Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Vulcan Steel Limited FY 2023 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero, and finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Rhys Jones, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, to begin the conference. Rhys, over to you.
Thank you, and welcome everybody, to the FY 2023 results presentation for Vulcan Steel. If you just go to the next slide, please. And then the next one, please. Yes. So this year's been a challenging year with the economic headwinds or tailwinds turning to headwinds quite rapidly. We also had the challenge of integrating a large acquisition in terms of Ullrich Aluminium. Overall, we felt the year went particularly well.
Despite all those challenges, the company's come forward very well with a solid result. But more importantly, we've positioned a platform where we can really grow strongly from here with this aluminum acquisition. Next page, please. And next page. Next page, please. Performance highlights. So the key element to focus here on is that revenue grew by 28% to NZD 1.245 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA, inclusive of the NZD 10 million that we had as reintegration costs at Ullrich Aluminium, resulted in NZD 219 million. NZD 95 million profit after tax. The key highlights for us were the operating cash flow, NZD 145 million. This is mainly due to inventory reduction.
As the supply chain came back online, you got a spurt of extra product, that's then being dissipated, as well as the slower economic demand, plus we had aluminum, which is well and truly overstocked. So a number of factors there, but the overall operating cash flow of NZD 145 million was very solid. Reduced our debt, which was roughly NZD 400 million when we acquired Ullrich, down to NZD 340 million, and we're progressively lowering our debt as we speak.
A key element too I wanna focus on is that our return on capital employed for this year pre-IFRS it was 32% and post-IFRS was 21%. Again, solid numbers given the circumstance of acquiring a business that needed a lot of surgery and the distractions of a tough economic environment. Next slide, please. Just a quick summary of the Vulcan business. We're a value-added distributor and metal processor. You can see we're in two key divisions, steel and metals. Steel composes steel distribution, plate processing, and coil processing. What we like to do is progressively go down the value chain and further process materials. Similarly, with metals, we've got stainless steel, engineering steels, and now aluminum. Again, further processing of stainless and aluminum and engineering steel is one of our core elements.
I'd like to highlight the fact that our geographic split is basically 2:1, Australia to New Zealand, and we're widely distributed right across all elements or all geographies within Australasia. In terms of market segments, we've got very strong access, for example, mining, through engineering steels in Australia, through to sheet metal and coil processing or engineering with the steel distribution, fabrication through steel and steel manufacturing. And we also have food and agriculture very strongly in stainless steel. So transport industry is plate cutting. So you've got all these different market segments we're exposed to by division, by different ratios, but what we've got is great diversity between geography and market segment split. In terms of customer buying power over us, we've got 13% of our clients. Top 20 clients represent 13% of our total sales.
This graphic does not include aluminum, so I think it'll be dissipated further. Aluminum is characterized by a large number of smaller clients. We have very few, very large clients. So again, the overall dynamic here is favorable to the business's performance going forward. Next slide, please. Just to recap our growth strategy and update. Brownfields expansion, it's all about growing the existing client base or selling multiple products to existing customers. It's an ongoing focus across 70-odd sites across Australasia, and that's a metric we track on a weekly basis. Entry into new geographies. We've expanded significantly over time into all parts of Australia and New Zealand. That program will continue, and we've identified a number of new opportunities to expand further in Australia. Expansion of products and or service offerings. Very specifically, we've added the aluminum product range in FY 2023.
Massive number of opportunities there to expand that further, particularly combining with stainless steel. We've had made 11 successful mergers since 1995. Ullrich Aluminium is one of the larger ones. We believe it's been a very successful acquisition to date, and we're making solid progress in consolidating into it, into our business and developing the Vulcan business model for this new unit. In terms of business improvement, 14-17 growth initiatives we previously identified now have revenue generation. We believe that will progressively grow and contribute further in coming quarters. Next slide, please. As you can see from this slide, is that there's a huge number of branches right across Australasia. I'd just like to point out, we've got now 1,360 employees over 72 sites.
