8/21/2025

speaker
Graeme
Chief Executive Officer

Good morning everyone and welcome to Bramble's full year results presentation for FY25. I'll begin our presentation today with an overview of our results for the financial year, including key highlights and achievements. I'll then give an overview of the operating environment before sharing an update on our transformation programme, including progress with Serialisation Plus. Finally, I'll cover our FY26 outlook before passing to Joaquin to take us through a detailed review of our financial performance. Starting with our FY25 highlights, we have again delivered a strong set of results, with our financial performance highlighting operating leverage and a step change in cash flow generation. For the full year, we achieved sales revenue growth of 3%, with a 10% increase in underlying profit and exceeded $1 billion in free cash flow before dividends for the first time. Our sales revenue comprised a mix of cost-to-serve recovery and a return-to-volume growth, where momentum in net new business wins helped offset lower like-for-like volumes as consumer demand remains subdued. Meanwhile, our underlying profit continues to benefit from asset efficiency and supply chain initiatives and ongoing discipline around overhead costs. These higher earnings as well as lower capital expenditure from the benefits of our asset productivity initiatives contributed to the significant improvement in free cash flow before dividends. The strength of our performance has allowed us to declare a total dividend of 39.83 US cents per share, representing an increase of 17% from FY24 and a payout ratio of 62% in line with our dividend policy. We're proud of what we've achieved in FY25 and attribute much of our success to our transformation programme, which has made us a more resilient business and delivered structural improvements across the organisation. I will cover our transformation progress in greater detail shortly, but among the most notable improvements was a stronger customer value proposition to retain and grow our customer base. This was further enhanced through our expanding digital capabilities and ongoing asset efficiency improvements, which led to reductions in the capital intensity of our business, with these benefits also being shared with our customers. This reduction in capital intensity and the strength of our financial position supported additional capital returns to shareholders in FY25, with US$403 million of share buybacks completed during the year. In line with our investor value proposition, we are pleased to announce additional buybacks of up to US$400 million in FY26. Finally, we are proud of the many positive impacts achieved through the course of our 2025 sustainability programme. Building on this success, we're stepping up our regenerative ambition for our 2030 sustainability programme to be released in September. Turning to the operating environment. During the year we saw a return to more normalised pallet market dynamics, following inventory optimisation initiatives undertaken by retailers and manufacturers during FY24. Overall, inflationary pressures moderated this year, with modest increases in labour and transport costs, partially offset by deflation in fuel and lumber. The capital cost of a pallet was down approximately 6% year on year, although it remains above pre-COVID levels. Importantly, we maintained commercial discipline with our pricing, recovering modest cost-to-serve increases that benefited from lower pallet loss rates. This was driven by the normalisation in pallet market dynamics and progress we have made through our asset efficiency initiatives. Whilst our business is reasonably defensive in nature, increasing macroeconomic uncertainty and the ongoing tariff concerns had a noticeable effect on consumer demand, leading to lower like-for-like volume growth, particularly in the second half of the year. This demand impact was more than offset by an acceleration in new business wins, particularly in the US and Europe, with more manufacturers recognising the value of our high-quality pooled solutions. This momentum benefited from broader market developments, including the reduced availability and rising cost of quality whitewood pallets, as well as increasing levels of automation across manufacturing and retail supply chains. Operationally, inventory optimization by manufacturing and retail customers in FY24 led to higher pallet returns in key markets and contributed to additional costs across our network in FY25. This included additional repair requirements due to higher pallet damage rates and incremental transport and storage costs in the US due to excess plant stocks. We have approximately 4 million excess pallets at the end of FY25 in the US and anticipate a return to optimal levels by the first half of the 2027 financial year. From a capex perspective, utilising excess plant stock in the US contributed to a half a point benefit to the pooling capex to sales ratio this year and should also result in a similar benefit in FY26. Let's now look at the Shaping Our Future transformation programme in greater detail. Starting with our customers, we have continued to enhance all facets of the customer experience, from improvements to service levels and investing in platform quality, to simplifying the way we interact with our customers and retail partners. Many of these initiatives are also being enabled by our growing digital capabilities. This includes the significant