Good morning, everyone. My name is Todd Hunter, Group CEO for Turners Automotive Group. Got Aaron Saunders beside me, our Group CFO. We'll crack into things, given it's 10:30 A.M. We'll try and rip through these slides reasonably quickly and get to the Q&A, which I know is the part that you all want to get to. Let's crack into things. I want to start with the big picture. I suppose these would be the key messages that I'd like you all to take away with. Obviously, we're super proud of the another record year for Turners, delivered in what has been pretty challenging circumstances. The key point I want to reinforce from the outset is that our diversified model has proven to be resilient through the cycle. I think we're going to get an opportunity to prove that yet again.
We're certainly entering FY 2027 very well-positioned, and well-funded for the next phase of growth. Probably just a couple of other things, that we've stayed on the front foot of our expansion plans, continuing to build the platform, not just protect the base. As we've indicated through the pack, we've seen conditions soften into late March and April. We had a record Q4 or actually a record quarterly performance for profit for the group in Q4. That softening kind of occurred late March and into April. What we've done is really just redeployed the same playbook, the same battle-tested playbook that we have used in 2024 and 2025. Yeah, we're in good shape. Just going to flick through a couple of slides here. I want to just pause on culture engagement quickly.
When we continue to include this slide so shareholders can see how seriously we take this aspect of our KPIs. Employee engagement remains very strong, and we have meaningful skin in the game through the employee share scheme that we run. The business continues to develop our leadership, people internally as well. That matters because execution is the difference between average and excellent, and particularly in a multi-divisional business like Turners, and particularly in a very distributed business like Turners. We rely on our people to do a great job for our customers and execute well. That's why we give this the focus we do. Okay, turning now to the results. These are all well laid out, so I won't spend any time here. Just getting onto the revenue bridge. Auto Retail revenue increases.
We sold a much higher proportion of owned vehicles, so we had a reduction in our consigned vehicles, but we more made up for that by purchasing more vehicles. The commercial revenue strengthened as that economy improved through FY 2026. Finance revenues have increased off the significant growth that we've had in the loan book, and Insurance revenue has increased off improved policy sales. The slight negative is that credit management revenues decreased due to that lower debt load, largely driven by system projects within the large referral client base. Overall, good increase in revenues from NZD 414 million to NZD 451 million. On the net profit bridge, Auto Retail profit reflects those new branches, that high proportion of owned vehicles, and improving gross margins. It's certainly worth noting, as you can see later on, that the second half was much stronger than the first half as confidence improved.
Finance benefited from disciplined credit quality, lower arrears and strong growth in the loan book. Insurance continued to refine our risk pricing and growth in that direct consumer channel in particular. Credit management lower debt load has led to lower commissions. The dividend remains a core feature of the Turners proposition. We've declared a final dividend of NZD 0.09 per share, taking the full year to NZD 0.33, which is 14% up on last year. Our message is simple here. We aim to provide shareholders with a reliable and growing cash return, while retaining enough capital to fund our growth. Really, just a few things to call out here. Inventories up, that reflects a real focus we had on building supply in that second half of the year. That began before Christmas and led into Q4.
We were really focusing on our conversion rates there to support that improving demand that we were seeing. Obviously the Finance receivables are up, and then property, plant, and equipment have increased due to the developments that we bought on stream over the last 12 months. Just noting the intangible asset down, which is due to the EC Credit Control goodwill write-down of NZD 7.5 million. I think funding is an area that's been a key focus area for Aaron and he and his team have done a lot of great work here over the last year, and I think positioned us really, really well. During the year, we've termed out our NZD 200 million securitization warehouse and our first public transaction, it's a huge success. We've also extended our syndicated banking facilities to post our year-end.
Again, another significant sort of step forward in terms of the way we're funding this business. It's increased our capacity and reduced our costs. I think the warehouse term out and the extension of the syndicated banking facilities are a real sign of confidence from our funders, and ultimately they reflect very positively on the risk profile that these funders attribute to our business. I think it's a really big tick from the funders, which is great. Okay. We'll move on to the segment results now. Auto Retail revenue up 10%, profits up 12%. Market conditions very challenging in that first half, but improved in the second half. We've given our sourcing initiatives a huge amount of focus, as you would have heard from us previously.
