It's been a solid half year. Definitely very challenging macroeconomic conditions impacting all three markets. That said, we did see some growth. Alex will talk more about that. When you do a comparison year-on-year, there was NZD 1.6 million of grants given around COVID in North America, which didn't happen this year. The growth year-on-year, excluding that one-off, is the NZD 2.2 + NZD 1.6. In terms of EBITDA, we're at NZD 12.6 million. That includes NZD 2 million of transaction and integration costs relating to the Coretex acquisition. You know, there are a number of one-offs that occur in this half year.
When Alex gets to those, you'll get to see what the accounting number is and what that normalizes with the removal of the one-offs. In terms of AMRR increase year on year from 88.4 to 92.9. Contracted unit growth, 6,500. Improvement around ARPU of $0.66, but when it's Forex adjusted, there's an adverse impact of $1.23. Asset retention rates remained high at 94.1%. R&D spend was 28% of revenue, slightly higher than we had previously said. That really relates to going hard on the technology platforms for the future and some of the revenue that we hope to get in the U.S. not coming through.
Good progress has been made with two strategic partnerships with Phillips Connect and Seeing Machines, and we'll talk a little bit more about those later on. I suppose the really big delivery for this half year was the deal making due diligence and integration planning of Coretex into EROAD. We now have all of the clearances we need, and that transaction will complete on the thirtieth of November, effectively operating from the first of December. On the next slide, this is really an update on our sort of ESG activities. Last year, we did a materiality matrix, so understanding really what's important both internally and with our customer base, and then focusing our activities of work on that.
Some of the key bits to note there, as you would expect, we've seen improved driver behavior as a result of dashcams being in vehicles. We will have a NPS score for customers in the future. Proxy for that at the moment is the number of customers renewing their contracts with EROAD. 538 customers renewed, which was 16,481 units. Represents happy customers. Infrastructure around SaaS, et cetera, was highly reliable, industry leading at 99.9%. Lot of help from our customer care people supporting customers through the lockdowns we've had in New Zealand and Australia. Work is well underway in terms of determining what EROAD's footprint is, from a carbon perspective.
We did our first sustainability report, involving 1,400 customers across New Zealand and Australia to really understand what initiatives they're doing and from that, how we can help them achieve that. In terms of the operations, contracted units, 5% growth for the half. We had previously reported that there was one customer that we unfortunately lost. That was an enterprise account that had been acquired by another company. They were very happy with the service that EROAD was providing. That customer came out of our subscriber base during the half. That was a customer 1,751. With additional adds in the U.S. of 306, there was a net loss of 1,445.
One of the frustrating things of the acquisition is that while we waited for ComCom clearance, we were in a bit of no man's land in terms of, customers or prospects which had looked at the EROAD product and were in a position to put them on, when they were made aware of what the Coretex offering would be post acquisition. They really wanted to wait for that. Also, during the Q2 of the half, there were the first trade shows that had happened in that North American market for two years. There was a really good list of prospects in there, again, waiting for the transaction to complete, before we can begin the piloting process.
We're very confident that in the next half of FY 2022, we'll see some really good pilot activity and hopefully the completing of one or two of those enterprise pieces of work. There was one customer of 530 added just outside the half, and that customer's in the process of putting EROAD into their fleet. I think we will see an increase in activity in that U.S. market upon completing the acquisition. Really big focus on retention and key account management that's reflected in high asset retention rates. We've talked about the number of customers that renew. There were 472 customers that upgraded to more valuable plans, so that was just under 5,000.
There was just under 300 customers that added the additional services, such as the electronic logbook and Inspect service and maintenance products. Some really good uptake in terms of the increase for this offer that EROAD can provide. You get to see what the individual numbers there on the right-hand side. Phillips Connect is the partnership we have with the trailer telematics company. They're definitely one of the strongest in that U.S. market. That makes sense for us to partner with them as opposed to build that product ourselves. The combination of EROAD and Phillips Connect is a really compelling one. It's a new product for our sales team to learn how to sell. Momentum is building around that.
666 trailers added, but those units are not included in our unit count. We have had six months of trading with the EROAD Clarity dashcam, so over 3,000 sold across three markets. That product is sold in combination with our Ehubo telematics. Many of our customers in that 3,087 is upgrading to add cameras. The solo camera got released in October, and that doesn't require any telematics box. It is a complete unit and allows us to sell a camera alongside competitors' telematics solutions. A bit of a Trojan horse. We're making very good progress around cameras, and I'll talk a little bit more about plans later on. I'll hand over to Alex to take us through our market-by-market progress report.
Thanks, Steven. Good morning, everybody. We'll start with the New Zealand home market, which remains as we say a significant growth opportunity for EROAD. It's made very solid progress across the board in the six months to 30 September, despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, despite you know the lockdown that's occurred in Auckland, and there was effectively 43 days of that included in the half. We still delivered a growth of 7% in units in New Zealand. You can see that that's a combination of the Ventia contract rollout, which was the large enterprise rollout within the half in New Zealand and in Australia, but also additional growth elsewhere.
