EROAD Limited (NZE:ERD)
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Apr 29, 2026, 3:58 PM NZST
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Earnings Call: H2 2024

May 23, 2024

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

A warm welcome to EROAD's full year results for the 12 months to the 3rd of March 2024. Today, I'm joined by David Kenneson, my recently announced co-CEO, and Margaret Warrington, our CFO. It's a pleasure to have you here today to go through our very strong financial results. Okay. So, first of all, you can ask questions throughout the presentation. There's a link in the Teams function to ask Q&A. So feel free to ask them during the presentation, and Jason will then ask them of us at the end once we've completed our start. Our agenda for today is that I'll take you through the operational results. David will speak to the performance of each of our markets, and Margaret will take you through the financial results. We'll then give an update on our strategic initiatives and we'll conclude with our full year guidance and outlook.

Just a quick reminder about our purpose. Our purpose is to deliver intelligence you can trust for a better world tomorrow. We are at the intersection of a customer's physical and digital operations, delivering products that add value through improved safety, efficiency, and sustainability. So let's get into the good news. I'm really proud to share our strong financial results and improved financial performance for FY 2024. EROAD exceeded guidance underpinned by a relentless and disciplined focus on all areas of the business. Total revenue was NZD 182 million. This is up 10% on our FY 2023 normalized revenue, and exceeds the guidance given to the market. This result reflects our strong sales activity and the rollout of our sales pipeline.

Normalized EBIT is NZD 4.4 million +, which is a growth from the normalized loss last year of NZD 4.5 million, a turnaround of almost NZD 9 million from last year's results. The key highlight today, owing to our strong execution of our strategy, we've achieved the free cash flow positive milestone ahead of schedule. We generated positive free cash flow of NZD 1.3 million, compared to a loss of almost NZD 30 million in the last financial year. I'm incredibly proud of the EROAD team, which has increased cash flow by over NZD 31 million in the last year, which shows what the EROAD team is capable of and sets us up well for FY 2025. We've also upgraded guidance. We now also expect to be free cash flow positive in FY 2025, up from being neutral.

In terms of asset retention, while we're focused on rolling out Sysco and a 4G upgrade program, we're proud to have been able to achieve a strong asset retention rate of almost 95%. This is a testament to the integral and value-enhancing roles our products play in our customers' operations. Globally, we surpassed the 250,000 unit milestone. EROAD has over 100,000 connections in North America, and we are a player of scale. We have a lead in Fortune 500, ASX 100, and NZ 50 companies using our platform, and we've only just started our growth journey. Looking at our normalized revenue growth, this is showing of a 10% increase in our net new connections, supported by a favorable FX rate. Half of our new units were in North American market, showing the strength of our strategy here.

We are also really satisfied with the ongoing growth in New Zealand and Australia and the continued momentum we're building in those markets. Our strategic objectives are showing tangible, positive results and cash generation. We have three key elements here that underpin our strategy. First is turning around the business. Our key focus for the last two years was to turn EROAD around to be a sustainable, profitable business. We generated positive free cash flow this year, as stated in guidance provided in May 2023, and we drove our costs, improved our efficiency while growing revenues and securing financial capacity to execute on our future opportunities. Secondly, was to drive operational leverage. We plan to maintain cost controls going forward.

This is expected to drive operating leverage from every additional customer win and it provides confidence that we'll continue to generate positive free cash flow this financial year, as we're on track to meet our FY 2026 targets. Finally, we have a clear pathway to growth. Our co-CEO partnership is a collaborative one, allowing us, allowing us to focus on new products, faster go-to-market, and stronger sales execution across all the countries we operate in. EROAD has exciting opportunities in front of us, including products leveraging AI, as well as enterprise products moving from pilots to general release, and opportunities to decarbonize transportation as the government looks to more sustainable revenue streams. We also see momentum build with the government to introduce EROAD across New Zealand's 3.6 million light passenger vehicle fleet.

