Kia ora, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. It's great to see so many of you here, including many investors who've traveled from Australia. This morning, some of you visited our William Sanders Retirement Village, located in Devonport, just across the harbor from Auckland CBD. William Sanders is a great example of a vertical, high-density village in a metro location, which has filled quickly since opening in 2019, with strong demand from people wanting to stay in the Devonport area. As you toured the village, you will have seen our continuum of care model in action, from independent and serviced apartments to the care center, providing rest home, hospital, and specialist dementia care, all in the one location.
Hopefully, you saw firsthand the commitment of our team, that they have to caring for our residents, and how much our residents value the choice, support, and community they experience living in a Ryman village. For those not able to make today's tour, we have included a link in the presentation to a short video of William Sanders and its residents to give you a glimpse of that special Ryman village experience. Having had the opportunity this morning to visit one of our villages, this afternoon's presentation will be more financially focused. We will introduce our refreshed strategy and the financial drivers underpinning it.
This will demonstrate our near-term focus on growing recurring earnings, how we will approach the range of portfolio growth opportunities we have across the business, and as we committed to do at this time last year, we will update you on our new capital management framework and dividend policy. With me today, I have the Ryman management team. This is essentially a new team with the right capabilities and skills to execute and deliver on our refreshed strategy. As you'll see today, we have evolved the team to how they operate, and they have already delivered a number of the key initiatives driving the bottom line. On stage with me, I have Matt Prior, our Chief Financial Officer, who leads our finance and procurement teams. Matt joined Ryman in 2025 and brings the capital markets and healthcare experience needed to drive improved financial performance.
Rick Davies serves as Ryman's Chief Customer Officer, with responsibility for sales and marketing. Since joining Ryman in 2019 as Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Rick has played a key role in strengthening the organization's technology, innovation, and data capabilities, with his portfolio later expanding to include customer, sales, and marketing functions. Marsha Cadman, our Chief Operating Officer, leads our village and care operations across New Zealand and Australia. Marsha rejoined Ryman in 2024 and brings deep experience leading large-scale operational performance transformation across complex, asset-intensive organizations. Also in the room are Di Walsh, our Chief People and Safety Officer, who is leading our workforce transformation, and Marie Bonnemaison , our Chief Transformation and Corporate Development Officer. Marie joined Ryman in 2024 and is responsible for driving the company's transformation strategy and corporate development to drive long-term value creation.
I'm also pleased today to introduce Richard Stephenson, who has just joined our team this week as our new Chief Development and Property Officer. Richard brings deep sector experience, with over 20 years in property development and asset management in the retirement living and aged care sectors in New Zealand and Australia. Finally, I'd like to introduce Dr. Rachna Gandhi. Rachna has recently joined Ryman's senior executive team as Chief Enterprise Strategy, Systems, and Governance Officer to lead the design of our enterprise-wide operating model, processes, and systems over the coming year. She brings expertise in enterprise transformation, digital strategy, and AI-enabled innovation, with significant experience leading change in regulated environments.
Looking at the agenda for today, following my quick overview of our business and an introduction to the refreshed strategy, I'm pleased to welcome Cam Ansell, Managing Director of Ansell Strategic, who will present on the future of aged care and retirement living. Ansell Strategic operates in New Zealand and Australia and advises aged care operators, investors, and governments on strategy, investment, and performance improvement. Rick and Marsha will then talk to our plans to improve our sales effectiveness and operational performance. After a break, I will run through our approach to portfolio growth, and Matt will talk through the new capital management framework and dividend policy. We encourage you to question our entire team on everything we talk about in the three Q&A sessions, as well as the breaks we have today.
We will be doing our best to keep to time, so can I ask that you save your questions for these times? After I wrap up, at the end of today, our chair, Dean Hamilton, will share a few words on the board's perspective. Dean and Scott Pritchard, another of our directors, will join us for the drinks following the conclusion of the presentations. James Miller is also here with us today for the first part of the presentations. Ryman has a clear plan to deliver value for both shareholders and residents, and there are six key messages to take away from today. Our strategy refresh is focused on growing our recurring earnings, optimizing the over NZD 12 billion property portfolio we own today, and getting back to value-creative portfolio growth.
Ryman's portfolio is uniquely placed, with flexible capacity to meet the most strongly growing areas of demand in care and assisted living. We are targeting NZD 150 million in sustainable cash flow improvement by FY 2029, the top end of our previously announced target range, with growing occupancy, reset pricing, and cost efficiency initiatives. We expect strong cash generation through the release of at least NZD 500 million by FY 2029, with key levers including NZD 800 million of new and paid-out resale stock and at least NZD 200 million from identified land sales following the completion of the land bank review. We have significant optionality for how we grow in the future, with over 2,500 units and beds in uncommitted developments and market demand and care capacity in our existing villages to support higher return brownfield expansion.
Moving forward, we have a new capital management framework, which, alongside a reset balance sheet, will underpin a return to dividends from FY 2028 and a disciplined approach to investing shareholder capital and growing shareholder returns. Let's start with a brief introduction for those investors new to Ryman. I won't go into great detail on these slides, as many of you are familiar with our business, but it's worth spending five minutes on, as the continuum of care model is central to our refresh strategy. We offer integrated retirement living and care at each of our villages, providing homes to over 15,000 residents today. The true continuum we offer attracts residents with an older average entry age compared to others in the sector. Ryman is a household name in New Zealand, and we've built that brand recognition in Victoria with the investments made.
Our customer ratings lead the sector, reflected in the awards we continue to win. Ryman led the industry in developing the continuum of care model in New Zealand. The concept was a resident-focused approach to meeting changing needs through aging at a single location, providing a home for life. Today, we operate three distinct products: independent living, serviced apartments, and residential aged care, with increasing levels of service along the continuum as customer needs change. We have a sizable property portfolio, valued at NZD 12 billion, comprising large sites with scale to support this range of product choices at each site. Our retirement living portfolio includes one-, two-, and three-bedroom independent villas and apartments, as well as serviced apartments, which are typically situated in our main buildings in the heart of the village.
Also situated within our main buildings are our care centers, which offer multiple levels of care, from low acuity rest home or respite care through to hospital, dementia, and palliative care. On average, our villages have 300-400 residents each, and the efficiency this scale brings enables us to provide a different level of choice and service to our residents and is a key source of value you will hear us reference through the presentation. Our revenue model sits across this continuum for our customers and property footprint. Matt will step through in detail how the model generates a return later in the presentation. Here, I would like to highlight that, in simple terms, capital gains from property drives returns on the left-hand side in retirement living, and margin on services drive returns on the right-hand side.
As Cam will talk to shortly, the market is increasingly shifting to more assisted living and higher acuity care. As this plays out, we see significant opportunity to differentiate our retirement living portfolio offering and increase revenue from services right across the portfolio. While we have operated in the past three distinct products across the continuum, we have the ability to adjust the level of service we provide, not just across the villages, but for each individual resident. This ability to flex and adapt our portfolio will become increasingly important in the future. As well as having this industry-leading value proposition for our residents, we have scale. We are the largest operator in both retirement living and aged care in New Zealand, and can offer residents a genuine continuum of care at all of our locations.
In just 12 years since entering the Victorian market, we have built an established platform with scale. In a market with significantly lower retirement living penetration than New Zealand, we are the only provider of scale in Victoria offering fully integrated retirement, assisted living, and all levels of aged care at each of our villages. It's well documented that there will be rapid growth in the oldest age groups, with the 80-plus market expected to double by 2050, and those in the older demographic group more likely to seek integrated living and care. You'll hear more about this shortly.
So pulling it all together, the Ryman difference that sets us apart is our scale and the opportunity this creates for significant operating efficiency and to offer more choice and better service for our residents. Our continuum of care model, driving lifetime value and stable occupancy. Our premium locations, modern design, build quality, and integrated care facilities underpinning enduring demand and long-term asset value. Our One Move proposition, with flexibility for residents to move across the village as their needs change. These differentiators will only strengthen as demographic tailwinds accelerate and demand for integrated living and care increases. With that context, let's now step into the refreshed strategy. It's important that our refreshed strategy builds on the elements that have been key to Ryman's past success and addresses the drivers of poor financial performance in more recent years.
It builds on our high-quality, integrated retirement living and care portfolio, which I just spoke to. We want to maintain the industry-leading resident experience and high-quality clinical care, which have been the foundation of our organization's purpose and values, driving resident satisfaction, brand, and community trust. At the same time, we need to address what has got in the way of financial success. Ryman held weekly and deferred management fees very low for a long time. Costs escalated, particularly through COVID, leading to significant operating deficits. The company chased larger and larger portfolio of development projects, at one point having 16 projects on the go with a combined total development cost of over NZD 4 billion, targeting a 15% year-on-year increase in underlying profit underpinned by development.
Non-village costs grew faster than resident numbers, and the company had not scaled its systems and processes to match the size of the organization. The lack of financial performance transparency, alongside the strong growth in property prices, meant the financial impact of this was not visible. You have heard, and will be reminded today, of the decisive action the new board and management have taken to address these factors. Learning from our past, our refreshed strategy involves a shift in focus from the past central focus on rapid growth through development that relied on capital gains to create value, to one that focuses on sustainable value creation. This change involves growing high-quality, recurring earnings from both retirement living and care, fully utilizing the capacity we have already invested in, and optimizing the portfolio based on growing demand, evolving customer preferences, and future potential capital growth.
We continue to see development as a key part of our future growth, but going forward, we're going to do things differently: a more disciplined selection of sites and markets with enduring demand, an outsourced variable cost developer model, a product mix to best meet the evolving needs of customers, and a disciplined approach to returns. Our refreshed strategy combines doing the basics well with evolving our model for how the market has and is changing. Our first strategic pillar is to be the provider of choice in care-centric living for the growing 80+ market, especially in assisted living and care, which is the fastest-growing part of the market and where we already have a strong competitive advantage. The second pillar of growing recurring earnings focuses on unlocking value through the reset of pricing, operational excellence, and growing occupancy.
This is about ensuring we have a business that can generate reliable growth in recurring earnings. The third pillar focuses on optimizing the portfolio for value, allocating capital to grow returns, and reducing capital intensity. This is about ensuring our portfolio meets the evolving needs of customers, and our shareholders realize the benefit of capital appreciation over time. Lastly, we will get back to value-creating portfolio growth, which remains a key opportunity for long-term shareholder returns. This is a strategy to deliver industry-leading customer satisfaction and grow total shareholder returns through growth in high-quality recurring earnings, alongside sustainable dividends and active portfolio management and investment, maximizing capital gains from our sizable property portfolio over time. Over the last 18 months, there has necessarily been a tactical focus on resetting the business.
We have reset revenue by changing contract terms, reset the balance sheet to have the lowest gearing in the sector and long-dated debt funding, are now through reporting changes which have created transparent financial performance, and for the first time in over a decade, delivered positive free cash flow. We have turned the corner, and now with our refreshed strategy, our focus expands to unlocking business potential and optimizing our portfolio for value. This will enable us to shift our focus over the next three years, increasingly towards sustainable growth that delivers long-term value. We will get back to portfolio growth, but we'll do it at the right time, having addressed the operational performance of the business, which has not had enough attention, not just at Ryman, but across the industry.
While our near-term focus is on resetting the business we have today, we are also thinking and looking longer term, and this year we are starting work to design and build our future operating model. Since 2010, which is when we have really solid data, we have provided homes and services to more than 50,000 Kiwis and Australians. This history and scale gives us access to the deep insight needed to continually evolve our offering in line with changing customer expectations, and to build a flexible and adaptable operating model that can anticipate and move with future changes in the workforce, regulatory and funding regimes, and the range of emerging digital opportunities.
We're already using data and insights extensively across the business, and as we reset and optimize the portfolio, there's significant value and competitive advantage to unlock, as highlighted on this slide, with early wins helping to fund the investment needed in systems and processes. Scale matters in this industry, and it's going to matter more in the future. We see that in the industry consolidation trends already underway in Australia. As we move through the turnaround of the business we have today, our focus will increasingly turn to how we build competitive advantage into our operating model and leverage our scale, keeping our residents and their needs at the center of what we do. In summary, we have a high-quality portfolio of assets, industry-leading resident experience, and quality of care that sets us apart. We are re-earning the right to grow with improved financial performance and operational performance.
We are changing our focus from the speed of growth to the quality of growth, and ensuring that we grow in a way that is value accretive. As Cam will talk to now, we are well-positioned to leverage our scale and care-centric customer proposition in the fastest-growing parts of the market. That's a good point to hand over to Cam, who is going to talk to the future of aged care and retirement living.
