Welcome to the Oceania Healthcare Limited full-year result announcement for FY 2025. All participants are in a listen-only mode. First, we will hear a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you are participating in the teleconference, please ensure your webcast audio is muted to avoid an echo. You can mute the sound in the lower corner of the video player. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Suzanne Dvorak, Chief Executive Officer, and Kathryn Waugh, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. It’s Suzanne here. Thank you for joining us. This is my first time presenting our full-year results, and I am pleased to say we are starting to achieve some positive momentum. Throughout this year, I have visited many of our villages and gained a site-by-site view of our portfolio, its strengths, and areas requiring improvement. I’ve also met with many of our team, and we are working to ensure we have the right people in the right places and focused on the right outcomes. Today, I’ll focus most particularly on two things: one, our sales progress; and two, our change program that is focused on accelerating the performance we’ve seen to date. If we move to slide two, please, I think we can see where we are starting to see some growth.
As you can see, since the half, our results have started to improve, and I’m also starting to see improvement on two key metrics: on cash flow and on sales. Whilst we are beginning to turn the corner, the directors have resolved not to pay a dividend at this time, and our revised dividend policy will be announced at the annual shareholder meeting in June. Again, we are very positive. We’re pleased to see that we’re starting to turn the corner, but we acknowledge there’s still a long way to go. On slide three, I’ll touch on a couple of our operational highlights. I’m sure everyone is as pleased as I am that we’ve had a 100% increase in sales at the Helia this year. This is good progress from a financial point of view, but I think it’s also great from a resident point of view.
When I first went to the Helia, I met and sat down with some of our founding residents and had a cup of tea. Just recently, I went back down there again. I was lucky enough to wrangle happy hour and have one of the cocktails of the day. The cocktail was better than the cup of tea, but what was even better was the fact that there were so many of our people sitting out on the terrace in the sun enjoying being together, and that is living up to the brand and what the Helia is all about. It helps to bring the village to life. If we move to the next slide, please. As a business, we are now very pleased at how well our care suites at Redwood have sold down. In March this year, we held our board meeting.
The directors all attended, and the executive came with us to have morning tea with our residents. We also toured the site and met with many of our team members. If we just go to the strategic sales focus, you can see on the right-hand side that our sales performance at our key sites has most definitely improved. These results have translated into NZD 80 million of capital gains. The two biggest levers we have used here have been sales incentives for the team and centralized pricing. Our sales team are now paid incentives on settlement and in a regular and transparent manner, and work with both the operations and finance teams to identify product that is available for sale and to ensure prices are set in a disciplined way. It is this focus on accountability, cooperation, and reward that has yielded the best results.
Sales incentives for incoming residents have been used at our key sites. However, these are not material and not outside of industry standards. Turning to slide seven, we’re going to specifically focus on the Helia, and we believe the uptick in momentum is down to three things. We’ve been talking to you many times, and we’ve heard many times that people thought that the Helia was not affordable. They thought it was so expensive that they didn’t even come through the door to have a look. We began actively publishing in the last half our entry price of NZD 146 million, and this has certainly led to an increase in inquiry. We also heard the feedback around the Helia fee, and we removed this.
Since we have done these two initiatives, we’ve been able to re-engage with our database, and through that re-engagement, on day one, we had 11 new inquiries and people coming through the door. We have not, during this time, reduced our premium service offering at all or the amenity at the Helia, but we have made it more accessible to many people. On the next slide, you can see the three developments that we completed this year: Elmwood, Waterford, and Almuretry. Our new Elmwood care suite has been a big success since opening. Many of us from the support office went to Elmwood to assist with moving our residents during the first week of opening. It was such a pleasure to see the joy on the residents’ and family members’ faces as they moved into their new home.
It was also quite a joy for me to see so many of our lawyers and finance team out there stacking the toilet paper and the paper towels. The actual café there definitely has the best scones in town. On my final slide before handing to Kathryn, you can see that we have gone from NZD 353 million of unsold stock to NZD 342 million of unsold stock. It is important to point out that during this period, we also added NZD 120 million of new stock. This reduction of stock on hand has, in turn, contributed to a reduction in debt of NZD 8 million. Whilst this might not seem like we have terribly much, we have had four developments under construction, with the last Meadowbank Dementia set to open in June. We now have only one active greenfield broadacre development under construction, and that is Franklin.
I’ll come back to you a bit later after you’ve heard from Kathryn on the numbers to talk through our cost-out strategy and where we’ll be going in the future. Great. Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you, everyone, for dialling in today. We’re mixing things up this year, and I will be taking you through the numbers and the portfolio ahead of passing back to Suzanne, who will talk us through the future views. On slide 11, starting with our statutory results, we have seen a year-on-year increase in our total comprehensive income of 5.8%. This is largely as a result of significant positive fair value movement in our property portfolio.
