Oceania Healthcare Ltd

I would now like to hand the conference over to Suzanne Dorvac, Chief Executive Officer, and Catherine Waugh, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Back in mid-September, we talked you through our longer-term strategy and the work underway to prepare the organisation for FY27 to FY31. At that time, we were clear that FY26 would be a stabilisation year centred on consistent execution across our priority areas. Today's interim result is about where we are right now and, importantly, the early progress we are seeing as we deliver the first phase of the strategy. When we met in September, we set out our three priority areas for the stabilisation phase of our strategy. First is sales performance. We have strengthened discipline and visibility across the sales process, tightened conversion pathways and improved how we manage applications and inquiry. This is about building repeatable systems that lift performance across the network. Second is business excellence. This includes workplace efficiencies, more disciplined procurement, improvements in rostering and using technology to support a more consistent operating model. These initiatives underpin the uplift you will see in today's results. The third is capital management. Our focus is on reducing debt, releasing capital from development stock, progressing investments and ensuring we pace development in a disciplined way. This strengthens the balance sheet and supports long-term value creation. These three priority areas remain the foundation of the work underway. Because our strategy update was launched in September, today's results reflect the very start of these initiatives. So building on these strategic priorities, I want to give you a brief summary of the half before we move into the detail. Across FY26, we are seeing promising momentum in each of our priority areas. In sales performance, applications and occupancy have lifted steadily with clear traction at our key developments. The helier has now reached nearly 55% occupancy and Franklin pre-sales have progressed to 35% for stage one. In business excellence, underlying EBITDA increased 23% to roughly $42 million, supported by improved care profitability and $4 million of cost savings realised. Care EBITDA per bed increased 45%, reflecting the strength of our care platform and the initial benefits of operational improvements. And in capital management, gearing has reduced to within our target range. Operating cash flow has increased 12% and we have released a net $40 million from development stock since March. We also have four divestments progressing through to due diligence, which will support further capital release. So overall, this half shows a steady uplift in performance and the initial impact of the work we've put in place. The early indications are encouraging as we continue to stabilise the business and position it for the next phase of the strategy. Turning to the financial summary, the key items I want to highlight here are total comprehensive income and underlying EBITDA because these reflect the impact of the operational improvements we have spoken about. Total comprehensive income increased to over $40 million driven by fair value movements across the property portfolio. This is a steady operating result in the current environment. Proforma underlying EBITDA increased 23% to roughly $42 million when allowing for the impact of the closure of the Wesley Institute of Nursing Education. This improvement was driven by stronger care profitability, initial cost savings and the lift in sales performance we saw through the second quarter. Total sales volumes reached 271 units, which is right in the middle of our guidance range, demonstrating improved execution and market traction. Operating cash flow increased 12%, net tangible assets increased to $1.57 per share and net debt decreased by 19 million. These are clear indicators that the stabilisation work underway is taking hold and that the business is now beginning to show more consistent performance across its four areas. Let me now turn to sales performance where we are seeing some of the clearest signs of momentum. I'll start with the Helia, a site I know many of you will be waiting to hear about. This is where the progress over the past few weeks has been most visible. At November 20th, occupancy stands at 54.5%. Since period end, we have seen a meaningful increase in applications and that uplift is the direct result of the work we put in six months ago. We refined the product fit, embedded learnings from our marketability project and ran successful campaigns to target our strongest customer segments. These insights are now part of our internal IP and we are applying them across to other villages. To give a sense of momentum, the range of sales applications has lifted from fewer than two per month between March and September to approximately four per month since the start of October. We're still targeting being able to reach the point of full development cash recovery by March 2026. That remains our clear focus. We're pleased to see this momentum building at one of our premier villages. Moving to Franklin, where we are seeing encouraging progress. For the first time, we have achieved meaningful pre-sales ahead of completion, with stage one now at 35%, including a further application this morning. This is a clear indication that we are building the right product in the right location and that there is strong market demand for what we are delivering. The opening of the lodge in the coming weeks is a critical milestone and an important catalyst. It gives prospective residents something tangible to walk through and we expect inquiry and conversion to strengthen once people can experience the community centre firsthand. The team has brought this stage in on time and within budget, demonstrating our development capability and our discipline. So in short, Franklin is tracking well and the trajectory is encouraging as we head towards first stage completion. Over at Meadowbank, which many of you visited during the Investor Day tour, we have also seen a very encouraging start. Occupancy in the new building has been tracking ahead of expectations since the final stage of the redevelopment was completed in June. This stage added 40 dementia suites, and occupancy has reached over 50% within the first four months. It is a strong initial response for a new dementia development of this scale. The clinical team has done an excellent job establishing a new service and supporting families through this transition. This redevelopment completes the sixth and final stage of our Meadowbank site, and it is pleasing to see such strong engagement from residents and from the community. Despite a challenging housing market, our new sales performance and development margins have remained solid. What matters here is the resilience in demand for our product, particularly in care suites, where we continue to see strong sales and improving occupancy across key sites. Turning to resales, which also performed well. Total resale activity reached 180 units with care suites making up the majority of the volume. That reflects the continued depth of demand in this part of the portfolio. Villa resales remain steady and we saw a lift in apartment resales as more recent developments move into their normal turnover cycle. What is notable this half is the balance across the resale mix. Our targeted marketing campaigns and strategic incentives have been effective in accelerating both resale and development stock turnover, which you can see reflected in these results. And finally, an update on development stock. In this half, we sold $65 million with $50 million of this from stock completed over 12 months ago. This is a solid step forward in clearing our order inventory. The progress was made. even after adding $25 million in new inventory during the period. What this demonstrates is real momentum in our settlements and sales thanks to stronger sales discipline and targeted marketing. Looking ahead to the development pipeline, our focus is on maintaining discipline, preserving optionality and sequencing projects in a way that supports the balance sheet. A key part of this discipline is pacing delivery. We're targeting a maximum of approximately 60 units at a single location at any one time. This keeps development aligned with demand, supports settlement flow and helps manage working capital. This keeps development aligned with demand. In short, we are progressing development in a measured and financially disciplined way that supports our capital positions. Alongside our development work, we are also progressing the business excellence program And I'll now hand over to Catherine to talk you through more of this.