upgrades to our customer portal that have increased the efficiency and capabilities for customers to self-serve, including electronic order placement and introducing AI-driven messaging in some of our markets to provide swifter customer support. These improvements have helped lift key customer performance metrics, such as net promoter score, delivery in full and on time, and customer satisfaction scores. which have all continued on an upward trend for the past two years. Our focus on asset efficiency has boosted the resilience of our business by reducing capital intensity, lowering the cost to serve and enhancing the circularity of our assets to deliver even greater sustainability advantages. Technology investments, including pallet tracking, together with our growing data analytics capabilities and expansion of our asset recovery capabilities, have fundamentally changed how we are able to track and recover our assets. This enabled us to reduce two key asset efficiency metrics, being the pooling capex to sales ratio by eight points and uncompensated pallet losses by approximately 50%. Both measured against the FY21 baseline and well ahead of our transformation target. In network productivity, our focus has been on continuous improvement to enable our business to operate more effectively and with greater agility. The initiatives are wide ranging and include automating inspection and repair processes, optimising service centre locations to reduce transport distances, investing in platform innovation to improve durability and optimising procurement across our operations. The efficiencies from these initiatives have been critical in offsetting cost headwinds while also enabling reinvestments to enhance the customer experience through platform quality and improving the cost to serve. Finally, in our digital transformation, we have continued to extract and analyze valuable insights from the increasing amounts of data generated through our autonomous tracking devices across 34 countries and our maturing data analytics capabilities. Our advancements in digital have enabled new business opportunities, for example turning unauthorised reuse into new customers, better commercial decision making and asset efficiency improvements. The work to date in digital has also laid the foundation for the brambles of the future and our vision to connect and illuminate global supply networks. One of our strategic priorities that underpins this vision is bringing greater visibility and insights to our customers that drive efficiency, resilience and regeneration. Progress towards this vision is being made through our efforts in digital, including Serialisation Plus, which I'll provide an update on shortly. and also developing our innovative digital customer solutions. To date, we have developed three distinct solutions, which we are currently piloting with several global customers in key markets, including the US, UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Turning to our ESG achievements, I'm incredibly proud of the work we've accomplished under our 2025 sustainability programme. Over the past five years, we have strengthened our inherently circular share and reuse model through transformation to deliver greater positive impact for the planet, business and communities. Starting with safety, we have achieved our best year on record with a Brambles injury frequency rate of 2.2 in FY25. The strong safety culture we have built has allowed us to bring our biffer down in every year of our programme and it is now 56% below where we started in 2021. Another key achievement has been the progress of our waste targets under our Planets Positive Pillar, with almost 94% of sites now diverting product waste from landfill, up more than 10 percentage points from FY24, although under the 100% we were aiming to achieve by the end of FY25. We've also surpassed our target of 30% recycled or upcycled plastic in new platforms, again in FY25, by 11 percentage points. For communities, we continue to leverage our central role in supply chain and logistics expertise to support those in need through food bank partnerships globally, a program that addresses the dual challenge of food waste and food insecurity. In FY25, we again supported 20 million people receiving meals through our support for food rescue organisations, including food banks. It is always a source of great pride when Brambles and our employees are recognised for our sustainability efforts. In FY25, we have continued to reaffirm our global leadership across major ESG indices and rankings, including the Dow Jones Best in Class Indices, Corporate Knights Global 100 and Time magazine. Turning to our transformation scorecard, I won't go into the details, but as you can see, a majority of the targets we set in September 2021 have been achieved and have played a key role in driving our performance over the past few years. For the few areas where we did not quite meet our goals, action plans are in place to continue making progress with further details available in our annual report. I will now spend some time covering our Serialization Plus program, including the progress of our rollout in Chile and the operational testing underway in North America and the UK, as well as our deployment of smart assets globally. In Chile, we have fully serialized our pool and refined our operational approach, driving efficiencies through automated inline tagging. We've also introduced an effortless service model that eliminates