000 staff in the field. We increased our number of hours billed by 18% to 7.7 million, we served over 2,700 clients.
In terms of our workforce, our people, we increased our number of employees by 111, which amounted to substantial growth through the business. It was partially related to the acquisitions we completed throughout the year, which I'll talk about in a second, but also relating to just organic growth coming through in the businesses that we operate. When I think forward to FY 2022, there's a particular focus on growing our workforce to continue to meet the demands that are coming through from clients. In terms of how we operated in the community, once again, just calling out some of the highlights, we employed or placed over 500 indigenous candidates across our business. We grew our home care business from 30 people to 130 people at the end of the year, and we planted over 4.5 million plants through our Timberwolf brand.
Just moving on and talking about the acquisitions we completed. As more economic certainty came through throughout the year, then we could continue to execute on our acquisition strategy. We did that across each of our divisions, which was pleasing to see, and one of the things that we've invested in over the last couple of years is our corporate services team, so we can rapidly not just make the acquisitions, but integrate them quite successfully into the business. I've been particularly pleased by how well the businesses have been received into the PeopleIN family and been able to execute and improve on their businesses as being part of a bigger group. The acquisitions we completed throughout the year in healthcare, we bought SwingShift, which is a Victorian-based nursing agency that specializes in mental health. We acquired eCareer and Illuminate, which is a Sydney-based IT recruitment business.
We acquired Techforce Personnel, which is a West Australian, South Australian-focused industrial workforce management business, and Vision Surveys. We didn't complete the acquisition of that business until July this year, although we announced it in FY 2021. It was great to, after a period of some uncertainty relating to COVID, to get back onto executing on our acquisition strategy. As a business, we've still got significant capital and significant opportunities coming through to continue to grow our business in each of the divisions.
In particular, there's opportunities that we're specifically looking at in healthcare, IT, and training and education. We have capacity on our balance sheet to fund, I called out in the presentation approximately AUD 50 million-AUD 70 million in cash that we can fund without stretching our debt to EBITDA levels, so keeping them below the one times limit, which is not one the banks place on us, but one that we feel comfortable being an appropriate amount of debt for our business. In terms of the organic business units that we've been able to grow ourselves, our home care business continues to grow really well. As I said earlier, we've substantially grown the number of candidates that we've got in that business, the number of people that we're servicing. We've invested in technology and expect to considerably scale that business throughout FY 2022.
Our Tribe business, which is outsourced HR and payroll services, also grew substantially throughout the year. Is expected to grow throughout FY 2022. The employment market has also been one of the highlights throughout the year. There was a significant bounce back in demand for employees throughout the year. Employment is up 6.3% year-on-year. More importantly, sits above where it was prior to COVID coming in, 1.4% above that level. In very strong employment markets, the demand for our services escalates even more. We've been able to benefit from that demand coming through from clients. At the moment, there's a little bit of uncertainty in New South Wales and Victoria, in particular with respect to the lockdowns. What we traditionally have seen, what we saw very recently was when we come out of these periods, there's even an increased level of demand coming from clients.
Once again, expect escalated demand coming once those lockdowns cease. Just looking back at our performance over the last seven years, and the compound annual growth rates over the last five years, I think this is perhaps the slide that we're most proud of. It really demonstrates the strength in our business, and the formula that we've gotten is very much working across our business. We think we've really been able to carve out a niche for ourselves in the sectors that we focus on with respect to recruitment and employment. We've got leading positions in each of those sectors that we focus on, and that's enabled us to continue to grow our numbers very consistently over a number of years.
Just looking at our strategy, I won't spend too much time talking about this, although I wanted people to see what's been some of the secrets to some of the success that we've had. In terms of our family of brands, there's a number of brands there. The key thing for us is we're organized along divisional lines. Each of those divisions is basically operating at a position of one or two in terms of the sectors in which they focus on. That strength that they've been able to exhibit in those sectors has been one of the key reasons why they've been able to continue to attract clients, attract candidates, and grow their businesses. In terms of the pillars that we look at which underpin that growth in our business, there are three major pillars. The first being together.
It's how we bring our business together as a whole, and how we bring the individual brands together under each of the divisions. The second is perform. How we cultivate our businesses to be market leaders in the sectors that they serve. The third is transform. These are the bigger initiatives that we make, which really lays down the tracks for our future prosperity. The markets that we focus on are incredibly large. Over time, we've been able to expand from staffing services to business services and operation services, and really taking full advantage of the capabilities that we have in the staffing space. They're big markets that we service in each of those categories. In total, we see a combined opportunity in terms of the markets we focus of over AUD 250 billion. Just talking about the growth opportunities that we're focused on.
