Welcome to the FY 2026 SGH Investor Day. Thank you for making the time to be here in person and for those joining on the webcast. We have a full day, and we really want it to be worth your while and worth your investment in time. Some of you have been with us for a long period of time and understand the SGH journey. Some are newer to the story. Today is ultimately about giving you a clear, unfiltered view about how SGH operates and ultimately where we're heading. Just a quick walkthrough of the day. We'll start this session with who we are at SGH and how we operate, then hand over to Gitanjali and Sam to talk through people, our workforce. Rob and our BU CEOs to talk through the operations. Richard and our BU CEOs on the privileged asset base and capital.
Then we'll have some [Inaudible] . The afternoon, we'll spend some time going through capital allocation with Richard and Stefan, then two deep dives around the AI and innovation and a go-to-market and growth pathways for SGH. I aim to close at bang on 4:00. Through each process we'll have a Q&A, so at the end of each session you'll have a chance to ask questions and work through that to make it interactive. Just a bit of housekeeping for today. We're at 175 Liverpool Street. It's been our corporate office since 2018. We have about 18 people actually in total that work across SGH, including support staff. That's the entire SGH corporate footprint. It matters, and ultimately we'll come back to that through the presentation. Some housekeeping. I think you should have the Wi-Fi details.
You'll hopefully have a chance to download the presentation, and the bathrooms are outside and if you hear the evacuation alarm, it will take you through what to do, but don't expect that to occur today. There is an assembly point in Hyde Park, literally across the road. The SGH leadership team and speaking order. This is the team you'll hear from today. It's the operating leadership of SGH. The average tenure across the group is over a decade. That's not by accident. That's just the continuity and accountability of how we operate. You will hear from each of them in respective area. Ultimately, everyone within the SGH structure will own their numbers. They'll speak to their plans. They'll take your questions directly. We have everyone sitting down the front who will get up, and we'll be able to make that question session quite interactive.
What to expect from today, I think probably three messages I want to leave you with as we commence today. Everything ultimately through the presentation will hang off these messages. First, SGH is a relentless operator. Performance improvement is a permanent state for us, not a periodic initiative. The SGH Way is our operating model and how we apply it consistently across every business we own and how we adapt that specifically to each business in its own unique attributes. Second, for us, industrial compounding. We really have a focus on our result being driven by this continued focus on improvement and accumulation of that performance gain. It's driven by hundreds of marginal gains across our people, operations, assets, and financials and ultimately how as we look around innovation, particularly AI, we can leverage that to continue to accelerate that. Third, this long duration growth.
We are exposed to strong demand thematics. In Australia, certainly what we see across this AUD 1.7 trillion infrastructure and construction pipeline, sustained mining production and tightening domestic and global gas markets, the opportunity with energy. Through the day, hold onto these three points and you should hear them echoed through different attributes of the presentation. More things to know about SGH. We're circa 32nd or roughly just around the 30 to 35th largest company on the ASX. We're in the ASX 100, the MSCI Global Indices, Australia's leading industrial operating business, a long-run TSR outperformance. All this underpinned by this operating model and the culture and the owner's mindset, where every decision we make is essentially made as if it were our own money and how we apply it, and that's an important philosophy that our entire team embraces. Australia is an anchor of this portfolio.
That has not changed. However, what has changed is probably that operating environment here. I think for us, the federal budget has raised the effective tax burden on Australian capital returns. Capital gains tax removed, the 30% minimum tax on net gains, negative gearing restricted, trust taxation reset. Cumulative for us, this is not tax reform, it is a higher cost of deploying capital in Australia at a moment when global capital pool is more mobile than ever. On top of that, we have the IR direction, energy policy, and planning settings that have been tightening for a number of years.
Our operating model can absorb that, but it means we now need to broaden how we think about deploying capital from a geographic opportunity perspective, and we can spend a bit of time later in the growth aspects around that. Clearly, given the timing, that is something we are evolving.
Nothing we have specifically now to talk to as far as opportunities. It is an important reframing as you think about SGH, as we think about where we look to grow. Prepare for those questions as you go through that. Our operating portfolio is concentrated where we have the deepest networks, strongest customers, the most defendable positions, market-leading businesses with privileged assets, focused around industrial and energy. For us, that's the right end of the market where we see this underlying activity, supported with the infrastructure construction outlook that I spoke to, this requirement to build 240,000 dwellings a year under the National Housing Accord, strong mining production outlook, growing domestic gas demand and tightening supply, and that global LNG outlook. All those elements are the long-duration demand drivers.
This notion of compounding excellence for us, which is how we apply our model, frontline-focused, operators over administrators, relentless on the incremental gains we need to drive through our business, and the SGH Way as a repeatable operating model, and the disciplined capital allocation supporting all this and how we drive a durable return over time. This slide is that system in one picture. There's four inputs on the left, and three inputs on the right. The left ultimately drives the outcomes on the right for us. That's the operating model. The four inputs on people, the owner's mindset, discipline and accountable, Balanced Scorecard and cadence. Every result measured, every gap owned. On pace, the decisions are made quickly with actions that follow.
AI for us at scale is a key focus on how we look at driving agents into production, where we can leverage productivity, operational efficiencies, and a better customer and sales execution. Those four inputs are what we define as that relentless operator perspective. It means we need to apply these in daily practice. They're not posters, they're not slogans. That's just how we operate. They're the disciplines with which we run our business and businesses every day, every week, every month. The three outputs, that's ultimately it in action and working, driving margin expansion through hundreds of small wins compounding into that structural advantage. That return on capital employed compounding and disciplined capital allocation and reinforcing this notion of that flywheel for us in action. That will all drive TSR result over the same period, and that's part of our core objective.
Ultimately, the inputs are the cause for us. It's what we do, and the outputs on the right are the objectives. The outputs feed upon that action, that activity. Latest numbers. This is the most recent half-year result. Half-year EBIT of AUD 844 million, slight against prior corresponding half, but I think up on second half FY 2025. The business has stepped up in that half-on-half result. I think the other important factor in our model, the operating cash flow at AUD 1.1 billion is up 32%. It's a cash store underneath the EBIT line. That's what's driving the deleverage of 1.85 x net debt to EBITDA. Again, unique attribute of our model. We'll spend some time talking about that, this ability to deploy capital and have strong cash flow businesses that can then continue to fund our growth. What is driving that result for us?
The Boral margin compounding 14.7% in half year 2026 against 6.8% in December 2021. That's a four-year transformation. WesTrac aftermarket support, that activity continues with 19 million parts sold to March, on track to exceed the FY 2025 numbers on a volume basis. We can talk to that, but activity is sustained there and the Coates utilization up at 62.2% year to date to March. Ultimately, the chart on the right is a story as you see the EBIT margin compounding over time. A decade of compounding excellence. For us, that's ultimately the proof of that working where you've got this 10 years of continued results, EBIT growth composition on the left, FY 2026 to FY 2025 from around AUD 300 million of EBIT to around AUD 1.6 billion and 18% EBIT CAGR over the decade. I think the important point, this is both the organic performance and inorganic action.
I think when you look at SGH, that's an important factor as to how we continue to grow the business and leverage that cash flow to continue to drive growth. The organic and inorganic are somewhat core to how we perform. If you split the source, it's a 10% organic CAGR from an operational improvement and the 8% inorganic CAGR from that disciplined capital allocation. The two together is really what drives our model. I think that the color mix on the chart's useful around, you can see the WesTrac contribution and now Boral dominate the earnings. Coates has continued to add to that mix as well. The ROCE on the right from 6.9%-16% in FY 2025. Results have improved. We've grown profit, but we've also grown that margin. For us, this is a demonstration of our model in action, our model working.
This is the SGH Way in one diagram. It's a scalable and transferable operating model, is applied consistently across SGH. There are four layers that sit within this. At the center are the objectives, which I've talked about, the TSR outperformance, that's an objective and the sustainable value creation. That is what we're setting out to do. Around that, we have the elements around how we deliver, so around disciplined capital allocation, is absolutely key to the sustained result for SGH. Our pillars around people, operations, assets, financial. The strategic focus for us around privileged assets, sector demand, performance focus, discipline, and accountable, and ultimately scalable. The outer ring, those seven traits, which I'll pick up on these in a bit more detail. This for us is the best way to describe how we operate and what we do.
It drives our decision process, it drives our engagement through the businesses, and it drives the way that we perform, the way our businesses perform. Each business unit will have an iteration that is relevant to how it operates, but consistent with the core principles of that operating model. Just getting into some of the seven traits that sit around the edge of that operating model. I'll probably break those into what's performance and what's structure. When we look at the performance attributes, execution and growth, which is for us, how we focus on fundamental execution, very clearly defined metrics, performance, be it efficiency, maximum output for us and every dollar we invest and contribute. Continuous performance improvement is a fundamental aspect of it. We have this mindset. We know we can be better every day, and we have to drive that culture deep into our business.
The job is never done. Marginal gains compound over time, and that is a really key principle to how we think culturally as well as operationally. Pace. Decisions made quickly, supported with technology where we can, but fundamentally, this is about moving at a continually accelerating pace. The scalability of our model, that's another important aspect. We want to be able to grow SGH, but we don't want to grow the corporate office oversight. We should be able to, and we do that through the way our model works with our business units and the way they function. That is just a key attribute of SGH. The accountability lets us grow our operations without necessarily having to grow our corporate oversight. Part of that is this clarity about the role we have at SGH and the role our business units play. Clear delineation.
Framework is defined, the delegations are defined, and we structure it efficiently and drive to a common objective, and then ultimately let the business units execute with autonomy and accountability. The frontline focus is another important point. 85,000 of our circa 15,000 workforce are frontline-orientated. That number is very deliberate. We want to orientate our business towards where people are driving outcomes for customer or business process to drive outcomes, and the rest is about how we drive an efficient oversight that is aligned to get that scale into our business. That frontline mentality is really important culturally as well as operationally. That's all part of how you should think about the way we operate and one of the key elements to how our model works. This SGH and business unit delineation, just to pick up and get into that point in a bit more detail.
That's the question we often get asked during our investor engagement around how does that SGH process work, and how the role within each of the business units function, particularly across WesTrac, Boral, Coates, and the energy activity. How do we do that efficiently and effectively? This is the way we articulate it. If we think about the top layer for us, the SGH Limited perspective, our board and executive dynamic, we have that very clearly defined. The role we probably play at a corporate level really is around capital allocation, portfolio composition. They're the issues we own, and that's what we have at that SGH level. Layer two, each of the business units has its own board. Really important. That's where budget setting, performance accountability, the sign-off on capital allocation, and very clear delegations are defined and measured and maintained.
It drives performance, it holds the BU executive to account, and there is a lot more autonomy in that structure and scalability with that structure. Third, the business unit executive. Full authority, own the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow, drive frontline execution. Fundamentally, that's where the action accountability occurs within each business. Our role, ultimately hold management to account, support them with the right capital and the right oversight, and ultimately drive the best from the team and ensure we are delivering. We don't micromanage, we ultimately support and we challenge. That's that role and it has to work efficiently to drive the outcome. That is replicated across WesTrac, Boral, Coates, and anything else we may do. This notion of industrial compounding, that's the value creation, the core philosophy for us.
The flywheel, which we have, again, providing this visibility for investors, the way we think through this notion around the five steps that drive the outcome of our flywheel. Four steps on the left around owning privileged assets, how we operate and drive performance through the compounding of this marginal gain, continuing driving improvement day in, day out, and looking for areas we can drive performance, and then how we deploy capital efficiently in businesses and take surplus capital and redeploy it elsewhere is going to drive. This flywheel just shows how we see this working, and if we execute each step effectively and continue to drive growth. That's the way we think through this notion of this self-reinforcing loop. The performance discipline drives, ultimately, through discipline, people, our BU performance. We deliver cash flow, we deploy capital and grow, and we continue that cycle. That's our flywheel in action.
Probably five numbers that define, for you, how we think about the ambition. Again, it's a very clear calibration of our ambition or defining of that ambition and the standard we measure ourselves against. This notion of zero harm, that's absolute foundation. Continuous improvement and how we get there and drive our safety performance every day. That's a critical factor. One SGH Way, which is one operating model, common language, accountability, framework across each business. Each business will have its own application and definition of this to suit its purpose. Fundamentally, we have an operating model that's consistent. This 10% EBIT growth is a clear focus for us. We want to drive EBIT growth, and that is going to be a combination of organic and inorganic results. Just to be clear, that's not necessarily going to be a steady year-in-year-out process for us.
This is something we expect to deliver over an average time, and our view would be three to five years, and ideally three, would deliver that CAGR. That's important because to get the discipline right in the combination of organic and inorganic, timing isn't always perfect in that. Fundamentally for us, if we execute the strategy effectively, we should be able to grow both through organic and inorganic action to drive that 10% EBIT and EPS growth. That's our ambition. 15. The 15% ROCE applied across our capital allocation targets. That might not be day one, but that is ultimately what we have as a result and return result required to justify that capital. We think our businesses can generate that. That's the discipline for us. To be honest, the last one's really more an ambition outcome. It's not a specific action in its own right.
If we're able to execute the first two of the foundation, grow the business, and deliver on that ROCE, frankly, the third should be an outcome that we achieve. That's important to set in our own mind where we want to be. What to listen for today. I think as you go through, you'll see a bit of a tone around the core pillars. For us, people, that frontline focus, safety, capability building. Gitanjali and Sam are next. Talk through that. Operations, the business unit way, the Balanced Scorecard discipline, marginal gains, AI deployment. Rob will take that through with the BU CEOs. Assets, our privilege assets, utilization, lifecycle management, network reinvestment. We'll have Richard and the BU CEOs talk to that.
Then financials, again, this notion on how we drive operating leverage, how we drive ROCE and cash generation, capital allocation, where again, that's something Richard and Stefan will talk through. We do have two deep dives, which I think will be quite interesting around what we're doing in AI and innovation, some of the opportunities there, and then how we think about this growth. Three things probably takeaway from the session. One, we are a relentless operator. That performance improvement is a permanent state for us. We are committed to how we drive that. The SGH Way is that operating model. We ultimately drive that through people, Balanced Scorecard, our operating cadence. They're all aspects. Two, our focus on compounding excellence is important. That if we look back the last 10 years, 18% EBIT CAGR, we want to continue to grow as we go forward.
The proof for us will be looking out in the future, can we deliver on that ambition? The third, we set out the zero, one, 10, 15, 30 ambition. You should hear that woven through each of the presentations. Before I hand over to Gitanjali and Sam, happy to, we've got some time to run through questions in this section. Questions?
Morning, Ryan. Harry Saunders here at Evans and Partners. Just wondering on the 10% EPS and EBIT CAGR. Through the cycle, what's the split, the sort of the organic component there?
There's probably a bit in that. Look, it's probably, in reality, I think for SGH, it's probably going to be a bit half and half in that mix. If you think over a medium-term basis of three to five years, it should be about half and half, roughly. Hopefully, that should put us above that threshold. Fundamentally, that's going to be there. The only thing I'd stress is it'd be wonderful to be able to straight line that, but the reality is it's never going to be quite a straight line. I think as you look at the SGH portfolio, as we defined organic, that is things we don't have.
If you stand back and look at SGH today, within the portfolio, which we probably should define as kind of notion semi-organic, things like Crux, that is what we'd consider are not an organic action in that context. That is coming, we're investing in that'll play through. The inorganic actions are what sit outside that. The uncontrollable nature of that means we are disciplined, and we'll find the right opportunities. You have to think through as SGH in this combination of both the organic and inorganic action. That's how let's frame that point.
That's really helpful. Maybe just to follow on from that, given we're facing into FY 2027, I guess, how are you thinking about the organic side of things in the context of a more difficult macro environment?
Yeah. We have to manage through. I think I'd say the underlying demand thematic, we still think is positive. There will be periods of time where that might not be as consistent as you'd like, but the fundamental demand thematic is there, and we just have to execute through it. Things will be in our control, will be outside our control. We'll have to navigate through that. We'll deliver how we can within that 2027 outlook. I think the important point to look through is what that means from a medium-term basis in reality, right? The known growth we'll have with what will come in when Crux comes online in the future with some of the property opportunities that will come through in rental income. Those elements for us all support that organic growth dynamic. Yeah, 2027 we'll have to navigate through.
Just to clarify, that sort of roughly 50% of the 10% being organic, that would include Crux and property earnings over time?
Yeah. Yes, in short. Mainly because when we think about the inorganic, it's elements outside our control. In a true context, you probably put Crux and property into, like, this notion of semi-organic, right? It's things we have, we own. They're part of the mix that we're investing in growing. I should keep in mind, as we think about that too, investing in growing Boral network or expanding that's all in what we term as kind of this notion of semi-organic, the way we frame it from an SGH perspective. We'll put capital into growing out part of the Boral network. That is not an actual inorganic step in our mind. Part of this growth journey is going to be how do we actually strengthen that network in areas and grow that will grow the underlying result as well.
Thank you.
Hey, Ryan, it's Ramoun from Jefferies. Just a question on that capital allocation comment earlier and potentially looking outside of Australia. Could you maybe flesh that out a little bit more, anything on geography?
Yeah
that you're thinking or assets or type of assets would be helpful.
Look, to be honest, when we're putting this together, that wasn't really part of the script. If you look through our strategy, it's kind of not really woven from there. We still have a very strong Australian anchoring here. One of the things I think sets SGH apart a little bit is we are very overt in what we look at. We've been very open with the market about what we look at. We've got our seven criteria, and so it's very transparent. Part of that is staying Australian-focused. What I'm stressing in that opening comment is there's a shifting landscape around deploying capital in Australia. We have to be mindful of that. We still think there are a lot of attractive elements about deploying capital in Australia. We have to be mindful that we're now given policy settings, that is getting challenged.
In our view, their attraction is getting challenged. We now need to think more broadly. It doesn't change the lens we have around industrial. It doesn't have a lens we have around the sector dynamic, but it means we just need to be a bit more open in our views and looking a bit, from a risk perspective and a notional capital return requirement, looking a bit more broader than just Australian geography. That's probably what we stressed to investors. It's not to say that there's anything on the horizon from an opportunity context that's changed, but that is a change in language because we have been very consistent in talking to our investment criteria.
I think in keeping with this transparency, I thought it important to kind of clarify where we are looking at the opportunity set more broadly than just Australia because of the capital risk or capital return framing.
Are there any geographies that contribute to that?
No. We're cognizant of the elevation in risk in anything stepping out of a geography you know and understand. That is absolutely still a factor as we think through that. It doesn't change our view that anything you do from a geographic perspective has to have a risk lens through that. What are the return requirements? What are the complexities? The growth attributes? The point I'm probably stressing is where we've had a closed frame around that, we need to open that because when we start looking at the risk-weighted return dynamic, Australia is getting harder, and that's what we're probably stressing in that context. Yeah. Over.
Hi, Ryan. Just going on from that point, I am curious with the budget that was recently announced and then also the gas reservation policy, which I think's been announced, but we don't know the details.
Yes.
Can you help us understand how you think about that in terms of?
Look, what I'd say is, we are confident our portfolio can sustain those issues, and we can navigate through that. What I'd say is when we're thinking about incremental capital and how we deploy it, we've opened that frame as to other geographies. That is a shift where we still think we've got a strong competitive advantage in Australia. We understand the market, understand how to operate, and understand how to drive operational effectiveness here. But that is, in our view, a shift in a policy frame around the return on capital and the risk on that return on capital slightly elevating here compared to how that was for prior context. Again, we can talk more about this through the day, so don't be concerned because we'll have other opportunity for panel discussion.
I think it's just we've been very transparent all the way along about how we look to deploy capital, and that is something we just wanted to broaden the frame. There's nothing that is of immediate opportunity that would be of any actionability for this, just changing your sight perspective. Now, with that, and hand over to Gitanjali.
Thank you, Ryan. I'm Gitanjali Bhalla, I am the Chief People Officer at SGH. I'll be joined today by my colleague, Sam Toppenberg, who is the Executive General Manager of P&C at Boral, together, we'll hopefully be able to walk you through the workforce and leadership story that really sits behind the financial numbers that you see today, with Boral really being the proof point at the end of it, in terms of that margin story. If I think about it, I'd like to give an overview of our workforce from our perspective. What you're looking at really is the scale of the human enterprise that sits behind SGH. We've got 15,000 people all in all. Around 13,000 of them sit at the frontline. We have called out that we are frontline-focused.
For us, frontline workers are really those who are directly involved in creating or delivering value for our customers. It excludes management and functional roles, everyone here that you're sitting in the front row only is overhead. From our perspective, value accretive overhead, Richard, I called out from that perspective, preempting some of that. Essentially, when we think about frontline, it really is about where the rubber hits the road and where value is created and lost. We have about 500 apprentices, trades, technicians, trainees, and I like to make that point because it is, in part, about investment in future productive capability. In the way we think about it's a deliberate hedge to some extent against some of the skill labor shortages that we see now and again and that come up. Notwithstanding the scale of the workforce, we're at 20% female participation.
We're working hard to try and improve that, with some of our businesses, WesTrac WA, and Coates certainly a little bit more ahead at 25%. I like to call out the culture and performance alignment because I do think it's an important one. Despite the scale of our businesses, our teams are also quite connected to our purpose and performance. An example of participation rates in our most recent engagement surveys averaged about 90% across Boral, Coates, and WesTrac. That reflects really strong alignment and cultural buy-in. Industry benchmarks are 70%-75%, just to contextualize some of that. It actually, generally, it sort of the business. We found this further reinforced when we think about how many of our employees participate in our all employee share plans. It's 22% participation in our plans. The majority participate through salary sacrifice plans.
They are really putting their own money into equity through salary sacrifice arrangements. It's not company-funded. The company doesn't fund that choice to some extent. Where our frontline workers have that direct stake in share price, you really see that alignment in terms of that owner's mindset really come through across all our business. The strategic priorities, our priorities are directly linked to what Ryan's already called out, the SGH Ambition framework. Zero Harm is the non-negotiable foundation. One SGH Way really is about that operating coherence that makes the model scalable. 10% and EPS growth requires frontline capability and a high-performance culture to compound into margin. We'll talk a little bit more about that in the way that we've affected some of that change across when we've come to Boral. 15% ROCE, I can't say this more strongly, the right people, right leaders in the right roles.
It sort of removes the execution drag from capability gaps that you tend to see from time to time. We're very focused on building that leadership capability, and that's the thematic you'll see all the way through. Finally, that AUD 30 billion target that we've called out, it's really about market cap positioning, and it's in part a story, frankly, about investor confidence in the leadership team that you see and the quality and depth of that team from your perspective as well. The point being, every investment we make in the people space is really linked back to how it delivers a business outcome for us overall.
Moving on, just in terms of when we think about our operating principles, we are talking about orienting ourselves to the Zero Harm framework that we've called out, notwithstanding that keeping people safe is really a bedrock condition for everything else. Safety is a leading barometer for us also of broader business discipline. It is something that we watch quite closely. Strong safety performance is an indicator of cultural and operational strength. The inverse is also true. We have really good vigilance across all our sites as to how we think about safety. The second is disciplined leadership. We treat leadership depth as a value lever. The right people we know compound value, the wrong decisions deplete it fast, and quite frankly, the correction cycle, if you think about it, is almost three to four years to reset that leadership dynamic where companies get it wrong.
Bench strength and succession coverage really for us reduces that risk, and we're very focused on building our internal capability. We like to promote from within, and you've seen that, and we've got Matt here today, no pressure, in that context as well. It is a really important area that we focus on all through all our businesses, succession, leadership depth, and what makes people successful in our economics certainly. The fourth for us is frontline capability. This is again where that productivity story sits, so it's trade frontlines, it's skills investment, it's now growing AI fluency, converting workforce skill into productivity uplift, and really coming back to that connection to business performance because capability investment for us is about business performance and not necessarily always an overhead cost that it tends to be classed as from time to time. I also want to call out the engaged workforce.
We've talked about that engagement and alignment already, but 6,000 people within our frontline are our EA-covered workforce, so they're covered by enterprise agreements. We are obviously operating in a highly activist IR landscape. Our approach remains, and we've talked about this from year- to- year, very disciplined. We don't engage through intermediaries. We have direct engagement with our workforce across all our sites. As well as when we think about from a cost structure perspective, we don't want to build a structural cost base. We don't want to build that into our cost base rather. As well as that wage inflation, when we think about looking at wages and entering negotiations, there's a lot of focus on productivity uplifts that we can get off the back of those as well.
Very disciplined and across all our EAs, we've had some really good success more recently with getting some of those voted up as well. Coming back to safety, again, it is about a zero-harm culture. Our lag indicators continue to trend in the right direction. Group LTIFR is at 0.5 as of March, it's a 64% improvement if you look at the three-year period. TRIFR is at 2.4, another 48% improvement over the same period it's called out. That said, the two incidents last year did cause us to pause and reflect and make sure that we were continuously trying to improve where we could across the board. We continue to review our approach and frameworks just to make sure that safety-first kind of mindset is embedded all the way down to our sites.
We've got everyone thinking about safety, and we've got reduced risk tolerance when it comes to taking risks across the board. We relaunched our life-saving rules this year, backed by robust consequence management, just to reinforce that message. We do terminate employees where our safety standards are not met. Off the back of that, we had 64 terminations this year in terms of our employees that just didn't meet the safety standards that we set for ourselves. Again, the seriousness with which we take safety across all our businesses. We actively share best practice across the business. We've got a brain trust of three businesses in the way that we think about it to continue to improve ourselves, and that's working pretty well. Overall, I think the trend shows us that the shift or the positive trend is actually structural. It's not cyclical.
The Boral story in connection with that as well. You look at the Boral trajectory, it again comes back to that cultural transformation that we're going to talk about a little bit further along as well. This is really about what our operational advantage is in the way that we think about it. We've called out that high performance culture and disciplined leadership. Just wanted to take a minute to focus on what that means in action, so to speak. 100% of our KPIs across the group are linked to our POAF metrics or people, operations, assets, and financials and Balanced Scorecard. Every leader has clear line of sight between their performance metrics and what they have to deliver to drive that value at the BU level as well as the group level. Remuneration is calibrated to stretch KPIs and share price.
The incentive architecture, so to speak, that we have at the moment really reinforces that culture and keeps us focused on the results across the cycle. Leadership capability, I don't want to belabor the point really, is central to this model. Our bench strength is strong and resilient. Succession is a strategic priority for us, and we manage it very closely. We curate teams both at the BU level as well as the group level. We build them for constructive challenge. We don't only want group think and consensus. Really it is quite a deliberate concerted effort as we work through all our teams.
