Turners Automotive Group Limited (NZE:TRA)
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Apr 28, 2026, 5:00 PM NZST
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Earnings Call: H2 2023

May 22, 2023

Speaker 2

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Turners Automotive Group FY23 results presentation. If I just get someone to quickly stick up their hand or just write a question to make sure they can hear us and see the presentation okay. Great. Thank you very much. Fantastic. Yeah, I just wanted to introduce Aaron Saunders, our group CFO as well, who's with me here today. Plan is roughly that we'll... Sorry, one second here. We'll go through the results, talk through the segments in a bit more detail, and then give you a few comments about what we see looking forward. We are very pleased with the year just completed. Another record result for the business.

I mean, I think this is a particularly pleasing result in an environment where costs are up significantly due to inflation. Interest rates have never increased faster than they have. There's been more government regulation, both within the consumer finance area and in the vehicle markets than ever before, and we're certainly seeing a market where demand is down. Despite all that, the Turners business has continued to perform. I think our Turners Auto Retail division is without a doubt the hero result with 28% growth this year of a previous year of 25% growth. You know, outstanding numbers from the Turners Auto Retail division, and I think reflects the investment and effort being put into that part of the business. Insurance has also had a stellar year with just under 10% growth.

Earnings before interest and tax is up 9% to NZD 52.2 million. Net profit before tax up 6%. We always use net profit before tax as the basis for our market guidance. The number just, you know, slightly up on where we'd guided the market sort of earlier in March. Directors have declared a final dividend of NZD 0.07 per share, that takes the full year payout to NZD 0.23 per share. Overall earnings per share are up 4% to NZD 0.377 per share. We included this slide last year, I think it is a good sort of reflection on how much progress we've made over four years. Progress in a number of critical areas.

Our sourcing strategy is working very, very well, as you can see from the numbers of locally sourced vehicles purchased. Our retail momentum continues, as can be seen through our Auto Retail market share and margin growth. The improvements in the quality of our loan book are very obvious, and that improvement in quality has resulted in a reduction in some of our net interest margin. Around half of that reduction you see in net interest margin is due to quality improvements, and the remaining half is due to the way interest rates have moved. Our focus on these metrics is what is driving the much improved outcomes for shareholders, and that's demonstrated through the EPS numbers and the dividends paid out. I think our track record is speaking for itself.

These are the sort of graphs that CEOs and CFOs love to put up in front of shareholders. It is really pleasing to see our progress, and we're very proud of the track record that we're creating and continuing to deliver for our shareholders. As you can see from the blue bars on the graph, the overall used car transaction levels have tracked now down well below pre-pandemic levels and are down 10% on the prior year. Government regulation has had the most material impact on supply during the last 12 months, resulting in fewer used imports coming into New Zealand. We're continuing to see demand shift into the lower price point segments as a result of the economic environment. I would also just point out that the red dotted line on that graph is the Turners unit sales by year as well.

We've seen really strong growth over the FY22 and FY23 periods, as you can see, performing against the market backdrop of a declining market. With the challenge around particularly used imports, we're continuing to see dealer numbers track back further due to these challenges in supply. I think we've seen, you know, smaller dealers who are reliant on used imports as their main supply channel, just leaving the market as things get very hard to operate. Our expectation is these numbers will continue to drop away, and probably at least another 10% down over the next sort of 12- 24 months.

The Turners brand continues to grow from strength to strength to strength, with evidence of this being that Google searches for Turners Cars has now overtaken Google searches for used cars. We're, you know, really pleased that the Turners brand is becoming synonymous with the used car category here in New Zealand. The combined effect of branch expansion, improved customer experience, our digital marketing initiatives, and brand investment are all contributing to this. We've also just won, for the fourth year in a row, the Most Trusted Used Car Dealership award. As I've said many a time before, operating off a platform of trust in a market that stands for the opposite of that is a very, very powerful place to be, and not something that we take for granted.

Perhaps our single biggest challenge and risk to manage this year has been our exposure to increasing interest rates. Whilst we lead the auto loan market in price increases, we've put through 12 increases to our base rate since October 2021, we've not been able to completely price in all the OCR movements. Interest expense is up 110% within the finance division. Unsurprisingly, this has had a material impact on profitability within this business division. I'll move through the next few slides pretty quickly. Just stopping briefly at the revenue bridge. Auto revenues have grown off increased car and damaged vehicle unit sales and new branches and more owned stock flowing through the business has helped grow our cars market share.

