Good morning, and thank you for joining the Freightways half-year announcement. We will begin with a presentation by Freightways management team, followed by a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please select the Raise Hand button to be placed in the virtual queue. The Raise Hand button can be found at the bottom of your Zoom screen or within the React button. Now, I'll hand across to the Freightways management team. Over to you, Mark.
Thanks very much, and welcome everybody to the Freightways half-year 2026 result. Here in the room with me, as usual, Aaron Stubbing, who heads up Express Package in New Zealand; Stephan Deschamps, CFO; and Neil Wilson, who looks after our Australian businesses and the Information Management division. First thing we just mention is just the terrible weather down the lower North Island and Wellington area, be affecting a lot of people. Certainly, we have people off the roads down in those areas, particularly DX Mail and our express businesses that are affected by the wind and the weather conditions down there. So we wish them well today, and I think by this afternoon, things are looking a little more positive, and we'll be back on the road down there.
Big thank you also to all of our teams across New Zealand and Australia. Really, every business has put on a pretty meritorious performance over the half year, and so we'd just like to thank all of those staff and contractors throughout all of those businesses. A big welcome to the VTFE team, as of two weeks ago in Melbourne, who joined the Freightways family. In terms of just high-level overview, as I said, a pretty consistent set of performances across all our business divisions: Express Package, Temperature Control, Information Management. A little less so in Waste Renewal, but we're seeing some promising signs there.
So we're happy that from a performance point of view, while there's always areas we can improve, and there's a couple of areas in particular that we'll keep working away at, it has been a pretty all-round result from the Freightways companies. There's a slight lift in the second quarter from what we reported in Q1 for the NZ Express and temperature-controlled volumes. So as those economic conditions start to improve, we're just seeing that volume starting to ease up a little bit, and I'd emphasize the little bit. It is really pretty slow and steady, and I think that's what we talked about at the end of the full year last year, that it would be a slow, steady, gradual increase.
The other trend we're seeing, and Aaron will talk a bit more about this, but still high demand for economy over premium services. So our businesses that perform one-hour deliveries across town, point-to-point deliveries, that is still pretty soft demand, and then greater demand for the economy express services we provide through our brands. So that's certainly a feature. Fantastic too, to add VTFE into the Freightways fold. So we announced that just prior to Christmas. I'll talk a little bit more about that near the end of the presentation, just give people a reminder of the nature of the business, and then talk a bit more broadly around M&A and what it is that we're hoping to achieve there. And really happy with how our balance sheet has been managed.
Stephan will talk about that as well, but, you know, sitting mid-range of the policy, acquiring VTFE puts Freightways in a, in a pretty strong position, I think, when you look at the performance of the business in terms of picking up share, an economy which is slowly and steadily improving, and a balance sheet which is in good shape. I won't go through and, and steal Stephan thunder to talk about all the numbers, because, that'll leave him nothing to talk about. But, the important thing to note here is the arrows are going in the right direction. So, you know, there's a, a series of, pretty impressive numbers there across the board, all going up other than, debt, which is the one you want to see going down.
So nice to see, as a result of the strategy, our objective of owning niches and having a series of brands that sit in a niche with an objective of being number one or a fast-charging number two, of garnering competitive advantage through their service, which gives us a little bit of pricing power and gives our salespeople something to go out and sell and to win new business. That strategy is yielding results. And as conditions improve in New Zealand. And I'd have to say conditions for us in Australia have been pretty steady all the way through, and we are a bit less exposed to the Australian economy by virtue of the size of our business in Australia. Pretty happy again with the direction of those numbers.
I'll hand over to Stephan to talk you through the consolidated numbers and balance sheet impact, and then we'll come back and talk about the divisional results.
Thank you, Mark, for not talking too much on the previous slide.
You're welcome.
The H1 FY 2026 is really a continuation of and a confirmation of what we discussed at the ASM. The economic environment remains difficult, especially in New Zealand, but we are seeing some improvement, and that allows us to generate a level of same customer growth that adds to the market share gains. In Australia, Allied is doing extremely well, double-digit top-line growth, even stronger bottom-line growth. The two businesses that are in Australia balancing that are TIMG and Shred-X. TIMG, because we are seeing a bit less digitization work in the H1 of the year, and Shred-X, I will talk a bit more about that because we are still ongoing through a significant restructuring of the business, which means that the top line is not growing at the moment.
So overall, our revenue is at 8.5% to almost NZD 720 million. Consistent with the last couple of periods also, our bottom line is increasing faster than the top line. So EBITA, which is the measure we use internally, up 12.7%, to NZD 96.5 million, and NPAT up 17% to NZD 52 million. We've talked repeatedly about our focus on margin, which has really been what Aaron and Neil have been focusing on in the last 18 months. The cost base has remained generally quite stable, so the work of the businesses has allowed us to increase the margin across the group. Some businesses that I wanted to spotlight because they've done really well, Post Haste in New Zealand, DX in New Zealand, and TIMG in New Zealand.
and Allied also has seen really significant growth, from significantly below the EP average when we acquired them, to now pretty much same level as Post Haste in New Zealand. So really good progress. Some of our businesses, though, remain quite exposed to the slower economic environment in New Zealand, and the fact that, as Mark mentioned, premium services are not rewarded in the same way in that more difficult environment. NZC and Big Chill are the two businesses that suffer more from that type of economy, and they will need to see a level of economic recovery to start seeing a significant improvement in margin.