EROAD's focus on operational leverage allows us to increase profits by scaling efficiently and managing costs effectively. In FY 2024, we've driven this through price increases of 6% in ANZ and 3% in North America, better reflecting our value to our customers and our position in the market. This was the first time we've ever done this, and we'll continue to ensure our prices reflect the value that our solutions bring. We've improved EBITDA margins owing to strong operational efficiency and ongoing financial discipline. This is illustrated by the NZD 20 million of annualized cost out across FY 2023 and FY 2024 combined. We also have a global scale of 250,000 units through effective scaling of operations. This reduces the fixed cost base per unit and enhances profitability. The maximizing of operational leverage positions us to capitalize on growth opportunities in our key markets.

We are leveraging our enterprise successes for references with customers to attract new logos and increase the share of $10 billion total addressable market in North America. We also see untapped potential in New Zealand and Australia, which we'll also continue to target.... EROAD's priority of winning, retaining, and expanding enterprise customers delivers both short and long-term value for EROAD. Large fleet sizes offer initial large orders, followed by both organic growth as fleets increase, and expansion opportunities within accounts as we broaden the products and services that we supply. Throughout FY 2024, we expanded enterprise fleets across all regions, industries, and product sets. Of note, we renewed Fulton Hogan, one of New Zealand's largest infrastructure customers, for almost 5,000 vehicles.

Reflecting our strength with food and beverage companies in North America, US Foods expanded the number of units they acquired from us by over 1,200 connections. Now, as report cards go, this is one we're particularly proud of. At the March 2023 Investor Day, we set clear targets for FY 2026. We have not deviated from these targets since setting them, and we continue to have confidence that we'll achieve these. As you can see, we're on track to meet all of these targets, but there are three key targets I'd like to call out. First is the annualized monthly recurring revenue. This grew by over 15% year-on-year, ahead of our FY 2026 targets we set for ourselves.

Churn continues to be at the bottom of the range we have set across all of our markets, and our free cash flow margin has improved significantly from negative 18% at FY 2023 to a positive free cash flow margin. We remain on track to achieve a 9% free cash flow margin in the next financial year. I'll now pass over to David to talk about our market activity.

David Kenneson
Co-CEO, EROAD

Thank you, Mark. Starting with New Zealand, revenue is up 9% over FY 2023 to NZD 91.8 million, reflecting the consistent, stable growth we continue to see in this region. While gross unit adds remain stable, net unit growth of 7,962 reflects the expected churn from the 4G switch out and our prioritization for larger fleets and higher revenue per account. While retention is slightly lower at 94.7%, we have notable renewals and expansions across our enterprise accounts. Monthly SaaS ARPU increased by 4.7% to just over NZD 58, reflecting both expansion within our fleets and the price uplift we executed in July 2023. Let's move on to North America. Revenue is up 10.3% to NZD 80.1 million, as some of our larger rollouts, like Sysco, come online.

Net unit count increased by 11,800, bringing the total connected unit count in the region to over 100,000 for the first time ever. Account expansions also contributed to our success, with 7,156 units coming online from fleet increases across enterprise accounts in the region. Of note, we have already supplied Sysco with an additional 1,400 units above their original order value. US Foods increased by 1,264 units, and we're gaining momentum in our SkyBitz partnership, with 1,494 units delivered through this channel partner. All of this demonstrates the value of our enterprise accounts.

Retention of 94.78% is up on the 93.2% retention we saw in FY 2023, and we continue to expect slight churn across our SMB accounts, but that is in line with our strategy to focus on larger fleets needing more complex and scalable solutions like EROADs. Our strategy is in place, and we're complemented by new leadership in the North American region. And lastly, Australia, where revenue for the year is up 14% to NZD 10.6 million. Focused sales efforts delivered a net unit increase of nearly 4,000 units. Total unit count for Australia ended FY 2024 at 19,613, which represents a 25% year-on-year increase over FY 2023.