Around the way we've been managing stock and been disciplined around stock management, has really set us up very well for that performance in the second half of the year. Our focus going forward remains on pricing optimization, disciplined discounting, and ensuring we keep stock turning at the right speed. Our competitive edge remains around our strong brand. Tina campaign continues to work very well for us. Being agile around our sourcing and repositioning stock quickly to where demand in the market is, and delivering that all as efficiently as possible. We still focus closely around the costs that we're incurring right across the business. Strategically, our biggest opportunity absolutely remains expanding that branch network, and we've kept the momentum up there despite the kind of backdrop. Used car market, sort of slow signs of recovery. Used car change of ownership's up 3% in FY 2026.
Whilst used import registrations were down 7% last year, we've seen some changes from the government in terms of the relaxation of the Clean Car Standard and certainly strong demand for small hybrids as we've kind of got into this whole Middle East conflict period. We've seen quite a strong increase in imports coming into the country in April, which is good to see. Yeah, we're big believers in disciplined stock management, and that is one of the keys to consistently strong margins. There are times where we go through pricing transitions, where demand in the market shifts, and we're going through one of those now. Our disciplined focus around aging, stock turn, speed to sale, and simply meeting the market helps us maintain margins and be well positioned as conditions improve.
The key message we want investors to take away is that we've built the systems and the discipline to manage through the cycle and then accelerate as demand recovers. Excuse me. Our local sourcing is a really important strategic capability for the group, and we continue to grow the number of units that we source locally. A big part of that is related to our branch expansion, but also doing a better job of the conversion of the opportunities that we're getting. Owned unit's up around 9% over the last year, to around 29,000 units. We continue to see the benefits of that balanced local sourcing with the imports. The recent fuel price shock and related increase in demand for hybrids is a really good example of where that used import market becomes very useful for us again.
Branch expansion remains a sort of multi-decade sort of strategy for us and multi-decade kind of commitments. Obviously are a core part of how we're growing the Auto Retail division. We now own 23 of our sites with a carrying value of around NZD 164 million. We're continuing to see opportunities to purchase sites that attract evaluations as we move through the interest rate cycle. Our pipeline is building very well, as you can see there. No new branches scheduled to come on stream in FY 2027. We have four new branches and two replacement sites on schedule for FY 2028, and work is continuing in this area, as you can see from the right-hand side of the slide. We thought it would be really useful to just look quickly at what's happened in Christchurch.
I suppose the rationale for additional branches in Christchurch was always to be closer to our customers. To move from the single branch in the center of Christchurch to three spread across the city, was enabling us to be closer to customers and generate more sourcing leads for people who want to sell us their car. With multiple locations operating through part of the year, we didn't have them all on stream through the entire 12-month period. Comparing to that single branch for the whole of the 12-month period, we've seen a 15% increase in our lead generation for people wanting to sell us their car. That's led to a 22% increase in cars purchased locally in that Christchurch region.
Yeah, huge success in creating that operating leverage that we're aiming to replicate as that network expands and we locate branches closer to key population catchment areas. A really good case study of the strategy in action, in delivering it, delivering exactly what we thought it would, or we hoped it would. I'll move on to Finance now. We are back in growth mode, as you can see from the graph here. The funding is in place to support that growth, and the business continues to generate great operating leverage for us. We're very disciplined around the credit quality. Credit quality, that is a non-negotiable for us, and we are selectively growing the book in areas where we think the returns are attractive. Total receivables are 27%, and new lending was up just over 50% for the year.
I think we added two people to that Oxford Finance team through the year. You can see the sort of operating leverage that we're able to generate. Arrears continue to perform well. We think credit quality is a key differentiator for us and is core to our lending strategy. Total arrears, 2.5% at March 26, down from 3% last year. Tracking at well below half of what the industry averages in the auto loan segment. Hardship applications, hardships improved through the FY 2026 period, as you can see from the table in the bottom right there. We have seen a small lift in applications through April and May. Currently tracking at around 115 hardships so far in May. In total, there's definitely been a lift as things have got tougher for people.
On margin, FY 2026 delivered the highest net interest margin in the last three years. I think it is worth noting that we are prepared to trade away some margin to continue our growth path, where it makes sense strategically and where returns remain attractive on a risk-adjusted basis. We really do want to see that growth continue. Unsecured lending, whilst it's still a very small part of our overall ledger, it got a bit of attention at our invest today, so we just wanted to give people an update here. From our perspective, that unsecured portfolio is tracking very well. We're limiting unsecured loans to those higher quality clients. We only do these loans for our top two risk tiers, and that book is growing well, but as you can see, well under 5% of our total lending.
