Good morning, and welcome to the PeopleIN Limited half year results briefing. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Ross Thompson to begin the conference. Ross, over to you.
Great. Thank you very much. Morning, everyone, and thank you for attending this morning, and welcome to PeopleIN's first half results. I'd like to introduce Megan Just, PeopleIN's CFO, who's joining me this morning. Good morning, everyone. PeopleIN is built on a simple but powerful purpose, to inspire excellence in our people. It's an absolute pleasure for me this morning to announce another record result for the business. We delivered AUD 596.7 million in revenue, and our normalized EBITDA was AUD 32.5 million. This is a growth of 88.9% on the revenue line and 50.5% on the normalized EBITDA line. Outstanding result from the business. We also delivered strong organic growth, 21.3% revenue and 11.8% to normalized EBITDA.
This 11.8% is up on our strategic goal of +10% organic growth. Again, we're extremely pleased at a solid financial result for the first half. Our performance is underpinned by our diverse reach into high demand and defensive employment sectors, including early learning, food services, infrastructure, which includes transport and water, and healthcare. Pleasingly, our on-shoring of international talent has significantly increased in half. We brought in over 3,200 new workers. Industry tailwinds continue with low levels of unemployment, 3.7% as of yesterday. Projected wage growth of +3.3%, and as you know, that wage growth drives the organic growth in the business because of our business model. Projected employment growth through to 2026 of 9.1%. The business is well-positioned to continue to deliver solid earnings.
82.6% of our normalized EBITDA and 106.2% of normalized NPAT was converted to operating cash flow. Slightly down on what we announced for the full year, as we highlighted in August, this is due to the F.I.T. Group acquisition. Still very solid performance for the business. Exceptional performance continues from the two brands that joined the family towards the end of last financial year. Paragon and F.I.T. Group, with a combined EBITDA contribution of AUD 8.3 million. The M&A pipeline remains strong, with a focus on establishing a global healthcare network, as well as focus on professional services in the government contracting space. Balance sheet capacity of circa AUD 40 million, which is up AUD 10 mil on what we flagged at the full year to execute on strategic opportunities in this half of the financial year, so H2.
The strategic review that we announced in November continues to progress well, with the goal of maximizing value for shareholders and turbocharging our growth. We'd also like to reaffirm our FY 2023 earnings guidance, normalized EBITDA range of AUD 62 million-AUD 66 million. We expect to be at the upper end of guidance. On this slide, just call out a couple of points here. Normalized EPS of AUD 0.206. This is 40% growth on the previous corresponding period, which is absolutely fantastic. Fully franked interim dividends of AUD 0.07. That is up AUD 0.005 on what we announced at the full year, a return on equity of 25.9%. Megan will touch on this in a bit more detail later on, but it's impressive that the business continues to deliver really strong return on equity.
The next couple of slides, just wanna address that confidence that we have in our earnings. You know, I've said before, we reaffirmed our earnings for FY 2023, we are one of the few businesses that came out in August with guidance, we continue to deliver against that guidance. It's really driven by two parts. One is the competitive advantage that we have, the other is the market conditions. On the competitive advantage, we have a strong business, we are a good company, if there is any economic challenges, then good companies rise. You know, the cream rise to the top. PeopleIN is a good business for a number of reasons, I'll call out a couple on this slide. The first is around our clients. We provide a specialized at scale complete talent solution.
You can see the wheel to the right. We have one of the largest access to talent pool in Australia, but also growing internationally as well. We can deliver for our clients. We think left field, we think outside the box in order to meet their talent needs. From a candidate's point of view, we're only as good as the candidates and employees that we have. We give our candidates confidence that we'll find them employment because of our sector and geographic diversity. You know, I've called out previously the chef example in lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne, where those chefs were working in restaurants, we were able to redeploy those chefs to mine sites for those that wanted to fly and fly out. They don't have to jump on SEEK. You know, it's our job to find employment for them.
Industry-leading safety compliance approach, generally our compliance approach is industry-leading as well. You know, we are a good business. We also have leading back-office support that allows us to continue to drive efficiencies across the business, especially as we bring new family members into PeopleIN. From a shared value point of view, you know, across our three pillars, we continue to deliver for First Nations, sustainability, and equity and inclusion. With regard to market. Again, that point of why do we have confidence? Well, I'll start at the macro level and look at the unemployment rate. It came out yesterday with 3.7%. You know, that is still well under full employment, which is regarded to be around that 4.3%. The market, the labor market is still tight.
