Austal Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Austel's FY2026 results call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during Q&A time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. I'd now like to welcome Paddy Gregg, Chief Executive Officer, to begin the presentation. Paddy, over to you.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the 2026 Full Year Results Poll. I'm Paddy Gregg, the CEO at Austal, and I'm joined by our CFO, Christian Johnson. And we'll be presenting the same format as usual. I'll give the business overview and context while Christian focuses on the financial details, and I'll finish with the outlook, as I say. And as always, We plan to present for no more than 30 minutes, but I don't have any time for questions. And so FY26 has been a year of significant strategic achievements for Austal, both in Australia and the US. In Australia, the execution of the Strategic Shipbuilding Agreement has delivered a record-breaking Australasian order book with $5-plus billion, 12-year build program for the landing craft medium and landing craft heavy. Plus, the general purpose for it is very real, valuable, and compelling future opportunity. Our Australian operations have delivered a record result with EBIT more than doubling to $85 million, demonstrating the strength of our defense and commercial programs. As we announced two weeks ago, the group EBIT result was shaped by an accounting adjustment at Austal USA. and while our request for accelerated contractual relief was not agreed by the US Department of War at this stage, notwithstanding prior constructive engagement, we have proactively commenced the longer formal process to recover value on these contracts. And our position is supported by documented factual and contractual records that give us confidence in that outcome. change of approach to ensure maximum transparency and to actively facilitate Hanwha's due diligence on Austal USA. The receipt of an indicative non-branding and conditional proposal from Hanwha Defence USA to acquire Austal USA was a major development this year. Austal is the time that it merits further evaluation and we've approved Hanwha to undertake some due diligence to strengthen the certainty of a proposal. And we're really pleased to see the revenue and employee numbers in both businesses are growing in line with the audit book as programs come online. And the outlook in Australasia is truly exciting. The combination of a profitable and high-growth Australasia and potential proceeds from the sale of Austral USA and, you know, will be carefully assessed as to whether that outcome provides the best value for shareholders.

It's certainly looking very interesting.