Now to slide four. Our input for the year—sorry, for the six months—was up NZD 4.3 million to NZD 6.3 million, which you can see from the slide is an increase of over 200%. Improved at a really, really impressive result that we're pleased for. Similarly, our earnings per share was up over 200% to NZD 0.022 per share from the previous period of NZD 0.007 per share. We will be paying a dividend in December of NZD 0.01 per share, fully imputed, and this represents an increase on the prior period of over 50%. It is worth noting that there will be no tax on that dividend as a result of the fully imputed nature, which we're, again, pleased to announce. Finally, on this slide, our available funds from operations, or as we like to call it, FO, was up nearly 100% to NZD 7.2 million.
Now moving to our business highlights on slide five. Just like to call out a few of the numbers here, and Jeremy will go into the numbers in more detail in following slides, but in particular, our growth in underlying EBITDA of over 40%, which we signaled to the market earlier, was right in the middle of the guidance range that we updated in August of this year. It's worth noting that. Again, we are absolutely delighted with our occupancy number. Some time ago, we had a drive for 95% occupancy, and we not only met that reasonably stretched target, but for the period, we averaged 95.0%, which is up on the prior period of 92.3%. Also, we completed during the period the acquisition of St Allisa, which has become pretty immediately earnings accretive to us and a key part of the portfolio.
I'll talk more about St Allisa later in the presentation. Lastly, on the slide, very importantly, Jeremy will talk more of this, but we have reduced our financing costs and our overall net debt. My final slide in this section is a very important slide. Our exceptional people, you can see Clara there with Derek from Marteau. Clara is our facility manager at Marteau, a facility that is consistently at 100% of the 147 beds, and we're very proud of Clara and the facility. She's part of our exceptional people who deliver exceptional care to our residents every day. Why does this matter? It's really important to note that our regional management team that helped drive the business have all been care home managers previously.
They know firsthand how to help our residents, how to help our care home leaders, or as I call it, our CEOs of our 24 care homes, to deliver care, how to be commercial, and how to run each of their care homes efficiently and with excellent care to residents, because that is the core of what we do: deliver excellent care to our residents every day. It is also worth noting our continued excellent audit results, which are industry-leading. During the period, we had two audits, and both had positive outcomes with no findings on either of those two audits. Finally, on this slide, you can see on the bottom right, our staff turnover remains at a record low of 17%.
Again, this means that our exceptional people are delivering exceptional care to residents that they know and they bond with and have that ongoing bond with and are doing it on the basis that they know the families and the residents. I was fortunate enough during the period to work two shifts as a healthcare assistant to witness this bond, and I have to say that changed my views of what our people do every day and only increased the respect for which I have for all of our exceptional people delivering exceptional care to our 2,000 residents. Now I'll hand over to Jeremy to cover some more detail of our financials, and then you'll hear from Brien. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. This is my third interim results call with Radius Care. I'm pleased to share some highlights of what's been a very strong first half year for the company. Andrew's covered some of these highlights already, so I'll go through this quickly, but I wanted to particularly call out net profit after tax tripling to NZD 6.3 million, and our FO result, or available funds from operations, which is the measure of the ultimate cash that's generated by the business and allows us to support increasing dividends. Also, our balance sheet position has strengthened significantly with a further reduction in net debt, seeing an increase in equity and a reduction in leverage. I'll move on to some of the detail now, starting with bottom line profitability.
Both profit before tax and net profit after tax have a very similar shape, and both of them tripling versus the same half in the previous year. It's pleasing to see this profile also seen in the earnings per share result, which has increased to NZD 0.022 per share, up NZD 0.015 on the previous year. In terms of underlying EBITDA growth, we reported NZD 14.9 million for the half, which was in the middle of the guidance of NZD 14 million-NZD 16 million that we shared at our shareholders' meeting in August. This also demonstrates the operating leverage that Radius Care has, with a NZD 4.3 million increase in underlying EBITDA dropping straight to the bottom line, with also a NZD 4.3 million increase in net profit after tax. Both care and our retirement village operations contributed to the EBITDA growth, although most of the contribution was from care.
