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Apologies for those who are joining us now. We'll just kick off. Sorry we've been a bit late and good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. For FY 2026 annual half year results, I'm Mark Warner, CEO of EROAD. I'm delighted to be introducing Keir McGregor, EROAD's new CFO, who commenced at EROAD in September. I'll start by outlining our performance for the half and Keir will take you through the financials. We'll then finish our outlook and guidance before opening up for questions. Turning to the key numbers for the half, free cash remains a real strength for EROAD, coming in at $6.2 million. We've delivered consistent cash generation over multiple periods thanks to the operational discipline that's been built into the business. Reported revenue was just over $99 million with 3.3% with steady performance across the installed base and contributions from ongoing rollouts.
Annualized recurring revenue increased to over $178 million, up 6.9% or 3% in constant currency. Growth continues to come from higher value subscriptions and enterprise expansion. Normalized EBIT was $2.5 million lower than the prior period due to some higher costs and lower R&D capitalization. Keir will step through these movements in more detail in the Finance Update. The results show business remains strong and resilient across its core fundamentals. First, our cash generation continues to be a standout. Free cash flow was over $6 million or almost $17 million on a normalized basis once the one-off 4G upgrade costs are removed. With that program finishing this year, the underlying cash profile becomes much clearer and provides greater flexibility in how we allocate our investment. Liquidity remains strong at over $62 million, giving us confidence in the pace and focus of our investment decisions.
Second, we've maintained strategic focus on the ERUC passing opportunity in New Zealand as the country moves towards universal electronic road user charging. We're preparing the technical, commercial, and operational components needed to support a nationwide rollout with clear relevance to emerging global models as well. Third, we're focused on regional market conditions. New growth investment is being directed to Australia and New Zealand, where the near term return profile is strongest. North America remains important, but slower conditions mean we're managing spend carefully while preserving capability. The impairment of goodwill and other assets in North America of $135 million recorded in half relates to the previously signaled softer economic conditions, the increased competition, the non-renewal of a large U.S. customer, and our focus on ANZ. Finally, our customer focus and operational capability have continued to improve.
Partnerships have been strengthened and boosted by the ramp up of our Manila office, providing our customers with enhanced responsiveness and support. These improvements are translating directly into outcomes including the newly inked Enterprise Agreement Cleanaway valued at $5 million ARR once fully deployed, heading to a sustainable growth across our core markets. Let's start with free cash flow. We've delivered four halves of sustained reported cash generation. That consistency gives us the flexibility to invest selectively and accelerate where market conditions are most favorable while also evidencing that management takes a prudent approach to investment. In Australia, our enterprise momentum is driving sustained double digit annualized recurring revenue growth.
Once the new Cleanaway enterprise deal is fully implemented, ARR in Australia is expected to grow significantly and finally, the EROAD opportunity presents a global opportunity for EROAD which we will dig into this opportunity over the next few slides. I am incredibly excited to be talking about New Zealand's move towards a universal electronic road user charging system and the direction of travel is very, very clear for EROAD. The New Zealand government has committed to transitioning all vehicles, including petrol and light vehicles, to ERUC. A series of bills and consultation steps are already scheduled through 2025 with implementation targeted for 2027. EROAD is deeply embedded in the current system, having pioneered ERUC for heavy fleets and we now facilitate around $946 million in annual RUC collection for the New Zealand government.
That experience, combined with our established regulatory relationships and gained platform capability, puts us in a strong position as the country moves to a fully electronic usage-based model. New Zealand is moving early on this transition, and the work underway positions us well for what is coming next. What we see in New Zealand is part of a broader shift starting to emerge internationally as fuel tax revenue declines and EV uptake grows. Governments are looking for a more sustainable way to fund their road networks, and usage-based charges come into focus in several larger markets. Our priority is to get it right in New Zealand first. As the market moving earliest, it gives us the chance to prove capability at a national scale while policy conversations elsewhere continue to develop. At the same time, the longer-term opportunity extends beyond New Zealand's.
New Zealand has 4.7 million vehicles, Australia has around four times that amount with approximately 20 million vehicles, while the U.S. is around 60 times the size of New Zealand with more than 280 million vehicles. Those markets are actively examining alternatives to fuel. Its size and the scale involved is significant. This includes the Eastern Transport Coalition's mileage usage based pilots in the United States, which EROAD has participated in in the past. While the immediate focus is on New Zealand, our line of sight is global. The preparation underway is intended to ensure we're well positioned to take part in those conversations as they progress. As the New Zealand government works towards design of the future system we've been preparing so that we're in a position to move quickly once the requirements are confirmed.