major friction points such as pallet declarations and audits. We've been very encouraged by the positive customer response, with more than half our customers in Chile having transitioned to this new model, with the remaining customers expected to convert by the end of this calendar year. Importantly, learnings from this market have evolved our understanding of the full value potential of Serialization Plus, which we have captured in a value scorecard that I will outline shortly. In North America and the UK, we have added service center infrastructure, explored the best tagging approach and developed auto tagging technology specific to each market's requirement. We have developed and are currently testing a lower cost tracking device that has the potential of supplementing visibility and depth of insight from our current autonomous trackers in a more capital efficient way. Throughout this operational testing, we have been taking learnings from Chile and continuing to evaluate the optimal technology mix, investment requirements and potential benefits of operating a serialised pool in North America and the UK. Lastly, we have continued to scale smart assets globally, expanding their scope and deepening our use of insights from this technology. These smart assets have enabled increased visibility and control over our platforms, improved our understanding of the cost to serve, and we're exploring the potential to use these insights to create a simplified offer for smaller customers, opening new opportunities for collaboration and growth. Turning now to insights from Serialisation Plus in Chile. This slide shows the value scorecard for Chile, which is guiding our efforts as we prove the full value potential of Serialisation Plus. As you can see, we have identified five key potential value pools, each with specific sources of value that we have either already identified or will test and prove out during FY26. Starting with customer experience, we have made significant inroads with the launch of our effortless service offer. We have clear examples of reduced administrative burden for the customer, as serialised data and insights eliminate the need for pallet declarations and audits. We have also proven a significantly simplified billing model, with one example seeing a customer shrink their invoice from 12 pages to 4. Examples like this are supporting our overall customer experience with further potential to improve NPS and long-term relationships by shifting our relationship with the customer to one which is focused on growing shared value. In Chile, the effortless service offer has also delivered growth benefits with three customers having returned to us or converted to CHAP based on the effortless service offer promise. As we look ahead, the increased visibility of Serialization Plus could increase our addressable market by illuminating new lanes. In addition, we expect to develop a more accurate understanding and visibility of pallet dynamics across different segments, grounded in specifics rather than averages, generating valuable insights for existing customers while also expanding the universe of commercially viable lanes. Serialization Plus also delivers benefits across pricing and asset productivity. Smart asset insights allow us to identify and monetize reuse as well as non-compliant flows and unauthorized exchanges of our pallets. In asset efficiency, we've been able to identify and mitigate sources of loss. However, the real value potential lies in using serialization plus insights to focus on identifying sources of inefficiency and collaborating with customers to solve cycle time and damage rate challenges and to optimize their cost to serve. We see immense potential for our customers and us from this collaboration. Furthermore, we see significant opportunities from equipping our supply chain teams with granular insights to reduce the cost of our operations, which we are yet to test. With this framework in place, we will systematically test these initiatives and our focus in FY26 will be to move from insight to action across the value scorecard, explore opportunities for more dynamic pricing and determine how to deliver the effortless service offer on a global scale. Looking now at the learnings from FY25, which are also informing our areas of focus in FY26. As we progress, we are continually building on valuable areas of learning across both operations and technology. Our biggest learning to date is that we can start generating valuable customer insights from our tax pallets only after the read infrastructure is in place. This has prompted us to take a different path in the US. Rather than running investment in read infrastructure and tagging in parallel, we have re-phased our plan to prioritise investment in read infrastructure, which will materially reduce our time to value, avoid operational costs of replacing damaged tags while we're still putting read infrastructure in place, and create opportunities to improve the performance of the tag while bringing the cost down, as this is the predominant driver of CapEx. Our second set of learnings has come as we continue to refine our approach to tagging. We now have automated taggers for each market that will allow us to scale at pace. Similarly, we have developed the technology to tag for each market, adapted for performance in local conditions. Finally, we have uncovered specific challenges in our current approach in the UK, whereby the movement of our pallets back and