Thanks, Suzanne, and good morning, everyone. When we spoke to you at the Investor Day, we discussed the broader cost-out program with a $20 million annualised impact from FY27. What we're focusing on today is what's already visible in the half-year results and what you can expect in the full year. We are seeing clear operational uplift through workplace efficiencies, early improvements in rostering, stronger procurement discipline, and the early benefits of the technology and process changes now embedded. The benefits of those shifts are already flowing through to the underlying result. So let me step you through that. On slide 14, we provide a normalised result. This has been adjusted for the impact of the closure of our Wesley Institute of Nursing Education and divestments. And it shows what's been happening in our core operations. The reconciliation to our statutory profit is in the appendices. While village earnings to date have remained steady, care profitability has improved materially, with care EBIT DARPA bed up over 40%. This demonstrates the strength and consistency of our care operations. In the corporate segment, we've completed the restructure and embedded the tighter operating disciplines, which positions the organisation well for our next phase of growth. 4 million of cost savings have been realised through this process during the half, and we remain on track to deliver 13.2 million during FY26. The corporate restructure was completed over July and August, so the first half captured only one to two months of the benefit. Together with occupancy, sales and revenue opportunities, These cost improvements contributed to pro forma underlying EBITDA increasing 23% to $41.9 million for the six months. While we won't go through this on the call today, further detail on our care and village earnings, including our premium revenue breakdown, is available in the appendix. Care is a core strength for Oceana, particularly our care suite model. We now have six sites running with workplace efficiency initiatives, including smarter rostering and streamlined shifts. As we roll out these improvements to another 20 sites, we expect further lift in EBITDA. As an example, at our Eversleigh site in the Hawke's Bay, we have reduced overtime and supported stronger resident outcomes, including higher satisfaction and greater continuity of care, which has set benchmarks for our other sites. Our mature villages are operating above 94% occupancy. Even small increases in our occupancy will mean a significant upside for the group. EBITDA upper bed is up strongly on last half, driven by occupancy growth, tighter cost management and the continued success of our care suite offer. Care suite development margins have also risen, reflecting the strong demand and the quality of our product. With the next wave of workplace efficiency initiatives underway, we're confident of even more progress in the second half. The corporate function is now right-sized and operating with much greater discipline, and the numbers show this. Corporate costs have reduced following the right-sizing completed in the first half, with full benefits flowing through in the second half. That streamlining, combined with automation and simplification, is positioning the function to support growth with greater discipline. During the half, we reduced these corporate staff costs by around 20%, supported by a combination of role consolidation and more efficient processes. What is important here is not just the cost reduction, but the capability and focus that the corporate team now has. The function is set up to support growth with clearer processes, stronger discipline and a more effective operating rhythm. Our team are now focused on execution, ensuring a minimum annualised 20 million cost out from FY27. Importantly, despite the reductions in streamlining, our recent engagement check-in shows the corporate team remains highly committed to the work ahead. The new employee value proposition is supporting that. helping us attract and retain purpose-driven talent as we move to the next phase. I'll move now to capital management. It's absolutely central to all that we do, ensuring appropriate capital management and working to the best return possible for our shareholders. So let's start this section with where we're positioned today. Moving to slide 18 for a view of our balance sheet. As you can see in the table on the top right-hand side of the slide, we have a strong headroom of 116 million available on current facilities. Moving to the bottom right, all of our covenants are met. In that bottom right table, you will see gearing is 34.8% within our target range and our ICR is at 2.5 times. Overall, our balance sheet is well positioned with further debt reduction planned, giving us the flexibility we need as development activity progresses. I'd like now to step through how we're planning to further reduce debt in the short to medium term and continue to strengthen our balance sheet. As I said, we finished the half