Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Smart Parking results presentation for the FY 2021 half year results. This morning, I have Paul Gillespie, CEO, and Richard Ludbrook, CFO, joining us. The format of today's presentation will be that Paul and Richard will present an overview. If I could ask you please to remain on mute during the main presentation, that would be appreciated. Following their presentations, we'll be pleased to take questions. Thank you again for joining us. On that, I'll hand over to Paul.
Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining me for Smart Parking's FY 2021 first half results call. I'm here in Melbourne. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Richard Ludbrook, who is in Auckland. Today, I'll take you through the H1 performance, business updates, and provide you with our outlook for the second half and beyond. Before we move forward, I want to focus on three key points. The business is performing well in this environment. There are clearly challenges in today's climate, however, I'm not here to make COVID excuses for the business. I'm pleased to say we focus on controlling what we can control and maintaining a keen focus on our recovery and growth strategy. I'm proud to say we've done that, and the results reflect this positive approach. The second point I'd like to make, we're delivering key milestones in our growth strategy.
We've added 27% to our installed portfolio, with 576 sites under management at December 31st. We continue to win blue-chip customers like KFC and Gatwick Airport, and this demonstrates we're getting on with the job of executing our plan. Three, we're significantly expanding our future earnings potential. We reaffirm our target of 1,000 sites under management by June 2023. We have line of sight on this number with a clear plan of execution, and we are confident that with focus on delivery, we will continue to grow our earnings well into the future. If we turn now to slide three. Thank you. Clearly, there is a lot of negativity coming out of the U.K. with lockdowns and high transmission rates and large cases reported daily. Despite this, we're performing well. There's a lot of green areas on this slide all pointing in the right direction, I'm pleased to say.
As I mentioned a moment ago, we've grown our U.K. estate by a further 85 sites in the half, and adjusted EBITDA margin is up 210 basis points on PCP. PBNs are up 40% on COVID lows, and we have cash of AUD 9.3 million. Added to this, we've settled the long-running VAT dispute with HMRC, which means we get a further AUD 2.9 million of cash refunded to us in the second half. Moving to slide four. We saw a strong recovery in the U.K. during the half, and we believe we're past the low point of this pandemic. We grew our managed services business in both installations and revenue from the COVID low point. We've won new business across the group with a clear path to our long-term growth target of 1,000 sites under management by June 2023, as I mentioned a moment ago.
With a strong pipeline for the second half, we are on track to achieve our growth objectives. As well as services, we continue to win new business projects in the technology business, with a further 2,500 sensors being sold to new customers. Staying with technology, we've completed new development projects delivering new IP that will strengthen our technology offering, benefit new and existing customers, and of course, drives future earnings. In New Zealand, our newly established services business is gaining momentum and we're winning new contracts and installing new sites. This project is in the early stages of growth, but we're happy with the progress to date and are excited with what we can achieve in this market. As I mentioned earlier, we've resolved the long-running VAT dispute with HMRC.
This has been frustrating for me, our team, and of course, shareholders, and we're pleased with this favorable outcome, meaning we write back AUD 6.9 million from the P&L and gain a cash refund of AUD 2.9 million. This is a pleasing result. After some challenges in the last year, we are expecting a strong Q4 performance, particularly as the U.K. vaccine rollout continues, we add new sites and customers, and we gain the positive impact of seasonality through the spring and summer. Finally, before I hand over to Richard, as a signal to the board's confidence and given the settlement and proceeds from the resolution of the VAT dispute, we are announcing today an on-market share buyback. The program can commence in mid-March once the regulatory requirements are complete.
We will be steady and disciplined in our purchases, and remember, there are trading blackout periods where we won't be active. We expect the buyback to be earnings accretive. Put simply, we believe the share price is undervalued and that committing capital to enhancing earnings per share is a good thing for all shareholders. I'll now hand over to Richard, who will take you through the finance slides.
Thanks, Paul. I'll start with slide 6, where you will see revenue of AUD 10.2 million is down 20% on H1 FY20 due to the impact of COVID-19. However, the company saw a strong recovery, with revenue in H1 FY21 up 35% compared to H2 FY20 as the volume of activity rebounded. Despite the fall in revenue, the group-adjusted EBITDA profit of AUD 1.4 million was down AUD 0.2 million as a result of cost-saving initiatives in FY20 and up AUD 3.6 million on H2 FY20. More detail on the cost reductions is included on slide eight. As Paul said, the company settled its long-running VAT dispute with HMRC, resulting in a one-off benefit of AUD 6.9 million in the first half.
