I must advise that this presentation is being recorded today, Wednesday, the 27th of November, 2024. I would now like to hand over to Rakon Investor Relations Manager, Nick Laurent. Thank you, and please go ahead.
Good morning and welcome to Rakon's HY 2025 Financial Results and Business Update. Joining us today are Rakon's Chief Executive, Sinan Altug and Interim CFO, Mark Dunwoodie. In a moment, I will hand over to Sinan and Mark to present the update, but first, a quick reminder that during this presentation, we will make forward-looking statements about Rakon Limited and the environment in which the company operates. Because these statements are forward-looking, Rakon Limited's actual results could differ materially. I encourage you to read the disclaimer on the important notice slide of the presentation for more detail. With that, I will now hand over to Rakon's Chief Executive, Sinan Altug.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Sinan Altug, Chief Executive, joined by our CFO, Mark Dunwoodie. Rakon is a global leader in frequency control and timing solutions, which provide the heartbeat for seamless flow of information and data in critical applications. From mobile networks to satellite constellations and AI data centers, we set the global standard for precision, reliability, and innovation in our field of technology. Mark and I will walk you through an update on Rakon's performance for the six months ending September 30th, 2024. We will also share progress in our long-term growth strategy and provide insights into our vision and aspirations extending to the end of the decade. Following the presentation, we'll open the floor for a Q&A session to address your questions and share additional context. Let's begin.
The first half was among the most challenging periods for Rakon, marked by tough market conditions in telecommunications and positioning that more than offset the continued strong performance of our aerospace and defense segment. Telco demand remained subdued and lower than our cautious expectations. Still, I'm extremely proud of our team's resilience and dedication through what was quite a distracting environment. Through their exceptional focus, discipline, and personal sacrifice, we achieved key strategic milestones but also laid a solid foundation for future growth. We balanced substantial cost reduction efforts with our growth strategy, and we have strengthened the business to grab opportunities in high-growth space and AI segments. This, along with early signs of stabilization in telecommunications, points to improvement in the second half of the year and into the next fiscal year.
Our aerospace and defense segment was once again the standout, with continued year-on-year revenue growth for the fourth consecutive financial half-year, and the strong order book into FY 2026 and beyond, reaffirming the strength of Rakon in this high-growth market. However, half-year total revenue was considerably lower year-on-year. Unsurprisingly, this was primarily driven by reduced demand in telecommunications and positioning. Gross margin was also down, affected mainly by loss of efficiencies due to low production levels. We have continued to focus on driving cost reduction and efficiencies but carefully reallocated the gains from these efforts into investment areas that align with our strategic priorities. This balanced approach ensures we continue to protect Rakon's growth trajectory and technology leadership under these testing conditions, and this is valid, particularly in high-potential areas like space subsystems and AI, while we also prepare for recovering telecom.
While it's still too early to call it a full recovery yet, the telecom market is showing early signs of improvement. Our largest telco infrastructure customers, as well as key industry players, have reported increased but selective 5G network investment, especially from North American operators. We are now also seeing planned network infrastructure investment in other regions, including India. These are tangible signs that the telecom market will improve through the second half of the year and into the next fiscal year. Customer demand for our AI and cloud infrastructure products has exceeded our expectations. Key alignments from industry leaders positioned this segment to deliver significant revenue starting from the first quarter of FY 2026. This reaffirms our confidence that AI and cloud infrastructure will become a core market for Rakon within the next years, further diversifying our revenue streams.
We are also on track with the accelerated transfer of key product lines to our Indian facility. As production ramps up in the last quarter of this fiscal year, we will start seeing immediate margin improvements and substantial reduction in overheads. And September was our highest revenue month of the half-year. That's encouraging. Looking ahead, we anticipate this momentum to carry through the second half, driven by improving telecom sector orders and a strong space demand in Q4. With that said, we expect to remain within the lower half of our FY 2025 underlying EBITDA guidance of $5 million-$15 million. And looking into the next fiscal year, we see a strong order pipeline and demand in space and AI and cloud infrastructure, and these will be key growth drivers for the company into the next year and beyond. We'll share more on this later.