Arrears tracking, well below our forecasted levels in this period. Remember that we were able to run sense check these losses against the wider population of unsecured loans with the Centrix team before we embarked on the strategy. The objective here is to generate risk-adjusted returns that are incremental to our secured lending, and that those returns are certainly helpful in stabilizing our overall margin profile. Okay. Just shifting on to Insurance. Yeah, this is the, I think James Searle described it as the steady Eddy of our group. I'd say stable and consistent. Distribution networks, very important for us here, and we're continuing to build our digital direct capability. Claims cost inflation has been well managed despite supply chain pressures and MBI loss ratios have edged up very slightly, but remain very consistent with long-term trends, sort of around that 57%-58% level.
Our digital distribution is really gaining some momentum, as you can see from the graph here. During the year, we've strengthened our capability. We've introduced a new MBI product for that private-to-private car market. We've also added new partners who are reselling our products now online. That's VTNZ, Gaspy, and Quashed. That's added to the New Zealand Automobile Association. The message for us is that digital is now a meaningful, scalable channel alongside our partnership distribution model. Turners Servicing and Repairs, still scaling up here. We're building this as our fourth growth pillar, leveraging the Turners brand, expanding the customer base, and growing the network. We've now rebranded to Turners Servicing and Repairs.
We've got some big cross-sell opportunities that we're just kind of working into now into our existing customer base, including selling service plans with vehicles and just service offers into the existing Turners and Autosure customer base. We're building out our network model, including mobile mechanics and leveraging partnerships such as VTNZ. Credit management, FY 2026 referrals, debt load referrals were constrained just because of several large clients placing temporary holds on debt referrals while they went through major system implementations, and some of those system implementations are still ongoing at the moment. We're expecting debt loads to reinitiate over the next quarter or so. As a result, revenue down 17% and normalized segment profit down to NZD 1.8 million. Okay. Probably the key part of the slide deck that everyone's interested in. We've upgraded the risk view that we have.
Funding and interest rate movements remain a key focus for us in terms of how we manage our risks. That's given the inflation story emerging in New Zealand. Recession risk has increased in our view. A reminder, again, we have the playbook to keep our agility and inventory sourcing, continued credit discipline, and conservative provisioning. We feel like we're well-placed to manage those risks. For those that were part of our Investor Day back in March, this is not new news, but we wanted to remind people of the new five-year target that we have of NZD 100 million profit before tax by FY 2031. We've already exceeded our prior targets, and we just want to note that the NZD 65 million target, which was for FY 2028, is that we're on track to achieve that a year earlier than we'd planned.
If you want to get more color here, certainly go to that Investor Day presentation, where there's a comprehensive background and build to how we get to that NZD 100 million. Just talking about March, April. We mentioned before our fourth quarter was exceptionally strong, and while March started strongly, it progressively got weaker. April is always a reasonably challenging month, just because of the seasonal aspects of it. You've got Easter and Anzac Day and school holidays, and it's always a short month. That softness has definitely been amplified by the geopolitical uncertainty. In Auto Retail, we've implemented that same tough macro playbook that we used in FY 2024 and FY 2025. Ironically, it's almost about the same time in those years. FY 2024, I think we still had Adrian Orr talking up interest rate hikes in May.
FY 2025, we had Liberation Day around the same time, and all of those things had a similar impact to what we're seeing now. Our strong cost focus, more selective buying, positioning that inventory for where demand is. Focusing on those smaller engine vehicles and cheaper cars, including increasing our purchase of hybrids. That is our playbook. It's our battle-hardened playbook from 2024, 2025. In Finance, book growth has remained a standout and credit discipline remains non-negotiable. As I mentioned before, small increase in hardship applications through April, but originations are still being pretty strong. Insurance continues to perform well, benefiting from that annuity growth and stable claims. We're still pushing hard around our branch rollout strategy. We don't take the foot off the pedal there, despite what's happening in the macro environment.
We continue to invest no matter what we're seeing around us, and that pipeline is building very nicely. Just to conclude, on the outlook, we're expecting strong progress towards that FY 2028 goal over this year, supported by the full year impact of those Christchurch branches and in Invercargill as well, and the benefit of the much larger Finance book as we start the year in a better position there. In Auto, focus on inventory positioning, maintaining high stock turn, so we're ready to accelerate when the macro environment improves. In Finance, continued focus on credit discipline and making sure we're managing our margins well. In Insurance, earn premium holding up really well, stable claims ratios, and continued contribution from those new partnership distribution arrangements that we've got.
In Servicing and Repairs, the focus is around that network expansion, cross-selling into the Turners database and leveraging a partnership that was set up with VTNZ. I think overall, Turners remains a well-diversified, very well-funded group with clear growth levers across each division. We are certainly confident for the next period ahead. Okay. Well, we'll just stop there and open things up for questions. If I could just get you to raise your hand, and then I can unmute you. James Lindsay, shall we start with you?