When you look at the projections forward and what we're depicting here on the slide is the RBA's projections. Now, out to 2025, it's still at 4.5%. There's still good conditions. Even when you look at when PeopleIN listed in 2017, it was high fives unemployment rate and still made good money. When you get into that 4% mark, it just means there's more availability of talent out in the market, so we can actually service our clients even better with having access to those candidates.
From a Wage Price Index point of view, you'll see there on the graph in the bottom left, again, you know, 3%+ of wage price growth, which we've talked about this previously, is what we pass on to our clients, and that does drive organic growth for the business. Moving to the table. There's three elements which make up our organic growth. There's new jobs in the sectors in which we operate. There's wage growth, which I just talked about. There's also market share. You know, that's us leveraging our size to just take more market because we can push harder and longer with our balance sheet, whether that be international initiatives, whether that be opening new offices in new geographies, et cetera. I'll call out healthcare and community in a bit of detail.
The expectation is there is, I think it's conservative, number of jobs will increase annually by about 3.2%. Wage growth, again, I think it's conservative, is around 2.9%. We believe, given our size, particularly in that nursing space, we can grow the business. Now that our international piece, which we saw in the last quarter, really start to get some traction. We can grow our market share by at least 10%. Adding all that together gets you to 16.1%, our expectation around annual organic growth for the foreseeable future in the healthcare space. We've called out a couple other key sort of defensive sectors that we operate in. Education, which is our early learning, which will be around that 14%-15%. Food services, double-digit growth, et cetera.
We'll start to refer to this more and more in future presentations, but we wanted to present that today, especially given some uncertainty at the macro level with markets. Again, we are confident that we can continue to deliver and can continue to drive organic growth. As a bit of a segue, I'll now hand over to Megan to talk more about our sustainable organic growth moving forward.
Thanks, Ross. Yet again, PeopleIN has delivered double-digit organic growth for both revenue and EBITDA. Our diversity in the industries we operate in has assisted in producing these results of 21.3% growth in revenue and 11.8% in EBITDA. We've seen demand in early learning, food services, and transport infrastructure all increasing over the half year, reflective of 9% organic increase in just the industrial services hours alone. We've been able to increase hours with the utilization of international candidates because of improved visa processing times. We've placed more than 3,200 new workers onshore in the first half of the financial year across all the verticals.
The acquisitions that performed in the second half of the last financial year have also performed well, leveraging from the group by utilizing cross-selling opportunities and the scale of the group to win multi-brand contracts, because of the increase in demand in the industries that they provide staffing services to. The contribution from these two acquisitions was AUD 8.3 million EBITDA for the half. Reiterating our statements of prior periods, we believe that we have a sustainable competitive advantage to our scale and diversity and have an ability to continue to win market share in a growing addressable market. We are continuing to target greater than 10% organic growth for the full year group wide and have confidence in achieving our earnings guidance.
The interim results are impressive, with revenue growth at 89%, EBITDA growth at 51%, NPAT A growth at 49%, finally, earnings per share growth at 41%. This growth has been derived from strong organic growth, supported by strong performing acquisitions. We believe that we can continue to deliver on these results into the foreseeable future as demand for employees continue and wage growth is also continuing. There is also significant market share for us yet to obtain. Our three vertical structure is deliberate to ensure that we weather any change in economic conditions and still provide good returns to our shareholders. The normalized EBITDA contribution was AUD 32.5 million, from revenue of AUD 596 million, being an increase of 51% from last half.
EBITDA margins have reduced from the full year to 5.45% as we preempted due to the acquisition of Food Industry People Group. Additionally, we've seen a change in the mix of our revenue, with contractor revenue increasing from 90%- 93% revenue. This is due to increase in contractor hours, but particularly in our industrial and specialist services vertical. This vertical has lower margins and very high volumes. Pleasingly, we remain above industry averages of approximately 3%. We are expecting an improvement in the margins into the second half as we see continued growth in the health and community vertical that we saw in the second quarter of last half. Normalized NPAT is up 48%- 16.1%. This is despite rising interest rates and increased amortization due to historical acquisitions.
