Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Turners Automotive Group half year 2022 results presentation. If I could just get someone to raise their hand just to give us an indication you can hear us. All okay. Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Joining me here today is Aaron Saunders, our Group CFO, and got Greg Hedgepeth along as well, who's the CEO of the Auto Retail division. Today, we'll just take you through the half year results, and then we'll open the call for Q&A at the end. Two options around the Q&A.
You can either use the Raise Your Hand function, when we get to that point and we can open up the audio or just use the actual Q&A to type in a question and we'll answer it that way. Just one second here. There sort of always a slight technicality around these things, isn't there? Okay, here we go. In terms of today, we'll just give you an overview of the first half, talk through the results, sort of drill down into the segments, and then just wanna put our business into a bit of context as well, and then give you some color around how we're seeing the outlook over the next few months. Yeah, let's start with the overview.
As the slide title says, we've been able to achieve significant growth in the first half despite the obvious challenges that we've had around lockdowns. You know, we felt we've seen another steep change in the business performance, even up further from that very solid second half set of results that we had in FY 2021. Our first quarter was outstanding before the brakes, excuse the pun, were well and truly applied in mid-August. However, to end up with net profit before tax 24% ahead of last year is a reflection of the quality of the winning business model, the quality of the people that we have in this business, and the improvements that we are continuing to make.
While there is still uncertainty around the level and breadth of COVID restrictions, based on our experience over the last two years, we do know that as these restrictions ease, our results should improve in line. We also feel our competitive advantages are continuing to build, and this gives us further confidence about the medium-term outlook. We're pleased to say that we're on track to exceed our NZD 45 million medium-term NPBT target by FY 2024. A few comments around the New Zealand car market to start with. I mean, the impact of the lockdowns is sort of very obvious on this graph, and we're pleased to say that Auckland transaction re-levels are now starting to recover.
However, at the end of October, if you looked at the total New Zealand market, used car transactions are still sitting well below that of 2020 and 2019. In contrast, over the last month, Turners has managed to exceed October 2020 sales, and I'll discuss that in a couple of slides. Supply remains constrained, and that is definitely impacting fringe operators. We've seen that with the registered dealer numbers being at their lowest level in the last five years. I won't go into too much detail on the slide, which is obviously available in the presentation and on our website.
Key points, reported net profit before tax, which is basis for our full year guidance, has increased 24% to NZD 23.2 million. Normalized earnings are up 55% to NZD 24.5 million. Probably more importantly, I was keen to share some insight into how we're going in the early part of Q3, as shown in the far right column, and also just moving on to the next slide. This is just a view into our monthly operating profit by calendar year. In auto retail in October, vehicle unit sales, as I mentioned before, were sitting well ahead of the same month last year, so October 2020. In finance, we've seen new lending materially ahead of October 2020 levels, with arrears continuing to track at historic lows.
In insurance, new policy sales, again, well ahead of October 2020 levels and claims levels below our expectations. In credit, we've seen debt load recovering, but collections action is still quite significantly restricted, particularly in those impacted lockdown regions. As you can see from the graph, despite the level three lockdowns that we've had in Auckland, Waikato, and to a lesser extent in Northland, we've seen much stronger than expected trading from these regions. Also very strong market kind of activity outside of those lockdown regions, which has, you know, certainly helped support the result and reminded us, and I hope you, about the great geographic diversification that we have in this business.
I mean, the short summary is that the recovery, the early recovery is very promising, end up with an October profit result, you know, substantially ahead of last year is a super outcome. Just moving on to the 2022 results. H22 results. We've covered these results previously, so I'll sort of move on to the detail. From a revenue perspective, you know, good growth, solid at sort of 13% year-on-year. Largely that's driven by the market share gains we've made in Auto Retail in the first four months of the year. Finance revenues have grown off the back of the loan book growing and good market share gains, particularly in the premium lending segment.
As you'll see in the next slide, there's certainly a strong margin component to the story, as well. Yeah, this is very much about solid margin improvements in all our three auto-related businesses. On average, we've seen a more than 30% increase in net profit before tax across those three businesses. Auto Retail has benefited from our focus on sourcing and sourcing smarter, and that's being reflected in our market share and margin gains. Finance growth has come from writing high quality new business and the resulting improvement in arrears. Insurance reflects the improvement in the claims and cost base. Credit Management contribution has been directly impacted by our inability to collect in those lockdown areas.