In the first half of the year, we secured two major space subsystem contracts, including our largest to date for $17 million. We continue to compete for additional mega constellation contracts and are seeing strong interest from across the space industry. As an example, we just announced last week that the German Aerospace Center selected our Master Reference Oscillator for an in-orbit mission onboard the International Space Station. While this is not a huge contract, it's a real honor for us as a Kiwi company, and it speaks volumes about Rakon's IP. In AI, we have hit some important milestones for product designs, and we are securing wins with most of the leading industry players. There are major programs with deliveries starting in the second half of this fiscal year, and we expect significant revenues from the first half of FY 2026 onward.
In response to the rising demand for our space and AI products, we are ramping up production capacity to meet current and future order volumes. Rakon's organizational transformation program that we introduced at our ASM is underway. This is a comprehensive program to reconfigure the company in line with our growth strategy. We expect it to catalyze growth while also delivering substantial overhead efficiencies and margin enhancements across Rakon's global operations within the next two years. One of the first steps in this program is the accelerated transfer of key products to our India facility. This is on track to deliver improved margins as volume production starts next quarter. All necessary equipment has been transferred, set up, and validated at our Indian facility, and we are shortly going to start customer qualifications. We continue to consistently hit the milestones on our technology and product roadmaps.
Most recently, we launched Mercury , our groundbreaking radiation-hardened semiconductor chip that will provide the foundation for Rakon's latest range of miniature space products. And we are also on track with our critical next-generation semiconductor chip, Vulcan. It will be released for select customer testing within this fiscal year. This chip primarily targets the AI and telecommunications markets, and it will, on its own, be also groundbreaking. I will now hand over to Mark to present the financials.
Thank you, Sinan, and good morning to everyone on the call. Just starting with our slide on financial performance for the first half to 30th of September 2025, we've reported NZD 41.7 million in total revenue, down 32% from the same period last year. As Sinan mentioned, a key driver in this result is the continued reduction in demand across the telco and the positioning markets. However, we have maintained our market share, and September was our highest revenue month for the half-year, was driven by an improvement in telecom orders towards the end of that period. We anticipate this trend will continue through the second half of FY 2025 alongside the increased space business orders that we're seeing. Gross profit is lower at NZD 15.7 million and a margin of 37.8%. This is a direct impact of the reduced sales volumes, but also NZD 1.7 million in increased inventory provisions and one-off adjustments.
OpEx is relatively flat at NZD 30 million. Rakon has been successful in reducing run rates, but this is masked by NZD 1.5 million in unfavorable FX movements as well as restructuring and acquisition proposal costs. Half-year underlying EBITDA is a -NZD 7.3 million, with a net loss after tax of NZD 10.4 million. It's worth noting that the increased inventory provisions and unfavorable FX movements are a significant factor in this result. CapEx has dropped back 6% to NZD 6.3 million as the company continues a very focused approach to delivering on strategic growth initiatives. Our growth investments include research and development. At the half-year, we've spent NZD 10.7 million compared to NZD 8.9 million the year before to extend Rakon's technology leadership for securing future design wins and strengthening our position as a technology leader in our respective markets.
Alongside the accelerated transition to manufacture in India, we're expanding facilities to ramp up AI chip production and to meet the space business demand. Operating cash flow was a + $8.3 million in half-year 2025 and up 14% on the last year. This reflects our continued focus on working capital management, including an $8.5 million reduction in overall inventory balances. We'll now move on to the performance summaries for each core market. Aerospace and defense is exciting. We're continuing to see year-on-year growth in the segment, with a total half-year revenue of $16.8 million, which is up 10% on the same period last year. It's generating $10.7 million in gross margin at 67%, which is good and healthy. High demand for space subsystem products is a key growth driver here, including the orders from the contracts that Sinan mentioned earlier to supply our subsystems Low-Earth Orbit satellite constellations.
We'd move on to the next on the telco segment. Total revenue in the telecoms is down at NZD 16.8 million. It's down 51% on the same period last year, with NZD 2.5 million of gross margin at a rate of 25%. This reflects the continued weakness in the telco market, but also our inefficiencies at lower production levels. And these are the key drivers in dropping both the revenue and the gross margin. We have seen order levels improve late in the half-year, and as we mentioned earlier, we expect this trend to continue into the second half of the year. Importantly, we've maintained market share and design win rates as we target to get a high share of the next generation orders through into positioning.