Many thanks, and good morning, and well done. A few questions, and then if anyone else throws a hand up, I'll stop as well. Maybe just on that NZD 1 million economic overlay, just what would need to happen to get that used? Obviously, that arrears is at 2.5% and been reasonably flat for a while. What would that need to spike to get that NZD 1 million as being used somewhat?
The way I see that working, James, is, well, particularly if unemployment rate increases further as a result of the Middle Eastern conflict and the oil price shock. That will ultimately lead to higher arrears. That overlay will become normalized into the main body of the provision.
Got it. You talked about softer trading conditions over April. Can you give maybe some more color with regard to that and where you're seeing it?
Yeah, definitely. Well, essentially, it's in the auto business. We're still seeing good growth in Finance, stable performance and Insurance. The primary activity-based retail business in particular has seen a drop-off from March, a noticeable drop-off. Volumes are down, margins are back at the levels they were in April to June 2024. There's definitely been a hit to demand in the short term.
Yeah. Got it. Obviously you've talked about strong Finance book and Insurance is going along well as well. Just interested in the attach rates that you've had on those and, will that softness in Auto Retail have an impact on the Finance growth for this year?
Yeah, I don't think so, James. Our attach rates tend to be pretty consistent. We tend to be in that low 30s to mid-30s kind of number a bit, bounces around a bit month to month. You can almost bank on that. At the margins, if you think about Finance, about 15% of the origination comes out of a Turners branch. About 10% is direct, and then the balance is third-party dealers and brokers. The broker strategy that we've implemented is working very well. As the branch network continues to expand, we get benefit of the halo effect of that into Oxford. As much it's the work that we do in that third-party community, of dealers and brokers that drives growth for us.
Yeah. Good. Then going back to Auto Retail, and the comments that you made about margin, obviously with transactions in the period, that reported it was up 3% and revenue up 10%, the margin was strong and from slide 20, that was obvious in the last six months of the period. Can you just go back to what you were saying about where you'd think margins would go to now? Have you got a view about them being down in 2027 versus 2026?
Well, we've got a view on what's happened in April, largely in the first couple of weeks of May, James, and that is that margins are much closer to the levels we saw in April, May, June 2024. That's NZD 150, NZD 200 unit down.
-on where they were in the fourth quarter of FY 2026. Yeah, this is a place we have been before, the economy went into recession, I think in that winter period in calendar 2024, it just feels a little bit like that again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
James, what I would say is that, we are definitely going through a pricing transition at the moment, just like we did in 2024 and 2025. You always see some downward pressure on margins as you go through that transition. Essentially once you reach an equilibrium, so once demand sorts itself out, margins will start to build again. There is always a seasonal aspect to our margins in Q1 and Q2.
Yeah.
Let's not judge a year on six weeks.
Yeah. Understood. Yeah.
As you can see from that slide 20, you can see.
Yeah.
In the second half and most years.
Yeah. You talked about your inventory building a little bit, still relatively low in comparison to longer run history, but just how are you thinking about the tightness of the market? Has that held up margins more than it would've if they were much more normalized?
We started trying to convert more of those sourcing leads back in October last year because we felt like demand was building and therefore we wanted to have the cars to sell into that demand. The guys did a really good job of that. They really focused around things that they could do to drive those conversion rates up, and were quite successful in that. I don't think there's any other reason than that. I don't think there's been a massive shortage of supply. I think we're getting better at anticipating what is happening in the market. We talk regularly about the next two to three months and what we see happening and thinking about how we need to position ourselves to either take advantage of an opportunity or potentially mitigate a risk.
Yep. Then just on Insurance, can you give us an indication about what the mix is of MBI versus your partner in general insurance?
In terms of premiums, MBI is 70-odd% of the premium base, James.
Okay. Yeah.
if I interpret you correctly?
Yep. No, that's a good heads-up, thanks. Last one from me, and I see David's put his hand up as well. Just with regard to the unsecured Finance book, obviously, or I assume quite different broker partnerships that you've got there. Just interested in sort of the number and what's the strategy about trying to build that out to develop that segment?
Yeah. The broker relationships for us, you tend to get a high degree of crossover between brokers selling auto loans and selling personal loans. They're products that kind of go hand-in-hand. For us there was very sort of little work we had to do from a system point of view to be able to accommodate lending in that personal lending space. It was a sensible extension of our product. Yeah, effectively, if you think about our strategy, it's to build up this customer base of high-quality customers, and we want to do more things with those customers. Yeah, they're just the same brokers and the team are doing a great job. I think we talked about it at Investor Day.