I’m pleased to say that with improved sales cadence and improved pricing at key villages, the impairment recognised at interim in relation to our brownfield care development Elmwood has been more than offset by positive increases in the rest of our modern portfolio.
The fair value movement, such as this, is reversed when we calculate our underlying earnings, and therefore the interest expense in our underlying impact reflects the interest expense excluding this fair value movement. The second point on this page is around our Wesley Institute of Nursing Education. As disclosed in our March update, we made the hard decision to close our training centre in response to changes to the pathways of accreditation for overseas nurses. Our last course was in March. Wesley has contributed NZD 4.7 million to our earnings this financial year and will have no contribution to next year. Now that I’ve touched on the gap numbers, let’s move to slide 12 and talk about our trading results. Here is our underlying view of our trading results, so to speak. At the interim, I spoke to you about a modest 2.7% increase period on period…
At that time, we said we would be embarking on an NZD 5 million cost-out process. The NZD 5 million cost reduction would be realised in full in FY 2026. However, these efforts have also begun to partially improve our full-year earnings for FY 2025, resulting in a year-on-year increase on the screen of 4.1% at the underlying EBITDA level and an end result of NZD 86 million. These results on screen are not adjusted for our divestments. This information is included in the appendices, and in the appendices, we have a pro-forma review of this year-on-year trading, which results in an increase in underlying earnings of 6.3%. That impact will continue until we progress further through our sell-down and has contributed an additional interest expense in the year.
As I’ve noted on the interest, we will also exclude the development interest from our ICR calculations, but it is an impact to our interest expense moving forward. This interest, as you see on screen, is that interest which is relating to completed developments such as the Helia. I’ll talk to the key operating measures when we talk about care and village segments shortly. Moving to our care dashboard, this slide provides a snapshot of our key financial measures. Working clockwise from the top right, occupancy continues to build, and in the case of the mature villages — so those not impacted by developments — our occupancy is back above my magic number of 94%. We’ll soon get to a stage where we have only one occupancy area left to attain. Reaching 94% is a key milestone from here. Operational efficiency is gained.
For those specific sites that are over 94%, our average EBITDA margin increases to 12%. Now, to the bottom right, the operating margin is as it is today. It is staying flat for now. During this year, we had a number of upfront marketing costs in relation to the care product and to target sales at new care developments coming online. This has been tapered off in the second half and will not be required to this extent in FY 2026. This year, we’ve also included details of our margin when including resale gains, again holding steady at around 19%. Now, for the last graphic at the bottom left, we have seen increases in both our operating care margin per bed of 2.7% and our care margin per bed, including resale capital gains, of 7.5%. These numbers are for the entire portfolio, including our ramp-up sites.
In this average portfolio, we have over 20% of our sites which are returning over NZD 20,000 per bed, an indication of what will come for our future once we’re through the ramp-up of the new care suite sites. Moving to slide 14, where we look at our profit and loss for the care segment: It’s important to add that it is not normalised, and so is a true year-on-year movement when we have a backdrop of divestments. These divestments contributed around 80% of the year-on-year decline, with the remaining decline coming from increased operating costs. These group operating costs were driven by the initial operating losses at those sites in ramp-up, namely the Helia in Auckland and Redwood in Blenheim. As these sites fill in, occupancy increases, and the operating cost-to-revenue ratio will settle.
On the right-hand side, you see the trading results include an EBITDA per care bed, where we are reaching NZD 10,000 per bed. The care segment remains stable, with increases in both premium care revenue and occupancy rates providing pleasing momentum. While total care operating revenue has decreased slightly with the divestments of sites, our underlying EBITDA remains strong, and we are effectively managing our expenses.
Some of you will have already noticed that the PowerPoint gremlins have had a crack at that slide, and we have unfortunately undercoded our resale sales prices. For example, our villa prices — sorry — should have said NZD 594,000, and our apartment prices should have said NZD 968,000. We’ll be sure to put an amended slide on the end index after this call.
As with the care segment, let’s now move to a more detailed view of our retirement village business. Since November, we are now indexing our weekly fees, which effectively caps out any shortfall on expense recovery through our weekly fees, and each year we will see an improvement as a result of this. It’s important to reference our year-on-year increase of 13.7% in underlying EBITDA, with the context that our 2024 results did include NZD 2.7 million amount for insurance income in relation to Lady Allum weather’s claim. It’s a bit of a mouthful. The increase in sales volumes and margins continues to be a significant driver of the strong results that we are seeing on the page and support our group result. These increased sales also go a long way to reducing our unsold development stock balances and unlocking our capital. Moving to slide 17 and cash flow.