We're developing a number of these sites to become hybrid sites, where they sell two products, for example, aluminum and stainless. I'd also like to highlight to you that there's 12,000 active customers, but that doesn't include our Aluminum Australian business. We only went live on IT in May, therefore, we don't have the customer number accuracy of six months. In the February update, we'll provide that, but we believe it'll be in excess of 20,000 clients by that date, when that's included.
Next slide, please. In terms of the Vulcan Aluminium Integration Program, key point there was getting the culture right. Aluminum will become part of our metals division. Now, we've got the key operational teams in place. We've made a number of management changes within that business. That's now settled down. People are very motivated.
They understand exactly what's expected, and that's going well. The business rebranding will progress over time, particularly in Australia, we'll move away from the Ullrich name. In New Zealand, that'll be a slower process, but over time, we'll be more advanced towards a Vulcan Metals branding and nomenclature. In terms of aluminum procurement, we've combined the aluminum procurement process for Australia and New Zealand. That's been hugely beneficial to the business and tidied up all elements of procurement, so stock availability has improved significantly across Australasia. A key highlight in the last 11 months has been the IT system. We've moved across to the existing Vulcan IT Abel System. Remember, November, December last year, we put New Zealand on. We used that as a trial for Australia, which is a much larger unit.
Australia went live in May, so we completed by June 30, all of Ullrich on our IT system. That's now settled down, and we're making progress, and enables us to develop the business to a greater degree. We've also exited the fabrication business in Ullrich Aluminium. This fabrication business effectively competed, excuse me, with a number of our clients, and we're focusing principally on distribution. Initiatives planned in FY 2024, we're really trying to build the Vulcan culture and also teaching the Ullrich Aluminium team the key basics of the Vulcan business model and service mindset. We're making good progress in this area, and we believe that will grow progressively and generate significant benefits. Greater stock availability, improved stock, far more customer orientation, visiting more clients, basically ensuring that every element of service is to a new higher standard.
In turn, that'll over time, with better market selection, better value-added product offerings, will provide better margins. This will be an ongoing slow process, which we believe will progressively increase earnings over the next two years. We want to really grow the customer base in aluminum.
We believe there's a lot of opportunity to do that. Now, I wanna also emphasize the number of hybrid sites that are starting up, where we offer, we offer aluminum and stainless. This is principally in Australia. And we're also doing a hub and spoke freight logistics review, both in Australia and New Zealand, but the primary benefits are in Australia. This will reduce damage, improve stock availability, and reduce logistics costs, and we'll run our own trucking fleet to achieve this. Next page, please. Okay.
From a health and safety viewpoint, serious harm injuries have continued to drop to a negligible number, but health and safety incidents still remain too high. Key point to note here is we've had to integrate a number of sites from Ullrich Aluminium and develop the standard processing operating procedures around health and safety for them.
We've also got six sites out of 72, which account for 70% of harm injuries. We're gonna focus on those six sites to ensure that that number comes down. We're very confident that you'll see that trend strongly in the next twelve months, as it's already become evident to us in the last few months. In terms of our environmental activity, we've reduced greenhouse gases by 8% over the last twelve months.
We're particularly focused on use of solar in Australia, where its electricity is generated by coal-coal fired power stations. And shifting to hybrid cars and looking at any opportunity to use biofuels or other improvements in reduction of greenhouse gases. In terms of our community input, we sponsor a number of charities, for example, the Halberg Youth Council and the Arts Centre in Melbourne, but we also make direct donations to employees of businesses affected in the Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand in February 2023.
We have work and wellness programs across many sites in Vulcan, including the opening of two new gymnasiums in the last 12 months. I'd now like to talk about the operating backdrop. That's the next slide, please. Just showing up. Yep, thank you.
The Australian and New Zealand economic background is fairly similar, but we would say the New Zealand scenario is worse than Australia, so it's basically we'd emphasize that. High interest rates, the rapid rate of increase in interest rates, and the sudden pullback from the COVID-19 stimulus programs have really reduced the demand for product.
Destocking activity across the market was quite evident in the first half of the year. As international supply chains freed up, extra stock came in ahead of schedule and led to overstocking, just as the demand started to decline. This led to significant reductions in margins for a large segments of the market, and also enabled businesses in New Zealand and Australia to fight through a slower and tougher market.