The VAT settlement will also result in increased profitability in future periods, given the lower input VAT restriction related to issuing Parking Breach Notices. The pre-tax profitability in FY20 would have been AUD 1.7 million higher had the methodology agreed on the settlement applied during FY20. Moving to slide seven, revenue in the parking management division decreased 25% to AUD 8.7 million on the back of reduced Parking Breach Notices. While Parking Breach Notices were down 28% for H1 FY21, they were up 40% compared to H2 FY20, as the division experienced a strong recovery. Site under management increased by 27% compared to a year ago. A restructure of the U.K. management team and field-based staff in December 2019, combined with the changes made in H2 FY20, resulted in a 28% reduction of personnel costs compared to the prior comparative period.
EBITDA of AUD 2.8 million was up from a loss of AUD 400,000 in H2 FY20, with the recovery in activity levels and cost-saving initiatives. We will see growth accelerating as the U.K. restrictions are eased, the impacted sites that have been suspended during the pandemic come online, and from the 226 new sites that have been installed during the last 18 months. Paul will talk to the recovery later in more detail. Technology revenue of AUD 2.3 million was down AUD 1.1 million due to projects being delayed. The company implemented a cost reduction program, with personnel costs reducing 39% compared to the prior comparative period, and this resulted in a 61% reduction in the EBITDA loss compared with the prior comparative period.
The outlook for this division is for revenue to recover, and the company has firm orders for installations of AUD 3.9 million, although the timing of recognition for this is uncertain given the evolving situation. Slide eight shows the 29% reduction in costs. Staff costs comprising 70% of total overheads were down 27% following reduction in the group's headcount in the last 12 months. The services headcount reduced by 24%, and the technology and R&D headcount was down 36% combined. Other costs, including travel and motor vehicle costs, were down as a result of lower activity and due to the restrictions in place. Moving on to slide nine, this shows the group maintains a strong balance sheet and is well-placed to fund growth strategies. The group has AUD 9.3 million of cash and, as Paul said, will receive another AUD 2.9 million in H2 from HMRC as part of the VAT settlement.
The company drew down a U.K. Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme for GBP 2.7 million. The term of the loan is 4 years. It's interest-free for the first year. Principal and interest repayments commence in September. As Paul already mentioned, the group has announced a share buyback today of AUD 5 million. Slide 10 shows the group has free cash flow of AUD 1.4 million, up 136% on the prior comparative period. The group incurred AUD 800,000 of capital investment, primarily related to the deployment of camera technology in the U.K., which will contribute to future earnings growth. Just a reminder on how the business model for the U.K. parking management division works. Each site costs approximately GBP 8,000 to install.
On a pre-COVID basis, each site generates 80 new Parking Breach Notices per month, generating revenue of GBP 2,300 per month per site and an incremental EBITDA margin of 65%, which give a payback of 5-6 months. This has increased to 7-9 months with COVID. Contracts are typically for three years. I'll now hand back to Paul to provide a business update.
Thank you, Richard. If we look now to slide 12, please. As I referenced at the top of the deck, we're bullish on our recovery. This chart shows the impact of COVID-19 and how the drop in car count and PBNs impacted the business in March, April, and May of last year. You also see the recovery that took place from April to July, with PBNs issued increasing sixfold. This period of time is also impacted by positive seasonality, which we expect to see in the second half, and particularly in Q4, as restrictions begin to ease. As the vaccinations continue to be rolled out, we're up to and over 18 million people now, the positive impact of seasonality and the greater number of sites under management, we are confident we'll see a stronger recovery than that of last year.
Looking at slide number 13, you'll see our site reconciliation. This is data we update for the market on a regular basis, given the importance of new sites to our business. On this slide, you can see how we are growing the estate, but just as important, we're reaffirming our long-term growth target of 1,000 sites under management by 2023. We are on track to meet this number. We also continue to diversify our portfolio as we operate across many sectors, in particular retail, transportation, healthcare, leisure, land agents, and residential markets. I also need to remind you that the total addressable market in the U.K. is a potential 45,000 off-street parking sites. We believe we have great people, best-of-breed technology, excellent customer service, and a focused team.
It's this mix that will allow us to beat the competition and grow market share and take us to the 1,000 sites and beyond. On slide 14. You'll see here we have multiple drivers for growth as the U.K. returns to a pre-COVID world. As retail, leisure, and hospitality open up again, and with positive impacts of seasonality, we believe we will see a return to higher numbers of cars visiting our sites and see a return to average stay times across the estate, which is very important. As this occurs, we will see a growth in PBNs issued. Our current average PBNs issued per site per month is 54. Pre-COVID, as Richard pointed out, this was over 80. As sites come back online and life returns to normal, we'll have an additional 100 sites under management, and this will translate to revenue.
