Good afternoon, and welcome to SHAPE Australia's full year FY 2024 results webinar for the period ending 30 June, 2024 . Presenting today is SHAPE CEO, Peter Marix-Evans, and CFO, Scott Jamieson. Today's format will begin with a run-through of the results, followed by a Q&A session. Should you wish to submit any questions, you can do so by the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. I'll now pass to Pete.
Thanks, Mel, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us this afternoon. I'm Peter Marix-Evans, and I'm joined here with Scott Jamieson, our CFO. So as Mel mentioned, there is a Q&A section, and we will endeavor to get through any of those questions before the end of it, the presentation. However, if we don't get through to them, we can certainly follow back up with you. So very pleased to announce our financial results today, to the market. The FY 2024 results see the company deliver the most successful financial outcome that we've had in our history. We would like to start off by sort of saying how very grateful we are to all of our staff, subcontractors, suppliers, and clients who have supported us in achieving this.
We have a few slide decks to get through, so we will move through them efficiently. Again, please remember to ask questions as we go along. To start off, just a bit of a recap. A lot of you would understand the SHAPE business, but just for anyone on the call who is not as familiar. SHAPE is a national construction services company. We have 13 operations across the country, including two modular manufacturing operations. We've completed over 7,000 projects and 34 years of experience, so a good, strong track record of delivering high quality projects for our clients. Tender rates, so conversion rate by number is around about the 50% mark. Very proud of that, and it's an industry-leading average. And we're also very proud of our Net Promoter Score at + 88, so that really ties into our repeat business and everything we do with our clients.
Mentioned on the right there, repeat business is circa 85%, and we've completed in excess of AUD 10 billion worth of projects and value. Sectors, we'll go into that a little bit deeper later on, but suffice to say, we work across a number of sectors, including the commercial office market. From a capability point of view, I talked about this, SHAPE being a construction specialist. We specialize in fit out and refurbishment, but we also carry out works over modular, new build, facade remediation, aftercare and maintenance, and also design and build, which we'll go into a little bit further later on as well. Just our brands there, you can see SHAPE, DLG SHAPE, which is our majority Indigenous-owned business, that SHAPE are partners with the DLG Group in.
Modular by SHAPE, our modular business, and AFM is our facilities, aftercare and facilities maintenance, operation that we've started up in the last year. Just a bit of history, and not to give a history lesson, but I guess, we often get asked around the growth of the business over time. We've got over 34 years of industry knowledge and experience, and importantly, you can see there across the 34 years, the resilience in the cycle and through the market. Despite, you can see there in FY 2012, 2013 dropping off as we had the recession or the global recession, and then you can see the effects of FY 2020 going through the COVID period. Despite global macroeconomic conditions, SHAPE have a demonstrated track record in bouncing back very quickly and again, regaining that trajectory of growth across our business. Scott will take us through some financial highlights.
Thanks, Peter. As you can see there, we've had strong revenues of AUD 838.7 million. While that's down 2.7% against the prior year, FY 2024 saw some protracted tender periods and some delayed project commencements on some of our larger jobs. That, in round numbers, was probably about AUD 50 million down on expectations due to that. That work hasn't gone away. That work's still there, but instead, that'll be coming through in FY 2025. EBITDA of AUD 25.9 million, which was a significant increase of 33% on the prior corresponding period. Prior corresponding period was AUD 19.4 million, which then transferred into the net profit after tax, so significant increase. Last year was AUD 10.5 million, this year is AUD 16 million, so that's up 53%.
The project wins, so that's projects that we've secured throughout the financial year, of AUD 947 million. In brackets there, you can see AUD 1 billion. That AUD 1 billion includes our associate, DLG SHAPE Proprietary Limited, where we hold a 49% interest in that business, and that's up 18% against the prior corresponding period. Through the success of all of those project wins throughout the year, that's provided us with a backlog order of AUD 457.4 million. Again, significant increase against the same time last year of AUD 343 million, and that really sets us up well for FY 2025, having such a significant amount of work in hand still to complete. The identified pipeline, so that's projects that we know, they're known projects. They exist, and they're projects that we have the skill set and expertise to undertake on the right terms and conditions.