In staffing, there's a number of new markets, new verticals that we're focused on. I call out some of them in the presentation being doctors, allied health, education, and white collar. We're pursuing both organic and acquisition opportunities in each of those sectors. We're also looking at expanding regionally into markets where we've got services, but we're not currently providing those services, so we've got those capabilities. Business services. The main one I'll call out there is training and education. Increasingly, we've seen it as being an opportunity with respect to our clients, and also an opportunity with respect to the talent that we employ in our business, to be offering more from a training and education perspective.
In particular, we're very focused on the talent life cycle, and how with the relationships we've got with our talent and with our employees, how we can continue to capitalize on that and offer them more. We're not just offering them employment opportunities, but we're also offering them training and education opportunities. We've already got a small RTO that exists in the healthcare space, and we're very keen to grow on that part of our business. We see it as being a key driver of more employees into our staffing business and also another, as I said, a way to capitalize on those relationships we have with our employees. Finally, on the operational services sector, there's a number of opportunities that we're continuing to pursue and continuing to grow. Home care, we're looking to continue to grow that business of ours. That's already shown significant growth throughout FY 2021.
We're looking at other opportunities in that space, which really expand on our capabilities in the staffing sector. The financial results, I'm just going to hand over to Megan.
Thanks, Declan. The annual results for this financial year have broken records in both revenue and EBITDA contribution, with the second half of this financial year showing a really strong recovery from the impacts of COVID in the first half. The EBITDA contribution was AUD 38 million, with AUD 17 million recorded in the second half. These results reflect the resilience of the group as a result of the diversity of the industries and the locations that we operate in. We've been pleased with how quickly all divisions have rebounded from the impacts of lockdown, and all were either at or exceeding record profit contribution in the final quarter of the financial year. The IT division has performed exceptionally well with the final quarter, with permanent placement being at really high levels. We are seeing significant demand for our employees across all industries.
We've continued to invest in the corporate services function to drive benefits across the entire business. With the added resources in this function, there were four significant acquisitions completed during the second half across each of the four divisions and across all spectrums of Australia, including Victoria, Sydney, W.A., South Australia, and then with Vision completing in July, which is predominantly in Queensland. At 30 June, we were in a net debt position of AUD 25.2 million. We remain in a strong position to undertake future acquisitions. Debtor days remained exceptional at 34 days for the group, excluding Techforce, down from 37 days at the half year. We continued to focus on the collection of debtors and driving these days down. That's the core of this result. There has been an increase in debtor days as a result of the acquisition of Techforce overall to 47 days.
The effective tax rate was 33.72% in financial year 2021, going forward into financial year 2022, we're expecting this to decrease to approximately 31%. We're forecasting an increase in capital expenditure in the next financial year with investment into our systems and processes to continually improve our service delivery and efficiency internally. We've estimated this to be AUD 2.5 million in financial year 2022. Cash flows from operations have been impacted by the settlement of deferrals obtained as a result of COVID, normalized operating cash flows as a percentage of normalized NPATA is 84% over the last two years. There is AUD 2.5 million still outstanding with regards to payroll tax deferrals, which will be settled in the first half of FY 2022. I'll just pass you back to Declan to talk about the businesses.
Thanks, Megan. Just providing a bit more detail on the business as a whole and each of the individual divisions. The total group billed hours increased by 18% year-on-year, and the perm revenue increased 12% year-on-year. Very happy with both of those results. As I indicated at the outset, it wasn't just the growth year-on-year, but the growth coming through in the second half of the year versus the first half. For billed hours, the second half averaged 19% higher than the first half. For perm billings, the second half averaged 132% higher than the first half. You can see how strong the business has been in the second half of the year and the strength of the position that we have going into FY 2022. Just running through each of the individual divisions.
With respect to healthcare, the billed hours increased by 14% year-on-year. A special thing to call out there was, I guess, the increased work that we got with respect to COVID testing, vaccinations, and some of the hotel related quarantine work. Also want to make special mention of the acquisition of the SwingShift business, which joined our existing Melbourne nursing business in the second half as well, with a focus on mental health. We've also been very focused on our sourcing of nurses. Our Australian Healthcare Academy has been critical to that. We also acquired ECT4Health , which has also acted as a funnel for nurses for us as well. We're excited about the organic growth opportunities coming out of this business as well.
