EROAD Limited

Apologies for those who are joining us now. We'll just kick off, so I've been a bit late. And good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for FY26 annual half year results. I'm Mark Varner, CEO of Aeroad. I'm delighted to be introducing Keir McGuigan, Aeroad's new CFO who commenced at Aeroad in September. I'll start by outlining our performance for the half. Then Keir will take you through the financials. We'll then finish with outlook and guidance before opening up for questions. Turning to the key numbers for the half, free cash remains a real strength for ERO, coming at $6.2 million. We've delivered consistent cash generation over multiple periods based on operational discipline that's been built into the business. Reported revenue was just over $99 million, with 3.3% of the steady performance across the installed base and contributions from ongoing rollouts. Annualised recurring revenue increased to over $178 million, up 6.9% or 3% in constant currency. Growth continues to come from higher value subscriptions and enterprise expansion. Normalised EBIT was $2.5 million, lower than the prior period due to some higher costs and lower R&D capitalisation. Keira will step through these movements in more detail in the finance update. The results show a business that remains strong and resilient across its core fundamentals. First, our cash generation continues to be a standout. Free cash flow was over 6 million, or almost 17 million on a normalised basis, once the one-off 4G upgrade costs are removed. With that programme finishing this year, the underlying cash profile becomes much clearer and provides greater flexibility in how we allocate our investments. Liquidity remains strong at over $62 million, giving us confidence in the pace and focus of our investment decisions. Second, we've maintained strategic focus on the e-RUC customer opportunity in New Zealand. As the country moves towards universal electronic reduced charging, we're preparing the technical, commercial and operational components needed to support a nationwide rollout, with clear relevance to emerging global models as well. Third, we're focused on regional market conditions. New growth investment has been directed to Australia and New Zealand, where the near-term return profile is strongest. North America remains important, but slower conditions mean we're managing to spend carefully while preserving capability. The impairment of goodwill in other assets in North America of $135 million, recordingly half, relates to the previously signalled softer economic conditions. the increased competition, the non-renewable large US customer, and our focus on ANZ. And finally, our customer focus and operational capability have continued to improve. Partnerships have been strengthened and boosted by the ramp-up of our Manila offers, providing our customers with enhanced responsiveness and support. These improvements are translating directly into outcomes, including the newly inked Enterprise Agreement Cleanaway, valued at $5 million in ARR, once fully deployed. Turning to our sustainable growth across our poor markets, let's start with free cash flow. We've delivered four halves of sustained reported cash generation. That consistency gives us the flexibility to invest selectively and accelerate where market conditions are most favourable, while also evidencing that management takes a prudent approach to investment. In Australia, our enterprise momentum is driving sustained double-digit annualised recurring revenue growth. Once the new clean rail enterprise deal is fully implemented, ARR in Australia is expected to grow significantly. And finally, the eRoad opportunity presents a global opportunity for eRoad, which we will dig into this opportunity over the next few slides. I am incredibly excited to be talking about New Zealand's move towards a universal electronic road user charger system, and the direction of travel is very, very clear for eRoad. The New Zealand Government has committed to transitioning all vehicles, including petrol and light vehicles, to e-ruck. A series of bills and consultation steps are already scheduled through 2025, with implementation targeted for 2027. E-road is deeply embedded in the current system, having pioneered e-ruck for heavy fleets, and we now facilitate around $946 million in annual ruck collection for the New Zealand Government. That experience combined with our established regulatory relationships and platform capability puts us in a strong position as the country moves to a fully electronic usage-based model. New Zealand is moving early on this transition and the work underway positions us well for what is coming next. What we see in New Zealand is part of a broader shift starting to emerge internationally. As fuel tax revenue declines and EV uptake grows, governments are looking for a more sustainable way to fund their road networks, and usage-based charges come into focus in several larger markets. Our priority is to get it right in New Zealand first. As the market moves in earliest, it gives us the chance to prove capability at a national scale, while policy conversations elsewhere continue to develop. At the same time, the long-term opportunity extends beyond New Zealand's New Zealand has 4.7 million vehicles. Australia has around four times that amount, with approximately 20 million vehicles, while the US is around 60 times the size of New Zealand, with more than 280 million vehicles. Those markets are actively examining alternatives to fuel head size, and the scale involved is significant. And this includes the Eastern Transport Coalition's mileage usage-based pilots in the United States, which E-Road has participated in in the past. So while the immediate focus is on New Zealand, our line of sight is global. The preparation underway is intended to ensure we're well positioned to take part in those conversations as they