We see this in our most important measure of our care operating margins, which is underlying EBITDA per care bed. We are reporting this this year on an annualized basis, so the NZD 29,900 is the last 12 months ending 30th of September 2025. The increase from the NZD 27,900 that we reported for the last full financial year is a result of a great operating performance in care, with stronger occupancy that Andrew mentioned, improving bed mix towards higher acuity care, and really effective cost management from the teams that are in all of the care homes around the country. In terms of revenue, 17% revenue growth was strong as well, and this was mainly driven by the strong occupancy and higher acuity bed mix, as well as further growth in accommodation supplements.
It's also important to note that we had six months of the CBIS contribution that wasn't in the same half last year, and four months of St Allisa revenue, that recently acquired care home that we'll talk more about later in the presentation, both of which contributed also to revenue growth. The results of all of this are seen in the available funds from operations metric, which has doubled to NZD 7.2 million. As I said, this is the primary measure of cash that's ultimately generated by the business after maintenance capex, interest, and tax. This has supported a significant increase in our dividend, lifting from NZD 0.0065 per share to NZD 0.01 per share. Once again, this is fully imputed, so it's very tax efficient and will be paid a week before Christmas on the 18th of December.
I'll finish with an update on our progress against the capital management framework that we originally shared in May. This has guided us in how we allocate our surplus FO across different areas of the business. We've talked about the $0.01 per share dividend already, but we were also able to return some capital to shareholders with a share buyback, with a further 1.4 million shares purchased as part of our share buyback scheme. Growth remains a focus, and it's important for us to allocate some cash flow towards growth. St Allisa was part of this, which was purchased for NZD 1.1 million after the sale and lease back in May. There was also a smaller acquisition of some development land in Invercargill. All of this still allowed surplus cash to be applied to reduce debt.
It is pleasing to see that our leverage has rapidly reduced now to 2.3 times, which is already below the medium-term target of 2.5 times leverage that we shared back in May. With that, I'll hand over to Brien Cree, our Founder and Executive Chair, to talk about our growth strategy.
Thanks, Jeremy. I will just summarize these next slides. I'm aware that there's a lot of slides in this presentation, so I'll try and keep it brief, although I don't have too many to go through. This first one here is just an example of how we're now starting to think of the business in terms of it being a health services business. We are actively pursuing all these areas that you see on the screen there, particularly ACC, and we've got CBIS Catering. We've got the Radius shop that is ramping up. We've got in-home care. All these various business units are being worked on progressively. Just go to slide 16. Executing our growth strategy focuses on three key groups. We have diversity of revenue, so we want to grow CBIS Catering. We want to grow our connect.
We want to continue to expand in-home care, which currently is quite small but is growing. We want to expand the shop, as I mentioned, and we want to expand into complementary health services, all that focused on predominantly aged care. Within the core aged care business, which will always remain the core business, we want to grow our scale, and we want to do that through leased care opportunities, a bit of targeted M&A as it comes up. St Allisa is a good example. We have Brownfield Developments, which continue to grow. As Jeremy mentioned, we picked up a small piece of land in Invercargill to add some villas to. We have also acquired a bit of land in Matamata next to our facility there. We are just continuing to grow that Brownfield footprint.
Greenfield, obviously, there's a large part of the future business will be Greenfield Developments of aged care, not retirement villages. Lastly, RedPro, which we refer to as effectively our technology that helps run the business, and that will have significant investment put into it over the next couple of years, particularly now that we have AI that we're all using almost every day. Even six months ago, it was a new thing. Now it's part of everyday life. If I move to slide 17, our growth strategy in general now is capital light, as you're all aware. We've been granted approval in principle with Western District Council for an 80-bed care facility. It does come with a bit of spare land, which was one of their requirements, really, to have a village next to the care facility.
We will build a 55-unit village next to the care facility. We have the M&A. St Allisa is a good example, 109 beds. We're in the process of completely refurbishing that building at the moment, and it's relatively full already, producing positive EBITDA. It took us about a month or so to get our operating systems in there, which was pretty quick, actually, given that Radius has been built predominantly over acquisition. That's the fastest integration that we've had. On the village side, 12 villas currently being consented and constructed, with another half a dozen about to come online after those ones. The new village development, we're again trying to make it very clear to everyone that we are not a village developer. Small villa developments around large aged care facilities is not a bad thing.