We've continued to enjoy a very strong asset retention rate in New Zealand, 97.3%, which is up from the prior year, prior comparative period of 95.7%. Across the board, we've been doing a lot of work around renewals and upgrades and expansion into customers' activities in terms of adding additional products and services. You can see that we had 360 customers renew their plan with us, which is over 12,000 units in the six months. We had 180 customers that added products and services to their plans, so just under 5,000 of those. We had 329 customers that upgraded their plan from one bundle level to another. Again, just over 1,700 units relating to that as well.
Some really good momentum in the business. The ARPU that we have over the entire sort of almost 94,000 connected vehicles increased by NZD 0.60, which is, you know, no mean feat given the size of that customer base, from NZD 56.18 at the end of 31 March 2021, up to NZD 56.78 that it is for this half.
In terms of the growth opportunity in front of us, we still expect EROAD's growth for New Zealand to be similar to the prior level, which was, you know, over 9,000 connected vehicles added in the year. Despite the lockdowns that we've been experiencing in Auckland, and of course, with the Coretex combination that comes into effect on the first of December, we bring on board, you know, 7,628 connected units, which is as at 30 September, onto the additional almost 94,000 that we have within EROAD. We will be over 100,000 connected vehicles once we combine, which is a great business in its own right. If we move to the North American market.
Just one moment. Just having problems moving the slide along. Thank you. North America has, again, had challenging macroeconomic environmental factors impacting growth in the business. We have had and we previously discussed at the Q2 operating update the issues that are out there around lagging impacts in the States around particularly driver shortages that are impacting the entire industry. There's a lot of poaching of drivers by bigger fleets from smaller fleets, and we have quite a number of smaller and medium-sized fleets in our customer base. We've been impacted by that.
That's flowed through into the asset retention rates, as well as this one-off loss of an enterprise customer we've talked about, where they moved and aligned their technology with that of the company which acquired it. In combination, that's why we've seen the dip that we've seen in the asset retention rate. You know, we are still working through the upgrade program to upgrade 3G technology in the cabs for our customers to 4G technology. You can see almost 80% of the units that we have in our customer base are now on 4G technology. We're close to completing that program. In doing so, we've been renewing and recontracting customers. We had 172 customers in the period renewed their plan.
In fact, ARPU overall increased in the period in US terms to $44.42. Again, brought about by some work that we've been doing around upgrades and adding products and services. You can see 86 customers added products and services to their plan during the period. It's also been impacted by the dash cam sales that we've made, which are obviously integrated. Most of those have been integrated with the Ehubo in the cab, and therefore that's had added to the ARPU outcome that we've got. We have had a delay around growth opportunities. We've talked about that at the Q2 operating update.
The delay really is centered around customers being interested in what Coretex brings to the table and the desire to actually wait to pilot the next generation platform, which we will be launching in the next few weeks. We are expecting that it will be the Coretex 360 platform and CoreHub hardware solution from Coretex as that next generation. We will start that, as I say, expected in the next couple of weeks. Customers are really interested in that, but of course, we haven't been able until we physically are combined with Coretex on the first of December. We haven't been able to demonstrate that and pilot that with those prospects. Now we can move forward and increase the momentum in terms of progressing prospects through the pipeline.
We have significantly increased the addressable market during this period as well through the partnership that we've entered into in June with Phillips Connect, which brings on board the best-in-class trailer tracking solutions. Of course, with the launch not only of the dash cam Clarity, which is integrated with Ehubo, which we launched in March and has continued to sell through the year. We also recently in October launched the standalone Clarity Solo variant of the dash cam, which doesn't require a in-cab telematics hardware to be integrated within it or to it, sorry. Therefore, we are expanding that addressable market into vehicles that don't have any telematics hardware in the vehicle or are using a competitor's telematics hardware product.
Effectively, as Steven said, a Trojan horse into that vehicle. Of course, finally, the point around Coretex. Coretex brings a very significant presence in America into combination with our business in America. Coretex adds just under 51,000 connected units at 30 September, as well as an advanced short to medium-term enterprise pipeline, as Coretex is very focused on the enterprise business. We will be working heavily with the Coretex team from 1 December to get the maximum momentum through both sales teams into the North American market for the remainder of the year and for FY 2023 going on. We move on to the Australian market. Again, it has had its challenges within the macroeconomic environment.
We've had lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney throughout large parts of the half, and that's caused delay in installations in terms of rolling out the Ventia rollout, which was the win that we had at the back end of FY 2021. Albeit we've now managed to complete about 60% of that fleet rollout before the third of September. We expect to complete the remainder of that by the end of financial year 2022. Of course, it's also slowed us down in terms of being able to demonstrate and pilot with other opportunities. That's delayed, as you can see in the growth opportunity segment. It's been one of the items of delay.