There has been a significant improvement in our underlying profits, which is due to margin improvements, market share gains, and the efficiencies, combined with the improved group resilience in lockdown trading conditions. We did sell the rump of our MTF shares back in Q1. We sold those shares back to MTF, and we think, you know, that's been a really good outcome for MTF and for ourselves. We do expect to see a very clean set of earnings in H2, and not anticipating any material one-off transactions to impact those results. This is absolutely the sort of graph that you want to be able to show, and I think it demonstrates very well the strong track record of dividend growth that we've been able to deliver over the last eight years or so.
We've declared our first two dividends for the year, both at NZD 0.05 per share, so to NZD 0.10 for the year to date, and we're projecting full year dividends to be at least NZD 0.22 per share, based on our guidance. That is a return of just under 7% based on a NZD 4.40 share price. You know, really is an excellent yield for shareholders. There hasn't been a huge amount of change in our balance sheet from last year. Inventory levels have remained, you know, pretty stable in and around that sort of low 30s, and has been for some period of time.
We've been very focused around our sort of processing times in our stock turn, which is enabling us to keep those inventory levels at that level. Receivables have increased off the back of our loan book growth in Oxford, and there has been that corresponding increase in our borrowings to reflect that growth. Probably the other thing to point out is just that property has increased with the acquisition of Rotorua and Nelson in the first half, and the completion of the Otahuhu site. Things to note in funding is that we have repaid the corporate bond that we had with a new lower cost term loan facility from the ASB. We are getting great support from our bankers, BNZ and ASB.
We've also commenced the process now to turn over our securitization warehouse to third-party funders. That process is underway and we're just targeting Q1 for a transaction next year for that to be completed. We always like to take this opportunity just to remind shareholders about our funding and just that nearly 80% of our funding now is dedicated to the finance business. Moving on to the segment results. Starting with Auto. Auto retail revenue was 20% higher at NZD 115.1 million, and really this does reflect the very strong sales that we had prior to lockdown. The Tina brand campaign is working really well for us, and we're seeing very tangible improvements in both buying and selling leads coming from that investment.
One of the things that we're really pleased about is our market share growth, and we've seen that market share of retail sales continue to improve and margins have remained elevated as we continue on our quest to really source smarter. On sourcing smarter, we've talked a lot about our, what we think is a very strong competitive advantage that we have, in the sourcing area, particularly compared to others in the used car space. I think there's two great examples of this. Firstly, that we've ramped up our local buy and, that is 30% higher than it was, this time last year. Secondly, we've had significant sourcing win, with, FleetPartners awarding us an additional, you know, approximately 3,500 units, of high-quality stock to sell per annum for them on consignment.
That is a big win for the auto retail business. The team here have been working really hard around our sales process and sales training and resource dedicated to the finance add-on sales, and those are going very, very well. We've been able to lift our attach rate up, you know, significantly from sort of high 20s up to well over 36% in that first half, which is great to see. We've talked quite a lot about the branch expansion and just wanted to give you a little update on Rotorua. You can see there, that's a shot of the branch. It's open now and operating.
The big white building you can see there will be remodeled effectively and redeveloped over the next sort of 6-9 months. We're up and running and you know, really pleased with the early results from the phase one opening. I mean, the site is still sort of partly operational, but already they've sold you know, just around 70 units in October and on track for another significant lift up from there in November. Early signs are very good. This is a repeat from our annual meeting slide on property, but I did want to remind shareholders just about the significant property asset base that we're building and the unrealized gains that are associated with this property asset base.
We've made a further acquisition since we last updated you, which is in Napier. That acquisition will allow us to double the size of the operation, the current operation in Napier. That property settles at the end of 2022. We do have a number of other opportunities in play and we'll update you on those when we are able to. Okay, moving on to finance. You know, really good momentum. Another strong six months of trading performance from the finance business. Excellent growth in the loan book with new lending up 57% over H1 last year. The quality of our loan book just continues to improve and correlates strongly to the improvement that we see in the arrears metrics.
As you can see from the little table down in the bottom right, unsurprisingly, we have been dealing with more hardship applications through the COVID lockdown period. I'd like to point out that these have peaked at less than a third of the hardship customers that we've had during 2020. Already, of those sort of 511 that were at the end of September, we're down to kind of less than half of that in terms of the current number that we have under hardship. Half of those 500 have rehabilitated already which is great to see. Insurance revenue decreased slightly over the period, and that's due to the impact of reduced sales in those lockdown periods.