We had a notable enterprise win with Programmed of 3,000 units contracted for five years, and we're pleased to see enterprise customers renewing and expanding in the region. Noteworthy enterprise accounts are Boral and Woolworths. Together, they account for over 3,245 units. Boral expanded their order by more than 70%, and Woolworths has chosen our new CoreHub Xtreme cold chain solution, with more than 400 units already delivered. Our success in the region validates EROAD's two-pronged strategy for Australia, targeting trans-Tasman customers who typically already have EROAD, and leveraging products originally developed in North America for enterprise accounts in the region. We have renewed confidence with our success in Australia post the Coretex acquisition. Now I'd like to turn it over to Margaret for the financials.

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

Thanks, David. So as we've said in the past, our emphasis has been on delivering results that can demonstrate EROAD can be profitable and sustainable, and FY 2024 has seen us make a significant step towards that goal. Our overall revenue, at NZD 182 million, represents 10% growth. But as Mark mentioned, this is underpinned by almost 15% growth in our recurring revenue. A reminder that FY 2023 revenue included a one-off revaluation revenue of NZD 9.6 million related to the contingent consideration for Coretex. We've normalized our results where possible to provide a more direct comparison of the underlying business growth from operations. One area where revenue did not grow year-on-year was outright sales of hardware. This revenue is primarily derived from our channel partners in North America.

The slowdown was due to two reasons: our transition from the end of life hardware product to the new CoreHub Xtreme, along with the rollout of Sysco. Channel partners are a growth area for us and an opportunity. So for FY 2025, we have a team of dedicated staff who are gonna look at developing this revenue stream. Last year, we committed to delivering on revenue guidance while holding our costs flat, with the middle graph demonstrating that we delivered on this commitment. This was achieved through the cost-out program and sharp financial focus by all of our teams.

... We celebrated cost saving heroes, and we drove a culture of strong financial management. The combination of both revenue growth and cost management has enabled us to deliver a positive EBIT result that's almost NZD 9 million ahead of FY 2023 when you normalize for the contingent consideration revenue. As demonstrated by the cost out, Cost to Acquire metric, which has reduced from NZD 615 to NZD 499, the Sysco rollout and large enterprise wins impact this metric quite substantially. The gross hardware additions often occur after the work to secure those bookings is completed. Our Cost to Serve growth has increased from 5.9% to 6.2%, and this is driven by the North American product support and service delivery. This includes additional staff to project manage and support Sysco.

As we target more enterprise with sales, we expect to maintain these costs to support future enterprise wins. Our cost reduction program has been very effective. It's enabled us to recalibrate our operating costs, remove overheads, and reinvest in growth areas of the business. Drive efficiency. Apologies. The positive impact of the cost reduction program is evident in the graph to the right, that shows a consistent decreasing trend in operating costs as a percentage of revenue. This is a testament to our commitment to driving leverage and improving EBITDA margins as we continue to grow. We are confident in our ability to maintain control over our fixed costs and manage variable costs, ensuring the long-term sustainability and success of our business.

We've engaged in many conversations and discussions with our investors regarding the nature of the costs that we've eliminated through the cost reduction program that we ran in FY 2023 and FY 2024. Our goal was to achieve annualized savings of $20 million, which we have successfully accomplished. The picture on the right of the page provides a breakdown of these savings. The majority were achieved by reducing our workforce, including full-time employees, contractors, and consultants. In May 2022, our total headcount, including contractors, was approximately 650 individuals. This now sits closer to 530, representing a reduction of 120 while still achieving our revenue growth. Another significant source of savings was derived from supplier negotiations.

In FY 2024, approximately half of the NZD 10 million in savings was achieved through these negotiations, primarily for the same or improved services at a lower cost. Additionally, we consolidated our Auckland offices from three locations to one. The graph on the left provides a bridge that illustrates the composition of the changes between FY 2023 and FY 2024 operating costs. It demonstrates that we have reduced overheads from our corporate functions and the costs associated with our mature New Zealand operations while investing in our growth markets of North America and Australia. Our contract negotiations have been focused on cost of sales, which are a variable cost that links to our revenue growth. These efforts have partially offset the growth, with cost of sales growing by 11%, while recurring revenue grew by 15%. Further details on the non-cash costs are included in the footnote.