As I mentioned, also in Australia, we are restructuring the Shred-X business, so there's a number of one-off costs that are still flowing through as we are reshaping activity, closing some depot, reducing headcount, and this is impacting the margin in the H1. But overall, the trend is quite positive and going where we want it to be. As Mark mentioned, in the absence of M&A in the H1 of the year, we've generated quite strong cash flow, and we've used that to repay debt to a large extent, both pre and post IFRS 16. And that means, if you look at the next slide, that our gearing is coming down. Excluding the acquisition of VTFE, we would expect our gearing at the end of the year to be in the bottom half of our target range.
VTFE will add about 0.2 to our net debt over EBITDA multiple. It's a AUD 71 million price tag. We've raised AUD 50 million through a bridge facility while we assess other opportunities and decide what the final funding will be. On the back of that strong balance sheet and slightly better economic environment, we decided to increase our H1 dividend by NZD 0.02. So we will be paying NZD 0.21 compared to NZD 0.19 last year. As Mark mentioned, that dividend will be fully imputed in New Zealand. In Australia, we do not generate enough profit yet to fully impute the dividend, so it will be around 46% imputed. I'll hand back to Mark.
Very good. So we'll talk about the EP and Business Mail performance, and then Aaron will give a bit more color around the New Zealand aspect of that. Neil will then talk a little bit more around Australia, give you a bit more detail, particularly around the volume profile, and then cover information management. So for EP and Business Mail, good increase in revenue, 10.4, and a bit of that leverage coming through, 14% increase in EBITA and NPAT. And again, as I said earlier, you know, the benefit of a little bit of a upswing in the economy, giving us some same customer growth that Aaron will talk more about.
Net market share gains generated from superior services, better account management, local people on the ground in all of the areas where we compete. And then price increases, where we just had that little bit of pricing power and the ability to recover the costs that we have through the cost base as well, and in some cases, get a slight increment on that. The economy services, Allied and Post Haste. So when I talk about economy, these are predominantly road-based services rather than using overnight air freight. The delta between the two is pretty significant. So for an average parcel, sending it air freight will cost you at least twice as much as the equivalent service on road freight. So when we talk about premium and economy, that is one of the key differentiations.
Are we putting it on a plane, putting it in the air to land it, or are we putting it over the road, across the ferries, and between the islands on road-based services? So still more customers using road-based than, than air-based. What we tend to see is, as customers get busier and they become time poor, they shift back to the premium services again. So that's a pretty common trend that we would have seen in most of the recessions that that we have worked through at Freightways. Pleasing uplift in margin. We have Evolve costs in here. So Evolve, just to remind you, is the billing and courier pay transformation project we have that will give us a modern, state-of-the-art billing and courier pay system.
Other than the efficiencies we get out of that, one of the key attributes of that system when it's complete will be the ability to price individual items at a much more micro level, so that we can get the right pricing for the effort that we are putting in. So the program remains on budget, was NZD 10 million all up. We had NZD 1.8 million extra cost on that in this half year than we did in the PCP. So I'll leave you to do the math if you added that in for the underlying margin of the business, but it's a nice improvement. DX Mail, again, continued their momentum, done an awful lot of local government work, particularly with local body elections. That's first for DX.
Did a particularly good job with that, and that's helped boost their momentum through the half. Big Chill revenue and earnings are both up. So Big Chill revenue up, not by as much as we would like, but you can just start to see a little turnaround coming through there. In December, Big Chill had a really good result, and I guess that is the impact where you have higher volume coming through a fairly fixed cost base, and you can see the margins start to increase. Hand over to Aaron to talk about express package volume and just a little bit more color in around the New Zealand division.
Yeah. Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. Express package volumes are up 5.5% in H1, and we had positive contributions from net market share gains and same customer growth. The international e-commerce volume has certainly been a meaningful contributor to the same customer growth. And as the gents both mentioned, we are seeing that our customers are showing a preference for the economy services as opposed to the premium options. And that's just giving us a little bit more scope to review how we operate those services and gear up for when the economy starts to change into a bit more of a positive light. Industries that we're seeing improvements from relate to healthcare and 3PL. We're seeing a little bit of an increase in manufacturing. It's just starting to move forward.
But industries that are still struggling for us are retail, accommodation and food services, and education and training. So those areas are still very much doing it tough in the current market climate. Right. Freightways Global. Freightways Global is our Facilitator of International and, and e-commerce freight into the EP brands and provides about 5% of our total volume. And we've been advised, as of last year, that given all this extra volume, the New Zealand Customs need to recoup some of this cost that they are having to incur and have decided to increase, or sorry, implement a levy-based system. And while we don't have a problem with the levy-based system, what we do have a problem with is there's two mechanisms: one for the national postal provider and one for everybody else.