While you're seeing that as a decrease there against the pipeline we recorded last year, there is still such a significant amount of work out there that we couldn't possibly undertake all that work with the current levels that we have by way of staff. Cash and marketable securities, so very strong liquidity position, balance sheet. We have AUD 98.6 million. The breakdown of that is AUD 69.9 million in cash and AUD 28.7 million in marketable securities. Those securities are highly liquid, investment grade corporate bonds. We move on to the earnings per share of AUD 19.20. Significant increase on the previous year, but very importantly to shareholders, we just declared a dividend, a final FY 2024 dividend of AUD 0.09 per share, and that brings the total in relation to FY 2024 to AUD 0.17, which again is almost a 50% increase against FY 2023. Peter?
Thanks, Scott, and we'll come back to a little bit more detail in the numbers, a little bit later on in the slide deck. So just talking about how the business is set up. So diversification of our business really drives our resilience. And so I guess what we aim to do is deliver high quality, cost-effective solutions while minimizing disruption to clients' operations. And we do that across all stages of the office life cycle, and talk a little bit more about the resilience of the commercial office life cycle in another slide. Extensive and diversified range of customers. So our typical customers that we work for tend to be blue- chip ASX 100, 200 companies, but obviously we work across a broad range.
A little bit about our work and a little bit of our resilience comes from our work book. So we've got a very short duration of project work overall. So if you look at 88% of our work is completed under a year, and 40% of that work is done in less than four months, so in 16 weeks. So it just gives us a level of resilience towards cost of goods escalation. Typically, for the majority of our projects, within a couple of weeks of being awarded the project, we have secured back-to-back with our subcontractors. We take on that risk, but then we pass it on very quickly, which gives us a very high level of resilience.
Also on the resilience side of things is a lower risk from 12% of our work is external, with 88% of our work being predominantly inside a building, not exposed to weather, industrial, and any of those sorts of delays that you might get as well. The quality of the book is very much focused around making sure that we have a good blend of risk. Also that risk is very manageable. On the right-hand side there, you can see that we rely heavily on our repeat clients. As I mentioned Net Promoter Score of + 88 really helps to do that. As I mentioned, that we aim every day to deliver high quality and cost-effective solutions for those clients. We still pick up new clients, 16% of new clients each year, but we're very focused on maintaining and nurturing those relationships that we have with existing clients.
Just a little bit more on the project wins, and some more on diversification. You see on the left there, we've spoken about the project wins. In addition to that, as at the thirtieth of June, we had decisions pending of almost AUD 400 million, and we were currently tendering AUD 300 million. Again, looking at conversion rates, certainly sets us up well for a very good and strong start to FY 2025. The backlog order book there, you can see that there's quite a bit of diversification across there. We're still heavily weighted or primarily in the office sector. Some of the reasons that Peter talked about before. What that also says is that the office market is not going away.
We're not doing less work in the office market, but what we're looking to do is undertake more work in the other sectors and continue to diversify that book. We also then have the ability to pivot into different sectors as we build our skill sets and experience and expertise amongst the 630 odd staff that we have. And you can see there that the pipeline is starting to diversify a little bit more, particularly, you'll see the orange section there, Defence and also into health. So with the Defence Strategic Review that was undertaken, FY 2024 had a lot of work, particularly in the Defence area, put on hold, and now that's all coming back to market as we speak.
So I mentioned earlier the commercial office sector resilience. So we are certainly heavily weighted in commercial office sector, and that's not by chance. It's a very resilient part of the market that sees work at all ends of the spectrum. So in a growing economy, we see a lot more new fit outs. In a shrinking economy, we see a lot more subtenancies and make goods, that sort of stuff. So there's work at both ends. But I guess if you look across the property cycle, we work in, you know, in the new build side of things, in constructing the assets. We're very particular about which clients and who we work for, but we do carry out that work.
Fit out, long-term occupancy, and typically a lease is seven years or 7 + 3 . So we tend to have a cycle in that, and again, we rely on that repeat business in coming back to do our clients' fit outs at the end of their tenancy or at the end of life for their fit out. There's also the ongoing maintenance and refresh of assets, and that's both for tenants but also for building owners as well. Tenant churn and increase in vacancy, and then reposition of assets, which again, if you look at the moment, A-grade, B-grade premium assets in the city are all vying to get quality tenants. So they tend to continue to keep spending money, investing in their asset, making sure that they can attract those long-term tenants.