Added to this, we've worked incredibly hard on our cost base. We have AUD 3 million of annualized savings. When you put this together with positive seasonality, vaccine rollout, and greater sites under management, it's clear to see why we're positive on Q4. On slide 15, while COVID dominates the headlines, the structural move to smart cities has continued. We're well-placed to benefit from this trend. We're also leveraging our technology into new customer groups to expand our addressable market. With many of our customers still being local authorities, we're now doing more and more into infrastructure, transportation, and retail. We're winning new business due to the best-of-breed technology and customers seeing the true value of the information our technology can generate and also how they can use this to manage their business.
We have over AUD 3.9 million of booked orders. We have delivered new innovative products to market, particularly our new enforcement and compliance management system that is gaining market momentum. You can see more detail on these products on slide 16. Moving to slide 17. In conclusion, we're encouraged by the first half results. To deliver growth and improved margins through a period of operational challenges highlights the strength of SPZ. We have multiple drivers for growth and have a bullish outlook for Q4. Vaccine programs will generate more activity. Our earnings power is also greatly enhanced by the growth in sites under management. We have the resources, both in terms of capital and capability to execute. I believe our results show that.
I'd like to thank the whole team at SPZ for their dedication and commitment, and look forward to keeping you all up to speed as we make more progress. That now concludes my presentation. I'd like to open the lines for Q&A.
People, if you'd like to ask a question, please take yourself off mute. Thank you.
Hi, guys. Since everyone's being so shy, I'll ask one. How are you fellas?
Good, Gary. How are you?
Not bad. The buyback. Just go through what's the real logic of putting that in that we can all see the share price is where it is, but are there other factors that's therein the element that the business was approached a little while ago about being acquired? Is there a reason why we need to get the share price up? That'd be one sort of question. The second one is, let's talk about your ability to accelerate site business, because I'm assuming. Hold on a second, guys. I'm just asking a question in this call. Hold on. Sorry, I'm in an office. I'm assuming that certain sectors will have seen competition diminish aggressively because of COVID factors and maybe that's happened in your own market.
Maybe if you give us a sense of your relative ability to go away and acquire sites and grow compared to your competition. Those are my questions.
I think I'll handle that one first if that's all right, Gary. What we saw after lockdown 1.0, we're calling it in the U.K., back in March, April, May last year, we took an aggressive decision. Obviously, worked very hard on our cost base, as we've talked about in some detail. I brought the sales team back quite early from furlough because I believe that gave them some first-mover advantage, and also, I was able to understand what was happening with our competition. A lot of our competition didn't want to mobilize as quickly, I saw that as an opportunity for us to get out there and essentially knock more doors and win business. Of course, through this period of lockdown, obviously November was slightly different.
This period of lockdown has been as harsh, if you like, as the original one from an activity perspective, and we have furloughed a lot of people for the right reasons. We have maintained a number of sales heads. We're still seeing whilst the pace hasn't been as high as I would like, certainly through this period of lockdown. It's significantly higher than what we had in April and May of last year, where we had no installations happening. From that perspective, I feel like we've got a good feel for where we're at with our competition. Whilst we're still signing contracts or winning contracts, the pace of installations is slow for obvious reasons, with getting onto site and access to sites and restrictions in place.
We've had to work around that and just do what we can. There's still a lot of competition out there, Gary. I think we, as I said a moment ago in my sort of closing piece, we've great sales people. We've spent money on beefing up that sales team, and we're going to continue to do that and grow that sales team. From that perspective, we're in good shape. Competition is what it is. Some are better than others. We can definitely see a few weak links, and we're trying to do what we can to capitalize on that. In terms of the buyback, as I mentioned a moment ago, we've obviously got some good momentum in the U.K. in terms of sites going in.
We're very positive about what's going to happen when things open up, certainly with the vaccine rollout. We're already seeing that now in terms of our car counts from January through to where we are today, it's significantly grown as people get lockdown fatigue. Also vaccines kick in. Also some positive news that came out of the government earlier this week, I should say. From that perspective, the VAT, a few other positive things going our way, we believe that it's a good use of capital. I believe it's good for the share price, good for all shareholders. That it's a good use of cash.
I'll ask another one. Technology business. Where is that on its journey to, I guess being, A, profitable and B, developing itself into a business that you want it to be a growth business and all that kind of stuff? Talk to us about what the position of that thing is now.