We appreciate this ended up getting quite confusing and raised many questions on our calls. In the spirit of providing information which is hopefully easier to understand and provides more clarity, we have provided additional information this year, and that is what is on screen now. The chart on the left-hand side of the screen shows the outstanding debt in relation to our completed developments. This will be repaid as we sell down our unsold stock. To provide a complete picture, we have also included the additional NZD 15 million, which relates to care suite residents who were transferred from the old care building at Elmwood to the new care suite building. While these are not included in our unsold stock, they are future funds which will be utilized to pay down debt. The coverage, as you can see, is NZD 138 million, or 1.63 times.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you see the debt that is outstanding in relation to land purchases and WIP on current developments. A list of these sites is included in the footnote: Franklin, Green Bay, Gracelands, and Woodlands. The coverage in this instance is from the value of land and WIP that we are holding, an NZD 8 million excess, and 1.09 times coverage. We thought that providing this information in this format would provide an insight into the choices we have with our banking facility and cash management, and a further insight into how unsold stock is still our greatest lever to reducing our debt. I've spoken previously about how when we have paid back initial development debt at a site, we can choose whether we allocate future funds to our drawn working capital debt, i.e., we could repay core debt, or we could repay future developments.
With less developments coming on this year, we will have additional capacity to focus on debt paydown, and you should expect to see a larger debt reduction in FY 2026. With a total combined excess of NZD 146 million, our current development debt is more than adequately covered. Moving now to the balance sheet. My earlier slide spoke to the positive fair value movements we have experienced this year, and shortly I will speak to the divestment program and the NZD 35 million of sales proceeds we have received from the sale of seven non-core sites in the last 12 months. The combined impact of this, with ongoing development and strong sales momentum, has resulted in an asset growth of NZD 158 million and net asset growth of NZD 75 million.
Coupling this with our decrease in net debt, we continue to degear the business, and gearing has reduced from 38.3% at March 2024 to 36.3% at March 2025, a notable decrease. It's no surprise that gearing, along with sales, continues to be a key focus of the group, and the two will go hand in hand. On slide 20, and some of this material was provided in our market update in March, and we're touching on our recent refinance. It was a successful process that resulted in an extension to the tenure of our facilities and an ability to take that point of time to split our tenure between three- and five-year facilities, as can be seen on the graph on the bottom right.
It provided an opportunity to reset at more favorable pricing, and we did all of this without any waivers or amendments to our covenants, either sought or required. The new syndicated facility took effect on the 1st of May, at which point we welcomed BNZ to our existing syndicate of ANZ, ASB, and ICBC. We've received strong support from our syndicate over the years, and we've received strong demand from both existing and new lenders as part of this process. This allowed us to secure optimal pricing and demonstrated lender confidence in our financial stability. At a time when the use of funds is at its utmost importance, we estimate annual cost savings of approximately NZD 1 million from the new structure, and this is from our reduced line fees and reduced margin fees moving forward.
As noted earlier in my section, this future saving is recognized as an asset in our statutory accounts. The refinancing is another clear step to position Oceania well for future growth and development initiatives. My final finance slide, I bring it all together with a recap as to our balance sheet management. All covenants have been met, ICRs at three and a half times, we've got debt headroom of NZD 97 million, and continuing strong headroom as we move forward. Our retail bonds continue to keep our overall cost of debt down, with a blended interest rate of 2.7% and a blended cost of bank debt of 2.8%. As mentioned earlier, our gearing is reduced to 36.3%. We continue to be in a strong financial health and are positioned well for future growth opportunities.
Sustainability and climate continue to be an important consideration for Oceania, and this year has marked another milestone with the completion of our climate transition plan, information of which will be published in June with our climate-related disclosures. As a finalist in the Sustainability Leadership Top 200 Business Awards back in November of last year, we demonstrated the integration of sustainability into all that we do. On screen is a snapshot of just some of the work that has been undertaken over the year, and more information is included in the front of our annual report. Moving now to our portfolio. In slide 24, the modernization in the portfolio has been significant. Since IPO, we have redeveloped or acquired 88% of our sites.
This is a stat that you will have seen before, but it is an important one, especially when coupled with the divestment program, which I will come to next. We talked about how our portfolio is moving to more of a 50/50 split between care and independent living, and how within that care portion, around 50% of those beds are now under an Aura. The right-hand side of this slide puts even more context around how this transition looks over the years. In that right-hand side graphic, you can see that our care beds have reduced from NZD 2,500 back at IPO to just over NZD 1,000 now, whereas our care suites have increased fourfold from NZD 242 at IPO to just over NZD 1,000. Likewise, our ILUs have almost doubled from just over NZD 1,000 to just over NZD 2,000 today.