Just a bit across our capability. Demonstrated ability to win and execute work across regions and capabilities. Our revenue by region there, you can see on the left-hand side for the pie, is split up across the country, with New South Wales and Victoria being the largest, with the other states following closely behind. Those numbers do move around, from year to year as we follow sort of the cycles in various states. However, the takeaway there is that, we're able to pivot to different states and move our workforce where required to partake in boom or bust type operations in each of the state. Revenue by capability, just showing there that we remain heavily weighted in the fit out and refurbishment.
In saying that, we are diversifying and continuing to build on our capability across new build, facades and modular, which again, both now and into the future, gives us that ability, to follow the money, and to follow the spend, whether it's coming from government or from private sector. I mentioned earlier our strong conversion rate. So we mentioned there 50% by number. Again, that's a very high percentage for the industry. We don't price for practice, so we're very particular about which clients, we work for and about which, opportunities that we pursue, and they need to be under the right contractual conditions to make sure that, they fit within our risk management framework. So from an origination point of view, I have spoken in the past about our bespoke CRM.
So we use Salesforce as a CRM. And we've really taken that system and spent time integrating our algorithms, which actually give us an opportunity to predict the model, which helps to keep those win rates up nice and high. And we're also able to track all our lease expiries across the commercial office market, which gives us a great level of visibility into that forward pipeline. From an execution point of view, we've got a really long history of investment in systems and process. So that's across financial, project delivery, EHS and HRIS. So the company's always invested heavily in making sure that our 630-plus people are well supported in everything they do.
And then also there, we've opened or started an AFM, aftercare and facilities maintenance, team focused on maintaining those client relationships, while we're in different stages of the leasing life cycle. Operational highlights, a lot of words on that page, so I'll just pick out some highlights for you, starting with safety. I do note that our TRIFR has increased this year, from 3.8 to 6. I caveat that with, when we compare that to the most recent industry average that we can access, from the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner, the average is sitting at 10, so we understand that we're still doing better than the average company. In saying that, please don't take that as me ever accepting any level of incident or injury.
So every day, that's the most important thing that we will do with our workforce, is to make sure that every single one of them goes home in as good of shape or better than when they arrived. However, we do note that increased exposure with our additional hours and revenue across different sectors. So that expansion into different capabilities comes with some nuances around different types of operations and risks. So we continue to develop our systems and our training and our people to be able to help us to cope with that. I would note that whilst it's an increase again from a TRIFR and a TIFR from the previous corresponding period, that PCP was an all-time low as well.
And if we go back to our sort of trajectory, we're still on a trajectory of decreasing the injuries and incidences that we have on our sites and our people, when we look over a sort of five-year period. And again, nothing is more important to us. I note there 52,000 proactive safety, quality and observation logged, and we really see that as an indication of a resilient safety culture across the business. From a people and culture point of view, we've achieved again a cultural achievement award from Human Synergistics. I think that's our seventh year in a row. Very proud of that. As I've mentioned many times before, our only assets are our people.
We'll spend an incredible amount of time making sure that we nurture and promote those employees and give them a career within SHAPE. 11.5% increase in our total workforce, so we continue to build that workforce of Shapeians. Importantly, we continue to invest in those people. Over 7,700 hours were allocated to training. And that resulted in 19% of our employees being promoted through the business. Again, we wanna promote, we wanna hire at a junior level and then give people strong careers through the company. Maintaining our 29% female gender diversity.
And if we look at that from a going forward point of view, while we've maintained 29%, our new hires from a female diversity point of view has been at 33%. And we have a strong focus on DEI across, not just gender, but across all aspects of diversity. From a partnership, I've already mentioned our very, Net Promoter Score of +88. 90% of our projects achieved Perfect Delivery. Perfect Delivery being an internal measure that we ask our clients to certify after we've finished a job, based on a number of pillars that we deem to make up Perfect Delivery. And we're also very proud of our extensive network of trusted subcontractors that, again, provide repeat services with us of over 2000.