So at this stage, we're unsure as to what the impact these pricing differences will have on future volumes and how easily our customers will be able to pass it on to their base. But we haven't sat idly. We've since becoming aware of this issue, we have lobbied Customs, MBIE, and the government to address this inequality, and our mitigation strategy or strategies is to have access to own postal channel, and we'll continue to explore this option, as well as other alternatives to protect our current volume in the future. Thank you.
Neil will just give a bit of an update on the air network, which we have talked about a little bit over the last couple of announcements. That is now coming to a conclusion, which is a pretty good outcome for us. Then we'll move into Australia and information management.
Morning, everyone. Yes, the air network, just background again, it comprises at the moment one 737-800 and three 737-400s. It's performed really well during the period, and both operators are giving us on-time performance around about 98% or higher, which has been good. So sort of despite being in receivership, Airwork continued to operate as a going concern while the receivers, who are Calibre Partners, work through a sale process. The receivers have given us regular updates around that process, and we kind of expect the sale to happen in the next few months.
On the back of that, we've got quite well-developed plans to modernize the fleet by transitioning to 737-800 aircraft, backed up with a spare 400 aircraft around about August this year. The spare 400 aircraft will be used during peak periods or when the 800s are in maintenance. So moving to that new fleet configuration will be quite good from both an uplift capacity, because 800s take 21 tons versus a 400, which takes 18 tons. And also, 800s are better from an ESG perspective because they generate around about 15% less emissions.
Yeah, sorry, and the last point on that slide is that there are some one-off costs associated with transitioning to that newer fleet configuration, which we've actually provisioned for for the last couple of years. Other than that, we expect the change to the new aircraft fleet to be cost neutral, give us better service, and be more resilient. Allied, as Stephan talked about, and Mark, they've performed really well in the H1 of the year. We got really solid growth from existing customers, as well as a number of key new business wins, and that kind of resulted in volume growth of just under 14% compared to the prior year. The team's done a really good job in terms of improving the overall network performance, and that resulted in improved service levels during the period.
particularly in the lead up to Christmas, which is a really important time of the year for Christmas, and we received positive feedback from a number of customers for the service that we delivered during that time. A key part of that success has been the investment that we made in larger depots and automation, which largely enabled the additional volumes to be handled through our existing infrastructure. With the one exception being Melbourne, where we've actually added a 9,000 sq m satellite depot and to enable us to meet the volumes that were coming through. Allied's business is focused around B2C, B2C bigger items, so therefore, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are particularly major events for the business.
During that week, which is the last week in November, volumes can peak by about 50% above what we would consider in a normal week. And it's a real credit to the team that we managed that volume with minimal impact to overall service levels. On the next few slides, I'll just quickly talk through some of the relevant points for TIMG New Zealand and TIMG Australia and Shred-X. Information Management division delivered a flat year-on-year revenue performance. From a TIMG perspective, the biggest drag on performance was the finishing of a major scanning project in Australia. That was a government project which finished at the end of the first quarter. In both countries, TIMG has a really good pipeline of digital opportunities.
However, unfortunately, those projects were not timed to commence in the H1 of this year, and as a result, digital revenues were down by about 14%. As Stephen touched on, Shred-X has implemented a performance improvement plan over the last year, which has impacted the H1 result with a focus on improved margins. So margins have exited a number of low-margin or unprofitable work, and that was predominantly across ITAD and some high-value waste products, such as some vape destruction work and coffee cup recycling. At both businesses, TIMG and Shred-X implemented really solid price increases of around 5%-7% depending on the service, which resulted in improved margins. But given the less digital work and the Shred-X restructuring that we've done, the EBITA result overall was relatively flat.
Just wanted to touch on LitSupport also, where the performance has improved. The businesses added legal, legislative, and commercial print sectors to their business. Traditionally, they've always been a legal print business, but that strategy to diversification has seen revenue grow by 7%. It's worth noting in WA, they were successful in resecuring a major legislative print contract, which will go for another 2-3 years, which will help underpin that performance. As you saw on the last slide, there was about NZD 1.6 million in one-off restructuring incurred for the period at Shred-X. While that was a drag on H1 result, the initiatives implemented will ensure that there is an improved performance in the Shred-X business in the second half of the year and beyond.
Just broadly, the key initiatives they implemented were rationalizing the number of driver runs, given that the low-volume work that we exited. They've used automation to reduce admin and back office functions and exiting non-profitable locations. An example of that, where they've exited Canberra and Newcastle, and instead we're transporting volumes to centralized sites for processing, where we get better efficiencies. During the period, Shred-X have also increased their textile processing capabilities, which will benefit future periods. Then lastly, on medical waste. Medical waste has continued to scale over the last three years, and this trend continued into the H1 of the year, as you can see in the graph, where medical waste volumes grew by 8%.
Thanks, Neil. And we talk about mergers and acquisitions. I guess nice to be able to talk about an acquisition we'd executed. Really the first meaningful one since we acquired Allied Express back in October 2022. So just a reminder about the criteria and I guess a bit of an update around M&A for Freightways. The primary focus, not exclusive, but the primary focus for us is really targeting proactively businesses where we think they're closely adjacent or very complementary for Allied or VTFE. So having established Allied and put a bit of investment into that business over the last three years, we're pretty clear about how we want to carry on growing that business.