For positioning the half-year revenue as NZD 5.5 million, down 23% from the prior year, NZD 2.5 million in gross margin at a gross margin rate of 45%. Similar to telecommunications, this is reflective of continued market weakness and inventory normalization driving down on order volumes. And to a certain degree, we have the same issue around Rakon being able to produce efficiently at this level. We continue to be a strong performer in the precise positioning part of this market and with a good share of sales and exceptional design win rates there. But overall, the demand in this market remains flat. Move on through to working capital, please. Thank you. We've got a continued focus on working capital management and driving out the cost savings, as well as optimizing the business.
At the same time, as Sinan mentioned, we're very targeted on investing in our strategic initiatives and our growth initiatives, and we've been protecting that investment as we go along. We also mentioned a bit earlier a reduction in inventory balances, and that year-on-year reduction of NZD 8.5 million has helped working capital. We'll continue to keep a tight leash on inventory as orders increase and production starts to fire on all cylinders. We're continuing a disciplined approach with CapEx and OpEx as we come out of this part of the cycle, and the focus on cost reductions across the business continues, but it's balanced with the investments that we need to meet the business's aspirations. We're continuing to transform our global operations to realize efficiencies, including optimizing manufacturing cost structures.
The accelerated schedule of transitioning the business to India is on track with NZD 2.1 million of CapEx and OpEx invested so far this half-year. We expect the manufacturing efficiencies from this to kick off in the latter part of the year as production ramps up. Production utilization is sitting at a good level given the stage we're at across our global locations. Year- on- year, we have reduced workforce by 22% in response to the market environment, and this has allowed us to optimize cost of production while still protecting capacity to ramp up and execute our growth plan. The balance sheet is strong with net assets of NZD 148 million, and we had NZD 15.8 million in net cash at balance sheet date, which was NZD 2.1 million less than the year before. Borrowing facilities that Rakon entered into with HSBC in April 2024 remain undrawn.
I just circled back to the comment that Sinan made about the people in Rakon and how hard they've worked over the last 12-18 months. They've all leaned into what's going on in the business and reducing costs and doing what they need to get everything across the line. It's been pretty amazing to see it. Back to you, Sinan.
Thanks, Mark. Let me now dive into our strategy and outlook. Next slide. This slide highlights Rakon's aspirational growth trajectory through FY 2029. While it should not be taken as a definitive indication of future revenue or profitability, it provides insight into how we see the next few years shaping up as we execute on our strategy for growth and, importantly, diversification of revenue streams. Our strategic roadmap has already unlocked new addressable market opportunities in high-growth areas like commercial space and AI and cloud infrastructure, which together represent a combined serviceable addressable market for Rakon of over NZD 1.7 billion. These markets are expected to continue driving growth and delivering a greater share of the total revenue, with aerospace and defense and AI and cloud infrastructure projected to account for more than half of our revenue by 2029.
The graph also clearly reflects our transition from being exposed to traditional rollout cycles, as seen in our reliance on telecommunications in the prior years, to a diversified cycle-resilient business model. This transformation has been an important focus area over the last years for us, and it enables us to better weather the market fluctuations that positions Rakon for sustainable long-term growth. Telecom and positioning will remain important to our business. These are mature markets with stable growth. We aim to continue to maintain our lead and market share through continued innovation and leverage our technological advantage in parts of these markets. Additionally, the graph highlights the one-off revenue spike during the chip shortage that we had seen in 2021 and 2022.
This was an extraordinary situation, as we had emphasized, but we have successfully pivoted from this temporary phase to focus on additional sustained growth drivers of space and AI. By continuing this strategic focus, we are succeeding in growing multiple strong, balanced verticals, again creating resilience for the business long-term and diversifying revenue to provide increased protection through the cycles. Based on this diversified portfolio of high-growth verticals, we have set an accelerated 25% compound annual growth rate target from FY 2026 to 2029. This demonstrates our confidence in the scalability of our growth drivers, particularly in space and AI. This next slide illustrates how Rakon's Innovate, Capture, and Capitalise or ICC strategy, enhances the lifecycle and profitability of our products while maximizing the value of our global R&D and manufacturing footprint. We talked about this strategic program at our ASM, but the underlying work actually commenced over two years ago.