Finance book revenues reflect the higher average loan book over FY23, with particular growth in our premium borrower segment. Insurance revenues are up off strong policy sales and improved investment returns. Credit management revenues have dropped as a result of lower collections and lower levels of payment arrangements. On the profit bridge, you can see the sizable contribution from Auto Retail, that profit growth has come from increased unit sales, better margins, and more owned stock flowing through our branch network. The finance result obviously impacted by the increasing interest rates and impact on net interest margin. Prioritizing credit quality and margin management over loan book growth. Also in the second half, we've added a further half a million dollars to our provision buffer.

Given the strong profit performance over the year, directors have declared the final dividend at NZD 0.07 per share, giving a total NZD 0.23 per share payout. Based on share price of NZD 3.75, that represents a gross yield of just on 8.5%. One new feature that we are introducing this year to the dividend is a dividend reinvestment plan. A number of shareholders have asked us about this over recent years, so I'm pleased to be able to announce that today. For those shareholders choosing to take up, they will receive a 2% discount applied for those taking up the DRP, and we'll have details on that released to the market shortly.

In terms of the balance sheet, notable changes from last year are the reduction in inventory levels as we've improved our operational efficiency. Finance receivables ended up flat year on year due to our focus on pricing and quality as opposed to growing originations. Property has increased with the development of sites completed in Rotorua and Nelson, and the acquisition of sites in Tauranga, Napier, and Christchurch. On the funding side, inventory funding has been broadened, which gives us more flexibility around not just funding imports, but funding local purchases as well, which is great. In our securitization warehouse, the BNZ now hold Class One notes only, as Turners have refinanced the Class Two and Three notes during the year. We're still very comfortable with the debt levels and debt capacity in the business.

We have capacities for Oxford lending over the next 12-24 months and to complete the committed property projects that we have underway. You can see just on the right there, the graph matching our borrowings to the assets that we've borrowed against. We believe a strong culture is a key advantage for our business, and this is something that we spend, you know, quite a bit of time and energy on. Having a strong culture and engaged team is very important to us, particularly at a time when recruitment and retention has been challenging. We are continuing to invest in training, remuneration, and other benefits. In FY23, we launched the employee share scheme and had just under 50% take up of that scheme last year, which is, you know, fantastic.

I think from other shareholders' perspectives, to have almost half of the team at Turners being owners and employees of the Turners business and bringing that ownership mindset to work every day is a great thing. I'm confident that we'll see more take-up of that as we launch new iterations of that employee share scheme. Great to have our team with skin in the game. Let's look at the segments now. Excuse me. Just talking about Auto Retail to start with. Auto Retail revenue 15% higher year-on-year, reflecting the increase in both consignment units and owned units. As you can see from the graph, Turners' retail market share has continued to grow throughout FY23. Our retail or buy now units are up 6% year-on-year, and wholesale auction units are up 25% year-on-year.

Our domestic sourcing strategy has worked very well in total owned units, so that's total units that we've purchased, are up 9% over last year to 24,000 units overall. The overall margin that we've made on the cars that we own is up 11%. This has been a very good strategy for us, focusing on this whole sourcing capability area. We thought it would be useful to just outline where we source cars from and how we sell them. We've seen strong growth in both our locally owned sourcing and consignment sourcing, and we've detuned the number of cars that we import from Japan. On the selling side, we still sell a significant number of particularly our consignment vehicles. These are the vehicles we get from lease companies and government departments and finance companies.

We still see a significant number of those consignment vehicles going down the wholesale auction channel. 49% of our sales last year were down that auction wholesale channel. Over the next few years, we are targeting to get retail sales up to around 70% of our total sales from the current, sort of around 50%. Largely, this involves convincing our consignment vendors to push their cars down that retail channel. I can tell you that on average, we achieve about a NZD 2,000 uplift on a car that we sell for them down the retail channel as opposed to the wholesale auction channel. There's a very compelling story for them there, albeit it might take them slightly longer to achieve that result. We achieve a better selling price for them, and we charge them a higher fee for that.

Also, more importantly, we create the opportunity to attach finance and insurance to that sale. Overall, delivering approximately NZD 1,000 more margin per vehicle sold for us, selling a car down that retail channel as opposed to that auction channel. Our pipeline of branch expansion projects is building very well. We've certainly seen more opportunity come to market as interest rates and holding costs increase. Branch expansion for us is not just about being in new geographies, it's also about upsizing existing branches. The Napier purchase is a very good example of that. That will effectively double the size of our Napier operation. Also repurposing old sort of auction built facilities.