It shows how we have balanced our care mix through development and divestment, reducing the number of care beds while expanding care suites and ILUs. An evolution from a portfolio of standard beds and standard villages to a portfolio of modern integrated villages and the choice which is offered to our residents, all while increasing the number of beds and units which can be occupied. These stats are important in that in the time since IPO and FY 2017, our number of beds has increased while at the same time modernizing our portfolio. This has happened while we have also been strategically divesting certain sites in order to realize our capital and transform the portfolio. This slide has photos of seven sites which were sold in this financial year for the combined proceeds of NZD 35 million.
It includes the Woburn site in Waipukurau at the top right of the slide, which settled last week. Ten sites were sold in the last 24 months, releasing NZD 55 million of funds. This number grows even more when looking at the divestment since IPO, and it has allowed us to progressively transform our portfolio. We're really pleased with the results from our divestment program. It's been great to work with the purchase of those sites. The handover to new owners has transitioned really well. We will, of course, continue to evaluate our portfolio for additional divestment opportunities moving forward. What's under construction in March? At Meadowbank in Auckland, we were in the final stages of developing the purpose-built 40-bed dementia building. It marks the last stage of development at Meadowbank and provides the important dementia level of care to complete the integration on that site.
The dementia suites will be under an Aura offering, much like our care suites, and start at NZD 695,000. With a build cost of NZD 25 million, we're forecasting a full cash recovery on first sell down, and we're looking forward to welcoming residents on this building over the coming weeks. Further south in Auckland, at Franklin and Pukekohe, we are progressing well with the community center and stage one villas. The first stage will be completed in FY 2026, and our dedicated sales manager is on site taking appointments for future residents to look through the show homes as we speak. Franklin, being our first greenfield broadacre development, is an important step in our evolution, as it not only provides flexibility to our development cycle and build rate, but it also expands our skills and expertise in the construction of care and retirement sites.
On the bottom right-hand side, we provide more metrics in relation to this development, which, when complete, will add over 250 units to our portfolio. Finally, before I hand back to Suzanne, our land bank. Across the portfolio, we hold a number of sections of developable land adjoining our existing villages. Our focus over the medium term is likely to remain on villa developments, which, as mentioned in relation to Franklin, provide flexibility to our development pipeline. As can be seen from the slide, some of these developments are already consented. We have good optionality at these existing villages with existing demand across New Zealand, and importantly, with a range of products. When the time is right, we are ready to go. Thank you, everyone. I will now hand back to Suzanne to talk us through our strategy for the next financial year. Thank you, Kathryn.
As you know, during this past year, we took $5 million out of our costs, and this was directly achieved through the reduction of professional services fees. Over this next year, we are targeting a further $15-$20 million of cost savings, and over the next two slides, I will give you some detail as to how we intend to achieve this. During this year, our focus will continue to be unrelenting on sales and debt reduction. We will continue to ensure we have a right-sized portfolio, some of which Kathryn has already touched on. It will be a modern portfolio in locations that are in high demand and that we can service well, and where we can provide an optimum service offering. We will continue to expect the best from our people so that we can continue to improve on these results.
A key to this must be cost control, and the details of how we intend to achieve cost control will be outlined on the next slide. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see how we intend to achieve the targeted savings of NZD 15 million-NZD 20 million. In order to achieve these savings, we're going to first set up some infrastructure. We are going to spend approximately NZD 2.5 million on the setup of a transformation office and also some investment into ICT systems. This will help us to focus on revenue initiatives and also help us to provide some discipline and structure to ensure that we can deliver on this program. Where we can go fast, we will. We will focus on procurement. We'll focus on services. We'll focus on anything that we can achieve quickly.
Where this change impacts people, we will take the time to be considerate and to consult and to ensure that resident safety is paramount and that our team members feel both valued and engaged during this period of time. I'm sure there'll be some questions on that very soon, so if I just finish up here by saying I do believe we've turned the corner, but I acknowledge we still have a long way to go. I think by having a group of people working together, being focused and cooperating, we're starting to deliver the results we need to both the shareholders and to our residents. I will now hand back to the moderator for questions. Thank you. A reminder that if you are participating in the teleconference, please ensure your webcast audio is muted to avoid an echo.
You can mute the sound in the lower corner of your video player. If you wish to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press Star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask today that you please limit yourself to two questions per person. If you wish to ask further questions, you may then rejoin the queue. Your first question today comes from Ari Decker with Jarden. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to start with some questions just related to the development land bank and changes you've made over the last year. No doubt had a chance to review where you're sort of heading.