Finishing up there on environmental and social impact. So we maintained our Climate Active certification for the year, which is very good. Completed three projects with Green Star accreditation. Two of our office achieved six-star, being Brisbane and Melbourne. Importantly, over 1,500 items were donated or used on projects, on the circular economy as part of our ESG commitments. And 1,725 tons of waste are diverted from landfill, which again, very, very important. And with our staff, our community, and our subcontractors, we've managed to donate more than 1.2 million in goods, labour, and service to local charities and, through our Community Plus program. Just a little bit more on safety. I feel I've covered quite a lot of this slide already.
But I guess, SHAPE continued to focus on safety leadership, our investment in systems and the pursuit of efficiencies and safety administration, through technology, also through training. So this involves the development of predictive project performance reporting and AI generative tools. So keep an eye on that, as we go forward and continue to invest in that. As I mentioned, the 52,000 proactive safety, quality, and environmental observations logged. So you can see on those stats there. I mentioned that if you look at the five-year trend or, you can see that while we've had a setback from the prior corresponding year, typically the statistics continue to trend down since 2020. And again, nothing is more important to us than keeping those trends going. Just touching on our new capabilities in FY 2024.
I mentioned earlier the AFM. So we launched that in November of 2023. And that's to focus on commercial office clients in Sydney and Melbourne at the moment. We will expand that to our other regions. Just wanted to get the model right. It's basically to ensure the safe and efficient operation of buildings, equipment, and systems through scheduled maintenance and immediate response to work. So that's in response to clients asking us to provide that service, which typically we would come and do a larger project or a fit out or a refurbishment, and then we'd move on to the next one. So it's about trying to stay in contact with those clients and assisting them with their asset or their ongoing facility.
There's an opportunity to expand that, through new clients and to, contract maintenance agreements as well. And in the future, it could provide an annuity stream, to revenue as well. So certainly does complement the current SHAPE business, and it's something that we've launched recently. Also launched, in FY 2024 is our D&B, so design and build business. So delivering end-to-end service, for bespoke workplace strategy and design to defect-free delivery. So that's not to compete with our existing clients or, consultants, in the sort of the larger end of town. This is mostly for projects sub, say, AUD 1 million , and it's again, where a client, would normally go to a D&B builder. They have the ability to come to SHAPE, and we can be a turnkey operation for them.
Very positive. It ties in with everything SHAPE talk about, with having strong relationships over a long period of time with our clients and continuing to deliver on that excellent customer experience that we strive to deliver on. Just across projects, that's just to give you a bit of a flavor of some of the projects we've done over the last year. If you look on the left-hand side at the Rosehill Secondary College , that's a modular construction of a classroom there, 26-week duration, repeat client. It again just ties in with the growth of the modular business. The middle one there, Albert Hall Renewal, that's still going now in Tasmania, one of the new offices that we've opened in the recent period.
Again, that's a combination of new build and refurbishment, and also on a heritage building as well. And then on the right-hand side there, one of our projects that we're doing in Newcastle. So you can just see again across the different durations from, you know, 26 weeks to 15 months to 14 weeks, the diverse nature of the types of projects that we carry out. From a sustainability point of view, again, I've touched a little bit on some of this already, but I guess good to note that from a carbon footprint, we have total emission offset continues to reduce down from 2.9 in the prior corresponding period. Carbon neutral, as I mentioned, we maintain Climate Active certification for the period.
Green Power, 59.5% of all corporate electricity is provided through green energy providers, and basically, every time we reposition or do a new, sort of fit-out refurbishment for our offices, we look to change that Green Power going forward. The middle one there, carbon accounting software embedded for corporate. Actually putting in place, the investment in technology, so that we can, carry out our reporting. That includes Modular by SHAPE and AFM by SHAPE. Go back to a bit more detail in the numbers.
We covered most of, these numbers at a high level previously, but I guess the key to this slide is, although the revenue was marginally down, there was significant increase in EBITDA and net profit after tax. And this is primarily because of the gross margin increasing by 19%. So gross margin moved from 7.6% up to 9.1%. And that's due to a combination of things, but part of that is improved trading conditions. So as we've come out of the COVID period, because you know, FY 2023 obviously started in the 1st of July 2022 , so we were still working through that. So as we've come out of that period, trading conditions have improved, and gross margins have followed with that.
