Thanks, Kiara, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the FY 2025 results session. In terms of the people in the room here, as usual, Stephan Deschamps on my left, the CFO, on my right, Aaron Stubbing, General Manager of Express Packaging New Zealand. Occasionally, in a rugby game, someone pulls up lame just before the opening whistle, and that's Neil Wilson, who has contracted COVID, and we've invited him out of the room so he doesn't share that with us. The three of us will walk through and cover off the results presentation for this year. Just by way of overview, and I guess setting the scene, it's been a pretty tough economic environment, particularly in New Zealand, slightly better in Australia.
We have come off probably two, two and a half years of recession, and I think the result that the team have generated this year is a really solid result given those conditions. We're a bit more than just a New Zealand bellwether, so we get labelled with that a little bit, but the reality is that there's a good chunk of earnings now coming from Australia. I think that diversification across information management and Express has really held Freightways in good regard. We're happy that we've got organic opportunities in all lines of business and across all three horizons. I think a relatively unique approach, particularly for people in our sector, where we target short, medium, and longer term with Horizon 1, 2, and 3 growth.
We expect that growth across all of the businesses that we operate, regardless of the part of the lifecycle they are in. We've got a really well-positioned balance sheet. Stephan will talk a bit more about that later on, but we're happy with where that is and how that gearing has moved over the last year. The performance of the Australian businesses, in particular Allied Express, which we acquired in 2022, has been particularly pleasing, and there's some really compelling numbers again as we move through the Express Package part of this presentation. We expect to grow revenue and earnings in FY 2026. I think things generally will start to improve, and we will get a bit of a tailwind behind us as that economy comes right. It's nice to see a series of numbers that are all going in the right direction.
You know, pretty pleasing when you come through a period where the teams have performed well, the businesses have done well in their respective niches, and you can come out with a set of numbers that are all going in that same direction. I mean, clearly, revenue growth of 6.6% and NPAT growth of close to 13%, I think, is a testament to the work that the team have done this year. A couple of numbers here that are quite interesting just in terms of contrast, though. If you look at Express Package in New Zealand, Express Package growth, so this is just the growth through the network businesses of New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, and Castle Parcels, 0.4% for the year. Pretty modest and really reflecting that economic condition that we've been in. In Australia, 11.6%. That's not necessarily to say the economy is going gangbusters.
I think most people in Australia would acknowledge that they're probably in sort of first to second gear, whereas New Zealand's been in neutral. The niche in which we're playing and the opportunities in that particular segment have really borne out, and the team have done a great job in Australia in generating that kind of growth. Information Management, digital growth is still really strong in Australia, and in fact, digital revenue surpasses storage revenue for archives in Australia, just reflecting the work the team have done to build their reputation and grow that digitization work. In terms of temperature control, Ruakura has been the big focus for us. Utilization there peaked at 83% just before the dairy dry-off season, drops a little bit for a couple of months, and we expect that we will pick that up.
We'll talk a bit more about that later on as well. Same customer transport volume, though, in temperature control down 5%. Last year, I think down around 8%. A flattening of the curve, but still pretty tough times for a lot of those customers. Just to put paid to the idea that document destruction is coming near the end of a cycle, it's a record volume that we've pumped through both New Zealand and Australia, 56,800 tons of recycled paper that we've shredded and recycled. Market backdrop, look, I won't spend a lot on this, but I guess really it's just a graph that shows that after we've come out of that COVID period, things have been flat and been tough.
While there might be some signs of life in a few areas of the New Zealand economy, you know, primary produce and meat, dairy, horticulture in particular, we're not particularly exposed to those sectors. While farmers, as they're doing better, might replace parts and upgrade vehicles and those sort of things that could drive some courier deliveries through to those areas, the reality is those aren't areas that typically push a whole lot of growth for our businesses. Australia, as I said, slightly better, a slightly better economic situation over there. You'd like to think unemployment has peaked at the 5.2% in New Zealand. A nice surprise, steady at 4.2%. Again, I guess in trying to get a read on where we're at in the cycle, we tend to think that things won't get worse.
Over to Stephan, who will take you through the high-level numbers and talk a bit about the balance sheet.
Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We chose to start that section a little bit differently. As Mark mentioned, we are hopeful that we're coming to the end of three years of pretty much a recessionary environment in New Zealand. We thought it would be a good time to take stock and look at the path we followed to get here. On these slides, we're showing the last 20 years of revenue growth. From the beginning to the end of that period, we've increased our revenue more than 5x , and that's an average annual increase of almost 9%. You can also see that in the last five or six years, that pace has increased significantly. One explanation could be that I joined about the same time. Another one is that we ramped up our acquisition.
We moved from reasonably small acquisitions every year to larger acquisitions that would make a big difference. If you look at these numbers, in FY 2020, we acquired Big Chill; in FY 2023, we acquired Allied , and that's driven a lot of growth for us. If we look more closely at FY 2025, as Mark mentioned, our revenue is almost NZD 1.3 billion; that's 6.6% over last year. The environment in New Zealand is still difficult. If I look at the same customer growth, it's still pretty lackluster, but we've managed that with price increases, but also a lot of new business and market share gains. One significant contributor to that, which is new, is our global e-commerce business, which is now delivering a significant increase in volume through our network.
In Australia, we've also seen a significant increase. Allied 's volume is up double digits, which reflects both a really excellent service quality, but also a new approach to sales, which is delivering a lot of results. On the IM and Waste side, the top line is also increasing, although not always in the way we want, and I'll come back a bit more to that. I won't talk too much about the EBITDA margin because we've got a slide looking at that more precisely. If you look at the bottom line, our NPAT reached NZD 80 million, which is almost 13% up from last year. On top of the business performance, we benefited from strong cash flow. I will come back to that, which allowed us to reduce debt and interest expense.
Looking a bit more at the margin, which, as you know, has been a significant focus of ours over the last few years, we got impacted significantly post-COVID by the labor cost increase. We had two or three years of double-digit increase, which we couldn't completely recoup as price increases. We've done a lot of work through that, and I'm pleased that this year, if I look at the E P businesses, pretty much all of them have seen an increase of margin. Overall, at the sector level, it's more than 500 basis points of margin. There are a lot of things behind that, price increases, but also a better utilization of our network. The network growth in the last few years had contributed to the margin reduction, but it puts us in a position now where we can absorb significant additional volume with very limited marginal costs.