Firstly, on Elmwood, looks like this has been scaled back pretty significantly, and there's no decommissioning plan now. Can you just provide a bit more color on what the changes are at Elmwood, likely timing of stages two to three, I guess, in the first instance, plans for the old care facility, which I think is down to 15 care beds, and then also whether a new community facility is ultimately planned at Elmwood? Yeah, hi, Ari. It's Kathryn here. I'll take this one. Yeah, very good spot. There's a few things going on there. I'll start with your last question first. Elmwood, yes, there's 14 or 15 residents left in there at the moment, and we won't be accepting more residents in there.
It's obviously a delicate way to say it on the call, but we're in the process of finding homes for those residents over the next couple of months. When that site is, or that building rather, is completely empty, we do have plans to demolish it straight away. It's important that we're not having a kind of decommissioned building hanging around, so we will tidy up the site as soon as we can, and that will be something we hope to do during this financial year. Your point around what happens to that site, and yes, when we first did the development pipeline and around the time of the IPO, there was a lot of thought that the future demand would be a lot around apartments, and we everyone built as many apartments as we could.
The consent we had for Elmwood was actually for a number of apartment blocks. Now that we've kind of moved on five, six, seven years, I guess, and we've taken a real good look, and actually there's a really, really strong demand for villa product on that site. What we've done is started to reimagine what we would do there. We will still have apartments there in time, but in the near term, it's very much about rethinking and redesigning and where could we add more of the villa product, which is where we have the strong demand. To your question of what happens this year with that site, residents we find a home for, there's still a focus on the care site and getting that to a full occupancy.
There'll be a focus on tidying the site up, and then it's very much about a redesign of the master plan so that we can accommodate villas. And just on my question around whether a new community facility is planned there and timing if it is. Oh, yeah, sorry, Ari. Yeah, so in short, absolutely. And we will have a new community center as part of that, and that will come as part of the master plan. I don't have a firm date on that. Obviously, Oceania's stance is the community center is a very important part of the site, which is why at Franklin, we've built the community center first. When we've got a better view of the master plan, we'll be able to give you more information on that later in the year.
Yeah, and then the other quicker ones, I guess, just on the development, just any timing for care suites at Waterford so that you have the continuum of care firstly, and then your thoughts on potential timing of starting stage one at Green Bay. Thanks, Ari. I’ll take this one again, and Suzanne will jump in if she needs to. Green Bay is a little bit easier. We have a corner of that site where we can fit between 16-20 villas, and we are relatively ready to go on that when the time is right. As with all of our sites, we are looking at the demand and where the best use of our capital is. That is one that is almost shovel-ready, turn-ready. With Waterford, we absolutely need to have care on that site to provide a full continuum.
I would say we only opened the last apartment block a few months ago. It's very much about building up those apartments, and then when the time's right, we'll start care. When we spoke to everyone at interim, we said there's no short-term plan to start another high-density just yet, but absolutely we're committed to completing that site with the care building. Right, thanks. If I put all that together then, and you can tell me if I've sort of missed anything as I sort of look to FY 2026, but FY 2026 then is by the sounds of it going to involve demolishing the care facility at Elmwood, completing the villas and community facility first stage at Franklin, and obviously Meadowbank's just recently completed. At this point, there's nothing beyond those things? Correct.
What we'll be doing between now and interim is really refining our master plans, but that's right. Delivery for next year at the moment is 71, which is Franklin and Meadowbank. Right, that's not a surprise. Next year. Could you just give, because obviously it does come to the debt paydown and the profile for that, could you just talk about the spend in 2026 across what is, I guess, Franklin, a little bit of Meadowbank, and then the demolition? Could you just give a ballpark view on what you'll be spending in terms of CapEx in 2026? Yeah, I'll let you speak to that one, Ari, because I noticed the moderator does for two, and you've managed to take a few in, but I know all of the analysts will have the same question.
Essentially, if you're looking at demo but a master planning in the two developments, then I think if you're thinking in the region of around NZD 70 million, you'd be about right. Thank you. I'll hopefully be back later. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Nick Maugh with Macquarie. Please go ahead. Good morning. Just on the sales side, could you just make any comments around what you're seeing in terms of sort of market features where the residents are sort of more active and listing the houses and the likes at the moment? I guess how much of the uplift you're seeing you think is attributed to the new sales practices versus sort of market features? Then just following on from that, any sort of commentary post kind of balance date on how trading's still going in terms of the sales momentum? Thanks, Nick.