As we're starting to cover already today, the aged care and retirement living sectors are about to go into their biggest period of change, the most exciting time in the history for both our countries. We always knew that this massive increase in the number of older people were gonna come through the system. We didn't know what political and economic environment it might land on. I'm gonna go through a series of the key elements influencing aged care and retirement living in Australia and New Zealand today, and it's gonna allow us to arrive at a projection about what the world might look like as the Baby Boomer generation comes through. Critical and most important when we consider the different elements influencing it is, of course, the customer, and we've focused very much on the sheer number of people coming through the system.
We've known that we'd have a doubling of the number of the key target market of the 80-year-olds plus. But perhaps the most exciting component of what's changing for us is not the number of people, but the character of those people. They're not homogeneous. And so you can see there at the bottom there, the Builder generation in orange being replaced by that big Baby Boomer generation, and then frighteningly, my generation, Generation X, after it, keeping us busy from 2040 onwards. The nature of those changing consumers are probably more influential than their pure numbers. The consumers themselves, those customers that we've worked with, those that we've largely built our models on, have been the Builder generation. And the Builder generation have been somewhat conservative. They've lived through world wars, depressions, and they're somewhat accepting of the services that we've made available to them.
They have been somewhat grateful. They're replaced now by a new generation of consumers that are not grateful. It's the Baby Boomer generation. They are the architects of consumer choice. Their expectations and the likelihood that we can just put them in the jam jars of services that we have historically made available to them is very limited. The Builder generation in Australia received about 95% of their direct aged care costs free. About 2/3 of Kiwis get their direct residential aged care costs free as well. The combination of that very changing demographic and the reality that they're gonna have to pay for more of their services themselves is going to be a massive influence on what we deliver going forward. Their capacity to be able to make contributions and their ability to be able to buy what it is that they want is demonstrated.
The boomer and remaining boomer and Baby Boomer generations represents less than a third of the populations of Australia and New Zealand, but they control most of both countries' wealth. And so their buying power, their ability to be able to match their very high expectations with their financial means, will be a major influence on the services that we provide going forward. And while we've always known that this huge gray tsunami was coming, the supply is hopelessly behind in order to meet it. In Australia, from about 2016, with the 2016 budget, and around about 2010 for New Zealand, we slowed down in the supply and the building of residential aged care beds, rest home beds in New Zealand, nursing home beds in Australia.
That slowdown comes in the face of what's just started to emerge massively as an increase in demand. So in Australia, for example, we required about 10,000 new built beds to be built last year. We got about 803. Kiwis almost built as many, although they were predominantly ORA beds. And so the number of beds that we can build now can't possibly catch up with the number of older Australians and Kiwis that will come through the system. Home care supply could be an option, and so providing services to people out in the suburbs is often seen as the great solution.
The couple of challenges that we have there is the Baby Boomer generation and X behind them didn't really have enough children for us to be able to supply the labor for us to live long time in our, in our homes in the suburbs. Also, the rationing system for New Zealand and Australia means that we're falling hopelessly behind in terms of need already. So in Australia, there's over 100,000 people that have been assessed as needing home care services, still waiting for them. There's another 100,000 people waiting to get on that wait list. And so the challenge associated with people getting their home care services out in the suburbs will continue, particularly as that demographic change lands on us. It has a major impact then on our health dynamics.
If you look at the rest of the world, the developed world, and OECD countries that capture their long-term care data, you can see that a very large proportion of Australians, in particular, aged over 80, end up in residential aged care, and their length of stay tends to be relatively long. That's partly because Australia has been a little bit immature in the development of its home care services. We're about 10 years behind the Kiwis with their aging at home policy. And so we've tended to have too many people end up in residential aged care, in Australia, and they stay there for too long.
And so what will need to happen as we're seeing the hospitals in both sides of the ditch start to fill up with older people who need to be discharged into aged care, we'll find that our residential aged care services will be reserved for people with very high levels of functional dependence, higher acuity, and challenging behaviors. And we will find... need to find other places for older people to age gracefully. We also need to be very careful about how we manage our scarce resources. I mentioned that we didn't have enough children to be able to provide services for us out in the suburbs. A critical one for that is our clinicians, our GPs, and in particular in aged care, our nurses. We can do the very best that we can.
That green line is a projection there on how many nurses we expect to get year on year coming through the system. The orange line is the proportion of those nurses to older people, older Australians and Kiwis. And so no matter what happens, because of the changing demographics, we're not gonna have enough clinicians available to be able to deliver services moving forward. In these circumstances, it's going to require more older people to be in areas of close proximity, where we can allocate our scarce clinical resources to their care needs, enabling them to age safely. The economics also force another major change already in Australia, but coming shortly in New Zealand.
So for all of the things that have happened in Australia in recent times, we went through the ABC report, we had a Royal Commission through COVID, and then the findings of the Royal Commission, and now a new act introduced in November last year. Of everything that takes place in that massive act, the single greatest change in all of that was around means testing. The contribution now required for those people entering home care or residential aged care in Australia will have a major impact on people's decisions moving forward. No matter which way we look at it, the changing dynamics and the shortening of the number of people available to make tax contributions to our care means that increasingly we're going to have to pay for more of this stuff ourselves.
The combination of the Baby Boomer generation having very high expectations and the need for us to make greater contributions ourselves means that the quality of our care services and the flexibility of it need to improve all the time. The other element of the reform progress is that we tend to find an injection of new funds when we realize that a sector has been under-resourced. On your left, you'll see the relationship between financial performance in recent year. You can see at 2023, when the government introduced the reform agendas recommended by the Royal Commission, it came with an injection of funding. On your right, you can see that New Zealand also under-resourced in terms of aged residential care is about to be moving into the reform program.
So we can anticipate that there'll be a short-term improvement. But no matter which way I spin this, it's very hard for me to come up with a solution that makes a standalone rest home work in New Zealand or an aged care facility to work in Australia. And so more and more, we'll be looking at alternatives to be able to provide services to this huge number of people coming through the system. Those dependency ratios I mentioned before, back for the Australians, the release of the first Intergenerational Report by the Productivity Commission, we knew that at that stage, we had approximately six taxpayers for every older Australian. Similar numbers you can see there when we analyze that for New Zealand.
When the Baby Boomer s hit their straps, that drops to about half, so half the number of people available to make contributions to our services. So that tightening, that dependency ratio means that our contributions need to grow all the time. That reform program then becomes absolutely critical. I mentioned we started with the Royal Commission, a new Aged Care Act, means testing. Also for Australia, terrific improvements in terms of accommodation revenues. The refundable accommodation deposits increased from AUD 550-AUD 750, and the reintroduction of retentions, where providers can take a recurring amount for five years of the RAD contributions. Again, it's really good, and it's positive, and it's been really good for those existing operators. Naomi mentioned the level of consolidation and investment appetite in Australia at the moment for residential aged care services.
It is primarily around investment in existing services. There's not a lot of new development going on. For New Zealand, I mentioned that we're at the earlier part of that, that transition. We can expect that in that reform process, there'll be some replication of what's happening in Australia. We're hoping that we have an independent pricing authority to make sure that pricing is more sustainable moving forward. We hope that there are better subsidies for supported residents. And we do expect that there'll be an injection of government funding to help encourage new development, but also to help facilitate a reduction of pressure off the hospitals and into the aged care system. So what does all this mean? This combination of these different influences descending upon us all at the same time. I've spoken today about different components of aged care.
I've spoken about retirement living, about aged residential care, and about home care, and Naomi is introducing more and more of this continuum care model. In our view, that the continuum of care is likely to be the most important future for village operators moving forward. It is the assisted living piece that will become increasingly important from where we go in the future. If we project that into the future, then we expect to see that the demand that we talked about today is going to be met in these four key areas. The first at the top there is residential aged care, nursing homes, rest home, a combination of the red line there that is, government-funded, and the yellow line, which is privately funded high-care services.
Most projections around this assume that it will increase in line with the growing population, but for the reasons I've explained today, we can't get the supply to catch up with the aging population. The bottom line is retirement living, and this is retirement living that just offers retirement living solutions. Our view is not the same as most village operators would recommend, is that that will go up in line with the, with the growing population. I think the changing market means that the Baby Boomer generation, and then us, all busily pretending that we're not getting older will find it harder and less interesting to go into villages where most of the people are older people, unless it provides some level of support.
And for that reason, it is that green area in the middle, the assisted living service, which will become the greatest and most exciting and most dynamic area of services, which will enable us to be able to provide services for that massive number of older people coming through the system. As the largest provider of those integrated services in New Zealand, and soon in Australia, Ryman finds itself in an enviable position to be able to leverage that model, and expand it moving forward into that demand. Thanks, Naomi.
Thank you, Cam. We now have around 10 minutes for a few questions. If you can, please wait for the roving mics before you ask your question, and I'll moderate the Q&A questions on each of the sessions. If you direct your question to me, and I'll make sure I hand to the right person. As Hayden mentioned earlier, please start with your name and organization. Do we have any questions at this stage on the first part of the presentation?
Yeah, thanks for the presentation. Maybe just on the EBITDA per bed sort of metrics, and I think it was sort of NZD 15,000- NZD 25,000- NZD 30,000. You know, is there some benefit from aged care reform baked into those targets, Naomi, or is that sort of potentially upside?
Can we come back to that, Stephen? Because we're going to talk to the Ryman-specific targets, shortly in, in Marsha's session, and, and we'll make sure we have another Q&A session at the end of that, to, to make sure we're clear on, on how we've built that up. But certainly as, as Cam's talked to, he's presenting the industry-wide, position right now, and what you see, in New Zealand is that very low level of profitability today that isn't sustainable, and that we expect will form the basis on... for a reset in, in the coming years. So happy to, happy to come back to, to, how we see that playing out specifically in, in the next session.
Cool, thanks. Sorry, and sorry, I should introduce myself. Stephen Ridgewell, Craigs Investment Partners. Maybe, maybe just on the industry changes then, Naomi, and if we were sort of talking about, you know, there is a review on at the moment, what would be the top three things that you think the industry would like to see in terms of change to the funding model or that specifically Ryman would like to see, you know, in the next sort of 12-24 months?
Yeah, we've had a lot of opportunity as an industry to engage with government. And so we think there's a good understanding of that. One of the first ones is evidence-based pricing. That's been a shift in Australia. We have brought the experts from Australia over to build a sector-wide pricing model to provide to the government and help inform the basis for future pricing decisions. Another is the evolution of how the funding works in terms of what is paid for by government, what is paid for by the consumer.
In a way, the government is letting the industry front that at the moment, in needing to supplement charges with the charges that come through daily premiums and DMF on ORAs. So it's a really important part of the reforms, and part of the work that the Ministerial Advisory Group are doing, to look at what that change in funding, who pays, how we make that an equitable model, and that is a key part of the MAG's mandate over the next six months. There's some near-term things that we're encouraging the government to focus in on. We know that right now today in New Zealand, as well as in Australia, there is bed blockage in the public hospital system.
That is something that the aged care sector can assist with, and what's needed for that is some different arrangements to how respite care and shorter stay care works. And so we see that as a near-term priority, even outside of the reforms that will need to be legislated. And probably the final one I'd mention, I could probably go on for longer on this, but the final one I'd mention is just in the provision of home care. Today, the government has been, it's mixed across the country, but has been taking a direction towards bulk funding and single contracts in regions. It's really important that retirement village operators are able to provide care to their own residents, so that's a very active dialogue at the moment as well with Health NZ, Te Whatu Ora.
Hi, Naomi. It's Oliver Mander from New Zealand Shareholders' Association. Just to extend the question slightly, and you talked about the potential for government reform here in New Zealand. Given that we have an election later this year, to what extent have you got cross-party political support for some of the positions that you're advocating for?
Thanks, Oliver. Look, I think that there's great cross-party support to address aged care funding in New Zealand. I think we're through that stage. I think everyone understands the need for that, and we're now at the point of talking about the how. How do we make that reform effective? How do we make it sustainable long-term? And then how do we work through that with the community and with the population? So, in Australia, when those reforms went through, we saw them go through with bipartisan support. That was an important part of those long-term reforms. Here in New Zealand, the Ministerial Advisory Group the government has set up has been established jointly by Minister Brown and Minister Costello.
So that's two of three, and is very much seeking active engagement with the Labour Party as well. So I'm hopeful and positive that we will ultimately have a bipartisan solution, and that hopefully this is one of the first reforms that, whatever the outcome from the election we have in New Zealand later this year, it's one of the first reforms that comes to the new parliament.