We launched our rural regional nursing business during the year, and that's enabling us to service a market we haven't previously serviced, being predominantly regional parts of Queensland and New South Wales. We launched our perm placement healthcare business a couple of months ago, and that's opened up a new market for us as well. We're exploring the acquisition of doctor/locum recruitment businesses as well, and other managed services. As a whole, really strong demand has been coming through from clients. Very limited margin pressure in that part of the business, and really excited around both the organic and acquisition opportunities we're seeing in that part of the business. The community services business, it increased 10% year-on-year, which was terrific. We launched our home care business back in February 2020, so we had our first full 12 months of operating that business.
We have significantly grown the number of people we service in that business. We've invested in the systems to make sure that we can continue to scale that business throughout FY 2022 and beyond. With respect to our IT business, it was able to grow its billed hours in FY 2021 versus FY 2020 by 23%. Its perm billings were flat year- on- year, but when you consider that it was significantly down in the first half, that's not such a bad result given the growth that's come through in the second half. The second half revenue from that part of our business was 43% higher than the first half. It had a tremendous second half, and the outlook looks incredibly positive for that business. It's been putting up record numbers in consecutive weeks for a number of weeks, looking back over the last couple of months.
The outlook for that business for FY 2022 is particularly good. We're hiring a number of people in that business, but there's also markets in Australia that we're still not servicing, in particular the Canberra market that we're keen to continue to grow into. I should say, we are partially servicing the Canberra market, but we want to grow our influence in that market, and in particular, grow our servicing of government clients, and that represents a good growth opportunity for us in that business. The eCareer and Illuminate business joined PeopleIN during the year in February. That's been integrated into our Sydney Halcyon Knights business. It's done incredibly well. We're very happy with how it's performed and how it's been integrated, and just the strength that that's given to our Sydney business just through providing more critical mass into that business. All up, the outlook's very positive.
Strong demand from clients coming through in the IT sector at the moment, limited margin pressure, and lots of growth opportunities in that part of the business. Just finally, onto the industrial and specialist services vertical, increased their bill hours 23% year-over-year. Margins were fairly steady. It also launched a perm recruitment business, which will grow into FY 2022. Launched an indigenous joint venture servicing rural and remote communities as well. Just as a reminder, the main client offerings are food processing, mining, and government, and there's been strength in the demand coming through from clients across each of those sectors. Also pleased to have the Techforce and Vision Surveys teams join our business. Really excited around the opportunity for these businesses, both in their own right, but also as part of the broader PeopleIN Group.
There's already a number of cross-divisional referrals that are happening with respect to those businesses. We're very excited around the growth that I think we can collectively all drive across those businesses and what that means for our broader business. In terms of the outlook, I think it's safe to say we're fairly positive around what the future means for us. There's been tremendous growth coming throughout the year across each of the divisions in which we operate in. Although there's some short, what we see as being very much short term uncertainty relating to the New South Wales and Victorian markets. When you break that down in terms of how that impacts our business, it's certainly mitigated by the growth that we're seeing coming across the businesses that aren't as directly impacted. We're pretty positive, both in the medium term, but especially in the long term.
I think one thing that we've been able to demonstrate is when you look back at our business, in particular for the second half of the year, the strength of the results that have come through the business, and the acquisitions that we have made, which will be additive, again, going into FY 2022, means that there's significant growth expectations coming through across that business. In more detail, there's a number of initiatives that we've got going on in the business where, in particular, investing in the employee experience. Our EVP is really critical to us, and we're doing a lot of work in that space. We're improving our IT systems to continue to improve our employee productivity and our offering to our clients. We've invested in our corporate services functions to better facilitate growth. We're investing in offshore staffing funnels to facilitate further growth post-border openings.
We think that'll be a strong opportunity in particular if there continues to be staffing shortages. We're expanding our training and education offering. I mentioned that. That's going to be a really key initiative for our business throughout the year, and it's going to drive what we think is going to be very positive incremental learnings to both our staffing business and to whatever the training and education offering is that we invest into. Finally, we're expanding our geographic footprint. Always focusing on markets where we're not currently servicing, but we've got the capability to service, and that's across all of the divisions, healthcare, IT, community, and industrial and specialist services.
I think our view on the economy is what we saw last time was government's propensity to spend to continue to make sure that if any lockdowns are prolonged, there's not going to be long-term economic consequences, the RBA's desire to keep interest rates very low and also households just building up or accumulating cash and their willingness to spend that once they come out of lockdowns. We've always seen, even when you go back to the time around the GFC, a really strong rebound in staffing and recruitment businesses once you've had the temporary impact of either a recession back in the GFC or lockdowns at the moment. With that, they're all our comments. I'll hand it back to the moderator for questions.