Despite that, the outlook in Australia and New Zealand remained relatively stable for the first six months of the year, then it started to decline quite solidly in the second six months. We've seen inflationary pressures on operating costs, but overall, we see Australia as being relatively stable, but New Zealand, further decline.
The Australian and New Zealand dollars were weakened by approximately 10% against the US dollar during 2023, compared to the average across FY 2022. In terms of global and local steel and metal prices, global steel prices in Australia and New Zealand dollar terms weakened by 25% compared to 2022. Stainless steel, 13%, and aluminum by 11%. The next page is on group financial performance. I'd like to hand over to Kar Yue.
Thank you, Rhys. Good morning, everyone. So overall performance, as Rhys mentioned, we think relatively robust in the context of the operating environment that Rhys has just given you an update on. At a volume level, overall volume fell by 4.5% in financial year 2023, to 251,000 tons, from previously 263,000 tons in financial year 2022.
Australia performed better in this respect from a volume perspective than New Zealand. Down marginally at about 1% compared with New Zealand at about 10% year-on-year basis. On a gross profit dollar per ton basis, it was the reverse. New Zealand margin per ton overall actually performed better compared with Australia.
So the consequence of the change in our product mix, following the acquisition of our aluminum business, overall gross profit dollar per ton was up, close on 20% year-on-year, compared with this time last year. The compression in terms of, percentage margin, gross, margin percentage basis, actually compressed because of higher selling price, and also higher replacement costs that came through during the financial year.
The net outcome from an adjusted EBITDA perspective, was down 10%. Part of it was the contribution from aluminum, offsetting some of the pressure that we saw in our pre-existing business. The most encouraging aspect of our business was really in terms of cash, generated from our operations, up at NZD 145 million, compared with NZD 12 million this time last year. Flipping over to the next slide.
Just to give you an indication of how we got to where we are at the EBITDA level. What we had was, at the end of financial year 2022, the position that we had was NZD 243 million EBITDA. The movement during the year was driven by volume, where EBITDA was down by NZD 17 million, including obviously, the contribution from aluminum. Gross margin changes, again, to do with the mix of the aluminum acquisition, led to a NZD 72 million increase, in terms of total contribution to the EBITDA bridge.
The final component, of course, the increase in cost to serve customer post the acquisition of aluminum, effectively led to an overall decline of NZD 24 million to NZD 219 million, before the impact of about NZD 10 million in relation to integration costs. Which therefore led to a NZD 209 million reported EBITDA number.
Turning to on a by-segment basis on the next slide. Steel segment, volume was down by 15% year-on-year, in financial year 2023. Majority of this is actually to do with our core business. The other component that led to a 33% decline in EBITDA, is our gross profit dollar per ton overall. That fell by 9% year-on-year, across Australia and New Zealand.
Getting to our metal segment, as we mentioned earlier on, contribution from aluminum, first time contribution from aluminum, effectively led to an 87% increase in revenue. If you break down the impact of the contribution from aluminum, including the contribution from aluminum, rather, EBITDA improved 37% year-on-year.
Of pre-existing business, certainly, yes, it did decline somewhat, but it was certainly more robust compared with our steel business. Finally, in regards to our operational update on OpEx, vast majority increase of that 54% relates to the impact of acquisition from aluminum in terms of cost to serve the market.
What is not included in this table that you've got in front of you on this slide, on slide 18, is the NZD 10.2 million impact from business integration costs following the acquisition of Ullrich Aluminium. Turning to our cash flow and working capital movement in the following slide.
As we mentioned, NZD 445 million cash generated from our operations, compared with 12 million last year. This, in fact, is probably the mirror image of what we saw in financial year 2022, where we actually generated a NZD 142 million of net profit after tax, but only NZD 12 million worth of operating cash flow.
We do. Obviously, our goal is to continue to maintain and manage our working capital requirement carefully going into the next 12 months, which Rhys will touch on shortly in terms of outlook for the next 12 months. The final point on this slide that I'd like to highlight is our capital expenditure expectation for financial year 2023, 2024. That should fall in the range of NZD 25 million-NZD 30 million.