The other piece, which is another impact similar to America, where there are some customers and prospects that are interested in understanding when EROAD and Coretex combine, what the technology stack will look like and what the platform and products will be in terms of what their needs are. Again, we're anticipating increasing the momentum in Australia once we are able to demonstrate the Coretex technology. We've also in the year in a half, sorry, built out and continue to build out our team in Australia. We've added, as you can see, a number of significant roles there. We've now got what we consider to be a reasonable-sized team presence there.
We've built out a market development and regulatory person as well as we continue to need to have key aspects of capability in the market given the COVID environment. Move on. Just to talk to the financial performance metrics now. For revenue, as Steven said, we've reported a 5% increase to NZD 48 million from NZD 45.8 million in the prior comparable period. Once we normalize that for that $1.6 million one-off US grant for COVID-19 that was in the half to 30 September 2021, it's more like a 9% increase. When we look at EBITDA, again, as a reported outcome, EBITDA dropped down to NZD 12.6 million.
Once we normalize both for that NZD 1.6 million grant in the prior comparable period, as well as the NZD 2 million that we spent in this half on transaction and integration costs, you can see we actually increased, on a normalized basis, EBITDA from 13.7 to 14.6. Our non-normalized EBITDA margin is back up into sort of the 30% territory, which is where we would like it to be. On the right-hand side, these are all reported profit before tax and free cash flow figures, so obviously pre-normalization. That drop in reported EBITDA translates down into a small loss before tax for the half.
In the free cash flow, we raised money in September 2020 and recently to continue to push forward with our growth strategies, including putting the foot to the floor on our R&D roadmap. That's what we've done. You can see the outcome of that in terms of the money that we spent on R&D, as well as the money we're continuing to spend around additional hardware, you know, the additional dash cam sales and the 3G to 4G upgrade program in America, as well as inventory management.
With the global supply chain being what it is and the issues that we have there, where we can hold greater levels of stock of raw componentry or finished goods in those markets, we will do that, which means we will be able to satisfy and can satisfy the demand that we're seeing from those markets. Income statement in the next slide. Again, we've talked to the growth in revenue. Operating expenditure did increase year-on-year. Again, we talked about the NZD 2 million integration and transaction costs that drove some of that. But in terms of other drivers of the remaining increase, that was really centered particularly around the cost pressures that we're seeing around remuneration. We've hired additional R&D folks in the period as we push forward with that product roadmap rollout.
It's a competitive labor market with the borders being closed in New Zealand. As a result, we're seeing, you know, increased levels of recruitment costs, and as an increased level of churn with our team, and therefore increased average salary levels as well. The other aspect of increased cost is around annual leave. Again, as people have been locked up, the annual leave balances tick up. We'll be working on managing that through the remainder of the year. To the next slide. If we look a little bit more at around EBITDA by segment, New Zealand, you know, has that continuing growth from customer fleets. The 19% increase translated into period on period for New Zealand, which is really pleasing.
As I said, in North America, it's been more challenging. We had the one-off loan in the prior year, which is some large part of the drop. The other piece is we've had to temporarily increase our staff count to deal with the 3G to 4G program, which needs to be completed before February 2022. Of course, in the prior comparable period, we didn't have, because of the U.S. lockdown, very much travel and similar sales activity. We can now recommence that as we get the sales momentum re-energized in the States. There's a small FX impact as well.
In Australia, the continuing SaaS revenue growth, which really reflects the increase in customer base as we roll out things like Ventia and we increase our underlying small- to medium-sized customer base. We've had an increased level of revenue into Australia, but that's been offset by the investment that we've made in staff to build out that team, to be able to really push forward and grab that enterprise growth that we anticipate coming through. In the corporate segment finally, again, there's further integration costs and transaction costs. That's where that's been booked, so that's NZD 2 million of the NZD 3 million increase in costs.
As I said earlier, the employment costs is the remaining NZD 1 million, which really reflects both the increase in head count in that space, which including our engineering teams, but also the average costs and those annual leave balances increasing. Just walking through the measures, I think we do need to go back one. Okay, thank you. We turn to our growth indicators first. Our annualized monthly recurring revenue and future contracted income indicators are the two that we use to outline growth as an organization. Annual AMRR has increased to NZD 92.9 million for the period. The slides have moved forward again. Thank you.
Revenue has increased over the period from NZD 88.4 million in the prior half, again, reflecting the growth that we've put through. As importantly, the future contracted income has moved up to NZD 149.1 million from NZD 141.9 million at the end of March, which again reflects the work that we're doing on renewing customers. Slide has moved again. Finally, R&D as a percentage of revenue has increased up to 28%. We've always said that we would be increasing that as we put our foot to the floor around the R&D rollout, and that's been the case here.