The market share of Autosure Insurance in the auto space is significant, sort of around that 50%. They are impacted more significantly with fewer cars being sold. However, segment profit was up 28% to NZD 5.8 million on the higher margins. This is due to our reduced overheads and lower claims than expected. Our operating cost ratio has seen further improvement over the half. One thing to point out is that looking forward, we do expect to see some claims cost inflation, both in labor rates and parts pricing. We expect our policy pricing to increase as a response to that. In the credit management business, pleasingly, we saw debt book improve around 9% over the same period last year.
That is giving us some confidence about the run rate going forward. This was largely due to more debt loaded from the New Zealand corporate customers that we have. Extended lockdowns in Australia have definitely had a significant impact for this business in H1, and we expect that to improve as those restrictions ease in H2. Credit management remains an important part of the diversification strategy in the business and offering a hedge if we did experience an economic downturn ahead. I just wanna congratulate Matt Gannaway and the team down there. They've done a great job of managing a cost base in a reduced debt load environment. They really have done a super job. Just a couple of slides now around sort of putting our business in context.
I wanted to start with sort of explaining something that we call the Turners flywheel. Really kind of our business starts with sourcing smarter. That unique combination of consigned and owned stock, but like any retail business, the money is made when we buy. So using data and tools to make better buying decisions is kind of the platform for success in this business. The more cars that we can sign, like the FleetPartners deal we just talked about, the more cars that we're able to buy locally in particular, the more attractive cars that we have advertised. The more cars that we have advertised, the larger the digital audience we can reach, and the better the rationale for more branches, particularly with our omni-channel approach. That scale gives us more reach and more market share.
More retail sales provides greater opportunity for add-on sales for Oxford Finance and Autosure Insurance, which in turn leads to that higher transaction margin. Greater transaction margin makes us more competitive at the sourcing end and enables us to pay fair prices for cars. The flywheel starts again. Over the last few years, we have deliberately built this flywheel, and it is very much now in motion. Over the last couple of years, and particularly up to July this year, we've really started to see the combined and coordinated effect of this flywheel, and we feel that we can regain that momentum as the lockdowns ease. Another key part of our strategy that we've talked quite a lot about in the past, and I just wanted to kind of put that in a broader context for you, is about our omni-channel approach.
There is a lot going on in the global used car segment. Represented by the left box, traditional used car selling is highly fragmented and quite slow to adopt the digital kind of customer experiences which we are able to deliver now. More recently, represented by the right box, we've seen new disruptive operators emerge. Some of them come and go, particularly those in the digital peer-to-peer marketplace. In the U.S. we've seen pure-play, digital-only used car operators gaining traction. However, their market shares remain only a small fraction of the large omni-channel operators like CarMax, who are placed at the intersection of these two models and continue to perform well with both profit growth and share price performance. At Turners, we are also very much deliberately at this intersection.
We strongly believe that the winning strategy is to be completely customer-centric. We give the choice to the customers of how they want to shop for their cars. We do this by providing an omni-channel platform with a mix of both physical and digital. The customer then chooses along the spectrum at one end, you know, that might be an in-person, at-branch experience with lots of help from our people, or completely remote and online and independent from Turners people. Ultimately, we have many types of customers, and they can choose the mix of experience which suits them best. We've kept investing when others have stopped or have been unable to. This is particularly true in the digital space. Many of the fringe operators are unable to hang in there and have left the industry.
Registered dealers are at their lowest level in the last 5 years. Despite the COVID lockdowns, we've continued to develop our competitive moat, which is positioning us for an even stronger performance in a more normal operating environment. COVID has absolutely been a stress test for this business. The Turners team have responded brilliantly, and we are optimistic about the future. Which is a nice segue into the outlook. You will remember we took the time to lay out a plan for getting the business to NZD 45 million in net profit before tax by FY 2024. Sort of medium term target that we communicated to shareholders. In the first quarter of the year, as you could see from that monthly operating profit slide, that we had genuine momentum. The Turners flywheel was spinning very well.
Despite the lockdown, we are now more convinced about our ability to overachieve on that FY 2024 target. We do plan on updating shareholders at the annual results announcement, so May next year, on that three-year plan. We'll give a sense of kind of where we see that. Results in October and trading so far in November are certainly above where we thought they would be when we were forecasting back in August and September. Assuming the current restrictions do continue to ease over the coming months, we expect a full year net profit before tax for FY 2022 to be in the range of NZD 40 million-NZD 42 million.