progress. As the New Zealand Government works towards design of the future system, we've been preparing so that we're in a position to move quickly once the requirements are confirmed. A key part of that preparation has been testing different ways the service could be delivered, depending on how the Government chooses to structure the programme. That includes early prototyping of consumer pathways, exploring how the existing e-road platform might support the scale and simplicity required for light vehicle users. We've also been building a clear view of the commercial considerations, the economics, the potential pricing envelopes, and what a high-volume operating model would require. This work ensures that any price you take is both viable and scalable when the program rolls out nationwide. And alongside the core charging model, we're looking at adjacent opportunities that may become relevant as policies develop, such as time of use in concept, tolling, and other services that could logically set nets to distance-based charging over time. The intent of all this preparation is to make sure we're technically ready, commercially informed, and operationally capable when governments finalise the shape and timing of the programme. And New Zealand offers the opportunity to prove capability at a national scale. Doing that well keeps options open in other markets, as users-based models continue to evolve globally. Now on to the regions. New Zealand delivered a stable and disciplined half, with growth across revenue, annualised recurring revenue, and ARPU. Annualised recurring revenue increased over 6% year-on-year to $93.2 million, supported by consistent demand from our installed base, and continued uptake of higher-value services. Revenue grew almost 5% to over $52 million, and EBITDA reached over $35 million, underpinned by strong asset retention at 92%. After we lifted 4.4%, reflecting the mid-shift towards higher-value opportunities and the final stages of churn associated with the 4G upgrade program. Importantly, most unit reductions appeared to come from fleet resizing rather than actual customer losses. Around 88% of the analysed recurring revenue impact from unit reductions relates to customers adjusting fleet size due to broader economic conditions. These relationships remain in place. An expansion in upsell activity across the portfolio more than offset the reduction, giving us a net positive analysed recurring revenue position. A quick update on our 4G programme. Australia's switch is now complete, and across ANZ, as of the half year, 87% of all units out there were e-rode and were 4G compatible. And as of today, this has now reached approximately 90% being 4G compatible. The remaining work is in New Zealand, but one is scheduled to switch off 3G in December of this year. The final activity is planned for the second half and remains fully funded from operating cash flow, with no change to total programming costs. With completion now firmly in sight, we're looking forward to retiring this slide going forward. North America did a soft half, and our numbers show that. Analyst recurring revenue reduced to just under $70 million, down almost 6% on a constant currency basis year-on-year. This was driven by a normal churn that wasn't offset by much new growth in the period. Customer decisions have slowed, and many fleets have taken on a more cautious stance on new investment given tariffs, higher operating costs, and a broader uncertainty in the freight sector. Redmi was $39 million, down 1.5%, and EBITDA was $9 million. APU increased 4.1% as the mix continued towards higher-value contracts with lower-value units coming out of the base. As previously signalled, North America will be impacted in Q4 by the non-renewal of a large customer of around 10,000 connections. However, North America remains a vital region for Ebrode. Our focus is on protecting the core by supporting our customer base. maintaining capability and aligning spending conditions so the region is ready to scale when momentum returns. And finally, Australia. Australia delivered a strong first half with sustained growth across revenue, ARR and EBITDA. A&I's recurring revenue increased by 30% year-on-year to over $15 million, driven by continued enterprise expansion and high adoption of safety and compliance products. Revenue rose 23%, while EBITDA increased to $3.7 million. Retention sits very high at 95.5%, and ARPU grew 8.3%, supported by product improvements and pricing actions. The standout development of this period was the recently announced Cleanway Enterprise Partnership, covering a national fleet of more than 3,000 EV vehicles. This cleanway partnership is a significant milestone for E-Road and the Australian market. It's a five-year agreement covering the full safety and vehicle monitoring platform across Cleanway's national heavy vehicle fleet. The solution includes AI cameras with dual connections, fatigue and rollover detection, critical events monitoring, and satellite connectivity for remote options and operations. Deployment has already begun with full rollout expected by November 2026. The agreement represents $5 million of analysed recurring revenue in Australian dollars, with fixed annual escalators over the term. And during its tendering, CleanAway conducted a comprehensive evaluation process. The partnership strengthens our position in the Australian enterprise segment and reinforces the strategic relevance of the investment we've made in product and operational capability. Over the last three years, eRata secured renewals or wins with a number of marquee Australian businesses, including Borrell, Woolworths, Programmes, Venture, Downer, and now Clean Away. This underscores how significant the Australian market is becoming, and ERA is committed to focusing on further growth here. I'll pause and hand over to Ciara to take you through the financials for the half.

