Good morning, and welcome to SHAPE Australia's webinar on the acquisition of Australian Professional Shopfitters. Presenting today is SHAPE CEO, Peter Marix-Evans, and CFO, Scott Jamieson. Today's format will run through a brief presentation followed by a Q&A session. I will now pass to Pete.
Thank you, Mel. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Obviously, a little bit of late notice, so really appreciate for those that could make it onto the call. There is a Q&A function on the call, so if you do have questions as we go along, please, yeah, throw them into that, and hopefully we'll have a bit of time at the end. First of all, yeah, wanted to welcome Australian Professional Shopfitters to the SHAPE Group. Really pleased to be able to confirm this acquisition. It's something we've been working with Sonny and Attinder and the team from APS for a little while now. We're really sort of excited about the opportunity that brings SHAPE coming into the group. You would've seen the slide deck, perhaps, on which will be up on the ASX.
Established in 1998, APS is a vertically integrated retail shopfitting business. They manufacture, they design, and install basically shopfitting joinery and the like across Australia, with a particular focus on leading brands for retail, again, across the country. The leading brands are importantly some really fantastic names that they work with. Long tenure, long relationships with those brands.
Importantly, in the retail sector, keeping things fresh and best-in-class design and really sort of well-presented materials is very important, and that ties into everything that APS do. They've got a 5,000 sq m facility in Melbourne. That facility is a fantastic operation. Very clean, focus on safety, focus on production, focus on their team there, keeping them both safe and very productive. Experienced in-house project management, so everything is internal. They do have some external subcontractors that they use for skilled labor, for installation predominantly.
Most of the manufacturing is carried out by APS staff. 80% of projects are valued at less than AUD 500,000, again, it's in keeping with the SHAPE DNA of shorter duration and larger number of projects. Strong alignment with SHAPE's strategy. We've talked before about wanting to increase our program, repeatable and program-based work, which aligns to everything we're doing with Modular and with the Arden acquisition that we did as well. Having a larger number of repeatable and, again, program-based work with key clients that value quality and value relationships. APS complements our existing retail capability, and we have talked recently about the Arden fit out and maintenance team. Certainly when we look at, for instance, Oxford Economics and those types of data, looking at three and five and beyond years, the non-residential construction starts.
Looking at where funds and where money will be spent, it certainly sits into that key strategic theme that we've identified there. FY 2025, revenue circa AUD 32.5 million. We expect that to generate a future maintainable EBITDA of circa AUD 5.3 million. The margins in the APS business, again, similar to the Arden acquisition, very accretive to the SHAPE and enhances the SHAPE group margin profile. Just a few of the fantastic brands that they work with there. Again, I won't go through necessarily the tenure for each of them, but you can see there that our top five clients through APS have an average tenure of approximately 12 years or beyond. Again, continual new retail clients coming to APS.
It also introduces SHAPE, and the SHAPE Group with Arden as well, to a number of additional retail brands with a strong ability to cross-sell across those capabilities and continue to deliver exceptional client service to those clients as well. Strategic rationale, I've talked a little bit about that already. I guess it does align to SHAPE's growth and strategy, diversification strategy, which we've talked about for some years now. They have a proven track record of profitability, aligning to SHAPE's growth and diversification. They also have exposure to highly repeatable segment of the retail market, focused on multi-store rollout, that's really important in that it's programmatic and it's repeatable. Good line of sight for pipeline across Australia, again, with those long-established tenures and relationships, we get to have a good view of that.
It strengthens SHAPE's offering, so it broadens our capability even further across the delivery chain, from design, procurement, and installation. The vertically integrated manufacturing. They've got a really strong background in procuring from overseas, so whilst they have full capability to manufacture in Australia, depending on time and number and quantities and that sort of stuff, they also have a very strong ability and good track record of being able to import from overseas, which is very important from a scale point of view.
Potential to support growth into programmed and repeatable work across adjacent sectors, and that's across the multifaceted SHAPE businesses. Talked there about the relationships. Again, very similar to the SHAPE business, where we really value those established relationships with our clients. APS certainly are well regarded by Australia's leading retail clients, which is fantastic. Experienced team with a national reach.