Most, more than half of it relates to growth as well as cost reduction initiatives that we've got planned. Finally, before I turn it back over to Rhys, in terms of balance sheet metric and dividend, we, our board, I'm pleased to say, have declared a dividend of NZD 0.305 for final dividend, bringing our total dividend to NZD 0.55.
And in terms of franking credit, it will be fully franked and 44% imputed. Our net debt position, as Rhys mentioned earlier on, is at NZD 340 million at 30th of June of 2023. As we indicated in our media release, we're pleased to advise the market that net debt has since fallen again to NZD 328 million at the end of July. Relative to our banking facility, the trajectory that we've seen over the last six months and also into July, we're very comfortable with our balance sheet position. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to you, Rhys.
Thank you, Kar Yue. In terms of the ongoing economic uncertainty, look, what we're seeing is monetary pricing policy settings in Australia and New Zealand are going to remain restrictive. We believe that particularly the downturn in New Zealand over the last four to six months will continue in the near term.
We're uncertain when that's going to abate. In Australia, it's a slightly more positive story, but we still have no real certainty as to when that will improve. The New Zealand political uncertainty is certainly affecting their customers and their decision-making about buying and investing. So we believe until there's a certain outcome around the New Zealand election, that'll slow investment.
Demand for steel globally in 2023 is expected to increase compared to 2022, but this does hinge on the economic recovery of China, which is still uncertain. This should become clearer in the coming months. The strong ongoing inflationary pressure on our cost base, that does seem to be abating somewhat, but we still think it's got a number of months to go before we finally see inflation come down to the right levels. And lastly, rent adjustments have the potential to place upward pressure on costs. Commercial rents seem to have really lifted right across the market, and we are exposed in some sites to that impact.
In terms of the business improvement program, notwithstanding the environment, our focus is on growing our customer base and integrating Aluminum strongly into our business, so we really capitalize on a huge uplift once the cycle improves. The effort invested in customer engagement is paying off.
Our ATA growth and numbers in our pre-existing business grew by 3% May to July 2023, compared to the same period 2022. Despite the slow economy, our ATA numbers have been maintained or improved. The benefits from Aluminum integration program are expected to progressively come through. Obviously, we spent a lot of money, time and effort straightening up Aluminum.
We're not 100% of the way there, but we believe we've made some good progress, and we believe that we'll get some significant benefits over the coming 12 months, but they will not be fully realized for another 12 months or more. Also within the Aluminum context, we've grown and spending a lot of money in further development of hybrid sites, which will principally be in Australia, and we've allocated CapEx for that period.
Productivity and cost efficiency across the whole company remain a major focus to contain the increase in operating costs, with a deliberate program, site by site, to minimize costs wherever we can. As we've indicated in July 2023, very hard to give a constructive view of the outlook, given the complete uncertainty we currently have.
So we hope by November 2023, our annual general meeting, to give an update with more knowledge about how China's going and how the New Zealand political environment's going, and how the overall economy in Australasia is performing. And that will give us more opportunity to speak more specifically about the outlook for 2024. Thank you, and I'll invite any questions now.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, and to allow as many questions from participants as possible, we do ask to please limit to one question and one follow-up, and we may address further questions, should time permit. Again, to ask a question, press star one on your keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Rohan Koreman-Smit from Forsyth Barr. Your line is open.
Morning, guys. Congratulations on getting a challenging year out of the way. First question for me, just on Ullrich, you know, I noticed in the accounts, when in the acquisition note, you know, the second half impact contribution looks pretty light. Can you just step us through or provide a bit more color on, I guess, how that traded for the second half? Just so we can kind of do a bit of a better job of splitting Ullrich from the metals division.
Sure. I'll take that question, Rohan. Good morning. So the NZD 23 million that you're referring to is obviously at a profit before tax level, and that incorporates the integration costs that we have called out for the current financial year.
That then gets you obviously closer to the NZD 3 million mark to that which you, I think, I believe, previously we've sort of talked about, in other forums, what the costs associated, the, in relation to the impact of goodwill amortization. No, sorry, amortization, amortization of capitalized lease obligations, both in terms of the principal payment and interest payment. You should be able to work your way back up to, through to P&L at the EBITDA level.