Christchurch, again, a very good example of that, where we are, we have one location in Christchurch at the moment and have now got commitments to three new sites across the Christchurch broader city region. We also have a number of other opportunities that we're working on. Obviously the ones on the left are committed. The ones on the right are plans that we're working on at the moment. Improving the time from receiving a car on site to having it ready for sale and advertised has been critical to improving our stock turn and making our business more efficient. Through the use of measuring this process more accurately and using that data to help reengineer our vehicle preparation process, we've been able to address a number of operational bottlenecks and really cut down this time, as you can see.

These improvements, plus increasing the proportion of local sourcing, has resulted in more sales with less investment in inventory, which is a great outcome. The positive impact of local sourcing on volumes and vehicle margins is evident from this graph. Through the use of data, branch, our branch network, our lead generation capability, the customer experience we're providing and really focusing on our conversion rates, we've had helped drive up the volume of local purchasing. The higher proportion of domestic buying has helped to lock in structural improvements and margin over pre-pandemic levels, as well as stock turn improvements. As opposed to used imports, local sourcing allows our business to direct purchasing to high-demand vehicle categories much faster.

Our ability to pivot into high-demand price points is much, much greater than it is with used imports. Turners Subscription has grown well, and we've just recently broken through the milestone of 300 concurrent subscriptions in February. That was taking advantage of a short-term summer demand spike, and we've seen those concurrent numbers drop back slightly to around 250 vehicles more recently. I think the most important thing for us is pleasingly that we've seen the last four months of the financial year see subscription in the black from a profit perspective. That has given us the confidence around continuing to help grow this business. In our finance division, growth has moderated as quality and margin have become a higher priority for us.

Our focus has been very much on pricing and managing our margin, which has been critical in dealing with the speed of interest rate rises. We're pleased with the new lending through our control channel, so that's lending through the Turners Auto Retail network and our direct channel, which is up 8% in FY23 to NZD 77 million. Given the environment and the forecasts, we've continued to tighten our credit policy throughout FY23, which we think is the right and conservative thing to do. With this tightening of our credit policy and our focus on quality, we've seen our quality metrics continue to improve. We've now had three years, so the last six halves, where our average origination credit score is running significantly higher than the average Centrix score for the auto loan book in New Zealand. That's really good to see.

The average credit score of new customers is increasing, reflecting a higher proportion of premium business and the affordability hurdles that we use to approve customers. It's no surprise that with our focus on bringing better quality borrowers into the loan book, our arrears levels have continued to outperform the broader market. We've also added to our economic uncertainty buffer by NZD 0.5 million, taking this buffer to NZD 2 million, which is over and above BAU arrears provisioning. Interest expense has grown at an incredible pace in FY23, reflecting the fastest ever rise in the OCR in history. Whilst our average loan book was up 13% in FY23, our interest expense was up 110%. We expect net interest margin to start expanding once we're on the downside of peak OCR.

In the medium term, we will continue to prioritize margin and quality. In insurance, we've seen good market share gains continuing to provide strong policy sales despite challenging market conditions. Our digital distribution arrangements continue to work well, and we have further opportunities that we're working on at the moment. Claims cost inflation is being offset by frequency of claims reducing due to changes in consumer behavior and particularly sort of work from home and cost of living. The book has also been well tested over the last few months and years from a catastrophe risk perspective, and we're pleased to report that there has been no impact from these events. In credit management, the debt value loaded is up, but debt collected is down due to diminished customer payment capacity, requiring lower repayment amounts to be accepted and payment arrangements being extended.

Positive signs, if those are the right words, are being seen through Centrix bureau reporting. Centrix are reporting that consumer credit arrears metrics are now in line with pre-pandemic levels and are trending up, and you can see that on this slide here, which just shows some of those Centrix arrears metrics and reporting. Looking forward, our company continues to demonstrate resilience no matter what the operating conditions are. As we head into an economic environment that will offer up different challenges and opportunities, the business has already been significantly de-risked. The work we've done on local sourcing of vehicles, building quality into the finance book, adding distribution to insurance, means the business is positioned to withstand and potentially take advantage of some of these changing conditions. Also, a growing auto retail division has a very positive halo effect for finance and insurance.