You can see that, and that's as we get through this bow wave of work that we need to do to take maximum advantage of the growth opportunity in front of us. If we go to the next slide, please. In terms of the value from our existing customer base, as we've talked about, ARPU, so I'll move on from that. But the main reason it's down is that there's been a NZD 1.23 foreign exchange impact. And actually there was an underlying 66-cent increase across the group. Our asset retention rate at 94.1% is slightly down on the prior reported levels. But again, once you back out the loss of that enterprise customer, it's more like 95.5%.
We are happy that it's stabilized as we go through quite significant renewal and upgrade programs in particular, North America with that 3G program. In terms of cost to acquire and cost to serve, cost to acquire as a percentage of revenue has gone up, and that's been really reflecting the investments we've made in Australia and in North America in our sales teams as we look to prime the pump for the growth that we're going to be getting in those markets.
The cost to acquire per unit while it looks like it increased, once you back out that loss of that enterprise customer because this is on net units acquired, it's 947, which is a drop from 1,026 in the prior comparable period, and certainly a large drop from the second half of last year. Our cost to serve as a percentage of revenue has gone up. That's mainly because we've invested dollars in billing improvements and automated customer support self-service portals, which we will be seeing the benefits of in future periods. We've only just really launched the first part of that customer support self-service portal, so we will see the benefit of that in due course.
Just rounding out operating expenses, as I said earlier, there's really two drivers to this. One is the integration and transaction cost of NZD 2 million, and that other NZD 2.4 million, which is the increase in personnel costs coming through from increased levels of actual employment costs, as well as that buildup of annual leave balances that we will look to unwind as much as we can in the second half. When we move through to the balance sheet in terms of our additions to property, plant, and equipment, it's a significant increase in this half, a lot of which, as you can see, is in hardware additions. Once you exclude the inventory management though, it's a more modest increase.
You can see the amount of work that we're doing to build up stock levels in advance of any further issues coming down the pipeline in terms of supply chain issues, as well as the work that we've been doing in terms of putting additional hardware into the market in dash cams and in that 3G upgrade program. On the intangible side, most of the intangible additions, of course, are development asset additions, so our capitalized development costs. There's been a significant increase period-on-period in that as we push forward with the R&D roadmap completion, and a very minor amount of software additions as support to our ongoing business systems.
When we turn to the next slide, which just shows you the movement in that, on the left-hand side is the total amounts of spend for research and development. You can see there's been an increase in overall amount spent, but also in the relative amount of capitalized R&D as we're really focusing on the things that really will drive future revenue growth through product launch and platform development. On the right-hand side, you can see the movement in the balances from NZD 45.3 to NZD 52.4. I'll move quickly to the cash flow analysis. This is analysis we have frequently done. You can see we're reconciling how we get down to the net cash movement around free cash flow.
A large part of that movement into negative free cash flow has been the investment that we're making of NZD 13.8 million, both in terms of additional headcount in the corporate engineering and product space, where we're building greater capability to deliver, as well as the actual time that we then spent on developing assets, and that's in that NZD 10.5 million dollar amount as well. We're pleased with the progress we made, but we've still a little bit more to go in the second half in terms of development as well as the integration work, which we'll talk about in a moment. This is just the cash flow statement stating that.
Of course, we then also had financing activities, which is a result of the issue of equity that we raised in July through both a placement and share purchase plan for the Coretex acquisition, which of course will settle on the thirtieth of November. Balance sheet has moved in accordingly, and importantly, you'll see a build-up in not only PPE and tangible assets, as we've talked about, but there are other movements in working capital as we've built up other inventory levels. Debtors have increased as well during the period. Again, some of that is to do with the impact of COVID-19, and some of it's to do with the level of growth that we've also seen in terms of our customer base.
Move to the outlook, and I'll hand back to Steven.
Thanks, Alex. We are very focused on our growth plans and accelerating our growth. We've talked previously that it really breaks into three areas. One is organic growth, and we've seen the broadening out and deepening of our products and services. There is a lot going on in addition to the Coretex platforms that are very enterprise-facing to get a better product market fit for enterprise accounts. As Alex mentioned, there has been a real headwind in terms of global supply chain, how that represents itself around electronic parts as there are parts that have gone out to the back end of the year. We saw that coming. We have strengthened our global supply team. It's nearly double the size that it was.
A lot of focus has gone into building agility into the supply of those products, so alternate parts, relaying out of circuit boards. I think we're doing an incredibly good job, especially compared to competitors in preventing stock out situations. It did look like things were trending back to normal, but what we've really seen over the last few months, and definitely you've seen it in the media, the global supply chain's deteriorating, not getting better. In terms of acquisitions, we've talked about Coretex. We're very excited about that. Of course, that does accelerate our growth plans two years in terms of all the different growth metrics, number of units, customers by market, the capability of the platforms and products that we have. That'll be a big engine, growth driver for us.