Our FY 2026 targets indicated that we would hold R&D relatively flat in absolute terms, therefore decreasing as a percentage of revenue over time as we grow. In FY 2024, R&D costs as a percentage of revenue have reduced from 23% to 18%. This is in part due to the completion of our integration activities. Our R&D costs are primarily personnel related and as such, are subject to fluctuation in labor markets. However, we have proactively explored options for increasing efficiency, including piloting offshoring some roles, and we've also partnered with Microsoft to leverage the power of AI. These initiatives will help accelerate our time to market. In FY 2024, our R&D investment was primarily focused on driving new growth, accounting for 54% of our total expenditure.

This represents a slight, slight decrease from the first half of the year, during which we completed several key capital projects, including the successful rollout of Sysco from a system and integration perspective, and we launched our new generation trailer tracker in New Zealand utilizing the CoreHub technology. Both of these developments create increased potential that can be leveraged for other customers. During the second half of the year, our focus shifted towards support and maintenance following the successful completion of these rollouts. As a general rule, we see approximately half of our R&D resources driving new growth, with the remaining half dedicated to maintaining and supporting our existing customers and platforms. As Mark said, this is the point we're really proud.

Free cash flow of the firm has improved significantly from NZD -29.9 million in FY 2023 to NZD 1.3 million in FY 2024, and this turnaround has been delivered as the outcome of delivering both revenue growth and the removal of the NZD 20 million in annualized savings during the past two years. The FY 2024 position is supported by a positive working capital movement of approximately NZD 2.5 million. But even when considering these movements, the improvement in free cash flow is substantial and positions us well to achieve a positive free cash flow in FY 2025 ahead of previous projections. The growth on the... Sorry. The graph on the left illustrates the period-on-period improvement in our free cash flows to the firm, while the graph on the right demonstrates the change in total cash burn.

This has also improved from NZD 3 million per month to about NZD 600,000 per month, despite an increase in net interest costs of NZD 1.2 million. As a result of our focus on free cash flow management in FY 2024, we are confident in our ability to achieve positive free cash flow again in FY 2025. It's important to note that following the completion of our 4G upgrade program in FY 2026, we anticipate generating significant additional free cash flow. Speaking of the 4G program, we're continuing to upgrade all 2G and 3G hardware devices in ANZ. As at the end of the financial year, we had 55% of our devices in that region that were 4G.

During the year, One New Zealand postponed the shutdown of their 3G network from August of this year to March of next. This has had the effect of slowing the program, with customers choosing to use that additional flexibility. A reminder that our devices can function on 2G networks, so at this stage, the program is expected to continue operating until FY 2026. Ultimately, the overall cost of the program remains the same, with timing being driven by customer decisions and the timing of the network shutdowns. Whether this happens now or later, doesn't change our underlying free cash flow, which, as I noted earlier, without the cost of this program, would be much higher. Given the lead times for hardware, we've seen a build in our inventory as we've purchased stock in anticipation of the increased customer activity.

Our current inventory is $33.2 million, with the largest portion being hardware product ready to support this replacement program. I'm not gonna say too much on this slide, because I think we covered it in depth at half year, but I just want to point out that we're well capitalized, with approximately $58 million of liquidity that provides us with the flexibility and headroom to grow. With that, I'll pass it back to David.

David Kenneson
Co-CEO, EROAD

Thank you, Margaret. As Margaret mentioned earlier, we have negotiated with our suppliers and reduced our SaaS-related costs. The cost out program successfully reduced expenses by NZD 20 million, annualized across FY 2023 and FY 2024. We've had several exciting and successful product launches, such as our refrigerated trailer solution, CoreHub Xtreme in Australia, as well as decarbonization tools in New Zealand. Our partnership with Microsoft is yielding exciting innovation, with pilots of new AI solutions underway. We're also piloting our Thermo King integration with key customers across our cold chain segment, and we're seeing positive results there as well. These products will not only enable us to expand into our existing customer base, but also create opportunities to target new logos. Additional new product announcements and associated go-to-market plans will be in place for Q2. The value we deliver.