Last year, we called out a number of sort of key challenges and risks, and when we reflect on those now, we think those risks have narrowed. Three of the risks we've now put at low due to the work that we've done to mitigate them. Supply chain, recruitment and retention of people, and regulatory risks, we feel have all been dealt with very well. Recession moves from a high risk to a medium risk as our business continues to demonstrate it will perform well in this sort of environment. Persistent inflation and interest rates that continue to increase higher and for longer are still a material risk. Whilst we continue to increase our hedging and mitigate the impact, they are still the biggest challenges for the business going forward. In the short term, these are our key work streams to support growth.

In Auto Retail, stock acquisition, keeping our branch network expanding, and really focusing on increasing our percentage of retail sales will unlock further growth. In Finance, it is continuing to target premium lending and manage margins and pricing closely. Excuse me. In Insurance, we continue to expand our digital distribution, and that is top of the work stream list. In Credit Management, we're well positioned for the next stage of the New Zealand credit cycle. These areas remain our key areas of focus in the medium term, and we know they have been working. Auto, our branch expansion, vehicle purchasing decision making, and there's optimization of units from wholesale to retail. In Finance, growth and premium lending. Insurance, increasing our distribution. We're really pleased to have achieved our NZD 45 million target that we set in FY21, 12 months ahead of our initial FY24 timeframe.

In regards to our FY25 target of NZD 50 million, we see that in the broader economic environment and specifically the OCR track could have a timing impact on achieving that FY25 goal. We've outlined a couple of scenarios here to explain how we think that might play out. It doesn't change the confidence that we have in achieving that NZD 50 million number. It is just simply the timing of that happening. You'd have to say, based on what bank economists are saying in the last week, that scenario two does seem somewhat more likely at the moment. We've also updated our roadmap to NZD 50 million and just want to call out that the big change is really the additional growth that we see coming from Auto and the headwinds that we're continuing to see in Finance.

New branches and margin expansion drives growth of Auto Retail and this transition of unit sales from auction and into retail. Headwinds in Finance are offset somewhat by growth driven out of direct lending and improvements in distribution. Insurance growth will come from direct sales and digital distribution. Credit Management delivers growth as low pandemic level arrears return to more long-term run rate levels. Like last year, this just gives some indication on what the growth pathway looks like. We think this is useful for shareholders to understand how we're thinking about it. In terms of this year, in Auto, we expect to see upside from our new branches that we're adding the second half and the supply constrained market to continue, primarily due to the impacts on the new car supply chain and government regulation.

Domestic sourcing will be an advantage for Turners, and the transition of the wholesale auction units into resale sales channel will underpin further market share growth. In Finance, quality and margin management remain key priorities in the short term. However, once peak OCR has been reached, we see net interest margin re-returning to expansion. In Insurance, we expect new policy sales to be buoyant based on our distribution and market share gains and claims ratios to be stable. Credit Management is expected to perform better as the economic conditions worsen and the resultant impact on consumer arrears. We're pleased to report that we're seeing a solid start to FY24, with April 2023 profit result showing positive growth against prior periods.

Before I finish, I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of our team, from our board of directors and the operational teams who deliver day in and day out for our customers and for our shareholders. This group of people continue to be totally committed and prepared to go above and beyond. We're really lucky to have such a talented and hardworking group of people in the Turners Automotive Group. Excuse me. We're now open for questions. Yeah, if you can raise your hand or just type a question into the Q&A, we'll deal with it that way. Okay, I've got a few questions coming through here. Given the successful expansion of sites, can you give an indication about what will be spent on property, plant, and equipment during FY24? That's from James Lindsay.

Do you wanna answer that, Aaron?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Yeah, yeah, sure. Thanks, James. We're gonna finish Timaru and Napier developments this year, and we'll get preparatory work done on the three Christchurch sites. I'd expect that would be probably in the range of NZD 10 million-NZD 12 million, with a further NZD 6 million odd to spend in FY25 to complete those three Christchurch sites.

Speaker 2

Okay, second question from James. You've spent more on systems maintenance at NZD 5.1 million during FY23, mentioned a new core system platform to be introduced into insurance. How will systems spend track over coming years? I think the short answer is we don't see it going backwards, do we?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

No. No. I mean, most of the jump that's happened. Well, big part of the jump that's happened this year is a result of that insurance system re-engineering and also, for those who follow other listed companies, you'll know that, under IFRS, costs associated with a transition to a software as a service model or to the cloud, largely need to be expensed in the year that they're incurred. Which is a kind of a different treatment from what would've happened with an on-premises solution. As we progressively migrate our core systems onto the cloud, I expect we'll see this, you know, somewhat elevated level of spend, which will essentially reduce the amortization expense going forward.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Aaron. Another question from James. With debt loading and credit management growing plus 20%, are you seeing banks, utility companies becoming tougher and more willing to outsource arrears? I think they're definitely becoming more active, James. Yeah, debt load is definitely on the rise from those customers that we deal with and, certainly, they implement no contact periods through the recent weather events, but have lifted them reasonably quickly. I think we're seeing certainly more positive signs for the credit management business. One further question from James. Other than timing of the cash realization, what is holding back consignment clients from transferring to retail sales rather than using the wholesale channel? Yeah, I'll answer that question.