Whilst the manufacturing facility is located in Melbourne, as we mentioned, in 5,000 sq m there, they also have a trusted nationwide network of skilled subcontractors, again, very similar to the SHAPE business, which is able to meet the clients' needs nationally, whilst being managed at a central point with the APS customer experience sort of banner across.
Average tenure for the key management, 15 years. Again, those strong and long tenures indicate the culture, and the alignment between SHAPE and APS, which is fantastic. The management team have a great stay-on. So, they will continue to lead both the day-to-day operations and the future. I mentioned on the last slide that the APS coming into the group will enhance the margin profile for SHAPE earnings and normalized EPS, expected to be accretive immediately, certainly in the first full year of ownership.
Couple of glossies there just to sort of give you an indication across the skill set with design, manufacturing, product management, and logistics, even the investment in this best-in-class systems and best-in-class manufacturing equipment. You can see there with the level of investment that they've got there, even logistically into a fleet, so that they're able to, I guess, control their own destiny from a delivery point of view, particularly with those, like I say, those national retail clients, where time is of the essence. Yeah, strong investment in the business over the years, yeah, supported by those long tenures of clients.
I'll jump in and talk a little bit about the acquisition overview. Late last night, we entered into a binding agreement to acquire 100% of the issued capital of APS. That was made up of an upfront consideration of AUD 20.4 million, plus the ability for the previous owners to earn up to AUD 9 million in contingent consideration over a two-year earn-out.
As Pete indicated, the acquisition of APS is expected to be earnings accretive in our first year of ownership, and delivering what we expect to be an accretion of somewhere between 5%-7% on a normalized earnings basis. The existing leadership team, as Pete talked about, given their long tenure, and key to the functioning of the business, will continue to run the day-to-day operations, post-transaction. As far as the funding goes, the upfront consideration is broken into two components.
The first component being a cash component of AUD 17.4 million, and AUD 3 million in SHAPE scrip. The transaction will be on a cash-free, debt-free basis, subject to a normal working capital adjustment. We'll be taking on that business with a normal level of working capital within that business. The equity component, that's been calculated on the 10-day VWAP up to and including the date prior to the execution of the agreement. That equates to 396 odd thousand SHAPE shares. These shares will be escrowed for 12 months. The contingent consideration, which is the earn-out period, that'll operate, as I talked about before, for two years. It'll be covering the FY 2027 and FY 2028 years. We do expect to complete the transaction.
There's the normal CPs involved that we need to get across the line, one of those being the ACCC, with the mergers and acquisitions and the new rules that apply there. The contingent consideration will be split 50/50 by cash and 50% in SHAPE shares. Again, that will be based on a 10-day VWAP, but that VWAP calculation will be utilizing the 10 days prior to the issue of the SHAPE's annual results for each of those FY 2027 and FY 2028 years.
That means that assuming that they hit the required hurdles and the maximum total consideration payable is AUD 29.4 million. The key with this acquisition as Pete touched on earlier, is that as we continue to grow our top line, we want to thicken our margins. We want to thicken those margins from a gross margin perspective, but more importantly, down to the net profit and the net profit after tax line item. I'll pass back to Mel, if there's any Q&A online.
Yes, we do. We have a couple of analysts who'd like to ask questions live. I might start with John Hynd at Petra. John, you may just have to unmute. John, are you there?
Thanks. Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yeah, we can hear you, John.
Morning, gents. Well done with this one. Can we talk about the operations a little bit more? I guess is the duration similar to your current book? Can you talk about average times on site and perhaps the pipeline within APS or work in hand for APS at the moment.
Morning, John, thank you. The size of the projects are less than the size of the SHAPE's BAU projects. 80% of the projects are less than AUD 500,000, as Pete indicated. In saying that, though, the average project size is probably closer to AUD 200,000 - AUD 250,000. They do a range of sizes. Generally, that range is between sort of AUD 50,000- AUD 800,000. Largest project they've done is about AUD 2.4 million. When you talk about duration, typically that's sort of three to four weeks, whereas the SHAPE's around about 16 weeks. The projects are smaller, quicker, and obviously subject to less volatility as far as any sort of level of price fluctuations go.