In addition to that, though, the way that the project life cycle works and the margins that come out of the project life cycle, we continue to generate generally. We have a going position, we have an exit position, and we continue to generate margin as the project moves through its life cycle. Throughout FY 2024, because we had some of those projects that would have otherwise have started and been delayed, what that meant was there was a slight bias towards projects that were finishing compared to projects that were starting. So putting that into some numbers, that of the AUD 50 million that we were talking about earlier in the presentation, had that AUD 50 million come through, that would have started closer to the going margins than the exit margins, and that can move that gross margin of 9.1% around sort of 0.2%-0.3%.
So those margins are at a position that, you know, has almost normalized, if you like. You know, there is certainly opportunities for gross margin to improve moving forward as we look to take on different business units or different capabilities and blend higher margin work with our current works. The other thing that I just wanted to point out there was the returns on that AUD 98.6 million of cash and marketable securities. So we generated about AUD 3.5 million in FY 2024, and that compares to AUD 2.4 million the year before. Just a little bit more on the liquidity position. So we continue to place a strong emphasis on diligent liquidity management.
So we have a great bunch of people as far as, you know, the project teams, project managers, and they're very diligent as far as, you know, managing the cash on each and every single project. We also need to make sure we manage that in such a way that we set ourselves up the best possible way we can to support about all of our pre-qualifications and external financial assessments. That graph there just shows you the breakdown of the cash and marketable securities, but it also shows the movement, looking at, you know, the high of AUD 104 million, the low of AUD 42 million, and it's showing the average position of AUD 74.8 million.
Included in those numbers at the 30th of June was restricted cash of AUD 6.8 million, and restricted cash is primarily in relation to project trust accounts and retention trust accounts. We do continue to generate interest earnings on the majority of that restricted cash. And then just moving across to the right-hand side of that slide, this is a typical monthly cycle of our cash balance, and you can see there that the first dip is in relation to payment runs that we make. The payment runs correspond with the Security of Payment Act legislation that dictates the payment terms. So, for example, ACT has recently changed where we need to make payments in fifteen business days, New South Wales, twenty business days, and Queensland and WA is 25 business days.
So you can see some slight dips as they sort of work this themselves through the month. But you have your initial payment run on the first business day, and then it builds up, and then you can see the corresponding payments throughout the months.
Moving on to growth and strategy, and thank you for all bearing with us. There's not too many. I think we've got about four or five slides left, so we're getting towards the end of the deck. Outlook and growth. We've got three pillars that we've talked about for a number of years now, and those pillars are highlighted on the screen. Growth into non-office market sectors. Whilst the bottom bullet point there, whilst investing in the growth strategies, we do remain very focused on maintaining our significant market share in the commercial office sector. In saying that, we continue to grow into alternate sectors. Significant opportunities to continue growing into non-office markets. Hotels, health, education, retail, and defence, and we need the skill set and capability and the track record in order to be able to do that, so this is a future-proofing type of growth as well.
Macro trends like population growth, aging population, geopolitical tensions are all expected to drive ongoing government investment into many of those sectors, so we're well positioned. We talked earlier about defence and Defence Prime, so Defence Prime are the consultants and contractors that work around the defence industry. When Scott mentioned earlier about the Defence Strategic Review, we were able to pivot, and you'll see that on future pages on the deck, pivot from Defence into Defence Prime. It's a very key part of our growth there. Second pillar there is continued diversification of our capabilities. We remain focused on implementation of our modular growth plan. In FY 2024, we expanded our modular capability with the addition of a new 5,000 sqm facility in South Australia. We've invested in several key modular professionals to strengthen that revenue, both in South Australia and in Victoria.