On the IM side, it's not exactly the same story. We mentioned in the past that Shred-X was struggling at a margin level. The other Information Management businesses were reasonably stable, a little bit lower in New Zealand, reflecting the fact we didn't have census work this year. We still had some last year. Shred-X has grown its top line, but that margin is below what we would expect. We've started a program of work there about six months ago, and we're basically looking at every single contract and piece of work we have to make sure that we are structured in a way that can deliver growth and profitable growth. The results so far are encouraging, and I'm optimistic that we will be able to see margin growth across all the network next year. Mark mentioned also Big Chill.
Big Chill's margins have improved last year, driven by a better utilization of the 3PL business, but we still need economic recovery so that the transport revenue kicks in. One thing that's probably worth repeating around our global margin, as Australia becomes a more significant part of what we do, the margins in Australia tend to be slightly lower than some of our businesses in New Zealand. There will be a natural dilution of the margins overall. As I said, even in Australia, the trend remains a significant improvement of margins. These translate into reasonably good cash flows. There was no significant acquisition last year, so pretty much all our cash flows went into paying dividends to our shareholders, but also reducing debt. CapEx remains very controlled. CapEx was essentially a BAU CapEx, below 3% of revenue last year.
All of that drives strong operating cash flow that translates into less debt. If you look at the gearing, the bars are the CapEx. The big bar in FY 2023 was investments we did in Allied for the [South Asian] system. You know that we have a capital management policy where we're targeting a net debt over EBITDA of between 2x- 3x . We started the year at 2.7x . We are now below 2.4x . The balance sheet's sitting in a reasonably good position. This allows us to look at the dividend. Our policy is to pay between 75% - 80% of our NPAT. We decided to go to the top of the range this year based on the position of the balance sheet and based on a reasonable optimism for the next 12 - 18 months.
We've increased our dividend by 8% to NZD 0.40 overall for the year against NZD 0.37 for the last three years. As you can see on that graph, with the exception of the GFC and the first COVID year, we really tried to pay a dividend that we believe is sustainable and maintainable over time. Hopefully, that increase in dividend reflects our optimism in our position in the market. I'll hand over back to Mark to look at the divisional results.
Thank you. Yeah, it's a great graph, I think, when you look at 20-odd years of sustained performance. Yeah, it's a graph that I know the team here are very proud of. In terms of Express Package and Business Mail, it feels like a little bit of a repeat of what we talked about over half a half year, to be fair. Revenue growth of 6%, EBITDA growth 11.6%, and NPAT 13%. Really driven a lot by new business, market share gains, work coming over the border, as Stephan mentioned, through Freightways Global. The ability to attract new customers to the network because of the quality of the service has been really critical, again, in this half year as it was really over the previous couple of years. Same customer volume, really pretty flat still. It was a slight movement upwards in the second half of the year.
I said to a few people over time, it's almost imperceptible, but less worse was the words we were using for quite a bit of the last 6 -1 2 months that that decline in same customer volume was a little bit less worse than it had been. We're now at a point where it's slightly positive, ever so slightly positive. Really pleasing uplift in margin, you know, despite the fact that we're not getting more volume out of the same customers. That's good execution of pricing that Aaron will talk about, which reflects, you know, the targets we have for FY 2026 as well. We've seen that margin move up really in the bigger businesses of New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, Allied Express, and DX Mail. Those brands, they're pretty variable cost bases in terms of contractors.
As we have grown volume and got a reasonable price increase, we have seen those margins expand in those businesses. Understanding that Big Chill improved their earnings as well, and really neat to see that a plan to implement Ruakura has paid off and really good utilization out of that facility that's helped Big Chill grow their earnings this year as well. DX Mail, really strong result, very agile business, operates out of the corner of every courier depot that we have around the country. Not a whole lot of fixed cost in that business, and we can tweak and respond to our customers' needs pretty quickly. Just another way of looking at that margin graph. This is pre-IFRS.
As Stephan alluded to earlier, just a nice movement of around 0.5% in terms of that margin trend, remembering, of course, that the businesses at Big Chill and Allied trade at a lower margin than the likes of the New Zealand Express Package companies. If we look at New Zealand Express Package volume, this is for the network businesses, predominantly New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, Castle Parcels, Now Couriers, those brands. In the first half, we talked about volume being down 1.5%. Temu was in the prior corresponding period. In the second half, volume's up 1.9%. No Temu in the PCP, giving it an overall volume increase of 0.4%.
When you look at the graph at the bottom there, 2020 lockdowns with COVID impacted part of the back end of that year, 2021 and to an extent 2022, a bit of a boom with online shopping and e-commerce that really pushed volumes up. Then 2023, 2024, and 2025 represented all of those pretty tough times from an economic point of view, but really had mahi in terms of picking up new customers that have replaced those same customer downtrends. A couple of other points to call out, the oversize initiative we have in New Zealand. These are items typically between 2025 and around 50 kg - 60 kg that has achieved its NZD 10 million target that we had for the year. Really pleasing to see. It's a mirror of what we do with Allied Express, but matching that over here in New Zealand.
Again, well-executed price increase that netted 3.6% with a bit of PFE that has helped us with margin and cost recovery. Over in Australia, it looks like a completely different planet, doesn't it? Half-year growth 8.5%, second half 15.2%, full year 11.6% in terms of items going through the network. I think there's a few things different around that Australian environment. The economy certainly, as I say, maybe one to two years up on where New Zealand has been. End of financial year sales for the niche that we're in, they were pretty big this year, really helping the tail end of the year along and a little bit into the start of this year. I think the niche that we're in, the reality is we are moving a lot of ready-to-assemble furniture. In these economic times, that category, I think, does quite well.