A key part of that preparation has been testing different ways the service could be delivered depending on how the government chooses to structure the program. That includes early prototyping of consumer pathways, exploring how the existing EROAD platform might support the scale and simplicity required for light vehicle users. We've also been building a clear view of the commercial considerations, the economics, the potential pricing envelopes, and what a high volume operating model would require. This work ensures any pressure take is both viable and scalable. When the program rolls out nationwide and alongside the core charging model, we're looking at adjacent opportunities that may become relevant as policies develop, such as time of use in concept, tolling, and other services that could logically submit to distance based charging over time.
The intent of all this preparation is to make sure we're technically ready, commercially informed, and operationally capable when governments finalize the shape and timing of the program and New Zealand offers the opportunity to improve capability at a national scale. Doing that well keeps options open in other markets as user-based models continue to evolve globally. Now onto the regions. New Zealand delivered a stable and disciplined half with growth across revenue, annualized recurring revenue, and ARPU. Annualized recurring revenue increased over 6% year on year to $93.2 million, supported by consistent demand from our installed base and continued uptake of higher value services.
Revenue grew almost 5% to over $ 52 million and EBITDA reached over $ 35 million, underpinned by strong asset retention at 92% after revenue lifted 4.4% reflecting the mixed shift towards higher value opportunities and the final stages of churn associated with the 4G upgrade program. Importantly, most unit reductions appeared came from fleet resizing rather than actual customer losses. Around 88% of the annualized churn revenue impact from unit reductions relates to customers adjusting fleet size. Due to broader economic conditions, these relationships remain in place. An expansion of upsell activity across the portfolio meant more than offset reduction to give us a net positive annualized recurring revenue position. A quick update on our 4G program.
Australia's switch is now complete and across ANZ as of the half year 87% of all units out there were EROAD and were 4G compatible, and as of today this has now reached approximately 90% being 4G compatible. The remaining work is in New Zealand with One NZ scheduled to switch off 3G in December of this year. The final activity is planned for the second half and remains fully funded from operating cash flow with no change to total programming costs. With completion now firmly in sight, we have been forced to retire this slide. Going forward, North America had a soft path and our numbers show that North America's recurring revenue reduced to just under $70 million, down almost 6% on a constant currency basis year on year. This was driven by normal churn that wasn't offset by much new growth in the period.
Customer decisions have slowed and many fleet has taken on a more cautious stance on new investment given tariffs, high operating costs and a broader uncertainty in the freight sector. Revenue was $ 39 million, down 1.5%, and EBITDA was $9 million. ARPU increased 4.1% as the mix continued towards higher value contracts with lower value units coming out of the base. As previously signalled, North America will be impacted in Q4 by the non renewal of a large customer of around 10,000 connections. However, North America remains a vital region for EROAD. Our focus is on protecting the core by supporting our customer base, maintaining capability and aligning spend conditions so the region is ready to scale when momentum returns. Australia delivered a strong first half with sustained growth across revenue, ARR and EBITDA.
Annualized Recurring Revenue increased by 30% year on year to over AUD 15 million, driven by continued enterprise expansion and high adoption of safety and compliance products. Revenue rose 23% while EBITDA increased to AUD 3.7 million. Retention sits very high at 95.5% and ARPU grew 8.3% supported by product mix improvements and pricing actions. The standout development of this period was the recently announced Cleanaway Enterprise Partnership covering a national fleet of more than 3,000 heavy vehicles. This Cleanaway Partnership is a significant milestone for EROAD and the Australian market. There is a five year agreement covering the full safety and vehicle monitoring platform across Cleanaway's national heavy vehicle fleets. The solution includes AI cameras with dual connections, fatigue and rollover detection, critical events monitoring, and satellite connectivity for remote options and operations. Deployment has already begun with full rollout expected by November 2026.
The agreement represents AUD 5 million of annualized recurring revenue with fits the annual escalators. Over the term and during its tendering, Cleanaway conducted a comprehensive evaluation process. The partnership strengthens our position in the Australian enterprise segment and reinforces the strategic relevance of the investment we've made in product and operational capability. Over the last three years, EROAD has secured renewals or wins with a number of marquee Australian businesses including Boral, Woolworths, P rograms, Ventia, Downer and now Cleanaway. This underscores how significant the Australian market is becoming and EROAD is committed to focusing on further growth here. I'll pause and hand over to Keir to take you through the financials for the half.