Cash flows from operations have been strong again, with normalized operating cash flows of AUD 22 million for the half. Our normalized net receipts from customers is AUD 26.8 million compared to normalized EBITDA of AUD 32.5 million, resulting in 82.6% of our EBITDA being converted into operating cash flows. Normalized operating cash flows were AUD 21.1 million compared to normalized NPAT A of AUD 20.7 million, being a conversion rate of 106%. Our results are supported by a strong balance sheet. Net debt has increased at the end of last financial year with the acquisition of Food Industry People Group and has remained steady over the half. With the earnings generated over the half, net debt to normalized EBITDA has reduced to 1.13x .
Growth of our group during the half has resulted in the increased utilization of our working capital facility. Continued strong cash flow generation supports that we are still in a position to undertake future acquisitions, and we are confident in our ability to borrow up to AUD 40 million over the coming 12 months for acquisitions. This will push our net debt to normalized EBITDA but within comfort levels. Debtors days has improved by a day to 32 days. We remain laser-focused on debtor collection, which includes client vetting prior to onboarding and methodical debt collection procedures. It remains a focus of both operational and financial staff collaborating to ensure that we maintain these exceptional collection statistics. There has been an increase in capital expenditure through this half.
This spend has been on three main avenues, being lease fit outs, the growth of Vision Surveys Queensland business, and the most significant being our systems program of works. For the half, we've spent AUD 2.3 million on the systems program of works and AUD 1.7 million for Vision and AUD 1 million on lease fit outs. The amalgamation of the number of brands at head office of Brisbane has been a significant step forward for collaboration, culture, and cross-selling for our group. Our investment into our systems and processes to continually improve our service delivery internally has been a major focus over the past six months. This program of works will continue into the next financial year as we roll out across the entire group. I'll pass you back to Ross now for an update on M&A.
Great. Thanks very much, Megan, solid results. It's a proven M&A model with a strong pipeline. Paragon Group and F.I.T. Group joined the family in H2 last year, and their combined EBITDA contribution was AUD 8.3 million. Around 20% up on the future maintainable earnings that we flagged for each of those businesses when they joined the family. We've been able to turbocharge the growth of both businesses, with Paragon being a real focus there on healthcare. One of the reasons why they joined the business was given our large reach into the healthcare sector and with combining and setting up client meetings, et cetera, they've been able to increase their healthcare work by providing accountants and business support service members to those healthcare companies. With Fitz, they've had access to a larger and more diverse client base, including in the renewable space as well.
Through our Halcyon Knights business, they were able to pick up work on Snowy Hydro, which is fantastic, and again, comes back to one of our key strategic pillars, cross-selling. As Megan highlighted, we've got capacity around AUD 40 million to execute on a strategic opportunity in the second half of FY 2023, and that will be debt funded. From a pipeline point of view, highlighted here on the slide, the two focus areas which tie back to our three-year strategy. The first around establishing that international nursing network, and the second is around increasing our exposure to government contracting, particularly in the defense space. The outlook remains strong. We have diversified sector exposure and client base. We're positioned to support key macro growth areas of healthcare, professional services, education, and food services, all of which have a long-term demand for talent.
Low levels of unemployment, higher wage inflation, and also just employment growth in these sectors support earnings growth for PeopleIN. The business continues to be well positioned to capture market share based on our scale and diversity. We'll leverage our key partnerships. A couple of weeks ago, we announced our strategic partnership with TAFE Queensland to help bridge that gap between education and employment. Will also give us access to the over 120,000 students that TAFE Queensland teaches, educates, upskills every year, and we'll become that employment part- partner for them to help position or find employment for those individuals. The partnership also gives us the opportunity to provide training opportunities to our existing contractor base as well, which is really powerful when we come, you know, come back to that slide on our competitive advantage, and we're only as good as our employees and candidates.
Our internal nursing network recruitment is expected to continue to increase. We saw a pickup, particularly in the second half of H1, and we're expecting that to continue to ramp up throughout H2, particularly as visa processing times improve. We've also launched our new campaign, which is You Plus Us. We're happy to send out a link to anyone that's interested because it's a fantastic website. Really good job the team has done there to help us attract more nurses, particularly from the UK and Ireland. Technology permanent recruitment is expected to improve. We did see a slowdown in the second half of H1, but we're already sort of seeing that tick up in the early part of H2, particularly in the cybersecurity space and our increased government work with contracting work.