You're not buying necessarily a NZD 2,000 bookcase or sofa. You're buying a flat pack, which is worth hundreds of dollars and can be transported by Allied . The team have also done a really good job at winning share and wallet and removing the caps that previously customers would have had before we had automation. I'll talk a little bit more about that shortly. The really pleasing thing, I guess, with that volume has come better margins. We've got a bit of leverage through the P&L as those extra volumes have come through. You certainly see that in the peak periods of November, December, and any of the other periods where you have things like end of financial year sales.
Just to remind people, I guess, of that case, the automation that has gone into Allied represented in the picture there is pretty unique in this part of the world. It really is aimed at that profile of freight from 23 kg and up to 60 kg- 70 kg. Automation in Sydney and Victoria does a fantastic job at absorbing a lot of that volume and pumping it out. What that's enabled us to do is to reduce misdirects, so reduce the number of items that have been directed to the wrong courier and then needed to be re-handled. It's given us a better labor-to-revenue ratio because as the volumes have grown, we haven't had to add as much extra labor through the network. The machine also is very good from a revenue capture point of view.
As items come through, they are weighed, queued, scanned, and that gives us a really good view of the actual revenue that we should be collecting for each parcel and the opportunity to recapture anything that has maybe been underdeclared as it goes through. We're really pleased with how Allied had gone since being part of the Freightways family. Grateful the way the team have executed and implemented the automation. It's a tremendous result from a team there in what is still a pretty tough market. The other investment made through the depths of the recession over here was that decision to go into Ruakura 3PL for Big Chill. Again, pretty big call when your volumes are going backwards, but you see the opportunity in that particular niche, and that's a Horizon 2 niche for us. Again, the team have executed really well.
The utilization of what really is a world-class facility has grown and grown. Customers have been really impressed by the work that the team do there, and we've had a lot of people that didn't get the chance to be customers that have been through the site and again have said, "Hey, I didn't quite realize how good that was going to be." That opened up October 2023. We built pretty well, lost a bit of money in that FY 2024 financial year as the utilization steadily built. By around the end of the year, start of FY 2025, we were at break even, and that property has made a profit for us. That really has resulted in the increase in earnings that we've seen in the Big Chill business. Good, strong customer demand. It's also fed the transport network.
When you get that product line within the 3PL center, that all goes out on Big Chill vehicles for last mile delivery through to restaurants, cafes, supermarkets, food service outlets. We are actively looking at where we go next. We expect that facility to be close to 90% come around September, October. The team have been doing work on where the next facility could be. Hamilton and Christchurch are the two main areas that we've looked at. The facility's also given us a bit of resilience. If you think back to Cyclone Gabrielle, that was a really tough time for the Big Chill business because you had Cook Strait ferries not able to operate for a period at that time. Food kept coming out, going into the network, and then fundamentally got stuck in either Picton or Wellington.
Having Ruakura set up just gives a little bit of cushioning, I guess, in the event you know that it'll be ferry sailings that are affected to store that product and not have it sitting in mobile warehouses, which are trucks sitting on the wharf. Being a bit of a godsend from that point of view as well. The other point I thought I'd raise, being a little bit of media. We have a JV partner for the air freight network called Airwork. We've been in a JV partnership with them since around 2015, so around 10 years. In fact, that business was placed into receivership relatively recently, still operating as a going concern. It still makes money and operates in that regard.
We're not particularly worried about it falling over, but it's certainly a point to be aware of, and it's caused us to make sure we have good contingency plans in place for aircraft. We operate three 737-400s together with Airwork in that joint venture. We provide the crew and the ground handling services. We also operate one 737-800 with a company called Texel. We have contingency plans in place in the event we need them. The two of those 737-400s come off lease around this time next year, and our strong preference would be to slowly start moving to 737-800s, which have a greater carrying capacity and are also more fuel efficient. Just a bit of an update on the airframe strategy and where we're at there.
If we look to the future in terms of those horizons of growth and think about FY 2026 going forward, a big win for Big Chill has been the investment in a transport management system, which provides far greater visibility for items going through the network, gives customers the ability to track their own items, sign on glass, see the quality of product if it's been damaged or affected in any way at receipt or through the network. There's another couple of steps of that program that we will continue to roll out through FY 2026, but it'll be a really important tool in the toolkit for the Big Chill team to go and win new business. In terms of Horizon 2, as I say, we expect to be 90%+ utilization by the end of that first quarter.
We've got verified volume that'll come through into the facility over the next month or two. Pretty close to, I guess, getting to a point where we make a decision on where we go next, whether that is Christchurch or Hamilton, having assessed customer demand and the cost of those facilities. Horizon 3, a smaller part of the business, but Produce Pronto doing deliveries into service stations, convenience outlets. We've had a step up in cost over this year to position the business with more capacity to grow into. While that has impacted their margins a little bit this year, we're confident that with that step up in capacity, we can go out and win new business in that particular space. I will hand over to Aaron now, who will talk about the key areas of focus for Express Package in New Zealand and just touch on Australia.
Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. FY 2025 was a good year for Express Package, as the gents have covered off already. The three largest businesses and DX Mail all had solid performances. We continue to grow our market share, and the new business team have had a stellar year in terms of their activity. They took advantage of PBT's exit from the market and made some solid gains in that area. Further areas of encouragement for the new business team were medical, wholesale to retail, and the health supplements verticals. Complementing the new business team and the service from our operations team was the account management team. I really want to sort of make a mention of them because they don't often get the limelight. We just had some really solid outcomes with regards to the annual price adjustment, as Mark mentioned.
I want to go back to July 2024, where we actually put out our largest APA in history, I believe, for Freightways and trying to ensure we cover off those significant costs, or at least most of them. That effort was stellar, and they followed it up this year in July 2025 with another fine effort. Based on that, they moved forward into the key tenders and customer retention, which went very well for us in the last financial year. They've taken on the share of wallet challenge, which Mark mentioned earlier. For us, share of wallet is about us having volume with a customer that we share with a competitor and how we extract more of that volume into our network. The work that's gone in from the account management team has just been absolutely solid.
We have to thank them for the time and effort that goes in because this is not an easy transition in terms of moving freight into our network. Very proud of the efforts there. Finally, the last bit that they've done is the address validation. This is something we've been talking about for quite some time. It's about getting better data into the ticket of our customer, which then provides our freight sorting team with better information, and they give a better path to the contractor who could have a better service standard. With that, we get a better DIFOD outcome and hopefully a better result all around for the customer and the business. Outside the core activities in Horizon 1, we've still got Project Evolve, our billing system technology piece that's under construction. We spent NZD 3.6 million on it last year, and this year we're budgeted for NZD 5 million.