ICC redefines how we design, develop, produce, and sustain our product pipeline across our global operations. It enables Rakon to efficiently develop new products, scale production as demand grows, and transfer high-volume manufacturing to cost-efficient facilities. It also ensures long-term competitiveness and extended product lifecycles. A central part of this strategy has been the accelerated transfer of products from New Zealand to our India facility. This is expected to deliver improved gross margins, as I mentioned, and substantially reduce overhead costs as we achieve volume production capability in India for these products starting from next quarter. And we are applying the same recipe across all our product lines. We are now starting to work to transfer select commercial space products from our France facility to India facility.
The ICC initiative enhances Rakon's operational scalability and resilience, enabling us to meet customer needs, improve margins, and achieve sustainable growth in both mature and high-growth markets. This all goes towards securing our long-term value creation path. Quickly about our growth milestones. As we near the conclusion of our current three-year growth plan that spanned FY 2023 to 2025, I'm pleased to say that we remain firmly on track to achieve all of our strategic milestones for this year, as we have successfully done in the last two years. The four key investment areas have been vital to driving growth and innovation for Rakon. On this slide, we'll continue to play a central role in our strategy moving forward.
Looking ahead, our next three-year plan for FY 2026 to 2028 will build on this foundation with expanded investment in high-growth areas such as AI and cloud infrastructure, aerospace, and further global organizational transformation to unlock efficiencies and field innovation. We'll share more details on our refreshed strategy at our full-year results. A quick look at our core markets. Our outlook for our core markets demonstrates the clear growth opportunities across space, telecom, positioning, and AI and cloud infrastructure. We expect space business to continue its strong performance and year-on-year growth, with revenue in the second half set to substantially benefit from seasonal delivery orders. With a robust FY 2025 and FY 2026 order book and an active pursuit of game-changing new contracts, and I'm referring to mega constellations with 10 times the value potential, we are positioned to capture significant opportunities and lead in space.
The growth potential of the market for Rakon is excellent, with industry predictions for up to 20,000 new satellites to be launched in the coming five years. Additionally, there are waves of opportunity happening in Low-Earth Orbit satellite constellation segment, as Mark mentioned, where the key players are racing to build, launch, and scale commercial space infrastructure. A major driver for this activity is the lucrative opportunity to provide broadband connectivity from space, and we also expect a major surge in Direct-to-Phone satellite technology and commercial constellations enabling this technology. We are very well positioned in this. You may also have noticed new partnerships forming between satellite service providers and mobile network operators, including some New Zealand operators. This is to extend coverage to rural and remote areas and add new customers.
Overall, this is a very positive development that is set to increase revenue growth opportunities for Rakon in both space and telecom markets. Looking at the telecommunications market, our assessment of the current conditions remains consistent with what we shared at the FY 2024 results announcement. The telecom market has been muted in the first half of FY 2025, but we anticipate potential stabilization on a year-on-year basis during the second half of the fiscal year. There are positive signs from some of the largest customers that inventory is to normalize by the end of this calendar year. The same customers are also seeing some positive signs from their markets and their sales growth in North America, and the network traffic continues to grow at a healthy rate.
This is a combination of the underlying traffic growth and the growth of the fixed wireless access demand that is using effectively 5G networks to deliver high-speed home internet. So there are multiple positive signs and early indications that the market is now stabilizing. In positioning, as I have shared before, we still maintain a strong foothold in the high and precise positioning subsegment, which continues to be a key market segment for us with several new applications enabled by increasingly precise positioning. However, we are still facing increased competition, price erosion at the commercial end of this market, combined with an inventory correction cycle that is still running its course. Lastly, strong momentum is building for our AI and cloud infrastructure business, and we are expecting to deliver significant revenue starting from the first half of FY 2026.