Great. Thank you Mark and good afternoon everyone. From a financial perspective, we have continued to execute on the four pillars of our financial strategy. As a reminder, these are position the company to generate cash, maintain operating leverage in the cost base, invest in innovation to drive growth and maintain a strong financial position. As Mark mentioned, first half revenue of $99.1 million is growth year on year of 3.3%. This was driven by annual price increases and an enterprise rollout over the last 12 months with a strong performance in our SaaS business where annual recurring revenue also grew by over 5.3%. This underscores the resilience in a challenging environment and the meaningful value that we are offering to customers. Following the recent Cleanaway announcement, the rollout is underway.
We began procuring inventory over the previous months and expect to have approximately $2 million in inventory and hardware built up by year end. About one third of the units are expected to be deployed by year end, contributing $1.8 million in revenue for the period. The remaining units are scheduled for rollout by November 2026. You will see that we reported a loss in the financial statement of $133.9 million. This was entirely driven by an impairment of the North American asset of $134.7 million. If we remove this plus the 4G hardware upgrade program, our normalized EBIT becomes $2.5 million and this compares to $4.7 million in the same in the half last year. EBIT was impacted by lower capitalization of R&D.
This will normalize or is normalizing as we exit the year and the accelerated amortization of a large customer termination in North America onto the next slide. Operating costs, so the chart on the left illustrates that operating costs were 71% of revenue. These include costs as we ramp up our investment in the Philippines office. Last year also included a one-off benefit to transaction revenue due to a change in the GST treatment of RUC transaction fee income. If we exclude these one-off items, operating margins would be broadly in line with last year. Remembering of course that by building our engineering and customer support teams in Manila we are growing our capability at a lower price point to support operating leverage as a technology business where transition and change are to be expected.
It goes without saying that we will continue to relentlessly focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency. The chart on the left, our cost to acquire remains stable as a percentage of revenue. Capitalized costs to acquire were lower at the start of this year, which we expect to increase, which will reflect the commissions relating to the closing of the Cleanaway deal in Australia. The chart on the right, our cost to support our customers has increased as a percentage of revenue as we have increased our service and support costs slightly to build capacity to support large enterprise rollouts. I think we've skipped a slide of research. Now turning to free cash flow. We are pleased to have generated the significant free cash flow to the firm of $6.2 million in the period, which illustrates the strength of our core business.
As Mark referred to, this is the fourth consecutive reporting period that we've delivered positive free cash flow. Once we removed the temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program, the company generated $16.7 million in normalised free cash flow which you can see illustrated on the chart. This normalisation shows the true underlying performance of our business. As the 4G upgrade program is completed by the end of this calendar year and we continue to deliver on our strategy, we expect to see free cash flow continue to accelerate. There was an inventory buildup in the first half of the year to support our 4G upgrade program which we expect to normalise in the second half as the program comes to a close. Subsequent to balance date, inventory was purchased to support the rollout of the Cleanaway contract which is now underway.
We also saw the benefit of $2.8 million related to the rollout of our annual billing program in Australia, New Zealand and a large North American account. We continue to see the benefit of this shift in the second half of the year. Turning to our research and development spend, in the first half of FY 2026 our R&D expenditure totaled $19 million which represents 19% of revenue. This is broadly consistent with last year. As you can see in the chart, our R&D efforts have been more heavily focused on platform scaling which is not capitalizable. We expect our future R&D investment to be more balanced towards innovation and growth initiatives which will be capitalizable with a specific call out to work completed to win the Cleanaway deal.
We believe this type of customer led innovation is low risk and generates long term value as we deploy these features across our customer base. Liquidity, we have maintained our disciplined approach to debt, repaying GBP 2.5 million of outstanding facilities with cash generated from operations, reinforcing our strong balance sheet. Our liquidity remains significant at NZD 62.3 million, providing a high degree of optionality. In addition, we're progressing plans to extend our facilities to ensure we are optimally positioned to execute on forthcoming growth opportunities. With that, Mark, I'll hand back to you.