with gearing at 34.8%, and this slide shows the levers that will help us reduce that further. Please note, this is an illustration rather than a forecast. It's intended to show the scale of the material reductions that are possible, not the timing. Our main lever is the sell-down of unsold development stock. which represents around 104 million of capital that can be released as settlements occur. Alongside this, we have two other sources of capital release, the sale of bought back stock and planned future divestments. Together, these could contribute a further 80 million. When you combine all of our levers, we demonstrate the magnitude of what can be achieved through disciplined execution. I want to emphasise that while we remain fully committed to our gearing target, We'll continue to operate responsibly and with discipline, ensuring capital management strengthens the balance sheet while still affording us plenty of room to grow. By maintaining a prudent gearing range, we put ourselves in the best position to invest sensibly and seize opportunities as they arise, supporting both stability and future growth. Divestments remain another important lever in strengthening the balance sheet and supporting the stabilisation plan. Across the half, we continue to progress a number of properties through due diligence and several are now moving through to final stages. We have been very clear that we will only divest non-core sites and that discipline has guided our discussions. We are targeting around 40 million of proceeds from the current subset of four sites and the timing will depend on completion of due diligence and meeting our return thresholds. I'm very much focused on being able to give you a meaningful update at the year end. These proceeds will further support debt reduction and give us additional flexibility as we move into FY27. Free cash flow is a new measure we introduced this year to give clearer visibility of the underlying cash generation of the business. You can see on the slide that the trajectory has improved since March as operating performance lifts, development stock reduces and capital discipline throws through the results. It's worth noting that around 30 million of AURA receivables from resales were outstanding at balance date, and a significant portion of that, just under 14 million, has already been collected since period end. Had all of that resale cash settled by 30 September, we would already be in a positive free cash position. The timing of these settlements can impact the measure in any given period, but the underlying trajectory remains positive and continues to strengthen. The improvement is putting us back on a path where over time and when the market turns, we will be in a position to resume dividend payments. The trend you see here is a clear indicator that our stabilisation phase is working and will provide a further update at the FY26 results. Moving to the financials, I'll now take you through the statutory gap position. These are high-level statutory positions and more detail is also contained within the appendices. Profit and loss. Looking at the profit and loss, the key movements reflect the themes we've already covered and they have resulted in an over three times increase in our total comprehensive income. Finance costs have increased this period due to interest in relation to completed developments. This will reduce as we sell down our development stock. This not only helps our cash position moving forward, but also our statutory profit and loss given the interest on debt associated with completed developments is expensed. Pleasingly, we have seen steady increases to our property portfolio, with a $61 million increase this period. Overall, the profit and loss show steady improvement across the core parts of the business, with further uplift expected as the second half initiatives land. Moving to the cash flow. Operating cash flow has increased this half. While there is a one-off GST refund relating to development expenditures, The underlying themes reflect stronger sales activity, higher care occupancy and the early benefits of the cost measures now in place. As the development stock reduces and as the settlements continue to flow, we expect operating cash generation to strengthen even further during the second half. On the investment side, the cash outflows have reduced sharply with Medibank now complete and only Franklin remaining under construction. This will decrease even further as we move to March. Overall, our cash flow performance is improving and we expect the trend to strengthen. And finally, our balance sheet. We remain in good shape with total assets over $3 billion. Gearing is mentioned earlier as 34.8% within our target range and we have $116 million of headroom. We are positioned well to continue reducing debt while maintaining flexibility to invest where it makes most sense for our growth. I'll now hand back to Suzanne, who will outline our priorities for the remainder of FY26. Thank you, Catherine.