We're also building on early success that we've seen with the design and build service offering, which I mentioned earlier, and also look to expand aftercare and facilities maintenance, services, across multiple market segments, as well. And also in the diversification is we remain what I call opportunistically acquisitive, in that we will also continue to monitor for opportunities for a merger acquisition, opportunities that are synergistic to the SHAPE business. The third pillar there being geographic expansion, and I'll go into some detail on the numbers in future slides, but we continue to focus on the expansion in three key areas, in the last twelve months, being Gold Coast, Newcastle, and Tasmania. We've recently established a permanent office in Hobart for the Tasmania team, and also looking to secure a new location for Gold Coast team, having already grown out of our original office there.
We also remain, again, opportunistically, looking at additional regional locations that would have the GDP population and growth, to support our SHAPE office as well. Getting into a bit of the detail in the non-office market sectors. So I won't necessarily go through all the numbers there, but you can read them on the screens. Typically, we're seeing a trend of both revenue and project wins, increasing. And going back to the terminology, revenue being turnover, project wins, being projects that we have secured. Doesn't mean we've sort of started them or turned them over yet. So project wins grew by 41% and revenue by 15% across non-office market sectors. So that doesn't mean that we needed to grow outside of the office market.
That means that we're looking to the future to continue to diversify that pipeline, and also that piece of pie that Scott talked about earlier. Revenue and Defence Prime surged by 135%, and that does reflect our ongoing investment in our Defence team, and our internal capabilities. I mentioned previously that the ability to pivot from government to private, regardless of the government's strategic review. We are seeing that Defence work starting to come back on, with the Australian Defence Force as well. Revenue for health and retail also saw some good, strong growth, 25% and 179%, respectively. We continue to see investment both by government and private sector in those areas.
And noting there that while we maintain our office market position, wins in the office market now account for approximately half of our order book. So that's compared to 25%- 30% a few years ago. And again, reiterating that, we're not moving out of the office market. We continue to have a strong desire to maintain our significant and dominant market share in that market. Outlook and growth. So that's just on our diversification of capabilities, which we've talked about, the new build, modular, and facade. Again, a typical trend there of an increase. You can see facades haven't followed that increase. As Scott mentioned, in one of the earlier slides, we have finite resources.
So we do very much follow the money, but we are seeing, at times, a general delay in facade remediation projects coming to market. Landlords are certainly focusing on making sure that their buildings are presentable to tenants and are attractive to attract and retain tenants at the moment, as they're seeing employees return to the office. So I think that facade will come back on, but again, we have the ability to pivot. New build projects wins increased significantly by 256 to AUD 112 million. A lot of that is in the Queensland branch, where we've picked up significant staff and expertise with a strong track record in delivering those types of projects.
As I mentioned earlier, we're very particular about which new build projects we take on and the risk profiles associated. Then the third or middle bullet point there, investment in modular capabilities, saw a growth in both project wins and revenue in FY 2024, compared to PCP, and we have continued to invest in the overhead required to support the growth in that business. Last slide, I think it is. Expansion into new geographies. Our three regional operations experienced, again, significant project wins and revenue growth, increasing 211% and 60%. Some very strong growth in those regions. I think, again, listening to our clients, they're crying out for someone like SHAPE to provide services in those locations and areas.
Gold Coast, 310% increase in project wins reflects just a very strong diversified order book with both new build along with refurbishments securing the region's marquee office project in FY 2024 as well, being an office refurbishment for the down on the Gold Coast. Gold Coast and Newcastle experienced significant increases in project wins. And since establishing offices in both locations, the local teams have invested in the network, the relationship building, and expanding those market opportunities. So this strategic effort has enabled us to invest in additional people, and thereby enhancing our capabilities and our ability to deliver more work for our clients. So that was the slide deck going through the results for the business for the year for the annual report and annual presentation. So thank you for bearing with us. We do have a few questions, so I'll hand back to Mel.
Thanks, Pete. We do have a few questions, so our first question is: How is an FY 2025 NPAT margin going to trend relative to FY 2024?
Yeah, I can, I can probably answer that one. While we're not providing any forward guidance in relation to the profitability at this stage, what I can say is that there is a lot of moving parts in relation to what produces gross margin, and of course, then you've got your overheads. But we don't see any significant deviations to the current financial year.
Thanks, Scott. Why is the company holding marketable securities this year when they were not previously held? Scott mentioned they were highly liquid corporate bonds. Is there a requirement to hold these under any of our projects, or is it a decision by management to maximize the return on cash held?