In the next couple of months, we roll out phase I of the system where we've had a lot of planning and testing underway. It will be quite a milestone to have phase I up and running and the internal customers starting to receive output from the Project Evolve team. Finally, under Horizon 1, we have the Christchurch Hub expansion. The freight hub, as we refer to it, where every piece of South Island freight travels through on a daily basis, will increase its footprint by 20,000 sq m. We will also increase our automation and upgrade at the same time, which will have about a NZD 10 million CapEx. The rental increase will be NZD 2 million a year, and we're looking for completion around July 2027. Two years from now, we should be breaking ground in the next couple of weeks.
Moving into Horizon 2, our B2C horizon, once again, also mentioned previously, was the e-commerce space or our niche that we've developed. A core cycle of our team going up to China and spending time with our customers up there and potentially new customers and understanding their market and their needs. From that, we've developed a solid number of medium-sized customers, which is our preference, as opposed to putting all our eggs in one basket or two. I guess we're just talking a little bit about pricing for effort. Where that all began was charging more for residential deliveries because of the time and effort that that takes. We've broadened that to basically focus on anything to do with time, distance, and complexity.
Our customers are getting used to us having these honest conversations with them, and hence growing better margins and better service standards with them at the same time. We'll look to continue that into FY 2026 also. Finally, in Horizon 3, it is the continuation of scaling the oversized volume. The Allied team has done a sterling job this year in terms of volume and profitability, and very pleased that the Kiwi Express team have started to hit their milestones as well. Both businesses are looking to increase their areas of coverage, and what that means is the items will stay in the network. They'll have better transparency for our customers, better service standard, and theoretically, financially beneficial as well. We continue to leverage off our relationships across the Tasman, working together and take on opportunities between ourselves.
Naturally, we will continue to assess the M&A opportunities in Australia moving forward. Thank you very much.
In terms of information management, yeah, looks slightly disappointing result here where the revenue growth was really strong. We weren't able to increase earnings there. The story fundamentally was across the storage and digitization businesses, TIMG, really good solid performance. Storage continued to grow. Digitization grew 16% across both New Zealand and Australia. Good solid performance there. The area that we underperformed was in waste renewal. What we had within that particular segment was actually really strong revenue growth and revenue growth really in Horizon one, two, and three, but at the expense of margins.
There was a couple of one-off costs within that waste renewal piece, but there was just some general underperformance in terms of margin, really recognizing the revenue we were bringing on and the cost structure that supported that revenue. We have a pretty clear line of what we need to do there. I'll talk about that a little bit more shortly. In terms of TIMG, archive volume is still growing. We have one slightly larger warehouse down in Victoria, so we've shifted out of an older property into a newer property, which is adjacent to our first Victorian site. That gives us a bit of a capacity for growth there, so we will focus on growing that vacant capacity. The digitization fundamentally as a strategy is helping us win new storage volume as well.
We really have staked the claim in terms of security credentials, accuracy, the ability to do a job on time. Those key capabilities around getting good efficiency and reliability. What that's doing is as we win digitization volume, we will often then archive and store the paper and the records that come with that volume. Happy with that strategy where Horizon 2 is actually feeding Horizon 1 for us. In Australia, the Australian elections slowed just a couple of those digitization projects near the tail end of the financial year. With a new government elected, we will hope that those pick up again in FY 2026. For Horizon 3, pretty small, but we've started a business called Stocker a couple of years ago. It's e-commerce 3PL, really targeting small and medium enterprises. It's part of the market, which is not particularly well served by anyone.
Often, customers that are a little bit of trouble for some of the large 3PL businesses to cater to. We use the spare capacity that we have within the TIMG footprint, and we clearly feed the items either through New Zealand Couriers or Post Haste. Growing nicely past NZD 5 million in FY 2025, and a good chunk of the revenue there pushes back into the courier networks. In terms of waste renewal, we have a pretty good view as the crow flies about where we need to get with this business. Fundamentally, what we want to do is double the earnings. It is sort of the key reason that we didn't grow earnings and maintain or grow margins in the IM division. The series of steps we have are relatively straightforward.
It really is working through and saying, "Hey, have we got the price right for the effort we are putting in?" Often, we will be the only player in particular regions, and sometimes just the prices we're charging in those regions don't match the costs that we have had. That's sort of historical pricing, I guess, that we haven't come back and revisited well enough. We've revisited, but not well enough, given the cost increases of the last two years in particular with drivers' wages and depot costs. We will work through that. We're restructuring parts of the network. What we want to do is improve the service, but also the efficiency. As Stephan mentioned, seeing some quite good progress with that even over the last couple of months. They're getting better utilization out of the wage driver fleet that we have. We have route optimization.
We've done some tweaks to that to improve the number of bins that we can collect per run, which is giving better service, but also giving better efficiency and a better cost per bin. In Horizon two, again, pretty simple. What we aim to do there is carry on growing medical waste growth 16% over this past year. Again, we want to achieve double-digit revenue growth in the coming year. Most of that will be focused on Victoria, where we're running at about 25% of the available capacity. We have plenty of room to grow into. A lot of that focus is on private clinics, private hospitals. We have won a place on the Victorian HealthShare tender board.
That gives us the ability to go into all of those various hospitals with prices locked in, terms and conditions locked in, and approval, but you still have to win them one by one. We'll expect to win a little bit of volume there, but I think that a lot of that focus will remain on the private clinics, private hospitals where we have achieved really good growth to date. As we improve the utilization of that facility, we'll improve the earnings that we get out of it. In Horizon 3, just reassess some of the products that we are collecting and the price for which we are charging for that collection, treating, and sortation. The business had moved into quite a range of products. We do ITAD, IT Asset Disposal, where we'll pick up laptops, servers, et cetera, et cetera.