Yeah. Okay. What about, because culture's obviously pretty important at SHAPE across all of your offices. How did you assess how compatible you were with APS? Also, can you talk through employees on site? Like you're obviously employee light, subcontractor or contractor light. How does APS compare?
Yeah. I'll start with the culture piece, and yeah, rightly, as you mentioned, culture is very important to SHAPE. Our only asset is our people, so we're very conscious of employing the right people, keeping them engaged, and then they go and do amazing things for our clients. It's a fairly simple profit service chain in hire great people and keep them engaged. It started off by meeting with Sonny and Attinder, the owners. The way that we ask them questions, the way that we talk about their team, if you look at the tenure of their employees, and just the way that they talk about their employees and the remuneration structures that they're on, it's fairly easy to identify quite quickly as to whether or not there's any care from the owners to the employees.
We established that very quickly, and were able to get down there. Scott, myself, Kate, our head of P&C and marketing and comms, spent a bit of time with the owners. Obviously we go through a full DD process, both from an employment, financial, legal, et cetera. That's on that side, and yeah, we're very comfortable with that. Culture fit. You can change revenue, you can change clients, you can change a whole heap of things, but the culture is a difficult thing to change. That fit is very important, so we're very comfortable with that. From an employee basis, typically, as I've mentioned, they've got project management in-house, estimating in-house, BD in-house, all the way through to the skilled tradespeople in the manufacturing facility.
Then outside of that, there's sort of supervisors that supervise nationally, but again, similar to the SHAPE business, rely on a national network of trusted subcontract providers. Similar to SHAPE, those relationships with those subcontractors are long-term relationship, and very sort of transparent in that APS are able to share with those installers their upcoming pipeline.
One of the good things about working with the brands that they work with is that they don't decide to do a fit-out next week from today. They have a planned rollout of stores, which has a level of transparency around it. A lot of those clients, for the logos that we put up earlier, APS are pretty much sole source to do all of their work because they're that trusted provider. Yeah, again, it's similar in many ways to both the SHAPE business and also the Arden business from that point of view.
Got it. Probably for Scott, there's obviously a reasonable asset base. Does it come with land as well or?
No. What they've got is they rent a 5,000 meter facility in Melbourne. There's no land. There's property, plant, and equipment. You're looking at sort of AUD 1.82 million. That's primarily made up of, so there's motor vehicles, and you saw on the slide there, they do have some trucks which they use for logistics. There's some of the equipment that they have inside of the factory, and of course, then there's the office equipment and desks and bits and pieces. It's not actually that capital intensive. Some of those machines that they have, they've recently acquired a new machine to increase efficiencies, and that machine was about AUD 260,000. It's certainly not capital intensive.
Yeah. Right. What, would D&A change of or addition of sort of AUD 400 ,000-AUD 500,000 a year or?
That depends if you're just including the P&E. Yeah. From a normalized point of view, you're taking up the D&A. Those numbers aren't too far off. The other thing for consideration, which obviously there's no cashflow impact, but of course, as part of the PPA or the purchase price acquisition, when we look at the intangibles and the allocation thereof in relation to customer relationships and things like that, there'll be some amortization in relation to that too.
Right. Sorry, last one from me. I'm not sure if you sort of answered the previous one. How does this change your pipeline with retail? I think it was about 2% in the first half of 2026. I guess it's more reflective of the work in hand and how they recognize the pipeline as well. It sounds like it's quite drawn, like it's long-term and transparent.
Yeah. I think that'll continue to change and probably, the last wagon wheel graphs that we have produced have predominantly been either revenue and or the FY 2026 first half. When we put out the full year, you'll see a bit of a change in there just with, obviously, because Arden have a lot of retail as well. Yeah, that will continue to grow that piece of the pie. Particularly their key clients being Adairs, Bed Bath N' Table, Forever New, Kathmandu, OPSM, Samsonite, Shaver Shop. There's some sort of large brands there that have just a continual both rollout of new stores, but also a refresh.