Having said that, we also act decisively when we feel like we don't have the right people in the right roles, and we've seen that affected through some of the decisions we've had to make when our interventions, so to speak, around building that capability have not properly gone to plan or worked. Again, very disciplined, and that bias to action really has set us up for delivering better outcomes actually through our leaders as well. At the frontline, we are building execution depth. We've got, I've already talked about this, but 500 odd people, 350 apprentices, 150 odd employees in our trade upgrade programs as well. Our programs are recognized, whether it's the Boral Way program or it's the Coates Branch Manager program that actually won an award.
The Coates Branch Manager program was targeted at financial and commercial fluency across the businesses and has actually uplifted that capability all the way through to the business. As well as the WesTrac Apprentice program, which really is year-on-year, gets recognized on that basis as well. On the sales side, we are focused on sales execution and capability, and you'll hear that again through the themes all the way through. Our BSC metrics are driving that accountability through our cross-sell or share wallet discipline, et cetera. From our perspective, again, it's bringing that what gets measured, gets done back through our sales force, and we're working quite hard through that. That incentive alignment actually then reinforces some of that message as well. Again, tying business outcomes back to incentive outcomes and reinforcing that fly wheel as we think about it. The third is operating leverage.
Rob's got a whole section on it in his slide, so I won't spend too much time on this. Our target is 80% AI fluency across leaders at group level because in a workforce of our scale, adoption really moves at the speed of leadership, not necessarily always technology. The adoption really has to be top-down, and when leaders model it, the workforce essentially follows. It's a bit of a top-down approach, notwithstanding that within our workforces, we've already got AIs being used in different ways from the ground up as well. I'll leave that when I think Rob will talk a bit more about some of that through his section as well. Alongside that, it is really the 1% margin gains compounded. We've talked about that as well. Lean structures, overhead discipline, cost variabilization, they are the levers that protect margin in the cycle.
That is where we think the value a lot comes from, and Sam will talk a little bit more about it in more detail around overhead management, et cetera. We do pressure test our structures continually to make sure that we keep the complexity out, and we've got people focused on really on the value levers that drive broader business performance for us. Operating model and framework. Again, this is really where the people strategy and the commercial strategy become a little bit more inseparable. This is the architecture, again, that makes everything else work. Frontline focus means accountability, investment, and P&L ownership sit at the operational level. SGH corporate is deliberately kept lean, as Ryan's already highlighted. The result is decisions are made close to the customer, operational accountability, and there's no bureaucratic drag on execution, which is what we want people to be agile.
We want our businesses to be agile, and that's sort of how we think about it. The Balanced Scorecard is really an active tool. It means executive KPIs are linked to that Balanced Scorecard thematic and cascaded to the front line. Again, everyone knows what they have to do and how that all fits together in the bigger picture of group performance. There is collective accountability and clear line of sight. Again, we've got incentives tied back to those BSC outcomes, which we review on an ongoing basis daily, weekly, depending on the cascade within the business, and monthly as well from that perspective. Operating cadence, it's the weekly rhythm of reviews I just talked about that reinforces and keeps that model quite live.
From our perspective, what that does do is the gaps get surfaced pretty quickly or early on in the process, so we're able to act on them, rather than waiting for the next round of sort of reporting cycles, so to speak, to come through. Finally, lean structures and cost discipline. I mean, this is really the bedrock of how we think about our businesses anyway, so it's bread and butter for us. It is important, and I think the Boral story will really be an obvious demonstration of how this all comes together. I'll hand over to Sam, who leads P&C, and as key architect, Sam, of what this looks like in practice.
Thank you, Gitanjali. Thank you, Ryan. As Gitanjali introduced me, my name is Sam Toppenberg. I'm the EGM at People and Culture at Boral, and I'm really excited to show you our story today. Boral is a proud blue-collar business. That's where the money is made. That's where the effort is expended. We operate in around 350 sites across every state and territory in Australia, and we employ around 7,500 people and contractors, employees and contractors, across those sites. Of those, 88% are engaged in frontline work. If you can keep that in the back of your mind as we move through the presentation, it's a really important stat because it tells you where the effort is.
Over the last four or so years, we've worked really hard to get Boral in shape, to transform our performance, and to deliver for our customers, our communities, our stakeholders, and our employees. Looking at the overall numbers, you can see that we've reduced our management layers from eight to six, and I'll tell you how we've done that. We've improved our SG&A revenue targets, and our EBIT margin performance has also improved. We scrutinize all costs at Boral. Okay, there is nothing that is given. There is no position that is replaced automatically. Every single person, every single role is scrutinized to make sure that we have a future. That role is necessary to actually deliver to our customers and to our stakeholders. There are three key elements to our performance.
One is the operating model, the other one is the operating cadence, and the other is our leadership model, and I'll take you through those now. At Boral, everybody knows what they're accountable to deliver. Our operating model is set, and our philosophy is that you should be able to drop a pin from the top of our organization to the bottom. It shouldn't have to go around a corner, it shouldn't have to divert off to the side, it should go top to bottom, straight down. The op model is clearly defined. Every person knows how they fit, how they play, and what their teams are accountable to do. This translates into whether you're a gold team, a green team, or a silver team. Everybody knows how they contribute. Importantly, when we did our last employee survey, our highest-scoring category was alignment. We had 85% alignment across our organization.
This is the fourth time we've done our employee survey, and that alignment score gets stronger every time. The reason is everybody knows what they're there to do, and they're held to account for their performance. We have very flat structures. We have multiple lines of defense because our green teams, our gold teams, and our silver teams pull out when there's a problem early. We have tension across the organization that leads to improved performance. Everyone is very respectful, but we know what we're there to do. Everybody knows the organizational rhythm, and that gives our people a strong founding without any ambiguity. That creates certainty for them, and it also helps them deliver on what their role is. If I talk about our operational cadence, every interaction has a purpose.
From our MBRs on a monthly basis, through to our six-monthly reviews, through to our Boral Say Engagement Survey, our ELT meetings, every single interaction has a purpose. There is no chaos. Everything is structured. Everything is predictable. That level of certainty means our people aren't distracted about wondering what is or what could be. It is set for them, and they know what to do. Our people know that this gives them order, clarity, and confidence. Supporting our cadence and our operating model is our leadership model. This is embedded across all of our people, processes, and decisions. It exposes gaps very quickly that we can rectify, and we can also focus on remedies for those gaps, which might be upskilling or a different type of job in a different type of industry. We're supporting that through our development programs, leading the Boral Way.
We want to make sure that our people manage their people correctly and actually build their own careers at Boral. Our commercial and financial acumen program, we've had around 600 people go through that program over the last few years. That is making sure that each one of our P&L owners understands what their P&L can deliver them. They need to be able to use that document and drive performance by using that document across their remits. We have our senior leadership program. We had 15 people graduate from that in the last week. They did projects, cross-functional across the group, to drive improvement and to drive efficiencies. We also have a very strong focus on sales effectiveness and capability. This is a program that we have been rolling out over the last year, targeting both managers and account managers and key account managers, across the sales spectrum.
What we want to do is improve revenue. We want to improve their skills, the outcome is to get a higher revenue number. The discipline that we've had with those three items, the leadership model, operating cadence, and our op model, has delivered significant improvement. We also know we're not there yet. We have delivered a 7% reduction in salaried roles. That was something that was an outcome of our discipline. It wasn't an annual cost-down process. It's something that we do all the time. This is normal for the way that we work. It's not a surprise to people. Everybody knows how the system works, and everybody knows the scrutiny that exists across the organization. We've made clear improvements in our SG&A costs, but we're not done yet. We know our target is lower at 6%, and we're slightly higher than that now.
We are targeting savings in our overtime management. This is actually really important to us. Overtime management should be linked to volumes. We are focused on reducing our overtime costs significantly for a couple of reasons. A poor overtime management indicates poor planning, indicates that you're not really keeping your eye on what's going on. We want our people to be able to work productively in the time they're with us. We don't want them to be burnt out and exhausted. We want them to be able to take their annual leave, take their sick leave when they need to, make sure they can come to work refreshed, to make sure that's reflected in our safety results. As Gitanjali mentioned, safety results are an underpinning thing that tells you the health of an organization across the board.
This is really important to us, and the cost savings that come from that mean that we're working better. We're looking at better ways to manage our contingent labor. Again, contingent labor is somewhere where you can hide stuff, not at Boral. Contingent labor should flow up and down, depending on volumes. We also want to make sure that if people come to us in a labor hire capacity, they're there for a short period of time. They're not dragged on without the support of permanent employment. If they should be permanently employed, then we need to look at that. This only exists in our blue-collar and our frontline area, and it's something that we're very focused on and are driving continual accountability across all of our segments and all of our business units. I mentioned earlier about our recent engagement survey.
Think of this: 88% of our people are frontline focused. We had a return rate and a participation rate of 97%. Across our employee workforce, 97% of our people took the time to tell us what they thought about Boral. Think about your own workplaces, and if you do engagement surveys, I will be very surprised if any of you with office-based jobs get to 97%. This means that our truck drivers told us what they thought, our quarry operators told us what they thought, the guy that runs the batch's hut in the concrete business told us what they thought. They took the time to tell us, and they've done this consistently. For four years, we've been running this survey. Our first participation rate was 80%, and the most recent, as I said, was 97%.
That tells me that our people trust us because it gets better every time. They trust us to listen to them, and they also trust us to run an organization in an adult way so that they can contribute. That's the point of our operating model. It's the point of our operational cadence. There is no chaos. People have no ambiguity. They know what they're there to do. We are committed to improving our new starter experience and turnover. As Gitanjali mentioned, with the changing skill set that's available for us and some of the, I guess, regional pockets in which we operate, we really have to work hard to make sure we get the right people into jobs. We do not want to get somebody that doesn't work for us or we don't work for them. We want our people to stick when they join us.
I think that is really important for our employment brand. Our employment brand is strong in the workplace, and it's strong in the market. We don't have trouble attracting people. It really is around some of our locations can be tricky, so we want to make sure we've got the right person in the right job. Every new starter in our business goes through a detailed onboarding program, and they go through an induction. If you're a salaried person that joins our organization, you do a face-to-face induction with our CEO. You can imagine the surprise on their faces when they realize it's actually Matt and not a movie. They are thrilled that they get an hour with the CEO. Every month, we do a salaried induction. Similarly, for our blue-collar employees, they do a face-to-face induction with their EGM and their GMs.
We want to make sure that our frontline people and our salaried people are connected all the way through the organization. They shouldn't stand on ceremony. They know where they can go if they've got a problem, and that's really important to us. Again, I'll mention our sales effectiveness and capability. This has been an ongoing improvement project of ours. This is in place to deliver our revenue targets. It is something that is really important to Boral across the board. It's really important that we fit in with our different layers of sales management to make sure that we've got some cascading objectives and everybody knows what they're responsible for. It also is making sure that we've got the discipline to deliver on our future.
Again, in line with Ryan's comments and Gitanjali's comments, our workforce AI opportunities are currently being unlocked through deployment of AI across our group. At the moment, we're in the, I guess, investigation phase, I would call it. It is really exciting, and I can tell you from my own team, they are excited about just the productivity and the improvement in the way that they're working through having almost an additional person as part of their team if they use it properly. I'll hand back to Gitanjali.
Thank you. I think the key points for me here really are just reinforcing what the session's about. 87% of our workforce is at frontline. All our structures, headcount investment is focused and weighted to the frontline because that's where value gets delivered. Corporates get very lean, that's what we want. The P&L ownership is pushed close to the customer. One SGH Way, it's really that common thematic around how we measure performance, whether it's our Balanced Scorecards. It's how we think about our operating model all the way through. Every BU has an SGH-aligned, as we call it, operating model that cascades all the way up and down. Capability that compounds into margin. Boral is proof of concept in the way that we think about it, and we're hoping to reinforce and replicate this across all our BUs that already have a version there.
Happy to take questions. Hi.
Hi. Lee Carpenter from J.P. Morgan. The contingent labor piece, is that referring more to the, I think it's about 25% of the workforce that's a contractor base, or is it some sort of excess capacity that you think you have across the whole network? Should we be thinking of 20% of the labor base, or should we be thinking 20% of the 25% contractor base?
The contractor base.
Okay.
It's way more higher, I think.
Yep. How far through that process do you think you are already, or is it additional 20% from today?
I think we are on the journey. I certainly know we are not there yet. It is a bit of a slide down, and it does require constant effort. Gitanjali, did you want to add anything to that?
Yeah. We are on our way now. We have made inroads as well. The contingent workforce predominantly at Boral, as we have seen in our contractor numbers, and we are working through it, and the team has got a plan. Yes, there is more to be unlocked.
Okay. Should we consider that a permanent reduction, or is that just more cyclical awareness in where the business is positioned?
Bit of both.
Yeah, I think that's probably a bit of both. It's a bit of both.
Okay.
As you would think logically, as the cycle goes up and down. It comes back to the do I want to fix base or want to be able to variable-ize the cost so we can move in accordance with the market and cycles, and that's the way we thought about it.
Excellent. Thank you.
Hi, Michael Ward speaking. You talked a lot about the employee survey, but you didn't actually give us any results. I was just wondering what the engagement was.
Boral gave its results.
Boral did, but no one else. Yeah.
On average, 65%. Again, I think we called this out last year. It is pretty high, 65% engagement in the way that you think about it. We're not aiming to be in the 80s because that, for us, is a different problem in that perspective. 65% engagement.
Where's that come from? I think you said something about Boral's done it for four years. Where were you, say, four or five years ago?
Sorry, what was your question?
Well, you've scored 65%, you said. Yes?
Boral did 68% in their survey. WesTrac is 65% on average.
Yep.
Leadership. Coates was about 60%, in their survey.
Where was the group two or three years ago? Right. Okay. Yep. Sure.
From that perspective. Yes, where we were, we've been trending in the right direction. I think Boral was sitting much lower. Sam, do you recall where you were three years ago?
We've moved from, I think, 63% through to 68%.
Yeah.
Around there.
Yeah
I think we're actually very happy with our survey results.
Yeah
Mainly because of the large participation rate that we have. We know it's a true score, it's not just a handful of people having a gripe. The other thing I would say about our survey, in particular, is that we have very, very low unfavorable scores. If you looked at, out of 100, if 68 people, 68% were positive, our unfavorable is, I think, less than 15, so the rest are kind of neutral. For us, that's a great win and we're working really hard to move those unfavorable, or sorry, the neutral people over to the favorable side.
Thank you.
To the call include that next year as well. Just so you know, we look at participation rates as well, because that in itself is also indicative of engagement.
Hi, Sam. Keith Chau from MST. I'm just trying to maybe ask a question of when do you know when you've pushed your staff too hard? If you look at Boral's metrics at the moment, delivery on time is as high as it's ever been, grade of services, as high as it's ever been, and arguably well ahead of industry standards by quite a margin. There's still quite a bit of reduction to go in terms of labor cost and optimization. When do you get to the point, or how do you know when your staff starts to get a bit thin or overworked?
This is one of the opportunities we have in our cadence model and our op model, because if that happens, we're aware of it very quickly, and we can deal with it quickly. The way that our operational cadence works is that because every interaction has a purpose, we have lots of operational reviews. We have a structured operational review that would highlight that that was an issue for us. Similarly, in our op model, because of the way the teams interact on the matrix, if that was an issue, we would know that very early, because the green teams, the gold teams and silver teams, that would be a significant tension point. We're always alert to that, and obviously, employee wellbeing is paramount to us, so we keep an eye out for it.
That is exactly the problem that our op model and our cadence model are designed to highlight so that we can deal with it quickly.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. My name's Rob Cotterill. I'm the COO here at SGH. Today with me stepping through this compounding excellence will be Jarvas, Matt and Murray. The session, obviously, Ryan set through the SGH thesis a bit earlier. Potentially, Sam, thank you, just covered through that workforce and how that gets delivered. In this session specifically, talk a bit more around the operating discipline that turns those positions and that workforce into the compounding returns that Ryan mentioned. From the SGH Way in our operating model, it's really that architecture that we've built that sort of runs deep through our businesses. Each BU has its own way, in doing so, it's shaped by the why, what, and how of that particular business, consistent in terms of the terminology, the structure and the processes that we think through.
The common thread through this, and through for a number of years, obviously, is the mindset and in particular, that relentless operator. The Boral Way was established, as Sam just taking you through, that's continued to deliver. You'll also hear a bit more through Matt as well in terms of some of the systems and processes and some of the outcomes being delivered. Building on that, the ability of what SGH offers as a group is the ability to sort of draw on that and leverage expertise which comes from one business into the other, WesTrac and Coates, their ways are defined in FY 2026 and be deployed. Obviously, drawing on some of that knowledge and expertise, as I said, one of the key aspects of what the group is able to deliver. Best practice built once, levered by the business and understood through the business.
What does it mean in practice? As Ryan mentioned, the consistency is what we're driving. We sort of set the framework, we set the architecture through the delineated model, then it is up to the businesses in how that is delivered. Stepping through four points. Firstly, is that cadence that Sam just mentioned, defined and understood in each of the businesses in terms of the meetings, the practice, the structure is very important in how we ensure that accountability. Second, through that accountability and the balanced scorecard, again, Sam and Gitanjali sat through that in quite a bit of detail, how that is driven down deep into the business, not just sitting at their level, but that alignment, not just from the frontline to the board. That is how we define the operating model.
Monthly Business Review in terms of the discipline, in relation to the schedules, the reporting, understanding actions and how they're tracked. Cascading from frontline to the board to get that visibility and the early insights to track those pinch points that the business might be feeling. Finally, the BU Flywheel. How we understand the metrics, the metrics that drive our business, each individual business, and ultimately how that continues to the SGH Flywheel as a whole. The BSC process in a bit more detail. It's that mechanism that really converts that operating model, the disciplines into our performance outcomes. The tool that we define at SGH, again, deployed deep into the business, but defined to the businesses themselves around that couple of mechanisms. Firstly is around that consistency, and how we drive that through in the templates.
The accountability through the KPIs and how they come through. Performance measures in terms of the KPIs and the priorities we're tracking, tailored to each business, tailored to the operational aspects. As Gitanjali mentioned as well, alignment is also very important, in terms of ensure our businesses, our operating areas are aligned and that alignment from frontline to the board, as well as through the incentives as well. Finally, the dynamic nature of this. Now notwithstanding, we track the longitudinal performance of our business over time in lots of metrics, as relevant to those areas. The importance of how we need to tailor and adapt that as we see challenges or opportunities emerging and how we adapt that over time. Ultimately, we have three very large industrial businesses, but the one operating system, the one SGH Way that Ryan set through.
Each capability is built across the businesses and compounding that through that operating layer. Some examples of this, obviously the BSC and operating cadence that Sam just mentioned at Boral. Leveraging that once, understanding how that's delivering today, but also then applying some of those learnings as we think through the WesTrac Way and the Coates Way. From a WesTrac perspective, obviously, large operating and manufacturing efficiency and innovative processes as they've thought through, how they leverage their workshops and their workforces, in particular in train to task and trying to get the most out of the operating labor that's available to them, and how some of those learnings then get passed through to Boral and Coates as they think through some of their activities and utilizing their labor forces.
From Coates' perspective, we've seen some great advances, and we'll step through that a bit later, with Stuart in the room as well, in relation to AI and leadership and that sales capability aspect in terms of how they're leveraging their data, how they're leveraging tools to encourage and support that sales function, and again, how we translate that information and that knowledge base across the business. Stepping back, when we sat here last year, we talked about our FY 2026 operational targets around operational execution, sales effectiveness, operating leverage, and innovation and AI. Pleasingly, we've made great progress over FY 2026, and as we sit here today, really sets us up for a great FY 2027 going forward.
As we think through the operational execution, the balanced scorecard's now in place, tracking over 132 metrics just from a consolidated basis comes through to us at SGH every month. Each business has its own very rich metric pool that they pull from different parts of the business, how we define that and how that tracks through across our people, operations, assets and finance. From a sales effectiveness, you'll also hear through the businesses today how we're really uplifting that focus in the last period of time, how we drive share and price. Also importantly, how we support our businesses through uplifting the capability, and we just heard Sam as well talking about that training focus of how we empower our workforce to help us deliver on these sales effectiveness. That's also helped us deliver improvements across Boral and WesTrac, for example, in the last six months.
From operating leverage perspective, again, as we just mentioned as well, that workforce, ensuring we have that variability built in, we can manage our business. Obviously, we operate nationally. We need to manage our workforce, our network, and our people, to respond to the market in the different dynamics in the areas which we do. How we do that is how we protect our margin, how we enable our business to respond to market opportunities and take those where we can and those marginal improvements. Finally, innovation and AI. I think everyone in the room has probably heard a lot about AI in the last period of time and will only hear more. Obviously, we've seen a real acceleration of the tools and the capability of what the tools can unlock.
From our perspective, how we empower our businesses, empower our people to unlock that in a structured, mannered, and responsible way. Again, we'll spend a bit of time on that later this afternoon after lunch. As we think about FY 2027 and the priorities that we set ourselves, refining and building on the last year's ambitions and what we've delivered to date, it's really about how we build that depth, and consistency and results to the frontline. The one operating model, as we just talked about, and the business will step through shortly. That sales execution, that value-based selling, really driving our understanding what our customers need, and the opportunity that we can deliver to our businesses and the improvements we do that through our people and our operations. That operating leverage, that concept, that continuous improvement, that owner's mindset never changes.
The work is never done. How we continue to think through efficiencies and cost, the performance of our assets, and that compounding excellence over time. To ensure we're getting the best we can out of our assets and ultimately delivering those financial results. Finally, on AI. Moving production in relation to our pricing, our quoting, condition monitoring, customer support. Obviously, there's a number of areas where we're targeted and focusing on very specific, very focused in terms of how we want to do it. Importantly, the tools that are now allowing us to unlock the cross-BU data leverage, compounding the moat that we have as SGH operating across the broad spectrum of business we have, across the country we have, and the end customers. Finally, I guess, from operational excellence perspective, it ultimately comes down to three key things.
The disciplined people and effective processes, our business's performance, which we'll step through shortly, and ultimately us as SGH, driving that relentless operator compounding those benefits across our businesses. Stepping through that shortly, you'll hear from WesTrac in terms of that aftermarket opportunity, but also that discipline that's required to drive that ROCE above the 25% target. Boral and Matt will spend a bit more time around the framework that's been able to deliver its improvement journey as it supports that mid-teen EBIT margins through the cycle. Coates as well in terms of the category economics as we think through our network, as we think through our financial utilization, utilizing our assets over time. With that, I'll hand it over to Jarvas.
Thanks, Rob.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. The WesTrac Way has been developed in conjunction or taken on board the SGH Way, and ensures we align across the unique aspects of our particular business. We've got our own flywheel. It's about knowing the customer, delivering those measurable outcomes, winning the aftermarket, and reinvesting with discipline to deliver the best return on capital, and then strengthening our competitive position for the next phase. There's some more details on the slides to come. We've got four operating pillars. They're people, customer, operations, and financial. They're very similar to the SGH pillars. The WesTrac Way is supported by that monthly rhythm of accountability from site all the way through to board. Each of our branches and workshop areas has its own scorecards and metrics. They roll up through our Balanced Scorecard approach to the metrics that are seen throughout SGH.
In terms of driving this return on capital employed, we have a number of levers within our business to help to drive this. I'm going to talk about four of them today. The first one is technician productivity. This is all about ensuring maximum tool time. It's making sure we get the most out of our technicians to deliver recoverable and chargeable work. There's a lot of work we do around inventory management. We want to make sure we can get the right part in the right place at the right time, both from physical parts point of view. Also from our parts exchange. Third is rebuilds. Every single time, it's a growing part of our business. There's a huge opportunity in this space. We can find ways to lower those rebuild turn times.
That frees up capacity within our business to do further rebuilds with the same fixed cost base. The fourth is around this working capital. Over the last few years, we've delivered a lot of major fleet. We've been very strong and focused in managing that capital through that cycle. We've still got more opportunities as we go forward to maximize sales and to manage that capital intensity. Our discipline execution model centers on the people, facilities, inventory, and technology. The right people, trained in experience with a strong performance culture. Those facilities that are optimal locations and the footprint gives us the size and scale to be close to where the customers require us and to provide those outstanding outcomes for our customers.
Inventory's all about those right parts at the right place at the right time, and we want the right machines in stock ready to meet the market demand. In the technology space, we've got the advantage of Caterpillar technology suite compared to our competitors, and we're also using that technology internally to maximize. Adrian's going to talk about some examples later on in the presentations. We continue to target that greater than 25% return on capital employed. In terms of continuous improvement, I thought I'd just share a couple of examples of how we drive this sustainable value through our business. We do a lot of work around operational discipline, execution discipline. We've got standardized work, so we know exactly what needs to be done, how many hours it takes you to do that job, the safety, the quality metrics, and the productivity that we're expected.
We need to monitor that work continuously, and we develop those jobs to continue to drive that performance improvement. We've got a load of focus on our WIP. Work in process, we're managing that daily and weekly and monthly as to manage both cash flows. It's also to make sure the jobs get closed out speedily, efficiently, and that we've got an understanding of the jobs moving through our shops in a controlled, disciplined manner. We do a lot of work around planning and scheduling. We know what work's coming. We know what needs to be executed. We ensure the parts, the facilities, and the people line up to determine that outcome for our customers. We have clear ownership and accountability throughout the business. It's our attention to detail. We were trying to get that 1% gain every single day, week on week, and that's what delivers the outcomes.
Much of that work's underpinned by the Caterpillar continuous improvement systems. They're very close to a Lean Six Sigma alternative production system, and that provides that relentless pursuit to give us a little bit more just every single day. From a people focus, we're very frontline-focused. There's very few layers from the top to the bottom, from the workshop floor to myself. We do very targeted skilled recruitment, and we've developed train-to-task to bridge some of the skills gaps we see in the market. The Caterpillar Training Academy develops people into the business to provide the skills we need and helps develop unskilled resources into a limited set of specific skills that matches our business requirements. We've been globally recognized through some of our training programs, and we continue to grow our diverse workforce. From a facilities and inventory point of view, we plan work across our network.
We move jobs to the most efficient location and facility and utilize the inventory across the state and interstate where required. We're constantly ingesting data from our customers, that information from those machines allows us to ensure that we've got the right part in the right place at the right time. We're very disciplined about inventory. We work together with Caterpillar to make sure that we've got that inventory available as and when customers require it, you see that in our very high DIFOT results. Many of our warehouses now have automation in place and will deploy further options in the years to come as those business cases and the technology continues to mature. We continue to invest in our facilities to optimize rebuild, exchange components, and service opportunities.