Based on the current dividend policy, that would translate into a full year, fully imputed dividend of at least NZD 0.22 per share. I just wanna take a moment to thank the wider Turners team for their efforts in the first half. It has been challenging, but they've all proven to be resourceful and adaptable and engaged in this business, and particularly those teams based in Auckland and Waikato and Northland who've been dealing with extended lockdowns. Before we sort of open up for questions, I just wanted to show this photo. This is a photo of Malua Tipi and his two girls, who were one of the first lucky winners of one of the three cars that we gave away to help with the COVID vaccination drive.
We've had very successful partnerships with Three's The Project and their Wheel of Immunity, and also NZME with their 90% Project. I'm really proud of what we were able to do to help people, getting behind that vaccination effort. Okay, with that, we'll open up for questions. So if anyone wants to ask a question, you can either ask it in the Q&A function or, if you'd like to answer it in person, we can, unmute you, or if you just raise your hand. There's a first question from Richard. As we move to a larger adoption of EVs in the mid- to long-term future, are you monitoring the public uptake?
Question, is there a danger, given a sudden change in legislation or reducing prices of EVs, that you might be stuck with a large inventory of older petrol cars that might be difficult to sell? Greg, would you like to take that question?
Yeah, sure. We absolutely are monitoring EV registrations, and they are obviously starting to lift up with the change in legislation. I think that the key challenge there is actually around the availability of EV stock, whether it's new or used from overseas. So I don't think we're gonna see a sudden flood of EVs on the market. If anything, it's gonna be a slow, gradual incline over the years. So I think for the foreseeable future, we are comfortable that, you know, ICE vehicles will still be the predominant share of the market, and that, you know, we don't have any risk there of effectively getting caught with a large stockholding of those vehicles.
Yeah, if I could just add that. You know, we're a high volume speed of sale type model, and we would turn over all of our stock within about 2 months.
Yeah.
It's a relatively short period of time.
Yeah. The risk is negligible, I would say. But we are certainly monitoring that space very closely.
Yeah, we do have quite a significant number of EVs in our vehicle subscription fleet as well. It makes up around sort of 40%-50% of our vehicle fleet and subscription. We're getting some quite good experience through that subscription fleet. Next question is, I'm still not sure that I see Turners comparative advantage in funding the finance sector, which uses a lot of balance sheet and requires significant funding line capacity. I thought you'd been looking at selling this. Aaron, do you wanna take that?
Yeah, that's correct. We went through a strategic review a couple of years ago, which essentially got us to the point where the integrated model, we feel, adds a lot of value. Our feeling in terms of our funding is that we are as competitive as the bulk of the kind of specialist vehicle financiers in the market, more competitive than some. We're very close in terms of funding costs to the likes of MTF, UDC. We have an advantage at the origination end in that 20%-25% of our business is captive and comes out of the Turners Auto Retail channel. We feel that gives us quite a significant competitive advantage.
I think the other competitive advantage that we have is around our risk pricing strategy, which just has more layers to it than typically our competitors do. We've got some further kind of innovations to that pricing strategy coming up. It just enables us to be much more targeted around the pricing that we can set, particularly for the risk segments of borrowers that we're looking to target. What underpins that is that we've been a very early adopter and have great understanding of Comprehensive Credit Reporting and the scores that are associated with that. I think we are one of the leaders in the market around our use of that data. Okay, next question from Grant Lowe. Grant, thank you for that great result.
Financial receivables are up NZD 40 million in the first half versus NZD 40 million target for the full year. What is the key driver of this lift? Attach rates, new dealers on board, and where to from here? Yeah, well, the key driver of that lift, Grant, is one is the attach rates in the Turners Auto Retail business have certainly helped drive that loan book growth along. The other aspect of that is the third-party originators. We are getting a bigger share of those third-party originators. You know, I'd go back to my comments that I was just making around our risk pricing strategy of what's helped that.
Plus we've put a huge amount of effort and focus into the turnaround times around credit decisioning, some quite smart things that we've been able to do, from a technology and system point of view to give those third-party originators and the guys in the Turners Auto Retail business much quicker decisions. Fundamentally, that makes a big difference to those originators and is a big reason why we're getting a bigger share of the market. Next question from Grant is, how do you see net interest margins tracking going forward in light of rising interest rates, and what are you doing to manage that? That sounds like an excellent question for the CFO.
We hedge around about just over 50% of our exposure. We've got a reasonable amount of protection there on the book. Essentially, I would expect them to come off slightly as interest rates rise. You know, we raise our pricing, but there's always a bit of a catch-up effect as you raise prices in a rising interest rate environment. I would expect them to come off a little bit. The flip side of that is that the quality of the book has improved significantly, so our impairment and credit provisioning costs have come down significantly as well. We feel confident that our net interest margin after credit losses and impairments will remain relatively stable.