We've got our senior lenders going and spending time in their businesses, working with their business managers and loan brokers at the coalface, giving them input around our credit policy and how we think about things and getting them to think as much like us as we do around these loans. That strategy is working very well.
Yep. Just checking the like-for-like. On 26, you had the slide with regard to your consumer arrears versus the auto loan industry. You've titled that consumer. That includes the unsecured as well, or is that just the auto loans?
That's just auto loans.
Okay. Got it. Yeah, okay, cool. Is that the same 31 days plus like-for-like that you've got on slide 28?
That's one day arrears.
Yeah.
Three.
Plus three days arrears.
Okay. Yeah. Cool. Okay. No, much appreciated. I'll hand it over to David. Okay, much appreciated. Thanks, guys. Well done.
Okay. Thank you. David, I'll just unmute you. You should be good to go now. You unmute your mic.
There we go. Can you hear me?
Sure can.
Lovely. Thanks, Todd. I had two very boring questions, and I apologize in advance. Could you just talk to the, what looks to me like a fairly dramatic decline in the corporate costs that is come through in that year just finished? You have been sort of double digits for several years and down to 7.7%, I think, this year.
There's a couple of things happening there, David. One, there's been a benefit of the interest rates coming down over the last, what is it now? 18 months. Also as we build out this property portfolio, we essentially allocate a market amount of that interest to property. You end up with interest, which was all kind of in corporate as we develop properties. When those properties move into the use of the Auto Retail business, we allocate an appropriate amount of debt to the properties themselves. In the auto business, it's less about rent and more about interest and depreciation, which you'll see in those segment numbers.
I see. Thank you. That's helpful. Just secondly, I didn't catch the numbers, but clearly, I understand the number of branches in auto has increased year- on- year in FY 2026. Could you just explain why the D&A charge in, well, across the group, but in auto in particular, has gone backwards in the year just finished relative to 2025?
Yeah, the big change in auto in 2026 was the move out of that largest branch that we had in Christchurch. There was a significant fit-out that we'd depreciated over the period of our tenure in that location, and obviously that dropped off and went Well, it got amortized or depreciated to zero at the time the lease expired in July. We had a big drop-off there, and we're replacing that with essentially longer-term assets that had depreciated over a longer time period, that these are the land and buildings that we occupy. I think that's a big chunk of the change there.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much.
Okay, great. Thanks, David. Is there anyone else who wants to ask us some searching questions?
Jake.
Oh, Jake. Yep. Okay, Jake, you should be able to open your mic.
Perfect. Thanks, guys. Just quickly from me, did you see any sort of spike in end-of-life activity or replacement vehicle demand from some of the flooding in Wellington in April?
Yes, we have, Jake. That will flow through into this financial year. Yeah. Like sort of in the order of a couple of 100 units, not the thousands that we saw in 2023 in Auckland.
Right. Is that just because of your sort of network coverage or just there not being the same number of vehicles on the roads at the time?
It's just not the same number of vehicles involved in that particular location.
Great. Thanks, Todd.
Okay, Kieran, we're opening you up now.
Oh, good day, guys. Just one from me, and apologies if you've already covered it off, but there seems to have been a reasonable improvement on the amount of ex-overseas vehicles being registered post the changes to the Clean Car Standard. Just curious if you're seeing any sort of benefit as a result of that, whether it's your competitors sourcing less locally or more sort of funneling into the end-of-life division?
Yeah.
As cars are replaced, but yeah.
I think interestingly, we are seeing kind of a decent size increase into that salvage business at the moment, into that damage and end-of-life business. Whether that's part of it, could be. I think more broadly, more used imports into the country is probably good for the fleet because you're generally taking out a much older car to replace it. That has to be a good thing. It's certainly good for the auction and Autosure business because those are more sort of opportunities outside of the Turners network to finance and insure and probably does take some pressure at the margins off the local sourcing as well. Overall, I think it's a positive for the business.
Yeah, cool. Thank you.
Okay, is there anyone else who'd like to ask a question before we wrap things up? Scanning through the attendees, looks like we're probably reached a natural conclusion there. Yeah, thanks very much, everyone, for your time this morning, and we'll catch you all soon. Please, if there are any other questions, just feel free to reach out to Aaron and I directly. Thank you. Have a great day.
Goodbye, Grant.