Before we wrap up, I want to bring this back to how we will measure progress from here. Earlier in the year, we outlined the key areas we would track as part of the stabilisation phase. What you see on this slide are the measures we will report against as we move through the strategy period. This slide does three things. First, it establishes a clear starting point. The first half gives us a consistent reference to measure progress across sales, development, care, engagement, gearing, and cash flow. Second, it drives accountability and focus. Tracking results against our measures keeps us aligned to our stabilised, optimised growth pathway that we set out in September. And third, it enables transparent reporting. It shows measurable improvement over time in occupancy, development performance, gearing, and free cash flow. To close out, I want to highlight where our focus will be for the remainder of FY26. Across sales performance, the priority is continuing to lift sales cadence to reduce unsolved development and aged stock. In business excellence, we will keep driving occupancy, and deliver the $13.2 million of savings targeted for the year. And we remain focused on divestments, reducing debt, and further reducing gearing as we recycle capital into the right developments at the right time. So in summary, we have a clear plan with clear metrics and momentum that is building for the next phase. Thank you again for your time today. I'd now like to open the floor to any questions.

Thank you. A reminder that if you are participating in the teleconference, please ensure your webcast audio is muted to avoid an echo. You can mute the sound in the lower corner of the video player. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Bianca Murphy with UBS.

Morning, Catherine and Suzanne. Thanks for the update. So first question for me is just on your ICR at two and a half times. So you, of course, explained that by the removal of the education income, but it is still a decent drop from FY25. So could you just comment on where you'd like to see your ICR to settle more medium term, or are you just comfortable with where it is right now?

Hi, Bianca. It's Catherine here. Yeah, so we talked about how Wesley's gone out. That obviously contributed $3.7 million of cash EBITDA during the period. We are confident it will rise again pre-March. All of the things we talked about today with the cost out will obviously contribute to the bottom line. One of the other big levers was the settlements that I talked about. So we can only recognise DMF, for example, in our ICR once the cash comes in. So we are in control of our focus on debtors and just making sure those settlements come in. So sales cost out and control of the debtors will see it increase. To the second part of your question about are we comfortable where it is, we're obviously comfortable it's met. We would like to see it back in the threes again. I think a long-term comfortable range is between three and four times

Okay, that's helpful, thank you. And then just on the four sites that are currently under due diligence at $40 million, could you share what sort of premium or discount to book value that reflects?