It does create a bit of a community, and it does obviously have a certain level of feed into the care home, although you can't really bank on that because, as you know, our care homes are predominantly full, so there's not always going to be a room. Secondly, you have no way of knowing how many people within the village will need care. For us, it's more about building a community around what we consider to be a broader community facility rather than specifically the old style of continuum of care model. Moving on to page 18, RedPro. This is a good description of RedPro. RedPro is Radius Care's operating model, representing the proprietary combination of culture, leadership, processes, systems, and technology that enable high-quality and high-acuity resident-centered care.
I think there's a lot of talk about how do we produce the results that we produce, particularly measured against some others. The bottom line is that it is about those core points there. It's about culture. It's about leadership. It's about the way that we operate holistically across the whole company. It is a systemic model. It's not just about technology. We intend to invest in that because our growth plans are significant, and we need to have the systems in place to enable that growth to occur. Page 19 leads us into that growth strategy. A key part of our growth strategy is providing home care in the community. Radius is an approved ACC high-dependency provider throughout New Zealand, and we are actively pursuing further contracts with Health New Zealand.
We expect this side of the business to grow substantially over the coming years as it integrates with the government policy of reducing rest home-level people in care and wanting to keep them at home longer. That fits with our philosophy also, given that we are a high-acuity provider. We feel that it's a good idea to move into the community and start to look after those people in the home, which we are successfully doing. We are currently the only aged care provider that holds those contracts. With that, I will hand you back to Andrew.
Thanks, Brien. An older slide here, as you can see, is of some goldfish outside St Allisa. Brien mentioned that the building is being renovated, and I just wanted to talk to a couple of things. We've mentioned St Allisa a bit. It's worth dwelling on the fact that it is earnings accretive. As Brien and Jeremy both said, it became earnings accretive and profitable pretty quickly. How did we do that? We appointed a former Radius Care leader or manager of another site in Christchurch on day one, and she has led that transition with obviously help from us. The team have become experts in what Brien described as RedPro and the operations. That's been really good to see. We've supported them. We've visited them and helped them out. That's been a really interesting process to lead.
The other point to note there is that we are, as Brien said, looking at other opportunities for large care homes of 80-100 beds plus to do effectively what we've done with St Allisa, what we did with Matamata Country Lodge, what we did with Clearhouse, and all of the acquisitions that Brien and the team have undertaken in the 21 years of Radius Care's history. Again, from a capital light perspective, not spending too much money, but having the operational efficiency that Radius Care brings to these new opportunities. Onto the final slide, our outlook slide. A couple of points from me here. You can see the Canyella and one of our regional managers at Elloughton. I think on the left is a sporting event at Elloughton there with, again, with Lorraine. Critical for me is the continuous improvement piece.
We are now seven weeks into the second half of the year, and trading has been strong in those seven weeks. We are looking to continuously improve all areas of the business: our service to our residents, our leadership, our engagement of our staff, and the homeliness of our care homes, amongst other things in the business. It is nice to be able to report on the first six months, but our focus is very today and in the future focused on how we can continue to improve the business every day. We will look forward to updating you in May of 2026. We will update you on the continuous improvements that we have achieved on our results and our strategic growth initiatives that we have achieved between now and then. We look forward to that at year-end.
Thank you for your time and patience this morning. I know it's a busy time of year and reporting. Thank you for joining the call. I see there is one question at the moment.
Two. I think Ari has a question.
Okay. James, then Ari. James, hi.
We'll just unmute you, James.
He just needs to turn his mic off.
James, if you turn your mic on.
Staff, can you hear me now?
Sure thing.
Okay. Very good. Well done on the result and the rest of the sort of stuff. Hey, a few questions from me, if I may. Obviously, occupancy has ticked up nicely over the last year. Could you just give us an indication about how much of it you think is sort of industry-related versus Radius-specific?
Yeah, sure. Look, it's always hard to tell. We think we know our people are doing a great job every day, and we're focused on that and getting our occupancy as high as possible. The industry provides lag data from the ACA, and I think occupancy is generally up. Obviously, it will be interesting to see how the other operators who have care homes report in the next week. 2.7 percentage points up is certainly a pretty steep upwards trajectory for us. We targeted 95%. We achieved it. As I said earlier, we're really looking to increase that in the year ahead.