forth between customers without returning to a service centre reduces the insight available from our data. We have identified an alternative approach involving a higher device density, created by supplementing insights from our current autonomous trackers with a lower cost option. Given these learnings, we have identified separate paths for North America and the UK. In North America, we will implement reed infrastructure to cover two-thirds of asset flows in FY26, while improving operational performance, and will continue to evaluate the optimal technology mix and investment required to serialise the pool in this market. In line with our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we continue to target a row C hurdle for serialisation plus investments of at least 15% once the market pool is fully serialised. The UK plan is different. During FY26, we will test a lower-cost tracking device to both test the viability of capturing the data required to build complete Serialization Plus insights and to explore the broader benefits of a mixed approach with lower-cost devices complementing our current autonomous tracking devices. Consequently, we'll be selective with further infrastructure investments and tagging until this trial is complete. Looking ahead to FY26, we expect sales revenue growth of between 3% and 5% through a balanced contribution from net new business wins and price. The lower end of our sales revenue growth is below our investor value proposition of a mid-single-digit increase in revenue. This reflects uncertainty about the macroeconomic environment, which could continue impacting consumer demand and, in turn, our like-for-like volumes in FY26. As you can see, this potential challenge to revenue has not impacted our expectations for strong profit growth and continued margin expansion, with underlying profit growth expectations of 8 to 11%. We also expect to deliver strong free cash flow before dividends in the range of $850 to $950 million. Finally, we are pleased to announce an on-market share buyback in FY26 of US$400 million. The Board has determined this to be the appropriate amount for FY26 given the expected levels of surplus capital available and will be subject to market and other conditions customary for a buyback. With that, I'll hand over to Joaquin to go through the financials and more details on our expectations for FY26.

speaker
Joaquin
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks Graeme and good morning everyone. Before diving into the detail of our FY25 financial performance, I wanted to touch on the key drivers of the result, as these will be recurring themes as we move through the slides that follow. In line with Graeme's comments, the key drivers of our FY25 financial performance were volume growth of 1% which reflects the strong momentum with new customers in key markets that helped to offset the impact of macroeconomic headwinds on demand from existing customers, particularly in the second half of the year. Our ongoing focus on productivity improvements across asset efficiency, supply chain and overheads, which delivered strong operating leverage with underlying profit growth of 10% and margin expansion of 1.3 percentage points. Our initiatives to improve asset efficiency, combined with improved overall pallet market conditions, continued to reduce the capital intensity of our business. In FY25, we saw a 45% reduction in uncompensated losses, resulting in a $86 million reduction in the IPEP expense, and further improvements in our pooling capex to sales ratio, which reduced to 12.3%. This improvement in capital efficiency was also the key driver of the strong free cash flow generation of over $1 billion. Collectively, these outcomes saw us deliver on our investor value proposition, generating total value creation for shareholders of 17%, with EPS growth of 14% and a dividend yield of 3%. The strong FY25 performance is testament to the progress of our transformation program and the business's ability to deliver on the items within its control. Turning to slide 15 and an overview of our full year results. On this slide, I wanted to call out the key drivers of our profit after tax and EPS performance, as I will cover revenue and underlying profit in more detail in the slides that follow. Profit after tax from continuing operations increased 13%. This was ahead of the 10% growth in underlying profit due to the reduction in net finance costs, which more than offset the higher hyperinflation charge and tax expense during the year. The 6% decrease in net finance costs reflected lower average borrowing supported by strong cash flow generation and the proceeds received from the sale of Chip India in January 2025. While tax expense increased 7%, our effective tax rate fell by 1.2 percentage points at an actual FX rate to 29.5%, reflecting the geographical mix of earnings. Profit from discontinued operations totaled $31.8 million for the year, primarily relating to the gain from the divestment of CHEP India. EPS from continuing operations of 14% included a 1 percentage point benefit from the FY25 share buyback program, which reduced the number of shares on issue. Importantly, our continued capital allocation discipline and our focus on driving productivity resulted in ROSI increasing 1.4 percentage points to 21.9%. Moving to slide 16. Group sales revenue increased 3%, coming in slightly below our FY25 guidance of 4% to 5% growth. This was due to the impact of the challenging macroeconomic