Great. Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. From a financial perspective, we have continued to execute on the four pillars of our financial strategy. As a reminder, these are position the company to generate cash, maintain operating leverage in the cost space, invest in innovation to drive growth and maintain a strong financial position. As Mark mentioned, first half revenue of 99.1 million is growth year and year of 3.3%. This was driven by annual price increases and an enterprise rollout over the last 12 months, with a strong performance in our SaaS business, where annual recurring revenue also grew by over 5.3%. This underscores the resilience in a challenging environment and the meaningful value that we are offering to customers. Following the recent clean-away announcement, the rollout is underway. We began procuring inventory over the previous months and expect to have approximately 2 million in inventory and hardware built up by year-end. About one-third of the units are expected to be deployed by year-end, contributing 1.8 million in revenue for the period. The remaining units are scheduled for rollout by November 2026. you will see that we reported a loss in the financial statement of $133.9 million. This was entirely driven by an impairment of the North American asset of $134.7 million. If we remove this, plus the 4G hardware upgrade program, our normalized EBIT becomes $2.5 million, and this compares to $4.7 million in the half last year. EBIT was impacted by lower capitalization of R&D. This will normalize or is normalizing as we exit the year and the accelerated amortization of a large customer termination in North America. On to the next slide. Operating costs. So the chart on the left illustrates that operating costs were 71% of revenue. These include costs as we ramp up our investment in the Philippines office. Last year also included a one-off benefit to transaction revenue due to a change in the GST treatment of RUC transaction fee income. If we exclude these one-off items, operating margins would be broadly in line with last year. Remembering, of course, that by building our engineering and customer support teams in Manila, we are growing our capability at a lower price point to support operating leverage. As a technology business where transition and change are to be expected, it goes without saying that we will continue to relentlessly focus on cost discipline. Operational efficiency. The chart on the left, our costs to acquire remain stable as a percentage of revenue. Capitalised costs to acquire were lower at the start of this year, which we expect to increase, which will reflect the commissions relating to the closing of the clean away deal in Australia. The chart on the right, our cost to support our customers has increased as a percentage of revenue, as we have increased our service and support costs slightly to build capacity to support large enterprise rollouts. I think we skipped a slide of research on this. Now, turning to free cash flow. We are pleased to have generated the significant free cash flow to the firm of 6.2 million in the period, which illustrates the strength of our core business as Mark referred to. This is the fourth consecutive reporting period that we've delivered positive free cash flow. Once we removed the temporary impact of the 4G upgrade program, the company generated 16.7 million in normalized free cash flow, which you can see illustrated on the chart. This normalisation shows the true underlying performance of our business. As the 4G upgrade programme is completed by the end of this calendar year and we continue to deliver on our strategy, we expect to see free cash flow continue to accelerate. There was an inventory build-up in the first half of the year to support our 4G upgrade programme, which we expect to normalise in the second half as the programme comes to a close. Subsequent to balance date, inventory was purchased to support the rollout of the clean away contract, which is now underway. We also saw the benefit of 2.8 million related to the rollout of our annual billing programme in Australia, New Zealand and a large North American account. We continue to see the benefit of this shift in the second half of the year. So, turning to our research and development spend. In the first half of FY26, our R&D expenditure totaled 19 million, which represents 19% of revenue. This is broadly consistent with last year, as you can see in the chart. Our R&D efforts have been more heavily focused on platform scaling, which is not capitalisable. We expect our future R&D investment to be more balanced towards innovation and growth initiatives, which will be capitalisable, with a specific call-out to work completed to win the clean-away deal. We believe this type of customer-led innovation is low-risk and generates long-term value as we deploy these features across our customer base. Liquidity. We have maintained our disciplined approach to debt, repaying 2.5 million of outstanding facilities with cash generated from operations. reinforcing our strong balance sheet. Our liquidity remains significant at 62.3 million, providing a high degree of optionality. In addition, we're progressing plans to extend our facilities to ensure we are optimally positioned to execute on forthcoming growth opportunities. With that, Mark, I'll hand back to you.