There is a broad range of value EROAD provides, including compliance, safety, efficiency, and sustainability. We deliver this value through features like RUC compliance, hours of service logs, fuel tax reporting, driver tools, vehicle maintenance, route management, decarbonization and emissions reporting tools, and more. Our solutions cater to various industries such as construction, waste management, transport and logistics, and food and beverage. EROAD is at the intersection of our customers' physical and digital operations, offering comprehensive solutions that enhance their operational efficiency, promote safety for their customer, for our customers' drivers and all of us on the road today, and help create a sustainable world by reducing CO2 emissions. EROAD's full stack approach differentiates us from standard off-the-shelf solutions. Our ability to meet complex enterprise needs through a robust platform that supports full fleet operations and integrates with our customers' internal systems.

New functionalities developed for our enterprise customers benefit our general customer base, ensuring continuous improvement across the board. And lastly, our reliance on partnerships for non-core functionalities ensures comprehensive solutions without diluting our focus. For New Zealand, we benefit from our leading market position, significant revenue, and leverage our strong position there in the region to expand across the Tasman. For North America, we have a huge market size and a potential to gain significant market share by leveraging on our enterprise customers across the regions, notably referenceable accounts such as Sysco. We have a strategic focus on enterprise accounts all across the region, leveraging our deep experience in comprehensive solutions. Turn it over to Mark to talk a little bit about transport.

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Yes, David. So a key element of EROAD's success is innovating off the back of regulatory changes. We have a strong track record of doing so. We're the first in the world to introduce a nationwide eRUC solution. We've also introduced innovative and successful products in New Zealand and North America to manage health and safety, and we've launched new ESG tools to decarbonize transportation. Now, another opportunity has presented itself. This is on how the government charges in New Zealand for the use of roads, with New Zealand announcing that it's moving away from a fuel excise duty to universal road user charging for all vehicles. The government announcement on wanting to introduce road user charging of all vehicles creates an opportunity for EROAD to broaden our customer base.

Already, we collect over 90% of all eRUC in New Zealand and over 40% of all RUC, with our chief competitor at the moment being paper-based RUC. Our solution already can provide eRUC to all EVs and hybrids, since those vehicles were introduced under the RUC system from 1 April of this year. And we are incredibly well positioned to leverage, in the medium term, the government's intent to replace Fuel Excise Duty in New Zealand with road user charging, and we look forward to continue to working with the government to introduce this. And finally, our outlook and guidance. We intend to be free cash flow positive in FY 2025, as we were in FY 2024. Revenue will grow, and we're targeting revenue growth of between NZD 190 million to NZD 195 million.

This growth is lower than the prior financial year, as we continue to monitor economic conditions in our markets, where sales cycles remain longer than previous years. For EBIT, we're targeting between NZD 5 million-NZD 10 million once normalized for the 4G swap-out program, and we're holding R&D normalized, so R&D is steady at around NZD 32 million. Over the last two years, we've focused on optimizing our business operations for scalable growth. We are in the transition from cost-cutting efforts to now growth-oriented strategies, especially for large enterprise customer acquisitions. We believe we have a strong foundation for future growth, focusing on growth and efficiency in ANZs in North America, leveraging new products and go-to-market strategies, which we'll have in place by mid-year. Well, I'll now open up for questions that have been asked throughout the presentation.

But Jason, do you have any questions that you can pass on to us?

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Hi, Mark. Yes. First question is, for David. Now that you've been in the chair for a couple of months, what has surprised you positively, and what has surprised you negatively?