Hey, Naomi. Shane Solly from Harbour. Thanks very much. Fantastic to get exposure to your team today. You talk about value-creating portfolio growth. Can you just expand a little bit on that? What are the sort of the key indicators we should be looking at as investors that would show that?
Thanks, Shane, and we are definitely going to come back to this later in the day, in the development section to talk about, and capital management sections, to talk about specific metrics. But at the bottom line, when we whether we're expanding the existing portfolio through investment or through greenfield sites, we want to be able to see a clear line of sight to shareholder value, which ultimately means cash flow.
And so, that's where we've obviously made the shift towards more cash-oriented metrics to really understand business performance, and are making sure we're testing and looking at each part of our portfolio, both to be performing at the level the assets we have today should be performing at, as well as when we're adding to that, being confident that the additional assets that we are investing in are going to add to the portfolio, and ultimately, that's got to be on a shareholder returns per, you know, shareholder returns per share basis. So, but we'll come back to the metrics more specifically later in the presentation. All right, I might wrap up this first round of Q&A. There will be plenty of time for more through the day.
Now I would like to invite Rick Davies, Chief Customer Officer, to talk to you about how we are improving our sales effectiveness.
Thanks, Naomi, and hello, everyone. I'm Rick Davies, Chief Customer Officer based at Ryman's head office in Christchurch. My role covers sales, marketing, and pricing, with a particular focus on our retirement living, living offering. I'm going to talk today about our focus on improving sales effectiveness, and we'll go through both our approach and the progress we're making. Now, I'm sure you'll all appreciate that the detail around our sales strategies are commercially sensitive, so there will be specifics I can't speak to today, but I will provide insight into our overall approach and progress. As Naomi mentioned earlier, Ryman has some significant scale in New Zealand and Victoria for our continuum of care proposition, and the strength of our value proposition is best demonstrated in our mature villages, with 94% of our independent units and 87% of our serviced apartments currently occupied.
Our resales opportunity, matching resales with resident turnover rates, sits across this stock. Our developing villages sit at lower occupancy rates, reflecting the supply increase that occurs when a village opens and the time required to establish itself in a new catchment. As you see in this chart, accelerating the sell-down rates of our new serviced apartments stock, currently at 57% occupancy, presents a significant opportunity as we look ahead. Aged care occupancy sits with our Chief Operating Officer, Marsha Cadman, and she will talk to this in her update. Before we get into sales strategy, I'll briefly touch on our recent third quarter sales update, which we announced to market in mid-January. We delivered a solid quarter, maintaining momentum through to the holiday period amid mixed housing market conditions and with heightened competition in some regions.
New sales of independent units softened after the strong uplift from our new Nellie Melba stage release the prior quarter. New sales of serviced apartments were strong, with Auckland delivering its best quarter in three years due to targeted efforts where village stock is concentrated. Resales were steady overall, albeit still mixed at a regional level. While resales volumes are not yet where we need them to be, importantly, these sales are now at a much higher value DMF. Growing resale volumes is a key focus for us and something I'll talk to shortly. Another key point I'd call out is that our FY 2026 figures, and particularly Q3, have the contribution from residents who have relocated from Margaret Stoddart and Woodcote to our other Christchurch villages.
Ryman made the decision to close the care centers at these villages late last year, and since then, we have supported the transition of almost all independent residents to other Christchurch villages. These transfers are expected to number around 40 for the full year, which we have excluded from our full-year sales guidance of 1,300-1,400 ORA sales on retirement village units. This guidance is unchanged. Looking more broadly at our sales drivers, the external housing market remains a key influence on our sales, with most new residents needing to sell their own home before moving into a Ryman village. Market conditions remain variable by region. Positively, we are seeing a recovery in Victoria gather momentum, along with some regions in New Zealand. However, the Auckland market remains subdued.
Despite these varied conditions, we do have sales momentum building in all regions, and as the Auckland market recovers, we are well-placed to capitalize on this with a third of our portfolio located in Auckland. Our focus remains firmly on driving sales effectiveness, and we are busy improving our sales strategy and insight, bolstering team capabilities, and sharpening our tactics at a village level. Our actions over the last 12 months have delivered measurable impact. Our contract book is now of higher quality. Sales cycle times are reducing, and lead-to-contract conversion rates are improving. Our marketing capabilities to target and engage prospective residents, leveraging technology, are also improving. Marketing messages are becoming more relevant, often tailored toward a specific catchment, product type, and audience profile. Investments in team capability have gathered pace.
We've built strength in our internal pricing expertise, along with customer nurture specialists, product research and design, and sales training programs to improve our frontline sales performance. Ensuring our product offer meets the expectations of today and tomorrow's retirees is critically important to us. Efforts are underway to broaden the market appeal of our serviced apartments , which I will talk to shortly. It remains a heightened competitive environment, particularly in Auckland. We're active in ensuring our own competitiveness, and we monitor and set our sales incentives and tactics at a village level to suit local requirements. Underpinning our sales effectiveness program are comprehensive data and insights that are helping us diagnose areas for improvement and target our investments where it's most effective. Every stage of our sales funnel is measured and monitored for performance.
The past 12 months have seen us focus on the mid-funnel stages in this chart, as we have successfully embedded our new pricing terms. Booking an appointment with a sales advisor is a high-quality indicator of a customer's likelihood to progress, as once they experience our beautiful villages firsthand, their propensity to buy significantly increases. Our sales advisors are now equipped with a broad range of tools that we have developed over the last 12 months to drive sales conversion. Tools vary by village, depending on the specific needs of each local market, but can include pricing and sales incentives, broader marketing options, and community engagement support.
Looking ahead, our focus is shifting to the top and bottom of this funnel as we seek to grow the quality of inquiries coming in, the volume of quality inquiries coming in, and better support contracted customers once they have made a decision to purchase. We expect to further reduce cancellation rates this year by better assisting customers in navigating this late stage of the journey, such as downsizing and selling their own home. The sales cycle can be long for many, often over a year, given the significance of the decision for a retiree. Over the last 12 months, we are seeing the time taken from inquiry to settlement reducing as a result of the focus on the sales funnel performance. We have developed a comprehensive pricing framework, which we use to set prices at a unit level.
This framework considers the market demand of its surrounding communities and layers in a range of factors, including unit type, unit quality, competitiveness, and sales velocity, among others. Flexible pricing is now available for all new customers. While our standard prices are based on a 30% DMF, we offer flexible pricing by adjusting the sticker price with the associated DMF rate. This ensures our product offers are more adaptive to a customer's financial capacity and preferences without compromising value for Ryman. Various experiments are underway across our portfolio, including price elasticity testing, which target occupancy improvements, and lead price testing for generating inquiry. Looking ahead, pricing will remain an important lever as we seek to substantially reduce our available stock. Comprehensive governance, reporting, and oversight is in place at Ryman to ensure this is exercised in a way that maximizes value for Ryman over the long term.
Every resident departure is a new sales opportunity for Ryman, with each new vacancy, a chance to reset weekly fee levels, commence DMF accrual, and unlock capital gain. Our goal is to sustainably trade at resale levels that match vacancy rates, regardless of external market conditions. As you can see from the top chart, we have an opportunity to generate cash as we converge the blue and orange lines, and as we do, reduce the volume of paid-out vacant resale stock. Reducing the days for a new customer to settle helps avoid growth in paid-out stock, and as the bottom chart shows, we are seeing improvement here, with days from contract signing to settlement now under 100 days. As our village portfolio matures, vacancy volumes will slowly grow, increasing the opportunity in front of us.
As we have seen throughout Ryman's history, as vacancy rates step up, our resale volumes follow soon after. There is often a lag between a vacancy emerging and settling a new customer. In challenging external housing markets, this lag can grow, as we've seen over the last three years. Through our sales effectiveness program, we expect to make good progress in closing the gap this year. It's worth noting that while an increase in contracting rates is required to sustainably close this gap, this gap can also close through lowering cancellation rates on the existing contract book. Through our efforts to improve the resident move-in experience, we expect we can further reduce cancellation rates this year.
To put context on the size of the resales turnover gap we are seeking to close, based on year-to-date training in FY 2026, we would need just the equivalent of one more sale each quarter at each of our resales villages. We're confident we'll close this gap. It's worth noting that the New Zealand government recently announced their intention with the proposed reform of the Retirement Villages Act, with the most significant change being a proposal to mandate operator buyback of vacated units within a maximum of 12 months. Ryman already meets this requirement and has done throughout its history. In October 2024, we lifted our weekly fees and deferred management fees to better support the premium proposition we provide and to ensure Ryman's costs are covered into the future.
While there is no doubt that this, along with other organizational changes at that time, slowed sales, these changes were critical for creating long-term value in the portfolio. With these changes now successfully embedded, the long-term benefit will significantly outweigh the short-term pain of this change. Weekly fees for incoming residents to our independent units are on average 67% higher than outgoing residents. Similarly, the average DMF for new residents has seen a 39% increase year on year. This slide demonstrates the significant value to be released when our back book and front book - between our back book and front book, as our portfolio rolls onto new contract terms. With a turnover rate of around 12% per annum, half the portfolio will be on new terms by FY 2029.
Looking ahead, vacancy rates determine where our sales strategies are most active, and as you'll see in this chart, serviced apartments at our developing villages present a significant opportunity in the near term. Ryman's serviced apartment s have long provided a convenient option for those needing additional services, such as cleaning or meals, or perhaps wanting to be closer to the village amenities. We now have approximately 2,800 serviced apartments in our portfolio, with over 400 units added in the last couple of years. The time taken to sell down this stock at a new village can take over three years due to the limited tenure of existing independent residents at that time and the service department product appealing to a more narrower, needs-based market.
With 43% of serviced apartments vacant in developing villages, we believe that diversifying the appeal of this product to a broader audience, with more resident choice in their required services, will accelerate this opportunity and improve sell-down rates from historical norms. We are exploring three opportunities to evolve our service department proposition and drive up demand and occupancy rates. Our first opportunity is in creating greater resident choice in the services a resident wishes to receive, and in turn, lowering the barrier to entry with regards to price. This trial will test customer choice and allow those wanting a lighter touch experience to enjoy service department living at a lower cost while expanding their service selection as their needs and preferences change.
Secondly, we know there is a market for those wanting serviced apartment living with the assurance that they don't have to move again when their need for specialist aged care services increase. Adapting our serviced apartments for flexibility, allowing these residents to age in place, will increase the appeal of the product to both existing residents and new customers. Our third opportunity is in converting a selection of our serviced apartments into modern, spacious, premium care suites, where those with the financial capacity and preference for premium experiences can enjoy full aged care services from the comfort of these high-quality apartments. These three opportunities will be tested in a targeted way that ensures the right product and value mix is achieved. Work is well underway, and we look forward to testing these changes out this year at selected villages.
This slide highlights the significant opportunity we have in new sales stock and paid-out resale stock. That's why our focus on lifting occupancy and sharpening our sales performance really matters. Today, we have over 1,300 vacant units. Around 1,000 of these are either brand new or have already been paid out to their departing resident. Together, these units represent an opportunity to release around NZD 800 million of cash back into the business. The level of paid-out stock is influenced by several factors, including housing market conditions, resident transfers, sales performance, and our historic six-month buyback approach. Releasing cash from this stock will require the resales turnover gap to sustainably close, and will also benefit from efforts to reduce our unit refurbishment timeframes. As the housing market improves, particularly in Auckland, this opportunity naturally becomes easier to unlock. But we're not waiting for external conditions to improve.
Our sales effectiveness program targets this opportunity and is underway in earnest. So to conclude on a few key messages, we are accelerating performance improvement through our comprehensive sales effectiveness program, supported by a recovering property market. While many sales effectiveness initiatives are already delivering improvement, we have a significant program still to come. Our pricing changes are successfully embedded, and improving conversion rates demonstrate our ability to sell effectively on the new terms. Serviced apartments are a significant near-term lever, with diversification of the offer set to accelerate and unlock meaningful cash flow. The NZD 800 million of new and paid-out resale stock is a substantial opportunity for cash release, and I'm confident we can get after a significant portion of this by the end of FY 2029, supported by our broader target of NZD 500 million of capital release.
Our sales and marketing improvements will build sustained resale momentum, reduce vacant stock, release cash, and accelerate long-term value for shareholders. Thank you, and I will now hand over to Marsha, who will talk to operational excellence.