Thank you, Ciara. I'll now turn to the outlook and guidance for the rest of the year. Our outlook for the second half of the year is consistent with the updated guidance provided to the market in October as part of the strategic refocus. New growth investment has been directed towards Australia and New Zealand, where we see the strongest near-term return profile. North America remains an important market, but the US environment continues to be slow with cautious customer investment. Our approach is to retain the base, maintain capability and align spend to the pace of the market. For FY26, we are reaffirming the guidance we set in October. Revenue of $197 to $203 million, ARR of $175 to $183 million, and a free cash flow yield of between 5% and 8% of revenue, normalised with a temporary impact of the 4G upgrade programme. And finally, we plan to hold Investor Day in March to take you through our product roadmap and our long-term strategic and financial targets. Further details will follow closer to the time. And with that, we'll now open to any questions.

Thanks. The queue is open for questions. The first question is, noting the reduction in units in the U.S., how many of those remaining units are part of the core strategy?

So if you look at the US unit base that we have, about 40% of them are cold chain customer units. So a good chunk of it is. The rest are in other verticals, including transport, and also ones who are particularly focused on health and safety. E-Rate has a really strong product suite in health and safety, and so we're really confident that we can focus on retaining those other customers as well. If you're looking forward, in U.S., there's over 700,000 cold chain trailers in that market, and of which only half of them have any technology in them to date, which means that it provides a great greenfield option for e-work to grow into that space as economic conditions rebound in that market.

Second part to that question is there was a slight reduction in the unit count in New Zealand. How much of that was due to economic factors, and how much of that was due to the 4G hardware upgrade?

We believe a big chunk of that, and in fact I think we mentioned over 80% was linked to customers reducing the size of their fleets as opposed to leaving everyone in entirety. And that suggests it's largely driven by economic conditions. New Zealand's had a rather challenging economic period over the last three years, which impacts particularly the freight sector. And so we are seeing customers park vehicles up, but we expect as economic conditions improve, those customers who have largely stayed with us will add additional units into their fleets.

And a question about the free cash flow. Strong results at $16.7 million of free cash flow normalized for the half. The guidance suggests a midpoint of $13 million. Wanting to understand what that might mean for the second half of the year and also how to think about the trend for FY27 in terms of whether that will be a year to harvest the free cash flow or to reinvest in the EROC opportunity.

And so, yes, I would agree with all of those points. It was a highlight. And the guidance, your point about guidance is correct where you see it sitting broadly. There's obviously timing shifts between the two halves. We've got some big inventory purchases and then cash goes out in the different halves. So there is an element of resettlement between the two halves. In regards to the point to FY27, we'll be obviously talking about that more towards the end of the financial year. We're going through quite a bit of planning, but our intention is certainly to be investing to leverage the EROC opportunity. And that's probably where we land at the moment.

There's a lot of questions in the queue about the EROC opportunity. I'm going to list them out and we'll address them all at once. On the EROC opportunity, Questions about the size of the opportunity, how much service revenue is up for grabs, what the operating margins might be versus fleet management margins, what the revenue model might be, was it a fixed fee or a paid percentage of the RUC collected, how capital intensive the opportunity might be, whether it's free cash flow positive from year one, and what the potential opportunity is in Australia following this rollout or deployment in New Zealand.

Great. Thank you, Jason. So we're going to go through sequentially. So first, there's five of the opportunity. In New Zealand right now, EROs can service about a million vehicles using EROs. Of that, there's about 200,000 heavy vehicles, and we have a substantial number of them already. And there's about 800,000 EVs and diesel vehicles already need to pay rough or some form. Some of them have e-road technology in them, but a lot of them are passenger vehicles. So right now we're looking at what sort of passenger consumer-focused applications we can launch for them to really target that part of the market. In addition to those one million vehicles, there's an additional three and a half, about 3.7 million vehicles, which are petrol. And the government's indicated they want to move all those petrol vehicles starting in 2027 over to ERUD. So we're absolutely focused on winning a substantial part of that share of the market when it comes online. In terms of operating margins and revenue model, those are things we're working through right now. Now, ERUD is looking at whether we go direct or we work with partners across a range of sectors, including telco, insurance, Jen Taylors and the like, there's a whole bunch of opportunities for us around how we service that segment. And as part of that, we'll work through what the financial model could look like. And as we indicated in the past, we are looking in March to provide an investor update to go into that in a bit more detail as we have a bit more certainty around what that model looks like. I'll probably reserve for March also the free cash flow impact and what it would mean from year one. But as you've seen historically over the last four quarters, sorry, four halves, sorry, we've provided reported free cash flow positive halves and we're going to continue to be focused on making sure that whatever we invest here is going to have a strong return for our shareholders in the short to medium term. In terms of Australian opportunity, so the Treasurer in Australia has noted that this is an area that they clearly need to get into. There's lots of pressures from the states, in particular New South Wales, who've indicated they want some form of road charging in the market by 2027 to help sort of fund their infrastructure challenges. And Victoria, likewise, are keen to do something too. So we expect movement over the next year or two in the Australian market to re-unlock the EROC opportunity there. More broadly, we're aware of RUC being rolled out in Hawaii recently. There are other states in the U.S. looking at it too. And eRoads also participated in past, and we've been invited back around looking at some pilots on the eastern corridor in the U.S. around how eRUC could be used to fund roading up there. So there's no shortage of opportunities, but we're focused on doing New Zealand First really, really well. We'll come to the market hopefully in March with a bit more detail around what that would look like from a cost and revenue perspective. But we are continuing to watch this space very carefully and explore the opportunities it presents.