Suzanne, I think I might have mentioned earlier in the presentation that we came from pretty much a standing start. For us to gain the momentum that was required, we had to set up pretty much from scratch. With the team now operating from zones with them focused on both resales and new development stock, with us setting up a centralized pricing office, with us looking at incentives for team members, and then also exercising, where appropriate, some incentives for customers. That was all done under fairly difficult market conditions. Yes, we are starting to see some change in inquiry in particular, whether that is a result of our enhanced practices or that is some change in the market. I think it is probably a combination of both. What that means is that between improving market economic conditions and enforced practice, yes, we are starting to see momentum.
I would say it's probably as much about grit, focus, and effort as it is about changing conditions. I'll talk to the trading. Does that answer your question, Nick? I mean, as far as your trading post, the only site that we've really given information on is the Helia because I know it's front of everyone's mind. We talked about an occupancy level of 36 at March. That's increased to 41 two days ago. We are seeing good momentum coming through. Everyone will notice we haven't talked about applications in here. We did promise you guys we'd stick to our knitting and just talk about sales, and applications come and go, but we are seeing building applications as well. No, that's helpful. By and large, the sort of sales momentum that you've seen the last couple of quarters has been maintained?
Yeah, look, we've continued to improve, Nick, and obviously the next six months is going to be crucial so that we can continue that momentum. But yes, we have. No, that's great. And then just in terms of the EBITDA here, how much is the drag at the moment or losses from the Helia and the other couple of startup facilities? Just trying to unpack that a little bit. Yeah, Nick. So I won't give you a site-by-site flow down, but there's around, rough numbers, it's about NZD 3 million in the operating expense line that is acting as a drag at the moment. Obviously, the sooner we get them filled, the better. I mentioned on my slide, we've got an average of NZD 10,000 earnings per bed at the moment, and that is getting dragged quite significantly by those ramp-ups.
If we look at our top five, they're all over NZD 20,000 per bed. We want to aspire for every single site to be over NZD 20,000 per bed. No, that's really helpful. Cool. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Your next question comes from Bianca Murphy with UBS. Please go ahead. Morning. Thanks for the update. First question is just on the expected development cash cost recovery of the Helia that you mentioned by FY 2026. Yeah, that's obviously positive commentary. I was wondering if you could comment on what assumptions that is based on in terms of sales or occupancy for that village? Yeah, I'm pausing on that one, Bianca, because it's hard to give you that without handing over our budget, which, as you know, we don't give forecasts. I guess a kind of vague answer to that is obviously we have building momentum.
We have turned a corner. We want in better cadence than we've had in the last financial year, but a lot more aligned to the cadence we've had in the last quarter. I know that's a vague answer, Bianca, but does that give you some sort of a steer? Okay. Yep, it does. That's helpful. Thanks. And then just following up on Nick's question on care. I guess with the disposal of the non-core assets, could you perhaps provide some color around what you expect the margin improvement to look like over the next sort of five years? For example, just considering we have seen that care EBITDA margin drop a bit this year. Yeah. I'll probably go a bit nearer term than the five years.
I think what I'd say is if we, so that's why we brought in a new metric this year, which is around, it's 19% if you include your capital gains, which is also a good metric. So we're between those bands. I guess the key thing I'd say is I also touched on 94% occupancy. That is my magic number because when you get past that 94%, your real operational efficiency comes through. Sites that are currently above 94% have margins which are above 12%. In the near term, it's very much about bridging that 10-12% margin, and that can come from a pure occupancy. Then we overlay everything that Suzanne's talked about, about cost optimization and operating models and working more efficiently. We want to be breaking through that 12%. You'll remember a couple of years ago we were up in the 14.
I'd love to get back there sooner rather than later. Okay. Yep. Thank you. And then last question, just on the non-core asset disposals, is there any update you could provide on, yeah, what sort of interest levels you are seeing for the assets that you are hoping to sell? Yeah. So I guess the ones that we sold in the past 12 months, we had great interest, and we were able to run competitive processes. At the moment, we're in a point where we're going, "Okay, we've done the first chunk. Let's stand back. Let's look at the portfolio. Let's critically look at what we can do at each of the sites." We're in a bit of that kind of holding phase where we're about to go again. Short way of me telling you, we don't have any officially out in a marketing process at the moment.
Yep. Okay. That's all from me. Thanks. Thanks, Bianca. Your next question comes from Aaron Ehret with Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead. Hi there. Good morning. A couple of questions. First one, just coming back to the Helia, which I guess has been a big focus for the last couple of years, you mentioned both on the call and in the release that occupancy has gone from 36% to 41% from 31 March to the day before yesterday, whatever you said. I just wanted to know if you could give us an idea of how much of both of those numbers relate to respite. Is it similar levels or same levels, both the 36% and 41%? We're obviously interested in the proportion that's occupied by people who have actually bought units. Just curious if you could give us that number. Yeah. Thanks, Aaron. It's Kathryn here.