From a technology standpoint, there's lots of work around workflow optimization and linking systems in the virtual world as we would in the physical world. We've got significant information that helps our condition monitoring teams, providing opportunities for service events that create sales opportunities for our sales teams. The digital platforms from Caterpillar gives us live information from the mine site or from the operational environment, and we can link that into our overall decision-making. All these small gains provide great opportunity for shareholders over the long term. In terms of compounding growth, we've achieved a 15% CAGR since 2016 in EBIT growth. Our margins continued improving. We've seen almost doubling in services revenue. There's huge opportunities in the aftermarket and together with Caterpillar, we continue to grow it, particularly as we see fleets aging with the installed bases that we have in operation.
Our operational discipline's about improving productivity and managing costs to maximize cash conversion. As Gitanjali mentioned, safety's always key. At the moment, our LTIFR is at 0.1 and our TRIFR is at 3.6, and we continue to see the TRIFR trend down. We see safety as a very important part of our business, and it supports our consistent execution across the business, and we continue to improve year- on- year, and there's a real passion from our team to improve that even further. From an aftermarket opportunity, we continue to grow parts. Parts volume continues to increase half- on- half, and it's been relatively consistent over the last few years as we've seen that huge opportunity. About 70% of our total revenue comes from the aftermarket, and with the installed fleet and aging fleet profile, we see strong opportunities into the future.
Along with the WesTrac Way, we ensure the installed fleet space through new capital sales continues because that provides that future annuity stream for our business. In terms of the aftermarket opportunities, our team's looking at our execution discipline. Our DIFOT is sitting above 90%. Those inventory turns is above six, and our PEX turns above 1.5-- Sorry, above two. We're focused on maximizing these metrics every opportunity to optimize our inventory, and we have daily decision-making on what we're holding, where we're holding it, and why we're holding it. That aging mining fleet continues to require maintenance, and we continue to see that opportunity grow as time goes on. In terms of technology and AI, Adrian's going to cover some more detail in his presentation, but I'll give you a very quick overview. Customers are looking to drive efficiency in their business.
They want fuel efficiency, they want production efficiency, and they want outcomes. Now, our ecosystem with Caterpillar provides valuable information to our customers so they can make those live decisions around productivities, volumes moved, equipment efficiency, fuel efficiently, and they can manage their sites far more proactively. WesTrac uses the Cat digital ecosystem, both through, VisionLink, parts.com, cat.com and Cat Interact, and they're underpinned by the Helios database, where all the data is available for dealers to access. From WesTrac perspective, we use these electronic data platforms to provide information to and from Cat and to and from our customers and to drive our business. That's the information that provides the basis for us to be able to overlay AI. I've gone a slide forward, haven't we? Sorry. Hit the button twice. Examples of AI in production today, we use the Optix system.
It basically scans all the purchase orders coming into our system in real time, converts them into electronic orders for our warehouses. That significantly reduced order processing time, increased velocity through our business, and reduced the physical process of manual keying. In condition monitoring, we use AI algorithms doing much of the analytical work through AI agents that traditionally we would've needed a skilled technician to do. We've used AI to identify tasks involving high-risk manual handling from a safety perspective and engineered those out. We've got work going on reducing cycle times through digital twins, and we've identified opportunities to optimize workflow in our business to make sure that we can deliver those really outstanding results for our customers. In terms of that operations excellence, it all comes together and compounds through the WesTrac flywheel. We're targeting continued growth in our technician productivity.
We've seen year-on-year improvements. Every single little piece of work we can get out of technician productivity gives us a better outcome to the bottom line. We continue to focus on that parts and PEX turns, faster rebuild times, and that real discipline around working capital. An example of compounding effect is in rebuilds. We know what the customer wants and when. We can optimize our inventory and pre-position the parts. If we've got that and the right mix of skills ready to go, we can make sure we turn it as quickly as possible, get that cost and velocity right, and that allows us faster rebuild time, allows us to do more rebuilds in a year and higher capital returns. As we apply those levers, we can use AI to help us and continue that compounding effect as we work through the cycle.
We're ultimately trying to drive continued growth in EBIT and underlying margins. I'm going to hand over to Matt now.
Thanks, guys.
Don't hold that button too long. It goes too slow.
Okay. Well, good morning, everyone. This way, right?
Yeah.
In late 2022, we commenced our Good to Great strategic improvement journey. The Boral Way was developed as part of that strategy. Plan on a page to align our decentralized workforce. We've performed well and we've delivered consistently improved results, and there's still significant improvement opportunities ahead. That's why we refresh the Good to Great strategy in the Boral Way every year with the fourth update finalized recently. The foundation of the plan stays the same. Our priorities evolve, by doing so, we keep building momentum. There are three features that underpin the whole strategy. The first is our operating model. Simply how we organize ourselves to serve our strategy. It ensures alignment, accountability, removes confusion, and gives everyone clarity on their role, as Sam covered earlier today.
Every successful team has a clear operating model. No different to a sports team. It's the same for every team member at Boral. Each has a role and knows their responsibilities. The second's our PMAF framework and balanced scorecard. It's how we do business at Boral. The pillars of people, environment, markets, and assets keep us focused and aligned to Good to Great. Manage well all four pillars, drive strong financial performance. Our balanced scorecard is how we track progress consistently. The third, our intense focus on culture and accountability sits at the heart of our strategy. Not only have these foundational elements remained constant as the strategy's evolved, we've embedded them more deeply in the business. The PMAF framework underpins all our business reviews, and we're committed to continuing the aggregation effect of PMAF metrics through disciplined execution.
Every one of our general managers has a PMAF scorecard, as do most of the managers below them. It's a critical aspect of our decentralized but standardized approach, enabling P&L owners and their teams to be as local and as close to the customer as possible. Our operating model and cadence are now so entrenched that they provide a scaffold for consistent execution. Everyone knows the drill. Our Monthly Business Reviews run like clockwork, using standard reports for minimized preparation and ensuring discussion focuses on key issues and priorities. It might seem rigid, but it works and actually improves engagement. People who thrive in a performance environment value structure and discipline. We believe ambiguity creates stress and poor performance, so we expect all our leaders to actively remove it.
Having this deeply embedded foundation means that as priorities have changed or new initiatives have been added, we've been able to execute well and deliver value, as evidenced by our strong and consistent financial results shown in the bottom right graph. Two key priorities in our strategy refresh are an increased focus on downstream assets to create compounding effect on our upstream work, and a deeper focus on SCROA, Safety, Compliant, Reliable, Optimized Assets, to create a real opportunity to variabilize cost. Of course, the aggregation of marginal gains remains central to our everyday thinking. We have a strong belief that the link between people performance and all areas of operating excellence. As you can see, our safety performance has significantly improved since we launched Good to Great.
In line with other PMAF areas and our financial performance, our safety results continue to improve and zero harm remains our key safety goal. A strong organizational culture is equally critical to Boral's operation excellence. At the foundation of this are Boral STAAR values, safety, teamwork, accountability, ambition, and respect. Now, all companies have values, but what's distinct about Boral is that they came from frontline feedback, from our blue-collar workforce, rather than being developed in a head office. They genuinely resonate. The annual Boral STAAR Awards are a significant event in our company, and winning one is considered a great honor. As you heard from Sam earlier, employee engagement measured through our annual surveys is also improving, now at 68% with 97% participation. This is a key metric for all our operating teams.
We see a clear link between our most engaged teams and their operating performance, and we hold all the managers accountable for improving engagement. To be more efficient, our plan is to continue to variabilize costs so that we have more flex relative to volume. One of the key opportunities relates to asset performance, so we're building our focus on asset cost and reliability. For example, we're bringing Caterpillar's VisionLink platform into our heavy mobile equipment. We're optimizing load and haul at our quarry operations with daily and real-time insights. This leads to improved payload, fewer loads and haul cycles, and lower labor costs. Similarly, an intense focus on HME idle time with daily frontline metrics reduces unnecessary fuel burn, repair, and maintenance. Investing in the right assets, such as cement silos closer to our plants, can also take out embedded costs.
I'll cover an example of this on the next slide. To optimize more broadly, we're running an enterprise-wide program aimed at cutting overtime costs by AUD 10 million. Sam covered that a little bit earlier on. Really well progressed with changes to historical work practices and shift management. Other cost focus areas include cartage, labor, repair and maintenance, and subcontractor costs. As a high volume supplier in our concrete industry, we have a relentless focus on avoiding material stock-outs at our concrete batching plants. This is key to delivering superior customer service and lower costs. A stock-out typically results in rerouting supply from a more distant plant, increasing Boral's cost to serve.
To address this, we're investing in material silo capacity at strategic locations closer to plants, so we can quickly flex supply if something doesn't go to plan. Another lever for optimizing supply chain costs is improving real-time visibility of inventory levels through modern sensing and automation technology. Without this, plants rely on operators to check levels or aggregate consumption data. Both approaches are prone to error. Automating and standardizing our entire S&OP process, including the use of AI, to optimally balance supply and demand across our vertically integrated network, compound these cost efficiency benefits. This final slide is where it all comes together, and the table you can see on the screen is the clearest illustration of how we think about operational excellence at Boral. Each row represents a real lever we're pulling right now across all our PMAF pillars.
From employee engagement and shift optimization to HME idle time, quarry OEE, cement storage, and concrete plant reliability. Individually, each of these is meaningful, but the power of our approach is what happens when you aggregate them. That's the compounding effect. As we execute consistently across every area of PMAF, not just the one or two initiatives, the full breadth, the gains don't just simply add up, they multiply. Better-engaged people run safer, more efficient shifts. More reliable assets reduce diversions and cartage costs. Improved upstream integration, lowest cost per unit as volumes grow. Each lever reinforces the next. The numbers on this slide reflect that compounding in action. TRIFR down 47%, engagement is 68%, every 1% improvement in quarry OEE delivering approximately AUD 2 million of EBIT. That's now scaling across our network. This is how Boral will get EBIT margins above 15%.
Not through one big move, but through disciplined, relentless aggregation of operational excellence across the whole business. We're confident in the path we're executing, and the compounding's underway. Thank you. Hand over to Murray. You got it, Murray?
Ready.
Thanks.
All right. Good morning, everyone. As everyone knows, Coates is the largest equipment hire provider in Australia. I'm going to talk today about how we operate through our version of the SGH Way, which we've translated into the Coates Way, and the disciplines in particular that we've utilized to hold margin over the past 12 months, as well as the levers that we're looking to utilize to gain a more productive business as we look forward to the future. This is our version of the Coates Way. At the heart of it, you'll see in the center, best service and value. The numbers underneath that are, again, our interpretation of the ambitions that we set similar to the SGH ambitions.
Commencing with zero harm and working all the way through, 15% red line, 20% return on capital, et cetera, all the way out to 65% or greater employee engagement. We have our POEF, and it's broken up into 12 segments. I'm not going to go through each one of those segments. They're there, you can see. It's not a framework that sits on a wall. This is a control system that we use in the business. Every decision, every initiative, every target maps to one of these pillars. That's a very important overlay to consider, as it all locks in together. In terms of how we create value, that's in those traits, or as we call it, the Coates cogs. There's seven traits there. Again, they define how we create value. Finally, there's growth. The growth is not a separate pillar.
It is the outcome of us executing our POEF system well. When we get the right people, the right operations, the right assets, and ultimately the financial disciplines right, then the revenue flows, and that's the definition, from our perspective, of how that POEF works. As we've seen, our flywheel from a Coates perspective is integral to explaining to the team and ensuring that the team understand how we generate that value. Like all flywheels, once it's moving, the system reinforces itself. It starts with winning the customer's trust, and our reliability generates that with the customers. That trust drives utilization of equipment. The equipment stays on hire longer, and our pricing holds because the customers value the relationship, not just the rate, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. That hire utilization and pricing discipline generates a stronger return.
Those returns fund the reinvestment in our fleet, the specialist capability and digital tools that we have across the business. That reinvestment then drives the next cycle of reliability. As you can see, 5 stages here. We target the right customers to execute the Coates Way in the right manner, and we convert that standard service offering into a deeper relationship, which enables us to deploy more capital and to service those customers. They're all interlocking. That's the key message here. As we lean on any one of those key parts of the flywheel, it will accelerate the other parts. A good way of looking at that is starting at the 12 o'clock position. 12 months ago, when I stood in front of a lot of familiar faces in the room, our win rate was sitting at 28%. Today, it's at 33%.
We've been focusing very distinctly on our ability to drive our sales effectiveness across this past 12 months. Our NPS, we started the journey in the high 30s. We now sit at mid-40s, and our target is to take that to above 50%. These are not just lagging indicators, these are leading indicators for us. What it proves is the flywheel is working, and the revenue will continue to flow for our benefit. If we turn to look at just how that comes through from an operational excellence perspective and the resilient core that we've demonstrated in what's been a pretty variable and fluky market over the past 12 months, there's some key messages here. Our EBITDA came in at 46.1% to the half, and our EBIT was at 26%, in a year where we've seen some metro activity, in particular in Melbourne, be quite soft.
That's a direct result of our pricing discipline and the right repairs and maintenance controls that we put across the business and executing and delivering on the operating leverage that we have across the network. Our transport recovery hit 107%, again ahead of target. Our R&M spend is at 6.8%, again below our board benchmarks. That fleet is important to servicing that customer. Our safety performance, we've heard from Gitanjali earlier today, generally about the SGH's performance. Ours is at a lost time injury frequency rate of 0.4, and that's an outcome that I'm particularly proud of, and a TRIFR that goes with that of 1.5. Again, this is not accidental performance. This is ingrained in our POAF system and the Coates Way.
If we look at through to FY 2027 and the shift we're making, you can see we're continuing to focus on our allocation of capital. We'll talk a little bit later on in another session about that go-to-market and how that comes together. Our red line, again, an important element of how we run this business at 19%, is slightly above our target of 18%, but we're heading in the right direction in terms of getting that below 18%, probably by the end of this financial year. Again, all these category-led processes are ingrained in how we do, combined with our pricing guardrails and our pricing discipline. In terms of what the customers are really buying, I mentioned this a moment ago, it's not just the rate, it's the total value of hire that we're talking about here.
What we sell is fundamentally the non-rate part of this equation. 30% is broadly equated to the price they pay, and about 70% is all the other elements. Let me explain. When a customer asks, "Will the equipment work when I need it?" That's a question about the fleet. Whoops, sorry. Let me go back one. Whoop. Yeah, that's a question about the fleet quality and the age of our fleet and the maintenance that we've got that sits behind that. Our age is around six years with telemetry-driven maintenance, no breakdowns, no swap outs, no project disruption for the project managers. When they ask, "Can you reach my site and respond fast?" That's a question about our national network. We've got 145 branches across Australia, all ingrained in a hub-and-spoke network process, fast response times that other competitors simply can't match.
When they ask, "Can one provider cover my full scope of operation?" That's when our specialist side of the model comes into play. Our engineering solutions, site accommodation, our power and HVAC, traffic, all under one banner, all under one service opportunity. Customers accept that they have now quite a complex series of project risks to manage. They ask, "Will you keep me compliant?" That's about how we deliver that equipment, plant packs that come with that, the telemetry monitoring system, and the documentation and compliance obligations. They're all a part and parcel of what we offer to that customer that make up that other 70% of what we do. If we look at our operational priorities, going back, there we go. Five key elements here.
It's the transformation as we go into FY 2027 of our transport management system, integrating our IT core 30 programs, the fleet telemetry, the safety systems into that. Secondly, it's our operational consolidation, where we're seeking to unify our customer experience through transport, through the fleet allocation across all four business units, and eliminating duplication and capturing structural efficiencies. This is a cost and quality improvement simultaneously. Third is our fleet performance. We're optimizing our fleet size, the mix, and the location to lift utilization and returns. Our time utilization is at 61%, 62% at the moment, and we're targeting to take that a long way further. Every fleet investment decision goes through our ROCE hurdles and the various capital allocation processes that we have at Coates. Fourth is our R&M performance. We have the internet of things, the predictive maintenance programs, all reducing our reactive spend.
Our R&M, as I mentioned, is at 6.8% of our core fleet today, and our target is to get that below 6.5 and obviously take our red line, as I mentioned again, down to 18. The final element here is our specialist operating model, which is a dedicated ROCE accountability by specialist category, and that specialist revenue now sits at about AUD 240 million. For those that you are familiar with where we started this journey, we began at around about AUD 100 million about four years ago. We continue to grow this. It's the fastest-growing element of our business, and the EBIT margin is expanding year on year and heading up towards that ROCE target of 15% that we're looking for. If we look at the operating leverage and the compounding of that flywheel and how that Coates compounding process works, those four interlocking disciplines are key.
First is the utilization. We deploy idle fleet through tighter redline thresholds and pull the equipment from low-returning areas and reposition it into high-returning areas. That latent network capacity that I mentioned absorbs the incremental revenue without any additional capital. The margin expansion is the second step. We hold the cost base flat as the revenue grows. That's the operating leverage flows through to our EBIT result. Third is the earnings conversion. The pricing discipline holds for us through our ingrained behaviors, the R&M spend reduces, and that fixed cost leverage converts directly into EBIT flow-through. Finally, the ROCE growth, where the direct investment to what categories with durable competitive advantage is recycled earnings back into the network and the cycle starts again. The key point here is that the flywheel does not require market recovery.
It's structurally self-reinforcing, and the performance improvement is a permanent state. It's not a periodic one and linked to that continuous improvement mantra that we have. I want to leave you with this final slide. We delivered 46% EBITDAR and 26.5% EBIT to the half, with utilization still at 61%. Our network is not full. That means that there is an earning upside sitting in the network, and when this utilization moves, even modestly, that earnings falls straight through to the bottom line. The incremental revenue comes through at a higher margin. Our TU target is to get above 65% over the longer term, and we're currently ourselves at 61. The gap is the opportunity, and we don't need another construction boom to be able to close that gap.
In order to close that gap, we'll continue to focus on our category discipline, better fleet deployment to areas of demand, and that flywheel will continue to build momentum. All right. Now, I think we are taking a quick break. No? Back to Rob.
Yeah. Thanks, Murray, Matt, and Jarvas. I think, just wrapping up this session together, I think what we're showing here through operating excellence, delivered through our discipline people, the effective processes, and ultimately business performance. As we step through, obviously, each business has explained how the SGH Way is deployed and made relevant in their own businesses.
You just heard as well around some of the key levers we're driving from operational excellence, be it WesTrac through five key levers around driving that ROCE performance through Matt, as well around that PMAF, the SCROA network. Also how that integrated network and the marginal gains at different areas of our network compound those operational efficiencies because of that integration. Ultimately, Coates and Murray stepping through some of those targets, the network efficiencies, the levers we have in place to help really utilize that asset and drive that asset performance. With that, with operating excellence, compounding our performance and ultimately supporting the SGH ambition I mentioned before, really delivering that 15% ROCE through the cycle. With that, I'm happy to open up to questions to myself and the speakers as well.
Hi, Jarvas. It's Ramoun from Jefferies. Just one from me on capacity to grow. You've obviously delivered a consistency in that margin profile now for a number of years at the upper bound of the 10%-12% range. Just wondering, what's the capacity within the business to keep driving continued growth in activity? Is there a further margin opportunity that you see for the business going forward?
Yeah. If you look at our business overall, we've still got capacity in our workshops, and if we can continue to drive that velocity through, that opens up more capacity we've invested. You'll see in the next section of slides some of the stuff we've done to unlock capacity through automation.
Through better processes. The market's still holding to be resilient with me. Adrian will talk about that a bit later on in the market section as well. Our business is one about every day making sure we take every opportunity that's out there and chase it hard and secure as much of that market share as we can, and then continue to get it through our shops in the most efficient way possible. We've still got plenty of little 1% levers here and there. There's nothing that sort of stands out as a just do this and you'll get a massive change. I think day in, day out, there's every little thing that we do continues to drive that performance and drive those increases. We talked a little bit about data and the value of data.
We've been able to maintain our inventory and get our turns up just through using that data and using AI to understand what are the customers going to need, when are they going to need it. As I talked about with that rebuild example, it's a massive difference to our business when you don't get delays in the job. It's often forgotten that you turn up to do a job today and you haven't got the bit you need. The nature of blue-collar workforce is you lose a few hours, right? They'll go and scratch their head, look for it, try and find an alternative. Eventually, they'll get onto something else. If you can have everything lined up ready to go, it drives a huge efficiency in your business. The team are motivated as well.
They want to come and do a good job, and they want to get the job done. If you can provide the tools to help them do that, it works for everybody.
Great. Thanks. Just on the, I guess, the top line, capital sales, obviously, can be lumpy.
Yeah
Depending on budgets, et cetera. What about parts service and revenue? Sorry, parts and service revenue.
Yeah.
Just given your backlogs, et cetera, what sort of, I guess, growth rate do you think the business can support?
Thank you. I think capital, as you said, goes up and down depending on projects, and I think we definitely see when we put lumpy sections of capital in, you get fleets that are punched up on their next round of component changes, for example. We will see fleets that three, four, five years ago we delivered that are all due components in a very short space of time. That can create some of this volatility in our underlying numbers. The thematic is that we've got an aging fleet. The install base continues to grow. Probably later in the presentation you'll get a bit more flavor about where we see that going in the future. We've still got opportunities there in parts service and growth. We don't capture all of the market, that's the thing that drives us every day.
We've got more opportunity to chase, but the base underlying business is still growing as well.
Okay. Great. Just one from me for Matt. Obviously, a lot of work's been done on the margin in recent years. You're at that mid-teen kind of level at the moment. Just interested to understand your view on the macro and what that looks like. In that context, where do you see the potential for those margins as the next sort of level?
Well, we'll cover it a bit more in the growth session this afternoon, but we certainly don't put a cap on it. We want to get above 15%, and I'll say that probably a couple of times today. I think the macro environment generally is good. Again, we'll cover it in the growth session about the sort of trends that we're seeing across the industry. There's some pretty positive tailwinds. I think in terms of getting margin, really, each year if you get 2%-3% improvement in price, 2%-3% improvement in reducing your costs and the same in volume, you wind up with some pretty strong growth across the business, and that's sort of how we think about it, get across all areas, volume, price, cost.
Hey, just to follow up to Ramoun's question on just the aftermarket support and product sales. Can you just talk us through just the power generation opportunity there? I know that sales are done out of a JV, but then the product support and aftermarket parts come back to WesTrac at a state level. What does that mean, particularly given you guys have the New South Wales market? Are you guys seeing an uplift in generator support or generator sales that you get aftermarket support? What does that look like over the next five?
Obviously, we've seen it for the EPSA selling the new equipment sales, and they've got a really solid pipeline of opportunity, both in power gen, data centers, backup power, standby power, and prime power as well. I think in both states, what we've seen is that installed base continues to grow. That provides us that opportunity over the long term for parts and service. I know in Western Australia, for example, we did some G3520, some gas compressor overhauls recently. They're good long-term business. We love seeing power gen units out in the field, particularly ones that run ours. The more we see the firming of the grid, definitely using things like gas, for example. Those things are all positive for us in the long term.
Then that same sector does marine as well, and we've seen some good opportunities in marine with growing tug fleets in Western Australia, for example, and the rebuild opportunities in those fleets as well.
Yeah. Keith Chau from MST again. Murray, a question for you on Coates. Your target for time utilization is around 65%. That's improved from kind of high 50s down to the low 60s now, but there's clearly quite a few components that go into that number. Can you help us understand, given the strategy and the ability to grow without the market improving, is that time utilization metric appropriate to use as a directional guide to where your revenues and therefore earnings could go? Is there something that kind of doesn't drop through between revenue and earnings as it relates to the trajectory of time utilization?
Great question. We'd probably like to think that it would all be directionally dropping through to the bottom line. Where we get it from is we break the business into 14 regions around Australia. Think about it as low returning regions. We will remove capital to try and lift their TU in those regions and redeploy it where we've already got reasonably high TU, but we think we can drive further demand. You are generating greater revenue, so in theory it will drop through. It may come with some additional cost depending on the region you're putting it to. Probably, I would hope that at least 50%-60% is a drop through and directionally indicates that revenue uplift that you get. It's the better deployment.
What it does do is means that you can think differently about the total capital that you need to spend every year and really hone that capital allocation model.
Maybe one for Matt. Thank you, Murray. One for Matt. Just want to try and understand, given the volatility and input cost for Boral at the moment, there's two price increases out in market. As I understand it, the first stuck reasonably well, the second one may be a bit more contentious. As we're talking about operating excellence, how have you changed your approach to potentially hedging out some of the cost volatility? Have you changed the way the business works from that perspective, in order to protect the margin and help deliver margin expansion? Thanks.
Okay. I guess just the first part of your question, I think the market's getting used to this, right? These surcharges are going to go up and down. They're happening across the market. Boral was probably one of the earlier ones. All the competitors follow. As you see prices move, they'll continue to go up and down. I think customers have accepted it very well. In terms of the hedge approach, I don't really see that changing. We've got a level of hedging and we continue to review that and we'll take the appropriate steps. Yeah, that's just going to be continue on.
Thank you.
Thank you. With that, I think I'm handing over to Richard, who will talk about the privileged assets. Thank you.
Thanks, Rob. It's great when you've got the best people leader in the country referring to you as overhead.
I didn't hear that,
Which is actually better than half. At least half of you would've heard Ryan usually refers to me as quintessential overhead, so we'll see how we go. In terms of Ryan has spoken to the operating model and that SGH Way, and I think what you've heard articulated by each of the leaders of the operating businesses is how they've cascaded that down their business. Now, that is absolutely consistent with the way that SGH is run and it's consistently pushed down through the businesses. When we have a look at, I suppose, the operating model, one of our key pillars is ultimately we're looking for privileged assets. Because from our perspective, privileged assets ultimately allow us to deliver a cost of capital return. That is centrally what we're looking to do.
The question then comes, what do we define as a privileged asset and how do we determine that? Scarcity, barriers to entry are critical. We'll talk to each of the businesses, but when we look through exclusivity, sole rights, effectively a regulatory exclusivity or license, give us a position that is difficult to replicate and therefore it gives us a capacity to generate that cost of capital return. That's a physical moat. In terms of embedded customer base, when you look through some of our businesses, that force of attraction, if you have a look at Murray doing 45,000 hires a month, if you look at 500 cubes of concrete from Matt, if you look at an install base for Jarvas, effectively 50,000 units.
That consistency allows us to have some level of predictability around the revenue and then run and optimize a business to deliver an outcome off that embedded base. That is hugely value accretive. In terms of operational asymmetry, knowledge, capacity, I think Gitanjali spoke to the leadership capacity across this group. That is one of the key advantages. That's right down to the front line. When you talk to Matt, he'll talk about we have 30,000 different types of batch mixes and they're all systemly set up in COMMANDbatch, and our teams know how to deliver that. In terms of Jarvas across his network of technicians being able to service and deliver that outcome. It's not only the knowledge in each silo of our businesses, it's the capacity that Rob's speaking to around the capacity to bring the knowledge from businesses together.