The acquisition of the two companies, Coretex being about 40% the size of EROAD, are significant. They're incredibly well-planned and will take us 12 months, and some activities will take a further 6 months beyond that. You know, once we have that under our belt, as we've previously said, as we show ourselves to be a good acquirer and deliver value from the Coretex acquisition, we will then look to other inorganic growth opportunities as we expect the industry to consolidate very heavily over the coming years. Strategic partnering is seen as a key ingredient for that, and I'll talk a little bit more about some of those strategic partners. The products that EROAD will build in its own right, they need to be world-class.
If we're not prepared to put that level of investment or it doesn't make economic sense, but our customers need it, then we will partner with best-in-class and integrate our products together to make sure that we can give our customers what they need. One of the things I wanted to highlight at this point is the camera opportunity. You've seen the delivery of the Clarity dash cam and Clarity Solo dash cams over, you know, the last year. We would expect, you know, in three to five years, pretty well every one of our customers to have a camera in addition to their telematics solution. It's an area of low adoption compared to the telematics market. Particularly in North America, so it's a good opportunity for us to grow into accounts that already have telematics solutions in it.
Since March this year, we've sold 4,100 units. That is quite a different product to our standard telematics products. Educating the market, getting to know us as also a camera telematics provider takes some time. Getting our sales teams really competent in selling these products takes some time, but we're definitely seeing good momentum around these camera products. It's definitely a key area of investment going forward. At the top end of cameras that will be able to track driver fatigue, so you're looking at the eyeballs and the actual posture of the driver, really important safety product. It's a product that we could spend literally tens of millions NZD on to be world-class. We've chosen to partner with best in class, which is Seeing Machines.
We have customers now that for their high risk hazardous goods vehicles, they could put Seeing Machines in, which is definitely at a much higher price point. For their lower risk vehicles, they can put Solo or Clarity Hero dashcams in, and both of them feed into our SaaS back-end and provides a seamless experience for our customers to manage the driver coaching and safety management behavior. We see that as a really important relationship for us going forward. In the trailer side, we've got first traction in the North American market with Phillips. There are conversations ongoing in terms of how we could bring those products to New Zealand and Australia, so we'll report more on that at the full year. You know, I think there is these competing trends.
One is, as our customers go through digital transformation, they want to have technology partners that can help them with that journey. For many of our customers, that is quite complex for them, so they want that complexity handled by their technology partner. They do want to have all the things they need to digitalize their business. We need to be very good at partnering and being able to integrate the different technologies to provide a really compelling customer experience. Finally, Coretex acquisition, it feels like forever since the fourteenth of July when we signed the original deal, and then there was the capital raise, and then there was the Commerce Commission clearance. That's all been done.
We've used that time very well in terms of planning out what the high impact things that we need to do day one and deliver first value from the acquisition. We can't wait to get going on this. When you look at what their product offering is, it's far more extensive. As you can expect, there are conversations around, you know, key opportunities and products that we want to build together but couldn't have those conversations with competitors. We're looking forward to becoming together as one company and making sure that we maximize the opportunity of those first best opportunities. In terms of Coretex, this gives an idea of their progress for the six months.
In New Zealand, which hasn't been a focus area of investment, that has declined slightly. Good growth in America, 3,300 vehicles added. How they do revenue recognition as a standalone business is slightly different to us. There is 4,100 additional units where they have won the business, but they haven't shipped it yet. All in all, a pretty strong half year for them. In Australia, again, not a high area of focus compared to North America. They are in the final stages of getting their electronic work diary approved, which is the equivalent to the ELD in North America. We're anticipating some good growth going forward on the back of that.
When you add the two companies together, for the end of September, we're just under 200,000 units. This here is just a summary slide of some of the integration planning that has been going on and the order in which we look to get things done. I suppose the most notable thing we have there is, you know, first focus is about leveraging the Coretex platforms in that North American market, and having got to a unified customer experience, and taking the best of both sets of applications operating on top of an Android platform, we'll then look to bring it to Australia and New Zealand. In terms of the last but final outlook, while EROAD will soon be joining with Coretex, the standalone guidance kind of is interesting but not as relevant.
On that basis, the board has decided that we should be telling the market that guidance is not relevant, as a standalone. Even though as a standalone it makes sense, but as a combined business, it doesn't. Two companies come together. There's some accounting treatments and things that we need to do. You know, as soon as practical, we will be providing an update on what the combined company looks like. In terms of that standalone guidance, which we issued about a month ago, we're looking at 10%-13% growth at a revenue level. When we normalize for one-offs such as the integration and transition costs, we're at similar levels to FY 2021. We expect to continue good progress in New Zealand and Australia.