Great. Thank you. There's a question about the current pipeline. that's in place following the landing of the CleanAway deal. Was that in your pipeline and what remains?

Sure. So, yes, CleanAway was in the pipeline. You may recall, investors, that at the beginning of the year, we used to have five enterprise customers in the pipeline, three in North America and two in Australia. CleanAway was one. There's another Australian customer that, as well as being a big bank, they're more of a customer who's got a large subcontractor fleet that we're working our way through over time. In North America, the other three opportunities we've deferred in two future years, just with the economic conditions we're seeing there now, they're quite challenged, and it's sort of deferring buying decisions. On top of that, though, we are still exploring other pipeline opportunities. In New Zealand, with the recent all-of-government win E-Roads had, we've seen a number of government fleets really interested in E-Roads' solution in this market. And also in Australia, given the opportunity in that market and the size of it, it also – we don't – particularly our very strong competitors, our well-resourced competitors in the Australian market, we're seeing more and more customers or potential customers come to us. More on that sort of enterprise level, between $100,000 and $1 million, as opposed to something in that large enterprise, which is Greenway, which is above, obviously, $1 million, being a $5 million ARR opportunity.

Thanks. And the customer that didn't renew in the U.S., wondering when that phase is off.

So we're working with a customer at the moment around their transition planning. We don't have a definitive date yet, but we especially have them before the end of the financial year.

And on the U.S. business, would you be looking to grow that going forward? At what rate? Who is expected to lead that? And what will the cost allocation generally look like?

So, starting with the first question in terms of – sorry, Jason, say the first part of the question again.

Is it – what kind of growth are you expecting out of that business going forward? And the cost allocation and who's going to be leading that business?

Sure. So in terms of growth expectations, we expect with the rollout of this customer, revenue will be backwards both this year and probably into FY27 as well. In the medium term, we're looking at growth around 3% and greater than that. We expect it to pick up over time as the economy rebounds back We'll certainly be focusing, though, on the cold chain opportunity, which should have a strong growth opportunity and ideally pushing towards low double digits or high single digit growths in 28 and 29. In terms of who will lead it, right now we're kicking off a executive general manager search for the US market around helping to drive sales marketing with a particular focus, obviously, on the cold chain experience we're key here to.

A question on the cold chain market. How much of the opportunity exists in New Zealand and how much has been captured? And same in the Australian market.

So we believe there's about a million cold chain trailers in the three markets we operate in. So about 300,000 dispersed between Australia and New Zealand, of which between 20,000 to 40,000 are based in New Zealand based on the type of track we're talking about. There's relatively low penetration in the cold chain trailer space in New Zealand. It's not one that's particularly been a strong adopter of technology, so we believe we can target existing customers. Indeed, we recently announced, or internally at the very least, we've won two cold chain trailer customers in New Zealand recently who were already existing customers with the front of our cab part of our business. In Australia, we see greater growth there. Woolworths are one of our cold chain customers in that market, and we're going to be looking to see who else we can leverage from. around the culture and opportunity, giving us a very hot continent over there.

Great. And final question, what proportion of your customers are now on upfront billing? And what is your target in the future?

So currently we have about 5% of our customer base on annual bill, and that brings in just under 10% of our revenue. Our ambition is still to go for a strong penetration of annual bill. We won't hit the 40% in November 26, but it's still very front and centre for us.

Great. That's it for the questions. Thank you, Jason. And I just want to close by saying, as you can see, we're disciplined in how we're allocating capital. We're focused on a market that's shown the strongest returns, and we're preparing well for the structural opportunities ahead in ERAC. Thank you, and have a great rest of your day.