Maybe sort of an extension of that, you mentioned a couple of your villages close to 100%, if not at 100. Can you give us an indication about what your longer-term view is about full occupancy?
Yeah, sure. Currently, we've got five care homes of 24 that are full. Obviously, we're targeting more. What does full occupancy look like? Obviously, with discharges and higher acuity, 100% is pretty close to unattainable. We believe that 98%-99% is effectively full. Aspiring to get to that number as soon as possible next financial year or the next year ahead would be excellent. Those are our aspirations: to have that number tick up from 95%-98% over the course of the next year, James.
Okay. Obviously, the business has done pretty well on the efficiency point of view, and staffing has been, I think you've mentioned before, sort of at full levels. Is there any pressures on staffing, or do you think you'll need to sort of increase further costs as occupancy sort of rises from 92% to 98% you're talking about?
No pressure. If you think about two or three years, we had lots of pressure to get staff into the country, and that was an issue. There is not that pressure now. We do have adequate staffing. We're always looking to pay attention to how we train and develop our staff as best as possible. The jump from 95 to potentially 98%-99% won't incur additional staffing costs, just the way our rosters are.
Okay. Cool. And then well done on the net debt for the period as well, with obviously a few moving parts and sort of Hokitika and additional sites in Invercargill and Belfast. Can you give us an indication about what the sort of net capital second half cost will be and spend?
Yeah, sure, James. So we're expecting to settle the Belfast site within the next couple of months. Exact timing TBC, it may be delayed over Christmas. That'll be an extra NZD 5.5 million CapEx. We have a banking facility that we'll draw down to fund that. Otherwise, underlying CapEx will probably be pretty similar, second half and first half. The brownfields developments, they're in the consenting process now, so there'll be limited spend on those this financial year. Most of that investment will be in FY 2027. Because they're residential properties, we're expecting that to be fully recycled within FY 2027 and fully paid back, probably also during FY 2027. There won't be a lot on Hokitika this financial year either. That will start ramping up next year.
Cool. Ari, just one more if I may. Just with regard to St Allisa, as far as you've put new systems in or your RedPro systems in there, how long do you think it will be to sort of achieving your expectations as far as EBITDA?
Right. In terms of the EBITDA bed monthly rate, it's been a month or so, really. We're pretty close, actually. We're pretty close. I mean, we're always aspiring for more for larger care homes, obviously, because don't forget that average of 30 is there's two things. As Jeremy said, it's average over the last 12 months. So the average over the last six months is significantly higher than half that. And secondly, it's a larger care home. It's 109. So the aspiration for St Allisa might be more closer to 32-35.
Okay. That was second to last one before I open up to it.
We need to.
Oh, yeah. Thank you. Sorry.
Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, James.
I was just sneaking the last one with regard to resident tenure and retirement side of things. At 4.9, quite a lot lower than in years than other industry players. I assume it's just sort of your age of entry. Can you sort of give us an indication of what sort of average age of entry is at the moment?
Yeah. Look, I don't have that number, James, but you did write it as pun on the pun. Age of entry related. Under five years is closer to probably service apartment occupancy for some operators. We are pleased with that. We do tend to, as Brien said, have smaller villages and higher age of entry, kind of circa early to mid-80s. We don't advertise to the kind of mid to late 60s. We are looking at the early to mid-80s range. Often they will transition to the service apartments where we have them and/or care homes and home support, which we are now instituting into our village. Reasonably early in that process.
Great stuff. Thanks so much. Well done again, please.
Thanks for the questions, Ari. Right. I think, Ari, you're unmuted now if you have a question.
Yeah. There's just a slight lag there, but I am. Thank you.
Hi.
Yeah. So just a few questions, firstly, just around what you've outlined on growth. I guess just current expectations with regards on Belfast and Hokitika, when you might be expecting to commit to those developments?
Do you want me to answer that? In terms of commitment, we already have a landlord lined up who wants to take Belfast. We will be committing to that as quickly as we can. I think we've talked about the site for a long time, and we've been held up consistently by the title being available. That finally is in the final process of going through council. We also have the full design of the building being completed, the full working drawings at the moment. They'll be completed in February. We expect that with any luck, we will be starting on that site in the first quarter or half of next calendar year. In terms of Hokitika, it is looking like Development West Coast will want to take the land and buildings.