Thanks, Rick. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Marsha Cadman, the Chief Operating Officer. I first joined Ryman as Chief Sales and Marketing Officer in mid-2021, and I left the company in early 2023 and returned less than a year later. In doing so, it didn't take me long to be energized at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we have to lead this company's transformation. When I walk into our villages, I consistently hear our residents say their village is the best village, or how they wish they had done this sooner, or how their staff are the best staff. I was recently forwarded an email from a daughter whose father has passed in special care. Here are some excerpts from that to give you a sense what is happening in our villages every day.
Throughout Dad's final week, we came to see the joy, fun, laughter, care that occurs in the special care unit. All of the staff are professional and positive, and so caring of the residents. The residents themselves are just a wonderful mix of personalities, the same as in any community, and they take care of each other and of us at times. Thank you for this special unit. It was a difficult time of our life, but it is one that we have precious memories of. What we didn't fully appreciate is how much laughter and caring occurs upstairs within that special community." Moments like these are made possible through our unique investment in the continuum of care in all of our villages, and our focus on well-being, not just care.
With the impending doubling of the 80-plus population, and the shift from retirement living to assisted living, our continuum of care is becoming increasingly sought after. Dementia is now the number one cause of death in Australia. Over the coming years, more and more of our residents will have higher acuity and increased care requirements. Having highlighted what makes Ryman unique, I'd like to turn to operational excellence and how we will build on our differentiators to unlock our full potential. Many of you will have visited friends or family at various care facilities across Australia and New Zealand. What is immediately clear is that the quality of both the facility and the care varies significantly. Our residents age in one place with the assurance that they have the care and the support they will need in familiar surroundings with familiar friends and familiar team members.
Our expert clinical teams on site are supported by a dedicated clinical and resident services team, ensuring on-the-ground insight combined with expert oversight. This means they and their families have access to the assistance, information, and advice to make the choice, the right choices as care and clinical needs change. This investment in the quality of our care is just part of the reason we are industry-leading with the experience we offer our residents. A wider commitment to resident wellbeing is a more holistic approach to the concept of care, and our residents tell me that they have a bigger life since they move into one of our villages. Whether it is the gardens, our award-winning AAA Program, the social activities, resident workshops, craft activities, craft activities, carefully curated menus, happy hours, ballet classes, choirs, bowls, croquet, aqua aerobics, walking clubs, I could go on.
There are opportunities for every resident to engage, ensuring the social connection that is essential for living. Finally, the passion and enthusiasm of our skilled and energized teams, and the amazing work that they do alongside our residents on a day-to-day basis, is reflected in the resident feedback and the family feedback. That is evidence that our team continues to deliver on the founder's philosophy of good enough for Mum or Dad. Our refresh strategy will look to maintain and reinforce these critical attributes, which are the backbone to Ryman's competitive advantage. With that context, I want to talk about the opportunities to leverage this foundation. First and foremost, our operational focus will be on building occupancy in our developing villages to mature village levels.
Second, we'll optimize our assets through sustainable increases in room premiums and in resident capital through turnover and better use of our range of accommodation options for highest value. And finally, our targeted efficiency initiatives, which are already bearing fruit, will continue to drive costs out of the business. First, occupancy. Rick shared this slide earlier, focusing on retirement living occupancy. I now want to focus on care center occupancy. Occupancy across our mature beds is consistently above 95%, what is generally accepted as full occupancy across the industry. With the requirement for residential aged care driven by need, often an urgent health-related trigger, and shorter tenures than retirement living, occupancy can fluctuate. With careful and active management, 36 of our villages have maintained 96% and above occupancy in the first six months of this financial year.
In fact, just this morning, 26 of our mature villages had less than five beds available. As you know, we have grown our portfolio significantly over the past 18 months, investing in five new care centers, which added another 440 beds. In these developing villages, we see a lower level of occupancy as they fill. By lifting these developing care centers, the levels in our mature villages, we can unlock an additional NZD 26 million of revenue. Pleasingly, we are quickly building up the level of occupancy in these new care centers and attracting strong premiums in New Zealand and RADs, Refundable Accommodation Deposits, in Australia, which will bring significant revenue growth. In our care facilities, wages remain the main variable cost, so as we fill this capacity and maintain consistent mature level occupancy, we will see strong care margin growth.
Premiums are another important opportunity for us. The daily accommodation premium, or premium room fee, that is paid above the New Zealand government-funded care fee for the quality of the accommodation Ryman provides. We have seen this premium grow, reflecting continued demand for the accommodation our residents enjoy. A greater focus on regularly reviewing and increasing these premiums without impacting occupancy further maximizes this opportunity. It also reflects the traditional market preference in New Zealand, particularly evident in non-resident prospects and their families, for paying a premium over a capital payment. We continue to see strong demand for premiums from these customers across all of our New Zealand villages. All of this means that as our developing villages fill with residents on new premiums that are higher than the current average, we will see meaningful growth.
We have seen some of our peers in New Zealand opt for an ORA model for care rather than accepting premiums. Ryman has chosen to continue to offer premiums across our mature and our developing villages, as we believe it reduces tenure risk and supports high occupancy. We remain flexible to options that will increase capital into care, and I'll shortly touch on the Resident Fund that we have recently introduced in New Zealand. In Australia, RADs are the market preference for paying for care, and as a capital product, involve a lump sum payment that a resident pays when entering residential aged care. Like premiums in New Zealand, we have similarly seen strong growth in Australia.
This is being driven by new residents representing higher RADs than existing residents, and also a more structured approach to reviewing pricing, as the regulatory framework allows in Australia, and reflecting the premium nature of our rooms. We take a targeted and tiered approach to ensure we provide can price rooms within each village with different features that suit different resident preferences. For example, at our newest Australian village, Bert Newton, the most recent RADs sold vary from AUD 795,000 to just a touch over AUD 1 million. In addition, we are able to provide the families with a combination of a RAD premium combo. As I mentioned, we have recently responded to interest from our existing residents seeking to leverage their ORA capital from their retirement living accommodation when they transition into care in our New Zealand villages.
Our new Resident Fund allows residents to pay for their care with the equity from their retirement village unit. We piloted this product in H1 with really encouraging take-up. We moved quickly and launched it across all New Zealand villages just before Christmas. We think the Resident Fund is quite innovative in the market and better supports residents and their families as they consider a move into care at what can be an incredibly stressful and difficult time. In the example on the screen, one of our residents, let's call her Mrs. Vance, moved into an independent living apartment worth NZD 500,000. After a decade with us, her care needs have evolved, and she and her family have decided for her to move into aged care.
As her independent apartment sells, Ryman receives NZD 150,000 of DMF, and she chooses to have the remaining NZD 350,000 of equity directly transferred into her Resident Fund. With this, she receives a discount on the daily accommodation premium, and the remainder of the cost is debited directly from the fund. This not only gives Mrs. Vance choice, but streamlines her move into care for her and her family. We are confident this offering will encourage increased movement into care due to the ease for residents like Mrs. Vance to pay for their care as their needs change. For Ryman, in addition to encouraging more movement into care, it means we retain the capital and thereby reduce our interest costs.
We see even more opportunity with this product offering, and believe the Resident Fund will provide optionality for residents to pay for care and extra services by a deferred payment into the future. Across the organization, there is a laser focus on driving cost efficiencies in our support functions, procurement, and our operations. For FY 2026, we are targeting between NZD 50 million-NZD 60 million of cost savings. Reducing our cost structure in support services has included moving away from a regional and executive senior management structure to a functional structure. This has removed removed duplication across senior roles and business units in areas such as human resources, marketing, sales, finance, and in operations. We are centralizing purchasing and procurement. This investment has identified savings across key cost categories such as food, medical products, and consumables. Rethinking our approach to some asset classes has also released value.
Shifting to a lease model for our vehicles will deliver savings, more efficient management of our fleet, and also improvements in the quality of these vehicles. We are continuing to work through the entire supply chain and are enjoying working with our partners to achieve efficiencies across the board. Finally, we are identifying operating savings within our villages by focusing our teams on identifying opportunities to drive down costs. For example, our contract with our waste provider in New Zealand will deliver savings, but also has commitments to work together to reduce waste volumes across our village network. As mentioned, major aged care reforms have been implemented in Australia, while New Zealand is still in design mode. In Australia, the government covers clinical care costs, while accommodation and non-clinical costs are means-tested, shifting both funding certainty and consumer expectations.
Key financial metrics are now locked in, including RAD retentions of 2% per annum on new agreements from November 2025, and twice-yearly indexation of daily accommodation payments. The Support at Home home care program is a major system shift designed to reduce wait lists for aged care and keep people supported in the community longer. From an operational perspective, implementation of the reforms is complete across our Australian business, and we have progressed in meeting the new care minutes requirements. Importantly, the Australian experience gives us positive evidence on pricing, workforce impacts, and system behavior, not just policy intent.
In contrast, New Zealand has just entered a formal review phase, and while slower to start, the timing difference and the strong commitment from government creates an opportunity to move more quickly from this point into design and implementation, drawing directly from the Australian learnings and avoiding early implementation risks. The Independent Ministerial Advisory Group will recommend changes before the 2026 election for a more sustainable long-term funding model, with government already indicating an ambitious implementation and reform program commencing in 2027. The policy direction signals alignment with Australia, with intent to leverage learnings from the Australian reforms rather than start from scratch. Early indications suggest a case mix approach, supporting both higher acuity residential care alongside expanded home care in the home. There may also be interim funding changes as early as this calendar year, particularly to relieve pressure on hospital beds.
In summary, pulling this all together, through the combination of filling vacant capacity, growth in premiums and RADs, our new Resident Fund, efficiency gains, as well as funding reforms, we are targeting a meaningful lift in aged care EBITDAF per bed from NZD 15,000-NZD 25,000- NZD 35,000 per bed by FY 2029. Matt will talk further to these key targets shortly. Before I hand back to Naomi, I want to mention an example of what sets Ryman apart, the continued focus on creating a holistic resident experience that is unparalleled in our sector. Up until recently, Ryman had a well-embedded annual tradition of giving every resident a Christmas present, but we have now shifted to involving residents in the art of giving at this special time of year.
This image is one of our Australian residents who participated in this project called Rise Up, where residents shopped for more than 760 different items and toys using gift cards provided by Ryman. These were then wrapped, gifted to the charity, and 230 children and 20 moms who spent Christmas in refuges in Victoria received the gifts. In New Zealand, a similar partnership with Catalytic Foundation's Christmas Shoebox Project meant more than 1,200 children received something special, selected and carefully wrapped by our residents last Christmas. These projects, which may appear small, do create opportunities for our residents to engage in largely meaningful ways, connecting, creating a contribution to their social wellbeing and connection, while removing cost for resident gifts that did not fully enhance the lives of our residents.
In the words of one resident, "It makes our Christmas even more special. We want them to know they're not alone, and we think of them, and we want to share with them, share our Christmas joy." As you've heard today, operational excellence will allow us to unlock significant value for the business. High-quality care, resident experience, and engagement of our teams across villages will continue to be at the core of our strategy. There is a substantial opportunity to lift our care margin from increased occupancy and care premium accommodation pricing. Our laser focus on cost reduction is driving decreases in cost by FY 2029. And as government policy evolves to meet rapidly growing demand, our flexible operating model will be a key competitive advantage. With all this, we are targeting a significant increase in aged care profitability. Thank you.
I'd now like to hand back to Naomi to facilitate our Q&A.
Thanks to Rick and Marsha, who've spoken on the existing portfolio and how we will grow recurring earnings and release cash. We've now got 10 minutes for questions on the first presentations we've had today. Do we have any questions? Arie?
Oh, thank you. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, just on the service department and the initiatives there to drive occupancy, can you just sort of talk to your confidence in your ability to sustain efficiency and not give up margin by providing more flexibility to residents? And I guess on the care suites and then the premium care offering and serviced apartments, here any meaningful investments sort of anticipated around that offering?
Thanks, Arie. I'll pass to Marsha. It's a key part of how we're looking to build flexibility into the model, in really how we structure our workforce around that. A lot of our service department focus, though, is focused on speeding up the rate at which we fill that capacity, particularly in our developing villages, where a number of those units are. And that still provides us with the shorter turnover timeframe we have on serviced apartments , time to continue to optimize the use long term. So we don't get one go at it, we can do it continually. But I'll pass to Marsha just to talk specifically to your question around: how do we adjust the cost to match the variable service and flexibility we're building in?