environment on like-for-like volumes, with net new business and pricing in line with our expectations. Price realisation was 2%, both for the full year and the second half, reflecting the recovery of cost-to-serve increases driven by inflation. This increase was partially mitigated by improvements in asset efficiency, which reduced the level of price increases required to recover the cost to serve. Net new business growth was 2% for the year, led by strong contributions from the CHEP Americas and the CHEP Asia-Pacific segments, with additional support from the European Pallets business. We saw increased momentum towards the end of the year in key markets, with fourth quarter net new wins in the US and European pallet businesses growing by 4% and 2%, respectively. This highlights our strong value proposition relative to the Whitewood alternative and the tangible improvements we have made to the customer experience. Like-for-like volumes decreased 1%, impacted by challenging macroeconomic conditions in key markets, the timing of US harvest season and the normalisation of the average pellets on hire in Australia. These factors were partially offset by the benefits of cycling inventory optimisation in FY24. Turning to slide 17, looking at the key drivers of our underlying profit performance. Sales revenue contributed $148 million to profit growth. while North American surcharge income decreased $23 million, in line with movements in market indices for lumber, transport and fuel during the year. Plant and transport costs collectively rose by $99 million, despite savings of $207 million delivered through supply chain productivity initiatives focused on reducing transport miles through network optimisation, driving continuous improvement for operational excellence, and optimising procurement across our operations. These savings were more than offset by input cost inflation of $87 million, additional repair, transport and storage costs due to higher damage rates and excess plant stock in the US, and incremental investments to support quality, asset efficiency and digital initiatives. These investments in asset efficiency and digital initiatives, combined with improved pallet market conditions, were key contributors to lower loss rates across the group, which drove the $86 million IPEP expense reduction in FY25. Lastly, other costs decreased $24 million with overhead cost management and early benefits from productivity initiatives, more than offsetting wage inflation, and an $11 million in incremental shaping our future investments, primarily relating to the digital transformation. For more details on the corporate segment, please refer to Appendix 5e. Turning to slide 18 and the key drivers of our underlying profit margin performance. At our investor day in September 2024, we outlined our target to deliver at least two percentage points of margin expansion compared to FY24 by the end of FY28. And as you can see on this slide, we had a strong start to delivering against this target, achieving 1.3 percentage points of margin improvement this year. There were several key drivers contributing to our performance, which I'll cover now. starting with asset efficiency and the IPEP to sales ratio, which halved from 2.8% in FY24 to 1.4% in FY25 and contributed 1.4 percentage points of margin improvement in the year. This improvement is well ahead of the 0.5 plus percentage points target we had set for FY28, reflecting a faster than expected realisation of benefits from enhanced commercial frameworks deeper collaboration with retailers and expanded asset recovery capabilities we have built through transformation and enabled by digital initiatives. These have structurally improved asset control across the group, and in the absence of further advancements in digital initiatives, such as Serialisation Plus, we believe them to be fully mature, as indicated on the slide. Moving to overhead productivity, which delivered 0.8 percentage points of margin improvement in FY25. While this is also ahead of the 0.5 plus percentage point target we set for FY28, we see further opportunities to deliver efficiencies by streamlining our operations to better utilise existing resources and using technology to improve processes and support broader cost control initiatives. Finally, supply chain productivity, as measured by our plant and transport cost to sales ratio, was a 0.9 percentage point headwind to margins, despite significant savings delivered this year. That said, the table on the left shows a clear improvement in supply chain performance in the second half, as increasing benefits from supply chain initiatives minimised the margin impact as the year progressed. With an early maturity stage, supply chain productivity has the most runway left and we expect it to become a positive contributor to margin expansion from FY26 onwards. Turning to slide 19. Considering the asset efficiency improvements already achieved and opportunities across supply chain and overheads, we now expect to deliver at least three percentage points of margin expansion by FY28 compared to the FY24 baseline. an increase of one percentage point compared to the previous target. We expect supply chain productivity to be margin accretive from FY26, supported by ongoing benefits from network optimisation, operational excellence, procurement and automation initiatives. As we progress towards FY28, we expect further margin improvements as the cost headwinds linked to US excess plant stock are no