There's opportunities for geographical expansion, for taking more volume and market share in the key markets we are in, and then there are some very adjacent services, for example, two-man white glove handling. We have a number of customers that would love us to be able to take some of the larger items they have that are beyond a one-man delivery. Likewise, for VTFE. VTFE, on the next slide, I'll give a bit of a reminder around that business. But again, an expansion of the geographic footprint for our B2B entry into Australia will be a key point of focus for us in looking at those targets. Be fair to say, over the last year or so, Neil, we've looked at 40-50 businesses in Australia in the transport sector. It's a really fragmented market.
Because it is so big, you have a lot of operators who operate in particular niches, and that can be a size of item, it can be a geography, a service standard, air freight, road freight, all of those types of things. That has given us really good knowledge of the industry, I would have to say. We've, we've learned a huge amount over that period. And so now what we're doing is narrowing the gun on, on those key targets that we think are highly complementary to VTFE or Allied Express. That approach will see us continue to remain disciplined, as, as we have done over this three years. We haven't sort of jumped out and backed at every passing car.
It really has been a matter of looking for businesses that have a good cultural fit, really good service ethic, and the potential for us to grow them. Then, as Stephan talked about earlier, the balance sheet supports that capacity to go out and make further acquisitions. There's still a range there. There are smaller businesses with a check of maybe NZD 20 million. There are larger businesses with a check in the many hundreds of millions. So still kind of a range of targets who would meet the criteria that we have. Little reminder about VTFE, VT Freight Express, and largely because we announced this one week prior to Christmas, when many people would have had a lot of other things on their mind.
B2B, I talked about it at the time we announced it, as being very, very similar to Post Haste Group here in New Zealand. So it provides a very similar set of services, predominantly express road-based services. And in fact, many of VTFE's large customers are customers of Post Haste/Castle Parcels over here in New Zealand. So as we worked through the final stages of due diligence, it was really nice to talk to a whole lot of companies where we were quite familiar with the way they operated, their needs, who their customers were. And I would have to say, the feedback from those customers on the service that VT provided was, you know, nothing short of excellent. So it's an entry into B2B. There's particular verticals that VTFE specialize in.
The numbers down the bottom in terms of purchase price, and what we expect to get out of the business. And those key benefits, really, you know, it's, it's a very close, almost exact fit with the type of work that we do over here in New Zealand with the likes of Post Haste, as I mentioned. It's complementary to Allied. So when faced with a choice of do you diversify Allied into B2B as well as that oversized B2C, I think the operating model that we have here in New Zealand, which has worked so well for Freightways for so many years, clearly said that a brand per niche, going out and trying to win, but working in the background where it makes sense. And so good examples of that will be where we can share facilities in the future, we will do.
Where we would share Line Haul and leverage better rates, we will do. If we can share IT capability and some of the overhead capability, where it makes sense, we will do. And that's exactly what we do here in New Zealand with NZC and Post Haste, as an example. VTFE, good, good, strong, committed leadership team, so that team will continue to grow the business for us. And the early alignment, really, it's been 2 weeks since we completed the deal, so the early alignment is really around some of the systems, safety, reporting, some of those commercial aspects. One of the initial projects for us is having a look at New South Wales. So VTFE picks up and delivers within Melbourne and Victoria, but has a reasonable amount of freight which goes interstate and is delivered by partners around Australia.
The notable gap in that network is New South Wales, and the challenge there has been finding a partner who lives up to the same service standards, data standards that VTFE require. So that really is the key focus point for us. Customers are very keen to give VTFE more freight going interstate from Melbourne to New South Wales, and we'll be looking at how we can either start up, acquire, or partner to fill in that part of the network. But an obvious opportunity for us to keep growing the VTFE business around Australia and fill out what is a very big footprint opportunity. The other thing I wanted to do was just give a little reminder around Allied Express. You know, Allied really have performed exceptionally well, as some of those numbers there on screen tell you.
You know, compounding revenue growth of 10, just under 11% over that three-year period. EBITDA growth, you know, quite a notch up on that, which gives you a feel on the margin improvement that we've achieved through that business. Great, great cash flow and a really good return on investment that we have generated. You know, the business has grown. The fundamentals of the business were a really strong service culture for their customers. And as Neil said, that was augmented by about NZD 20 million that was spent on a couple of automated sorting systems in Vic and Sydney. But also the implementation of a very Freightways style of new business sales teams to go out and win either a greater share of wallet or win new customers.
The margins have improved as that scale has built, and plenty of opportunity for that business to keep growing. We must remind ourselves that really we're domiciled in the capitals of each of those states, and Australia is a very big country with some very big cities that sit outside those capitals. So again, key point of focus for the Allied team in the near future. Finally, the outlook, and I guess we debated these words pretty heavily, but look, we do expect to see a steady improvement in same customer volumes. The same customer volumes that we saw in the NZ business that Aaron talked about, 2.5%. The lion's share of that has come from international cross-border volume coming through.