Sure. Key, there's been challenges with capital projects. You don't need to look too far from here in Melbourne, and had a meeting recently with Melbourne Airport, and how they've been impacted, and that would be a great customer for us. We actually don't have them yet, that'd be something that would be fantastic for us. Those kind of capital projects have slowed down as businesses and customers of ours have turned the CapEx taps off, so to speak, that we would normally talk to. Having said that, we've seen a big uplift in tendering, public tendering in particular, local government work. Whilst we're still waiting on a lot of decisions, there is an awful lot of activity in quoting and tendering happening. I think we've worked very hard on our cost base in that business, certainly after COVID-19, in our development team in particular.
We believe we're on our way to profitability. We set ourselves a target of being cash flow positive as soon as we can, and I think the results show for the first half that we've had a much better half in terms of profitability than we did in the prior comparative period. Should be better again in terms of the second half, if you like. Really it's challenging with capital projects. That's the hardest bit, I would say, Gary. On a positive note, we've got lots of activity, lots of tendering activity, particularly in the local government space. To us, we have great products out there and obviously launching new product as we have in recent months. That's getting good market momentum.
We are on that journey, as you know, Gary, towards where we want to get to, and obviously we set ourselves some pretty strong targets and we're making good progress.
Do you have any other questions?
Dave Curll. Could I just ask a follow-up question about the buyback? If I understand it correctly, the company is in receipt of a COVID business support loan. Just in terms of the optics, is it proposed that the buyback would be in place before that's paid back?
We plan to start the buyback within 14 days. That's a procedural restriction we have upon us. You have to remember, we took that loan because we thought that it was good at the time. Clearly, there was a lot of uncertainty around COVID-19 and what was happening, and it was a good interest rate. We took that loan because we wanted to obviously make sure we've got the CapEx in place to go ahead and keep installing sites as a big part of our growth in the U.K. and want to make sure we've got the CapEx there to do that. Now, clearly, we've had the positive news about VAT, so we're using some of that money to obviously help us with the buyback. That's really the focus, Dave.
We've got the loan taken down to really push our CapEx and keep driving sites in, hiring the right team members as and when things keep picking up or start picking up again. Yes, we wouldn't start paying that loan back until September this year.
Thank you. Just a follow-up. I understand that the Parking Association of the U.K., such that it is, have been having discussions with the government about arrangements and agreements for just the way charges operate. Is that going to have any significant effect on the business going forward?
The short answer is no. There's been a new parking bill going through, so more regulation for private parking operators. I actually see that as a good thing. We're the only public company operating in that space in terms of that private parking enforcement space. Of course, as a public company, we're held to much higher corporate governance, quite rightly, and account. Red tape and governance are something we do quite well. We understand, and we have a very strong risk and audit committee, and always have had a very strong risk and audit committee, I'm pleased to say. That ensures that we are, of course, always going to be doing the right thing. Now, a lot of our competitors don't have that experience.
If they're asked to operate slightly differently with more red tape, for example, that's not going to be good for them. I see it as positive news for us, and I also see it positive for the industry. Some more regulation will be a good thing. It allows us to just reaffirm what we're trying to do and reaffirms the fact that there's a lot of good stuff there for us to go and win and capitalize upon. No, in the short term, Dave, to answer your question, is no, it's not going to impact us. Longer term, I think it will impact on our competitors, which I do see as a good thing.
Okay, thanks.
We have time for more questions if anybody would like to ask one. [audio distortion] .
Why don't we go back to your closing remarks?
Okay. I guess really I'd just like to finish on sort of comments I made towards the end of the presentation, really around slide 17. I think we've still got slide 17 to show you. Yes, we do. I guess really, we're encouraged by what we've seen in the first half, and it has been a very challenging time for lots of people for many different reasons. Like I said right at the top of the deck, I don't want to sit here and make COVID excuses. We've had to make some tough decisions. We worked incredibly hard. The team have worked incredibly hard on our cost base and to get to the point we are today, we're very pleased with. We can't ignore the rest of the things happening in terms of we have multiple drivers for growth.
We are bullish on Q4, I think I've said that a number of times. I do think the vaccine program will generate more activity. Our earnings power is of course greatly enhanced by the growth in our sites under management. Importantly, we have the resources both in terms of people, capability, and also money, cash, capital, to execute our plan. I think our results show that. Those are the key things I'd like to make. We're focused on our long-term growth targets of 1,000 sites under management by 2023, and we're well on the way to making those numbers. Unless there are any further questions, thank you very much for joining, and that concludes our results call.