Yeah. You just don't want to quantify that right now, Pete?
Well, I guess if we look at pipeline, from what we can see right here, right now, there'd be AUD 13 million-AUD 20 million in pipeline of those projects just with APS. When I add that to the SHAPE retail, and then to the Arden retail, that'll sort of expand again.
Okay. Great. That's really helpful. Thank you very much.
John?
Yeah.
We have Eric Rolls from Moelis. Rolls, are you there?
Yeah. Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Yep.
G'day.
Morning, Rolls.
G'day, guys. Yep. G'day, Pete.
How are you?
G'day, Scott. Hey, can you talk a little bit about, you've sort of alluded to in the slide deck, the offering that APS brings to the adjacency that you did with Arden and how you envisage that offering to be once the two businesses are potentially aligned and integrated in the SHAPE business. Where do you see this business in 12 months time as part of SHAPE, as part of Arden?
Yeah. I think it's a really exciting opportunity because if we just take APS by itself, a fantastic client base, good, strong track record of growth organically, just by themselves. A strong focus on able to produce joinery, but a strong focus on shop fitting. If you look at what Arden do, again, heavily focused on the fuel retail, but a lot of shop fitting as well. The ability to cross-sell between just those two groups represents a good opportunity for the group. In saying that, APS couldn't possibly satisfy all of either Arden's or SHAPE's requirements. We need to maintain our current relationships with both joinery and manufacturing subcontractors. Also if you look at it from a SHAPE point of view, we spend circa AUD 80 million on joinery across the country every year, and that continues to grow.
There'll be, again, potential, depending on APS workload, for some cross-selling there, to be able to support SHAPE around the country. APS are already manufacturing in Victoria or in Melbourne and transporting across the country, to satisfy all of their clients. Basically wherever their clients are is where they go, and their clients are national businesses. Yeah, there's a strong opportunity for cross-selling there. As far as where they are in 12 months, it's again, fairly similar to the SHAPE business, and anyone that's been on a call with me would have heard me say that our ability to grow is mostly restricted by our ability to hire, onboard, and retain fantastic people.
Again, the APS will fall into that category. With manufacturing, as we've learned with the modular business that we acquired and the modular business we started in SA, it's all about how do you maximize throughput through that factory. I think there's a strong ability within the group to assist APS in keeping those throughput levels and manufacturing levels very high. Yeah, good opportunity.
Good. Thank you. Can you talk about organic growth of APS? What does that historically mean?
The revenue for APS, even if you just go back over the last three years. FY 2023 was about AUD 27 million, FY 2024, AUD 28 million. The most recent full years that, as we disclosed, AUD 32.5 million. It's steadily increasing. I think now obviously with the backing of SHAPE and the assistance and support and the opportunities and the cross-selling that Pete's talked about, obviously the idea of that is to increase the throughput in the factory.
Yeah.
They're currently running at about 45% of capacity.
Got it.
Ability within that factory. We'll look to, obviously next steps are how do we continue to diversify. Grow the business with the support of the previous vendors and their broader team.
I think, just to jump on the back of that, it's worthwhile acknowledging Sonny and Attinder, the vendors that we have joined forces with here. Both Sonny and Attinder have developed a really strong understanding for manufacturing. When I talk to them, they both sort of interact over each other, talking about how to get efficiencies. The new machine is a Woodtron flatbed CNC. That doesn't mean a lot to me yet, but in, I'm sure, in coming months it will.
Just their forward-thinking and, because that was part of their growth strategy, regardless of an acquisition that they've purchased it, and looking for continual ways to be more efficient, and to produce more out of that facility. As Scott said, at circa 50% capacity. It's pretty rare you get a manufacturing facility up to 100%, because if you do, then you're probably in the wrong location or the wrong facility. There's certainly an opportunity to enhance that.