I think largely it's kind of almost muscle memory for them. They've used the auction channel for a long time, so does require, you know, a full comprehensive kind of pitch to multi-levels within those organizations. We have varying degrees of success with different lease companies. We, yeah, are confident that we can get them lifting those percentages of retail sales. It's not going to suit every single unit that they want to resell through our business. Particularly where they get, you know, large fleets of similar cars back, it won't make sense. The auction channel still plays an important part, and certainly when they have a need to turn the cars into cash, you know, reasonably quickly, the auction channel is still a very effective and efficient way of selling things.

There's no doubt that we can deliver them better returns by using that retail channel. Okay, just moving on to next question from Kieran Carling. What do you see the key drivers being for hitting the 70% retail channel target by FY26? Are there any other levers that you can pull beyond branch expansion? Yeah. The main driver is getting more of the lease company units down that retail channel. That is the key driver for hitting that 70% number, Kieran. To some degree, you know, we've needed the branch expansion to sort of help support that retail effort as well. We've actually had to build our retail capacity.

You know, that's certainly kind of one of the connections between that is branch expansion and increasing those retail numbers. Have you got any other comments to make there?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

No, I mean, I guess the other point would make is that returns through the auction channel have been particularly strong over the last 12 months, due in large part to, you know, the supply constraints into the used car industry. There's been a lot of demand from dealers to find ways of getting stock other than going up to Japan. Therefore, you know, our vendors have rightly seen that and taken advantage of that. Yeah, I think as supply kind of normalizes over the next couple of years, we'll have a better opportunity to convince them that retail is the way to go.

Speaker 2

Okay. next question from Greg Foran. given some of the new car brands out of China and your national footprint, would you consider representing them in New Zealand and sell new cars? Have you considered other new car opportunities? Do you wanna take that?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Yeah. I think most of the Chinese brands that you see here now are reasonably or very well represented in New Zealand already. We certainly have looked at the new car space and been close a couple of times, I guess. It's kind of reinforced to us how much we like the used car business in that we control, you know, our brand presentation, our marketing bits. The kind of franchise dealer space is heavily kind of prescribed by the OEMs, including an ongoing kind of requirement to meet corporate branding, you know, obligations. So we like the discretion and flexibility that the used car business gives us. You know, we like the size of that market. We like the fact that we have a relatively low market share despite being the biggest player in that market.

We like the fact that, you know, most New Zealanders buy a used car. They don't buy a new car. Yeah, we just feel there's a much bigger organic opportunity for us in used than there is in new which would, you know, require us essentially to buy into an existing business, which is probably already being really well run. You know, a potential challenge for us as to where we could add value to that new car distribution. I think in short, we see a pretty solid runway ahead of us in terms of our used car expansion opportunities, and that gives us four -five years of fairly solid organic growth, you know, to look forward to in the medium term.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I might just add one more thing here is when we have looked at these new car opportunities, it's become pretty evident pretty quickly that a NZD invested in our organic growth strategy in the used car space is a much better bet for us than a NZD invested into a new car business. The risk and really the reliability that we now know from opening these new branches is, you know, gives us a high degree of confidence around the returns that we're going to get. It feels like a, you know, a much safer bet for us. Okay, just moving through. A question from Grant Lowe.

The auto and retail internal target of 51% - 70% retail by FY26 implies an NZD 8 million uplift in earnings, circa, you know, NZD 400K per percent. How much of this uplift is factored into the NZD 50 million FY25 target? Sounds like a good one for you, Aaron.

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Thanks, Grant. That's why we put that, the bridge in for the FY25 target. You can see the bulk of that, the bulk of that growth in auto, you know, we feel is achievable through that, transition to a higher proportion of retail sales. Expect to see some growth in the damage to the end of life business and the trucks business, but largely we feel it's within our control, to do a better job in retail. It's a good, it's a good half of it, maybe a little bit more. I think we had a NZD 5 million step up to that, FY25 number from memory. That's about 60% of your NZD 8 million.