He runs a nerve center where we can start to look at demand forecasting and start to see, well, we know that effectively WesTrac will get some visibility to utilization of machines. That's usually going to be when you start construction. Before that, in fact, Murray's put in road barriers. He's put in site accommodation. Once you go through that construction phase, Matt's then looking at, how do I actually then provide the concrete, the asphalt to actually support it? By starting to look across our businesses, we can get early demand signals. The sales integration allows us to take AI and optimize where should we be targeting our sales force to actually deliver an exceptional outcome. It's that operational knowledge. I think the other element across our businesses is the longevity. Ryan's always pushed, we want a leadership position. Why?
Because it allows us to actually exploit a market and manage it. All of our businesses are leading in their respective markets. If you think about WesTrac, over 70 years, when you consider its predecessor entities, with all of the information that goes with effectively running that business for that period of time. If you think about Coates, 120, and if you think about Boral, over 80 years. The level of operational knowledge and the history, Murray can tell you every piece of fleet that's used in every tunneling project. When CPBs come to him and go, "We're doing another one." It's like, "Well, this is what you're going to need, this is when you're going to need it, and this is how we're going to manage that process." That level of integrated knowledge that sits in the business because of that longevity is unique.
Network and scale, we're always careful around these attributes because scale of itself is not a competitive advantage, we've seen that and experienced that. Network genuinely is. The capacity, particularly for products which are time-sensitive, to deliver something to a market within a 45-minute window when they need it, that's critical. The capacity to have, as Murray's highlighted, what everyone needs where they need it. Having 145 branches, that national franchise, big operational asset. In terms of scale, AUD 1.9 billion of original cost fleet. As Murray's highlighted, if you can get utilization up 10%, which the team has done over the last decade, that's an extra AUD 200 million of capital deployed in that business at no cost in effect. The compounding opportunities, this is, I suppose, where we look at it.
If you have a look at the businesses, Jarvas effectively has taken the business from about 7.5% margin to over 11% margin. Jarvas and Adrian run the two best Caterpillar dealerships in the world. If you have a look at Murray, he's taken the business ultimately from 14% margin to 27% margin. That is equivalent to United Rentals, that is the best operator of a general rental business in the world. If you have a look at Boral, I suppose Matt and the team have taken the business from 4% EBIT margin now to 15%, and he was very clear this morning, he's got some aspirations, so I'll hold him to that next year. Across that kind of dimension, ultimately, the compounding, if we get the right people in the right seats and run a good business with a leading market position, we can drive superior returns.
It's the compounding. It is the SGH Way and the manifestation of that drives through the business that delivers that outcome. The optionality piece is also critical because one thing that is unique about SGH, we have a much longer mindset. When we look at the asset and liability duration matches in our business, we're thinking we're holding these businesses for 10+ years, not we're thinking about flipping it tomorrow or we've got an exit event. The optionality, if we have a look at Boral's property, for example. When we acquired Boral, we looked at the 4,000 ha of surplus land, and that represented either at first instance, when we took on effectively an AUD 8 billion bridge finance, how do we repay that bridge? I had an option.
I also had an option of if everything doesn't go to plan, do we have an exit plan to CRH? For us, having a real option in our business is valuable, and that's the way we think about all of the businesses. Through the cycle, if we think through over 10 or almost 15 years of SGH, to deliver compound 17% returns. Have we had differences in mining investment cycles? Yes. Infrastructure investment cycles? Yes. These businesses through longitudinally are delivering exceptional returns. One of the elements that I consistently get, "Oh, your businesses are inherently cyclical." If you have a look at the performance of these businesses over 12, 13 years, I would say it challenges that base thesis. One of the elements is that myopic focus on variabilizing cost. We will not control effectively what happens out there in an external market.
As Ryan consistently tells me, every cost in our business is variable. It is just a function of time. We always want to think about how we've got to have time to change our cost structure to manage the external environment. One of the fundamental changes in Boral's performance is historically, the mantra was, everything is fixed, we just have to sell stuff cheaper to manage any dislocation in that top line, it destroyed the business, quite frankly. It's that focus on how do we make sure that business is resilient through the cycle rather than just dropping price and destroying effectively our return. Talking to each of the businesses specifically, if we have a look at the Cat dealership, exclusive territory rights between WA and New South Wales, ACT. Ultimately, heavy mining jurisdictions. They are privileged.
We think about 50,000 installed units, 12,000 mining units. If you think about the average utilization of Cat, you might use your car one and a half hours a day. If you think about a 230-ton mining truck, they're using it on average 21 hours a day. If you think about it takes them one hour to refuel it, all the other time is actually maintenance. In reality, actually operating those assets pretty much 23 hours a day. The wear and tear, the annuity revenue that falls off that business as a result of the consumption of parts and service over its life, which as Jarvas highlights, they're extending, makes this a privileged asset. In terms of the logistics network, ultimately, when we look at the parts distribution, 300,000 lines per month is a sophisticated business.
It's having 94%, 95% delivered in full on-time type capacity to support our customers means that we are the provider of choice with circa 65% market share across critical resource industry. That is difficult to displace and very hard to replicate. In terms of Boral, and Matt will talk more to the privileged asset, but it's that integrated network. In terms of having, ultimately, there are three concrete plants, cement manufacturing plants in the country. Having one of those, it's a billion-dollar asset to effectively go and buy a new one. In terms of if you did, you would destroy the market. Without having effectively the downstream capacity, you could never make that investment. Very difficult to get regulatory approval to actually put one in.
I suppose having one, having it operating and successful, gives us a situation. Ultimately, whilst you can bring in clinker, that capacity gives you a unique market position. If you then add that to the quarries, again, it's not economic to transport hard rock effectively from other countries. Matt will confirm it, but I don't think a new quarry has been consented in Victoria for what, about 15 years?
Like 40 in metropolitan Melbourne, it's been something regional.
If you think about having the privileged position down in Marulan, at Berrima, those assets that are connected to a rail link, an integrated position where you have the rock, you can manufacture the cement, you have the sand, also manufacture ultimately asphalt. The recycling position is still a growing opportunity, and we refer to optionality. That's where part of the optionality sits. If we can take construction and demolition waste and push it back through the front end, ultimately preserving the life of our quarries, getting paid to take the demolition waste, running it through a demolition shredder, and pushing it back out as manufactured sand, road base, it represents a great value opportunity. It's also inherently circular. Concrete batch plants, having the network of batch plants around effectively a growing metropolitan area allows you to service.
You only have to look at CBD Melbourne, CBD Sydney, Brisbane, to understand if you do not have proximity and you can't deliver at scale, you're not going to be relevant to the customers that we genuinely service. That, I think Matt and the team have taken Delivered in Full. When we first joined Boral and we saw Delivered in Full on time about 40%, we thought for a time-critical product like cement to have that kind of DIFOT, when we were used to Murray and Jarvas talking about, "Well, my DIFOT's 95," or "My DIFOT's 87," we were somewhat surprised. In that context, getting that up to 65, 70 highlights effect, if we do it right, the force of attraction for customers is compelling, particularly if you've got 20 or 30 concrete places sitting on site waiting for a truck to turn up.
In terms of the vertical integration, what's also critical is we get to capture margin effectively at the cement, at the quarry, effectively at concrete. I think what's important is 90% of the product that we manufacture through that manufacturing process is ultimately delivered through that downstream. We get to preserve that integrated margin. In terms of Coates and the privileged assets, 145 branches nationally. If you think about our market share in tier 1, we're 3%-4% higher in market share in tier 1 than tier 2. Why? Murray highlighted the value of hire and the critical value proposition. We're never going to be the cheapest, let's be clear. The reality is we're providing the best value proposition because of the service. We can provide you what you need, where you need it.
What's interesting is the number of clients that actually pay us to go and source equipment, so rehire equipment, because we can service it, deliver it, and we can maintain it. That is a unique value proposition that Coates can deliver because of that national footprint. In terms of energy, and if we have a look at Beach, five production hubs, exclusive licenses. I think everyone would acknowledge that the East Coast market is fundamentally short of gas. If we look at what's going on in the Middle East, I suppose LNG demand is only going to increase. Again, the positions, not only in terms of having infrastructure, pipelines, gas plants, as well as the capacity or export licenses, are all critical and support effective to the business to generate an economic return. Very difficult to replicate.
Media, if we have a look, ultimately, Southern Cross, number one television network in the country, if we think total audience. If you think about the revenue opportunity that sits in that media business, optimizing the cost structure, there is a compelling business opportunity in media as well. Talking to the flywheel and how does this ultimately the compounding of performance. From our perspective, when we think about driving the performance, and Gitanjali and Sam have spoken about ultimately, if it's measured, it's managed. If it's remunerated, it's delivered. Very simple principles, but incredibly powerful. If we then think about the people, everything is about how do we deliver above a cost of capital return. It's pretty simple. Our operating model is actually deceptively simple. It's the capacity of the people to deliver that operating model with a good business that actually drives that compounding effect.
I think what you've seen from the leaders of the business, it's their capacity to look at the Balanced Scorecards to understand the metrics, what measures matters. If they've identified what are the things that are actually going to change the outcome, and by the measurement, as Sam Toppenberg highlights is, if then something moves longitudinally, we're quickly onto it to change that outcome. It starts with performance of our businesses. Without that fundamental performance, we don't get that initial cadence through the flywheel. In terms of the discipline people, ultimately, if we think about ultimately inertia, as a quick sidebar, Ryan has a new interest in AI, and he's been pushing it through the management teams, which has been reflected. He did put out effectively a leader score last week, which highlighted I'm an absolute laggard.
In my attempt over the weekend to think about how can I better use Claude, I did throw in a flywheel into Claude. I said, "Give me some useful insights." Claude then threw me back to that theory of perpetual motion, which throws me back to, and I'm surrounded by engineers, effectively, ultimately, how do we get perpetual motion? The answer from laws of thermodynamics is you can't. The way that we think about the business in terms of entropy and enthalpy is ultimately, if we're putting energy into the system, being our people running good businesses, then that ultimately needs to drive a velocity through the business. I suppose the other element is if you think about, ultimately, again, second law of physics is my memory, greater the complexity, greater the rate of decline in any closed order system.
In a business context, we think that absolutely applies. When Matt talks to when he joined the business, we had eight layers. You couldn't drop a pin through the organization. Take out two layers, that reduces the organizational friction. Everything that we think about is ultimately the greater the complexity, the longer a chain, the greater its propensity to break. In this context, everything in our business is, when we talk 15,000 people, 13,000 frontline, the discipline around the operating model is how do we make sure we get the right people with the right systems and processes managing the people to do it right? That's the flywheel in effect. If you think about enthalpy as energy flow and entropy is about disorder, if we can create a greater level of order, that allows us to overcome that.
In terms of enthalpy, if we can create the energy by putting the right people in the right businesses, ultimately, we get an exothermic reaction, which in our context is a return. What's interesting is I think that goes back to the Gibbs free energy effect, correct me if I'm wrong, which is the energy arbiter. Claude was good to play with on the weekend, so thanks, Ryan. In that context, the way we think about our businesses is absolutely consistent. Scarcity, customer base, operational asymmetry. How do we drive these through to deliver relative outperformance? It's that growth in earnings, growth in cash flow that ultimately delivers the first leg of that flywheel. I'll hand to Jarvas.
Thanks, Richard. You made me feel like I was helping my son do homework again. As we explained, WesTrac has an absolutely privileged set of territories. We have Western Australia, New South Wales, and the ACT. Both fantastic states in which to offer Caterpillar products. From a mining production standpoint, some of the largest operations across a diverse range of commodities. What's important for us is always material movement, right? It's not just about production volumes from miners, it's about the material they need to move in order to run their operations. That's the overburden, et cetera. From a construction perspective, some fantastic infrastructure opportunities. We continue to see ongoing investments in both the states or all the states. Our extensive branch network is very hard to replicate. Often I have people ask me about emerging OEMs.
Look, the thing they're going to struggle with the most is they just don't have the branches, the people, the network, the gear on the ground to be able to support this equipment 24 hours a day, seven days a week across the remote operations in which we are there to support. We've got a fantastic reputation both with the tier one miners and our construction customers, and it's backed up by the day-to-day delivery from our teams. We have a great workforce with some deep technical expertise. We're globally recognized in that space, and we have the access to the Caterpillar systems, plus the passion and drive to continue to deploy that across our business through automation and data as well. In terms of that installed base, we're seeing that base continue to age. The base has grown by about 4%. It's aging at about 1% a year.
Our business is largely driven around recurring aftermarket services. Caterpillar products are fundamentally designed to be rebuilt. We get a fantastic opportunity to take machines, continue to upgrade the parts, sell remanufactured parts, exchange components, along with the Caterpillar exchange components, and continue to see those machines continue to run for years and years. There's been some recent posts recently about some of the trucks globally hitting some massive 200,000+ operating hours. We've got some options to take machines and components through the end of life through our FlexiParts business and recycle them, find new homes both domestically and overseas, and obviously those new parts opportunities. We have a proven track record in rebuilds, and we're doing life extension projects with major miners nowEnable leaders to continue parts and service growth over time as those machines will continue to operate for years into the future.
From a workforce perspective, as we're speaking about, over 4,500 amazing technicians. One of our technicians pictured there was a runner-up in the Global Dealer Technician Challenge, that just reinforces the quality of the technicians we have in WesTrac on the global stage. We've got over 30 years of operational expertise within the business. We've done significant investment in infrastructure. We've got purpose-built rebuilt facilities, machine shops, CRCs, and parts exchange facilities. We're one of the few players out there that can not only just do the equipment overhaul, but we can also take all those components and overhaul and recycle them back into your machine as well.
Got a very strong relationship with Caterpillar through our parts distribution centers, and we have the IP that helps deliver the right parts to the right place at the right time, and we are consistently showing some of the strongest DIFOT performance of any dealers globally. As I said, we've got some amazing facilities and many of you through past visits may have experienced some of those firsthand. In West Australia, we've been running as the WesTrac brand since 1990, and we opened our new headquarters in Tomago in 2012. Our relationship with Caterpillar's actually been in Australia for over 100 years, and we celebrated that last year, and as WesTrac for over 35 years. Our parts distribution centers are some of the best in the world. They manage high volumes of activity very productively.
We've got an extensive branch network that's really close to our customers, that's supplemented by a huge field service contingent and embedded workforce on major customer mine sites. We're well-placed to support not just the physical network, but also with the people on the ground to optimize the performance of their machines. Going forward, we continue to look for opportunities to scale and grow that aftermarket. Because of volume, size and scale, every 1% improvement delivers time and time again throughout our business. We've increased our CRC holding capacities. We've expanded our hose shops. We've used automation in some of those shops. We significantly increased our ability to turn products on a faster basis. We've optimized our branch network to drive scale benefits, and we're seeing further opportunities in warehouse automation. Later this year, we'll look at doing some stuff around automated wrapping and dispatch.
We deployed some narrow aisle projects last year. All of that are about making sure we use the same physical footprint of warehouse, but we store more parts and we turn those parts faster. Give you an example of the capital discipline in action. Through our investment cycle, we're very disciplined about what we invest in. We have very clear paybacks. We check them, and we monitor any investments we make in the business. We look at those lifecycle opportunities to provide that sustained disciplined CapEx deployment throughout our network and look to deliver returns. On that bottom right's an example. That's a twin wire arc spray unit. We deployed that in West Australia on the back of the expertise and knowledge that we got from the deployment in New South Wales. It's got a solid payback. It frees up resources for us.
That machine itself, it moves backward and forward using a robot arm. It builds the metal back up on the blocks, allows us to run the blocks for longer, get more turns out of the blocks. That job used to be done with someone in a hood, limited visibility, trying to manually spray it. You reduce the excess spray, you get faster turn times, and you get that resource now to do something else. Fantastic example of how that works for us. We've gone through some great CapEx programs already, and we've got some continued opportunities both to drive our warehouse growth, but also support our branch network as well.
In summary, it's the Caterpillar relationships, the huge range of certified technicians we've got across our extensive branch network, our integrated parts and service offerings, our strong customer relationships, and our disciplined investment program allows you to continue to grow year on year into the future going forward. I'll hand over now to Matt.
Thanks, Jarvas. Right. Well, this slide gives you an overview of the size and scale of Boral's privileged assets, built up over 80 years to make Boral the largest integrated construction materials company in Australia. We've got 328 operating sites across concrete, quarries, asphalt, cement, recycling and concrete placing. Our prized upstream cement and quarry assets sit in privileged locations that simply cannot be replicated. As Richard covered earlier, it'd be impossible to gain approvals for many of them today, given their proximity to populations, the regulatory requirements involved, and the political realities around community opposition. Boral's also got an extensive footprint of downstream assets in close proximity to customer, which is particularly critical if you consider concrete, where you sell a product that goes off in a matter of hours.
This slide describes the integrated nature of our business and a critical feature of how we create value. We've got eight unique asset classes. Upstream, we've got cement, quarries, bitumen, recycling. Downstream, we've got concrete placing, asphalt manufacturing and contracting. 50% of upstream volumes are supplied by Boral's downstream businesses. 90% of downstream businesses source their raw materials internally from Boral upstream. The key to creating value is to optimize each asset class individually, but also how they work together. Done well, vertical integration delivers Boral's secure source of materials, margin retention and improved capital efficiency and it delivers customer benefits including package solution options, a single supplier interface, a broader range of technical solutions, and logistics and supply chain optimization.
Turning to optimization at the individual asset level, SCROA was introduced to the Boral strategy last year and is a key feature of our most recent refresh. Core part of SCROA is daily frontline metrics on visual management boards to drive operational excellence. Going through them, Safe ensures critical assets are aligned with Boral's SOPs and life-saving rules. Comply ensures assets are operating in accordance with environmental licenses, regulatory approvals, stakeholder expectations. Reliable drives focus on assets being operationally available and ready. Optimized is about effective and efficient operation to drive cost per unit. Like PMAF, but the next level down within the asset management pillar, SCROA is an overarching approach to asset management that improves operational visibility and accountability, engages teams to share learnings, and drives operational performance. This slide covers a couple of examples of how SCROA delivers cost and customer benefits.
The first is OEE in our key upstream businesses, quarries, cement and recycling. OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It essentially combines reliability, quality and performance into a single number. In quarries, a one percentage point improvement equates to AUD 2 million in EBIT. To drive OEE, there's an intense focus on frontline performance. For example, daily visual management on plant downtime in a quarry drives increased frontline attention to all factors contributing to downtime, the performance progressively improves. Quarries have historically been more agricultural in approach to what you might see in advanced manufacturing. We're changing that by bringing a more systematic and disciplined approach consistently all the way to the frontline. In our downstream businesses, the focus is on plant breakdowns.
In these operations, where the product's perishable within hours and customers have idle labor waiting around, any breakdown's costly for both the customer and for Boral as we scramble to deliver product from another location. SCROA provides a nationally consistent framework for tracking issues and performance daily, focusing attention on the site with the greatest opportunity to improve. It also gives the asset SMEs the data to systematically address the highest frequency root causes. In the first three years of Good to Great, we very much focused on addressing challenges and gaps in our upstream assets, particularly short-life quarry reserves and our prior cement assets. We've largely addressed the quarries through gaining approvals and expanding existing sites through strategic acquisitions. Similarly, we've made and are continuing to make significant improvements in our cement assets to strengthen our position.
We're now increasingly turning our attention to downstream assets to compound the value of those upstream investments. Filling gaps in our downstream concrete plant network, expanding into growth corridors such as our Wallan investment, or upgrading key assets such as our Botany plant in Sydney. An important aspect of Boral's asset performance is our approach to capital management. We take a disciplined approach to managing annual capital spend in line with depreciation and amortization. We do this through our monthly capital committees, chaired by each segment EGM and head of finance, and our monthly investment committee, chaired by CEO and CFO for larger investments. In these forums, we encourage operational teams to put forward investment ideas while demanding really high-quality proposals. Owner's mindset. The format is consistent, and SMEs are available to support proposal development, ensuring the business cases are robust with verified assumptions.
The forums also include postmortem reviews to capture learnings and maintain a high level of accountability. The end result is we invest in the right projects and execute them with discipline, leading to significantly improved return on invested capital. This performance has given the business the confidence to undertake a one-time strategic catch-up investment in heavy mobile equipment to address an aging fleet, as well as several acquisitions. This final slide just seals everything we've covered. I want to draw your attention to the table on the screen because it captures how we think about value creation through our asset base. Four drivers, four outcomes. The real story is not the rows in isolation. It's what happens when you execute all four simultaneously with discipline across a network of 328 operating sites built up over 80 years. That's compounding through privileged assets.
We have assets in locations that simply can't be replicated. Regulatory, community and political realities mean the quarries and cement facilities we operate today could not be approved in the same locations from scratch. That structural scarcity is the foundation. Vertical integration with 90% of downstream input sourced internally means every improvement we make upstream flows through and multiplies in value downstream. When we drive SCROA performance across quarries and concrete plants, improve OEE, reduce breakdowns, invest in cement storage close to the customer, each of those gains compounds through the network. The financial track record reflects exactly that compounding in action. EBIT margins have grown from 3.6% in FY 2022 to 14.7% in the first half of FY 2026
It's not a one-off. It's a result of ruthless, systematic improvement across a privileged asset base. We have a clear line of sight to sustaining and building on that trajectory. The assets are privileged, the strategy's disciplined, and the compounding continues. Thank you.
Thanks, Matt. In the earlier session, we talked about how we operate. I'm going to now talk about the assets, as Richard said, what makes them privileged assets from a Coates perspective. That is the asset base, the network and the technology, they are generally hard to replicate from our perspective. Probably the keyword that I want to emphasize for this session is our competitive moat. It's not a buzzword. It is a true structural description of the Coates network as it is today. As Richard mentioned, Coates is 140 years old.
70 of those past years have been in the hire business. Over these past decades, that moat has been built up and the capital that we've been using is well-defined. Let's look at what we're dealing with. Replacement value or OC, AUD 1.9 billion, and a fleet age of between five to six years. 145 branches across the network, over 7,500 equipment models and 135 equipment types. Our employee base is 1,700 individuals. They are highly skilled with deep operational and sales capability and background in hire. That's important. No competitor in Australia comes close to matching this in terms of the combination of that scale, the age of the equipment, the breadth and depth of our network, and the density that we have across Australia. In terms of why that's important, and scale, again, as Richard highlighted, it's only critical if customers choose to use you.
Let's look a little bit further into that. More than 70% of our revenue comes from contracts that exceed 12 months, and our top 10 customers contribute just over 22.5% of that revenue. That's not transactional. That is the embedded partnerships that we have across our customers. The customers choose us for the five reasons. You can see them listed there. The fleet quality and availability, that's that low fleet age, the proactive maintenance that we operate under, and the reliability of that equipment once we get it on site. Second is the specialist solutions. As I mentioned in the prior session, over AUD 240 million of that revenue now comes across that competitors basically just can't replicate or compete against. Our safety and compliance infrastructure, compliance is now a key part of every major project and is getting greater for all of our customers.
It's critical in those regulated environments where that compliance is a real cost and where we can take that cost away from those customers. The network, 145 branches delivering response times, again, that competitors can't match just purely because of our locations around Australia. That account management piece, our grade of service, 80% of our calls get answered in under 30 seconds, and we have a less than 5% abandonment rate of those calls coming in. That's a service level that's hard to match. If you're running a major project as a project manager, supervisor, director, they cannot afford to have a hire company let them down. We are a low-risk choice for those customers. That's where the premium that we earn comes through. That's that total value of hire that I spoke about in the earlier session. All right. Improving the return.
The metrics on this slide tell you where we are and also where we're going to in FY 2027. I mentioned time utilization, looking at shifting that up. We're on target, and we're improving. The real gain here is the opportunity in finance utilization, and that's the gap between equipment on hire and the return that it generates. That gap varies widely by category, and as the gentleman asked earlier, that's that fundamental that we're shifting. That gap varies in category across the regions, and it's similar to time utilization, but the category economics now are where we're choosing to shift the business. We talked about redline. Every one percentage point of reduction in redline directly lifts our financial utilization. That goes to lifting our EBIT margin and hence that will enhance our ROCE.
We get there through that category-leading pricing and guardrails that I mentioned in the earlier session, and that's enforced by our systems that we have in the business. Coupled with tighter deal review, the establishment recently of a Chief Revenue Office where all of this requires sign-off up through the scales through delegations. That ROCE then is the reporting feature that we're looking to enhance and improve. We've coupled with our fleet availability, so the concept of what's on hire, what's been in redline, and the fleet availability is the final piece of the puzzle. That makes 100% of that AUD 1.9 billion of fleet. These are all numbers that are improving. They're not aspirational. They are the output of our management systems, of that POAF system in action, and they're in place and they're producing results for us now.
In terms of the fleet capital, our replacement capital expenditure is between AUD 230 million and AUD 250 million a year. That's one of the largest fleet investment programs in the sector, and it is governed rigorously. Our CFO, Jeff Proctor, is in the audience here. Jeff basically chairs most of those processes through a structured investment committee, which then feeds onto board approval for appropriate sign-off at various delegation levels. Those investment decisions are all tied to utilization performance and return thresholds. We're looking for those demand signals. We're managing the fleet in an active way based upon that utilization, and not only where we can pivot to enhance investment in appropriate categories of equipment, what we can also defleet or remove from what we offer. Over the decades, you probably can see that Coates has continually changed the fleet offering over that portfolio period of time.
We're now evolving that model further. The next phase is that portfolio-based approach to capital, where we will be allocating capital at a portfolio level, and that will be aligned to those demand signals across those 14 regions around Australia. That's, again, a more detailed process compared to historically where we've just looked across the four BUs of east, west, north and south. The governance is being refined, and we're using a lot of AI, which we talked about, our new best friend, Claude, that is run across the business. Coates has been an early adopter, and we're going to hear a bit of that later on from Stuart Freer, our Chief Information Officer. We're continually looking to take low-value admin out and using that to integrate our sales, our operations, our procurement and the finance elements into a faster, more responsive fleet deployment model.
That means that we are faster to market, less lost revenue, less shortages or outages of equipment, stronger utilization, which enhances our return on capital. That leads us to long-term capital productivity. This is how the scale becomes our compounding and competitive advantage rather than just a management burden as it so easily could be. I mentioned AI a moment ago, and probably a broader technology piece. Technology has always been at the heart of Coates. We've always collected a lot of data, and it has been embedded in our daily operations for many years. There's three layers to technology at Coates. The first is the telemetry and the fleet intelligence. That's real-time tracking and utilization monitoring of not only the fleet age and availability of that fleet, but also the performance of that fleet for all of our customers and the predictive maintenance that it offers.