Got it. Sorry, final question from me, Scotty. You're just spending AUD 17.5 million out of existing cash reserves. Where does that leave the balance sheet and the cash position of the company and the ability now to go forward to do You've done Arden three months ago, you've done APS, the ability of these bolt-on acquisitions going forward, given how the balance sheet looks like? Can you just comment on that a bit?
Yeah. This is aimed to go through on 1 July or thereabout, certainly post 30th of June. We would look to look at other facilities or forms of facilities. Purely, as you talk about with the balance sheet and the support of the balance sheet, primarily that is just for certain ratios and liquidity and those sorts of things, to support the criteria for external financial assessments and pre-qualifications and the like. As you know, we do carry a large cash balance. At any given time at the end of the month, generally we're sort of around about AUD 120 million, AUD 130 million odd.
That does fluctuate through the course of the month, through the payment runs. The lowest we got in this financial year is circa AUD 60 million. We've got AUD 60 million there of funds that we could use, and if we took that out of the business, it actually wouldn't change the operations and the way the business functioned. What it would do, though, it would restrict our ability to tender for certain projects because there's all of those ratios that need considered. That's something that's a work in progress at the moment, which will be all sort of set up and a few little things done there at the start of the next financial year.
Thank you. Thanks, Scott.
Thanks, Rollsy. Guys, we have Abe from EMP.
Yep
You're on.
Thanks. Can you hear me, guys?
Yeah. Good morning, Abe.
Okay. Just got some quick housekeeping questions.
Sure.
You've given us the EBITDA margin. Do you mind sharing the gross margin? I might have missed it in the opening remarks.
Yeah. I don't think we necessarily talked about gross margin, but basically the gross margin will be double of our BAU in round numbers.
Got it. The BAU of the SHAPE business alone, I assume, not the Arden piece?
Yeah, that's right. Look, our BAU is sort of circa 9%, so we're expecting that to be at least double that.
Yeah. You made a call-out for the top five customers. Do you mind sharing what percentage of, I suppose, revenue they account for? Is that meaningful?
Top five's 40-odd percent of the revenue.
Your agreements with the customers, are they over several years, or do you have to re-tender every year for their upcoming fit outs and so on?
The agreements are, obviously a lot of them are negotiated, single select. Some of them, they're on a panel. Some of them, they are tendering. It is a combination.
It's a real combination. For some of those clients.
Okay
Abe, just going through the facility, I won't mention the clients, but they'll have manufactured items stored there for the clients that they haven't actually sold yet, but they just know because there's a rollout of 50 stores or whatever it is, and they do all the work. They can sometimes get programs brought forward because, again, it's similar to the SHAPE business, we respond to the clients' needs very quickly. There's a sort of a strong confidence level, I guess, from the team in that pipeline that is coming up.
Yeah. Awesome. You made mention about the pipeline being about AUD 20 million. Is that the same as backlog, or is the backlog a lot smaller than that number?
The backlog's probably half.
Yeah, the backlog is small. Look, they're working on projects of sort of circa AUD 8 million as we speak now. Given that the velocity of them, the actual backlog is what we would classify for SHAPE, is probably closer to AUD 3 million of backlog. Given the velocity at which they turn that over, it's obviously significantly different to the way SHAPE works. Obviously you're not going to be applying the same multiples to backlog on the future 12 months of revenue. We talk about sort of 1.8 to two. In this business, you're sort of up there at double digits.
Yeah. Makes sense. I suppose lastly from me, you call that joinery, part of your cost of goods accounting for AUD 80 million or so. Is there the potential to bring that all in-house through the acquisition by expanding their manufacturing capability or buying those machines that Peter may do homework on now?
Yeah. I wouldn't. There is certainly an ability to enhance the throughput from SHAPE revenue into the business. There's different joiners that operate at different levels, whether it be executive, client facing, heavily timber veneered or solid timber versus your back of house unit. It'll be a real combination and similar, again, to the SHAPE stuff, the SHAPE sort of ways of working. Where it's live environment, technically complex, that's where APS will really sort of come into their own similar to the SHAPE and the Arden businesses. Again, that DNA sort of threads its way through the group.
Yep. Awesome. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Scott.
Thank you.