Speaker 2

Further question from Kieran Carling. Said that this might be quite challenging, but are you able to quantify the impact of the recent cyclone and weather events on your FY23 result, particularly interested in the end of life business for auto retail? Yeah, I mean, we did see quite an uplift in the sales of flood damaged cars in Auckland, and we're really still working through what happened in the Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay. That event is ongoing. Much more complex in terms of retrieval and the types of assets that we're dealing with down there, as opposed to the Auckland event. Yeah, there was certainly an uplift both in damaged vehicle revenues, but probably the sort of second bite, which was the replacement units for people as well.

I mean, our estimate is kind of roughly about NZD 1 million, isn't it, Aaron?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Yeah.

Speaker 2

We've called that out. Just a couple more questions here. One from David Oxley. Finance receivables flattish year-on-year, but declined second half versus first half. What is the outlook for FY24 in terms of finance receivables?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Yeah. If I was to call it out now, David, I'd say broadly flat again. We'll probably see further decline over the first half, and then a little bit of an uptick in the second half. Yeah, broadly flat would be my answer there.

Speaker 2

James Lindsay, another question. Can you talk more about internal attach rates for insurance and finance this year and where you'd hope to take these? Yeah, attach rates were down, slightly, year on year. I'm just gonna remind myself of those numbers.

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Low thirties.

Speaker 2

So 31% this year as opposed to 33% the year before. And really the impact of that is around, A, tightening credit policy. Oxford has tightened their credit policy, but they're not the only finance company to have done that in the market. It's just beliefs, people kind of getting through the affordability hurdles. And the other, the other area which has sort of contributed to that is the changes around the CCCFA. So the affordability assessments and the income and expense verification that does go on now compared to the year before, has knocked a number of borrowers out as well.

Yeah, we're seeing, yeah, we're sort of seeing those conversion rates hold in, I think in April they might have been slightly up on those levels. Yeah, we're still working hard to see if we can increase them further. I mean, we know from benchmarking that those conversion rates are best practice. You know, we're confident we're doing a good job. Further question from Grant Lowe. Assuming flat receivables, would you expect to see flat earnings given the recent interest rate changes and the flow on to next year? Do you want to take that?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

I'd love to have a crystal ball on this one, Grant. Yeah, I think given this year's result has been a record, and it feels like the headwinds in the macro environment are only strengthening. I think it would be a, you know, a flat result would feel like we were going forward, to be honest, given the headwinds we kind of feel that the economy is facing into. If your question is purely relating to the finance book, those profits will be down. I think we've hit the low point, in terms of the last six months' earnings. Also we, you know, we put through some extra economic overlay provisioning, but we're expecting Oxford profits to be down again, in FY24.

That will largely again be offset, maybe offset plus some by, further improvements in auto retail trade. I mean, I think what we've seen in the last 12-24 months is that, a dollar invested in auto is the best use of our capital at the moment. You know, we're quite comfortable to see receivables stay reasonably flat in Oxford, if that's giving us the powder and shot to make the investments in auto, which we think are gonna drive this business forward in the medium term.

Speaker 2

Just a question. Further question. Do you need a dividend reinvestment plan to support your organic growth plans, or are you more responding to shareholder requests? What level of take-up would you be expecting?

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

I mean, I'm comfortable with the capital levels in the business. The answer to that question is probably both. We've had over the last couple of years, quite a few shareholders come to us and request we consider a DRP. We see a lot of opportunity in this environment to expand auto, it'd be nice to have a little bit more powder and shot in terms of acquiring sites to, you know, sort of turbocharge that expansion. We're not thinking it'll be a huge take up. Maybe in the 15%-20% range.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Aaron. That's, we've sort of exhausted the typed questions. If anyone wants to ask a question sort of online, you're more than welcome to do so. If you just raise your hand, then I can allow you to talk, or you can type in another question into the Q&A. I think we've answered all the questions now. Any other questions before we wrap up? Now is your opportunity. Okay. I think that feels like we've come to a natural conclusion. Of course, if anyone on the call has further questions, you are very welcome to get in touch with Aaron or myself directly. I know a number of you do, and we really enjoy that interaction as well. We encourage it.

Our emails and phone numbers are on the back of the presentation, yeah, take advantage of that. Otherwise, thank you very much for your interest and your attention. Yeah, we look forward to getting back together for the annual meeting, which will be in August. Thanks very much, everyone.

Aaron Saunders
Group CFO, Turners Automotive Group

Thanks, everyone.

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