Lockdowns, we're getting better at working around those, and the rules in the relevant markets. There's some backlog that we will, you know, produce some good sales in the second half of the year, but may push into FY 2023. North America is definitely impacted by COVID, and as they head into winter, we would expect that impact to continue to be worse. Certainly, the driver shortage is also creating some challenges. As I mentioned before, there's some very good prospects that have come out of the conferences that we've been at, about 40 of them over the last 2.5 months. The sales cycle for those larger opportunities is typically 6 to 9 to 12 months.
If we're lucky, we'll get to complete one or two of those within this financial year, but more likely to be in next financial year. I think that concludes the presentation. Happy to take questions. We have Mr. Dale first up, so I'll unmute you and allow you to talk.
Great. Can you hear me okay, Steven?
Absolutely.
Thank you. Just first question. When you say customers are waiting for the Coretex platform and products, sort of throughout your slide pack, are they waiting until December first, or are they needing to wait the full 12-18 months for the full integration, or is there some in between? Can you sort of explain how that works?
Sure. We aren't allowed to show them the product until we're completed. The Coretex product as it currently stands, we can start selling that immediately, and we will get first sales. There are gaps between the products. EROAD has a very good set of sort of road tax products, which they need to be integrated into the Coretex platform, getting some of the single sign-ons between the two systems that they get done early on. We definitely have a very viable set of products to sell day one. When we look at the electronic logging device, which is kind of one of those key things that all interstate fleets need to have, both companies have got very good ELDs. The EROAD product is easier to use.
The Coretex product's got more of the hours of service rule set. There, there's positives and negatives. To get the best out of both ELDs and unify around one, that will take kind of a year to do. You know, we've kinda got an interim branding position, which is kind of better together. As we integrate these products together, we go from having what is arguably the best ELD and a top-five ELD to being kind of an absolute leading product in that market. Hopefully, that answers your question. We will be able to sell day one. There'll be one or two things that we need to integrate that's in the EROAD product set into the Coretex one. The main ones for that will get done over the first sort of three to six months.
We're into getting more uniformity around sort of the customer experience.
Sure. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. I suppose when you sort of say momentum is expected to increase in FY 2023, you know, by that point, you're sort of expecting most of the integrations to be done and to have a more complete product set in that financial year rather than FY 2022?
Correct. You know, when you look at what we have actually been doing, you know, EROAD has been building sort of equivalent platforms, which relates to SaaS mobile and Android, which is the embedded software on the in-cab hardware or trailer. With Coretex, they basically got to solve those problems like 18 months before we have. Instead of us duplicating that spend, let's use what they have. There is a lot of value in what we have developed in our platforms, in terms of architectural elements which will get added in over time. It's not like we've wasted a lot of money.
Certainly, over the six-month period, while we have had that sort of optionality on whether we would get ComCom approval or not, which we were always very confident. You know, you do have to have a plan B. We have been progressing a number of elements that would be useful both as a merged or unmerged company. You know, that will add more value faster when we integrate the EROAD bits into it. You know, I think the key success for two technology companies coming together is to be absolutely crystal clear on which platforms you're going to build on and start building on those quickly rather than trying to have some kind of beauty contest between different sub-products across the two of them.
I think we've really been very focused on what we're doing there so we can maximize first value from the acquisition as quickly as we can.
Great. Thank you. That makes sense. Just one last question, if I may, before I step off. If we ignore Coretex, you know, you seem to be having some good success with upselling additional products. If we look at the ARPU chart on slide 18, you know, ARPU is obviously an average. If you're cross-selling a bit more and ARPU sort of staying relatively flat, is your sort of cross-selling activity offsetting perhaps some underlying decline that we might not be able to see? Is that right? Or is there an explanation for that?
I think, you know, technology does, you know, devalue over time. That's not the right word. It does get commoditized. You know, customers that have been using, say, road user charging in New Zealand for now a decade, you know, that's kind of hygiene. But, you know, would they pay more for that or the same for that? They would expect over time that might come down in value. You are in this area where you are wanting to add more value that more than counters that commoditization of technology that commonly happens. I think we've done a very good job of doing that.
You know, many of the renewals that we've had, when we do that re-signing, we will get them the base package that on them there may be a small discount on that, but then we'll counter that by them taking on additional services, and paying a slightly higher price. You know, you've also got the effect of, you know, we renewed, what is it? 16,000 customers out of 132,000. You know, some of those customers were paying another NZD 4, 5 dollars for the logbook, etc. But when you divide it by the total number, it becomes a much smaller number. That makes sense?
Yes, it does. No, that was a very helpful explanation. Thanks, Steven. That was all from me.
Thank you. I'll go to Hamish.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
Absolutely.
Yeah. Just a couple from me, if I can. Firstly, just the Australian ARPU. I saw in constant currency it came down NZD 6. Is that just reflective of, I guess, Ventia being a really large enterprise and competitive pricing there, or where does that sit in the market? I guess how should we think about that going forward?