Cheers, Abe.
Thanks, Abe. Just talking to the shop fitting sector, Pete, Scott, Matt from Moelis has asked, "Can you talk to the competition in that space and how APS are winning?
The way APS win is very similar to, again, the way SHAPE win, which is basically repeat business. When they go down, like say their top clients, like Bed Bath N' Table, they've got 15 projects in the pipeline for them. OPSM five, there's just a number of repeat business. The way they win is by doing a fantastic project and reacting very quickly for clients that basically, it's a revenue game for them because they need these shops, retail facilities open.
If you look at clients, sorry, top competitors, you've got people like Ramvek, the Johns Lyng Group, their shop fitting arm, One68 Leeda Projects, Associated Projects. That'd be probably the top five. Again, it's very fragmented, across all of those and certainly APS have focused on Australia's leading retail brands. Predominantly, not just because of the quality, but also because of that repeatable program, which just sort of gives them that good transparency of pipeline.
Great. I know you've touched on this. Could you just maybe let us know, of your joinery spend at SHAPE, what percentage could be manufactured internally at APS given the spare capacity you flagged?
That I could talk to. I don't actually have it on hand, but if you think about it logically, probably 60% of our joinery is upper end. We're talking timber veneer again. SHAPE work predominantly for ASX 100, 200 clients. When I say that 60%, the internals of all of those joinery carcasses, et cetera, are generally melamine and low cost framework. If you look at what could we throughput, we could probably add reasonably easily, AUD 5 million-AUD 10 million of revenue through that business, without impacting our existing supply chain. Again, that's not something you can just do tomorrow because, you can't just run the machines overnight without people. Again, it comes back to that, how quickly can we grow the employees and the tradespeople in that business.
Thanks, Pete. Scott, Phil from Shaw and Partners just has a few questions on the transaction. Could you talk to us about, the D&A looks to be about AUD 2 million. Is that correct?
Of the D&A? No, I think that's a little excessive. There's going to be the PP&E component of the D&A. Of course there'll be depending on how you want to treat AASB 16. If you take AASB 16 into account, yes, you're probably closer to one and a half or thereabouts. Obviously, still to be determined exactly what those numbers are through the purchase price allocation.
Just on the earn-outs, what are the hurdles, KPIs there?
The earn-outs will kick in slightly above where the current EBITDA is. It’ll be a pro rata, through to a maximum earn-out, which is significantly above where the current EBITDA is.
Thank you. We've just got a question. The cash pro forma after the acquisition, what would that look like?
When you talk about the cash pro forma, it's basically straight after. Initially out of the acquisition, AUD 17 million will come out, basically straight out of the cash at bank.
Thank you. Then Phil at Shaw and Partners asked what was the completion date.
We're aiming for the 1st of July. That's all subject to the conditions precedent. There's a bunch of conditions precedent, and of course, there's the ACCC that we need to get across that line, which we couldn't start that process until we had the executed agreement.
This is the first time we've been through the ACCC's new M&A requirements, we're getting through it so far.
When I say we couldn't start, we couldn't lodge. We've done all of the work, and that's in a position now that we can lodge that. We're certainly hoping that the ACCC will turn that around relatively quickly. We are cautiously optimistic that everything will be all done, ready for the 1st of July.
Thank you. Pete, Ben from Ord Minnett is just asking, what's the typical cycle of a retail fit-out? Is it, for example, five years?
It's very different for each of them, but it's far less than the commercial office. If you think about commercial office leases are generally seven plus three. People that walk into a retail shop like yourself and myself, we're very easily distracted. These leading national brands are constantly refreshing, not just their store, but their offerings. For instance, they'll change what they're selling and a lot of what APS do relates to showcasing product. If they're changing a certain type of equipment or item that they're retailing, that will have bespoke joinery and cabinetry made for that item. There's sort of a constant refresh. I couldn't necessarily put a time on it, but the leases are shorter than commercial offices, so that drives that. Also, the product is constantly changing.
Thanks, Pete. John Hynd has a few more questions. John, I'll ask you to unmute yourself.