Yes, of course. So we're looking to be able to tell you all of the details pre the end of March and we are in progressed due diligence at the moment. All of our sales, as you've seen in the best, when we look at them on aggregate, so some of them are part of a portfolio that's going, we're looking at at or around CBRE.

Okay, thank you. And then lastly, just on four-year sales. So for the first half, you, of course, gave that guidance of 3% to 7% growth versus BCP. This result was sort of in the middle of that range. Is there any guidance you can give for the full year? Do you expect it to be similar sales growth for the first half, I guess?

Yeah, thanks, Bianca. Yes, we're guided 265 to 275. We've obviously landed at 271, as you said. Those sales aren't necessarily lost. That would have been at the higher range. They've come in in October. For the full year, we're not giving specific guidance, but I would say we would expect at least that increase if you look at volumes. And when we were at the Investor Day and in those Investor Day materials, we also talked about the strong increase in applications that we've seen, and those applications, we'll be looking to settle the majority of those in the second half.

Okay, thanks, Vipul, for me.

Your next question comes from Ari Decker with Jarden.

Good morning and thanks for a very clear presentation. Just on the expectations for second half, I just had a more specific question with regards, you know, apartments, which obviously pretty high value, particularly with the hellier So sales of apartments have been running at about 40 for the last three halves. Just given that increase in momentum that you've noted, Suzanne, would your expectation be that you can sell comfortably more apartments in the second half than you have over the last few halves?

Yes, our expectation is we can comfortably do that and, yes, improve our result in the second half.

Yeah, and so then taking that into account, you know, as well as, you know, perhaps, you know, the continuation of some release of the buyback stock and the short-term receivables, should we expect an acceleration of debt repayment in the second half on the level achieved in the first half?

Yes, Ari. Yeah, Ari, I'll pick that one up. So, yeah, so as I pointed out, we had a... kind of um debt decrease of around 18 million in the first half as is in our accounts and as we've clearly said here a lot of that was due to the gst second half as you've said we are expecting more apartment sales coming through they are of the higher value we're also going to have the divestments and we've also got a key focus on the debtors so yes you're quite right the decrease in debt for the second half should be a lot better than the one you've just seen in the first half

Okay, no, that's good. And like, I guess if we were to sort of put a number on it, like, you know, do you think that, I mean, I think you did just under 20 in the first half. I mean, could that be as much as sort of $40 or $50 million of debt repayment in the second half?

Yeah, of course. The number I'd probably invite you to have been more of the 60. So if you think we've got 40 of divestments we're hoping to finish and we'll have at least 20 from a sales perspective as well.

We're hoping to exceed on Thursday. Yeah, okay. So you're actually confident that the cash settlement of those four sites will occur in FY26, that the cash settlements won't flow through into FY27?

And we're working with the prospective purchasers on the moment of settlement in March. Obviously, these transactions will be subject to external approval of FATRA and statutory supervisors, but that's certainly what both sides are working towards.

Great. Just progress at Franklin, you know, pretty encouraging ahead of, you know, completing that first stage. Can you just give a bit of an update on your expectations for the size, you know, if there is any change on the size of the next stage at Franklin, which, you know, presumably you'll be targeting for delivery in FY27?

Yes, I'll start and then I'll hand to Suzanne. And with Franklin, the way we've designed it is that we come out with small stages at a time. So first stage is 30, second stage is around that as well, just slightly more than 30. We'd also talked about we would start the construction of those villas as soon as we are happy with the level of pre-sales. And Suzanne spoke today, I think in the presentation we said 35 and that was off 11 pre-sales. We've actually had another this morning, so we're at 12. We have the lodge opening in the next week or so. We expect applications inquiries to increase again off the back of that. And so I'm not sure if that answers your question, Ari, but effectively, if you think of stage two as being between 30 and 40, you'll be about right.