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 a question. Your first question comes from Kurt Gelsomino with Morgans. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning, Declan. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, Kurt. How are you going?
Yeah. Good, thank you. Yeah, congratulations on a solid result. I just thought I'd unpack your outlook comments initially, where you talked to the volatility or the impact from COVID in New South Wales and Victoria being significantly impacted-- mitigated, sorry. Mitigated. Is it correct, should I interpret that mitigation should mean that you'd expect your second half FY 2021 EBITDA run rate of that sort of AUD 17 million, is continuing on in this first half FY 2022? Is that the correct way to interpret that mitigation comment?
Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption.
And can you just sort of—
At this point, we've made the decision not to give guidance. Historically, we never did give guidance until, with all the uncertainty around COVID, we gave guidance last year. We sort of reverted back to that. Certainly, assuming there's no major change to current economic conditions and what's happening with respect to the lockdowns, then I expect that AUD 17 million number to be a good run rate number historically.
Terrific. Can you maybe just talk to where are some of the growth you're seeing across the business at the start of this first half 2022 and just talk to what are some of the impacts being experienced in New South Wales and Victoria across your various verticals?
Yeah, sure. Firstly, it's quite varied, right? The businesses that are being, what I would call, slightly negatively impacted, our Sydney nursing business, but mainly the private part of that business rather than the public part of that business. Our childcare business has had some impact with respect to the casual part of that business, but the perm part of that business has been quite strong. A couple of small clients in our blue-collar business have been impacted. Parts of our Tribe business have been impacted. I wouldn't consider them to be material. Conversely, our IT business has been incredibly strong. As I called out earlier on, the revenue coming through from that business is significantly up on budget. That's gone a long way to mitigating those businesses which have had some small downturn.
I guess given IT saw a bit of a downturn in the initial lockdowns in Victoria, I guess you hold a very positive outlook for that business again in FY 2022, so you're not concerned by the Melbourne lockdowns at this stage on the IT business?
No, not at all.
Can you just remind me, I think there's about AUD 9 million of EBITDA you're expecting from the acquisitions you completed in FY 2021. Is it fair to assume that, I guess, that contribution would be reasonably evenly split first half, second half in FY 2022?
Yeah, I think so. I guess it's going to be slightly up in the second half. Probably for two reasons. One is we didn't complete on the Vision acquisition until the start of August, so we're missing a month there. Also, the Techforce business is growing, so we expect it to have a stronger second half over the first half.
Yep, understood. Maybe just a question on the cash flow. It looked like there was a significant increase in receivables into year, and I think you sort of flagged the impact of the Techforce acquisition there. I guess, was that sort of the driver of the increased receivables, and are you seeing that sort of working capital build release in the first half of at all?
Yeah. Look, obviously the business grew throughout the year, so there was more working capital used throughout the year as it grew. We did the Techforce acquisition, which had a considerable receivables book attached to it. We bought the business with the receivables in it, so we didn't have to pay for that separately as such, but that's what drove that increase in the receivables. We have seen July's been a really positive cash flow month. I think we did AUD 3.8 million in operating cash flow for the month, so there was a partial bounce back there as well.
Understood. I guess your M&A comments too, are pretty clear, I guess. These recent lockdowns aren't sort of slowing, I guess, your sort of intention to pursue M&A in the near term?
No. We've got, as I called out, there's a particular IT acquisition opportunity that we think just strategically makes a ton of sense to our business. Its numbers haven't been impacted. It's going very well at the moment, and we think would be a great addition to our business. There's a couple of opportunities in the healthcare space as well that we think strategically would be great additions to our business. Also specifically one opportunity in the training and education space that we are focused on that hasn't been impacted by COVID-related restrictions. No, we're very focused on continuing to execute on our acquisition strategy.
Terrific. I guess, well, you made that comment too in the pack that you're sort of saying that there's not a lot of increased competition for acquisitions at the moment. Is that sort of what you're highlighting?
Did you say there's not a lot of competition for acquisitions?
Yeah, I thought I saw a comment in the pack saying.
Yeah. Look, it's been key to our execution strategy for a number of years, and it has been the fact that we have been able to make acquisitions without the competitive tension of a sales process, and we've been able to do it on terms that work for both us and the vendor. We've seen those conditions continue. It's great to have such a strong pipeline of acquisitions that we know that we can buy many cases on an exclusive and off-market basis, and they fit so well strategically with our business.