Thank you Kier. I'll now turn to the outlook and guidance for the rest of the year. Our outlook for the second half of the year is consistent with the updated guidance provided to the market in October. As part of the strategic refocus, new growth investment has been directed towards Australia and New Zealand where we see the strongest near term return profile. North America remains an important market but the U.S. environment continues to be slow with cautious customer investment. Our approach is retain the base, maintain capability and align spend to the pace of the market. For FY 2026 we are reaffirming the guidance we set in October: revenue of $197 million-$203 million, ARR of $175 million-$183 million and a free cash flow yield of between 5%-8% of revenue normalized with a temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program.
Finally, we plan to hold Investor Day in March to take you through our product roadmap and our long term strategic and financial targets. Further details will follow closer to the time and with that we'll now open to any questions.
Thanks. The queue is open for questions. The first question is noting the reduction in units in the U.S. How many of those remaining units are part of the core strategy?
If you look at the U.S. unit base that we have, about 40% of them are cold chain customer units. A good chunk of it is. The rest are in other verticals, including transport and also ones who are particularly focused on health and safety. EROAD has a really strong product suite in health and safety and so we're really confident that we can focus on retaining those other customers as well. If you're looking forward in the U.S., there's over 700,000 cold chain trailers in that market, of which only half of them have any technology in them today. Which means that it provides a great greenfield opportunity for EROAD to grow into that space as economic conditions rebound in that market.
Second part to that question is there was a slight reduction in the unit count in New Zealand.
How much of that was due to?
Economic factors and how much of that was due to the 4G hardware upgrade?
We believe a big chunk of that. In fact, I think we mentioned over 80% was linked to customers reducing the size of their fleets as opposed to leaving EROAD entirely. That suggests it is largely driven by economic conditions. New Zealand's had a rather challenging economic period over the last three years, which impacts particularly the freight sector. We are seeing customers park vehicles up. We expect as economic conditions improve, those customers who have largely stayed with us will add additional units into their fleets.
Question about the free cash flow. Strong result at $16.7 million of free cash flow normalized for the half. The guidance suggests a midpoint of $13 million. Wanting to understand what that might mean for the second half of the year and also how to think about the trend for FY 2027 in terms of whether that will be a year to harvest the free cash flow or to reinvest in the EROAD opportunity.
Yes, I would agree with all of those points. It was a highlight. The guidance, your point about guidance is correct. Where you see it sitting broadly, there's obviously timing shifts between the two halves. We've got some big inventory purchases and then cash goes out in the different halves. There is an element of resettlement between the two halves. In regards to the point to FY 2027, we'll be obviously talking about that more towards the end of the financial year. We're going through quite a bit of planning, but our intention is certainly to be investing, to leverage the EROAD opportunity, and that's probably where we'd land at the moment.
There's a lot of questions in the queue about the ERUC opportunity. I'm going to list them out and we'll address them all at once on the ERUC opportunity. Questions about the size of the opportunity, how much service revenue is up for grabs, what the operating margins might be versus fleet management margins, what the revenue model might be, was it a fixed fee or paid percentage of the RUC collected, how capital intensive the opportunity might be, whether it's free cash flow positive from year one and what the potential opportunity is in Australia following this rollout or deployment in New Zealand.
Correct. Thank you, Jason. Working it through sequentially. First, the size of the opportunity in New Zealand. Right now, EROAD can service about 1 million vehicles using ERUC. Of that, about 200,000 are heavy vehicles. We have a substantial number of them already, and there are about 800,000 EVs and diesel vehicles that already need to pay RUC of some form. Some have EROAD technology in them, but a lot of them are passenger vehicles. Right now, we are looking at what sort of passenger consumer-focused applications we can launch for them to really target that part of the market. In addition to those 1 million vehicles, there are an additional 3.5-3.7 million vehicles which are petrol. The government has indicated they want to move all those petrol vehicles starting in 2027 over to ERUC.
We are absolutely focused on winning a substantial part of that share of the market when it comes online. In terms of operating margins and revenue model, those are things we are working through right now. EROAD is looking at whether we go direct or we work with partners across a range of sectors including telco, insurance, gen tailors and the like. There is a whole bunch of opportunities for us around how we service that segment and as part of that we will work through what the financial model could look like. As we indicated in the past, we are looking in March to provide investor updates and go into that in a bit more detail as we get a bit more certainty around what that model looks like. I will probably reserve for March also the free cash flow impact and what it would mean from year one.