So New Zealand domestic customers are positive, which, which is great, but, but still have an awful lot of improvement left to go, in our opinion. But we think that improvement will be steady. We think it'll be slow and steady through the, the second half of the year and, and then beyond. Our efforts will be maintaining, and, and growing margins in all of our businesses. So every business has a margin opportunity. Shred-X's margin opportunity and waste renewal will be a little bit bigger than others. Big Chill have a great margin opportunity as those volumes come in through the network. But every business has initiatives just to keep improving margins steadily, over these coming years. Service quality is still paramount.
We measure N PS in all of our businesses to understand where we sit at a macro level with customers, but we're a very accessible business. Every one of us, every one of our teams, can hear from customers at any point in our job when things go wrong, is to put it right, and that's one of the things that really sets us apart from our competition. So that focus on service will remain. That is the competitive advantage that allows us to pick up business, usually at a bit of a premium on the competition, who I think are still struggling how to price things properly out there, particularly in New Zealand. And that's yielded positive results across our network.
And then M&A. I think what we can say is that focus just narrowing from a really good learning for us, looking at many, many targets. Just closing that down and having much closer focus now on the ones that are complementary to VTFE and Allied Express. That is the presentation from the team here, and I think we've got a reasonable amount of time for questions. I'll hand back to Kiara to manage that.
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 Raise Hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen to be placed in the virtual queue. After your name is announced, please unmute yourself, state your name, company, and ask your question. Our first question comes from Andy Bowley. Andy, please, go ahead and unmute yourself.
Thanks, and good morning, guys. Well done on another good result. A couple of questions from me to kick things off here. Firstly, just stemming from the slide on, on Allied, you've, you've generated pretty impressive growth since that acquisition. Can you just, give us a little bit more detail with regards to where that growth is coming from, you know, regionally, industry sectors, you know, same customer sales versus new customers? I recognize that you've, you've well cycled the removal of the volume caps at peak, but, if you could just, yeah, provide some illustrations of where that growth is coming from, and then, I guess the, the question for us is to determine what the sustainability of that growth is.
So the growth predominantly out of the existing base, there's certainly contribution from new business. You're dead right, Andy, we removed the caps as we got the 2 automated sorting machines into Sydney and Melbourne, so that enabled us to remove caps that had often been placed on customers in those peak periods. The second piece that's really driving that is a lot of those customers are riding a bit of wave, probably taking a bite out of bricks-and-mortar retailers in Australia, so a lot of online providers. And these are customers like Temple & Webster, who are improving their penetration of the market, selling from an online model. So those operators are growing as well. So we're winning a bit of share that might have gone, in some cases, to a competitor.
We're riding the growth that they have in that niche, and then the new business, which would be the smaller part of it, has come on top. Melbourne is the real standout geographically, so Melbourne's had by far and away the greatest growth. And I think that really is down to the fact that a lot of those e-commerce operators domiciled themselves in Melbourne quite a number of years ago, probably at a point where rents were a lot cheaper than setting up warehouses in New South Wales. And as their volumes have grown, the geographic output from Victoria has been far, far greater. Having said that, you know, areas like Queensland are still growing well. There's still really good growth coming out of that Queensland market. We're well resourced up there in terms of a shed.
We're not at a point yet we've put automation in, but as those volumes grow, we know the pivot point, at which time we would. We haven't done a huge amount with pricing, so the gain for us really has been to keep growing scale, so we haven't pushed pricing, particularly hard, really. It's just been an effort to claw in and around the 2, 2.5, maybe up to 3% to cover the costs of inflation. Anything to add to that, Neil?
Yeah, I think the only other thing I'd add to that, Andy, would be the introduction of a margin model, that we, we'd know a lot more about their costs-
Mm
A nd their margins, and because of that, they've introduced some different rate cards to target specific sectors where we traditionally haven't moved volume. And then that's kind of, you know, knowing the margins has allowed us to do that, so... And that's helped volume growth as well.
Sustainability of it, I mean, forecasting these things is hard. There's plenty of market share out there. It is because the market is so fragmented, almost every operator will do a little bit of oversize, but it's not their core, and so they won't necessarily do it that well. They don't necessarily like it in some cases. Sometimes it just won't fit with their network, their fleet configuration, and the depots. So plenty of opportunity there. There's a couple of competitors that are a kind of a smaller version of an Allied that we would keep looking at. And then there's market share to be taken off, you know, off any number of other operators there, not to mention the geographic piece.
When we look at a place like Canberra, you know, capital of Australia, still a reasonably sized city, and we don't operate directly there ourselves, so those types of opportunities we have in front of us, too.
That's great. And I guess there's no, there's no immediate capacity constraints in terms of continuing to grow at this type of, you know, low double-digit volume growth?
Y eah, no, there's not. I mean, as Neil mentioned briefly, we have added another building in Melbourne, which helped us deal with the volume growth. I can't quite recall the total volume growth we've had over the three years there, but it's really significant. So there's another building there which has just taken the heat out and allowed us to keep growing, but we still use that centralized sort system for all your inbound and outbound freight. But no, very similar model to over here in New Zealand, Andy, that we're not capacity constrained. We can add a bit more capacity in the areas that we need to. Usually, that has benefits too, I'd say.