Rohan, if I was just making a general comment, we bought the business in August. We basically focused on getting the IT system sorted out in New Zealand in October, November, December. So we started serious restructuring in New Zealand post that, and then Australia slightly lagged that. So the second half of the year had a lot more restructuring and change than the first half year.
Perfect. Thank you. And then just on the leases that you talked to for your sheds. Can you give us some idea of, I guess, when you'll run into market rent reviews and kind of how that plays out over the lease book over the next couple of years?
I'll give a crack at that, and I'll get Kar Yue to comment as well. We have a number where the ratchet clauses, which basically mean that they you know, cap and collar effectively. Then we have some that are open, and they have different terms of expiry. So most of the Ullrich ones, we have no issue with, to be fair comment. In fact, we don't have any issue with any of them. In New Zealand, a couple major sites, and basically they can't do much about it. It looks like the market rate has really rocketed, in the vicinity of 20%-30%. So it gives you a sense of it. In the South Island, lower North Island, there has been some increase, but we don't believe it's significant.
But, we're obviously worried about the impact on Melbourne and Sydney, where we've got some very large sites. One's been set recently with a ratchet clause, another one's due. So probably got maybe four to five that could be exposed. Would that be your comment?
Yeah. It is largely location by location basis. But certainly in New Zealand, we've observed a certain amount of rent inflation or any pressure in some locations. Other locations in Australia, again, I would say it feels less pressure, but the pressure is still there.
Thanks. And maybe one more, if I could just quickly,
Yeah, go bro.
You know, you've previously talked to having a bit higher than normal volumes, particularly in steel, just with those late deliveries. But also in Ullrich, in terms of, you know, the amount of inventory you acquired on acquisition. Can you, I guess, talk to both sides of, you know, the existing business and the Ullrich business?
Yeah, yeah.
Where you are at inventory destocking cycle?
Okay, so inventory across the board, but in steel, a pre-existing business other than one, which is engineering steels, which is a little bit slow because it's got very long lead times. It's got up to nine-month lead times for product. We believe eventually, all 100% or very close to it, exactly the right inventory level, so one's just slightly over. And if there are a bit of tidying up, it's within the next three months, Rohan. So you could basically say pre-existing business, be conservative by Christmas, 100%. Aluminum, you probably recall, we said we bought, like, a year's stock of billet. That's when we had the delayed payment on... Do you remember that comment a while ago? And they had a vast majority of inventory that was all over the place, some absolutely excessive.
We're probably nine months away from fully sorting that out.
Thanks. I'll leave someone else.
Your next question comes from the line of Lee Power from UBS. Your line is open.
Hi, Rhys. Hi, Kar Yue.
Hi.
Is it possible to give just a little bit more color on, on kind of what you're seeing in markets year to date? So, like, have you seen further destocking of markets continue to decline, or has that rate of decline slowed as we've kind of progressed into, into 2024, and then maybe the differences in, in Australia versus New Zealand?
Okay, I'll give you my best crack at it, and then I'll get Kar Yue to comment. Aluminum, I'd say relatively stable. In terms of New Zealand versus Australia, Australia is relatively stable. If anything might even be a slight uptick, but you know, relatively stable. I'm talking July, August, versus the last quarter of last year. You know, so, you know, the last five months. In New Zealand, last few months, two, three months, big slowdown, and we've start hearing a lot of projects being put on hold, subject to the election. So we believe that there's a definite pause in New Zealand, through the election.
And we've also had the impact in the last two weeks of the dairy announcement, which means dairy payouts are gonna be much lower than people thought, and that's definitely affecting investment decisions and demand in rural parts of New Zealand. So I'd have to say, Lee, New Zealand's definitely looking quite worrying, with all aspects of the economy not performing well, and people really quite worried about the outlook. So I don't really know what will happen post the election.
Maybe some of these projects come forward, depending on the election result, but the dairy outlook is definitely gonna weigh on rural demand. On a positive note, stainless steel, which is related to water infrastructure, dairy core investment, and wine, that is holding. It's showing slight signs of weakness as well in New Zealand. In Australia, it's going fine. So we've got two different stories, with New Zealand definitely, the worst of the two.