Again, we don't really have any impediments there to moving forward. Council already owns the land. Again, we're hopeful that that construction will be able to start next year as well.
Okay. No, that's encouraging. Just on that commitment, West Coast's keen to take the land and buildings. Would that be the land for the retirement portion as well, or will you take that land?
We will take that land. They will own the land and buildings of the care facility, and then we will, over time, just develop a small village there. It is the standard model that we are using, which is the duplex, sort of 110-120 sq m, two-bedroom units.
Great. Just with reference to what is a very large pipeline of new build opportunities, I guess a few questions there. Just, I guess, keen to understand how you're looking to prioritize those, the final approach you're sort of taking there. Also, importantly, resource it with a couple of developments potentially starting construction in 2027, as you've just outlined. I mean, how many of those would you be looking to progress sort of simultaneously through to construction commencement?
The ones that we, if you like, are closest to starting are being built by independent builders and owners. We have signed agreements. We have four at the moment in the process of consenting, which we have actually nothing to do with the build side other than sort of oversight because we have supplied all the plans. As you know, we have developed our own building, and we are very stringently making sure that they stick with that. There is no variation to those plans. Four of them are being built by independents with virtually no input from us until they are nearing the end of completion. The others we are in discussion with various people, funds, etc., around what the next few years will look like with substantial funding and behind the land and buildings.
Again, just pointing out that Radius is not interested in owning all the land and buildings. What we want to do is build a large health services business. What we have found is that there are a lot of home offices and people like that who are interested in owning a reasonably large building like this that's brand new with a solid tenant. To an extent, I've got to be honest and say that we were a bit surprised with people that have come out of the woodwork and said, "Look, I've got land. Can I build you one?" As to your question, resourcing-wise, at the moment, we have no issues with resourcing. It's fair to say that if a couple were to open at the same time of any given year, we might struggle. There again, Andrew and his team are all over that.
We are already talking about how we resource it and how we would start them.
Would you envisage any of those four being in construction in FY 2027, or is that more likely sort of 2028?
It's possible 2027. Two of them are going through the final stages of resource consenting now. We are obtaining building consent for the plans that will cover the whole country under the government's new policy there that you can now consent for the whole country. So very possible that they would start. I mean, earthworks, as we all know, in New Zealand, you're sort of stuck with the four or five months of summer. It's more likely, I think, that civil would end up starting on any of those properties probably late 2026.
That's helpful. And then just last one on the growth aspect, just whether you're in late-stage DD on any acquisitions at the moment?
No, we're not.
Yeah.
I couldn't answer that anyway.
DD doesn't take it.
Oh, that's correct. DD doesn't take us long, Ari. Yeah, we don't have anything to announce. You'll see, as we always do, if we have material information, i.e., signed contracts, probably conditional on these, we will announce them immediately. Good question.
That's a very broad question. Just on last two, quite quick, just the reference to refurbishment of St Allisa. I mean, I presume that's over and above the NZD 1.1 million net investment on acquisition of the, I guess, chattels. So just wanted to understand that being the case, how much you're spending on refurbishment in 2026 and how much of that was spent in first half?
Between $500,000 and $1,000,000, Ari, which will be spent in FY 2026 by the end of March. Probably about a quarter of that in the first half.
Perfect. Yeah. Just nothing out of line with your maintenance spend. And then just on buybacks, just any comments on your intent with regards to recommencing the buyback in second half 2025? That is 2026, sorry.
Look, as you know, up until today, have been in a blackout period. We did announce that the buyback would continue to December. We have not announced that it will continue into the next year. If we continue or if we decide to continue share buyback, we will announce that in due course, decision for the board, obviously. It goes without saying, I think, that our share price is undervalued. Yeah, we do not have any intention. If we do, we will announce that to the market.
No, great. Thanks. Yeah, really good result. Thank you.
Thanks, Ari.
Thanks, Ari.
Anybody else? We can't see everybody's hands, but anybody else questions or? Thank you all for your time. As I said, it's a busy time of the year and recording season. We appreciate you joining the call and the interest in Radius Care and look forward to bringing you our full year results in May. Thanks all. Have a good day.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.