We'll continue to drive a strong cash and cost discipline across the business, including leveraging the scale of PeopleIN. The M&A pipeline remains strong, pointed out earlier in that healthcare space and also government contracting with circa AUD 40 million to execute on strategic opportunities. With all of that, you know, we have confidence in our guidance, AUD 62 million-AUD 66 million, and we're targeting the upper end of guidance. Now just to bookend the key highlights, the key parts of today's presentation. Another record result for PeopleIN. Revenue up 88.9%. Normalized EBITDA up 50.5%. Outstanding result. Strong organic growth. You know, we're not just a roller. We bring businesses into the family, and we grow those businesses organically.
Delivering 21.3% revenue line and 11.8% of the normalized EBITDA line is a solid performance for the first half of the year and bodes well for the next three years of our strategic plan. Our performance is underpinned by our diverse reach into high demand and defensive employment sectors, including early learning, food services, infrastructure, healthcare. Our onshoring of talent is up, which is great to see because I know we've been talking about this for about 12 months now. It's good to see that tick up of 3,200 in the first half of the year, and we expect that to be higher in the second half of the financial year. Industry tailwinds are good for PeopleIN.
Low unemployment, wage growth up around 3%, and also new jobs being created, you know, out to 2026, 9.1%. The business continues to be well positioned to deliver solid earnings. Strong cash flow, as Megan Just went through, you know, 82.6% EBITDA, 106.2% normalized NPAT A. We'll continue to drive that strong cash discipline in the business. A great performance from the new brands that joined the family. You know, it just goes to show the solid M&A approach that PeopleIN has, bringing businesses in, growing those businesses, and therefore generating a strong return on equity. Strategic review continues to progress well, with the goal of maximizing value for shareholders and turbocharging our goal of growth.
We reaffirm our FY 2023 earnings guidance, a range of AUD 62 million-AUD 66 million normalized EBITDA, and we expect to be at the upper end of guidance. Thank you very much indeed for your time, and I think we will move now to Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Liam Schofield from Morgans Financial. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Can you hear me there?
Yeah, I've got you, Liam. How are you?
Perfect. Yeah, good. Thanks, Ross. Two quick questions. Just, that implied run rate for the second half, you know, that's sort of implying nominal growth. Is there some sort of expectation, you sort of talked about 10% organic growth going forward, that that could also occur in the second half? Secondly.
Yeah.
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
No, no. Sorry, you... What was your second question?
Yeah. Secondly, just on the growth, you talked about 20% growth over the underwritten assumptions for Paragon and FI, and F.I.T. Group. What's the split there? How is F.I.T. Group running, I suppose, compared to the underwritten assumptions and likewise for Paragon?
Yep. Look, I'll target that. We flagged AUD 8.3 million, Paragon was just over AUD 3 million, and F.I.T. was just over AUD 5 milionl there. We had flagged 9.5 million FME for F.I.T. Group, they're running above that rate. We flagged AUD 4.3 million for Paragon. Again, they're running at a +AUD 6 million rate. Again, we're very pleased with the way those acquisitions are performing, which is great. Look, wait for the full year, we're still continuing to target that 10%+ organic growth for the business.
Great. Thank you. Perhaps just one other quick question. Can you just maybe comment just on Labor government, Same Job, Same Pay legislation, how it may or may not impact you guys?
Yeah. It's a couple of parts for that, Liam. The first is we continue to work with government, which is great. You know, given our size and diversity as well, we're a good sounding board. So that's good. The other thing, and for those that may have heard from Minister Burke talk about good labor hire, bad labor hire, and we've talked about this on previous calls as well. You know, a lot of this IR reform is focused, or it is focused on the bad side, you know, those that aren't following processes, procedures. You know, as a good company, as a public listed company, you know, we follow process, procedures, we offer our contractors upskilling opportunities, etc. So we've put ourselves in the good camp. So I actually think there'll be more opportunity out of this.
Again, I know this is all being worked through, and it's something that we will continue to engage with government. For the likes of a national labor hire agreement, then we would welcome that. In the past, pre my time, but in the past, executives from PeopleIN were part of Queensland developing their labor hire agreement. Again, we would welcome a national agreement.
Perfect. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue for the time being.