Thanks, Mel. Guys, were APS a subcontractor of yours before? You've worked together previously?
They have worked with us, but not for some time.
Okay, you have a specified subcontractor for this sort of work now, or how does it all work now?
We've got over 1,700 subcontractors across the country.
Country, yeah.
It depends on the level of joinery. Like say if we're doing a executive front of house for a law suite versus a call center, they're completely different subcontractors that we would use. In talking to the APS team around why haven't you done more work for SHAPE, the answer was that SHAPE are too hard to work for because we keep asking them for pricing versus their current clients who understand the pricing and value and time is actually more important. Not to say that price is not important. Yeah, like I say, there's a huge opportunity there to cross-sell.
Right. You mentioned a few times as well, I think, in the presentation that they've got a good supplier base. Does that mean, like the particleboard, that that comes out of China or it's all Asia or are you sourcing that domestically? What are you trying to tell us there?
The particleboard comes from wherever the particleboard comes from. They buy in bulk and get whatever appropriate deals. When we're talking about the offshore and the manufacturing and ability to import, it's more around product. For instance, they might, say it's a Kathmandu store, they will create in-house the unit that's going to showcase that particular hiking boot or whatever it is that Kathmandu are sort of focusing on. Depending on the number of stores, if it's one to 10, they'll make it here in Australia. If they're going to then order 200 of them, they'll actually send a couple of prototypes over to their factory in China. When I say their factory, they don't own it, they just have longstanding relationships. Because importing from China, there's China imports and there's China imports, and the quality level can vary.
It's key to have those relationships with the appropriate quality of manufacturer over there. Yeah, they can build it here, but they can also, when it's on scale and you're doing 200 units, they can create some significant efficiencies in their costing by pulling it in from overseas.
Okay. Last one from me. Why this one and why now? You seem to be doing quite well building into retail. You talk about in Coles and you talk about the inroads you're making with Arden. It sounds like it's adding a little bit of complexity probably to your day, Pete. What's the lever that this is pulling? Is it essential to help you grow into the retail space and add critical mass?
With everything government, there's organic growth. You can build or buy. We're doing both. If you look at the Modular, we bought one business, we built one business. You get earlier traction when you buy. Obviously, you pay for goodwill and different things that will sit on the balance sheet. It's around that different traction. If you look at how and what really attracted us to APS was the fact that it could cross-sell into SHAPE, but also into Arden, because if you look at a lot of the stuff that Arden do, it is shop fitting. However, they use external shop fitters as a large part of their spend. When I talk about the joinery spend for SHAPE, I haven't even mentioned the joinery spend for Arden, which I don't have at hand.
The why now is we've been talking to this business for probably 12 months at least. Like everything SHAPE do, it's considered. We don't rush into things. The DD process needs to be the DD process. I guess, yeah, as I've sort of mentioned to many of you, we're constantly assessing potential opportunities for how they might fit into the SHAPE Group to continue that expansion. This just gives us another footprint into the retail sector, which we see as a strong growth for the future, particularly when, like I say, we look at non-residential construction starts over the next three to five years, and ongoing and repeatable and all those sorts of things. Short duration, generally carried out inside. It's got all the sort of, like I say, the DNA aspects that we like.
Great. Thanks very much, guys.
No problems.
Scott, we have one last question. What's the lease repayment for APS?
The total repayment at the moment for that facility and outgoings is circa AUD 600 thousand.
Great. Thank you. That's the last of the questions. If anyone needs any other questions answered, my details are at the end of the release. Pete, I'll pass back to you for final comments.
No worries. Thank you, Mel, and thank you for hosting us. Thank you to everyone who joined us on the call. No doubt, Scott and I will catch up with many of you in the near future. I would like to again offer another warm welcome to the APS team, Sonny and Attinder, and thank them for their patience. Really excited about the transaction in how this fits into the SHAPE Group with SHAPE and Arden and APS, and how that will enhance our ability to continue to service our clients, and expand that footprint to again continue to allow us to diversify and continue to grow the business. Again, thanks again, and we'll catch up soon.