Yeah. Thanks, Naomi. Thanks, Arie. I think, a couple of key things here. One is, we are already offering, rest home and some hospital-level care into our serviced apartments. This is more on a case-by-case basis and flexibly across our portfolio. What we can do is a more targeted increase in that approach, on a proportionate basis, in our villages, so there are more rooms that we can do that in. So we see a real opportunity to effectively use the cost base that's sitting in the care center to extend that care into the serviced apartments with a marginal impact, substantive marginal impact, so we're looking forward to doing more of that.
I think separately, there's also the opportunity to go in the other direction, as Rick talked to, be able to have people move in, live independently, without having that requirement for higher level of care, and reduce some of the packaging that we do currently with serviced apartments , where we offer a very set menu of selections and give them flexibility, whether that's hospitality services such as linen, cleaning, towels, or whether that's getting further support through higher level care needs, and particularly as New Zealand follows Australia in moving into a more flexible model in terms of how care is provided and how acuity is assessed.
Yeah, and then just one other question. The guidance on the EBITDAF per bed was useful. I mean, while I accept the duration's longer in terms of, you know, ultimately turning around the performance, the weight of capital is in your RV offering. So just any comment on where the EBITDAF per unit, you know, which was the equivalent, there was, you know, just over NZD 4,000, at first half 2026, what your targets are for EBITDAF per unit in the RV part of the offering to FY 2029?
So we're going to come back, Ari, to how we think about returns in retirement living, 'cause you're right, they, they are different, in terms of, the capital and, and the return, profile. So if you can hold that over to, to Matt's session, and, and ask that. I am conscious that Stephen asked us one about, what's in the twenty, you know, the 25-30, and we haven't pulled that apart, obviously, in, in today's, presentation. We do see government acting in that timeframe, because we see the necessity for government to act.
If you look what's already occurring in the public hospital system in New Zealand, and the cost of a public hospital bed, close to NZD 2,000 a day, compared to the cost of an aged care bed, which today, at government-funded rates, is around NZD 300 a day. So even with addressed, sustainable funding, there is significant value in having people in aged care capacity where they can be properly cared for in aged care capacity, and having our public, health system, in hospitals available to meet the most acute care needs. That's what will drive that shift in government funding.
It is an FY 2029 target, and part of what, through the presentation today, I think you'll see, is while we have these two very integrated businesses in a single location, that contribute value to each other, we have to also pull apart and think about them financially differently, from a valuation lens, from a financial performance lens. And, and so that's giving you the frame to, to do that. But we'll come back and talk to, to returns that we need to target through, the RV side of the business in the capital management session.
Thanks.
Nick Mar from Macquarie. Just on the Resident Fund model, could you just talk through how you determine the pricing for the discount, whether it's on an imputed interest rate or something like that, and how it sort of differs from, I guess, the RAD model you were offering before, where there's sort of a capital piece for a discounted or no daily premium charge?
Sure, I might pass that one, Nick, to Matt.
Thanks, Nick. So there is an imputed interest calculation. You can see in the example we've provided on the slide, we give you the interest rate down the very bottom of the slide in the footnote, and you can use that against the other factors in terms of the example of the residual equity that the resident's using in the Resident Fund to calculate both the premium and the interest.
[audio distortion]
It is. The accounting treatment is more akin to a RAD model, but I won't get into the accounting treatment today, and we're yet to report on a half which has the Resident Fund product in it, which we will do at full year.
Just to come back, you know, the rationale is really to make that move seamless for a resident, when they are needing to go into care, and give them choice. So it should be... Our aim is to make it economically neutral for Ryman, but to open up the range of ways that residents can pay for care. And as people are asked to pay for more of their care over time, giving more options, particularly around how you use capital to pay for care, is going to be important for that. Because a lot of our customer base, they might be asset rich, but they might be cash flow liquidity poor, and so we're really trying to help give them solutions and make that seamless when that transition needs to occur.
Thanks. Stephen Ridgewell, Craigs Investment Partners. Naomi, just, Naomi, I just wanted to go back to the gap between resales turnover and unit resales, which in, in sort of earlier part of this session. And it's been good to see that that gap obviously has been narrowing, but there is still a reasonable gap there. Can you give us an indication of when, you know, from the, the CEO chair, you'd like to see those two lines meet? And then essentially, at some point, they should cross over, and unit resales should be ahead of turnover. And then the second part of the question is, you know, what are, what other things in the toolkit could you use to accelerate that?
You know, because it does seem it was a little bit slow in the third quarter, perhaps, in terms of perhaps of where we might have been hoping that that gap closing. Thanks.
Thanks, Stephen, and I'll pass to Rick to answer the second part of the question. But look, from my perspective, obviously, the answer is as soon as possible in terms of closing the gap. One of the things to be mindful of is just the journey that our residents typically come on from the point they're first thinking about moving into retirement living, to coming in, to signing a contract, on average, six months later, moving into a village. It's quite a long timeframe, often one to two years. And so all those things that we're doing across the village to improve the funnel really take time to do that. I'll just ask, Rick, to talk specifically, you know, how we focused on chasing that down in FY 2027, and then we might need to wrap up for time.
Thanks, Naomi. Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, the gap is clearly a very key focus for us this year, and it's not just... From time to time, the gap will already close, but we're looking to sustainably close it, and that is that inverting those lines. We've got measurable performance improvements that we can see in that sales funnel. And to Naomi's point, due to the natural sales cycle time, many of those benefits that we can see and measure today will take some time to flow through their full benefit as we see those inquirers playing that year-long cycle out before they sign up, and then move in. So we can see the improvements. We know it's closing the gap. We're very confident we can close the gap, and that remains our key focus this year.
Okay, I think that's all the time we have just right now for Q&A. We will have another longer Q&A session, so for those we didn't get to, we'll make sure there's an opportunity then. As part of our refreshed value focus strategy, we are looking at the full range of options for portfolio growth. In the next section, I'll take you through how we're assessing opportunities across our developing villages, mature villages, and land bank before handing back to Matt to talk to capital management. We have a mix of opportunities on both sides of the Tasman, with a range of scale and complexity.
From our developing villages, where we have uncommitted stages and the flexibility to align development with demand, to our mature villages, where we've already invested in village centers and care capacity, and that have high and proven market demand and potential to expand. To our greenfield sites, where we have reassessed feasibility across our land bank to identify those sites most prospective for future development and those unlikely to be developed, where divestment offers better value for shareholders. And while M&A is not a focus at present, there may be opportunities in the future as we see consolidation occurring across the industry. We will continue to monitor corporate activity across both retirement living and aged care on both sides of the Tasman.
In six of our developing villages, we have made the decision to pause later stages and to phase the timing of development of those stages in line with demand. In all but one of these villages, the main buildings are now complete or soon to be complete. We've shifted from programmatic development to phasing development based on market demand. This approach has reduced capital spend and supports our focus on reducing stock and improving capital efficiency. Before committing to later stages, we will ensure earlier stages are well sold and priced to deliver strong returns on subsequent stages. We expect the next stages of Patrick Hogan and Northwood to be progressed in FY 2027 after strong sales at both villages in the last six months.
Construction of the main buildings and next stages at Hubert Opperman are also due to start in FY 2027, and this will be the first project we deliver under the new outsourced model. In the past, the organization had a primary focus on greenfield development and the reported new build rate. This has meant we haven't had a focus on how we can grow within and around our existing footprint, where we already have proven demand, established pricing, and existing care and village infrastructure. This makes the risk profile and capital intensity lower for brownfield developments compared to greenfield. We know that in our existing villages, around 30% of the care residents, on average, come from within the village. This means we have significant capacity to support more retirement living, with priority access to care at these sites.
More than half our villages have very high occupancy or wait lists for independent living, indicating that demand to support expansion exists. These opportunities are weighted to New Zealand, where our portfolio is more mature, and almost one-third of the portfolio is in catchments with median house prices above NZD 1 million, which is where high-density vertical village economics can work. An example of one of these brownfield development options is our Grace Joel Village, located in St Heliers in Auckland. An affluent area, our village occupies a hilltop position with panoramic views of the beautiful Hauraki Gulf and Rangitoto. This opportunity is at an early stage and is one we are looking to prioritize. Over the last five years, we've seen average occupancy of over 90% and strong property values in this catchment area, with median house prices of around NZD 1.7 million.
If you look at the picture on the right-hand side of the slide, you will see the 6,300 square meters of land we own adjacent to our existing village. Estimates suggest that for a project cost of between NZD 120 million-NZD 160 million, we could add an additional 96 units in a unique and irreplaceable location. We are mindful of surrounding competition and market conditions in Auckland as we further progress assessment of this opportunity and potential timing of it in the coming year. Moving now to our greenfield land bank. We have completed our review to identify sites which will be retained for future development. When assessing these sites, we have re-evaluated feasibility on a site-by-site basis, considering the current outlook for demand, house prices, surrounding competition, and future capital growth potential.
In addition, we are reviewing our village designs, including product mix, unit layouts, and finishes, and the form of our main buildings. We expect to continue evolving these designs before these projects are committed. As an outcome, we have retained six high-quality sites for potential future greenfield development: four in metro locations, which can support vertical, higher-density development, and two lower-density, more broad acre developments. 60% of the retained greenfield land bank by unit count is in Australia, where retirement living has a lower level of penetration and better care profitability, making it more attractive at present. Over the course of FY 2027, we will be focused on prioritizing the best of these greenfield sites to move to a more advanced stage of planning and have the potential option to upgrade the quality of our NZD 194 million land bank as this progresses.
At the time of the half-year results in November, we confirmed that we had contracted land bank sales totaling NZD 110 million. Following the completion of our land bank review, we have identified further sites for divestment and are now targeting at least NZD 200 million in cash release in total from land divestments. This includes our Kealba, Kohimarama, Rolleston, and Rolleston greenfield sites, as well as our Hornby and Riccarton sites, which, following the closure of care and transfer of almost all residents to other villages, we expect to become available in the future. Based on work to date, one of our most prospective sites, greenfield sites, is Essendon in Melbourne. This site offers three hectares of land in close proximity to Melbourne CBD and is permitted for aged care and retirement living.
We know from our Raelene Boyle Village, less than 10 minutes away, that there is strong level of demand and limited supply in this area, and see this as a prime location for future development. I won't spend long on this slide, as it pulls together the range of development options which we have just discussed. While we won't be putting a spade in the ground tomorrow on new projects, Richard's mandate will be to prioritize the best options across the portfolio with significant flexibility to build in line with demand. So pulling it all together, we have over 2,500 units and beds in identified and uncommitted developments. Our review has found that we have market demand and care capacity to support higher return brownfield expansion in more than half of Ryman's existing villages.
We are retaining six land bank sites and currently see Australia as more attractive for greenfield investment and New Zealand for brownfield expansion. We are targeting at least NZD 200 million from land sales and have already contracted NZD 110 million of this to date. We see development as a key part of our future, and an important part of Richard's mandate coming into the business will be to advance our plans for the best opportunities for both greenfield and brownfield growth across the portfolio. Now I'll hand to Matt to present on our new capital management framework and dividend policy that underpins the refreshed strategy.
Thanks, Naomi. I want to start my section with a value lens, recapping how the business makes a return, which I appreciate is not always easy in a sector with complex accounting. So in making the complex simple, for Ryman, it starts with high-quality recurring revenues that are, by their nature, consistent throughout economic cycles. The earnings from our daily and weekly fees across retirement living and aged care are net of our cost to provide these services. And at the half-year result, we talked the importance of the front book, as historically, our fees hadn't kept pace with costs, which is evident in our past results. We are now addressing both the pricing of our fees and also our cost base, which I'll talk to more on a coming slide. Second is our DMF, which is paid out of resident capital on exit and retained by Ryman.
The DMF is benefiting from the same front book profile, with our 30% contracts now well accepted in the market. The uplift from the 30% contract base will generate significant cash flow in the years ahead. Care is similar but slightly different, as it has a number of different resident funding options that are largely interchangeable, and as Cam has already spoken to, some of the economics around demand. The combination of both the fee revenue and DMF, or its care equivalent, provides a recurring earning stream and a defensive growth profile. From a balance sheet perspective, resident capital is an important component of Ryman and the industry's efficient funding structure. This funding structure enables shareholders to benefit from the capital gain of this asset base over time.
This can be cyclical in nature, as we are seeing in the differing property price growth rates between New Zealand and Victoria, but represents significant leverage to shareholders over the long term. This slide provides a diagram representing a simplified version of our new capital management framework. The aim of the framework is to improve the sustainable allocation of Ryman's capital and its measurability through to shareholder returns. You can see the main sources of funding, which provide our efficient and low cost of capital, benefiting from the nature of resident funding in the first sell-down of a new village. With the restatement of our targeted gearing range of 20%-30%, we are committed to a long-term, resilient balance sheet for both our shareholders and our residents. The allocation of care between RV and care...