Excellent. Thank you. And then, just on the OpEx front, like I know you've obviously talked to rent increases. OpEx per ton obviously jumped pretty significantly in the year. Like, do you have a view on where that should sit on a more normalized basis?
Okay. I'll have a crack at it generally. What we do is it by unit, so what we've got. Like, you're getting the generalized number, we're doing it right down by unit. So we're focused on units that are outliers. Now, the key issue is, if you've got a very productive unit and the volume drops off, you'd automatically assume, "Okay, we can take your OpEx down." Well, not necessarily, because somebody's buying six items rather than eight items. Your volume's down, but the person's doing the same number of transactions and work, so you can't necessarily reduce headcount. And your truck goes out, and it's two-thirds full, not full, so therefore, you know, you're still, your costs are harder to recover.
So from our viewpoint, it's definitely there's a little bit of a link to volume, and there's a limit to what you can go down to. And in terms of our culture, we don't force people out the door. What we typically do, use sinking lid policies and other and innovative programs, whether it's changing shift patterns, transferring people between divisions or any other way, shape, or form to get costs down.
That's what we're currently doing, but it is definitely a challenge. I think if the market came back and there's a bit of volume, your operating cost per ton would even be lower than what it was potentially, Lee, or sitting at a similar level. Do you hear where I'm coming from?
Yeah, I do. It's just interesting on the employee front, because I know that, like, staff employees have jumped from, I think, 1,350 when you gave your update in July, and it's now up at 1,360. I thought maybe that might have continued the other way.
Well, to be specific, that's 1,360 at the end of June, and we made a lot of changes, and there are people still on the payroll that didn't work for us.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Because remember, we only did the computer changeover in Australia in May, so we were focused on that, and we've made some quite significant changes May, June, July in Australia. So the headcount now is lower than then.
Okay. Thank you.
Before we continue on to the next question, if you do want to join the queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Luan Nguyen from Jarden. Your line is open.
Hi, team. First question from me is, do you expect that you can maintain or even grow gross profit per ton into FY 2024 and beyond?
If you look, there's a couple of points on that. Gross profit ton is an average across all those different products, so it depends on the mix of the product. But if you go down by individual division, we certainly have big opportunities in some divisions, and other of the divisions, not so many opportunities. But our goal would be to maintain or improve it. And I think particularly in some divisions, we've got significant upside. Do you want to comment, Kar Yue?
Sure. It comes down to, to Rhys's point, Luan. Good morning. It comes down to the product mix. We obviously acquired Ullrich Aluminium with a view of growing the business, and as you can see, we called out the increase in gross profit dollar per ton this year, to turn about 20% year-on-year because of the product mix.
Obviously, with the higher gross profit dollar per ton out of aluminum, aluminum, comes a higher cost to serve as well on a per-ton basis. So just bear in mind the overall blended number if you're trying to understand the dynamics of what it therefore means at the EBITDA level.
I would say, you know, whereas our metals in general, as you've no doubt followed us long enough, to understand that metals, in general, does provide us with a high margin, in terms of gross profit dollar, so.
Yep. Thanks for that. Could you make some commentary on, you know, your, your current market share for FY 2023 versus FY 2022? Have you gained some market share versus your competitors?
It's hard to tell, but look, if I broke it down, you need to look at it by area, by segment. So we tend to look at, if there's 100 clients, we don't want all 100. We, we might want, you know, the right 30 out of 100. So particularly in, say, New Zealand, where it's been quite a competitive environment, there's been a lot of price cutting.
So we're actually quite pleased with our gross profit per ton. We, we think it's been well managed, given the behavior of some of our competitors. We think we've maintained share, and we've deliberately highlighted to you the ATA growth. So we've had 3% growth in ATAs in this, in our pre-existing business. Now, that indicates you're holding your share or improving it.
Key point to note in a tough environment is a client, for example, might have four employees sitting in a workshop. They get their job, it's all short notice. They want the steel straight away. They're actually prepared to pay a premium. They want to work with somebody that actually can deliver it bang on time, and that's us. So we typically actually do pretty well with short, urgent orders in a tough market.