Okay. Yeah, that's a good question. We have moved, as you saw, obviously, some money into those marketable securities, and we've taken the view there, and because of the inverse relationship between the interest rate movements and the value of those securities, because the interest rates had moved, and they'd moved up, and then the view taken, certainly when you listen to the various economists around the country and sort of forecasts on interest, we then took a position there, and we took into account, obviously, the risk with the potential capital movement of that. And so we took the view that that's an opportunity for us to move into those corporate bonds.
And because they are highly liquid, in the event that we need to access that cash, you can basically get that money in T plus two, or trade two days after selling those. And again, it's enhanced our earning ability. So in rough numbers, the current running yield on those bonds is producing about 200 basis points more than the cash rate. And so that's the primary reasons why we did that.
Thanks, Scott. Okay, gross margins were a real highlight. How should we think about gross margins in FY 2025, given a higher than usual percentage of projects closed in FY 2024, boosting the margin of growth well?
Yeah. As I mentioned, that because of that weighting, and that other AUD 50 million that we expected to come through, that has the potential to move those margins sort of by 20- 30 basis points. Again, that's just in general terms, and there is a lot of moving parts as to what constitutes margins. So it's, you know, there's a number of things around the, you know, the procurement method, the amount of variations, the duration of the job. There's things that are there. So that is very sort of high level, general terms on that sort of 20- 30 point movement.
I think there's also a number of factors in the type of work, 'cause as we've talked about with our three pillars, typically, you know, for instance, modular tends to attract a higher gross margin. So as we continue to blend those works, the intent is to continue, obviously, to grow the gross margin by a percentage. But as Scott mentioned, there's a number of factors that sort of depend on quarter by quarter.
Thanks, Pete. This is our last question, so if anyone has any further questions, just remember to send them through. Liam says: Congratulations on another strong result. Hoping you can elaborate on AFM implementation costs and expected ramp up to revenues, the revenue model and pricing relative to competing CRE services, and what you would like to see before broadening the service into other areas.
Yep, sure. Thanks, Liam, and thank you for the congratulations, so that AFM business was started up on the back of requests from our clients, and we've opened the sort of business unit up in predominantly Melbourne and Sydney, so it basically equates to a technician and a van in Melbourne and Sydney. Like with all of our sort of growth initiatives, we look to make sure, and it's not imperative, but we look to, wherever possible, make sure that their earnings are accretive from day one, so that business is not something that we're going to invest heavily in as a sort of a loss leader. It's basically to respond to requests from clients. We will look to grow that business organically and sustainably.
So, I don't anticipate a huge investment, further to what we've already invested going forward, and any investment would be commensurate with the revenue that we can derive from that. So, we will look to, as we mentioned, expand it into different markets, and to look to different clients and different buildings. So it really is. That's more of a slow burn, and a watch this space, rather than a sort of. You know, it's not gonna start to compete with, you know, the modular business in the next year or two, from a revenue point of view.
Thanks, Pete. Monty asked: Were there any specific areas of health growing? Example, hospital or aged care. Anything worth calling out?
I think it depends on each region, where you are. For instance, you know, Canberra, they have a very strong relationship with, and track record with major projects. Canberra work at, you know, the Canberra Hospital or Calvary. So, each state has different nuances. We are definitely seeing an increase with the aging population, not just in, you know, aged care per se, but in the services that are required to provide aged care. So it's not necessarily in one specific area at this stage across the country.
Thanks, Pete. We've just had a few people raise their hands, so I'd remind everyone to type your question in. We won't be allowing people to ask verbal questions, and another question's come through: Are you expecting corporate costs to grow much into FY 2025?
So corporate costs will grow as we continue to grow the business. While there is a level of scalability, we will need to add headcount, you know, as we build the other businesses. And you'll obviously have the general CPI increases that come through. So we do expect corporate costs relative to revenue to be less as a percentage increase.
That caveat on that is, again, ongoing investment in. If you look at in the last period, we have invested significantly in a new facility in Adelaide. So, in the normal course of business, what Scott's saying is, yeah, the efficiencies should continue to materialize. In saying that, we will continue to invest where it's prudent for growth.