The second is the various metrics around our sales and metrics 360, which is pricing, the pipeline of revenue that we've got, the utilization that's being driven by all of the live data that we're capturing. That links to the pricing conformance that we enforce through those guardrails that I've mentioned. That's driving the structured call cycles for our sales team, where they can enhance and lift that win rate that I mentioned that has been a real focus over the past 12 months. The final piece is AI. We've deployed AI. We've got five agents actively working at the moment, 46 use cases in review and further development, expanding all the time. What's exciting is just how quickly that's been taken up by the business, we certainly have a very strong utilization.
Probably the exciting piece from an AI perspective is what's coming next, which is around scheduling and the utilization, i.e., taking that demand signal from the market and looking at how we can actively refine where the equipment needs to be in real time and the maintenance that goes with that if you think about the very large workforce of mechanics that we have in place. What that means in practice is that we then get a higher utilized fleet, which costs less to run. The pricing that we can offer holds under pressure under that pricing discipline that we've got in place. That leads to more revenue being won on a consistent basis, and the decisions that it takes to manage all of this happens in real time compared to the days and sometimes weeks the decisions now take in the current model.
I want to close on this slide. In terms of our two competitive moats, neither are easily replicated. The first one is the fleet depth and network coverage, which is not easily replicated, and they compound together. Our fleet is the largest fleet of specialized equipment in Australia. We're shifting the mix of that towards higher-value categories and the fleet age, the composition that we're managing is happening now at a category level, not in aggregate. That's important if you think about how just a general hire business has historically been run. The network gives customers proximity and response times. That's important for them, and no new entrant can replicate that.
Our customer relations are embedded at a site and project level where the switching cost is extremely high. Every incremental revenue dollar for us is absorbed through that infrastructure at a higher margin, and that is important in thinking about the model. The asset performance framework of utilization, category economics, fleet decisions, and the network model feeds directly into the flywheel that we talked about in session one. These are not separate systems. They are the same system operating at different levels of the business, compounding that privileged asset base that we have. Thanks, and I'll now hand over to Brett.
Thanks very much, Murray. It's great to be here. Thanks, Ryan and Richard, for giving me the opportunity to present to you today. Beach Energy, very much at its heart, has very similar philosophy to the fully owned SGH organizations. Starting with the key part, our core assets. We have a privileged position both on the west coast of Australia with our recently fully brought up to speed, up to full rate Perth Basin assets at Waitsia. We have our wonderful position across the east coast of Australia, where over the last 12 months, we've represented 20% of the total of the east coast domestic supply. Very hard, if not impossible, position to replicate under current climate.
We have our position in Central Australia through the Cooper Basin, where we can supply molecules to anywhere across the east coast of Australia into Queensland, all the way through to Tasmania in effect. More recently, we've made out a winner block with a partnership in the Taroom Trough. That is an important strategic pivot for us. Getting access to deep onshore capability, which we have in our organization. Being able to deploy disciplined capital is absolutely critical for margin support. With the current situation with the Australian government, with the expectation of a reservation policy looming, we just need to make sure that we can deliver molecules at the lowest possible cost. Chasing opportunities that are onshore, where we can manage that cost, we can manage our CapEx run rate, and we can be very dynamic is important.
Moreover, what Taroom offers us is a big liquids exposure. One of the key mitigants for the potential threat to the East Coast domestic market is more and more exposure to liquids. Through our Western Flank assets and through the Taroom Trough, we are building a very exciting forward-looking portfolio in terms of material liquids exposure. In terms of our Otway Basin assets, we have some development opportunities there, and we're looking very closely at how we optimize those to make sure we maximize our value. We've been looking outboard of those, and we're seeing some very exciting, in excess of a TCF scale, opportunities. Those of you that follow the Beach story would know that I have been very much focused on delivering scale in that portfolio. Similarly, in Western Australia, we also have fantastic opportunity to capture additional volumes through tight gas.
When Beach originally bought the assets from Lattice, one of those key components of that acquisition was a large portfolio of tight gas assets that had been drilled and discovered. The focus had been over the last five years, effectively to deliver a conventional project, but the tight gas through the Perth Basin will give length to that portfolio, which is very exciting and very important for Western Australia. That is partly speaking about the other key element to our portfolio is access to the key markets. Across the east coast of Australia, at the moment, the market is effectively getting close to being balanced. We've seen some of the LNG exporters divert some volumes to the southern markets, and that has meant that spot prices at the moment are sub AUD 10.
For us, we have a fantastic contract base, and you will see that in an upcoming slide. We've been able to grow our realized gas prices across our portfolio, in the order of 30% or 33% over the last two years. We're getting more value for our molecules, and that's really that flywheel compounding effect that Ryan and the team keep talking about. It's utilizing our tools, utilizing our skill and our assets to deliver and unlock significant value. We do see a material increase in the gas demand across the East Coast of Australia.
The inbounds I've been having recently, because we have a book of uncontracted gas by the data centers, the large AI rollout that's wanting to be achieved through both New South Wales, Victoria and, more recently through Premier Malinauskas' announcement of a big push for data centers into South Australia is really an exciting opportunity for us. They offer a solution which is high paid, long-term contracts, which unlocks value and gives us the ability to continue to execute against our privileged asset base. Across the global LNG environment, we've seen a market shift with the war in Ukraine. With Qatar now 20% less export, the chart there effectively looks like we're in balance, but we will see that gap grow. You've seen JKM into Asia, nearly two to three times what the Australian domestic gas price is delivering at the moment.
There's a huge value arbitrage to that. We have access to that through LNG contracts associated with our assets in Western Australia. Global liquids is a great picture to look at. You can see why we are chasing more liquids in our portfolio. The growing gap is getting bigger and bigger. I believe the frequency or the outlook for growth in terms of Asian energy is in the order of 40%-50% of current levels by 2050. We're not seeing a world that is really stepping away from traditional oil and gas. We see Asia is materially growing with its demand for more and more energy, as you can see through their recent buying activity across Australia. We have a privileged asset base both across the East Coast and the West Coast.
We have very good connection to those key markets, being able to deliver molecules to every major market in Australia. I'm very pleased to say that we've had 15 months without an incident through a period of which we've had heightened activity. If you follow Beach, you would have known two years ago we announced a 30% target for headcount reduction. We've delivered over 35%, with much more execution without an incident. It's always a very good sign if you can strengthen your organization through operational performance outcomes and not hurt anyone on that journey. It's very important for us to maintain that diligence through our operations. Key pivot for our organization is really our forward push in onshore.
Very much focusing to growing our footprint on the onshore assets in Australia, where we think we can deliver material value and unlock a whole lot of scope. Taroom Trough is important. If you were trying to think what the Taroom can look like, it's like our closest example of a Henry Hub-like outcome, because you have that large liquids credit that can potentially unlock low-cost gas through that market. We're quite excited about our step into the Taroom Trough and looking forward to drilling some wells, which we've accelerated to FY 2027. In terms of offshore, I've always maintained this view that we need to be very disciplined in the offshore. We're currently executing a program there. For me, it's about delivering those types of opportunities that have that high rate of return and not just recycling capital.
Very focused on delivering value, and part of that story is about chasing those larger scale opportunities in the deeper water. Very exciting for us is later this year, we will be FID-ing some nearshore opportunities, and those nearshore opportunities are drilled from the onshore. The targets are offshore, but we can do that for very low capital, and that gives us more than 20% rates of return on those assets. We're very focused on having a disciplined balance sheet. We have a very disciplined balance sheet, and our gearing is less than 15%. It gives us a great platform to continue to grow and add length to our current portfolio. In terms of some of that operational discipline and our owner's mindset in action, our unit operating costs over the last three years has significantly fallen by 33%.
A fantastic outcome. That's the objective that I set out at the beginning. Particularly where we operate, we're now operating our assets at around or just less than AUD 10 a gigajoule, or a barrel equivalent, which is a fantastic outcome. Across our broader portfolio, it's around AUD 11. We continue to want to push more and more into that operator position through our assets where we can utilize our flywheel approach to efficiency to drive better outcomes. As I mentioned before, our improvement in terms of a realized gas price is important, as leveraging our molecules every day. When I joined, we were at around three external contracts with gas end users. Now we're over 15. We're going around the middleman and getting direct connection to the market and chasing those molecules and growing that value every day.
Across our key assets, as I mentioned, Waitsia has ramped up to full rates. That's a very pleasing outcome for me in particular. We've been able to accelerate some value through swaps through the last year and a half. We'll be pushing more molecules and more LNG out into the market over the next period. We have an exciting exploration campaign there that's coming up. We've got that tight gas opportunity we're chasing, and it's a great opportunity to grow our portfolio. Across the Otway, again, focused on doing things right. We have plant reliability to over 99% across our operations, which is fantastic. We've, predominantly through the abandonment scope that we have delivered, we have just completed the Thylacine West intervention, which will increase production across the Otway, and we're about to complete the Artisan completion. Our work is going on there.
We've been able to execute very complicated scope in tough weather efficiently without any safety outcomes. Finally, in the Cooper Basin, we've seen some weather impacts over the last year that has limited our production through the core assets with Santos. We're in the process of executing a significant oil campaign there. We're about eight wells through a 12-well development campaign, and then we have our exploration campaign on the back of that, which is all about chasing liquids to market as soon as we can. The Taroom, as I mentioned before, very exciting opportunity. There's currently another gazette round going on, and we're bidding through an AMI process to try and capture some more of those blocks. It's material for me because the scale is kind of larger than anything else in my portfolio.
It gives us a bit of a blue sky aspect to our portfolio base, which gives us a great opportunity to chase value into the future. You've seen some really good outcomes from wells in the adjacent areas. Finally, we have a privileged asset base. We're really focused on delivering balance sheet discipline. We have that owner's mindset, and we're delivering value for every molecule we produce. Ultimately, we are chasing growth. Growth is important for us to add longevity to our base plan and our base assets. Look forward to delivering that over the next period. I think that ends this section. I'm not sure if anyone wants to close out or, boys, we can go straight to questions.
Peter Steyn with Macquarie. Jarvas, sorry, a question for you. In the context of the comments you made about aspirant OEMs and them not having the network you have, and I think Cat has probably got a similar perspective on some of the potential risk there. It seems like at the very least, one of your large potential mining customers is prepared to back them in a pretty big way. Your perspective on that, how do you think that plays out? How do you think WesTrac is positioned to counter that from an asset perspective?
Yeah, obviously, there's plenty of different manufacturers out there, and we've seen people trying different products, and they tried one path and they've taken another. They still run a lot of our gear, and they're still a very valued customer to ours. We'll see what happens with batteries and electrification and how that plays out over the next five to 10-year period. We think the Caterpillar product has a number of long-term areas of interest for customers in terms of what it can offer and how we might be able to support. I think the Dynamic Energy Transfer system's probably a key differentiator compared to swapping charge and the ability to charge on the go is huge from a productivity point of view. Look, who knows? I still feel that we've got a great network. You need to keep this gear running.
Doesn't matter what it runs on, you still need to have the support on the ground. It's vitally important for customers that that uptime and physical availability remains really high. Our team and Cat are very focused on that. Equally capital intensity. We're rebuilding machines now, and they're going back to work at plus 90% physical availability, which is as good as new. You can do that for a lower cost. There's lots of variables in that. Yeah, we'll see how it plays out.
Thanks.
What? Go for it.
Yeah.
I'm going out for a coffee.
I'll follow you.
I don't wake up early in the morning.
Just a follow-up question to Peter. Maybe another way of asking the question is, obviously WesTrac's a dominant market share with a second key player, Komatsu, in Australia. There's only one way this threat is going to go, which is up. How much time do you spend trying to manage that threat? In our discussions with Richard and other industry participants, it seems like hybridization is the way to go at the moment. What's the technology and innovation that WesTrac is driving to maybe bridge the gap to full battery electric technology? Are you entirely hamstrung on what Cat allows you to do?
Oh, look, I think, when I go back to fundamentals of mining, number one is get efficient at what you do today, and that's where autonomy and technology can help you right now. There is no point trying to do batteries and hybridization and do all these very capital-intensive processes if your base operations aren't effective. With a lot of the CEOs I talk to, it's about, well, what are you doing today to utilize the technology available today to reduce idle time, to increase your productivity? How many liters are you burning per ton of dirt moved? You would be absolutely gobsmacked at some of the stuff that we unearth through those processes. I mean, orders of magnitude, and that's before you go down the battery path, right?
I say to everybody, it's not a case of this won't happen, it's a case of it's going to take some time because you can put a battery truck in there today, and we can demonstrate a battery truck that'll work today, and it'll be quite productive. The challenge is when you've got 100 of them, the electrical system and the infrastructure you need to support that is vastly different to what's on the mine sites today. For many of those miners, they may not have the life of mine to be able to get that true benefit out of it. I think you'll see a staged change over time, and I think you'll see as new mines emerge, those factors will play into their design, and they will factor into the infrastructure they put in place around it.
You could choose to do a big dollar capital investment and go that path and try and be the first to market, and that may prove to be a path that gives you some optionality. If you look around the globe, most of these projects, people are more investing in a staged manner and a controlled manner and waiting to see the results and the productivity that goes with those products. You said about competition. We've got a huge range of competitors across mining and in construction. We talk about ourselves and Komatsu. The reality is there's a lot more players than that in a lot of the different sectors into which we support. We're not necessarily just looking at just one competitor. We look at all the competitors.
From our perspective, I go back to you don't get fired for buying a Cat because we're there for the long term. We can rebuild the machine. You can get the parts. In 10 years' time, 20 years' time, we can still keep the machine running. We've got to continue to play to those strengths, and that's that parts availability, the technicians are trained and able to support you. We can make sure you get your uptime and your availability, and that's ultimately what produces a result for your business. That's really, I think, what we continue to lean into.
Thank you.
If we think about the flywheel and the way that it's been articulated, starts with people. We get right people, right roles, good businesses, we deliver outcomes. The management team running good businesses, delivering compounding returns. Ultimately, from a capital management perspective, what that flows off is, from our perspective, free cash flow, because as Ryan consistently reminds me, only thing he can spend. How do we think about the capital structure of SGH? It is unusual by public company standards. Jointly with Stefan, who can give you a Boral perspective. I suppose when Ryan talked about decision rights, I suppose capital management is one of the few things that genuinely sit at an SGH level. We look at the entire portfolio rather than merely looking at business by business. The capital structure for us ultimately is about how do we take on leverage.
The reason we take on leverage is because our confidence in the underlying capacity of the business to service that leverage. If I think about a cost of debt 5%, and I think about a cost of equity at 15%, the extent that we've got effectively constructive use of leverage, we're enhancing our return on equity. It is that simple. Ultimately, there's also a little tax driver in there, and we always manage effectively real cash, which means tax is an impost on our business. We always are thinking about how do we optimize our tax position to optimize our cash outcome. From a leverage perspective, ultimately, we want to maintain an investment-grade capital structure. We think net debt to EBITDA around 2.5% is certainly where we're targeting. We're quite happy to go above that, as we've demonstrated.
We've been as high as about 3.8 times, and we're happy to go under that. I think the discipline around maintaining that kind of position, we have the optionality of being able to take on leverage and de-leverage quickly. Ultimately, from a deployment of capital, it's all about the buy. If we get privileged assets, we get the right teams running the privileged assets, if we buy well, we've got half a chance. If we pay a significant amount of goodwill, we're chasing our tails for the next decade. It is that simple. In terms of when we look at acquiring businesses, for a AUD 6 billion market cap company to take on AUD 8 billion effectively leverage, to buy Boral, it was a big decision.
To sit down with about five banks in here on a weekend and go, "Here's our plan A, here's our plan B, here's our plan C. What do we do if we get to 49? What do we do if we get to 51? Worse, what if we get to 89? How do we manage all of those scenarios?" We had a plan for all of them. We understood what the property could potentially be worth at that point in time, and therefore, if we had a leverage issue, we always knew that we had break glass in case of emergency. We always knew that we had a free option back to CRH, who thought Boral was a prize asset, particularly if you got rid of the U.S. operations.
We understood the real options that sat in that portfolio, which means we were happy to take on leverage because we thought if we look at every other market-leading heavy construction materials business, they're doing 15% return. They're doing high teens return on capital employed. Why is Boral doing four? The diversified model of SGH gives us the capacity to take on leverage. To be fair, it's also forced us to take on leverage and look for inorganic growth. From our perspective, the disciplined allocation of capital is probably driven from, if we think about WesTrac, 25% return on capital business, phenomenal free cash flow, 100% EBITDA cash conversion over a decade. I can't replicate that dealership. What makes it so privileged, I can't just organically replicate. Run well, throws off free cash. That free cash flow allowed us to go and buy Coates.
Coates was effectively doing about 14% EBIT margin, doing mid-single digit return on capital employed. If you now look at it today, 27% EBIT margin, effectively high teens return on capital employed. It's thrown off effectively very strong cash flow. EBITDA cash conversion over the decade's also been about 100%. We take on leverage, take the group up to 3.8, de-lever, and then reset. Today, leverage sits about 1.85 times. Are we theoretically unlevered against our optimal cost of capital? Absolutely. It is more important for us to find the right opportunity to deploy capital. It's the discipline in how we think about capital allocation. We want to look at delivering on a risk-adjusted basis, effectively a cost of capital return, which means not all of our assets have the same cost of capital.
We look at Crux, and Ryan will talk to Crux later today, where we will say, "We've held that asset for the better part of a decade. We've invested close to AUD 1 billion, and it's thrown no intermittent cash flow." Okay? That represented a greater risk to us. We had a higher expectation when we went into that asset because we reflect a premium against the pure cost of capital to justify that. I think the other element, in terms of hurdle rates and thinking about sectoral focus, Ryan spoke to this this morning around industrial services, energy, Australian-based, and he highlighted that there's been a change in terms of the tax environment has fundamentally changed. The regulatory environment around assets has changed, and labor.
One of the strengths of our operating model is Ryan's prepared to then say we now at least need to consider on a post-tax basis, would it be better looking at two like-for-like investments to think about another jurisdiction other than Australia. It's not to say we will, but we're now at least open to the possibility, because without doing that, we're not following the discipline of our capital allocation model. The operating cash flow discipline, I think, is critical to the group. From our perspective, it's the certainty that we have around cash flow that allows us to make long-run decisions. We can invest in property with a 10, 15-year kind of view. We can look at investing in energy assets, and we can buy businesses like Boral.
It gave us the confidence to look at something like BlueScope. In that context, taking on AUD 15 billion of leverage to buy BlueScope, we had a plan, but we knew how we would get the group back to two and a half times. In terms of earnings and TSR outperformance, for us, ultimately, if you think about the process, good businesses run well, delivering earnings growth. Ultimately, if we've got the capital structure right in terms of leverage, we'll actually drive TSR outperformance. It's not that complex. It is the execution of that that is complex. When we think about, ultimately, EPS growth de-levering over time, for us, we do have an insatiable appetite to deploy capital. We are looking for opportunities always. In that context, it's because that's how we think we'll deliver value.
From a shareholder returns perspective, the proof, ultimately, of the effectiveness of the group, I'm not talking about a week, a month, 10 years, 750% TSR over a decade. If you look at companies that have consistently outperformed in terms of top decile TSR performance, three, five, seven and 10 years, it's like two hits. SGH is not an overnight success. It has been that compounding effect that Ryan refers to and that focus on delivering returns, it has been seminal to the group for 13 years. I suppose the how is even more interesting. If you think about most public companies, from a capital structure perspective, you'd have a deed of cross guarantee, a class order, one funding group. I'm sure that's a capital structure you'd all be familiar with. SGH, when I joined 13 years ago, was absolutely anathema to me.
Effectively, five funding groups, all distinct, no deed of cross guarantee, no class order, and you sort of sit there, how can you possibly manage that? Once I was educated, I now see the power of that structure. Ultimately, our capacity to take on long-dated leverage at the operating business, USPP 144A, very long duration, gives me funding certainty and an asset liability duration match. Each of those businesses are levered to about 1.5 times. In terms of I get very efficient funding, and I suppose the capacity that WesTrac Holdings, the intermediate holding company, gives us the capacity to take on syndicated debt, which gives me the flexibility to go up and down. I effectively fund the base at the businesses, but I fund the growth capacity for my intra-market volatility, effectively, at WesTrac Holdings. We look at it as a group.
We sweep cash daily. We think about how we optimize the funding between the groups, but they are all legally distinct. Then we tap different pools of funding, Asian term loans, bank debt. The last thing I do is allow banks into my operating businesses because I'll never get them back out. Whilst at an SGH level, we currently have no other debt. We've had hybrids, we've had exchangeables, convertibles, swaps, scrip loans. We will optimize, effectively, the choice of capital structure with structural subordination or preferential security to optimize our cost of capital. The other element for us is the way we think about dividends. Ultimately, if I just allow the businesses to perform, they'll throw off free cash. At the end of the day, they'll then have cash sitting in their surplus capital into the operating businesses.
All other things being equal, the business unit CEOs will always find a way of deploying that capital in their business. Jarvas is laughing. He knows it's true. So is Murray.
Yeah.
The reality, though, if we pull the capital up, how do we pay a dividend at SGH? How do I fund, ultimately, the interest cost at an SGH level and a WesTrac Holdings level? I need, effectively, that cash flow. We have a discipline of every quarter, we pay out 75% of the earning of NPAT for Boral and WesTrac, and 60% for Coates, and the differential just reflects the capital intensity of the business. In that context, we flow that up. Now, we never starve any of our operating businesses of capital, but we always make sure that we pull capital up. Not only does it give us the capacity to support leverage, but it also provides the discipline.
If one of the businesses then want to go and invest something beyond their capital budget, then the capital gets reinjected, which means the capital reinvestment decision is made in a portfolio context at an SGH level. In that context, all of the businesses are actually competing for capital. Fundamental. If we think about, ultimately, the dividend allows us to then pay out the ordinary dividend. When I think about credit rating, not having one group credit rating is probably, again, somewhat of a surprise for an ASX 30 company. The way that we look at it, I've got a rating at Boral, private rating at WesTrac, private rating at Coates. I get very strong investment credit rating pricing from all of my banks, who all look to their own pricing models.
If I go and get, effectively, a credit rating around the group, all it's going to do is Moody's and S&P will both go, "We don't want you to do M&A and take the group to 3.8 times," even though we know you can do things. Their models are not flexible enough to allow us to do what we do. If I get a rating that is effectively below where the banks are currently rating, and the banks will then be forced to follow a public rating rather than doing the work. I prefer to work with the banks, have that discipline of having them think through the structure, the delivery, the capability across the group, rather than just apply S&P and Moody's. The rating for us is getting. Ultimately, we're always looking at capacity, cost of borrowing, and how do we maintain that.
To have AUD 1.2 billion of committed undrawn facilities at the moment highlights our capacity. We hold AUD 450 million of crisis liquidity. The logic for that is very simple. If everyone stops paying us, we need to be able to maintain our employee base and pay our suppliers for six months. That's a big commitment to a business. If you've had experience going through a GFC and the pandemic, it was the strength of our balance sheet and that ability to say we've got a lot of effectively committed capacity that allowed us to buy the first 20% of Boral. The capital allocation model in terms of the flywheel and the capital allocation forms ultimately a critical element.
Once the businesses do their job, the way that we think about it is we'll take on leverage, we'll buy good assets, we'll get good management teams to drive performance, they'll throw off free cash, then we look to reinvest. This model is simply starting at, we get the right capital structure, then we're looking at what are our demand thematics, what are our return hurdles, and what effectively do we invest in our existing businesses in their organic opportunities, or do we invest effectively parallels to them because we think we can get a better cost of capital return? We're looking for industrials and energy businesses with CPI plus growth, and we're often where we think we can add value, and we're also looking for strong cash conversion.
In terms of buying heavy IT businesses where you've got huge operating losses and negative free cash flow and hope's not a strategy in our environment for industrial business. That drives op cash, that allows us to deliver, and that ultimately allows us to either return capital via dividends through EPS growth or ultimately reinvest in our next opportunity and start that cycle again. The way that we think about it, firstly and foremost, always invest organically in our businesses. If the businesses have a compelling business case, we will always invest capital in our existing businesses. If we starve our businesses, they cannot deliver to their obligation of driving effectively the margin accretion and growth. Once we're comfortable that the businesses have effectively been able to meet their needs, it's about where else do we invest?
In our context, it can be adjacent and Ryan will talk to some of the adjacent, latent adjacent opportunities, but it also means inorganic. For us looking at the right opportunities, mining production, infrastructure, construction, energy. We don't want any fixed price contract execution risk. The things that we're very clear around what we do and what we don't do. At the end of the day, we're looking for businesses where we think we're looking for the worst house in the best street that we think that with good management can drive a ROCE. Once we've done that, same process. Our governing principles, sector tailwinds, geography, as Ryan has spoken to, we do ultimately think we have privileged assets in Australia. We've got political influence, we have a funding base, a tax base.
As some of those dynamics change, we're prepared to then reconsider should we be exclusive. As I said, we've spoken to privileged assets in the last session. Scale. From an investment opportunity, we're looking at something that delivers AUD 200 million of underlying earning with growth opportunities. If it's not that, then it's probably in a business unit and it would be very much an organic piece of growth for one of the businesses. For Matt to buy a batch plant, for Murray to pick up a small rental business that's struggling. In that kind of context, for it to be relevant to SGH, it's got to be able to throw off circa AUD 200 million with growth. We are looking for value disconnect. We've got to have a unique opportunity. We're competing with PE, we're competing with other trade buyers.
We don't technically have any synergies. We have to find an opportunity. What is SGH's unique value proposition. Is we run hard-to-run industrial businesses, and each of the leaders have highlighted the consistency in the way that the SGH Way and the way it cascades down. For any business that we buy, the Balanced Scorecard, the operating model, the consistency will just be automatically flowed down, and they'll be bought into the systems and process by which SGH manage its businesses. We're looking for a value disconnect where the market is unloved or ultimately a performance gap where the business is fundamentally underperforming and it needs a lot of work. I suppose the other element, it needs to be actionable. Now, from our perspective, if we look at some transactions currently in the market, that might be the bit that we might have underestimated.
From a capital allocation, if we have a look at the operating cash performance of the group, we'll throw off operating cash this year of circa AUD 2 billion. That is a very strong cash flow. If we think about the assets that we're reinvesting in, if we think about last year, we invested AUD 250 million into Crux. We invested into new quarries to extend our life. We invested in new infrastructure. There's another AUD 150 million of what I would say, not ordinary business capital within Boral. That's been funded out of ordinary operations. If we think peak to trough for Crux, we stop spending capital on Crux, it starts throwing off FFO. The change in the group FFO is circa AUD 500 million in full production. That's the power of the model.