No worries. Three in one, Liam.
Your next question comes from the line of Ian Munro from Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Good morning, Ross. Good morning, Megan. Congrats on the result. Just a couple of questions from me, please. Just firstly, with the healthcare billable hours, it sounds like there's some decent momentum coming through for the second half. Is it logical that we'll get above the second half FY 2021 levels, which I think were 1.1 million-1.2 million billed hours? Secondly, just interested in where you sit on the submissions for the insourcing of the PALM Scheme. Obviously, that's going on at the moment. Well, how does that potentially impact PeopleIN? Then thirdly, just on the CapEx intentions for the second half that redesign the systems upgrade is complete. Just interested in how that's progressing. Thank you.
Cheers, Ian. Yeah, the expectation is we'll be up on billed hours for health care and community. There's definitely some momentum building there in Q2. Visa processing times are improving and, you know, federal government's committed significant dollars to work through the backlog there. We're seeing that. Also with the launch of our new marketing campaign as well, we expect all of that to pick up. The demand is there and will continue to be there for many years yet. It is really about supply, and I'd say we're addressing that. With regard to the PALM scheme, so the insourcing, any particular point there, Ian, you wanna cover off?
Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. As I understand it, there was some submissions due to the government with respect to the insourcing, and there's been some revisions as to the department that the PALM scheme lives under. Just trying to understand whether there's any potential implications, positive or negative, for PPE. Thank you.
That's, you know, you talk about DY there. Look, it's still a key focus for government, the PALM Scheme. You know, I don't. From a scheme point of view, I think very much committed to continuing to drive that and diversify that, which is probably the biggest opportunity for us. We've talked before about our aged care proposal and the fact that that was endorsed, and it's something we're continuing to work through. Any change there, I don't think will have a material or have an impact given that overall the intent is to still focus and drive forward the PALM program and diversify it as well. CapEx, I hand over to Megan on CapEx.
obviously we've got that big program of works continuing. That will continue over into FY 2024 as well. leading into the full year, we're expecting that that will be up around AUD 5 million for the full year, including the AUD 3 million that we spent in this half. Then into FY 2024, there'll be an additional AUD 3 million spend. The remainder of the CapEx, so Vision, it is dependent on the surveyors and their growth. They have experienced significant growth, that will probably peak up and slow. Then the remainder of the CapEx is quite minor and minimal and will remain consistent with what it has historically.
Thanks, Ross. Thanks, Megan.
Cool.
Cheers, Ian.
Your next question comes from the line of Elijah Mayr from CLSA. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, Ross and Megan.
Hi, Elijah.
on the results.
Cheers.
Just a couple from me. Maybe just firstly on Food Industry People on FIP Group. Can you maybe sort of just talk through, I guess, the exit run rate? I mean, it seems like that business was or has performed a lot better than original sort of expectations. I'm just sort of interested to note, I guess, what sort of it exited the half and what should we expect going into second half and how much that should continue to grow.
Yeah. FIP Group. Yeah, as I said before, we flagged that AUD 9.5 million, it puts it in the AUD 10 million run rate mark. It is up, and we're expecting that business will continue to perform. Looking at the individuals that they brought in from the Pacific during H1 was around 1,500 people. When we acquired Food Industry People or FIP Group, they had 4,700 workers. They've now got 5,500 workers. I know my math is off 'cause we've had some leave. We brought 1,500 workers in and now have 5,500 workers. The business is growing nicely and also benefiting from having access to a more diverse client base as well.
Our expectation is that, at least continuing the run rate that it's done in the first half, if not slightly up on that.
No problem. Maybe just on the professional segment, so a bit of some margin compression there. I was just wondering if you could sort of talk through, I guess, the mix shift on some of maybe the permanent placements and what you would sort of expect the margin to recover to in the second half.
Yeah, absolutely. It went from 13%- 10%, there's two elements to that. In Q2, particularly November, December, we did see a slow and permanent recruitment in the tech space. That brought down the margin slightly. We have seen a tick up coming into the new year, and I flagged earlier, cybersecurity roles are starting to flow through. The other thing we've seen is that move from permanent recruitment to contracting. Contracting is a permanent recruitment is around that sort of 13% margin. Contracting is more around 10%-11% margin, but it's longevity of earnings. You know, once you get a contractor in, particularly into government work, it may be six months, 12 months that individual is working on a particular contract.