I'll start talking, and then Suzanne can carry on about, so from the number of respite, we had four respite residents at the end of March, and we've got six respite residents now. Also, going back, another measure, interim last, or sorry, FY 2024, rather, last year, we had seven then. I'll probably hand to Suzanne because I think an important thing of the respite is it is a good feeder for our site and the converting. I don't know if Suzanne wants to add anything. Hi, Aaron. I need to say that, as many of you would know on the call, going into care is a very difficult decision to make. Many people choose to go in as respite residents first so that they can go in and see whether or not they like it and whether it suits them.
Of course, it's generally frailty that they're usually experiencing. Once they're there, they convert and they stay. We certainly see there's an opportunity to convert people who come as a respite resident into a permanent resident. We do have some great success at that particular Helia. Thank you. The new pre-sales. Secondly, just on operating cash flow. You seem to talk positively around NZD 110 million up from NZD 103 million. I think this was slide 17. If I look at new sales, that was NZD 137 million, I think, this year and NZD 97 million last year, so up NZD 40 million. If I look at your cash flow from existing operation, it's actually down over NZD 30 million. Can you talk a bit to this? This is clearly unsustainable. What are you expecting going forward?
There does not seem to be a lot of focus on that number having gone down so much. Could you break that out a little bit? Is it buybacks that you have done, which were higher than normal, or do you expect that to reverse, or? Thanks, Aaron. It is Kathryn here. As you know, there are many things that go into it, and there are many things we are focusing on at the moment. Myself and Suzanne have both talked about the turning of a corner. I guess you know me. I will talk positively to any grass that goes the right direction, hence the 103-110. Suzanne has spoken to the cost out, and I will hand to her so that she can add to this in a moment. There is a really key focus on the business to get the operating cash moving in the right direction.
The 5 million of cost out has helped with that. It will help in 2026. There's another 15-20 million that we're targeting. We are also, though, as part of this business optimization or operating efficiency review, looking at where our cash goes. It's not just cash savings that will come from cost savings. We are also looking at all of our CapEx, all of our development, everything to free up some of that cash. I'll probably hand to Suzanne. She can give a bit more color on it. Hi, Kathryn. Sorry. Yeah? I just want to, in the first half, you had 5 million negative, and in the second half, you had 22 million negative cash flow from existing operations. That's a quite dramatic movement, and it's hard for me to see exactly why that has happened. Yeah.
You have had a bit of cost out. The market has, if anything, improved a little bit, so there should not have been a lot of more bought-back resale units. What is driving this major EBITDA, underlying earnings? It is hard to see why the cash has deteriorated so much in the second half from existing operations. Yeah. You touched on all of the points, Aaron. There will be the receivables balance is one that you often talk about, or is there taken a short term to settle, and it sometimes goes across the year end. There is obviously the expenses line, which is a key focus going forward. There are still buybacks, not to the level that we would want them to be. We want them to be much, much lower and, in fact, never have any buybacks.
It is a nature of where we are in the cycle that we are having buybacks, both for resales and for developments. I'll just hand to Suzanne so she can give some more flavor of what we're focusing on moving forward. I guess that's the flavor of what we've had during this year. Aaron, you talked on resales, and I think that's right. We obviously had a large amount of development stock, and that included the Helia. Our major focus was on selling down the Helia and on that development stock. It is very clear. You've obviously pointed it out that some of our resales have been the days on market are far too long.
We certainly, over this next period of time, as we divided and conquered with marketability and the rest of the team, going into this period, we're dividing half the team will be on development stock, half the team will be on resales. There's a lot of rigor about identifying that product, why it's been on there too long, and how we can shift it a little more quickly. Yes, incentives will probably come into that as will price. On top of that, we've talked about the cost-out. You've heard many times, probably many more times than me, actually, the discussion around investments in our portfolio. Over the time that the divestments have started, the portfolio has actually reduced by about 40%. In recent years, our costs increased by about 50%. Obviously, that's unsustainable and not okay. That is what we are focused on.
The $5 million that we've spoken about was easy. The next $15 million-$20 million is not. That said, some of it is achieved. Rostering, we are working with our union partners very closely, and we have achieved some success at four of our sites, which has had some significant financial impact. On top of that, we are obviously also in discussion with many of our people, and we are looking to significantly reduce the size of our support office. You will understand that I can't give you any more information than that. On top of that, I think that the business has had a development focus for a while now. We need to have an operational focus because there's a large number of procurement savings in there. We have built up a site-by-site view.