David Kenneson
Co-CEO, EROAD

Great, great question. There has certainly been some surprises. One is just really the strong fundamentals of EROAD. Also, the fact that our customers absolutely love us, the partnership with them, the feedback they give us, the co-development we do with them, it's just absolutely exciting. And then really the diversity of our employees, our EROADers, all around the world, bringing it every day to make sure that we make our financial numbers, but also bringing that spirit of innovation and ingenuity into the office. It's really energetic to be here. I can't say that there's really been anything negative right now, other than, you know, there's not enough hours in the day, it seems. Thank you for that question.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Thanks. On the guidance, the question is, EROAD has beaten guidance on the revenue and at the top end of normalized EBIT. Can you explain what caused that change, and how much of that was due to exchange rates?

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Margaret, for that one?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

Yes. Look, as the question is, there's a couple of areas of revenue that for us is a bit harder to forecast. And, one of those is exchange rate, the other one is outright hardware sales from our customers. So they're that depends on the customer's decision and buying processes. So our underlying recurring revenue did what we expected it to do and hit. We were always aiming for the top of the guidance range, so it hit there. The hardware sales reduced in the second half, and as the question asks, the US dollar was pretty strong for the back part of this year and contributed $1.8 million.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Thanks. A follow-up question on the guidance. You provide FY 2025 guidance of revenue between $190 million and $195 million. Could you tell us what that implies for AMRR?

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Touch on that one, Margaret, or?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

Yeah, I will. Look, AMRR as a measure looks at the March profile. So ultimately looks at March and casts forward when we're talking about full year. So, it'll depend on our growth profile, but, and I would expect the AMRR will be similar, 'cause we will have hit our targets or above what we're aiming to do in terms of the movement percentage. I'd expect AMRR to be growing higher than the revenue percentage.

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Agreed.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Perfect. Thank you. You added 11,800 units in North America during the year. Could you tell us how many of those were related to Sysco specifically, noting that some Sysco units were added in FY 2023?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

I think we've popped that in the presentation on slide 13. So, in terms of unit count, we added about 9,500, so it's disclosed in the presentation. I think we had just over 1,000 at the beginning of the year, and we've ended the year with kind of 10,500.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

As a follow-up question on the US revenue, do you know how much the US revenue was on a constant currency basis?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

Yeah, from memory, my apologies, I haven't got it in front of me, but from memory, the underlying growth is slightly lower than the New Zealand because of the FX rate, but pretty similar. So underlying growth in the US revenue was, it's followed the same trajectory as what we're seeing. And you can see it in the unit growth. Obviously, recurring revenue follows a lot of our unit growth. I've already called out that hardware revenue, which is specifically North America. It's usually North America, was a bit lower in the second half, so that's a bit lower year on year when you look at 2023 versus 2024.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Thanks. There's a question about revenue growth and volume growth, noting that revenue growth seems to be similar to volume growth. Can you talk about how price affected revenue during the period?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

I'm presuming it was around our price increases, so I'll take it like that way. Jason, correct me if I'm wrong. In terms of those price increases we applied, we could only apply them to a portion of the customer base, so it absolutely helped. And it was the right move to make and represented value to our customers. And you could see that in the few customers that actually kind of came back to us, that they understood, they understood the value they were getting, and they understood the environment we were operating within, in terms of CPI. But we didn't apply them to them, to customers who'd either recently renewed, because we usually, typically, as part of a renewal, consider pricing with that customer, or the customers who, which typically are enterprise customers who are sitting on their own individual terms.

So, for example, in the New Zealand market, probably half of the base ended up with the price increase. Much smaller in Australia because of the nature of the customer base there, and much smaller in North America.

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Yeah, briefly to say, Margaret, that it wasn't, it didn't have a demonstrable impact on revenue, but it did help on the margins of the business as well. Our next question, Jason?

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Yeah. The majority of growth is coming from existing customers. Can you give us a bit more color on the dynamics there? How much is upsell growth in the underlying customer and launch of new products, and how much opportunity continues to exist to upsell to those customers?