Yeah, for delivery and 27. And then just on Graceland's, you know, just your view on timeframes for getting consent there and when that would sort of support the first deliveries?

Yeah, so the team are working on the design and planning for that at the moment. As you go through the consent process, you always talk 12 months absolute minimum. And our focus really at the moment from a starting construction in 27 is on Franklin and Graceland. We'll see what happens with the consent process and we'll see what the market demand is as well before we commence there.

Great. And then final one for me was also just in relation to ICR, which I guess that movement in the half of a full turn sort of highlighted I guess, you know, the sensitivity of that metric. I guess my question is more a medium term one, you know, as you go through a period at the moment where the amount of development activity is decreasing a bit. Are you comfortable that The development margin, which no doubt is a pretty strong contributing factor in the numerator, the decrease in that that will come with sort of a lull in development activity is more than offset by the reductions you see coming in interest costs.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I'll just clarify what I said to Bianca earlier. If we look at the ICR, 2.5 times our covenant is at 2. 0.5 is generally If you look at our current interest bill, about $6 million of earnings. So you're right, Wesley was 3.7, so it did have quite a swing. But when we talk about, particularly for 27, we're reducing costs by 20 mil. We've got focus on sales, focus on occupancy. All of those help. But if you look at the other side as well, our interest costs will be coming down as well as our debt comes down. And things like the divestments only aid that calculation significantly. So we're confident that it will increase from here.

Great, thank you.

Your next question comes from Will Twist with Forsyth Bar.

Morning guys, can you hear me?

Yes we can, hi Will.

Hey, so obviously one of the highlights from your Invest Today update was just the strength in that sales application momentum through the first five months of the first half. Can you just talk to whether you've seen that continue into the first two months of the second half?

Yeah, so, well, as we talked about earlier, the applications were 58% up when we were looking in the Investor Day in October, sorry, in September, last month. And those applications will come through as settlements like over the second half. So, You're quite right, we didn't see the benefits of those in our first half, although first half was strong. Applications, we're still seeing strong coming through, particularly at some of our focused sell-down sites. So we think about the likes of the Hellier, our Terry Bayview, that's where we're seeing, and Waterford, that's where we're seeing our strongest applications. And as I say, all of that helps with our forward trajectory. It gives us good confidence going into the Christmas period.

Okay, great. And then thanks for the disclosure that you've provided on page 37. It's really interesting. The average tenure, if you look at the care suites in particular, looks pretty high to me. Can you just discuss, I guess, your strategy to, I guess, improve, if that's a tough word, but improve the commerciality of those care suites in terms of their average tenure going forward?

Yeah, so I'll start and talk about what we've got now and then I'll hand to Suzanne. She might want to talk a little bit about our Aging in Place strategy moving forward. So on the tenure, what you're seeing with the care suite model is there's almost two halves to it. So our hospital level residents spend a short time with us, as you would expect. Our rest home residents are spending the longer range with us. Again, it's due to acuity levels. From a commerciality perspective, as you've alluded to, the absolute goal plated for us would be if they were all hospital. Obviously, we're providing services to all types of acuity levels, but the better the mix you can get on hospital versus rest home, the better. I might just pass to Suzanne if she wants to touch on the agent in place that we talked about at the investor day.

I think the main factor is those which Catherine has already outlined. But I think one of the benefits of coming to an Oceania village is you can stay through the fruitful time of your journey, including entering as a retiree. It is preferable for many people to, those first stages of requiring care, it's preferable for many people to experience that in their homes. And we are, at a couple of our villages, such as the Hellier and Meadowbank villages, providing those services into villas, and then we are moving people into the care home when they're requiring hospital-level care. That provides more comfort for our residents and it also provides more profitability for us. So we will continue to look at how that plays out and how that occurs. We also need to be, particularly as people are living longer and dementia is becoming more and more an issue, we need to be very on top of how and when we reassess people's health needs and pass them on to that next level of required care.