Awesome. I'll leave it there. Thanks a lot for your time, Declan.
Thank you, Kurt.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jack Dunn with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, Declan, Megan, and Tom. Thanks for taking my call.
Thanks, Jack. How you going?
Yeah, good, thank you. I've got a couple questions for you this morning. I'll start off on the acquisition pipeline. With some of the target areas you called out, the doctor businesses and allied health, can you just provide a bit more color around what you're seeing in that market? Are you sort of expecting the same multiple range of four to six times that you called out at the half?
Yeah. I think, in terms of the types of opportunities, they're staffing businesses, they fit neatly with the offering that we're already providing. In many cases, for instance, where we're providing either nurses or carers into hospitals or say, aged care facilities, then providing either doctors or allied health workers is just another very natural offering that fits with those businesses and fits in that division very well. Yeah, in terms of multiples, pretty similar levels. We've always been very focused on buying these types of businesses for multiples of less than 5x, and that continues to be the expectation.
All right, great. Thank you for that. My next question, looking at procurement within hospitals, what are you sort of seeing at the moment, given international border closed and the different levels of domestic border closures? Then also, what are your expectations when Australia gets to, say, that targeted 70, 80% vaccination rates within this?
I'll come back to your second part in a second. I might need some clarity on that. In terms of procurement from hospitals and how we've been seeing things, apart from the things I've called out historically, such as, obviously there's less nurses moving between states because of closed borders and less nurses coming in internationally because of the closed borders.
They've been the things that have made a little bit different over the last 12 months, and that hasn't changed. Our business has really been operating in somewhat of a steady state in terms of responding to our clients and what their needs have been. Their needs have changed based around what's happening in their own business. With respect to hospitals, what's been happening with respect to other surgeries or their expectations around vaccinations, et cetera, they're things that we work very closely with our clients on in terms of being able to provide them with a workforce that meets their expectations. Apart from that, it's sort of been business as usual for us.
What was the second-?
Yeah, I'll just clarify that one a bit better. It's more about when Australia gets those targeted 70, 80% rates and some of the restrictions on borders ease. Are you thinking, are you expecting some greater availability of nurses to meet your clients' needs, which will help, or how are you sort of seeing the market once these restrictions ease off?
Yeah. Well, I think, look, when domestic borders are open, then across our whole business, you've just got a workforce that can move more easily and respond to whatever clients' demands are. That's in nursing, but it's also across a bunch of other sectors. That'll be great to see. We've been kind of living with this for a while now, so we've learned to sort of manage it and deal with it and be able to respond to our clients without having that flexibility. That'll definitely be helpful to us, especially in a market where there's a shortage of employees. We're also very focused on building our funnel of international employees, and this is really across our business, so that when the international borders do open, we'll be able to capitalize on that.
We think there's going to be significant demand from international employees wanting to come to Australia and work, when our international borders do open. There's a little bit of it going on at the moment, but it's a bit harder to manage given demands around quarantine, et cetera. We're more excited around what it's going to mean for us when the international borders do open.
Perfect. Just on the international funnels, is there any sort of geographical regions where you're targeting more than others?
In terms of international workers, I think, in our industrial services business, we're focused on opportunities with Pacific Islands in particular. I think with our healthcare business, probably more in the U.K. We're also focused, the Philippines actually, with respect to opportunities in our industrial services sector. There's a bit of a cross-section of countries that we're focused on.
Perfect. Thanks. Just the last one from me. I just wonder if you could just touch on the labor market at the moment, and, obviously nursing you said there's challenges getting nurses. Are you sort of finding any other areas tough to find labor? Is there sort of a mismatch in available labor in some areas as well, in terms of you've got oversupply in some divisions, whereas others are tough?
Yeah. Look, really, across our business, we've always strategically tried to focus on those parts of the Australian economy that are growing and where there's strong demand for employees. Really across most of our business, when you've got unemployment being as low as it is, then you've just got constant demand from clients looking for workers and us out there using all our capabilities and to actually execute on that for them. I'd say it's not a bad thing. It's pretty consistent across our business where it's a tight employment market. It doesn't mean that we can't service them. It just means that, if anything, the value that we provide to our clients is more pronounced in these markets.
Perfect. Thank you. That's all from me. Thanks. Thanks again.
Thanks, mate.
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. We will now pause a moment to allow for any further questions to register. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Sherman for closing remarks.
Great. Thanks very much for that. Thanks everyone for dialing in. Really appreciate your support throughout the year, and look forward to catching up in the future. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.