Ultimately, we reinvest for growth. We use cash flow to well, we firstly use leverage to make the investment, then we use the cash flow to support the repayment of leverage. We probably have a longer view around the duration of our leverage. We've got 70% of my drawn debt is fixed, all-in fixed costs circa 5%. With that, it gives me confidence in being able to take on leverage and manage it. In terms of balance sheet, 1.85x liquidity, about AUD 1.7 billion available, and it's a syndicated facility. It is not a coterminous bilateral. I understand the difference, which means effectively, I've got all four major Aussie banks in my syndicate. If any of the other 16 banks fail to fund, they're legally committed. Not a bad position to be in when things go to hell in a handbasket, and I have seen it happen.
Our effective borrowing cost is about 5.5%. When we took Coates to market and did the USPP, we did AUD 900 million, seven, 10, and 12-year tranche, all-in fixed AUD 4%. That looks like a pretty good deal right now, right? I think in terms of corporate, we've refied about AUD 1.8 billion in corporate this year. Why? I think Ryan and I sat down and went, "We can see a difference in terms of markets, where markets are assuming in terms of credit spreads." We expect credit spreads to probably blow out. We think that markets could be a bit more choppy. Let's just lock it in. Did we have a unique view? No.
The simple view is where we've got risk that we can manage, we take it off the table because we've got enough operating leverage that if we get it right, that gives us time to ultimately make a change to the business to drive outcomes. Consistently highlight, if we were that smart that I knew what interest rates were going to do and commodity prices, I wouldn't be doing this job. We use it as a, our view is let's manage the things that we can manage, take those off the table, which always gives the time for the business units to then change to variabilize their cost. In terms of interest rate hedging, as I said, about just over 70% hedged. Again, as interest rate goes up, we're effectively covered.
In terms of capacity, the fact that we could get four Aussie banks to each give us an AUD 7 billion effectively commitment around a bridge facility highlights the strength of the relationship that Ryan has with all big four Aussie major banks. I suppose that, for us, allows us to look at things that are effectively beyond what most public companies would contemplate. Our capacity to know what the business units will perform give us confidence that if we take on leverage, we can absolutely manage it. That compounding track record, if we think about ultimately, if we've delivered compound 17% earnings, 750% TSR performance over a decade, that has not been delivered by accident.
As Ryan highlighted, which we've delivered 10% through the base business and 18% through M&A, a lot of the value that has been created in SGH has been pivoting out of China, buying Coates, buying Boral. What people probably don't understand, it's also about the assets that we sell and how we recycle that capital. We sold AUD 5.8 billion of Boral's assets, repatriated AUD 3 billion back to shareholders and paid off AUD 2 billion of their debt. From the valuation perspective, I suppose what we look at is if we have a look at PE multiples, I suppose the consistent question I get is, "Well, why is SGH trading effectively less than the average industrial multiple?" I can't answer that question credibly, but what I can say is eventually you guys will work it out.
Eventually, the way that we think about it is I can't control the market, but if we deliver earnings growth, consistency and outperformance in cash, and we redeploy the capital, I suppose what the top graph highlights is eventually the market will follow because it's just such a compelling proposition. I will now hand to Stefan.
Thank you, Richard. Into the question of how that happens from operational perspective, all the strategic capital allocation decisions, as Richard has said, are taken on the SGH level. From an operational perspective, quite a bit is what we do from a Boral point of view as well. The way we look at that, if you stay at the blue box at the top, is basically by breaking it up into two components. The first one is our stay-in business capital, and that stay-in business capital is expected whereby every dollar allocated is contributing to the concept of aggregation of marginal gains. We discussed plenty of that earlier today. The way this is operationalized is through the SGH Way or Boral Way, which we spoke about as well. Secondly, we have the allocation of incremental capital, that is targeted to then generate increased returns.
If you then add one plus the other, you get that compounding outcome that we are after. The way that the incremental capital is thought through and enabled is by the capital allocation framework that Richard just walked through, and it's embedded into the operating cadence of flywheel effect and cadence. It sounds all good in terms of the tools we have, the magic and to how that then translates into outcomes is in that relentless execution from a day-to-day point of view. In terms of numbers, what does that mean in terms of specific numbers? We're moving on to how this has resulted into how we've made use of our funds. What you can see here is our balance sheet from four years ago. Pre some of the capital recycling that Richard touched on as well and compare that with FY 2025.
There are a lot of large numbers. If you ignore most of them, though, and just look at the red ones, simply you can see is that cash went up AUD 308 million and PP&E went up by AUD 241 million. That is the operational capital allocation, i.e., cash into PP&E to grow the basis of our operational assets, which are expected to, in the end, deliver the returns that we are after. In terms of those other large numbers, in essence, they do net each other off. There's a small movement overall in net working capital, and there's an equally small movement from M&A capital structure activities and so on over the period. If we stay with the PP&E, which is that asset base, the use of funds.
If you break that now down on a year basis, you can see the continuous but disciplined, that is important, it is not just continuous, there is a lot of discipline in that, increase in PP&E. Importantly, on the bottom half of the slide, you can see how the corresponding return, i.e., the underlying EBIT, improved over the same period. In summary, as outlined in that cumulative column at the end, over the four years, PP&E increased by a total of AUD 241.5 million, which compares to an EBIT growth of AUD 287.1 million. Put simply, it means every additional dollar of PP&E compares to an incremental AUD 1.19 of EBIT, or in other words, a compounding capital return, if you cast your mind back to that blue box at the top of two slides ago. That is in terms of the use of funds.
The other way to look at this or complementing that is the source of funds, which is kind of the second part of the benefit of operationally compounding capital, and that is supported by a robust cash conversion discipline that Richard already outlined as well. I am very glad that our 106% is favorable compared to WesTrac only doing 100%. You take both together, it results in improving capital strength. One way to assess this is through rating KPIs. Not the only way, of course, to look at it, we do have a rating. What we are showing here are the main ones used by the rating agency when they look at the overall credit strength. What you can see on the bottom left side is that there is progress across all of them.
It's not always entirely linear, but there is an ongoing improvement over the period from June 2021 through to June 2025. Likewise, when you look on the right-hand side, notwithstanding that the actual rating assigned, which is the red line, has been stable since FY 2021, what you can see is that green line, which is improving, which is the scorecard-indicated outcome, and that has an improving trajectory since June 2022. Not entirely linear, but it kind of only goes one way. I think put simply, credit strength is obviously benefiting from operationally compounding capital as well. A short detour from a Board point of view, and happily, before we move into AI and innovation, open it up for questions. Great
Thank you. Lee from J.P. Morgan. Richard, you started, like the end of the last session, you talked about focusing on EBIT growth and then cash flow, most of the kind of segmental presentations we've heard have been very much focused on capital returns and margin and Albeit there's clearly some things like Stefan talked about, incremental capital injection. When you think about your longer-term targets that you've had around the EBIT growth, do you think that matches with the capital return piece? Is the capital return improvement enough to drive the EBIT growth, or do you think you need to have the internal CapEx?
I would think of it the other way. If you get the underlying earning performance driving EBIT growth, if you've got supportive leverage and effectively you're throwing off free cash, it'll allow you to delever. Ultimately, return on capital and your return on equity will ultimately improve. At that for us, if you have a look at the performance of the group, we would see our return on equity significantly exceeding effectively our cost of equity. It's really about the business performance. If you think about the downswing of the flywheel, it's all about the business performance effectively drives the first leg to bring that flywheel back up. It's then the reinvestment of capital and the discipline around that gets it over the top and creates the momentum.
Yeah.
We see them as both being complementary, and one without the other stalls.
Yeah.
If we take on leverage and don't have the operating performance, then if we think about other businesses that are currently 11 times going through refinancing, it's a problem.
Yeah.
Right? Having the discipline around knowing how we deploy capital and the discipline around how much leverage we take up and the confidence around the performance of the business ultimately will drive that. With an average cost of debt of 5.6%, the more leverage I use, the significantly better will ultimately return on capital be like.
Yeah. I guess what I'm trying to reconcile is the 10% organic, like how much of a free kick is there still in the internal structure just improving the return metrics and clearly swinging the assets harder to your privileged assets versus having to put the incremental dollar in to help drive it.
I think if you have a look longitudinally through the group, if you look at Jarvas's business, it's gone from a 7% EBIT margin business to 11.5%. If you look at Murray's business, it's gone from 14%-27%. If you look at Matt's, it's gone from 4%-15%.
The operating leverage in those business and the performance journey has taken them from, I would never describe WesTrac as an underperforming business, but Jarvas and the team have been able to squeeze that a little bit more juice out of that lemon too. Ultimately, once you get an industrial business delivering that kind of performance, it's not going to deliver compound 10% growth, right. If it was, then you should be valuing at about 45 times. You look at our PE, you're not, right. Let's make sure that your valuation thought processes are consistent with your understanding of the business. Ultimately, we've got mature businesses in defined markets that grow maybe a little bit better than each of the underlying dynamics supporting that market, and they're already optimized and running well.
For Matt's business, if we invest in things like recycling, extend the network, we are 25% of the East Coast. If we actually invest to grow the position in the West Coast from 12%, there are opportunities to deploy capital and grow the organic business. Do I expect Matt to take the business to 30%? I would love it. He did not make that commitment this morning. I think you need to understand, these businesses are actually mature businesses in defined markets with privileged positions. They are actually operating really well. The strength of that is they are throwing off free cash flow that allows us to go and buy the next opportunity. That is the difference between. Embedded in the 10% growth of the organic portfolio is the performance journey of taking them from underperforming assets to best-in-class performing assets.
That's useful. Thank you.
Is that better? Thank you.
Thanks, Richard and Stefan. Now it's probably one of the deep dives we thought we'd cover today is how we're seeing AI and innovation in our businesses. Some of the structure that supports that and the discipline that we sort of apply that through our businesses. With this session, I'll be supported by Ali, by Stuart, and also by Alistair in terms of how we're doing this through the businesses. Part of that is how we build on what Richard just mentioned in terms of that compounding capital framework and one of the investments in how we're investing in businesses through our technical structures and through AI and technology more broadly. Innovation and AI agenda at SGH is where we really compound those advantages of our strategic position.
We just heard a lot about our strategic positions across the businesses and also through our people section, our operations, and now our assets, how we use AI to accelerate our strategy and our delivery. Through this, we're prioritizing AI through four key mission areas, this is really targeting on the areas where we believe we can utilize the skills and the technology that's coming through to prioritize value to our businesses. We think about this through four lenses. First is process optimization. Now, how are we thinking about AI and agents to accelerate the way we're doing business? In the business today through quoting, scheduling, the compliance aspects as well, as well as skilling our people in relation to response.
Next place, in relation to workforce productivity, how we're supporting our field technicians, our mechanics, other aspects of our frontline as well as our back office to use Copilots to reduce some of that friction and hours that otherwise takes from knowledge retrieval and accelerating the delivery. Ultimately, not just from a cost side, but also from a customer side, how we're using AI and technology and our systems and data. We obviously heard from Jarvas earlier about the long history of operating data and from Coates as well, how we're now using these systems to unlock that data in a way we've never been able to do before. Really how we think about this through live analysis, through extensive internal, external frameworks to streamline solutions and support our operations from a customer intelligence perspective.
Ultimately, this supports our sales execution as we think through deal-level pricing, pipeline sourcing, next best alternative, next best action, how we move our assets in our network, all supported by improved analysis and ability supported through AI. From the structural positioning side, the strategic goal from SGH is to transform into an AI-enabled industrial operator where we can actually utilize our data, our analysis, and automation to compound these benefits across our businesses. We have three structural things that support AI's, SGH's position. Firstly, our operating model. You heard this morning around that relentless operator focus, the discipline in which we apply everything we do. Compounding that excellence, compounding that investment we just went through. How do we generate the returns? How do we ensure that what we're putting in is what we want to get out?
The other piece that supports that with our operating structure and unique to SGH is obviously how we can leverage the playbooks developed by one business across the other. We're uniquely placed with three very large, well-run businesses that we've just been through in relation to what they do and how they do it. We'll leverage how we can leverage that information, that data flow and that skill book across the businesses. Secondly, the data breadth, as we just heard. Long-established businesses, well established in both deep customer relationships, deep market understanding, and someone that can span the full life cycle of construction and mining, as I think Richard mentioned a bit earlier today. Lastly, that privileged asset moat. This is really where it lands from us in terms of how we believe AI is fundamentally changing where we are before.
From the operating model, you've heard a lot in terms of how we've run our businesses, the independency, very clear in terms of the operational delegation between what's centrally versus not. What this now unlocks is a further ability to leverage that position and that demand signals across our businesses that no other single operating business can match. Sorry. Murray warned me about that. In terms of governance, I'm sure you've heard a lot about AI from different businesses over the last period of time and fundamentally what's changed over that. We continue to see AI being quoted by multiple businesses, and the truth is, where does AI lie in terms of where does that investment turn into value? We've obviously seen that transform in many people where obviously some research is showing that very few businesses are able to convert that investment into value.
The issue now is not the technology. The issue is in terms of the discipline, the deployment and ensuring the returns we get from that investment. To do this, we've established the structures and the support to ensure we can manage that investment into our ultimate value. Firstly, the 3-tier governance approach. The SGH AI Investment Board, which Ryan chairs. Showing the leadership, as Gitanjali mentioned at the start, driving that ownership and understanding and importance of what AI can do and unlocking that value and belief from the top down. Secondly, we have an SGH Innovation and Nerve Center. Again, the businesses bring an understanding to share policy, playbooks, tooling, capability, and shared learnings.
Thirdly, each business has their own center of excellence where they effectively need to understand, scope, choose best tool for solution, and ultimately test and deploy and then review that investment over time. The structured approach that we do this is key to everything we do at SGH and obviously what Richard just went through in terms of the discipline application model. It's no different to AI. It's no different to any investment we make in SGH, but in particular, the opportunity that we also see and what it unlocks for our business is rapidly evolving. This discipline realization through simple lifecycle steps. That business owner in case and managed, the BU center of excellence ensuring that ownership, that cross-functional support, and the implementation of that investment, the deployed within the boundaries, understanding the governance and how we operate.
Finally, that review process to ensure we're getting the return on the investment, and we're allocating our capital, our investment in the right areas. All this is underpinned by our embedded processes that ensure the AI investment delivers a return through the responsible AI, the data governance structures, the understanding of the capability we need to build inside our business to support today into the future, as well as that cyber and OT security overlay. All this goes to supporting the flywheel, and in particular, in terms of SGH, in terms of AI. As we deploy AI and operations with the live cases around process optimization, the workforce productivity and customer, the operating leverage and the margin that we'll extract through as revenue grows on the flatter cost base, the lower cost to serve, and also sharpens our competitive position.
The ability to reinvest, as Richard mentioned, obviously the bottom of the flywheel, spitting out the operating cash and the free cash flow to fund capital investment, either in other businesses or in further technology to support the growth returns and the optionality in the future, and ultimately deliver the TSR uplift. In terms of today, we've got numerous use cases which we're about to go through in terms of the business in relation to AI agents and how they're deployed. Numerous use cases, both from a small use case from a bottom-up perspective, as well as more strategic, larger builder opportunities that are being delivered through the businesses. We've got a pipeline of 20+ material projects we're tracking that come through that governance process we talk about.
In terms of agents, we've got centrally managed agents, and there's obviously productivity agents, so people who can support Richard doing his research on fiscal dynamics over the weekend. More importantly, the agents that I care about are not Richard's agents, but the broader agents where we see real value being delivered through, which we're about to step through a bit later today. In short, compounding the benefits of AI, drawing on the SGH operating model, drawing on the structure and the discipline, the owner's mindset that Ryan instills in the whole executive team and permeates through the whole business. Through the discipline, people with effective process, ultimately, the BU performance, which we talk about, and the operating flywheel and the execution that helps support the business and that relentless operator compounding those benefits over time.
Next, be supported through WesTrac, through Alistair building on that local data, the AI foundations that are in place in WesTrac, also leveraging that AI investment that Cat is making, and that WesTrac deep customer relationship. Boral will step through a little bit in relation to the innovation AI's accelerator, both from their improvement journey, but also in the decarbonization objectives and in the material steps we're making from the innovation perspective. Then finally, Coates, through the disciplined, commercial-led pipeline of those opportunities, prioritizing use cases, deliver measurable P&L and technology to support their growth ambitions. First, to Al.
Thank you, Rob. I'm going to introduce some of the foundational capabilities that we've been delivering at WesTrac over many years. I'll give a bit of a flavor of some of the developments that we've got built on top of that in the AI space, some in conjunction with Caterpillar and some internally. Finally talk about how that drives our flywheel and the compounding growth. The foundations that support data and AI at WesTrac have been built over many years. We've spent that time connecting thousands of assets across our region. This uses telematics, and it gives us information on equipment health, utilization, productivity.
We use that not only to unlock customer value and support our customers, but internally, we use it for our planning and execution across the business. Today, technology is available that allows us to do that with more scale and quicker than we thought imaginable when we started some of this journey. Firstly, our enterprise data platform, what we call the EDP. This runs in near real-time, seamlessly integrated with Caterpillar's Helios system, and it gives us full control over our data. While having that full control, we get to leverage Caterpillar's 1.5 million connected assets and analytics to really leverage and give us more insights. We have over 27,000 connected assets across the territory, and the technology we're working with provides connectivity and advanced analytics, supporting advice at scale for customers, which directly supports our customers' machine availability and productivity.
Our IDS system, which stands for the Integrated Dealer System, puts a screen in front of almost every one of our team members that gives them access to our customer relationship management, equipment management, condition monitoring data, parts and service quoting, as well as service execution. It connects to our enterprise data platform, and it delivers information consistently, while drawing insights from our EDP, but also feeding our EDP over time. Our FitFleet portal, our customer portal, which we launched in 2021, now has over 3,200 users, which represents 65% of our annual revenue, and that number's growing as customers deepen their engagement with WesTrac's digital ecosystem. Our agent interoperability layer means that WesTrac agents can converse or can interact with Caterpillar agents securely, carrying context so that more full responses are given to customers or users on their requests.
Through our long-term focus on connectivity and customer engagement, layered on top of Caterpillar's investment in AI, digital and predictive analytics across those 1.5 million global assets, we've built an industry-leading digital ecosystem that cannot easily be replicated. One of these such use cases that we've collaborated with Caterpillar is the Cat AI Assistant, which is an example of the collaboration. The result is a single AI interface for customers, regardless of how they access it. Today, it's on some applications, both internally and customer applications. Soon, it'll be across all applications and in the not-too-distant future, it'll be in the cab of the machine. WesTrac data feeds the Cat AI Assistant, giving it WesTrac specific information, things that we have access to, like inventory, credit limits, service history, so that customers can self-serve in one place.
WesTrac is a core part of the Cat AI Accelerator program, which means that we get to shape how the roadmap for the Cat AI Assistant takes place over time, and make sure that it's delivering value for our customers locally and also our business. Finally, we operate an agreed interoperability standard with Caterpillar, so as we build out our agents, we can connect them with the Caterpillar AI Assistant over time. This is one of the few examples where WesTrac and Caterpillar are partnering to drive technology that's really the benchmark in our industry. Rob mentioned earlier that our AI use cases sit across four pillars, process optimization, workforce productivity, customer intelligence, and sales execution, and I'm going to run through a few of the examples and how they connect. Optic automates our PO ingestion system and drives our parts transactional POs into our e-commerce system.
We've had more than AUD 30 million in orders processed through this AI. We're seeing volume growth without the corresponding demand on increased resources. Our Condition Monitoring Analyst AI is a sophisticated tool that was developed by Caterpillar. It provides our condition monitoring analysts insights and recommendations, as well as helping them refine their recommendations that get sent to customers on equipment health issues. At the moment, every recommendation that's sent to a customer is reviewed by one of our people. Over time, as we get higher confidence levels in the recommendations that are being driven by the AI, they'll go directly to customers. The Customer Help Center AI triages and auto-resolves routine tickets, handling times down 33%. We have 500 tickets a day that are resolved without any human intervention. The user acceptance from our team's really high at 83%.
Our Asset Strategy Data AI, for many years, we've engaged with our mining customers, to bring their asset strategy information into our internal tools to make sure that we use it for planning and also proactive engagement with our customers. That happens in many different forms, depending on the systems that our customers use. This Asset Strategy Data AI takes the processing time from what could be days or weeks, depending on the customers, down to minutes and hours. Snowflake Intelligence. Snowflake is the key tool within our enterprise data platform. It's the newest case.
It's the only one on the page that hasn't reached a pilot or a production phase. It gives our sales teams natural language access to the full EDP data estate, so they can query pipeline, pricing, and margin data in real time without the need to use clunky reporting or going to a data analyst. Jarvas mentioned earlier that aftermarket is 70% of WesTrac revenue. Every one of these use cases either protects margin, reduces cost to serve, or deepens the customer relationship with that aftermarket attachment. The compounding flywheel. As you can see here, with our foundations, particularly that connectivity across the 27,000 assets, the more assets we get, it drives a better understanding of our customers, AI recommendations, which enable proactive customer outreach. That proactive customer outreach allows us to engage with our customers before they experience downtime, which builds trust and accelerates parts pull-through.
Optic and tools like we saw on the last page, which are efficiency-based tools, free up team member time. That directs FTE to more customer-facing proactive engagements with our customers. The data builds, the AI learns, and the advantage widens. Thanks for allowing me to share some of the things we're doing within WesTrac and how we've built on the foundations that we've had developing over many years to leverage AI to deliver more for our customers and our business. I'll hand over to Ali.
Innovation and AI also present significant opportunity for Boral. In particular, we are leveraging product and process innovation to strengthen our position in low-carbon products, recycled products, and also developing innovative supplementary cementitious materials. We are also exploring AI opportunities in several key areas, including customer service and compliance solutions, technical efficiency, as well as sales and planning optimization. As I mentioned, a key innovation focus area is low-carbon products, and one of the most effective ways to achieve this is process optimization to decarbonize our operations. By investing strategically on key decarbonization levers, we've been able to reduce our scope one and two emissions by almost 17% only in the last five years. Decarbonization is important for all our operations, but Berrima Cement Works operations is a key priority for us.
The reason for that is almost 70% of scope one and two emissions from Boral come from one single facility, and that's Berrima. This is also a very strategically important facility for Boral because it supplies 40% of the cement used in new startups. Looking at Berrima, we've been able to invest on decarbonization continuously, and that has helped us maintain the emissions under the Safeguard Mechanism compliance requirements, and that's a significant achievement. We've achieved this mainly through investment in two key decarbonization projects, the alternative fuels project and the alternative materials project. These two projects address the two key sources of emissions in cement manufacturing. To understand this, we need to have a quick look at the cement manufacturing process. What happens in cement manufacturing is we basically heat materials to very high temperatures of about 1,400 degrees.
To do that, we need to burn a lot of fuel. This fuel combustion results in significant amount of emissions, which is almost 35% of cement manufacturing emissions. To address this, we've been looking at taking the initiative to transition from coal as the primary source of fuel to low-carbon alternative fuels. We've been very successful in doing this. Only in a short time, we've been able to transition almost 45% of the fuel to alternative low-carbon fuels. That would represent 10x the global average. If we look back again at the process, what happens is that once we've heated the material, the limestone would decompose into the components that you need in cement manufacturing, but also carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is very hard to abate process emission, which accounts for 65% of the emissions in cement manufacturing.
To address this, we're taking the initiative to transition from limestone to alternative materials, which are pre-carbonated, which means that they can give us all the chemicals that we need, but without decomposing into carbon dioxide. We've been very successful in doing that. So far, we've achieved 9% replacement level, and we are working towards a 23% replacement level, which is a very ambitious target, five times the global average. We've been very successful in securing state and government grants to support both of these projects. It helps with de-risking the process. We are also actively exploring AI and innovation, and automation opportunities across several key areas. These areas include opportunities that help us reduce cost and improve cash, opportunities that improve customer intimacy and customer experience, and opportunities that helps us build our strategic mode.
For each of these areas, we have several projects in the pipeline, which are at different stages of planning, design, and implementation. Some of these projects are already adding significant value. The first initiative I would like to highlight is an initiative which looks at using AI to reduce the cost and time associated with design of the products. This is in response to the additional complexity of the design process, which is a consequence of the increasing importance of sustainability. With the growing attention to sustainability, there are now new requirements such as carbon footprint, such as long-term durability of the product that need to be considered alongside the conventional requirements, such as mechanical strength and cost. That turns the problem into a more complex, multi-objective problem, which would require significant amount of time and cost to do the laboratory trials required.
We identified an opportunity to work with University of New South Wales and leverage a significant amount of data that we have over many years of testing and supply, and use that data to train the AI models that could help us design new mixes. The AI tool that we've developed and now is being trialed can now solve mix design solutions requiring multi-objective optimization on a click on a button. Has great potential in terms of cost and time saving. The second example that I would like to highlight is an example of using AI to improve customer experience in the environmental reporting space. With the introduction of climate-related mandatory reporting and also growing attention of the head contractors and asset owners to sustainability, we've identified that there is a significantly rapidly growing demand for environmental reporting. There is one problem here.
The traditional process of environmental reporting is a manual process involving 5 steps and 3 different parties. It leads to significant cost and time. To address this issue, we identified an AI-assisted solution, which helps us replace that 5 manual steps with 1 fully automated step. By relying on that, we rolled out the EPD on-demand service in February, which has proven very effective in reducing the time of processing from more than 3 months to less than 1 day. These are just examples of the projects in the pipeline in terms of innovation and AI, but give us a good indication of the value that can be unlocked. We look forward to exploring more of these opportunities in the future. With that, I would love to hand over to Stuart.
Thanks, Ali. I appreciate it. Which one is it?
This one.
I say it's always the IT guy that's going to mess up the projector, isn't it? I thought I better check in on this one. Afternoon, all. My name is Stuart Freer. I'm the CIO at Coates. What I want to do this afternoon is just spend a few minutes just explaining to you the approach that we've taken with AI, because we've taken a very governed, disciplined approach to generating what is a commercial engine. Fundamentally, I also want to explain to you the outcomes that we've actually observed through the proof of values, the pilots, if you wish to call it, but actually now the scale opportunities. I want to leave you with three things. Those three things are how we think about AI, what we've built, and more importantly, what it's already returning to business.
This slide really talks to that approach that we've taken. The first thing we actually did way back when we started was really set our governance. We thought about what are those guardrails, what are the security elements, how do we need to protect the Coates data? How do we make sure we get best value out of this? How do we make sure that we're not the 95% of AI projects that fail? Because we want to be in that 5%. We started with our approach that AI is a mechanism, not the objective. Every initiative that we've carried out has been funded, is anchored around a measurable business outcome. We've created an approaches around these three main areas. It's about value-based deployment. It's around the pilot proof scale or what we often call proof of values.