It's actually less about Ventia. Ventia is not a really sharp price. It's a good price that we obviously won't disclose, and they don't wanna disclose, but we got good value for them in terms of what they've got as a bundle of services. Some of the other growth that we've seen in the market has been in those small and medium-sized customers, and it really depends on what we're selling. So we're selling a lot of tracking related telematics services which don't have a bigger bundle of services and therefore don't attract the ARPU that you would attract from, you know, the fuller services. So that's where some of that small and medium size growth has come from.
The other aspect of it is we did actually have a customer roll-off. It's not huge, but it was several hundred units, which is in the prior year number, and that they have actually acquired. It's an organization that actually has acquired a telematics provider. It's a global organization. That was on quite a high ARPU. Being as there's a relatively small denominator with the number of units we've got there in Australia, the math means that accentuates that drop. We would anticipate, as we push further into enterprise, actually the ARPU to come up, mainly because we're not just delivering certain types of services. Ventia is certainly at a better pricing than what you're seeing there.
Thanks. Just a quick one on the U.S. sales. I think I heard that you know, after the end of the half, you have added 530 units in the U.S. Is that correct? Can I just confirm that and I guess how's churn going on in that market, you know, underlying since we entered this arc?
The net underlying, I think it's 306, is the net underlying add pre that drop of the 1,751 units for that enterprise customer which changed its technology. The net add is 306 for the half.
In recent times, Hamish, in the last couple of weeks, we have added a fleet of 530. That will be in this month's numbers.
So, Perfect. I just wanted to confirm that. Just one more question. I just didn't want to take your time there, Alex, but just the Coretex update. You know, compared to the independent expert report, by memory, it was about 85,500 in there that we were hoping to close FY 2022 with. Given we're at what 66,000 plus they've added 4,000 units in the U.S. 71,000-ish as it stands today once they're shipped. You know, do you think that can get to that 85,000 number in the second half once you guys take control? Is that still possible or are they suffering some of the same impacts in the North American market that are out of your control?
I think, you know, you've got a number of things there. I think the New Zealand number went back more than what we thought, 1,000 units. You know, in terms of the US and our current level of visibility, of course, having not completed, we can't see the deals which they have in the pipeline or actually really talk too much about it. Certainly how they're going against the plans which they have is good. Their delivery for this last month was 96% of budget. You know, they seem very bullish in terms of substantively understanding their sales pipeline. Past the first of December, we get more color on that.
The other side of that, you know, some of the prospects which have come out of the trade shows, there's a good six of them which require refrigeration solutions, which is one of the key verticals that Coretex is really strong in. You know, one of the, I think, the first benefits will be that through the marketing efforts and the shows that we've been to, those opportunities will be able to work collectively together. Coretex's approach up to this point really has been very focused around working a target list of accounts as opposed to doing a lot of marketing and trade shows. You know, there's some opportunities in there through the combination that we'll see progress on the next six months.
Thank you, Steven, and thank you, Alex. That was it for me.
No problem. We do have one question that's in the Q&A in the actual chat mechanism from Raymond Jang. Who do you see as your biggest competitors in the North American market, and what differentiates EROAD's products and solutions from these? I know we're short on time, but maybe Steven, we can just briefly touch on that.
Sure. I think, you know, the answer to that question improves with the acquisition of Coretex. Prior to Coretex, we are known for great compliance solutions related to the driver fatigue, sort of ELD type of product, the safety side of things, which the camera further enhances that. With the addition of Coretex, we focus on a larger customer size. We are going to be more competitive within the professional full truckload interstate fleets to which we have been focusing on. Coretex also brings really specialist telematics solutions to refrigeration, construction, waste and recycling, and less than a truckload, which is similar to full truckload, vertical.
You know, I think the additional differentiators that we'll be able to provide with Coretex is better being able to address that larger fleet. Coretex have been in that U.S. market another six years longer and really have been focused in those larger fleets, whereas we've been more small to medium. I think the combined company is going to be very competitive in that sort of 300-2,000 size fleet.
I think we've got a Wasim might be next up.
Yeah. Good morning. Guys, can I just ask regarding the pilots, the enterprise pilots in the U.S., where they're up to? Can you sort of remind us around your conversion record around, within enterprise pilots in the U.S.?
One of those pilots, of course, has just completed that 530. We got into a catch-22 situation where we're piloting prospects. They're happy with that. We could close them with the EROAD product, but, you know, we would potentially get them upset when they find out a short time later that we have this other product that we could have offered to them. There are a number which we have done that, and that they're waiting to pilot the Coretex product, which is more extensible than the Ehubo 2 product, which is, you know, 3-4 years old, than the Coretex platform. In terms of win rates, we are not as diverse as many of our competitors, as EROAD.