And, you know, where there's a big order, where it's price competitive, and there's lots of opportunity to deliver it in a schedule of weeks, we'll just get our share, and that's all just pricing behavior. It's not delivery service. So I actually think we've probably... Well, I think we've at least maintained our share. The ATA data will probably be a lead indicator. We probably improved it.
Yep. Just a final question from me. So do you expect any one-off OpEx for Ullrich in FY 2024? Given you expect, at the beginning of the year, you expected NZD 5 million, and then there's another NZD 5 million, unexpected costs coming in. So, so just wondering if there's some more costs coming in for Ullrich.
Yeah. Okay, well, again, two comments on that. In the Ullrich NZD 5 million extra, there was a tax error we made, which was NZD 2.5 million. And two, we found more opportunity to improve the business, which cost us more, a bit more. So we, you know, well, obviously, that was those estimates are hard to make at the beginning of a period. I think there's a lot of change still to go. So there'll be at least a few million dollars of one-off costs in all likelihood.
You know, I wanna make it pretty plain, too, like, we, with the NZD 10 million of very specific, you know, redundancy costs and, you know, tax costs, we have, we absorbed a lot of other costs in that period, which were just in operating costs, like moving sites, facilitation, meetings, training for IT.
There's all sorts of costs we absorbed, that weren't expensed. So we'll still have those sorts of costs carrying on, and I think the abnormal cost, it could be a few million. And I think by the end of this year, this current financial year, the aluminum will be really, cranking. We think it's gonna be, like, 70%-80% of the way there by first of January, and it's all about fine-tuning and introducing our business model, and that takes time to learn it.
It's just a matter of communication and focus and slow improvement, which will take us several years.
Yep. Thanks, team.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Rhys for closing remarks.
Uh, okay.
I believe there's one more follow-up call.
Oh, we have a follow-up from Rohan Koreman-Smit.
That's right.
I'll just open up his line.
Thanks, guys. Sorry, very last minute. I just had a question on, you know, integration accounting, or acquisition accounting of Ullrich. You know, when you, brought on the trade receivables, I just noticed you, you know, you put through a NZD 1.3 million, kind of doubtful debt provision.
I was just wondering how collection is going on that against expectations. And also, there was, you know, NZD 14 million, inventory provision as well, obviously against the Ullrich inventory. Again, can you just talk us through that and, and I guess, you know, the reasons for it and, and how it could unwind?
So, the overall doubtful debt is actually blended across all the pre-existing business as well as Ullrich. I wouldn't necessarily attribute that to only the Ullrich. But in terms of collection level, based on what we can see in terms of trend, we remain relatively comfortable with the trajectory of our collection rate, monthly collection rate. We track that very closely, as you expect, in terms of what we collect during the month or any for the prior month balances.
Can I just make a comment? I think we are gonna see more bad debts because they're, they're starting to emerge. We're fully insured in Australia, and in New Zealand we've got very good insights, and we deliberately stay away. There's already been a few bad, big, bad debts in New Zealand. We weren't exposed to them. We're very, very focused on identifying who has risk, and if they do have risk, we wanna talk to them and look at their balance sheet. And if they don't have full access to that, we don't trade. So, but I, I've got no doubt there will be some bad debt, but we're well and truly provisioned there, Rohan. What was the other part of the question? The stock provision for obsolete stock.
Sorry, could you repeat that part?
12 million of obsolete stock provision.
Rohan, are you still with you?
Yeah, still, still here. It was the fair value of inventory that came on for Ullrich. You know, there's NZD 141 million gross value versus NZD 127 million, I guess, fair value. I just wondering-
Yes. So that was, that was the assessment that we had to make in terms of a combination of obsolescence and mark-to-market valuation.
Can I just make a quick comment, Rohan? What we've bought with the number of the items, there's literally, I think we highlighted when we bought the business, there was about 20,000 items of different SKUs, and reality is you probably need 1,800-2,000. So we're deleting a large number of line items. So the provisions are basically a ceased fair value calculation. There's a ceased against problem products we know we have, which we'll basically delete over time. That's where it comes from.
Perfect. Thanks for the extra color. Sorry about the late question. Thanks.
No problem. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for your time, and looking forward to any further questions at a future date. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.