Sorry, allocation of capital between RV and care can and should be measured differently, sorry, separately, given the differing operating models of the two businesses. For retirement living, we have looked at a range of different reference points for what yield is achievable for this asset class. We believe well-run portfolios can deliver a yield of greater than 5%, which is what we're targeting. Our measure of this is based on the RV segment, CFEO, pre-interest over the RV NTA. The RV NTA should be thought of as an asset NTA, which includes resident debt but excludes corporate debt, to provide the simplest form of the measure, which can be used down to a village level. But to be clear, today, across the portfolio, we are not meeting this 5% target and are under-earning on our asset base.
As I spoke to on the previous slide, the change to our fees and contracts reflected in our resident front book, combined with the cost savings program and the progressive improvement in occupancy, provide a clear path to deliver on RV yield over time. For care, we see EBITDAF per bed as the appropriate measure, given this is the widely used benchmark across listed and unlisted operators. As we spoke to at the half-year result, we are aiming for NZD 25,000-NZD 30,000 in EBITDAF per bed, which is a material uplift compared with the average of NZD 15,000 we are achieving today. Similar to RV, the combination of our cash improvement targets, combined with the progressive uplift in occupancy, make this target achievable. Within development, we are applying a more disciplined approach, with much greater focus on project hurdles, as well as applying market-backed assumptions in feasibilities.
Where there are projects that demonstrate an attractive opportunity, we will invest for the medium to long term. The combination of these targets generates a return, which is akin to free cash flow per share, and importantly, provides a full picture of cash flow across the business. The use of this return in capital management has several main choices, which I'll speak to more in coming slides. Our recent refinancing demonstrated the support of our banking partners, and is a long-term platform from which to continue to strengthen the business and optimally position it for growth. The refinancing delivered both a lower cost of funding and an extension to tenor, meaning that we can focus on reinvesting our post-interest returns into either growth or our dividend profile.
You will note that our bond of NZD 150 million is set to mature within this calendar year, but our headroom provides the optionality to absorb the repayment of the bond or seek a new bond issuance. We look forward to coming back to the market this year as to our intentions, as we consider the bond market a key component of our capital management in providing flexibility and diversification of our cost of funds. One further element that I wanna call out is the ICR covenant, which we have set at 1.5 times. There was a lot of consideration behind this metric, given Ryman's continuum of care and the proportionality of care in our portfolio. It was important for the covenant to have care development costs excluded for the first 24 months post first occupancy.
This is due to not all residents entering under a capital product in New Zealand, with many paying for their accommodation under a premium. The allowance for this is a key component, highlighting the covenant's fit-for-purpose nature, and matches the way we view care funding from our residents within our wider capital management framework. This slide is a focal point for my section, as it provides additional context and proportionality of how we are growing our recurring earnings. It underpins our strategy, the optimization of our portfolio, and the new capital management framework. Starting with the outcome, you can see that we are now targeting NZD 150 million in CFEO improvement from FY 2029 against an FY 2025 baseline. This compares with the previously stated range of NZD 100 million-NZD 150 million cash improvement over three to five years.
We have narrowed the measure from cash improvement to CFEO, so as to provide accountability, given the nature of the contributing categories. We have also reset the measure to the top end of the range. Talking to the categories: firstly, occupancy improvement will drive operating leverage as development slows, and we focus on filling our villages and care, where volume is critical. Rick and Marsha spoke to this and the size of the uplift potential, where the continuum helps fill our serviced apartments and care, along with clear demographic demand. This category is just the occupancy uplift benefit through to FY 2029. Second, care operating performance will improve through a combination of higher room premiums being implemented by Ryman, along with the introduction of RAD retention in Australia and cost efficiencies.
Third, village operating margins will benefit from higher weekly fees as the front book rolls forward, combined with village-level efficiency initiatives. While this isn't as large a category as care, it has the potential across the portfolio, even as we benchmark within our own group. These first three categories are presented on a net basis, with underlying cost inflation and resident growth already incorporated into the targets. Procurement and overheads are the next two categories and are considered on a gross basis, given their nature. They are presented consistent with our previous disclosure of annualized cost savings, although they don't include capitalized costs and unit refurbishment savings. There's already been substantial progress in both the restructuring of our head office and cost out in procurement, and we maintain the guidance of NZD 50 million-NZD 60 million of annualized savings for FY 2026, as defined at our half-year result.
Finally, front book DMF will be realized over time, reflecting the total value of the portfolio benefiting from the increase in DMF within our contract book. This category represents the difference between cash DMF recognized in FY 2025 versus what will be recognized in FY 2029. To be clear, these targets are across identified categories within CFEO, where we have line of sight to improve our operating performance in the near to medium term. Collectively, they give us confidence in the NZD 150 million target, which will underwrite a large amount of our return profile in the capital management framework. To achieve this uplift, we expect to incur NZD 5 million NZD-10 million per annum in one-off costs from related investments to deliver the NZD 150 million through to FY 2029. Any such one-off costs will be made clear in the disclosure of our future results.
It is worth highlighting that reported CFEO includes other categories, such as village refinancing, which is central to the economics around the retirement model. However, given this component is heavily influenced by macro factors outside of Ryman's control, we saw it as more appropriate to exclude this from the NZD 150 million target. Now, Rick has already spoken to the opportunity to release cash from stock, which is based on what we had reported at the half-year result. To make clear the measurability of the NZD 500 million cash release target, for CFDA, it excludes CapEx or cash receipts from new projects, and for CFEO, it is the cash release from paid-out stock, resale stock. Another value driver for this cash release is, of course, capital from care, specifically RADs and, of course, our new Resident Fund product.
We haven't quantified this, given the level of customer choice in care. However, this remains a key opportunity to drive CFDA and cash release going forward. There is lots to get after, and with a valuable, high-quality Ryman inventory in combination with land bank divestments, there is clear potential to release NZD 500 million by FY 2029. As we see progressive uplift in returns and cash generation and cash release from the business, gearing will deleverage in the near term. At the half year, with gearing at 28%, we are now in the initial band shown in this slide. The land bank divestments, along with better performance into FY 2027, will progressively move us to the lower end of this range.
In the medium to long term, depending on the speed of the NZD 500 million of cash released, Ryman will be in a position of having a lower level of gearing. However, the intention is to remain within a band of 20%-30% in the medium to long term. Being within this range provides the capacity and prudence for Ryman to continually assess the optionality around growth opportunities that Naomi has spoken to. For shareholders, other than dividends, a core proposition of the returns in Ryman is sharing in the capital gains from this asset class over time. While the NTA of Ryman often gets focused on, with the NZD 4 billion shown on this slide, there is over NZD 12 billion of total gross assets across the group.
I should also call out that care within our NTA is only the land and buildings, and arguably not its full value. While this is due to the accounting treatment for care, it is something for investors to note, given Ryman's proportionality of care across the portfolio. While there is cyclicality to real estate prices, which we manage through price governance, there is meaningful value to shareholders of consistent capital gain over the long term at a very efficient cost of funding. Starting at the bottom of this slide, today, we are announcing our new dividend policy with a payout of 20%-50% of CFEO, which we expect to recommence from FY 2028. Given the cash flow improvement across the business, we are using CFEO as the basis for dividend distribution, given it represents sustainable cash returns.
I should also add that using CFEO is aligned with the feedback that we have received from shareholders. The payout range of 20%-50% is intentionally conservative to create capacity to invest in growth over the long term. It also holds management accountable for the generation of a cash-backed return. Lastly, we expect to recommence the dividend from FY 2028, when the profile of our earnings and related cash generation should be stronger than today. This slide shows the cascade of capital allocation in relation to the dividend policy and brings into context the approach to the payout range of 20%-50%. The initial use of our CFEO generation above debt servicing is to distribute a minimum of 20% to shareholders, after which there are several options.
As Naomi has spoken to, there is optionality within and around the portfolio, as well as on both sides of the Tasman. The choices around growth and distributions will have regard to the right level of gearing, depending on Ryman's portfolio, our market, and the opportunities ahead of us. Importantly, we will not pay dividends from debt in future allocations. The position Ryman is now in, post-refinancing, allows us to take the next step in more disciplined capital management to provide stronger returns to shareholders. We will do this by focusing on a targeted yield from RV and operating profitability from care, benchmarked against the best performers in the industry. By delivering on the operating cash improvement, it will underwrite the uplift in these measures, as well as the return profile.
This will enable Ryman to reduce gearing in the near term, pursue growth opportunities in a disciplined way, and pay dividends. I'll now hand back to Naomi.
Thanks, Matt. We now have time for around 20 or 30 minutes of Q&A before I wrap up, so a longer session on any of the presentations that we've done today. So we'll open up the floor to questions. Nick?
Thank you. Just on the NZD 150 million, could you just talk through which of those buckets have, I guess, in your mind, changed materially since you last talked to the market? Because a lot of things like, you know, filling up your villages, some of the changes in DMF, the cost-saving targets run changed. So what's given you that increased confidence in the 150? And, you know, has there been any new, revenue or cost opportunities that have gone into that versus, say, six or 12 months ago when you first announced it?
Thanks, Nick. So I think a couple of things have changed. First of all, when we announced it a year ago, it was 100-150. Just from a personal perspective, I was three months into the role at that point. I'm now 14 months or so into the role. And we have, from what you can see on the slide, quite clear views on exactly where we are going to go and target the top end of that range. And the purpose of giving you those buckets is to sort of communicate really that confidence and the identification of the specific savings.
I don't think the what we are going after has materially changed, but our understanding of the value in it has shifted as we, as we got further into it. And probably the one thing that would stand out to me, and I'll, I'll check if Matt's got anything to add, is the care business has an ability to reset performance much more quickly. So as you shift pricing and improve occupancy and things like that, that's coming through much more quickly in cash in care, compared to the retirement living business with its tenure, with its contract turnover, that just takes a little bit more time to see the full value. So while we've given you the FY 2029 numbers, that is not the full benefit of the steps we're taking.
That's just what we see as being targeted within that initial timeframe. Matt, anything else that's changed from your perspective?
No, Naomi, all I'd add is that the work is always underway. I think the quantification of these savings requires time, as it should, and I think the team has done a great job running to ground a number of the opportunities that we knew were present. But it was just a factor of quantification and then target setting to the extent of timeline.
I know Will had a question before the break. Do you wanna go to Will first, and then Shane, and then Jeremy?
Thank you. Will Twiss from Forsyth Barr. You've kind of given us a timeframe around the aged care goal in terms of getting to 25K-30K EBITDA per bed by FY 2029. How should we be thinking about the timing in terms of the goal around retirement living, in terms of that 5% yield on into?
Thanks, Will. You're right, we haven't been specific on that. What we have been specific on is obviously the improvement we see coming through CFEO within that FY 2029 time horizon. But I might pass to Matt in terms of talking to what's the range of things that can contribute to us building back up to that more than 5% level longer term.
Yeah, thanks, Naomi. Thanks, Will. In terms of the target, it's a long-term target, let me start by saying that. I think it's important in terms of the calculation components that we've provided you to understand that in terms of the 150, that's the recurring sustainable improvements per the categories identified. It doesn't include resale margin, which is of course in the RV yield component in the numerator. So there are long-term components which are variable by nature in terms of that resale margin, which we didn't think was appropriate to include in the FY 2029 time horizon, but on a long-term yield basis for RV, is appropriate to include.
The other thing I'd add to Matt's comments is just where we're at in our reset. If you think about the levers we've pulled, they're really portfolio-wide levers. And so that's what a lot of the targets for that FY 2029 timeframe are focused around. As we step into the next stage of the strategy, portfolio optimization comes more to the fore. Richard joining us with a deep background in asset management for value, we'd see more value coming through that, and that all helps us get that portfolio-wide yield up to the sort of level that good performing RV assets are at. I think Shane was next.
Yeah, thanks, Naomi. Shane Solly from Harbour here again. Just you talked about earlier on, this is a scale industry, and I'm just interested in what scale means for Ryman, and maybe you can give some illustrations as to where scale- where you wanna be.
Sure. So, if I talk about, first of all, Shane, the value of scale, and I think about it in a couple of parts, primarily. In aged care, first of all, you know, it's a high-cost business, a high fixed cost business. It really relies on high occupancy, efficient leveraging of systems and expertise. It's very hard to do that in small facilities. It's very hard to do that in small corporate groups. So we think of optimal capacity or size in aged care of probably in the order of 80-100 beds per site. And then the added benefit you get from running a portfolio of assets of scale, that adds to that.