The third part is that it's actually our foundation to digital revenue at Coates, which we've got a target there, as you can see, of AUD 85 million in the next two years. When we started this process, as you heard earlier, we started with really trying to understand, well, what are all the pain points across the business? We identified potentially 45 different use cases. I think that number's actually grown a bit recently as we've started to dig in. As we've started to deploy tools across our business. We've got 96 users as of last night running Claude. We're starting to see people generating ideas and coming to us about how do I do this? How do I press this forward? Everybody else has got Copilot, we've got another 200 users on another AI platform.
What we did was we took our discipline and we worked through 16 specific use cases where we built what we call essentially an AI canvas. We had the detail of the problem statement, how we thought we could tackle this, what the business value was, and what we thought the boom was, the order of magnitude cost to actually enable it. To date, there are actually five AI programs in live or build. I'm not including what we're doing with GitHub Copilot. I'm not including what we're doing with Figma. I'm not including any of the tools and platforms that already existed. I'm talking about things that are discretely built for Coates to enable our teams. There are three that you can see on the right-hand side, I'm actually going to dig into those here in a moment.
When we think about customer service, we think about the pain points of the customer, which is coming into a contact center, hoping to get to the right person quickly. There's the grade of service measure, which is I pick up the phone in 30 seconds. How do we bring that number up so we avoid the abandonment, so we avoid those drop of calls and potentially those lost leads? How do we get to the right person who has the knowledge, and how do we then open up that opportunity into a lead or a customer or win that relationship or even turn around a customer relationship that might not be where it should be? The second one is enterprise product knowledge. We've been using a number of tools, but one tool we specifically landed on is what we call MCP.
It's a model context platform. It connects into any model that we choose, and we're using all of them. In this case, you're choosing Claude or OpenAI or Gemini Pro, but it chooses what it's going to use. It also indexes that data so that the information and the context is at the heart of the conversation with the user, and therefore that performance and speed comes back. That inference is quick. When a salesperson is having a conversation, there isn't a natural gap that you get with AI, where it's, "Hey, I'm Stuart from Coates. How can you help me?" One, two, three, no answer. "Oh, hello." It's actually super quick. It's natural and supportive, and it feels human, which is important. The third component is what we call complete sales enablement.
This is an extension of another platform we've got, which is where we built three core components that we call HunterIQ, SalesIQ, and TenderIQ. We've also extended that into HSEQ, and we've also extended that now into CRM activity, and I'll touch on that in a moment. The first one I'm going to talk about is something we call the Coates equipment specialist. If you will, for a moment, imagine trying to be a new person coming into the business, trying to learn all about our products, our services, how they go together. It can be very difficult, and if you're then the customer sending an inquiry in, it might be a digital inquiry, it might be a web inquiry, it might be a form, that lands into a small operation center.
They've then got to figure out what the customer wants, understand it, price it, create the availability, reserve it, organize transport. What we've done with the Coates equipment specialist is we have built five agents. This is a truly agentic platform. Each of those agents have direct API calls into our core systems, and we carried out what we call a proof of value for, I think, 61 days. Should say 61 days. What we saw was able to answer 3,923 inquiries. Now, we didn't point it at everything because we were testing, and we're having people observe this. What it achieved was almost a 15% win rate, and week-on-week, the growth was 5x.
When we think about what that can do, you think about the inquiries that come through a digital center, the human cost of managing that, the time it takes, and we can now respond to a customer in under five minutes. If anyone looked at the FY 2025 United Rentals report, they're talking around three to five minutes response time. We think this is going to be quicker once we start to build this out. Now we're into phase 2 because the learnings that we took from this pilot were such, one, we were very conservative, which is unusual for AI, but in this case, we're very conservative. The pricing wasn't taking into account the rate cards, the price books, and the agreements the customers have. That created some rejections which our owning team had to handle. We're integrating that.
The second part is the availability. In our ERP, there's two flags for availability. The first one is it's actually in that branch location, and the second one is, you will have heard Murray say, it's in green light and it's actually available to us. What we've had to do is we've had to change that process so that it actually just looks at that availability flag, that it's actually in branch, and then it triggers a relative backshop service, so bring that asset online for the customer. That is what we're building out at the moment to take it to the stage two. This we then believe we can then grow this five, 10, 20x over the time period that we'd be focused on the next pilot. The next one is what we call, this is the AI sales enablement or the sales effectiveness.
We've built three specific agents in this focused on the sales team, but the two I'm going to focus on are what we call HunterIQ and SalesIQ. If you will, imagine you are the best sales development rep in the world. You've got a lookalike of your sales manager. He or she has said, "Go find me customers, prospects that I can talk to." What this does is it takes that lookalike of that individual or the patch they operate. The area might be general hire, it could be industrial solutions, it could be engineering. It says, "These are customers in your area that look like the customers you could serve." What it then does is it goes off and finds web data.
It might be Cordell's, it might be any pipeline information, it might be public data, and gives them a view of who is the leadership team, what is the conversations they're having, and also what are they doing in the market. You're able to rank that. The second part is you take that data and that ranking, and you match it with what we call SalesIQ.
Based on all of the data context we've got at Coates, this is emails, this is previous hires, previous quotes, this is job packs, schedules, everything we've got in our armory of our data, we can now surface context to our salesperson and say, "Hey, for customer A or B that you're going to speak to, here is the conversation we recommend you have, because here are the products that are likely to fit them, what they want to do, and also here are the adjacencies that you can speak to as well." When we ran that pilot, the results speak for themselves. We actually took 47 salespeople, pre-pilot, and we measured them, and we measured the remaining 150 or so. We took the same group into the pilot.
Bear in mind we'd done sales training and we'd done effectiveness, and the CRO office had been established. We still saw for the observed group a 9% increase in appointments, and that flowed through to an observed revenue figure of around AUD 3 million. That observed revenue figure of AUD 3 million was only on a 10% attribution. It's incredibly conservative. From our point of view, this for us felt like a very strong case that we wanted to accelerate. There's conversations now with Boral or WesTrac through Brad, our CRO, to look at how we might do this and share this. Again, the win rates were very positive. We started using it and trying it for some of the disputes that we see. When we look at disputes between our customers and us around bills, they typically come down to two major categories.
One is the PO that they've given us is already exhausted, and the second one is that the PO is the wrong number. This has enabled us to find this information very quickly. The one that you've got here, which is what we call the NPS 45-50, we've called it program, you've called it 60, shoot for the moon, hit the stars. What this will also do is it provides that knowledge base back to the individuals in our contact centers. Whilst we've also got AI that we're about to move towards testing, that allows us to bring those queries in through an agentic IVR, so that's the integrated video recording that you hear when someone answers.
Fundamentally take 20%-30% of the simple calls off the individuals, handle it with AI, then get the right calls to those individuals so they can answer them and do their job and support the customer. That we see as the next step to really drive towards the NPS numbers that we're hoping for. With Coates, we've got a very healthy AI program. We've got three more initiatives that we approved to actually focus on. When we say approved, what we do is we take those use cases, those examples, now we flesh them into those value statements and what we think the cost might be and what the benefits cases might be. Focus on labor management, focus on dynamic pricing, and focus on transportation. Look at those big cost or revenue or margin opportunities that we've got across Coates.
I'm going to pause there and I'm going to hand you back to Rob. I think I brought us in just about on time. I'll let you, carry on.
Thanks. Yeah, thank you. In closing, thanks, Ali, Adrian, and Stuart. Three takeaways to close. As you've heard, AI is an accelerator. That's how we view it in terms of our strategy and strategy delivery. We've deployed AI through the measured outcomes, as Stuart just ran through. Very defined, very purposeful ROI targets, stood up the tiered operational governance framework to ensure that operational discipline, the investment, and the returns are met. Ensuring as well that top-down leadership, as we heard through from Ryan's perspective, but also from the bottom up, surfacing real use cases and real investment that's going to deliver value to our business.
Today, we are focused on the areas and the discipline, the investment in AI through that gated approval, that post-implementation review and delivery. Going forward, it's really how we scale this investment across our BUs. I think it's an exciting time with the deployment of this information, obviously, the data we've got in our business and how we can leverage that across our business and drive that flywheel. We're building that agentic AI, which you just seen a few examples of. Obviously, there's more cases we continue to explore and go through that discipline process to implement. Continue to innovate in terms of how we think through what it can deliver to our systems, both from a process optimization, that workforce, that sales, and ultimately the customer interaction and delivery.
Finally, the structural moat that we do have, reinforcing that moat, leveraging that data, leveraging the skill set that we're developing in each of our businesses as we hear about some of those playbooks and how they work for one business and how they could also work for the other. In all, supporting that business, that model, the flywheel of SGH through that investment, and ultimately, delivering an accelerator to the strategy to support our ambition as we go forward. With that, happy to take questions.
Thank you. Nick Dage from RBC. I'm just curious, we've touched on all business units pretty thoroughly today, all relatively mature or very mature businesses. Do you see AI as more of a top-line ability to expand the business opportunity, or is it more of a cost-out story from your perspectives at this point in time? It's probably the question that everyone's asking themselves on AI. Where does it help your business? Curious on how you see it throughout your three.
Yeah. I'll answer, but then I'll also ask the other businesses. I see it can do both. That's where we're seeing it strategically. We can see if you think about the four mission areas that we're thinking about, two of them are cost-focused and two of them are revenue-focused. We do see the benefit to both deliver products and solutions that the clients want at an efficient price. We do also see it in terms of optimization, in terms of that automating processes is probably the real key in terms of information flow. We're a very large business, large footprint. There's a lot of information that needs to go up and down from bottom, like the top, how we automate and streamline information flow, as well as using the tools to support our customers in terms of response and acceleration.
Yeah. I don't know if I can add much to that. I think you've summarized it really well. We've got cases of both, where we're getting a cost advantage because we're able to improve processing time. Also with our connected assets, and the analytics that we're driving off of our connected assets, there's a whole lot of sales opportunity growth, within our AI projects.
Yeah, I'd agree. One I mentioned on the Coates equipment specialist, if you imagine the team prior was 20 people, it's now three. You've got cost out, but you've also got a revenue target of AUD 5 million. The ability to 10x that scale, with agents as opposed to individuals creates a real striking balance with value add book. The sales enablement one, that's purely about driving revenue. We would try to strike a balance because you've just got cost out and you've got to deliver it where you go to. Ali you are next up.
No, I think the cost reduction is an obvious outcome of improved efficiency. A lot of processes that we see in place through therefore improving the efficiency of design or improving the efficiency of reporting could definitely lead to cost reduction. With the improved customer satisfaction, again, you'll get the outcome in terms of improved business and revenue increase as well. I think they'll be the outcomes of the improved efficiency.
Do you have any sense for where as a collective, where your peers perhaps are along this journey? Because I think everyone's doing it, everyone's talking about it, but a point of differentiation is where you are along that journey relative to your peers.
That's a good point. I think what Ali was talking about in terms of what Caterpillar is doing in the equipment and how they're doing as a technology is a true enabler of and differentiator for Caterpillar equipment is obviously a key area that Ali can speak to. I guess from an SGH perspective, I think from an industrial business, obviously, we do speak to different businesses. I think, the benefit from sitting in our seat, we can see what WesTrac's doing. We've got three businesses that are not peers, but obviously leading industrial business in their own right. I think the ability to leverage that information to help drive that competitive advantage, which you might have heard a few times, even Stefan mentioned in cash flow, the same from AI. How we elevate and mark ourselves internally is just as harsh as we do against third-party competitors.
I do think, as I mentioned at the top, there's a lot of people talk about AI in terms of how that delivers over time. I think the purpose of today was to show you how we're actually doing in the real world, and challenge our businesses to deliver outcomes, and that review process we need to do to ensure that that does do as well. I think a bit later, in terms of the internal ambition, we've obviously got strong ambitions and good leadership around what we expect to deliver from ourselves. I think that's how we benchmark.
Thank you.
Next session, driving growth. Next. Thank you. Okay. Last little session before we get into the rounding and close for the day. Two more jobs for this session. I'll frame the long-duration growth, dynamics or thematics that underpin SGH, which really kind of sit alongside the core activity as well as some of the semi-organic elements we talked about earlier. Secondly, we'll hear directly from Adrian, Matt, and Murray around how they convert that demand dynamic into profit. We start with the infrastructure construction. For us, this is the AUD 1.7 trillion five-year pipeline that sustains what we consider a sustained upcycle in relation to activity. The chart on the right really kind of underpins that outlook. Between engineering, residential, non-residential, oil and gas, all is contributing to a strong thematic in the infrastructure construction outlook.
Transport and utilities, that activity kind of builds as we go to, let's say, 2030 in relation to projects, Brisbane Olympics, Inland Rail, a number of different activities underway. Of course, the much hyped and talked about residential build. What we do know is there is a gap in supply and a lot of focus on that, and then we do expect that to underpin activity for Boral and Coates. Again, it just presents a framework to say the activity is one of competence. Mining production. Iron ore volumes, we see growing over the medium term. I think the growth projection of about circa 3%, from FY 2025, 2027 and out to 2030, we still see growth in that iron ore export volume from the Pilbara. Pilbara investment case, in our view, represents one of the strongest returns on investment amongst our customers.
We see that as a logical place for them to deploy capital. Gold production, that's pretty clear. The return in relation to the opportunity there, we're seeing a pretty strong growth in volumes play through. Thermal coal's outlook we think is resilient. Certainly New South Wales has the lowest cost, highest quality coal, so we see that playing for a long period of time. Overall, there's about AUD 10 billion committed resource project pipeline, in WA and New South Wales, and Adrian will pick that up in more detail.
Third aspect for us, the energy component. Domestic energy or domestic gas, there has been a lot in relation to what is playing through. We know peak day shortfalls forecast from 2029, that there's structural supply aspects around the domestic gas market, we think that'll probably play through 2030. Beach is well positioned to play into that gap. That's definitely a factor. On global LNG, we see this as a compelling opportunity, strong demand across a number of countries. The power generation, coal to gas switching, supply diversification, all driving this. The Middle East geopolitical risk, particularly around Hamas and what's happening there, again, further reinforces the uniqueness of Australian LNG ability to supply into Asia. We think that that's a great position for Crux to be playing into right now.
Coming back to that domestic gas story, one of the attributes we are quite confident in is the role it can play in the data center and AI build-out that's going to occur in Australia. The new demand that will come through is going to require power as a fundamental attribute to building the data centers, certainly, that's an opportunity that gas has to support. Obviously, the role that gas can play in firming the grid as you have an increase in renewables. There's a bit more detail on Crux. For us, Crux is coming into the SGH. It's going into production. We're investing at the moment. It's a world-class LNG resource in Browse Basin with a firm backfill development pathway. The numbers are there, 1.6 TCF of gas. It's in gross. SGH holds 15.5%, Shell holds the rest as operator.
In total, it's probably a AUD 1 bill-AUD 1.2 bill of project investment. From our perspective, we deployed the bulk of that capital. Production life about 13 years. It's a two to three-year ramp up, and then eight to 10-year plateau. For us, this is something that's going to be playing into our underlying cash flow for a significant period of time. I guess why it matters and why it's relevant, this is not maybe. This is a point in time. We do expect it'll go into production late calendar 2027, into a tightening global LNG market, and it just coincidentally worked out that we'll start marketing gas in April. That's a period we're going to, and we're at the moment talking with traders and end users of gas, so that's a process underway.
It is a material source of new cash flow, sustained over a decade in a market that we expect to be somewhat undersupplied. This is another interesting point. Through various discussions, a lot of questions being raised about the role and what we're seeing on the AI infrastructure role, our data center build. This slide connects those core thematics together, if you like. There's about, I think, slate of AUD 100 billion of expected data center investment announced in Australia since 2023. That's headline number, and we think over time that will continue to grow. The AI infrastructure demand sits at a really interesting intersection across the broader SGH interest. If you think from a physical construction perspective, Boral's role in the data center build-out from a precast concrete, as well as some of the concrete requirements to supply that build is substantial.
There's the role of Coates in supporting that construction process. WesTrac's got the role in that power gen dynamic, and if we look at the expectation that it's going to be a prime power solution more than standby, that's where it becomes really appealing to us. That's where we have a stronger competitive offering and certainly from our perspective, have the ability to back that up, the parts and service up. That attribute comes to the role Beach can play in supporting that prime power with gas. It's a really interesting dynamic. We think Australia's probably lagging behind what's happening in the U.S., but if you see what's happening in the U.S., that is substantial. We think that's an interesting opportunity.
The fourth aspect, which is more, I'd say, latent and potential, is where we've got surplus land, whether that sits in industrial sites, whether that has actually got now high voltage power connection, and seen as industrial land in different applications. Be it at Ravenhall or be that Waurn Ponds or be that Penrith Lakes, et cetera. There are potential opportunities, and that's something we'll turn our mind to in due course. Property is the other thematic we want to talk to. It is a key part of the SGH portfolio. Boral is a land-rich entity. It's part of our predisposition within Boral is to look to invest, own sites, utilize those sites to their full capacity, then at the end of that activity, look at how else we can deploy that.
Our predisposition is to look at the highest and best use with a preference to own and retain and then drive revenue through that. Not all surplus property will be best used in an industrial type application for us to own. Where we can, we'll look to do that. Ravenhall is probably the one that warrants the greatest focus. It's circa 500 or just under 500 ha developable site. We've partnered with Dexus to co-develop that. We'll start to get underway. It sits about 20 km from the CBD of Melbourne and it's about 2.5 million sq m of developable land. It's a substantial project. That's one. We have other sites, and we'll look to develop those over time.
When we think about it from an SGH perspective, while it may be tempting to realize these sites and exit and get that in today, we believe very firmly that the value creation over time is far greater holding, partnering, and developing a site like that. If we stand here and in 5 years' time, it gets underway, rental income starts to now become more meaningful. Over the time, whether it might be a decade after that, it is a substantial opportunity. That's just a way we think about it, and there are a number of different properties. This isn't just the simplest properties of today. We have sites that are nearing end of life and thinking through what do we do to convert that to the highest and best use that's going to create value for us in the future.
That's a key part of our thought process. What to expect from the session? I think ultimately, each of the leaders will answer the same core questions around how the structural demand drivers play into our go-to-market strategy and specific commercial opportunities we are pursuing to drive the medium-term growth opportunity for SGH with different markets, different customer bases, different commercial models, but the core and similar operating discipline. That's what our SGH Way operating model, driven through each business, is pushing. With that, I'll hand over to Adrian.
Ryan. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm just going to talk through how these thematics are going to benefit WesTrac and, as Ryan says, deliver increased profitability. I'm going to start with mining. We know mining has really good thematics. The mining production remains resilient. We've got good exposure to iron ore, gold, thermal coal, and all those customers, in particular, for WesTrac, are really sitting in that lowest cost tier. Our revenue is levered to what our customers like the dirt they move. As Jarvas said, as ores are getting lower grade, there's more overburden that needs to be moved, which ultimately is really good for WesTrac. The other thematic that's occurring for us in this market is the aging fleet. One of the interesting factors around that is inflation is actually a really good thing for WesTrac in this market.
Through COVID, our equipment prices obviously escalated through various factors like a lot of assets did. Inherently what that means is that the assets that may not have been rebuildable 10 years ago become more economic to rebuild. Obviously, we're going into another, let's say, period of inflation, which no doubt will deliver some benefits in that space. If I move to construction, it's definitely a second growth engine for us. We know there's a long-term opportunity in construction, whether that's infrastructure. Ryan spoke about the residential deficit. We all know that's going to be a long-term thematic that there's going to be an opportunity for us. The other thing from a WesTrac point of view, there's other segments like transportation, utilities, defense, and renewables. They're all key sectors which require a lot of dirt to be moved to build that infrastructure.
Moving to how we win. In mining, we really win based on partnerships. We have excellent technical capability, and it's about us delivering throughout the life cycle for our customers. Early engagement is really the key for us in that model. We have the partnership right from the front end when we're doing the mine design. One example where we've been very successful, in particular in Western Australia, when we're doing that mine design, we get technology as part of the thinking, we almost always win. That's been a real core advantage for us for many years. We work with customers to optimize their total cost of ownership. That's really important for our customers. We just know over time, that's become much more important for our customers. That's something that WesTrac and Caterpillar do really well.
As Jarvas mentioned earlier today, Caterpillar equipment is built to be rebuilt. There's a whole lot of thematics there as I talked about the inflation. Obviously, there's the renewable piece. More and more of our customers ask for our data around how much iron have we reused. As Jarvas spoke about from a profitability point of view, our ability to reuse iron, and he used the example of the twin wire arc spray. Imagine we're selling that bit of iron for circa 70%-80% of new and from a, let's say, cost perspective, it's a whole lot less than buying a whole new engine. There's benefits for the customers, but there's obviously benefits for WesTrac. Our service commitment. What differentiates us from the others? We give our customers clear service commitments. We talked about our DIFOT.
Every customer will want 100% DIFOT, but we all know 100% DIFOT comes at a cost. We're that 94%-95%. You could not find another competitor that is anywhere close to that. That's a key differentiator for us, and we have clear service commitments with our customers, not only in parts but also through service. It's all these factors that really drives that relationship between WesTrac and our customers and delivers that long-term relationship, which you see there through that flywheel, where we continue to get a growing installed base in our markets. Moving on to construction. This is where things are a bit different. In the construction market, we've had a lot of the discussion around data. One thing we've always had in WesTrac is data, lots of it. I'll say before AI was around, we talked about big data. We've got lots of data.
What the benefit we have now is, and a term that I don't like to use with our customers, but effectively, how do we monetize that data? We've got a lot of digital leads. We've got digital leads now going to our people. What we're converting to is how do we convert those digital leads into execution? As an example, a machine, let's say one of our great customers, we've got two of them there, Boral and Coates. We're getting telematics off those machines. We've always been able to do things with it, but now with AI, the data analytics are a lot quicker. We can turn that information into a human, or say understandable human instruction that can go to a WesTrac person.
In the future, and it does happen a little bit now, but more in the future, can go direct to a customer to say, "Matt, your machines have this issue. This is what you need to do. Press this button to book in WesTrac service." Through there, we run our automation processes to make sure they're booked in. Once again, we're doing a bit of that now. With the AI automation, there's a huge opportunity for us to accelerate that. The other area I really want to point out in the construction space, the construction market for earth-moving equipment is large. What WesTrac is really good at and where we have really good success is where customers value productivity. We have a distinct advantage where we have the data, we can help our customers get better, we help our customers make more money.
Once again, it inherently gives us loyalty. The other aspect of that is the customers that value productivity are inherently the ones that have high machine utilization, which inherently then give us more after-market opportunity, where really from a WesTrac point of view, that's our profit engine. The other aspect, probably just from our DNA and culture perspective, we know that every new machine is all about the customer for life. Once, I talk about Caterpillar equipment is built to be rebuilt. We know we're not there just for a capital sale. We're there to partner with a customer for life because that is our business model. Moving on to the commodities. Iron ore, Ryan spoke about this. Look, we know we're the world's largest supplier. We've got the best deposits in our backyard. We've got customers that are on the lowest end of the cost curve.
We've got increasing mine lives. There's greater acceptance in the market of lower ores. Once again, in those markets, our customers have to move more dirt, which inherently is good for us as well. Our large miners continue to invest in iron ore through the matrix that Ryan spoke about earlier. The thing that really differentiates WesTrac and Caterpillar from the others is our technology. We have the largest base of autonomous haulage, world-leading. We also have very strong technology in dozers and drills. We have a complete package. We have great support because technology does not happen without strong support. Imagine doing work in the Pilbara. For anyone who's done that, it's not easy. That support structure that we have from a WesTrac point of view is very important.
Just talk through a couple of areas that are no doubt of interest to people. We have the battery electric truck in territory. It's running around. We're at the front end of that. The WesTrac team have been involved with Caterpillar not only through the development of that, but the build of that, and obviously we're supporting that now. As Jarvas mentioned in that question, is the technology available? Yeah, look, it's there. There's a bit of work to do for whichever OEM to actually move it to production. The question long term is around, is it going to be economic? This is where I'll say Caterpillar has actually got a really interesting technology called Dynamic Energy Transfer. Think of it like depending on which state you're from, but let's say the light rail down here with the pantograph.
Caterpillar's actually developed a system which goes off to the side. I'll say pantograph off to the side. From an operational point of view, it's very practical around the installation and the moving, which is really important on a mine site. It is a significant differentiator against the trolley system. The thing that I didn't put in the presentation, we've actually got doing detailed studies with our customers around how they implement DET in their operations. While they're not going to get 100%, call it carbon reduction, they're going to get a long way there. I won't quote the exact numbers, it's very good from a carbon reduction perspective. More importantly, it's actually economic.
Working through the data with our customers, the case studies we've done is actually showing that there's economics in using DET on their site. The benefit of DET is you really get away from a lot of the complexities that come with pure battery charging. It can run on battery, but primarily the studies we've been working with is around diesel-electric powertrains. It's a real interesting opportunity, and credit to Caterpillar, it looks like they've developed a very good technology in that space. Onto some of the other metals. Gold. We all know that gold's had a very, very good run, and that's been very, very good for us as a business. Inherently, gold, especially at the current prices, lower grades are being explored and mined.
Once again, the more dirt that's being moved, the better it is for WesTrac, in particular in that hard rock environment. The other, call it, battery metals, obviously it's had a bit of a resurgence in recent times. Also interestingly, those customers are becoming more sophisticated, which is actually lending itself to, I'll say, working well for WesTrac for things like autonomous haulage, also a lot more focus around our customers, I'll say, are benefiting from proper life cycle analysis. Then onto thermal coal. Obviously, the events in, I'll say, this calendar year's probably reinforced the importance of thermal coal in global energy security. In New South Wales, there's been a bit more government policy improvement, in particular, to give our customers certainty around their mine life extensions.
Overall, you see there from the data, and as Ryan spoke about, we are expecting the production outlook in thermal coal to remain steady. Once again, that'll deliver good equipment utilization, that'll deliver good aftermarket demand. Once again, automation and Dynamic Energy Transfer are really key drivers for us to continue to be winning in this market. On that, I'm going to pass to Matt.
Thank you, Adrian. Okay. Well, as you just heard, the construction industry has significant structural tailwinds supported by a positive demand outlook. Let me highlight a few of the big drivers. Under that, the government's target of 240,000 homes we've talked a bit about under the National Housing Accord. That saw 174,000 dwellings completed in the first year of the program. Now, while this was 27% below target, momentum is actually improving with a 13% increase in dwelling approvals in 2025 calendar year over the prior year. According to that National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, the cumulative stock shortfall is now estimated at over 200,000 dwellings, and it's growing. Net migration running at over 300,000 people per annum if you include students and temporary workers.