As you've seen historically over the last four quarters—sorry, four halves, sorry—we've provided reported free cash flow positive halves, and we're going to be continuing to be focused on making sure that whatever we invest here is going to have a strong return for our shareholders in the short to medium term. In turning to the Australian opportunity, the treasury in Australia has noted that this is an area that they clearly could get into. There's lots of pressures from the States, in particular New South Wales, who've indicated they want some form of road discharging in the market by 2027 to help sort of fund their infrastructure challenges. Victoria likewise are key to 2027 too. We expect movement over the next year or two in the Australian market to really unlock the ERUC opportunity there more broadly.
We're aware of RUC being rolled out in Hawaii recently. There are other states in the U.S. looking at it too, and EROAD's also participated in past and we've been invited back around looking at some pilots on the Eastern Corridor in the U.S. around how ERUC could be used to fund road in up there. There's no shortage of opportunities. We're focused on doing New Zealand first really, really well. We'll come to the market hopefully in March with a bit more detail around.
What that would look like from a.
Cost and revenue perspective. We are continuing to watch this space very carefully and explore the opportunities it presents.
Thank you. There's a question about the current pipeline that's in place following the landing of the Cleanaway deal. Was that in your pipeline and what remains?
Sure. Yes, Cleanaway was in the pipeline. You may recall, investors, that at the beginning of the year we said there were five enterprise customers in the pipeline, three in North America and two in Australia. Cleanaway was one. There is another Australian customer that is, rather than being a big bank, more of a customer who has a large subcontractor fleet that we will be working our way through over time. In North America, the other three opportunities we have deferred into future years just with the economic conditions we are seeing there now. They are quite challenged and are sort of deferring buying decisions. On top of that, though, we are still exploring other pipeline opportunities in New Zealand. With the recent government win EROAD had, we have seen a number of government fleets really interested in EROAD's solution in this market and also in Australia.
Given the opportunity in that market and the size of also, we do not particularly have very strong competitors, well resourced competitors in the Australian market. We are seeing more and more customers or potential customers come to us more on that sort of enterprise level between AUD 100,000 and AUD 1 million as opposed to something in that large enterprise which is Cleanaway, which is above obviously AUD 1 million being a AUD 5 million ARR opportunity.
Thanks.
The customer that didn't renew in the US is wondering when that phase is off.
We're working with the customer at the moment around their transition planning. We don't have a definitive date yet, but we especially have them before the end of the financial year.
On the US business, would you be looking to grow that going forward? At what rate? Who is expected to lead that and what will the cost allocation generally look like?
Let's start with the first question in terms of—sorry, Jason, say the first part of the question again.
What kind of growth are you expecting out of that business going forward and the cost allocation and who's going to be leading that business?
Sure. In terms of growth expectations, we expect with the rollout of this customer, revenue will be backwards both this year and probably into FY 2027 as well. In the medium term, we're looking at growth around 3% and greater than that. We expect it to pick up over time as the economy rebounds back. We'll certainly be focusing though on the cold chain opportunity which should have a strong growth opportunity and ideally pushing towards low double digits or high single digit growth in 2028 and 2029. In terms of who will lead it, right now we're kicking off an Executive General Manager search for the U.S. market around helping to drive sales marketing with a particular focus obviously on the cold chain experience. Very key here too,
a question on.
The cold chain market. How much of the opportunity exists in New Zealand and how much has been captured and same in the Australian market?
We believe there's about 1 million cold chain trailers in the three markets we operate in. About 300,000 are dispersed between Australia and New Zealand, of which between 20,000-40,000 are based in New Zealand. Based on the type of truck we're talking about, there's relatively low penetration in the cold chain trailer space in New Zealand. It's not one that's particularly been a strong adopter of technology. We believe we can target existing customers. Indeed, we recently announced, or internally at the very least, we've won two cold chain trailer customers in New Zealand recently who were already existing customers with the frontal cab part of our business in Australia. We see greater growth there.
Woolworths are one of our cold chain customers in that market, and we're going to be looking to see who else we can leverage from around the cold chain opportunity given us a very hot continent over there.
Great. Final question. What proportion of your customers are now on upfront billing and what is your target in the future?
Currently we have about 5% of our customer base on annual bill and that brings in just under 10% of our revenue. Our ambition is still to go for a strong penetration of annual bill. We won't hit the 40% in FY2026, but it is still very front and center for us.
Great.
That's it for the questions.
Thank you. Jason and I just want to close by saying, as you can see, we're disciplined in how we're allocating capital. We're focused on the market showing the strongest returns and we're preparing well for the structural opportunities ahead in EROAD. Thank you and have a great rest of your day.