It's very difficult in Australia now. We've, we see this post the reforms, for small operators to compete with the regulatory requirements, and just the nature of the business. So, we think scale's got a big advantage in aged care. We think that's going to grow. We also think as services become a bigger part across the village, the same applies into RV. If you think about the value proposition we can offer to residents as we have this next generation of residents coming through, the boomers, who are looking for more, wanting for more, but also able to pay for more, being able to offer more services, more options, more choice, across the village, that's all a real opportunity.
and to set up the systems and processes to deliver that, scale really helps you. Similarly, in terms of a lot of the digital opportunities that we have, whether it's managing, you know, a NZD 12 billion asset portfolio with a NZD 80 million per annum capital spend, through to the size of our workforce, almost 8,000 people, there is huge leverage in these capital and people-intensive businesses that AI-enabled systems and process can really unlock. Scale allows you to do it. It's very hard to just invest in the capability without that. So, that's in a way still ahead of us, 'cause we're really resetting what we've got today. But I certainly see it as an important part of the future opportunity.
I think the other part of your question is, how big do you wanna be? And, and, you know, what does Ryman look like long term? We don't have a fixed view on, on size as a, as an overall objective. We wanna be in the markets that value the Ryman proposition, that have the enduring demand, that we can be confident that we're gonna deliver a strong, return for shareholders. You don't wanna be in an oversupply position with assets like this. The scarcity factor adds to the value, and helps you in a business that really relies on occupancy. And so, you know, we're, we're comfortable, with where we are in New Zealand. We see great opportunity, in Australia. We've had great success in the first 12 years we've, been into the, Victorian market.
We've now got the scale, we've got the ability to work within the regulatory regime there, and that's a great platform from which to grow in the future. I think Jeremy is next, and then Bianca, and we'll come-
Thanks. Yeah, Jeremy from Milford. Thanks for the presentation and taking my question. Just a quick one on the CFO. You've got the NZD 150 million improvement. To what extent did you consider an absolute target to put out there? And just sort of noting in 2025, you did negative 115 CFO, and I know you've excluded resales, but, you know, to what extent did you think about putting an absolute target or number out there? Thanks.
Thanks, Jeremy. I'll pass to Matt to talk to that.
Thanks, Maureen. Look, ideally, we would put a target out there that's absolute, but it's made up of components that, to the extent of the 150 recurring, sustaining improvements that we are targeting, and by the nature of the categories, are well within our control. To the extent that the broader, complete CFEO picture includes other elements like resale margin, that over the long term will normalize, but within that FY 2029 window, being a shorter horizon, are more due to factors outside of our control. So whilst price and our price activity is of course a component, there is the real estate market and property prices, which is probably equal to, if not a greater component.
So given there are different levels of composition of what's within our control, within those other elements of CFEO, like resale margin, we felt the target was more appropriate for things that we could focus on and execute on within that time period of FY 2029.
Thank-
Do you think resales will normalize by 2029?
Just to add to that, and to your question, Jeremy, if you think about the two targets together, so in the, as Matt said, that sustainable, recurring, CFEO improvement that we just wanna see growing over time in the business, we wanna see growing CFEO over time, on a consistent portfolio base. And separate, we do see opportunity with the stock we have, in terms of reducing that stock level. That's captured in the NZD 500 million target. So that NZD 500 million target does have a component of CFEO. It's got CFDA as a starting point, and then added to that, the reduction that we are expecting to see in the bought-back stock.
So we're trying to keep those separate intentionally: one sustaining, recurring, keep doing that, grow over time, and the other is more of a one-off working capital release. And so we are actually trying to give you, through the two targets by FY 2029, a full view of that. We can go to Bianca next, and then we'll come back.
Thank you. Bianca Murphy from UBS. Just a question on the 6 retained greenfield opportunities. So the majority of those are high density. Could you just give us some color around how you're planning to stage those projects, and make sure the balance sheet doesn't get too stretched again?
Thanks, Bianca, and good question. Good question for Richard, but probably need to give him more than two days that he's had so far. There's no doubt that with vertical villages, staging is more complex, but there are still things we can do. You actually saw a really great example of that at William Sanders this morning, where that village was built over about four years in a staged way, where we could bring independent residents into the first stages with the cash flow that comes with that, and then completing the continuum of care with the main buildings, but it is more tricky.
The other thing that we're conscious of, with, the Greenfield developments, and is part of why we wanna have more of a diversified approach to development, is that the Greenfield sites tend to be quite capital intensive. We certainly don't wanna get back to the situation we were in of having 16 projects, NZD 4 billion of spend on the go at one time. That is too much, and clearly stressed the balance sheet. But having a number that is manageable, staging them, so that again, we've had six care centers open, main buildings open in the last two years. We wouldn't do that again. That's a lot of care and service department capacity to bring on at one time.
It's a lot of main buildings to open with, with the cost and startup and commissioning that comes with that. But phasing is also between projects, across projects, within projects, and so part of what we'll be looking for is that clear view and ranking of the best opportunities we have, but also, how do we phase them, to really manage the balance sheet well? And as Matt's spoken to, we've got that ability within the new dividend policy, and with the gearing policy that we've maintained, to have some flex up and down to allocate more CFEO to fund our growth projects, or to have that higher level of gearing. Certainly, I would expect in the next couple of years, we're going to have a good amount of capacity for growth in the balance sheet, and be well set up for those best opportunities that we wanna progress.
Hi, Francois from ANZ. My question is as follows: You're working really hard to grow the recurring revenue from the business, and then you're planning in 2028 and thereafter to keep half or more than half for growth initiatives and opportunities. Can you give us an idea of what returns you will be seeking, you know, for those growth opportunities?
Thanks, Francois. I'll pass to Matt to talk to that one.
Thanks, Francois. So the measure we use, the Project IRR, for returns on new projects, and that has regard to both the time and cost to build, the time and cost to sell down the project, as well as the carry cost over that period of time. It also allows us to compare projects, which is, of course, important. We haven't given you the specific hurdle today. As we look forward as to new projects, we will look in terms of those new projects to provide a level or measure of return that we're pursuing.
So as and when we are bringing new projects forward with a specific view around capital commitment, we would, as Matt said, look to also give you an expected return and be clear on that upfront, before we're next deploying new capital.
But today you've decided on the dividend policy, so you must have an idea of what kind of, you know... You're forfeiting, you know, a chunk of the dividends to invest, so you must have an idea of what kind of returns you will be seeking.
So I think if you look at what's in the capital management framework, we clearly talk about positive NPV. So at a minimum, you know, we're investing in a way that's above our cost of capital. But we're also, as Matt talked about, wanting more discipline around project IRR. And the reason for that is because we think that often the time taken to build and sell down has been missed in some of the economics previously. And so, you know, your own view on cost of capital, there's lots of views out there as to what it might be. But it's the, the... You know, it's contributing to the enterprise value, but it's also, as a project, confident to sell down within a timeframe that the project has a strong return.
And then ranking them across the full range because there are quite a range of different propositions based on size and time to build. And so we wanna look at that across greenfield, across brownfield, across the mix in the portfolio, and think on it that basis, you know, that portfolio of growth opportunities we have. Where you're probably going and getting to is: Where does this all end up in terms of a return on capital employed or other metric? And that's certainly something we're gonna keep looking at and thinking about.
Wouldn't want you to think that this capital management framework is done and never to be touched again. This is a big step for us to be very clear in how we are running the business today and to have clear metrics around that. We're gonna make sure we listen to the feedback from the market. There is always good perspective on that. There's a range of views in this particular sector, and we'll look to continue to refine it as we move forward through the strategy we've put forward.
Arie Dekker, Jarden. Just three questions. Firstly, just thinking about our ability to, I guess, measure how you're tracking against this, would it be fair to say that in terms of those buckets in CFEO that contribute to that 150, that they're pretty equivalent to you sort of guiding to your expectations that you can improve operating EBITDAF by NZD 150 million over that period?
Pass that one to Matt.
Yeah, so Arie, the majority of the buckets are CFEO related, and to the extent that the target is CFEO, you will also get an EBITDAF uplift corresponding to that, although not all buckets are EBITDAF equivalent, so DMF in the sixth bucket, an example of that. But yes, to the extent that the six buckets collectively represent an improvement in sustaining CFEO, yes.
I'm conscious of your earlier question, Ari, which might have been answered. We're obviously very focused around EBITDAF as a key measure in care, and understanding that at a village level, and across the portfolio. In RV, we probably see CFEO and cash yield as the more relevant all-in metric, just because of the accounting treatment of DMF as Matt's spoken to.
... Yeah, and then just on the, gearing and, and the sizing of debt, you know, to that point that you made about your inability to, you know, control macro factors and, and I guess in the valuation that underpins, LVR, there are additional factors outside of your control, the independence of it. Yeah, so I'm just sort of interested in why you're using that measure, you know, to, to target the sizing of your debt, you know, given, given some of your concerns about, you know, control a- and that and, you know, particularly the, the issues the company has had in the past, in using LVR as a, as a guide to, to debt sizing.
Matt, do you wanna talk to that?
Yeah, sure. So I think the 20%-30% is appropriate, given there's already a degree of leverage in the business from Resident Funding, which can't be ignored. So that needs to be in a consideration to the 20%-30%. We've given you the other measures in terms of the headroom to our facility, the 1.5 times covenant, obviously consideration towards debt for development activities. So I think there's a composite of measures. It also connects through our capital management framework to our dividend payout policy. So 20%-50%, at the low end, 20%, it allows us 80% of CFEO return to be redeployed back into debt servicing or reduced gearing.
Yeah, and then just a couple of guides on the development front. So in terms of if we go back to the Ansell presentation and, you know, what was sort of outlined there right at the end, I think, in terms of expectations for demand for independent living, in particular, you know, versus, say, assisted living, should we expect to start to see that influence both, you know, I guess, the mix of the developments you start to undertake, more skew to assisted living than perhaps in the past? And then, you know, also on development, just a question around land acquisition and sort of the timeframes that, you know, we might expect to see you add to those six greenfield sites.
So, on the question of mix, Arie, that's something that is absolutely under review. I think one of the things we're going to see change is the shift from thinking about the physical footprint as a fixed proposition in terms of the care you provide within that physical footprint. And so that sort of separation of independent, serviced, or assisted living and care, residential care, you know, almost by their terms, they're communicating how fixed we are in the service we're providing.
I think what we're going to be doing is looking at how do we build more flexibility into the physical footprint, because we know that the customer expectations are gonna change, the government funding's going to change, but we're building 50-plus year assets, and so we need to make sure we're doing that in a way where we can flex the use of those assets over that life of asset, aligned with how the market's going to shift. We think we've got a really good starting point, because already today, 20% of the portfolio is serviced apartments, 30% of the portfolio is aged care, and we've got a lot of independent living that is apartments, which is easier to provide assisted living into, generally.
There's a lot that already in the physical footprint that exists today will easily flex to a greater level of service. We do, in saying that, and this is something we're quite mindful of, need to make sure we're attracting residents who are really going to value that proposition. And so, helping that shift occur over time in terms of the offering, you know, how we allow for residents to opt in and out of things, is a key part of what we're thinking about over time, 'cause clearly there's a risk in pure play independent living around tenure if we don't get that right, and we think our model is a key part of how you manage that risk.
Thanks.
Jesse, I think, had a... Yeah.
Thanks. I've got two questions. The first one is just a follow-up on the development economics. So project IRR is a bit of a challenge for Ryman because the projects are meant to be 100%+ geared over time with resident financing. So the IRRs can tend to look very high initially, but if there's a, some kind of variation, cost overrun, things don't sell down as quickly as you want, then they can very quickly go negative or, or, become very small. So I just wonder, are there any other secondary how, how do you think about, first of all, the amount of leverage in the projects when you look at your cost of capital that you use as a hurdle rate?
And then also, are there any other secondary metrics that you would use to look at projects as a bit of a fail-safe because IRR can be so volatile?
Great question. So in terms of, sorry, in terms of the gearing, the gearing or the level of debt is in regard to the total business. So we don't think about gearing in terms of the individual project. We think about the project as to its effect on gearing for the whole business. And you're right, there are risks and variables involved in a project IRR, given that time period and the speed to sell down on any new project. That's why I think it's important going forward, where we look to deploy new capital, to Francois' question, that we provide those return targets that we're seeking from new projects going forward to make that clear.