Those products can be refurbished and sold on after the data has been wiped. We do quite a bit of e-waste as well, where likewise we're picking up data on devices and shredding and destroying that material. We've moved into textiles. We've moved into high-value packaging. There was quite a number of waste streams there. The strategy for the team is really to consolidate those operations in a particular state so we can get the best out of the processing capacity we will have in that state. As I say, address the pricing. In some cases, we've been picking that up at break-even margin or even a slight loss. We will sort that out. In terms of M&A, certainly despite the fact that we haven't acted on an acquisition, we've certainly been active.
The areas we're looking at fundamentally are things that are either complementary or synergistic with our existing operations. 80% - 90% of the focus is in Australia and in and around the Express Package market. Complementary means something where we might be able to service the same customer, but with another service, or it's a service that's closely adjacent to what we're doing with Allied Express. Synergistic clearly means that we can fold it in and get bigger scale efficiencies by perhaps rationalizing depots and runs and those types of things with a similar business. Those are the two carriers that we are looking at. We're looking for businesses that align with our operating culture. In most cases, I'd have to say most of the targets tick that particular box. We want businesses that we can grow.
We don't want a business that we can pick up and is going to do the same revenue and earnings next year as it has done this year. We want businesses where we've got the capability to add something to it and really help grow like we have done with Allied . That means that we're pretty disciplined, we're picky, we're fussy, and we will continue to be that way. Having said that, there are a large number of businesses that we have looked at over the past year. Some of those remain very firmly in the choice set. Some of those we've gone through and drawn a bit of a line and said, "Hey, not for us." A few of them have gone out of business, in fact, over in Australia in the last 12 months. The pipeline's still got a reasonable number of active and future potential opportunities.
I think we are probably better positioned this year than any other to be able to act on some of those. There's a big range in terms of size, anything from NZD 50 million -NZD 500 million in revenue. They fit across B2B and B2C focused businesses. The nature of the Australian market means that a lot of these transport businesses fit in particular niches. They might be a geography. It might be a freight size or type. It might be a particular industry vertical. It could be a service standard. It's interesting, again, our strategy is to be number one or a fast-growing. How do we become a fast-growing number two in a particular niche so that you can build a bit of power and concentration and density with what you do? We are looking for those things as we work through that list.
I think we've established really good relationships with a lot of these targets. Most of them are independently owned, family-owned type businesses, and the vendors can only sell them once. They need to make sure they're selling to the right party. I think in most cases, we tick that box for them. It's a matter of whether those businesses meet our criteria as well. All right. Finally, the outlook. I think what we'd all acknowledge is that trying to be economists and trying to pick when the economy's going to tick up is a pretty challenging thing to do. That recovery has been delayed far longer than probably anyone anticipated. We don't kind of use those words around green shoots. I guess what we do say is just a very modest improvement in volume over the last six months.
The customers have gone from being slightly negative in terms of the volume they're sending to very, very slightly positive. That turn has happened over this last six months, and we think that'll keep building a bit of momentum into FY 2026. The exact gradient of that is a little hard to tell. That's back in the realm of being an economist and a forecaster. What we do know is that if we get a bit of positive momentum, that organic same customer growth coupled with winning new business and getting the right price for everything you do will allow us to expand margins in the coming year. The gradient is not over to us, but when it comes, we know it will be a bit of a tailwind for us.
Our focus then remains on just playing our game, improving service quality in every single one of the brands that we have, making sure that account management strategy we have of staying really close to customers and helping them and understanding their needs and growing with them and keeping them is really critical for us. Then going out and winning those new ones for each of those niches, which is what the team have done not just last year, but in reality, probably over the last four to five years. As I said right up front, we're really happy that for every one of our businesses, no matter what stage they are in a product lifecycle, we have a Horizon 1, 2, or 3 opportunity that we can go and pursue. I think you take a bird's eye view of where we sit as a business, and we're pretty happy.
I think a lot of people would love to have the problems that we have. We will be seeking growth in all of those areas. If we find the right acquisition opportunity, I think we've got the balance sheet in a position where if it's small, we can do something there. If it's big, hopefully, we would have the support of shareholders. That brings to the end the cacophony of slides we've given you. I might hand it back over to Kiara to manage any questions.
Thank you, Mark. We'll now begin the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please select the raised hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen to be placed in the virtual queue. This may also be found under the reactions icon. After your name is announced, please unmute yourself, state your name, company, and ask your question. Our first question comes from Grant Lowe. Grant, please unmute yourself to ask your question.
Good morning, team. Thank you for the presentation and good result in a tough operating environment, clearly. Just a couple from me. Just around you spoke, I think it was Aaron spoke about the Evolve phase I rollout in the next couple of months. What exactly does that deliver and what's the implications for FY 2026?
I'm going to maybe talk a little bit about what we're doing, but there's no particular impact financially in FY 2026 grants. We're still constant in terms of what we talked about at the half year and the previous full year when we announced the project that we don't expect any major cost savings. There's no magic pricing for effort initiative that strikes in FY 2026. Aaron can bring you up to speed and just where that project is evolving to.
Yes. Firstly, it's all about credit control and invoicing, just getting the basics right of the billing system. That will then progress into how we actually can strategically bill and grow courier remuneration, graduate courier remuneration in the billing process, and take it further where we can actually do smarter things with our customers. We're getting ourselves out of spreadsheets and databases and actually into the new millennium. Basically, we'll be able to put more focus on getting more accurate and timely outcomes for our people in a cost-effective way that gives us a process that's robust enough for the next 20 years, per se.
The one thing, and it's pretty small in terms of contribution, but the EP team this year tackled Auckland out-of-area deliveries and a bit of differentiated pricing for that. It was quite a nice dry run, I guess, in terms of thinking about what we do with local in particular that we have talked about in the future. That out-of-area pricing effectively established a ring around Auckland and said, "Hey, if you're sending items out to Beachlands as an example on Maraetai, that's not Auckland anymore. That's an out-of-area. And it will cost you a little bit more." The team have implemented that for FY 2026. Pretty modest gains. That was really us just picking on a small part of local. It's about 10% of Auckland's local volume, I think, goes out to those out-of-areas. Testing that with customers around the differentiated pricing, which generally has gone pretty well, hasn't it?