longer in place and digital insights become a key enabler of further efficiencies across our operations. In asset efficiency, we expect to maintain the structural reduction in uncompensated pallet loss rates. However, we do expect IPEP to sales to increase to approximately 1.6% in FY26 and remain around these levels through to FY28, driven by an increase in the FIFO cost of pallets written off. And in overhead productivity, we have identified restructuring opportunities in FY26 that are expected to deliver a net benefit of $15 million in the year, with the full benefit of $55 million expected to be realised in FY27. Turning to slide 20, which shows the impact asset efficiency improvements have had in reducing the capital intensity of our business. as shown through both the IPEP to sales ratio reduction I mentioned earlier and the group's pooling capital expenditure to sales ratio which improved by 0.7 percentage points to 12.3% in FY25. 0.4 percentage points of this improvement was related to sales revenue growth with a balance driven by lower capital expenditure despite a 1% growth in volumes. On an accruals basis, capital expenditure decreased $20 million year on year, as a $45 million benefit from the lower capital cost of new pallets was partially offset by the impact of 1 million additional new pallets purchased this year. This increase in pallet purchases was driven by volume growth and the impact of cycling a higher capital expenditure holiday benefit in the prior year, driven by inventory optimisation. These impacts were largely offset by asset efficiency initiatives, which recovered an additional 9 million pallets in FY25 that would have otherwise needed to be replaced. In the current year, the capital expenditure holiday was limited to the US, where the business continues to carry excess plant stock levels, while the prior year also included a CapEx holiday in Europe. FY25 pulling capital expenditure to sales ratio includes an approximate 0.5 percentage point benefit from utilising excess plant stocks in the US, with a similar percentage point benefit also expected in FY26 in line with continuing to utilise excess plant stock. Moving to slide 21. These asset efficiency improvements, combined with higher earnings and lower financing and tax costs, supported strong cash flow generation, with free cash flow before dividends increasing by $212 million to $1.095 billion in FY25. Capital expenditure on a cash basis decreased $204 million year on year, supported by asset efficiency gains, lower capital cost of new pallets in the current year and the timing of pallet purchases in the prior year. Financing and tax cash payments were lower year on year, primarily driven by the timing of Australian tax instalments and timing of interest payments following the maturity and issue of European medium term notes. These benefits offset $30 million in adverse working capital movements, which were driven by natural variations in creditor payments, and a $61 million increase in other cash movements, largely related to provisions for employee benefits and increased spend on intangible assets, particularly technology initiatives aimed at enhancing customer experience, digital capabilities and supply chain activities. Importantly, excluding the CapEx benefit from utilising excess plant stocks in the US, free cash flow after dividends would still be over $1 billion, reinforcing the strength of our underlying cash flow performance. Turning to slide 22 and looking at our regional performance, starting with CHEP Americas. The Americas segment delivered sales revenue growth of 4%, with a balanced contribution from both volume and price, reflecting new customer wins in the pallet business and recovery of cost-to-serve increases across the segment. Margins improved by 0.5 percentage points, supported by significant gains in asset efficiency and productivity across supply chain and overheads. These benefits more than offset incremental costs related to repair, transport and storage, largely stemming from higher damage rates in the region and excess plant stock in the US due to the prior year inventory optimisation. These benefits also enabled investments to enhance customer experience, including quality improvements and digital investments such as Serialisation Plus. ROSI increased 0.2 percentage points as profit growth more than offset a 5% increase in average capital invested, driven by pallet purchases to support volume growth in Latin America and increased service centre lease costs in the region. Looking now at US pallet revenue on the next slide, the US pallets business delivered increased revenue growth of 3%, supported by price realisation of 2%. Price realisation was aligned with cost to serve as contractual pricing to recover input cost inflation was partly offset by lower contributions from asset efficiency linked pricing, reflecting improved loss rates during the period. Net new business volume growth of 2% was largely driven by small to medium enterprises and produce and beverage sector transitioning from Whitewood to our share and reuse solutions. This momentum accelerated in the fourth quarter of FY25, with net new business growth reaching 4%, supported by enhanced sales capability and digitally enabled initiatives that simplified and improved the customer experience. The strength in net new business wins helped offset a 1% decline in like-for-like volumes due to macroeconomic headwinds in the second half of FY25 and the impact of an