Great, thank you. And then it was pleasing to see the bought back stock fall $7 million by my calculations on the half. Where are you expecting that to be by the end of the year?

I mean, everyone would like it to be at zero, but I think it would probably be We wouldn't quite get there by the half. So I think the level that it's dropped by in the first half, we want at least that for the second. We would like to improve on that. If we look at it from a 10 to 15 million perspective, that would be ideal. We treat in our sales, though, I must add, they're all equal, whether it be a new sale, a resale or a bought back stock. Our focus is on sales in general.

Cool, and then last one from me, the share price has had a bit of a run but still trading at kind of half times book. With this in mind, how does the hurdle rate of purchasing your own stock contribute to how you think about capital allocation and growth going forward?

Yeah, thanks Will. Conscious you weren't at our investor day, that question came up then as well and conscious some of the retail people on the call wouldn't have had the benefit of hearing that in the room. So when we did the invest today, our share price was around 68 cents. I could understand the line of questioning back then. Yesterday, as you know, we were at 82 cents. We have had a bit of a run, as you've said. We've discussed it at length at board level, and as a management team, we haven't recommended a share buyback at this time. We currently – we lack the free cash flow at the moment. A buyback would require additional borrowings. But importantly, we do believe that as we have capital free up, so over all the things we've talked about today, through divestments, improvements, sell down of development stock, we are freeing up capital. Our current view, though, is that there are better growth opportunities such as value-adding developments that would deliver greater long-term value than returning the funds to shareholders at this point in time. We'll obviously keep revisiting that as a board and we'll come back to you again in March and I expect the same question and we'll be able to answer it again then. But at this point, we're not recommending a shared buyback.

Great. Thanks, guys. That's all from me.

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Nick Marr with Macquarie.

Morning. Just a couple. In terms of where the IOU new sales washed up, it was sort of a little bit below what was guided at the invest today. Can you just talk through the difference there?

Yeah. So, Nick, as we said earlier to one of the other questions, those sales haven't necessarily been lost. It's more that they got pushed out for whatever reason and they will end up settling and taking occupation during October and November. And we've had some good settlements during October and November. And so it was just a matter of timing. I mean, the investor day was very close to the balance day. It's unfortunate that some of those pushed out and it was out of our control.

Okay. And then, you know, the sort of uplift in applications is good, but if I look at sort of the applications on hand for both sort of new sales and resales, it's kind of still reasonably kind of low and not lifted that much. Can you just sort of talk us through what we're seeing in that stock number versus that growth in applications you're talking about?

Yeah, so I... I guess when we look at applications, though, Nick, we are seeing a considerable uplift. So if I look at we've had some really strong months. August, for example, applications were 94% above the August of the previous year. September was about 75% above the previous year. If we look at where we sit in today, the number of applications that we have on hand going into the summer period is, you know, up in the 300s. If I look at where we've been in the last couple of years, it's been more low 200s. From where we're sitting, we are seeing good growth in applications, and they're sticky as well. So we've seen various levels of applications falling away in the past. We're probably at a run rate of about 11% right now, so it's a good sticking rate for us.

Okay, so just linking that sort of, what did you say, the 300 number versus... what sort of is under application in the stock base. I'm just trying to link those together.

So sorry, that's talking about the applications that were received in period to date. And so sorry, Nick, what was your question? You want to link that to the stock question?

Yes. So if I look at the sort of stock under application, for example, between March and September for new sales, it's gone from 22 to 26. So you're not holding a whole lot of additional applications versus six months ago.

Oh, and it might be in the intricacy of the appendix. So when we say an available stock, even if there's an application over it, we're still shown as it's not occupied essentially. So it's not been counted as a sale. We don't count our chickens before they hatch. So it's still in an available stock bucket until that person has moved in and paid.

Okay, now that's fine. We can chat a bit more about it later. That's all from me for now. Thanks.

Thanks, Nick.

There are no further questions on the teleconference at this time. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.