Those are the two elements that impacted on the H1 results.
No problem. Maybe just 1 final one, if I could. Just on potential acquisition, I mean, you've been quite open in sort of stating, expecting something in health in UK in June. Do you guys have, I guess, something already in mind, I'd expect is? How far has this progressed and? Or is there a couple options on the table?
Absolutely. We've got a good pipeline. You know, looking at a number of organizations there, and we wanna make sure, you know, they stack up against the strategy and everything is right. You know, there's a level of confidence there. Obviously, it's never a done deal, but a level of confidence there that we'll be able to execute as long as, you know, everything stacks up and is aligned with our strategy moving forward.
No problem. I'll leave it there.
And-
All the best for the rest of the full year.
Cheers. Cheers, Elijah. Probably worth noting on that as well, 'cause the question may come, you know, it's still around that 3x-5x valuation range as well. We haven't seen any tick up in that space, which is good. You know, being able to acquire creative deals is obviously a focus for us as well and deploying that capital correctly and strategically.
Perfect. Thanks.
Before we move on to the next question, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Ben Wilson from Wilsons Advisory. Your line is open.
Thank you. A lot of my questions have been asked already, but just interested Ross, in...
Oh.
Sorry. Ross, just interested in the number of overseas nurses you've currently got on your books. I think at the Investor Day, you mentioned you were at about 400 overseas nurses, so it's still improving but still well below your pre-COVID levels of sort of 1,500 overseas nurses. Just wondering-
Yeah.
if that's increased further.
Absolutely, mate. I think we flagged just over 300 overseas nurses at the full year. Now we're over 700 overseas nurses that we brought in. We're slightly up on where we were at the full year. Pre-COVID was around that 1,200 overseas nurses figure. You know, we're getting back there. As I said, we're hopeful for H2 that we'll be able to increase that further.
Great. Thanks, Ross. Then just interested more on the macro picture and picking up on the professional services, margin compression, question you spoke to. You know, one, a question I get a lot is whether in a downturn, you know, contracting positions will actually be the first ones to be let go by employers, whereas I think you've often spoken to, you know, moving from permanent positions to contracting. Judging from your answer before, it sounds like that may be what happened in Q2 with your professional services vertical, in particular in IT.
Can you just speak on that a little bit as, if the unemployment rate does continue to tick up a little bit, are you confident that your contracting base won't get too impacted and that if anything, it may see a bit of a benefit from employees moving away from permanent hiring?
We expect that to continue to grow, and we're focused on those areas where there's money. Whether that be in parts of federal government, et cetera, but also with the banks and other big clients, blue-chip clients for us. We expect that to grow. That's what the business has seen in the past, whether it be the GFC, et cetera, that's a shift to contracting, which is, you know, 1%- 2% drop in margin, but then you get that longevity of earnings. It's something we've been focused on for over 12 months, is growing that contractor base and organically pushing into the government area as well.
We've also flagged as part of the M&A pipeline, if there was a good business that could turbocharge our exposure into federal government, particularly defense, then that's something we would be interested.
Great. Thank you.
Cheers, Ben. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Ron Shamgar from Tamim. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi. Great results. Can you hear me?
Yes. Morning.
Yeah, just a couple of questions. Morning. In terms of that, PALM Pacific Workers program, you know, there's been some news in the media about some a lot of these sort of workers, maybe 1 in 5, sort of fleeing the workplace because of sort of poor conditions and so on. I guess, you know, it's something that the government might look at, and I'm just wondering whether it's something that you're seeing and whether, you know, implications for PeopleIN, whether good or bad?
No, thanks for the question. I think it was a couple of weeks ago. It was in Australian, very much focused in on the agri space. With regard to the PALM, most of our workers are in the meat space, so different sort of sector. Also from our side, we don't see that level at all, you know, it'd be single digits for us. We're very focused on before individuals jump on a plane to come to Australia, just setting expectations about what it's gonna be like over here, you know, the changes and how everything's going to work so that, you know, before they fully commit, which is when you jump on a plane, that you're managing, you know, those expectations. It's a really good experience for them when they get to Australia.