earlier US harvest season, which shifted produce volumes into the fourth quarter of FY24, impacting growth in the first quarter of FY25 and creating a stronger comparative base for the fourth quarter of FY25. These headwinds more than offset the benefit of cycling inventory optimisation from the prior year. Turning to the Chep Emia region, revenue increased 2% with both price realisation and net new business wins each contributing 1%. Net new business wins were primarily driven by the European pallets business with additional contributions from the RPC and containers business. Like-for-like volumes remained flat as the impact of challenging macroeconomic conditions on European pallets and the automotive business offset growth with existing customers in Africa and the benefit of cycling inventory optimisation in FY24. Underlying profit increased 14%, with significant margin expansion of 3 percentage points, driven by asset efficiency, supply chain and overhead cost savings. These gains were partly offset by inflation and investments in customer experience and asset efficiency initiatives. This strong profit performance combined with asset efficiency benefits drove a 3.6 percentage point increase in ROCE this year. Moving on to CHEP APAC, where we delivered revenue growth of 3%, primarily driven by price realisation of 4%, to recover cost-to-serve increases and the impact of customer mix. Volumes declined 1% as new business growth of 2%, reflecting contract wins across Australia and New Zealand pallets and RPC businesses, helped offset a 3% decline in like-for-like volumes. This included the impact of lower daily hire revenue in the pallets business, as the average number of pallets on hire normalised from peak levels in the first half of FY24. Underlying profit margin improved 0.4 percentage points at actual FX rates, as supply chain and overhead cost savings were partially offset by inflation and increased repair, handling and relocation costs associated with higher pallet returns. ROSI increased 1.1 percentage points as profit growth more than offset a 1% increase in average invested capital. Turning to our outlook considerations for FY26. We expect sales revenue growth of between 3% to 5%, with a balanced contribution from volume and price. Price realisation is expected to be in line with both cost to serve increases and the level of growth realised in FY25, while volume growth will be driven by net new business wins across key markets. Given the current macroeconomic uncertainty, we anticipate a slight decline in like-for-like volumes, though as Graeme mentioned, this may vary depending on how the macroeconomic environment develops throughout FY26. We expect underlying profit growth to be between 8% and 11%, supported by continued momentum in supply chain and overhead productivity initiatives. Margin expansion is anticipated across the group and all regions. As outlined earlier, IPEP to sales is expected to increase to approximately 1.6%, primarily due to the higher FIFO unit cost per pallet. While we expect to see improvement in the overhead to sales ratio, FY26 includes overhead restructuring costs of approximately $30 million, primarily incurred in the first half of FY26, and expected to deliver a net benefit of approximately $15 million in FY26, with the benefits weighted to the second half of the year. These changes are expected to deliver an annualised benefit of approximately $55 million in FY27. Moving to slide 27. In FY26, we expect to deliver free cash flow before dividends of between $850 and $950 million, with a pooling capex to sales ratio of approximately 14% to 16%, which includes a 0.5 percentage point benefit from utilising excess pallets in the US. Non-pulling capital expenditure is expected to be between $250 and $300 million, including digital investments of $90 million, primarily relating to Serialisation Plus, as well as supply chain investments relating to automation and quality enhancements. Dividends are expected to be franked at 20%, which is a 10 percentage point down from the current 30%. and in FY26, quarterly sales trading updates will be discontinued. Lastly, in summary, I would like to reiterate our commitment to our investor value proposition, which you will see on the left-hand side of the chart. Reflecting on FY25, we are pleased with our performance, which reflects meaningful progress across key areas of our business, underpinned by the Shaping Our Future transformation program. While the macroeconomic environment remains challenging, we're continuing to deliver and focus on the items we control, which is delivering net new business wins, enhancing productivity and realising efficiency gains. These actions are supporting the operating leverage across the group and underpinning strong, sustainable free cash flow generation. Combined with our strong financial position, this has enabled us to announce further capital management initiatives in FY26, consistent with our investor value proposition and focus on shareholder value creation. We exit FY25 with positive momentum across the business, reinforcing our confidence in the outlook for FY26. I will now hand over to the operator for Q&A.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press the star key then 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the star key then 2. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question is from Andre from UBS. Go ahead, thank you.

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