Yes. Look, it's one of those pricing for effort strategies that we talked about. It also just means that we don't have to create an exception in the system every time we want to do something new, that the system can actually cope with the direction of the business and what we want to do from a systems and operational point of view.
That's great. Thank you. Okay. It's a key building block, clearly. In terms of the waste renewal side of things, can you just remind me what the NZD 2.2 million of one-offs was? There was some in the first half, I recall. Do you have a target in mind for earnings improvement in FY 2026?
Yes, we do. The NZD 2.2 million predominantly related to historical work cover premiums that tracked back over about a four-year period, which work cover hadn't invoiced us for. Partly our mistake, partly theirs. Regardless, you don't want to battle with a regulator, so you pay the bill. That's what that related to. The target for us is to double the earnings of that division over the next two years, and a big chunk of that in this year.
Have you disguised what the earnings of that business is? I'll think about doubling.
No, we haven't. If we double, look, it's sort of in the order of another NZD 5 million -NZD 6 million of earnings, roughly.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. Just around the M&A side of things, obviously, everybody appreciates the discipline that you guys have shown, and nobody wants to see anything done rashly, clearly. Just in terms of the last comment there that you've got around the nature of the market means operators typically service a niche, what's the context of that point? Are you highlighting the fact that this is sort of like, obviously you're looking for the right thing? Is there a large number that come across your desk which are not quite the right fit? Is that where you're getting at there?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting. I mean, you look at the TGE business over there. I guess that was the business that tried to be everything to everybody and literally, you know, do everything from all containers through pallets, through overnight air freight, B2B, B2C, fast couriers, et cetera. That business has had a really tough time, right? I think it's been on a turnaround path for probably about four or five years now. I think that's an example of one that's not a particular niche operator, has gone right across the board and maybe lost itself through that period.
A lot of the businesses, the better ones we have seen, the ones that have good margins, that are capable of growth and have demonstrated growth, those are the ones that have tended to operate in niches, which, as I say, could be a geography or it could be a market vertical in terms of the segments they service. It could be a freight type. In Allied's case, it was the size of the freight that was the key niche they occupied. Those are probably the ones we have found more interesting and are spending more time on.
Got it. Just last one for me. In terms of the timing for that, are prices, is the pricing realistic? What's been the constraint, as I say, nobody's looking for you to do something rash just for the sake of it. In terms of what has been the constraint, something you've been talking about for a little while now?
Look, there's a few with unrealistic pricing expectations, 100%. There's a couple we would have loved to have, but you know, really highly, very high expectations, and they haven't sold. They'll come around again, I think. A big part of it with sort of family and independent owners is what is the right time to let their business go. I think for a lot of them, they've come out of this period again of high labor inflation, and a lot of them in their mind go, "Oh, well, if I could hang in for another two years or another year or another six months and just improve the earnings, even on the same multiple, I get a better price." There's quite a bit of that thinking, I think, as well, amongst these independent owners is, "It's been a pretty tough three years.
If I could just get my earnings back to where they were, if I could improve them by a little bit, then I've got another X million in my pocket." Those people there, you've got to show them it's a good home for their people, which most of them are convinced of, and then help them realize that this might be the right time. If you don't go now, maybe you miss out. Anyway, we're working through them. I think we've done this for a reasonably long period of time, and we are disciplined, and we're not going to rush in and get something that's not right for us.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andy Bowley. Andy, please go ahead and unmute yourself to ask your question.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. A couple of questions from me. The first of which is around pricing. In slide 18, you are referring to NZ Express Package pricing from a GRI point of view of netting at 3.6%. Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the GRI from a gross perspective last year was 6.5%. I guess the first part of the question is, can you confirm that that's like for like? If so, you know, why are we only netting off at such a low level versus what we've been accustomed to in recent years?
Yeah. Sorry, the 3.6% is for that's the price increase we have just implemented. That's around 80% of the 4.4%. We implement that three months of May and June, which is the reason we had it on slide 18, probably. Yeah, we're pretty confident we get the 3.6% out of this FY 2026 price increase that we communicated through May and June.
Okay, I get it. Maybe just confirm what you netted off last year as well while we're at it, please, Mark.
I think we had 6% through.
Seven?
Yeah, 5.8%- 6% , Andy, in that region.
Great. The 3.6% for FY 2026 for NZ Parcels, can you maybe talk more broadly around the pricing expectations across other aspects of the business, be it Allied and Big Chill, please?
Yeah, Allied, we've certainly gone at a lower rate with Allied. The key strategy with Allied really is to build volume through the network. Typically, we're a little bit dearer than others for the type of work we do, but can justify it because the quality of the service is really good. The Allied team price increase we went with there was only high twos, about 2.8%, 2.9%, and we hope to net around about 2.5% out of that particular price increase. The bigger focus for us is to get more volume through those larger facilities we have. Big Chill, tougher time for those customers. Price increase we went to the market with was high threes, and again, hoping to net around high twos. Just a tougher time for that customer base at the moment. Reasonably competitive.
I think you've got fixed cost infrastructure across all of the competitors in the temperature control space. Everyone probably with volumes a little bit down. Important for us to hold on to our customers, which we have done, with a bit of market share, which we have done, but probably at the cost of a little bit of pricing that you'd like to have that we've elected to be a little bit more conservative on.
Great. Thank you, Mark. Now, just moving to the outlook commentary, where we talk about the broader economic backdrop and recognize it's been challenging, but perhaps there's some improvement now being observed. We talk about assist to expand margins, and I kind of press the word slightly in the year ahead. Can you kind of clarify what you mean by slightly? I'm mindful here that margin expansion's been a feature in FY 2025. If I look at broader market consensus expectations for the year ahead, they assume 70 basis points. Does that meet the kind of the slightly in the outlook commentary?
Yeah, maybe Stephan can talk about the quantum, and I'll just give a little bit of the backdrop. I think that if we just look at the component paths, particularly for NZ Express, and I think certainly for Allied , where we look at the leverage we get from the volume coming through, we would think that we will improve the margins in those sectors with a little bit of same customer growth, which is what we are seeing now. I think that part's positive for Big Chill. Still yet to see much in the way of same customer improvement. It's a little bit less worse, you know, again, than what it had been. A wee way to go, I think, in that particular industry before there is positive growth out of those same customers.