Perhaps a slight tail off with some offset from the growth in the receivables ledger. Part of our strategy to introduce third-party investors into our warehouse securitization funding is that will free up some more capital, which will enable us to grow that book further without deploying additional capital of our own. We'll get some scale benefits in terms of our funding from that respect.
Okay. Next question, from Grant. Any new store locations in the pipeline? Yes. Yeah, I mean, talk about the Napier site acquisition. Part of the expansion plan is not just about being in new locations, but expanding some of the existing locations. Yeah, others kind of in the pipeline, Grant, not that we can kind of share, you know, exactly with you the details of that right now, but when we can, we absolutely will. Obviously we have Rotorua to come on stream in a kind of you know, full mode or full operating mode still, and then Nelson to come as well. There's a reasonable pipeline of development work for us to do.
Next sort of part of your question, things have been going very well. When, if things start to normalize in terms of supply, claims, economy, where do you see the biggest risk? Aaron, do you wanna take that?
I mean, in the near term, I think the biggest risk is still COVID-related in that you know, if the hospital system was to get overwhelmed, then you know, there's a chance we'd be back into quite strict lockdown conditions. A slightly lesser risk, but I think there's some uncertainty as to how the country will adapt to you know, a COVID endemic situation. Business has been very robust outside of Auckland and Waikato. I guess just what happens when COVID is part of the everyday life of people in the South Island and the lower North Island, for instance, is still quite uncertain. You know, aside from that, it's the usual sort of suspects.
You know, a big surge in unemployment would create pressure in the finance company. It doesn't look like that's the biggest risk we're facing at the moment though, given where unemployment numbers have been trending even through this lockdown. Yeah, I think that there are some headwinds for this business, how the country adapts to a COVID-endemic environment, interest rates going you know much further than perhaps people think they might with inflation getting away from people. Other than that, I'm not sure that we're really you know it's just kind of a business as usual situation.
The last part of Grant's question was, guidance of NZD 40 million-NZD 42 million implies 18.8 in the second half versus 21.2 in the first half, excluding the MTF gain. How did you come to this range, and it appears cautious and conservative? There's a kind of couple things going on there, isn't there, Aaron?
Yeah. I think we've probably been a little bit conservative. The big uncertainty for us over the next few months is really, as I said, how the rest of the country adapts to a COVID endemic environment and whether that does impact consumer confidence, in, you know, the regions that haven't been dealing with COVID on a day-to-day basis. That, that's the reason for a little bit of conservatism in that forecast. You're quite right. Last 12 months' profit is around about NZD 42 million.
There is a first half, second half effect as well with December and January.
Yeah, that's right. There's a seasonal impact in the business, particularly the auto business, because in December, January, you have, you know, 4 weeks of overheads but really only 2.5-3 fully trading weeks. So there was a slight sort of seasonal deterioration, second half compared to first half.
Question from Kieran at Craigs. Could you please add some color as to what you're seeing with Auto Retail margins and how you expect this to track in the second half of the year and into FY 2023? Aaron, do you wanna take that?
Yeah. I wouldn't say that we've really enjoyed a massive jump in margins. Certainly, used car prices have risen, but our objective is always to buy and sell in the same market. As I said earlier, we turn over our stock every two months. In a rising environment, we get a little bit of a gain through that two-month period. If car prices were to come off, we'd see a little bit of a drag over that two-month period. You know, we can adapt fairly quickly to the market. Because we are, you know, pretty much buying today and selling tomorrow in our local purchases, we're buying in the market that we're selling in. You know, while margins have firmed a little, it's not like they've really jumped out of park.
You know, I see for us a fairly stable margin environment going out for the next sort of 12-18 months.
Greg, maybe just got some comments from you. Kieran just asked around, can you update us on how long you expect semiconductor shortages and supply chain issues to last?
Yeah. From what I understand, it's gonna be at least another year or two of these similar situations. For us, that's not necessarily a bad thing. The stock shortage situation that we're seeing in this country is helping keep used car prices high, and our supply lines are pretty strong. We don't have any fears around the semiconductor shortage situation. In fact, it probably works in our favor. As Aaron's point around the next, you know, 12-18 months, we certainly see it being a similar situation to what we're seeing today.