As we add a depot, usually what it means is the contractors servicing out of that new depot get more time on the road and can complete more deliveries in a day.
That's great. Second question from me is just around Shred-X. There's been a couple of periods now where we've had those restructuring costs that have been well flagged. Now, given the previous commentary, is it fair to now assume that there'll be, one, no more restructuring costs? And then two, you know, could you kind of give us a sense of the phasing of the strategic initiatives in terms of the uplift in profitability from here, i.e., what can we expect through the second half, and then what annualized through FY 2027, and is there more to come beyond then?
In the year, the second half of this year, we should roughly double the EBIT from the H1 of the year for Shred-X. So the majority of those initiatives are well on train, the costs have been incurred. Those costs are anything from writing off some of the equipment that we might have had for certain product streams through to restructuring, changing the way we operate in a couple of those depots. So yes, that is largely done with, and I'd be disappointed if we didn't double the EBIT from the H1 year, and then that should give us a run rate to still keep growing off for FY 2027.
What does that mean in dollar numbers, Mark?
Oh, we should. We don't tend to break those out in too much-
We don't
De tail, Andy, but
Twice the number of the H1.
Twice the number of the H1. Yeah, how's that?
That's a lot. Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time.
Thanks.
Pleasure.
Next question came, comes from Wade Gardiner. Wade, please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Hi, guys. A few questions from me. Start out with the postal revenue, which is up about 26%, which you sort of alluded to a lot of that being local body elections. If we strip out that sort of one-off revenue from local bodies, what was the sort of underlying growth rate?
Oh, it's a very good question, but not one I could answer right off the cuff, Wade. But what I can say is the business has continued to grow. They're still taking market share. They have customers that are choosing to use them because of the service standard that they offer, and the level of account management and closeness. So I'm not. Yeah, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head if I stripped out local body, but it still had positive revenue growth, if you exclude that.
What about the general election next year?
Coming up next year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have you got that work or is that still out for tender?
The elections are typically run. There's a couple of companies that tend to coordinate and run the elections. So certainly for local body, there were two of them, but the local bodies tended to choose one or the other. Look, that's not decided yet, but I would expect we are a very strong chance to be doing some work for the general election. I think reality is, you know, New Zealand Post's capability, that'll just be shrinking a little bit as their volumes come down. And the reality is national elections, that is a big lift, it's a massive lift of volume at a very short period of time. So I would expect EX to some extent participate in the national election next year.
Okay. Is that a similar size to local body, when you add all the local bodies up?
Yeah. It would be en masse, yes.
Yeah. Okay. With your net market share gains, are you able to strip out how much of that is sort of still fallout from the PBT deal or-
Well-
Y ou know, is, is there still an element there or is that wearing off?
What do you think, Gardiner?
It's a tough one. We don't- we haven't really made it a specific example.
Yeah.
Um-
I think there were a couple we picked up at the start of the half year-
Yeah
TS hat were, sort of larger PBT customers, but probably stuck with Post for a year, gave them a year, and then moved over. So there were a couple right at the start of that half year.
Absolutely.
And since then, look, it's just been a steady stream. I think the team have kind of focused on particular verticals. So-
Yeah
S upplements is a good example of a vertical.
Yeah, supplement side and a bit of pharmaceutical. But yeah, I wouldn't say we actually specifically measure it on its own. It's just very much a... It was very much a business as usual, sort of one-off.
Mm, mm.
and quite a few of those customers had been, had had some Freightways involvement previously anyway, so they weren't all new to us per se.
Yeah. Still really good prospect lists, though, Wade. When I look at the prospect lists for all the businesses, really solid, so plenty of activity. Generally, the reasons are service-related, can we get a better service?
Yeah.
Can we get better account management? How do we have local contact when things go wrong? All of those types of things are the reasons that customers will entertain our new business sales reps going in the door, and then we just have to work our way through price. We're still pretty picky. We still wanna make sure we maintain margins, so, you know, we're rating things correctly. If you wanted to go mad, you could pick up a whole heap of volume at really low margin, but that's not us. So yeah, still pretty happy with the size of the prospect list that we have across the businesses.
Okay. With Project Evolve costs, I mean, you, you've outlined the increase on last year. Can you just sort of remind us where we are at in terms of, you know, the total spend, and how much to come in the second half and into FY 2027?
Sure. We've spent about NZD 2.8 million in the H1, if I'm not mistaken, and total spend for the year should be roughly NZD 5.5 million.
There won't be-
Right, and-
Too much in FY 2020. So there's a... Once the NZD 10 million is spent, there's a residual, which is part of the 10. We're paying some licensing costs now for the first of those products we are using, called the billing platform. The ongoing cost will be NZD 2 million per annum, pretty much in licensing cost, Wade, and you could have maybe NZD 1 million, maybe NZD 1.5 million in FY 2027, just depending on timing. We'll give an update on that as we get a bit further through the second half of the year.
Okay. And finally, any guidance around the full year CapEx, including VTFE?
Excluding VTFE, pretty much in line with what we had last year. So from memory, we spent a bit more than NZD 15 in the H1, should be consistent in the second half.
Yeah.