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

I can maybe start then pass over to David.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Sure.

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

So in terms, as we talked about earlier, we do see typically with enterprise customers, we grow off the back of them. So a strong proportion of the growth we saw was from expansion. But as we also indicated, we are launching new solutions to those customers, too, which does help us grow revenue in the long term. Dave, anything you want to add to that?

David Kenneson
Co-CEO, EROAD

I mean, maybe just looking forward at the pipeline. Right now, about 70% of our overall pipeline is new logo. So, you know, 30% is to existing customers. We roll out a lot of our new innovations with existing customers, and as Mark just said, from there, just organic expansion, it pulls some revenue through as well. But, we really have a concerted effort to target new logo acquisition, and I think you'll see a lot of that this year.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Thanks. There was a question on the 4G hardware upgrade. Can you tell us how much was spent in FY 2024?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

Yes, we can. From a P&L impact, I think we've disclosed it in the presentation, it's about NZD 3.6 million. Some of that's accelerated depreciation, some of that is increased staffing or staff focus on the program. In terms of cash, between NZD 8 million and NZD 9 million in FY 2024 was invested in that program.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

A related question on the hardware upgrade. Your FY 2026 targets note a 9% free cash flow margin, excluding the hardware program cost. What is that cost expected to be, and in 2027?

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

For the 3G program, Jason?

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Yes.

Margaret Warrington
CFO, EROAD

We're expecting to be fully complete in FY 2027, so the network shutdown of 2G at this stage is scheduled to occur during FY 2026. So FY 2027, that program should have been completed.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Perfect. And can you talk a little bit about the underlying backdrop for your customers and how that may or may not be impacting the sales discussions or lead times?

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Well, I mean, what we've been reflecting on, as I think many companies, that there's a softening economic outlook out there. It most prominently probably impacts our small to medium business customers who are more exposed to economic headwinds. We are seeing a bit of a slowing sales cycle with our larger customers as well. And so for us, we're sort of focusing on how we can sort of bring forward those customers as much as possible. And one of the good things about our solution, though, is we do demonstrably take costs out of a customer business. So if you reflect that in the churn numbers, we had very low churn this year, you know, around 5%. So, although we're taking a close look at the current economic environment, we don't think it's going to significantly impact us going forward.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Another investor is asking, "Are there competitive products in markets that are distinct from paper or Excel-based RUC? So are there other competitive eRUC products that you can talk about?

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

There are. So New Zealand has two different types of eRUC solutions. One is a solution like EROAD, which is built into the vehicle, which automatically updates and charges eRUC. There's also some providers out there provide a bit of a middleman between the government and the user by providing licenses direct, by electronic means. We believe our solution's more compelling because it provides, it's more user-friendly, to our customers, but there are a small handful of providers that provide sort of electronically provided licenses. But they're not a big impact as you see on eRUC. We collect over 90% of all eRUC in New Zealand.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

The next question asks: Now that the Sysco rollout is substantially complete, how are you seeing the pipeline evolve in the U.S.?

David Kenneson
Co-CEO, EROAD

Yeah, as I said before, globally, about 70% of our pipeline is new logo. If I look at North America, it follows suit, maybe a little bit closer to 75. Out of the 25% of my pipeline that is existing customers, Sysco makes up less than, less than a third of that. So, again, you know, we're, we're really looking to leverage the wins we have at a number of enterprise accounts within, within the region. And I think this is going to be a year of adding several new large accounts to our North America roster.

Jason Kepecs
Head of Investor Relations, EROAD

Perfect. That's all the questions that I have.

Mark Heine
CEO, EROAD

Thank you, Jason, and thank you to everyone who's joined us today. As you can see, EROAD has outperformed on revenue and free cash flow from the strength of our turnaround plan. We're also focused on continuing to generate positive free cash flow into FY 2026, and we're accelerating our product development and our go-to-market strategy in all markets, and expect to realize that in mid to late Q2 of this year. Thank you, and enjoy your day.

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