I think some other businesses and maybe smaller businesses aren't able to invest that time, and therefore there's a bit of an expectation mismanagement when they get here and results as, you know, what they reported on in the paper about higher absconding rates. Yeah, it's something that doesn't isn't significantly impacting on PeopleIN.
Yep. Okay, thanks. Just last question, in terms of the strategic review, you know, that's been going on for three and a half months now and, you know, I guess, you know, you delivered a good result. You're still trading on a cash NPAT of 8x. Just trying to understand what you're trying to get out of this strategic review. I mean, you know, your current multiple, if you're sort of buying businesses at close to 5x EBITDA, it's not too accretive and, you know, your debt levels are beginning to get a bit stretched. I mean, what, are you trying to basically get someone to acquire you?
If you can't find someone to acquire you know, how does that strategic review help the business?
Yeah. The review is a full review, so you know, an outright sale is an element of that, but it's not the only element of the review. You know, it's all about looking for opportunities to turbocharge our growth, which comes back to capital. You know, we've highlighted AUD 40 million, which we've got comfort in order to deploy that AUD 40 million, using debt and where that would land our debt levels. There's comfort there. There's a hell of a lot more we could be doing. You know, we could really turbocharge that if we had access to capital. We're looking at other options that there may be in order to deploy, you know, source capital and turbocharge our growth. As I said, there's a number of options to it.
We did announce in November, we knew Christmas was gonna be in the middle of that, which really writes off a month, you know, up to the Australia Day holiday when people will start coming back. You know, we're at the 2-month mark, but we are conscious that, you know, you don't want reviews going too long. As I said, it's progressing well at this point, which is good. It's a bit premature for us to disclose any specific details related to the direction, if any, that we'll take the company at the conclusion of the review. You know, in the meantime, we really are just focused on business as usual for the team and continuing to execute on our 3-year strategy.
Yep. Okay. I mean, at what point, you know, do you sort of, you know, come to a conclusion? I mean, just from a timeline perspective, and sort of you give it another two months and then, you know-
Yeah, I won't commit to it. I think as I said, it's progressing well, but there's a number of options that we're looking at. We don't wanna delay this beyond the point of, you know, we're not getting value out of that review. At this point in time, we're still getting value, we're still working closely with Luminis, our advisor on the review, looking at a series of options. At the right time, we will inform the market.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Ken Wagner from Petra Capital. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, Ross. Good morning, Megan. How are you?
Very good, Ken. Yourself?
Very well, thank you. Well done on the result. Look, just really a question from me around EBITDA margin. It looks like FIP progressing really well. But it looks like margin, EBITDA margin sort of around about the mid-twos for that. Is that where you thought it would be when you acquired it? Are there some perhaps early stage or startup costs involved in that? Do you expect to see better margins from that going forward?
Ken, I might address that one, hey.
Yep.
Yes, it is performing as we expected. We were expecting in the mid to 2%-3%. That is where it is performing. As for improvement in margin, it probably will stay around that. Where we'll see improvement from margin is the mix of the group and the health and community starting to fire.
Yeah. Okay. I think of this strategy today, you are targeting a medium-term 7% EBITDA margin. Is that still the case, or have you needed to modify that given perhaps the shift from perm to contract during tech or anything else that's having any impact there?
No. 7% is still our target.
Okay. Great.
Ken, that's over the three-year period of our strategy. With the focus on government and the focus on health, you know, we got confidence we can return the business to those levels.
Yeah. No, that's fine.
FIP Group had an impact also. Our industrial business just shut the lights out as well, which again, is around that 3%-4% margin.
Yeah. No, no, that did have a terrific half by the looks of it. Just on the last thing on the organic growth for the half and the revenue at 21%. What's the split across the segments on that? Oh, you just mentioned ISS, so I assume that did most of it. Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Any more color on that, or is that all I'm gonna get?
Well, most of it is in the industrial. Remember, it's got the specialist services, so we have seen growth in the education business in there, the early learning, and also in the hospitality. Both of those have performed really strong, and the surveying business is up there too. It's the specialist services as well as the industrial, so it is predominantly that business. That's the organic part. In the professional services, it's really Paragon that's outperformed.
Okay. Great. All right. Good one. No, thank you. That's all I have. Thank you.
Cheers, Ken. Thank you.
As there are no further questions, I would like to thank our speakers for today's presentation and thank you all for joining us. This now concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.
Excellent. Thank you. Cheers.