To put that scale into perspective, Australia's ready-mix concrete sector produces approximately 30 million cubic meters per year across all construction, residential, commercial, and infrastructure. Eliminating 200,000 dwelling shortfall in a single year would require more than 30% of that total annual output on top of all the existing demand. It obviously can't and won't play out that way, but I think it illustrates the level of need and that the industry demand forecast I'm about to show have really strong thematics in the face of the current fuel situation or whatever other challenges the external market's likely to throw at them. Turning to infrastructure, over the last decade, we've seen a significant pipeline of transport projects. Many of these have years left to run and more are coming. The shift is now in the diversity of the infrastructure demand.
Defense, energy, water, health, other public and private infrastructure are together driving record level demand forecasts. Our data centers, which we talked about earlier, growing rapidly in significance. Some of the projects currently out there tend to require more than 100,000 cubic meters of concrete, and the sector's expected to add around 2 million cubic meters over the next three to five years. Importantly, data center concrete is not commodity concrete. These projects require high strength mixes for heavily loaded floor systems, low shrinkage mixes for foundations, and large continuous pours requiring significant batch plant capacity and logistics coordination. All the areas where Boral excels. Let's look specifically at construction material demand. All our product segments have strong forecasts for the medium term. Of course, there's different rates of growth and timing across states and segments.
With the largest network of assets, Boral's well-positioned to capture the multiple opportunities this strong demand environment presents. What's also particularly important to highlight is Boral's core cash and go-to-market strategies, which I'm about to cover, provide a further opportunity to maximize the benefit of these market tailwinds and our strong asset network by compounding the value of everything we're doing. Before I do, I want to cover the concrete demand specifically, our most significant downstream business, which pulls through our high-margin upstream materials in cement and quarry aggregates and sand. There's often a perception that concrete demand is volatile. If you look at the historical trends, while there've been ups and downs, the long-term national trend has been quite steady at 2.2% per annum for a very long time.
As the largest national concrete supplier with the most extensive footprint of batching plants, Boral's well-positioned to shift focus to wherever demand's strongest. With this backdrop, let me turn to how we're planning to maximize the opportunity through our Call to Cash initiative. At Boral, we believe to deliver great service, we need to optimize customer experience at every interaction, from the moment they place a call to when they pay us. We call these interactions moments of truth. Over the past three years, we've focused on improving two key metrics. The first is grade of service or GOS, the percentage of calls answered within 30 seconds. More than 90% of Boral concrete orders are still placed over the phone. This is a critical moment of truth. Since launching Good to Great, we've improved national concrete GOS from under 60% to over 90%.
The other is delivery on time, the percentage of concrete loads that meet the customer's delivery window. This has also improved significantly, and we're now consistently in the high 80s and recently exceeding 90%. We think of this as our Horizon One Call to Cash journey, and our success is the result of focusing on discipline, process, and culture. It's been key to stronger customer retention and the pricing traction we've achieved. We're now moving on to Horizon Two, shifting focus to empowering customers with digital ecosystem, communication and collaboration tools, and AI for routine support. Another moment of truth in our Call to Cash journey is product quality, and this is where we're seeing some of the most meaningful results. When a customer receives concrete or asphalt that doesn't meet specification, the consequences go well beyond a rectification claim.
You lose time on site, you damage the relationship, and critically, you hand your competitor an opening. Getting quality right is not just cost discipline. It's a retention pricing lever. The numbers speak for themselves. We've reduced concrete dump loads by 14% and rectification claims by 45%. These are not marginal improvements. They represent real dollars saved and real customer experiences protected. The work behind this has been systematic. We've strengthened our internal standard operating procedures and lifted training standards. We've implemented daily reporting of product quality through our ReadyView app and our SCADA dashboards, which give teams daily or live visibility on batch plant and slump stand performance, so they can act in the moment rather than after the fact. Critically, we've changed accountability and behavior all the way to the front line.
Our teams are working much more closely, both internally and directly with customers, to identify and resolve quality issues before they escalate. The shift in culture and behavior is what underpins the improvement metrics, and that's exactly the same discipline that's driven our DOT and GOS results. Together, these three areas, service, delivery, and quality, are the foundations of the pricing traction we've been building and why our customers are choosing to stay with Boral. Turning to our go-to-market strategy, we know that our demand shape will change as different segments of the market grow across different geographies. Knowing and managing it effectively is how we optimize both margins and price. Pricing discipline, in particular, remains a key priority. As I mentioned, the more complex infrastructure segments demand scale, service, and technical capability, and therefore command higher prices.
In the high volume, highly dispersed multi-residential and detached residential sectors, focusing on volume opportunities in close proximity to our batch plants will optimize returns. Critical to all this is the highly effective and disciplined sales force, which is why we've invested in our Sales Capability Uplift Program. Developed with specialist partners and highly customized to Boral, the program includes a dedicated stream for sales managers focused on coaching and performance management, and a Frontline Sales Program focused on building skills and effectiveness. It's an outstanding program undertaken by every Boral sales employee. Once again, this is a key part of our decentralized but standardized operating model, one that allows any pocket of underperformance to be quickly identified and addressed. This final slide draws together everything I've covered. I want to highlight these four points because they represent how we think about Boral's growth trajectory.
The first two speak to the market backdrop we've already explored in detail. Long-run concrete demand at 2.2% per annum since 1977 isn't a projection. It's nearly half a century of structural evidence. Our deliberate positioning in infrastructure, now 43%-45% of our revenue, puts us squarely in the most resilient and increasingly diversified segment of that demand. With the residential growth I covered, the upside is substantial. These are genuine tailwinds, and we intend to make the most of them. The second two points are about what Boral's doing to outperform the market. The DOT, GOS, and quality improvements we walked through aren't just operational metrics. They're converting into real pricing power and stronger customer retention. Combined with the discipline and go-to-market execution we've built over the last two years, we're positioned to grow above market through the cycle.
Critically, all of this is in service of a clear financial goal, delivering EBIT margins above 15%. These initiatives are not peripheral to that ambition. They're central to it. Boral has the market position, the operational momentum, and the strategic discipline to get there. We're confident and we're moving forward as we continue our Good to Great journey. Thank you.
Matt. All right. Final session. Where our growth comes from. We've talked about our operational foundations and what makes up our privileged assets. Now I want to go through how we're positioned to win and the commercial model we're using to create that opportunity
Our specialist business, I've spoken earlier about this. We're currently doing over AUD 240 million in that, and that includes our engineering solutions, power and HVAC, traffic managements, and industrial solutions. These are not peripheral businesses. They are our highest margin and most defensible parts of what we do, alongside of the traditional general hire part of the model. Energy and renewables are tracking at AUD 58 million and growing strongly. The structural pipeline behind that is quite extraordinary as the decarbonization of the network continues to gain momentum. Let's look a little bit further at some of those numbers. There's approximately AUD 50 billion committed to energy and renewables through to 2030. Defense spending is forecast to lift to 2.4% of our GDP, and we can probably thank Donald Trump for calling that out in some of his actions recently.
Data centers as, I think it's been highlighted with Ryan's slides, that's AUD 100 billion forecast at the moment. We're certainly actively playing in that space. Of course, there's the Queensland Olympics, which has got a committed AUD 11 billion program, that I think everyone in this room is probably aware they're a little bit behind the mark and they need to accelerate, and that acceleration we're starting to see now. These are not speculative markets. These are committed programs. They're long duration programs and projects, and they're sit in high compliance environments where our capability commands a premium, and that's where Coates is already positioned, as a preferred provider with quite a few of those suppliers. If we look at the full picture of our addressable market, at our core is engineering, construction, transport, health and education, residential, industrial and mining.
They are the traditional markets that we play in. That's our bread and butter, long duration government infrastructure projects, maintenance. Now you can add to that the residential density, as the housing mix shifts. You've heard from both Ryan and Matt just what that means broader for the business. Layered over that is our growth segments of energy transition, defense, data centers, and the pre-Olympics infrastructure in Brisbane, and water, which is, I think just about every piece of water infrastructure around the nation is going through some form of planned upgrade. These are not markets that we're moving into. These are the markets where our specialist capability is already deployed and where the pipeline is structural and multi-year. The specialist model is what differentiates us here. Full service delivery, compliance infrastructure that I've spoken about, our fleet scale, and our national reach.
Competitors potentially can match one, maybe two of these. Very few can match all of those criteria. If we look at how we win, I've spoken in session one about the total value of hire in the operations session, and here I want to show you the commercial impact of that. The daily hire rate, as I mentioned, is approximately 30% of the total cost of hire. Availability, downtime, logistics, compliance, the project disruption make up the rest. Coates competes at that 70%, which customers rarely talk about when they put a tender out, but they feel every day when it goes wrong. The old conversation was, what's your day rate? That's fundamentally a race to the bottom. There's no loyalty, no depth in the relationship, and there is certainly no pricing discipline in that. The Coates conversation is, what's your total cost to hire?
When we frame it that way, we back it up with our service data, and the customers pay for the premium because it's demonstrably cheaper when they don't have those 70% elements playing against them. As I've mentioned earlier, our win rate since we focused on this, is up from 28% last year to 33% currently, and we expect to take that beyond 35%. Our overall market share is 25.5%, and our specialist revenue at AUD 240 million is growing. The mid-tier share of that for us at the moment is 19%, and we're targeting to grow that mid-tier share to 21%. These are all moving in the right direction because of that total value of hire proposition and the credibility that it brings to the table. The biggest addressable part of the growth opportunity for Coates right now is that mid-tier.
It's the 19% up to 21%, it's the mid-tier combined with our top-tier exposure. What we're seeing is the mid-tier opportunity is coupled to those top-tier constructors. The tier 1s basically subcontract out that work. We've been rebuilding our approach here with four specific actions in mind. A dedicated coverage model with structured call cycles, a segment-specific offers tailored to the trades and the subject matter, the small to medium enterprise opportunities there where volume growth customers exist, and applying that total value of hire framing at the mid-market. We're not competing on rate. We're competing on the service and that total value. Of course, continuing to apply our win rate, sorry, our pricing discipline through that structured pipeline cadence that we now are getting greater visibility through our use of AI.
In the top tier where we sit at 29% of the market at the moment, we're targeting to move above that to 29.5% as we close in on that target. The work there is about deepening that specialist penetration and building that on the existing customers that we have, as well as adding to the overall market through that mid-tier. That should combine to give us a 26% + share of market. The pathway through that is through that mid-tier and combining that with existing top-tier customers. All right. Service quality, spoken about that and how this comes to our growth. That's our commercial vantage, and it's not just a delivery metric. You've heard this now a couple of times. Our NPS is at 45 and targeting 50. Our DIFOT is at 94%, moving to beyond 96%.
The greater service, 80% of calls answered within 30 seconds and less than 5% abandonment. These are all important elements from our customers. Our sales execution is improving through that total value of hire reframes with every conversation that we're having about the total cost, not about the price or the rate. The win rate is growing, and that's critical to us. When customers trust us, they stay with us. When they stay, they spend more. When they spend more, we earn the right to grow with them across the categories that we offer. That is the Coates flywheel in action. Let me close. Three things happening simultaneously in the Coates business. Mid-tier market share is rebuilding through our dedicated coverage, and that's gaining traction. The specialist penetration is deepening with our top-tier accounts, and that will gradually move into the mid-tier as well.
The utilization returns that I've spoken about earlier today, through that category economics, is building and enhancing our returns. The proof points are already starting to grow, and that Coates flywheel is turning, and that's the element of the privileged assets with the operating discipline brought into place. All right. Thank you. I'll hand back to Ryan.
Thank you. Thanks, Murray. Hold your questions. We have a little Q&A, but give me a couple of minutes and we'll just do a bit of a wrap-up. It's been a long day. You heard from our executive team and a number of the business leadership. Hopefully, you've got this theme as to the SGH operating models and the way it plays through each of our businesses. To start with, the evidence. The four elements that define the compounding that's delivered for shareholders.
30 years of stable growing dividends for SGH, 18% EBIT CAGR over the last 10 years, the 410 basis points of ROCE expansion, and returns lifting while earnings have grown, plus the 800% cumulative TSR for SGH. I think this chart for us tells that story in one picture, and clearly the comparative to the ASX Industrial is something we take pride in and we want to continue executing the same performance going forward. Coming to the track record for us, is what we've done. For us, the operating priorities for how we go forward. There's probably four elements we really want to emphasize out of today. There's operational execution, that Balanced Scorecard cadence is visible at every level, every month. The sales execution for our win rate, how we're driving that pipeline conversion, value, the pricing on each of the BUs Balanced Scorecard.
Operating leverage, that cost-to-income trajectory, how we track that across every aspect of our business. Our margin expansion and the structural, ultimately, output of that playing through in our performance. You've seen that through Boral's 14.7% EBIT margin, up from 6.8% in 2021. Clearly, you heard the aspiration to continue to grow that, which we've spoken about. Finally, that AI deployment for us, we do want to see that as a further continuation both of our revenue opportunity for customers and on our cost process optimization and efficiency. The capital allocation aspect for us is another key emphasis. We do have those clear criteria, how we're going to deploy incremental capital. That 15% ROCE target is another element that does really frame how we look at that. That guidance, which we reaffirmed a couple of weeks ago at the Macquarie Australia Conference for FY 2026.
The SGH flywheel, we've spoken about this. I just want to close and reinforce that. We spoke about this as a compounding system. It's something we believe in, and there is a lot of focus around how we execute each step of this to continue this flywheel in motion. This notion of thermodynamics, as Richard's outlined, means we need to keep putting more energy in, otherwise things are going to dissipate. That's a fundamental piece of the flywheel, and that's the energy you've seen up at the front that is responsible for that flywheel continuing. Drive performance, that's really playing through in that relentless operator context for us. Disciplined people, effective process. I think Gitanjali and Sam really outlined this frontline focus and how we think through this in the way we execute and the criticality of that people in our core execution.
The business unit flywheel performance is absolutely critical to continue to support that growth. Ultimately, if we're successful in that, we deliver returns to surplus cash flow. Then how we redeploy that capital for growth is another continuation. That's that flywheel in action. Ultimately, every aspect of that needs that energy to continue its forward momentum. There is no perpetual motion. It just requires continual effort.
Three things to remember. One, relentless operator theme. That's something we'll try to reinforce through today, and hopefully that's something that's come out in each of the relevant speakers in each of the presentations. That compounding excellence really for us is absolutely critical, how we continue to drive growth. For us, it's really about what we do in the future in driving the next decade of compounding. With that overview, I'd like to ask all those who spoke just to pop up, and we've got time now, and we're happy to step over the 4:00 P.M. time barrier just to give you time for a full panel Q&A.
Excuse me.
Yeah. Questions. Anything, any element you want to go through.
Ryan, just a quick one on Crux, if I may. You recently spoke about the swing in free cash flow, obviously as a consequence of you ceasing investment and then starting to get the return in 2028. I've got just a couple of questions around the technical aspects of the project. First of all, gas prioritization versus Shell, and secondly, just some of the technical aspects around gas versus condensate. Are you convinced that there's no technical risk with those two aspects of the project?
Richard. Rob can answer.
Should I answer? Actually, yes. If you think about the way that the project runs, we jointly own the asset. There's a lifting and balancing agreement effectively in place. They've got effectively Prelude, which effectively Shell owns 65% of, versus 84% of Crux. They've had that position operating for the entire life of Prelude with the Prelude joint venture partners. In essence, effectively, you get a percentage of your cargo. If we're doing 5-6 cargoes, it will be sequenced. Will Shell get more cargoes? Absolutely. Will they be able to schedule their cargoes so they fall in a particular window? No. In terms of that, it has been agreed in terms of lifting and balancing process, so that's actually reasonably set. In terms of Crux, it's actually liquids rich.
Whilst we're marketing the gas currently, and it's equity gas, so we have the capacity to market that ourselves and will. In terms of the liquids, we have the capacity to jointly market that with Shell. In that context, given you're talking about far fewer cargoes each year, it probably makes sense, particularly given Shell's relationships with all of the refineries in Asia, to probably jointly market that with Shell. Will they clip the coupon on the way through? Absolutely. It's Shell. In terms of is that the most effective way for us to potentially market that? Definitely.
Thanks, Richard. If I may, while I've got the mic, your AI slide or the data center slide was great. There's one thing that you're missing, and that's a little bit of steel.
Good one.
Nice.
Good swing. Any updates, Ryan?
As I said, the process is public, right? There's nothing more. I do come back to the comment made earlier. Opening our perspective on geography doesn't mean that we're abandoning the investment in Australia. It's a lens to which we now look at, and I think it's just trying to be transparent to our investors, which we have been, in the way we look at the investment criteria. Australia is still a logical place for us to look to invest. The risk element is elevated, I think is probably the framing. Still, we think on the right value opportunity that BlueScope makes sense. If I stand back and think about it from our perspective and your perspective as looking at the SGH side, between making the offer and today, that risk dynamic on the Australian business has become more acute.
It's very difficult to say it's worth more today than it was when we made the offer. Honestly, I think that's the way we'd probably frame that. If we don't get there are other opportunities. I think one thing we've proven ourselves to date is we're disciplined. We need to make sure it makes a return for us because that's whose capital we're managing, and we think that it is still the most compelling opportunity for their shareholders, but that's up to them.
Thanks.
Just to follow up on Crux, Richard. We spoke over lunch about it. The plateau cash flow or free cash flow post-tax is AUD 250 million. Historically, I think it was around this time last year, there was some guidance provided on the EBITDA and EBIT metrics. Seems like those numbers have lifted a bit. Can you give us an update on where you think those numbers are at the moment?
In terms of EBITDA, I think we've been relatively consistent around that AUD 250 million in plateau production.
That will obviously change depending on what the spot gas price is. We haven't effectively changed our view reflecting current market conditions where you've seen spot price on a Brent or JKM linked basis more than double. I think from our perspective, we don't see that as sustainable for a long time. We certainly see that demand for LNG outside of, I suppose, the Gulf is going to increase, making Crux relatively more attractive. In terms of the EBIT element. If you basically said if you took AUD 1 billion and amortized it off over 12 years, that pretty much gives you the difference between the EBIT and the EBITDA. It's just the amortization off. That's where historically we've guided sort of just a bit in excess of AUD 100 million of EBIT and AUD 250 million in terms of EBITDA.
The free cash being, which is post-tax being similar to EBITDA, there's obviously a tax benefit there somewhere. Well, it's untaxed. Can you help me understand that mechanism?
Yeah. From a tax perspective, you actually amortize off your capital cost on a unit of production basis. In essence, the tax is closer to effectively on the EBIT rather than the EBITDA.
Right.
Just the way that those assets will actually amortize through our tax books.
Okay. Got it. One, Ryan, historically, you've explored selling that asset. In one of the presentations, Richard talked about not tying up capital. That asset is now coming to production, should be generating cash flow. How are you thinking about potentially marketing the asset if you are indeed thinking about that, and would you let it go for the right number?
Sure. Yeah, we have that discipline around our assets. If it's the right valuation, yep, we would look to exit that. To be honest, having gone through the pain of developing it becomes quite attractive when you start looking at the cash flow, and we are very confident in our ability to manage that. The other point is, when you think about the cash flow coming out, we can redeploy that in a number of different avenues. In some ways, we do get to monetize that value through the confidence we have in that cash flow, and can use that to fund our other acquisitions. Even if we don't get to monetize it upfront, the way we look at capital structure, there's an opportunity to create value through that cash flow coming into SGH.
I think that, and Richard outlined the way that our capital model works, we can create value through that. Leverage it on.
High-quality problem. If someone turns up and they're desperate to have long-term gas, that's a great outcome for us. In terms of once you've got that steadier cash flow throwing off, I can securitize that cash flow a dozen different ways. Whether we wanted to sell it and actually incur a tax liability or wanted to effectively leverage it and generate the cash for other opportunities, we've got multiple financial structural options available to us. I think you're going to struggle to wrestle that one out of our hands once that's into production.
Quite right. Good. Okay. Ryan, can you help us on property? I can sit here and make up numbers for your property value, but you're probably more close to what the real numbers are.
Yeah.
Can you help us frame out the bottom number, so maybe like an asset value, or what do you think is a fully developed value under your assumptions? It's useless for me to sit here and go, "Oh, it's worth one and a half," which is the midpoint of the independent expert report, because that was a few years ago.
Yeah.
Any framework around that would be useful.
Yeah. It's an interesting question because it's not as straightforward. It's fair to say, in our view, if you were to realize it today, it's materially greater than that's not our strategy. We're very comfortable to hold that and play that through. It's a fair question because it's not as clear cut to say it's worth X. We expect when Ravenhall, let's say, logistic precinct is starting to, you've got sites developed, you've got rental income coming in. The valuation should be against an owned property asset, that rental income set as a value methodology, as an asset, we would expect to get a rental cash flow coming through. The other sites will be depending on what we do. I think it's something, as you look forward, in our view, it's a material valuation in the broader asset base.
Once we work out what's the best opportunity for the site, we'll give the market more context around that. If you stand back and think, I touched on the data center point. Waurn Ponds is 1,000 ha, right? There's the opportunity around that, touch on this notion of, you've got power going in and a number of different opportunities. We've been focused on what we do with Deer Park or Ravenhall. That's an opportunity that we think we can look to move forward. Seeing more action there will further prove that value up. It's a material store of value for us. We just want to find the highest and best use over a long period of time from an SGH outlook perspective. That's the fact of it. I understand plugin model. I do think where that expert was is now the room outside.
I'm probably conservative.
Is it too far-fetched to assume that the NPV of the highest use value of those sites is multiples more than that midpoint of the independent expert report, rather than just a percentage uplift? Is it a 2x, 3x, or could it be a 2x, 3x number?
Probably a high percent to a low multiple. From our view, I'd probably say it. Try and be cute, if you think about that one property, if you look through what Orica sold, that particular and adjacent piece of property to UniSuper on a like-for-like basis in terms of on a per square meter basis, that property is worth AUD 1.4 billion. In terms of the value uplift, if you think about that property throwing off fully built over AUD 250 million of cash for around four shares, having all of the capital then required to build the shares being provided by your partner. If you look at what company in terms of your REIT, if you said you had AUD 250 million and you're using an appropriate cap rate, I think you'll find that that's what, probably your 5% in cap rate.
You're probably talking about a multiple of the original property value today. I think that's the difference in the way that SGH has framed property. Historically, Boral sold property to generate a profit to cover a management incentive. Let's be very clear what the methodology was, and the market accepted that as an outcome. When I go and visit Jarvas in South Guildford, it kills me to drive down Kalamunda Road and have a look at what was the Boral site, because that would be it would've been awesome. They sold the site and the bricks business. The people who bought it, really smart, on-sold the brick business to Buckeridge Group for the same price and got the land for nothing. We look at these as generational assets.
I think as Ryan highlights, Bombo, if you think about Scoresby, Donnybrook, and others, some of them will be residential, where we will take money off the table. That will give us the capacity to reinvest with that for the next leg of growth, because you've got to replace these generational assets. Waurn Ponds, there's what? Another 2,000 hectares out in Penrith Lakes between you and your joint venture partners. The opportunities are significant.
Thank you. Very helpful.
Thanks. Just another quick one on Crux. Why the extended ramp up to two years? Is that a knowledge phasing with the processing unit or something else?
Yeah.
That said, is it determined or can that move around?
Yeah, with that one, I'll jump in there. Obviously, Crux is obviously a key backfill asset into the Prelude asset. Part of it is minimum volumes guaranteed, and then there's obviously some flexibility in that ramp up till we get to plateau, depending on how that Prelude asset performs versus obviously the capacity of Crux then to accelerate as well. There is a dynamic aspect to that in terms of the ramp up period before we get to that plateau period.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Just on Boral, given this margin upside we've seen time and time again, just wondering in the scenario of potentially a softer macro environment in 2027, what sort of EBIT growth you could still generate in that scenario for that business?
Well, if we're at 14.7%-
By the time, by the way.
Exactly. Our aspiration is to be over 15%, and clearly we want to improve. There's not much between where we are now improving and getting to 15%. That's clearly the goal.
Great. Maybe just on that AUD 100 million of AI identified in this slide, how much is incremental to that sort of mid-single digit organic EBIT growth implied within that 10% EBIT target? Is it more of just a project to underpin the growth, and what sort of timeframe is that in?
The way we're thinking through this, obviously, it's rapidly evolving. We're in the process of a combination of top-down, bottom-up application. We obviously see we've got line of sight to a number of key opportunities that's going to unlock value, but obviously it goes into the mix. We see AI as an accelerator to our strategy. It's not the strategy. When you think about that number, it's around how AI can unlock that growth inside the business, both from a productivity efficiency, doing more with less through operating leverage, as well as that revenue upside as well.
Great. Jumping around, just a final one on Coates. What's the perception of fragmentation in the industry? Is there a roll-up opportunity beyond the organic market share targets? We've seen this with large players in the U.S. market. Clearly, I think some out there are seeing an opportunity. Just wondering what kind of opportunity there is for you.
Yeah. We keep testing this. There's probably still quite a lot of founder-owned businesses that think their baby is beautiful, and their expectations are some day you are probably way beyond them. You've heard the discipline that we apply. We keep kicking tires. We'll keep testing this. There's probably a point where the valuation start to meet what we're prepared to pay. We're showing when we get to that point, we're happy to execute, but we're not in the business of overpaying for assets. I'd rather use that capital and grow the business ourselves organically.
Thank you. Murray, sorry, I don't mean to pick on you. Just want to ask you another question on one of the points you made. Going from this pricing model, going away from pricing individual bits of equipment, through to providing a solution, when you back-test that and you break down your solutions offering versus your single piece pricing, do you get to an endpoint where your solutions pricing, when it's broken down, is actually higher than when you price on a single piece of equipment basis?
Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it. Look, I think we basically build up the, if you like, the individual asset price based upon our investment thesis and the returns that we expect to generate. That starts as the building product. A project will then require a set of solutions. Assuming that that set of solutions is not just one piece of equipment, and it's tens or hundreds of pieces of equipment, then it comes as a package. That's where we get to play. We tend to offer the set now. It'll be a combination of perhaps at the start of a project when the early works are going on, you'll have barriers, you'll have site accommodation, you might have some excavation works going in, dewatering, shoring, depending on if it's a vertical construction. These all come as a package.
That will give us a return across that package of goods. Individually, we might decide to perhaps discount say the barriers, because it doesn't come with an engine, they're fairly easy to maintain, the R&M is quite light. The site accommodation elements that we put in there would absolutely generate a return that would probably be beyond what the individual price of that unit is. It's a bit hard to give you a simple answer.
What we see is a premium that we can apply through that total value of hire model. That's the essence of it.
Okay. Thank you.
Appreciate your time today, and thank you for the team for the effort. Thank you for participating today on webcast. Hope you found it informative. Again, we appreciate the support and look forward to continuing engagement. Thank you very much