VTFE, there's probably a bit more work to get a better sense of CapEx. It will depend also on what we do with the location of the depot, but I would not expect much in the next six months. I think there might be more coming in the next year.
Yeah, VTFE's asset light, again, very similar to Post Haste, where contractors bring their vehicles. We operate out of one large depot in Dandenong. We will certainly have a look and look at how we facilitate, you know, the type of growth that we would have aspirations for out of VTFE. And so at a certain point, that'll mean a bigger depot. And then what we do with all of our businesses, Wade, is just look at the volumes and look at where a bit of automation or mechanization, at what point does that make sense and give us a return on investment? So there's all those types of things to go, but as Stephan said, nothing material from a CapEx point of view, in this first six months of ownership.
Okay, great. Thanks. That's all for me.
Next question comes from Grant Lowe. Grant, please unmute yourself to ask your question.
Oh, hi, team. Firstly, just around the core express package business in NZ, can you just talk to the price increases that you're achieving and how those sort of match against your expectations from the start of the year? And then just sort of partly linked to that, just around the trend between the economy and premium services, are we saying that the premium services are growing but just to a lesser extent, or are they sort of—there's still sort of a bit of a trade-off, you know, shift towards economy?
Yes, okay. So I guess second question first. The premium services are still growing, it's just the economy side of the business is growing faster, which is understandable given where the market's at currently. As we see more organic growth and pressure comes on time, as Mark alluded to before, I think we will see the shift come back, and in some instances, where we have busier periods, you see that nature occur. So from an EP perspective, having the segmented businesses helps us understand exactly where the challenges are or where the opportunities are, and that's how we sort of isolate them individually. From a price increase point of view, we are still looking at what our costs are, what we need to do to increase our margin, and then put that out to market.
While it is getting a little bit tougher to get as high a number as previously, we're still achieving probably around about 80% of our guidance, and obviously, that has to relate a little bit to the CPI side of things. Fundamentally, it's business as usual as we in terms of our approach. But yes, we are having to think about where the value is for some of our customers, and at the same time, looking at how the business complements their service and how that relates to pricing.
I will give a slight CFO twist to that answer. So if we look at the premium services for EP in New Zealand, they are growing from a top-line point of view. They are not growing from a bottom-line point of view.
Got it. Okay, thank you. And then just around Big Chill. So, you know, still pretty subdued, but you, you did allude to a good December result. Just wondering how sort of January, February have gone, and then second part of that question relates to thoughts on expansion. Obviously, you know, we're, we're still waiting for a meaningful recovery in that business, but just where you see the trigger point for looking at expansion in that business around the 3PL side?
Y ep, Big Chill revenue growth in January, probably just on par with what we'd had for all of the H1, so very similar in January. December, December seasonally kicks up a bit. Think Christmas hams going out to butchers and supermarkets, and gift boxes, and all of those types of things, so think about that seasonal uplift. So what we saw in the, in the December period, where you had the uplift, quite a, quite a meaningful expansion of margin for that month, you know, with that extra volume coming through. January, pretty much reverted to the, to the mean, to the norm for the six-month period from a revenue and earnings point of view. The team have got some good new business that will come on around about March, April.
April, Yeah.
So that'll be nice just to see a bit of a kick in our volume to help fill up that utilization. In terms of future facilities, yeah, still assessing that. We're very mindful of. In temperature control, because the facilities are so specialized, you can get a really good look at capacity around the country. You can look at who's added capacity in which areas, and feed that into your thinking around where you go next. So there's been a few moves there, by a number of operators who we wouldn't necessarily say were competitors, but it is extra capacity in a couple of places, so still refining our view on where that is. What I can say, though, is that the team are very focused on filling out the branch transport network.
So we added New Plymouth last year to the network, and there's a number of other branch locations from a transport point of view that we will assess and look at over this half.
Okay, that's great. Thank you. And then just finally around the M&A side of things, like you've previously spoken about the size of acquisitions and sort of alluded to that again today. Just, I mean, what would be... You're obviously looking at everything, but, you know, if you are sort of picking where that might land, what sort of size do you think would be likely, most likely for the next acquisition?
Toss of my hypothetical coin, Grant. Look, we actually have, there's two pretty clear alternatives. Or we should either go with. There's a number of larger sort of full network operators out there in different sort of stages of health, you could probably say. So there's a couple of those that we are looking at, and then there are a number of state-based operations that typically operate within a state. Then we'll have a bit of outbound freight that they will give others. That's a really common way of operating over in Australia. We have these agents in other states.
We could do one or the other, or potentially both, but more likely one or the other, and that's really what we're focused on now, looking at some of those state-based operations, looking at a couple of the larger national operations. And we'll work through and, you know, do our numbers, but also just think strategically around which gives us the better outcome. So, a bit of a toss of a coin at this stage, 'cause still early days on some of those parts to that puzzle. But nice to have sort of two clear alternatives, and as I said, having gone through 40 or 50 that we've had a look at, we're probably focused in on a list of 10, 10-ish, from here on out.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Next question comes from Ian Munro. Ian, please unmute yourself to ask your question.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. Just relating to Allied Express, perhaps you're able to comment on the competitive intensity of the oversized segment with respect to new supply, also the pricing environment, and noting the cost pressures that we're seeing across Australian industry at the moment, how you're thinking about price negotiations into next, next financial year. Thank you.