This segment is on track to become an established vertical on par with our other core markets in the coming years. As many of you know or would have heard, the AI hardware and data center sector has seen a lot of investment already. This is driven by high levels of computing demand from hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, all public announcements, and because we are being designed into the next generation products for many major AI hardware players, we expect this investment to come through strongly for Rakon, especially when the AI factory deployment starts to take off. Current market expectations are projecting that AI factory deployments will have a meaningful impact on the sector growth from 2025 onward. Wrapping up, the first half of FY 2025 showcased strong performance in aerospace and defense, rising demand in AI and cloud infrastructure, and early signs of stabilization in telecom.
However, substantially lower year-over-year revenues in telecommunications and positioning significantly impacted our results. In response, we have accelerated cost reduction efforts and strategically reallocated resources to high-growth areas aligned with our strategy. We have prioritized R&D investments to extend technology leadership and safeguard growth in space and AI, while also positioning ourselves for telecom recovery and growth. Despite challenges, we remain on track to deliver within the lower half of our FY 2025 underlying EBITDA guidance, and we maintain ambitious growth aspirations for FY 2026 to FY 2029. In summary, the first half tested us, but we have strengthened our position in core markets and continued our expansion into high-growth verticals, building a diversified and resilient portfolio for the future. These efforts position us firmly to achieve our aspirational growth targets and deliver sustained long-term value.
Thanks to our team, we believe Rakon has emerged stronger, more focused, and ready to capitalize on clear growth opportunities in front of us. We will continue our targeted investments and operational transformation to ensure we unlock Rakon's full potential in the years ahead. Thank you, and I will now hand back to Nick to begin the Q&A.
Thanks, Sinan. We'll now start the Q&A portion of the presentation. A reminder that if you would like to ask a question related to the half-year results and presentation, please submit your question in the Q&A box on your screen. We will try to answer up to two questions from each person first before answering any additional questions in the time remaining. I'll now read out the first question. One moment while we bring it up. The first question comes from Will Twiss of Forsyth Barr.
His question is related to the telecommunication segment. He points out that gross margins were weaker, and he asks if you can talk about the segment and the second half recovery.
Thank you, Nick. The telco market has impacted us in that while the sales volumes are as low as they are, it's costing us more to produce what we're producing, and our gross margins are lower. So our manufacturing leverage and our operational leverage is lower. As far as the segment itself, it remains a core part of Rakon's business and strategy going forward. We're geared that as the volumes increase, we'll be able to pick up and increase and improve our gross margins. Our setup both here and in India and the transition of the business to India also strategically positions us to make the most of it.
I guess the analogy that we've talked about around the table here is similar to a flying monohull in the America's Cup business. You need wind to get up on your foils, and Rakon needs sales orders to get up on its foils and go from seven knots off the foils to 50 knots on the foils.
Great. Thanks, Mark. We have a second question from Will. He's looking at the telecommunication segment, excluding AI and positioning, and is asking, has there been any change in your long-term expectations for either segment?
Sorry, I probably sort of answered that in the first one, but our long-term expectations is, while this is a more mature market and not a growth market as per AI, cloud, space, and defense, we still expect to have a targeted strategy to do well in this market.
So our long-term expectations as telco and positioning are very important to us.
Yeah, and I would add to that that the slide that we had, I believe it was slide 11, that showed our growth aspirations. You would see there the rate of growth for telecom. We still expect a healthy and stable growth across the coming years for telecom. And with positioning, it is a bit lower than the telecom expectation because of the fact that we are going to continue to participate in a subsegment of the precise positioning subsegment of the positioning market.
Great. Thank you. So one moment while I bring up the next question. The next question comes from Kevin Arscott, staying with the theme of Rakon's segments, looking this time at aerospace and defense. He notes that sales have improved, but they haven't improved perhaps by as much as expected.
When are shareholders going to see a bigger increase in sales in the aerospace and defense segment?
Yeah, let me take that. The increase in the first half year-on-year was 10% approximately. But as I mentioned, there is some seasonality in that. We expect a bigger number in the second half, even year-on-year. But I want to note once again that these sales. So two things. One, for the first half, if you look at our revenue for that segment, it is now equal to our revenue from telecom and at a 67% margin. So we find it quite healthy. And now that we are getting economies of scale, it is going straight to the bottom line. I would revisit this question, Kevin, at the end of the fiscal year as well because of the fact that we are expecting a bigger growth as well.