It's fair to say, Greg, that I think we have a view that used car pricing is going to remain at elevated levels while these supply chain kind of disruptions are on, plus the sort of overlay of some of the government regulation that's coming into play around cleaner cars coming into the country and things are just kind of helping keep those prices up.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the stock shortage is one thing which has got the prices to a certain level. The legislation changes have the potential to push them up even further, to be honest, especially with the stuff that's coming into the country fresh. All of that is, I guess, positive in regards to the pricing levels of the cars that are in the country and maintaining or even lifting them up further.
Great. Thanks, Greg. Next question from Roger. We've seen how the Briscoes lady has been incredibly valuable at building the Briscoes brand over time, and it's clear the Tina personality is working well. Have you got a long-term contract with the lady? It is the personality, Tina. Perfect question for you, Greg.
It's something that we've just been talking about and having discussions. Obviously I'm not at liberty to kinda share those details in this forum. Yes, that is something that is currently being worked on at the moment. She is working very well for us. Brand metrics, lead volumes are significantly up. That campaign is exceeding our expectations. It's something we're looking to continue for the foreseeable future.
Okay. Another question from Kieran. Can you see credit management getting back to pre-COVID levels of pre-tax profit in the next couple of years with lockdown restrictions easing across Australasia? Well, I think the short answer is yes, Kieran. It may take some time, and it is going to really depend on kind of what the economic cycle looks like. Yeah, you'd have to think that that business is heading towards a more supportive environment for that type of business. The next question from Kieran again. Do you expect that first half 2022 earnings run rate of circa NZD 4 million per month is sustainable in the medium to long term? You wanna take that?
Yeah. I think, as Todd indicated earlier, we'll be recutting our medium-term forecast at the end of this year. I guess I'd prefer to keep our powder dry till we actually go through that exercise. We've got confidence that a lot of the initiatives we've put in place over the last sort of 12-18 months are delivering higher margin and higher market share. Looking at the underlying metrics of the business, I would have to say, yes, we've got a lot of confidence in our growth runway.
Okay. I think that's the end of our questions. Oh, no, we've got one more coming in. Oh, Mo. Strong finance attach rates in the half. Where do you think they settle? What's a stable rate? Any movement in the competitor environment in terms of originators using competitors? Yeah, I think we can do better. Greg and his team sort of targeting that next kind of milestone of 40%. I think that's, you know, well, in the realms of being achieved sort of over the next 6-12 months. Yeah, I think that feels like a stable rate to me.
I'm not quite sure about your question, but any movement in the competitive environment, I mean, what we've seen, yeah, is probably over the last kind of 8-10 weeks as pricing start to move up. Competitors have, you know, I think, like UDC, they had three price rises now. We've had two in our sort of underlying rates. Yeah, others sort of one to two price increases. So things are definitely kind of on the up in terms of pricing. But yeah, that would be the kind of biggest change. Everyone's getting prepared and ready for, there's quite a big regulatory change coming up on December 1 with some changes to the CCCFA.
I think that change is gonna provide some more opportunity for the opposite business in terms of how we're dealing with that. I'm kind of looking forward to the next six months in the finance business to see some of the things that we've got in play delivering what we, you know, some further growth. Okay. Let me just check here again. Another question from Mo. Our brand is getting well-known and strong. You've mentioned trying to leverage that into other opportunities, servicing, repairs, et cetera. Any further thoughts on that? We've had some thoughts and, no, you know, no deliverables or actions out of that yet, Mo.
Think we feel like we've got enough opportunity sitting in front of us at the moment in the core parts of the business without sort of delving into that right in the short term. Yeah, we remain sort of open to those ideas and are certainly giving it some thinking time. At this stage, yeah, very much focused on the core and that organic growth. Another question from Mo. Any appetite for M&A with other dealers feeling the pain? Is that your last question? Not in the used car space. I think we've been there, done that, learned the lesson. Yeah, probably just a quick, so no is the short answer. I think we're likely just to see players leave the market, not consolidation.
Reduction in dealerships, which yeah, fundamentally is gonna be good for our business. Just one sort of comment. Those of you who will know, we were tied up with a bit of a court case with the former owner of Buy Right Cars, and it's all been wrapped up now. Well, they lost the court case and we've now put that behind us, so it's good to finalize that and be clear of that court action. Okay. We seem to have got to the end of our questions. I'll keep it open just for a couple more moments just to see if anyone else wants to fire one in. Okay. Looks like we're. I think we're done. Yeah. Thanks very much for your time, everyone.
Obviously, if you have other questions, feel free to get hold of Aaron or myself by email or phone. Happy to take anything from here. Otherwise, enjoy your day, and we'll catch you again soon. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.