One other thing I'd just add, Jesse, is just the, the difference that exists between New Zealand and Australia, and in how care capacity is funded. So, in Australia, we have 60% RAD penetration. That provides significant capital to fund the building of care capacity. In New Zealand, we have about 10% RAD penetration, and so care does not recycle capital. And the reason we think project IRRs are so important is that often if you just focus on cash recycling, you're not seeing the time value of the money, the holding cost of the land, the holding cost of the stock, the time to build, and ultimately, you know, measuring that on that basis.
And we do need to think about care separately because it's got different economics. As Cam said, tricky to get to stack up our standalone today, just with where the funding is at. But, you know, we'll keep looking at that, on a case-by-case basis to make sure each project has a strong return, off a much clearer basis, rather than relying on effectively the capital gain, through the duration of the project, which was often driving that in the past.
Okay, thank you. Then the next question is, if you meet the targets that you've set by segment for Ryman, so the 5% cash yield on retirement and the EBITDAF targets on aged care, and then layer in the other elements with the development using the cash retention that you're planning with the new dividend policy, interest expense, corporate costs, and so on, can you say what that looks like on a consolidated basis for Ryman?
So presumably, if you meet those targets, you'd be able to model out and say that means overall, after all the additional costs, et cetera, Ryman overall should have an X% cash yield on net tangible assets, and it should have an X%-Y% return on equity. It should have a growth rate that looks like something. Can you give us a bit of a picture of the overall consolidated targets for the company that you're going for?
So in terms of FY 2029, I think the thing to highlight is these are not our long-term targets. That improvement we're targeting is what we're looking to get to by then, versus what we might look to get to from the portfolio long term. What we've done with the capital management framework today is to say across the different components, retirement living, aged care, development activity, what are we targeting in terms of financial performance? That question of aggregate portfolio performance is definitely something we want to come back to as we get through this performance improvement journey. Clearly, the answer is much better than today. But we just don't have a specific view for you on that right now.
So, we'll look at how we can continue as we go forward. We'll be reporting against the targets we're setting, so you've got that clear line of sight. And then, get to that clearer view on how we effectively grow overall returns over time. We've probably got time for one more final question. Stephen?
Cheers, thank you. And thanks for the detail on the land bank review. That's been really helpful. Just had some questions on some of the decisions in terms of what was kept in the land bank and then maybe what's up for sale. So, you know, first of all, on the Takapuna site, you know, it's obviously a well-located site, but it's very small. If you build it, it'll be quite a small village, maybe a boutique. You might call it a boutique village. So maybe you could just help us with the thinking around why you're still keeping it in the land bank and at this point, planning to progress it, and will the economics stack up, you know, for these return hurdles that you've talked to?
Thanks, Stephen. So yes, as you say, Takapuna is a smaller site compared to what we generally will look for. It is in the right target demographic. As you would have seen, visiting William Sanders and Devonport today, that is our market. And so what we'll be doing is, through this prioritization process, look at how that stacks up compared to the other greenfield opportunities we have, and we'll be progressing the best of them. So for the reasons you've said, it's got some constraints in terms of what you can do on that site, but it's got the market, and that's what has led to the decision to keep that in the portfolio today. We'll look at how we prioritize the best opportunities across the land bank that we are retaining.
Thanks. Can I just ask one quick one? This may be one for Matt on the gearing target. So, you know, you've got the gearing ratio coming down in the next few years and then potentially, you know, with the, with the upper level going to back to 30%. You know, within those targets, there'll be a, I'm sure you've modeled in the background some kind of build rate. You know, or, or there would be a range of build rate outcomes from very little to potentially something more than that. Can you give us any kind of indication within that range? Because it's a big range, 20%-30% gearing, especially in the longer term, right? What Ryman might be at the top end of that range and perhaps the low end in terms of the level of construction activity that you might be targeting longer term?
Thanks, Stephen. The 20%-30% is a big range, and you can see that we're taking steps to deleverage in the near to medium term. I think we've given you several building blocks to help you model that. I'll leave it up to you to come up with a cost to build per unit or per bed as to an extrapolation, depending on the sensitivity you want to apply, between 20% and 30%. We think 20%-30% is a prudent gearing range. It gives us resilience to the balance sheet versus above 30%, again, to the point I made earlier, that there's resident debt within our capital stack as well.
But I think the range, you can apply an assumption based on a cost to build that will give you a number, depending on where you want to forecast within the 20%-30%, and it'll be subject to the opportunities ahead of us to the extent to what Naomi had said earlier, where we have projects that meet a return hurdle and exceed it, and are attractive for us versus alternatives. We will pursue them and stay within that 20%-30%. I'll leave it up to you to work the sensitivities.
And I think one of the key things, Stephen, is just that shift to flexibly developing, so not having the imperative to develop because we're carrying a big cost and a big program. We want to be able to develop when it makes sense, but equally not develop when it doesn't make sense. Ultimately, if the better use of shareholder funds is to return it, we will return it. If we think we've got really good prospects for investing it, we will invest it. And we think we've got good capacity in the balance sheet with the capital management framework we've presented today to do that, as Matt's outlined. Right, let's do a quick wrap-up before I hand over to Dean to close. Today, we have run through our refresh strategy.
You have first of all seen what's not changing, which is our focus on being industry-leading in meeting the needs of our residents, and continuing to evolve our offering as their needs and expectations change. In wrapping up, I want to give you an overview of where our focus will be in the next financial year as we execute on our refresh strategy. As we look to continue to be the provider of choice, we will maintain our resolute focus on the quality of care that our residents receive, which comes from the culture and engagement of our team. We will be looking at opportunities to improve customers' experience, including providing more flexibility in payment choices, and we will be working alongside the New Zealand government as they look to find solutions to ease hospital bed pressures and deliver sustainable aged care funding.
In FY 2027, we see opportunity to grow recurring earnings by increasing the occupancy levels at our developing villages, optimizing utilization of our care capacity to drive better outcomes for our residents and improved financial performance, broadening the market for our serviced apartments , and continuing our efforts to drive efficiency and cost out of the business. We will be increasing our focus on optimizing our portfolio by growing resales to exceed turnover and reduce stock, more targeted allocation of capital for value across the current portfolio, and continuing the divestment of land that doesn't meet our portfolio growth criteria to release NZD 200 million in cash.
On our last pillar of value-creating growth, our focus areas for FY 2027 will be to sell down the new sales stock we have, progress the next stages of Patrick Hogan and Northwood, establish our outsourced delivery model, which will give us the flexibility to grow where we grow and in how we grow. Richard's team will prioritize the best opportunities for brownfield and greenfield growth across the portfolio. Now, I know we have gone through a lot today, and I hope we have provided you with the confidence that we have a clear plan for this business and to deliver value. I'll finish up by reiterating the key takeaways from today, which I shared with you up front.
Ryman is focused on growing high-quality recurring earnings, optimizing our large property portfolio for value, and returning to portfolio growth that creates value for shareholders. We are uniquely positioned with the portfolio of assets and capabilities we have today to meet the significant growth and demand that is coming, and are positioning the business to have the flexibility to benefit from this. We have set clear targets for improving financial performance in the next three years and have reiterated those targets and our confidence in them again today: NZD 150 million in sustainable cash flow improvement and NZD 500 million of cash release, and we will continue to update you as we move forward on how we are performing against those targets. We have significant optionality for portfolio growth and a plan to return to disciplined growth in the coming years, progressing those opportunities with the best returns.
With a clear capital management framework now in place, a new dividend policy, and improving financial performance, we expect to return to dividends in FY 2028 and have a solid foundation on which to grow shareholder returns. With that, I'll hand over to Dean Hamilton, our Chair.
Thanks, Naomi. I was just reflecting, sitting there, actually, it's good to be at the end of the meeting, not at the start of the meeting, which is what I was 18 months ago before, we were fortunate enough to hire Naomi. So, nice to reflect on what has progress we've made in a relatively short period of time. The clicker, Naomi, where's the clicker?
Oh, there it is. I thought I'd just touch on two things. One, the board. We've made a significant amount of change in this board over the last two and a bit years. James and I started in 2023, and then progressively built up the board since then. In terms of that board, you know, I'm really pleased with how it's come together in terms of the mix of capabilities and experience we've managed to attract to the company over a period that was actually a relatively challenging external environment. Kate has a background in construction and law, and then moved into healthcare, where she ran all of Ramsay's 80 hospitals, which is a highly competitive game, and then became CEO of IVF business Virtus before it was taken private in Australia.
So Kate brings a great set of experiences. James will be well known to you. You know, his experience in audit and risk and investor and capital markets is probably second to few in New Zealand, so great to have James leading the audit team there. Paula is our long-serving director at six and a bit years. Paula has had a career in people and performance across healthcare and finance. David was a partner at BCG for many years, leading their strategy and M&A practice. He then moved to Stockland, where he led their business development, and then ran their whole retirement living business before divesting it.
And Scott will be well known to you as well, you know, having led Precinct for a number of years now, you know, really focused on premium property development across Auckland and Wellington, so bringing great depth, so great for Scott to recently join the board. So we've trimmed that board down a bit. We think we've got one more to add back. As we look at what our business strategy is, how we're focusing in on operating ways of working, how we bring digital into the customer journey and also into our back office, we'll look to bring one director on with that direct experience to constructively support management in those endeavors. So I'm, I'm pleased with how the board's gone.
Clearly, a lot has been achieved in the last couple of years from a reset perspective, and really, the key message I wanted to deliver today is, you know, the board is very conscious that we may need to move away from that tactical reset and to sit back and focus on strategy and you know, looking at long-term shareholder wealth creation. But, you know, in terms of the tactical stuff, pretty much a brand-new board. A large change to management, which we're really supportive of. We're delighted with how Naomi has got her hands around a relatively complex business pretty quickly.
We talked about the timing of the investor day, and we felt that it was time to get back in front of people, and I think one of Naomi's key messages is, it's a dynamic strategy, but clearly some key strands that we wanted to focus on here today. So we've reset board, we've reset management, we've reset the accounting, we've reset our financial transparency, the way in which we report, what we report on. We've reset the management incentives, so a significant amount of foundational change, but clearly pivoting now to much more, you know, strategic dialogue with management, which is great.
In terms of the focus we talked about today, you know, maintaining that industry-leading customer satisfaction, you know, there is no Ryman without a resident, so that's critical to us, and one of the board's key responsibilities, in my mind, is organizational reputation. To generate sustainable returns on existing capital deployed, you know, the board is right behind that as a key priority. We actually think that's an enabler for future development as well, because the fit of your current portfolio is, you put that in your forward cashflow model, you know, your IRRs, NPVs all look better. So we don't think that's actually inconsistent. We actually think it creates more optionality going forward, having a highly cash-positive core business. Disciplined approach to future expansion in markets with enduring demand. You know, the board is supportive of getting back out and at it.
But, you know, the business needs to rebuild that capability. Richard's only just joined, so we need to let him get his feet under the table, and we need to build that capability back. But I'm very confident that this business, with board and management support, will get back out building. Prudent capital management. When I joined, debt was heading towards NZD 3.5 billion. And when we were in diligence, and the raise, the initial equity raising was before James and I joined, that brought it down, and then we obviously hit very challenging business markets, which meant that the business was under a fair bit of pressure, so we had to raise equity again, which hadn't been anticipated. So we certainly appreciate everybody's support. But, you know, we're not going back there again.
You know, funding that at 2% I think hit a lot of ills. You know, you can't survive when interest rates, you know, effectively went to 6%, so they trebled on the business at NZD 3 billion worth of debt. You know, that maths was just... In a business that wasn't creating positive cash, you know, you didn't have to be a genius to see that was a place that you could not survive. So, you know, everyone's done the hard work. Investors have kindly supported board and management in that we need to be prudent. We don't want to do that again. We think we've got the capability to both generate cash return and grow within that capital structure.
And lastly, a real focus on, you know, total shareholder returns, which is, you know, a mixture of dividends and capital gains, and we've aligned management incentives. You know, when I first joined, short-term incentive, medium-term incentive, long-term incentive, all driven on underlying profit. So we've had to dismantle that, and the long-term incentive now is all around TSR. So, a mandatory requirement to retain those by management when they, as and when they vest, and a mandatory requirement for board to own shares. So hopefully, we've got some good alignment and skin in the game across board and management. So that was the key things I wanted to touch on. You know, strong endorsement by board of this strategy. But thank you for your time.
Really appreciate the support of Ryman, appreciate the support of the board and the management, and we look forward to returning that with much improved returns. Thank you for today.