Mm-hmm. So I guess to clarify that, I was talking solely just in relation to the corporate or head office expenses, rather than the general overhead. So the general overhead, obviously, we continue to invest in, as Pete talked about, with the AFM business, the D&B business, the modular capability. So there is some additional spend that gets allocated there with a view that we'll get the return on that spend as we move into the future.
Thanks, guys. The next question is, have project delays continued into FY 2025?
I think at this stage, we are still seeing a continuation of a conservative approach to projects. We are still seeing some delays. In saying that, we've actually got a backlog of delays, so those delays that we had, so the AUD 50 million of revenue that we thought we would have done last year, that's starting to come on now. Whilst we're still experiencing some delays, it's almost playing catch up, so I wouldn't, at this stage, anticipate it impacting our revenue in any material form.
Thanks, Pete. A couple of more questions have come through. Will the modular segment be able to monetize the new factory in FY 2025?
So the, yeah, the investment in the modular in, and I'm assuming new factory, so you're talking about our Adelaide operations? T here's an Adelaide and Victoria. Victoria's already earnings accretive. We would anticipate that, providing, there aren't delays in the projects that we are securing and pipeline coming to market, that that facility will be earnings accretive in FY 2025.
Thank you. And then will the Defence wins bounce back to previous levels in the upcoming year?
I would certainly hope so. That, I mean, obviously, SHAPE can't comment on what the Australian Defence Force and Australian Government do, so there were two hundred and forty known projects that we were tracking prior to the Defence Strategic Review a year ago. That Defence Strategic Review channeled a whole lot of money towards AUKUS and a number of other things, obviously, depending on where the government sees fit to spend money. All of those projects were required to be carried out, whether they're refurbishment or maintenance or new build, so they need to happen. It's a matter of when, so we are seeing the tap, if you sort of will, turn back on for those defence projects.
It's certainly not back at what it was, but we are seeing a continual growth in the number of defence projects coming to market again. So I would anticipate that that will return, whether it's returning over a 12 month period or a two to three year period, will very much depend on, yeah, state and federal government or primarily federal government.
A question here on: Are there any research analysts at broking firms covering SHAPE on an ongoing basis?
Yes, we currently have about two firms that are providing research coverage on us at the moment.
A final question has come through: How is the health of your subcontractor base? Have any gone out of business?
Yeah, so like, well, there's obviously been a lot of insolvencies, particularly in the construction industry of late. So we're not immune from that as far as our subcontractors becoming insolvent. In saying that, though, there is very few. We do have a very good and strong subcontractor base that we've, you know, don't do a lot of work with. Our systems and processes, we do a lot of due diligence, financial checks, and, you know, and that, and our teams know the subcontractors well. So also, while they have gone broke, if you like, because of the duration of our projects or the shorter duration of the projects and the way that the payment claims and payments thereof are set up, we certainly are very well protected from any insolvencies of our subcontractors.
It is something we spend a lot of time talking to our subcontractors. We have good, strong relationships with them, as Scott mentioned, and we certainly do require them to be in good financial health to be able to deliver the amazing projects that we do, so we do spend a bit of time making sure that they are doing okay as well.
Thanks, Pete and Scott. That looks to be the last of the questions at the moment. If anyone does have any additional questions, feel free to email me. My details were at the bottom of the release. I'll pass back to you, Pete, for final comments.
No worries. Thanks, Mel. So yeah, as Mel mentioned, if there are any other comments, you know, whether you channel it through Mel or Scott and myself, very, very happy to have discussions with you or to answer any further queries you have. So that concludes our presentation this afternoon. So I hope you found that valuable in getting a more fulsome understanding of our FY 2024 results and the performance of SHAPE. Again, really pleasing to present such an outstanding set of results. We're very proud of that, very proud of our teams across the country that have helped us and who have driven those results. I would like to say thank you to our shareholders for your ongoing support and our growing shareholder base, which is great to see.
Also, a thank you to our board of directors for their ongoing support, guidance, and assistance. So look forward to keeping you all up to date, and communicating as much as we can, in the future. Yeah, I'll see you soon. Thank you very much.