Yeah, I mean, as we discussed for the EP business, I think we have the right network. We are well positioned. We can absorb additional volume. For the businesses that haven't been doing well, we have a plan that's already delivering. If I were not comfortable with consensus, I would have had to say something. I am reasonably confident with that, and maybe we can even do better.
Great. Loud and clear, Stephan. Thank you. That's it from me.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Wade Gardiner. Wade, please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Hi there. Just a few questions from me. First up, also on slide 18, you talked about the target of NZD 10 million for oversized. What would be the targets on that going forward? How much extra do you think you can get?
Yeah, for that, we reckon the kind of go right from that bird's eye view. We reckon that market in New Zealand's probably about NZD 100 million. It's really spread between a whole lot of people who often don't want something that is 40 kg, not on a pallet, and a bit awkward to handle. We reckon the market's around NZD 100 million, and our target would be to get up to that 40%-45% market share in that market over a period of a few years. That's the direction of travel. I can't recall what we've got for this particular year off the top of my head, but around that NZD 40 million-NZD 45 million is where we're aiming over the medium term, three to four years.
Okay. Investment by Big Chill, why you sort of made out Hamilton and Christchurch as sort of an either or, not doing both. Why would you not do both of them if it makes sense? Is the Hamilton one, as a scope, you know, if it was there, is it an expansion of Ruakura or is it a new site?
Yeah, yeah, it's potentially expansion at Ruakura, I guess. We're at a stage of working through and negotiating what the cost bases look like for those two. There's a little bit of work to do there by the supplier.
Right. So, you potentially do both?
Potentially, you could do. I think we've always been a little bit mindful of, you know, when you go into them, you take on a big rent bill and you've got to build your volume. You take a bit of a hit. I think in our perfect world, that would be staggered. As you were getting one up to profitability, then you took on the next one. Yes, there is the potential you could do both, absolutely. I think with one of them, with both of them, we're pretty happy with the demand profile. With one of them, there's a little bit of work to do on the cost side of things.
Okay. With Allied , why are there much better volumes in the second half relative to the first half? Can you just provide a bit of color there?
Things like, for example, end of financial year sales coming in through that June period are probably a little bit symptomatic of just that Aussie economy, which has slowed a little bit more recently. A lot of those retailers are going, "Right, we're going to pump it out. We're going to sell stuff at discounts and really get it out." That has really given a bit of a boom in the second half of the year.
Yeah, so where was it? If that's the case, you know, if it was a June financial year sale, where like we'd had this and having this conversation in May, where was it tracking at that point?
Where was it tracking in May?
In other words, was the second half growth consistent at that sort of 15% level, or was it really at a much lower level and then boom at the end?
Yeah, it would have been a little bit lower than that. The other thing can be just the timing of Christmas on where we cut off, Wade. Sometimes that can push a little bit more into second half or first half, depending on where we cut off our financial month. Generally good volumes. We won a bit more share wallet in the second half. There was a bit more volume that was shared between a couple of providers, and we have won more of that. There has been a new business pickup as well in the second half. Those things have all contributed to a higher level. I'm not, I certainly wouldn't say bank on a 15% run rate. That's not what I'm saying.
Between end of financial year sales, some of that new business that has now eventuated and come through, and maybe just the timing around when Christmas cut off, that's why we've had a better growth profile in the second half of the year.
Okay. Finally, for me, just in terms of lower margins that you're getting at Allied , you know, given the, I guess, the operating leverage from better volumes and, you know, maybe better pricing in the future. Where do you think you can get those margins to? Can you get them up around the New Zealand level?
I reckon up around 15% over time. I say that because at the peak periods where you have the biggest amount of volume going through, they're not far off that. They're kind of in the 14%, low 14%.
What do you think, is that EBITDA or EBITDA?
EBITDA.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, that wouldn't be a million miles away from like a Post Haste margin. NZC would be higher with that overnight 9:30 A.M. service, but yeah, that would be pretty close to Post Haste margins for EP.
Yeah, okay. Cool. That's all from me.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ian Munro. Ian, please unmute yourself to ask your question.
Yes. Good morning, Mark, Stephan, Neil, Aaron. Thanks for taking my question. First one, just picking up on Allied and that second half performance. Able to just give us a sense of the mix of freight driving that result, please. Is there any kind of lumpier customer contributions and maybe, yeah, a little bit more, I guess, commentary around that sort of mix of B2B, B2C freight that's moving through Allied? Thank you.
Yep. More of a B2C, but there is a bit of B2B in there as well. There is some product. If you think about what's a good example, it would be office equipment, stationery, where you think about the bigger items. It might be whiteboards and desks and chairs, those types of things. They're going into a B2B setting, but it's a similar size profile to what we're doing through a B2C network. There's certainly a pickup in that type of volume. We've got some customers that are just going great guns as well, Ian. Some of those good Aussie brands, Temple & Webster and Kmart, have been trading really strongly. They're doing things right, and Allied is benefiting from that because they're getting that volume to go out and deliver. That has certainly helped as well.
We've had a sales team out there knocking on doors for a little while now and just starting to get a little bit of traction in terms of picking up some of the smaller and medium-sized accounts. What's nice about a smaller and medium-sized customer in Australia is often a medium to bigger customer here in New Zealand in terms of scale. When we see the team bringing on some of these customers, they look great from a New Zealand perspective. They're in the hundreds of thousands, high hundreds of thousands, which would be a really big customer over here, but that's a little bit of bread and butter in Australia. The new business momentum's starting to pick up as well. The overall mix probably hasn't changed radically B2B, B2C. There's a little bit more B2B, but because the B2C has grown so much, the proportionality is pretty similar.
Just as a follow-up, with the kinds of growth rates that you're reporting in the second half, obviously a bit of momentum behind the customer mix and also new accounts. Are we getting into a situation where we're rubbing up against the capacity constraints in any of these capital city facilities?