But I would not call 10% growth year-on-year on a 67% margin business, sea change.
There's also the aspect to this that the stage of our customers and their life cycle is a factor here too. Their initial contracts that we currently have are their first and smaller ones, and then they're going to go to larger scale as well. And we're linked in very early to this life cycle. So we would expect to see similar increases as they get more confident in their product and what they're delivering into space.
Thank you. We have another question from Kevin. This is relating to the India facility and the product transfers.
He would like to know when that facility will get up to 100% capacity, noting that it's been operating for about a year and would like to know clear indication on when you're expecting to see the benefits from that facility and the transfers.
Right. So there are three, maybe three points that I want to make on that. I think the part that we are referring to as India getting to volume production is for the portion of the business that we will have in India that was and that is transitioned from New Zealand. Otherwise, we have had India up and running on our traditional Indian business since we flicked the light switch on. So it has been running with all the business that we had in our previous Indian factory.
On top of that, what we are transferring is the New Zealand part of our New Zealand business, as I mentioned, through the ICC program, and the third portion of it is going to be our space business, the commercial space business that we are starting also to transfer from France into India, so those transitions will continue for a number of years. As I mentioned, we're looking at the transition that will be continuous as it's a part of our ICC strategy, and there will be continuous transitions and transfers for us to extend the product life cycles, achieve competitive margins, and be able to reduce our overheads as well.
Thank you. One moment while we bring up the next question. The next question comes from Eden Bradfield of BlackBull Research. Eden is asking, how realistic is the 25% aspirational target given the current results?
I think, I mean, I can understand that question, but again, if we were to look at our slide number 11, that does show the picture that we are looking at for the future years starting from next year onward, so on top of our existing business, which I would call for our telecom business, it is at a very low point at the moment, and it is going to bounce back to recovery, you're seeing early signs of recovery, so it will recover, so that's telecom, which has been our largest segment, which is at perhaps its lowest point at the moment. That's one. Two, AI is coming in in a big way. The AI hardware business, which we have a very small quantity of, is going to come in as an additional slice on top of our existing business.
That's on its own an entirely new growth driver. And the numbers that we are looking at in our own internal AI projections are very substantial. It's on par with other segments that we are looking at on this, like telecom and space. And coming to space and new space, I would still say that although we have been looking at four consecutive half years of growth on our space business, we are still at the start of it. As I mentioned, we are looking at constellation contracts that have even 10x the potential value of what we have addressed thus far. That right now, we are in a position to bid on because of the fact that we are now an established top three global player in this.
So we have additional, in short, additional growth drivers that are coming on to a set of numbers that are at a really low point at this point.
Thank you. And we have a question coming in from Brett Horsler. Brett asks, what currencies are you most exposed to, and what hedging have you in place, particularly with USD to NZD currently below $0.59 ?
Good question. Our primary exposure is USD to NZD, and that by far is our largest as we convert our revenue that we receive in U.S. dollars primarily back to fund and pay for our New Zealand dollar cost base here. That will obviously shift as we transition more offshore. But at this stage, that's our dominant hedge. We are well positioned and hedged for the next 12 months and then from 13 months out to 24. Our average rate is not at the $0.59.
We have had hedging in place earlier, and some of it is higher than that. But we have been taking advantage of the changes recently in the market, although it's highly volatile. And as we saw yesterday, even though he's not in power yet, his tweets seem to have a lot of impact on the market. But we have a strong hedging policy with external expert advice, and we're fairly confident with our position at this stage.
Thank you. So we have a next question. The question's coming in from Bill Potter. In regards to our Indian operations, do you foresee any geopolitical risks?
I would not say in the very short term, but I can also say from our side, when you look at our risk management strategy, we actually, as a part of our ICC framework, we are looking at multiple manufacturing locations if need be for our high-growth product lines moving forward. Now, normally, having two active operations up and running for the same product increases the overheads. But if it comes to geopolitical risks and shutting down versus continuing operation, yes, our risk management framework does address this with multiple operating sites for our future high-volume runners.
Great. Thank you. We now come around to another question from Kevin Arscott. Kevin asks, when will we hear a statement on dividends? And why wasn't there a statement on dividend today?