So Allied operate in the oversized niche. Where that niche is quite nice is that your mainstream express package companies don't really want that work. Though that doesn't... The oversized nature of what they move, you know, CKD furniture, larger items, doesn't work on the automated sortation system that your major carriers in Australia operate. So in terms of the competition, it's. They, you know, they've got one key competitor that also operates in the oversized niche, but apart from that, it's not, you know, not highly competitive. And that does allow you to, you know, maintain really good margins. And as Mark said, their customers are gaining market share, or it seems they're gaining market share on bricks-and-mortar retail.
So you've got B2C online platforms which are growing oversized capability, and Allied's riding that wave, and from what we can see, there's no signs of that stopping. Plus, as we've also invested quite heavily in a larger new sales team, and that seems to be delivering good gains in terms of new business. That said, we're quite selective in terms of making sure that the new business we bring on is at good margins, and that's where implementing that better margin models and understanding the utilization on different routes has become quite important. What else?
Well, the team have also simplified pricing, so there's a, there's an element of transport revenue in Australia, more so than New Zealand, that goes through brokers. And to be fair to say, brokers have always found it a little bit hard with Allied, because they've had so many different surcharges—like a lot of different surcharges that will apply, and it becomes really hard to actually feed into broker models. So one of the things the team has done is simplified the pricing model so that for that volume we might have coming through brokers, and it's not a massive proportion. It's made it a hell of a lot easier for the brokers' customers to choose Allied. So I think from the pricing point of view, our approach probably won't change in the very short term, Ian.
I think we're, we're happy to still keep sort of attracting volume, don't need to hike pricing too much, but simplifying pricing and having a really good view on the margin. From a pricing point of view, that's our key focus at the moment.
And just in terms of the capacity levels in Allied, so you noted a new warehouse were sort of pending or active already. Outside of that, how are you seeing the kind of availability of line haul contractors, the other more variable capacity constraints? Is that remaining unconstrained to growth for Allied, and you know, are we kind of looking at any larger, major sort of CapEx items to support that future growth?
The answer is probably no. They're not really constrained. The line haul's done through a contractor model, so and in most cases, we're paying a one-way rate, so it's just a matter of adding more contractors in as we do more, as we add volume growth. We added, let's say Victoria, which was 9,000 sq m last year. Apart from that, no, it's largely been... I mean, it benefits from volume, Allied. The more volume you pump through the network, the better the margins are. So it's, no, it's a pretty resilient model.
Yeah. We, the Allied team, one of their strategic objectives for this year was just to review the line haul carriers that they had. So, so they're working through that and just looking at, you know, where are the opportunities to either get better service, better timing, better price, those types of things, and we can explore that along with VTFE, as well. The reality is now we have a greater volume coming out, certainly coming out of Melbourne than we had previously. So just opportunities just to keep exploring the various line haul providers are out there. But yet again, very fragmented space and a lot of choice, I would say.
And just one final one with respect to Shred-X. Apologies if I missed it. Just we've been talking more recently in the last couple of reporting periods around you know, renegotiating price, trying to drive better margin, and are we sort of saying that that top line, sort of, you know, penetration of better rates is, you know, maybe hasn't worked in the short term, or have you had sort of, you know, there's been a level of deliberate contract losses, but how should we think about kind of that customer resistance to to rate rate rises? Is that likely to support or kind of hold back top top line growth?
I think it's a little bit of a mix in reality. So if you looked at the coffee cup collections, they started, geez, probably back around COVID times. Team really enthusiastic around it because of the sheer volume, and if it could be done, you know, at a margin, and the product actually be recycled. It was quite an exciting waste stream for us to have a look at. But the reality was, when we came back and reviewed it, pretty clinically, it went, "Oh, there's quite a bit more you need in price to maintain a collection network for that." And that waste stream just could not support a higher price, so that was one that we were happy to let go.
And I'm not sure it would ever would've been realistic for the company's manager, the recycling side, to pay those rates. In other areas, we're getting a better price for what we do. So, there, there's, yeah, there's a combination of both, but there's certainly a couple of waste streams that, that, we have pushed away and said, "Yep, we're better off without that particular volume." And that relieves a little bit of capacity in a building and allows us to carry on targeting some of the ones that are good financial earners for us. So the, the answer is a bit of a mix, but, they've all been done pretty deliberately by us, knowing that, geez, if, if you can't stand a 20, 30, 40% increase in rate, it'll likely go, and we're okay with that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
That brings our Q&A session to a close. Mark, I'll hand it back to you for closing remarks.
Very good. Well, look, thanks, everyone, for your attention, and, as I said, from a half-year point of view, I think we're pretty happy that the businesses have performed well, that economy's just slowly starting to tick up, and, and your company is really well-positioned from a balance sheet point of view. So these are nice periods. It's nice to get out of probably five years of Covid and labor market shortages, pretty deep recession, long recession here in New Zealand. Yeah, plenty for us to do across all of our brands. We look forward to getting stuck into it the second half of the year. Thank you.