We need to be where customers need great compliance, we're incredibly capable, where they need other specialist functionality based on the industry that they're in, we're less well-placed. With the Coretex acquisition, there are additional products and services that we can provide beyond the EROAD's feature set. I think our win rate's reasonably good because we do the upfront discovery, and if there's things that we can't meet, then of course we will not proceed. I think there will be an improved number of opportunities that we'll be able to work together and hopefully have a higher win rate too.
We have a question in from Claude Walker, which might be able to cover off and then Owen. Claude Walker's question is just on the question around competitors in North America, which is the competitor we respect most in the USA market. Which is probably quite an interesting question.
I think, you know, there's multi-layers to this now. We have within our vertical, which is that professional interstate trucking, they're primarily the incumbents being sort of Trimble, Omnitracs, and more recently Samsara. If you look up, Samsara's about to IPO, there is some interesting commercial activities they're doing, trying to maximize their pre-IPO situation, which we see as not sustainable long term. In terms of Trimble and Qualcomm, they've had some interesting rough roads, so they are losing customer base. But they're the ones that we're typically coming up against the most. When we start looking into the specialist verticals for Coretex in the refrigeration side of things, there's ORBCOMM would be the big competitor in that space.
Within the construction side of things, it would be Command Alkon. The waste and recycling seems to be a very open market in terms of it's typically had quite generic telematics solutions. I think the Coretex offering in that vertical looks quite exciting. I think the recent infrastructure bill that was passed in the U.S. is going to see a huge amount of activity within that construction vertical, particularly around concrete, which they specialize in. You know, we see that as a really good growth market. Many of these competitors in the verticals, Coretex also needs to cooperate with.
There is quite specialist stuff like if you look in the concrete side, there's a thing called slump for concrete, and that's a product that Coretex most probably won't ever do. There's one that Command Alkon has. End customers put together what they want. It is quite interesting in terms of how competitors cooperate within those verticals to meet the end customer needs. Hopefully that sort of answers questions.
Thanks, Steven. I think we've got Owen still wanting to ask a question.
Well, guys, can you hear me?
Absolutely.
I'll be quick, given the time, but just understand the guidance that's on an underlying basis, right? You're kinda talking about a 34% margin profile for the business on an FY 2022 basis. Is that right? Versus 31% in the first half.
Well, that's the 34%, yeah, is where we had landed last year. As we've said, we anticipate being out and around that number for the full year on the underlying. You know, that's been reiterated here.
If the first half was for the 30?
That's a normalized basis, yeah.
If it's 31% for the first half, is that kinda highlighting that the cost base is now flat and you're expecting some operating leverage in the second half?
Well, we certainly are anticipating some additional operating leverage from growth coming through. Yes, we've ramped up a lot of what we're going to be doing around the R&D, and we wouldn't see the same level of a ramp up in the second half. There might be some aspects of what we've got to do around integration, and obviously integration will come through in the second half. Once you normalize for that, yeah, we've not seen too many other cost pressures. Supply chain aside, of course, that's the important qualifier.
Steven, a question for you. Given the industry growth rate that we've talked about, and you talked about your TAM before, what's a unit growth cadence, you could say, per annum, that you'd be happy with in North America?
I think we're expecting that U.S. CAGR for the industry is gonna be around that 15%, as an industry average. You know, we need to be north of that.
Does your pipeline that you have today facilitate that in FY 2023 and beyond?
Yes. I mean, remember there's two parts to that pipeline. There's a EROAD part and there's a Coretex part. But based on what we can see, we would expect that to be the case, yes.
Just remind me, just around the earn outs for Coretex or just what's the expectations for them to achieve the high end of the high watermark for Coretex in terms of growth?
The contingency components around two elements. One is the safe transfer of the customers that make up 60% of the recurring revenue. The other is around, you know, their new platforms are very new. There is things in there making sure that they mature and scale. What we're seeing so far is incredibly promising. You know, we would expect all of those contingencies to be paid out. They're really there to focus everyone's mind in terms of what the very key things that must happen as a, you know, pretty fundamental side of things.
Not from a growth perspective.
Just more around the platform and product and retention.
No, there wasn't a contingency element around the growth side of things. I think that becomes incredibly hard to place. As a sort of contingent element, you'd want them to be operating reasonably independent to allow them to earn out. We thought that was pretty messy. I think if you go to what are those critical elements that's going to allow you to drive growth. If you have safely transferred across their critical accounts and they're happy, then you've got good references for future opportunities. If the technology is rock solid and it can scale, and it has all the functionality that their current product offerings have, then we're very well addressed in terms of growing.
Good one. Thanks, guys, and I'll see you this afternoon.
Okay. Thank you, everybody. I think we're past time. Hopefully that was informative, and many of you we'll talk to in the coming days. Thank you, everybody.