In Melbourne, we're just having a little look because Melbourne, a lot of those e-comm 3PL and warehousing operations have set up in Melbourne over the last five or six years, probably because rents are a bit cheaper than Sydney. It was interesting with the end of financial year sales that we had coming through in Melbourne, a lot of that freight is generated out of the BIC market. That gave us a bit of a surprise because some of that volume was up 27% in BIC. We went, oh, jeez, if that carries on, we might actually add either a satellite depot or a little bit more capacity in Melbourne. That's probably the only one. Brisbane, we moved into a big facility there in August, I think it was last year. Really happy with that. Sydney, 20,000 sq m, going really well.
Melbourne's probably the one where we will have a little look and say either is that a satellite operation to take a bit of heat out for a peak season in future years, or can we add a bit of capacity nearby?
Thanks. Just one final question, please, maybe for Aaron, just picking up on the comment around picking up market share in Express in customers where you're kind of rubbing up against a competitor. Maybe kind of looking at the segment, I guess now, and the market share opportunities that you see in Express relative to perhaps where it was, you know, maybe five years ago. I know it's a broad question, but yeah, just keen to understand kind of where you see the greenfields in the business in terms of new customer growth.
I think it's pretty positive. I think we've honed our craft a little bit over the years. We've learned a little bit more about our sales teams and what they do well and what they don't do well. That all comes back to service. We're really utilizing our service standards as a key selling point, and that's where we base our pricing around. I think we're in good shape. I think we're very positive. I don't think we've wasted a good recession in New Zealand in the E P space. We plan to hit it really hard and take advantage of all this good work that's been done so far, then leveraging off that.
Still, there's a lot of opportunity through that sort of cross-border e-commerce sector, Ian. It's a big market. We only have a pretty small share of that because we're pretty new to that game, right?
Traditionally, pricing in that area has been pretty low and it hasn't really attracted us. The team are forging some good relationships with customers, particularly up in Asia. There is more, as Aaron said, there's more volume coming through Freightways Global. I think we'll see that continue to grow. I think customers are enjoying the fact that there's a differentiated offer when that freight lands in New Zealand. There's different levels of service standard they can plug into depending on the niche of product they're bringing in. I certainly think that's an area that's probably got outsized growth. It's sort of market share gains, but they're offshore customers. Slightly different niche from that point of view. A lot of them are new to market as well. A lot of them are new businesses that are popping up, selling into a New Zealand market that just haven't existed before.
You're not necessarily taking them off anybody. You're Johnny on the spot to pick them up when they get up and running.
I think the other advantage is having the brand differentiation. Having New Zealand Couriers in a particular lane, Post Haste in another lane, and then the EMSL team heading in another lane. That gives us such good coverage and at times even overlap, so we have two or three racks at the same particular customer.
We're doing a bit of work. It's hard to know whether it'll work or not, but just targeting Trans-Tasman oversize and the little issue between Allied and Kiwi oversize here.
With a couple of key customers that are saying, "Right, can we help you get into New Zealand with your oversize product without necessarily having to have warehousing and what have you in New Zealand?" That'll get up and running in a few months' time. Guys have done some really good work in terms of setting up how the network will operate for that. Yeah, that'll be interesting, but that's a nice third horizon opportunity in that oversize space.
Very good. Thank you.
Thank you. Our final question comes from Marcus Curley. Marcus, please ask your question.
Good morning. Unfortunately, just a couple from me. Can you talk a little bit about the cost pressures in the business? Mark, you obviously talked about Express Package pricing going up. What are you seeing in terms of OpEx costs? What are you planning on paying courier drivers, yeah, from a rate increase this year?
Yeah, look, across all our people, that rate of increase should cap at 3%, Marcus. That's across, you know, 6,000 people on Freightways, contractors, employees, New Zealand, and Aussie. That'll cap at around 3% this year. That increase out of N Z E P around that 3.6%. In terms, that's the single biggest category that we do have. Overheads, I think even insurance, we might get a little bit of a win this year. It'd be quite nice. That's sort of been on this massive upward trajectory over the last couple of years. I think that might abate a little.
The air freight piece, as we shift to 800s, once you get over that little transition cost, ironically, that could be about the same, could even be a little bit cheaper on an ongoing basis at the point we can get to three 737- 800s, depending on the number of flights we have to do with the volumes we have. I think we're generally pretty comfortable in and around the threes. It varies a bit by business. Obviously, Big Chill energy costs are significant for them. That's a big uplift. Everyone in New Zealand is probably having a bit of pain from the level of electricity price increases. Generally, across the board, we think that we'll have, you know, cost pressures that are roughly online with the price increase that we've levied, maybe a little lower.
Sorry, Mark, did you say just under three for drivers in New Zealand?
Yeah, it depends on the brand, Marcus. In some cases, the guys have put through some pretty good increases over the last few years. In different fleets, the guys are taking a slightly different approach to that to say, how do we bring up the ones with maybe lower volumes and lower density? How do we bring them up by a bit more? The ones that are doing well, we might not shift their rate as such. It's slightly hard to answer. It's a little bit horses depending on where your particular earnings are as a contractor.
It's not just one particular increase for the whole fleet. It's done on a case-by-case basis based on their sustainable earnings.
Okay. That's, you know, it's below 3% on a total cost basis. That includes any volume growth. Okay, great. You mentioned the uplift in the waste performance. Excluding waste, what would be your sort of perspective on the, let's say, the EBITDA in the remainder part of the Information Management business looking into 2026?
Sort of slow and steady increase, Marcus.
Okay.
There won't be anything radical. She's a very stable business. These break businesses, I call it a bit of a shock absorber, actually, through recessions because the amount that you're holding in storage doesn't really change in a recession. For TIMG, NZ and Aussie, that'll be slow and steady, top line being digitization-based in particular. Being in the waste business, that's where we really need to turn around those earnings.
Finally, you mentioned a margin lift in Allied this year. I know that you don't want to give away the margin itself, but could you just give us some color on what was the quantum of the change? Like how much margin increase did you see in Allied ?
Express. It was around 500 basis points.
Okay. Is a further increase expected this year?
Hopefully, yeah, hopefully.
Yes, okay. Great, thank you.
Very good.
Thanks, Marcus. Friday, thank you for everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, everyone. That brings our call to a close.