We now know at every single site exactly what our costs are, where our overspends are. As I said, we've established a transformation office so that we can go about that in a rigorous, detailed, and frankly step-by-step manner to reduce all of those unnecessary costs. Thank you. Just one slight clarification, last one from me. Just your build cost on Meadowbank of NZD 26 million, what is included in what you refer to as build cost when it comes to things like capitalized holding costs, potential land cost allocation, capitalized OpEx, anything like that, future holding costs when you sell down? Just to understand what this is. Yeah. It's all in, Aaron. So includes interest, includes holding cost under obviously an assumed sell-down rate, but all in, nothing taken out on that one. Okay. Thank you. Your final question comes from Stephen Ridgewell with Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
It appears that line has dropped. We have time for one more question from Ari Decker with Jarden. Please go ahead. Oh, great. Thank you. Yeah. So just on the I had some follow-up on the cost out. I mean, if I look at your numbers in terms of the portfolio, and I know there is a lot been going on in it, but between FY 2022 and FY 2025, the portfolio is essentially the same size, clearly some compositional differences, and you are not at full occupancy yet, which impacts clearly the net line. I guess my question is, over that period, and FY 2022 obviously impacted by the higher pressures on costs from COVID, we have seen cost growth significantly outpace revenue growth. Like I said, the portfolio has been relatively stable in size.
I guess the first question I've got is, can you please confirm, is the cost out, are those targets net cost out targets, or are they gross cost out targets? If they are gross, then what should we be expecting in terms of the trend and that underlying growth in cost that we've sort of seen? Ari, it depends which financial year you're thinking of. If I'm thinking about when we're doing it on FY 2027, then they're net. We want the entire NZD 15 million-NZD 20 million saving. Obviously, this year is a bit of a transition year, and some of those things are going to cost us to implement. Suzanne, for example, talked about IT. Some of the things we're going to want new systems on. There will be some real things that will help us from an efficiency perspective, particularly in my own team.
There will be a cost of that, potentially up to NZD 2 million-NZD 2.5 million. During 2026, we'll have ins and outs. For 2027, you should be seeing the entire NZD 15 million-NZD 20 million saving. Yeah. Just so that we're not talking at cross purposes here, if I look at it either on a P&L lens, employee benefits and other expenses or payments to suppliers and employees in the cash flow statement, in FY 2025, that's circa NZD 260 million. You're not doing a lot of development, so the portfolio should stay reasonably stable, so not adding in a lot of new cost in terms of opening anything up. What you're saying is that NZD 260 million by FY 2027 should be NZD 240 million because the cost savings at the upper end are a net cost out. Correct, but not all of the cost savings are in salaries.
Provided you're talking about there will be other savings that are procurement ones or consultant ones or professional service fees and staff, it's not a straight saving to a staff line if that's what your question was. No, no. The 260 I'm referring to includes your other OpEx as well because your employee costs are 180. Okay. That is a net cost out of $20 million by FY 2027 that you're targeting. The other one, just in it relates to Aaron's questions on the cash conversion of underlying earnings, which obviously is very weak. Can you just confirm that the receivables balance, that had actually come down quite a lot at the half, but the receivables that relate to the ORAs is back up over $90 million.
Can you sort of, with very little new product coming into the mix now, can you just sort of talk us through where we should expect that receivables balance to go? Also, is the vast majority of that receivables balance on the ORAs relating to new sales? Yes. I'm picking because there's a few in there. You hit the nail on the head, though. That comes from my point earlier about when we look at the cash, we also need to include the receivable in that view. Where will it go to? I'd say that in the NZD 90 million balance that you refer to, there's probably an extra NZD 15-NZD 20 million that we wouldn't usually have, but it is there because of the timing. Where you think it will go down, I think a more stable level is between NZD 60-NZD 70 million in a year.
That probably answers both of your questions, does it, Ari? There is probably around NZD 20 million that is very short term that is relating to new sales. Then a steady state because the in and out is probably between NZD 60 million-NZD 70 million. No, that is helpful. Yeah. In terms of the buyback activity, which was more elevated in 2025, you would sort of hope over the next couple of years, at least on the resales front, to see some net buyback activity in the resales part of the business. Yes, absolutely. There is some net positive. Yeah. Correct. As Suzanne's spoken to, sales team, a lot of focus. That focus is not just on new stock. It is very much also on resale stock. Okay. Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions on the teleconference today.
I will now hand back to Suzanne and Kathryn. Thank you very much. I look forward to talking to most of you this afternoon. Bye-bye. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.