I believe there was a statement on our NZX page that we have put there, but not in our presentation, yes.
But maybe just to reiterate that, Kevin, yes, the board has concluded that there will be no dividends announced this half year.
Thank you. Another question from Will Twiss from Forsyth Barr. He would like you to talk more about market share in your segments and if you've lost share in any particular segment.
That's a good question because this is something that we always are in the check for. For us, it's extremely important that with technology, we continue to be the market leader in every part of the market and every market that we play. So the answer to this is no. One could think that, hey, maybe for telecom infrastructure, did you lose share? The answer to that is no. We have had, and how do I say this confidently? We have had our contract negotiations with some of our largest telecom infrastructure customers.
These are some of the largest telecom infrastructure makers in the world. And we have maintained or grew our share in most. Having said that, their foreseen volumes for this year had substantially reduced due to their inventory correction. So that gives us a look and some level of transparency into our share position for telecom. I'd like to address positioning a bit separately. For positioning, we have deliberately moved to the precise positioning subsegment, which is the higher end of that general market segment. So if you were to look at the consumer segment of positioning, one would say that, yes, definitely, we have lost share there.
That is based on our own choice, a strategic choice to play in the precise positioning part of that market based on the fact that there has been extreme price and margin pressures at the consumer part of that positioning segment.
Thank you. We have another question from Will. You've talked about inventory rebuilding. Can you give us some quantum of this and more detail on timing?
Good question. And this is a tricky one because there's a couple of dynamics at play here. First of all, we would expect, as we see our order books improve and build, that we would be building inventory to match that. So it will be in some sort of proportion to those sales orders and revenue forecasts. But at the same time, our global transformation program includes how we transform our supply chain and our ordering mechanisms.
We're hoping to see that, or we're expecting to see, or we're designing to see greater efficiencies in the way we manage inventory and to try and manage down in the past or in the future, manage with lower inventory levels through these efficiencies. I don't have the quantum at this stage, but it's a part of our planning going forward.
Thank you. We have another question, a couple more questions, actually, from Kevin. Let me just see if I can unpack this one. So Kevin is looking at the NZD 1.7 million acquisition proposal costs. He asks, was there not an opportunity to disclose this at the AGM, and is any of the costs recoverable?
Yes, that's referring to the acquisition proposal. Acquisition proposal costs, yes. I think on that, we have provided all available information openly at our AGM.
I don't believe we have any additional information on that at this time.
Great. Thanks. And then a second part of the question, Kevin is looking at the operating expenses and asking what action is being done to reduce costs.
There's an element in our operating expense base that we don't want to cut into, not only because you're sort of getting through fat and muscle, but also there's an accounting treatment that runs through our OpEx around salaries and R&D that we capitalize once a product is feasible in the market and proven and meets the IFRS criteria for this. So what we've had is that we have a running rate of OpEx that protects that innovation and technical capability. We're monitoring this very carefully against the operating costs that we can pull back in and at the same time pushing that innovation ahead while in this current climate.
It is a base that you can't tackle without stunting the future strategic growth of the business.
I want to add to that that actually while the net result on operating expenses seems like on par, again, if you take out some of the one-offs on operating expenses, it's actually slightly lower than last half year, year-on-year. However, there has been substantial reduction of operating expenses and reallocation of those expenses to these areas that Mark has highlighted. It's extremely important for us to balance these two factors together. We are at a really critical stage that we have actually, if we were to cut, for instance, as an example, if we were to right now cut down our investments into AI, we will not be able to take it off the ground in the way that we're projecting.
But conversely, if we do, we believe that return on that investment is substantial. So we have made strategic choices from our side and continue to invest into these areas. But again, I want to be clear that we have actually had substantial cost reduction efforts throughout the whole company. It is just that it is balanced by the strategic investments that we had to proceed with.
Another example of strategic investments that are in OpEx is the transition to India. So you can imagine as production lines are transitioned from here, there are people assisting with that knowledge transfer as well as the implementation in India. And to a certain degree, while that line or production facility or part of production facility is being moved, we have an overlap in OpEx as people come up to speed in India and the knowledge is handed over from here.
And we don't want to cut into that either.
Thank you. So.