I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jim Bindon, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Okay, thank you, and morning, everyone. I'm pleased to have John O'Connor joining us here today. You're gonna mostly hear from me today, given John only just started on Monday. He's our new CFO and Company Secretary, so won't go through John's background. We put some details up on the ASX site in weeks gone past, but certainly great to have John join us here, and he's certainly available for any questions when we get to the end. In the main, you'll be hearing from myself today. Thanks for joining, guys. We'll try and skip through pretty quickly as we do. It's always a very busy reporting day, so I'll try and focus on the main points. Just, I'm working through the investor presentation that was uploaded this morning, so I'm just gonna skip you guys to page four. There's a bit of background on the business, particularly on page three, so I'll just let you read through that at your leisure. That's not greatly different from some of the summary or the business overview we've presented in times gone past. Just perhaps to focus there on the geography, again, there's not a lot of change here, just worth noting of some subtle differences. First thing is the strategy that we put in place during the year where we created two divisions, the Construction Products division and the Panels division. Within Construction Products there's, you know, two core groups there, one being the trade centers, building trade centers heavily exposed to detached housing and the renovation market, and our formwork and commercial sites you'll see there, larger sites, you know, more akin to a DC trading, particularly in the formwork, large commercial and civil markets. That just gives you a little bit of spread about where our dots are. Now, the message is pretty consistent, which is what I've said for some time. Huge growth potential in all three segments, given that you can see that's a pretty sparse coverage on the map of Australia and New Zealand in a very, very large addressable market in the broad construction industry. Just scooting on to the ESG side. Realize I've split this over three slides just to try and make it a bit less cluttered. Perhaps my starting point is obviously the great message with respect to ESG and our organization is that timber is being well-recognized now about its great carbon sequestration quality. We've presented some graphs on that in years gone past. It's the absolute A grade story with respect to the timber being the most sustainable building product that's obviously been well-recognized now when you start hearing stories like the Atlassian tower that's just about to start in Sydney, which will be the largest hybrid timber tower in the world. Those credentials are well-recognized now. Perhaps just on page five, one thing that I've tried to focus on in this year's presentation is, you know, Scope one and two emissions from our large plywood manufacturing plants. Clearly the closure of our site at Wagga, which we've spoken about in times gone past, and the consolidation and investments we're doing at Grafton creates a really good story with respect to carbon. Because at Wagga we used gas to generate our heat, so large users of gas and electricity of course, whereas the consolidation onto the Grafton site where we use all of our wood residues, our manufacturing waste to generate heat and fuel the boiler is obviously a really good story in terms of marked reduction in our requirements on fossil fuels, in this case particularly gas and indeed electricity. You'll see there, this year just gone a large reduction in both our Scope one and Scope two emissions now that we're consolidated onto the Grafton site with respect to the manufacturing side of our business. Just quickly on the social side, guys, I have touched on this in the past. Really proud of the program that we do with the indigenous inmates in the correctional center at Grafton. That Toys Save Lives program is a really great one and we're particularly proud to be a partner of that. Thousand toys, I'd call them out myself, but yeah, a thousand have been produced now to help out, you know, underprivileged communities there within the indigenous network. Pleased about that and certainly substantial work we do with the Men's Shed organization in multiple sites, as well as our 40-year support of the Westpac Rescue Helicopter through payroll deductions, which has been a long time focus of the business. I think there's some great things we're doing at a social level as well. Just finally on the ESG side, the governance side, obviously modern slavery's been in the press a little bit lately, a really important part of our business when we're dealing with international suppliers. 75% of all of our suppliers were audited during the year. And certainly all, you know, full compliance was achieved in all those cases. Yeah, look, in an industry where it's male dominated, we've got a lot of blue collar workers. We've got manual labor roles in six of our key manufacturing plants. At least it's pleasing to see you know, the ratio of women in our workforce gradually edging up four percentage points over the last two years. They're certainly lower than some industries still, but you know, that's a good step. You know, that four percentage points represents you know, 20% increase. You know, obviously we think that's you know, important for us to become a you know, a more rounded and modern organization. Good steps on that front there, guys. Just on a board level, a couple of new NEDs were brought in during the year to ensure that independence was maintained. I think for a small business like ours, you know, I think you can have some comfort that we're extremely well governed, particularly from a board perspective. Okay, just quickly into the, you know, the meat of the call, guys, on page eight. Certainly, you know, it's pleasing to be talking to you today after a really good year. There's no doubt I've been in the organization 22 years, and this is certainly the strongest overall and probably the most rounded result I've ever seen in my time here. Growth of 45% up to around AUD 410 million of revenue now. Pleasingly that 20% of that growth was organic store on store, like for like growth, depending on what language you prefer. Our view is that's well ahead of the growth in the addressable market. So obviously that translates to, you know, some solid market share gains in our view. The underlying EBITDA of the business at AUD 48 million was up over 100% on last year. So that's obviously pleasing that growth on the top line's transferred to the bottom line. From an NPAT perspective, just excluding significant items as the first measure, which were quite minor this year, about AUD 22.7 million, that was also up 190%. So from a statutory level, for those who were on the call last year, we did write down the assets at Wagga, obviously with the closure that occurred during FY22, during last financial year. So that obviously meant the statutory NPAT was quite low last year. Yeah, more than a tenfold increase there. I think the high-level metrics from a financial perspective were certainly very strong. Working capital management always really critical and certainly very topical at the moment, particularly with respect to inventories. I think a lot of organizations have been under pressure with large increases in their inventory. For us to maintain our trade working capital to sales ratio at 18.1%, 17.9% last year, perhaps we can call that unchanged, but I think that's a really good result during a period where there's been considerable pressure around inventories. You know, return on funds employed, I think a good measure to make sure that, you know, obviously the funds we've got in the business are generating good return, 26.6% just using EBITDA over net debt plus equity. You know, I think that's, you know, that's a solid result for our business, well ahead of our own internal strategic targets. From a dividend perspective, obviously, the shareholders, you know, deserve and should be rewarded in a year like this when the business has done well. Overall dividends for the year, interim and final of AUD 0.155 per share, that represents a 176% increase on last year's AUD 0.056. That really strong cash conversion, which we'll touch on in the financial slides, of 88%, during a year when I think it's pretty tough. I think a lot of organizations have found cash conversion challenging this year. I think that's a really pleasing result. Actually is in front of last year's result, which, you know, which came in about 82%. That represents a 60% payout ratio, by the way, which is right in the middle of the board's range between 50% and 70% of net profits after tax. Just from a balance sheet point of view, you know, I can put some more color on this as we get through the call, but our net debt position of AUD 21 million unchanged from last year, even though we acquired two good businesses that have contributed well and obviously invested in capital too. To maintain our net debt, obviously that resulted in our gearing falling to the 15.9% versus over 18% last year. That gives us good headroom for growth in the business. I just might move on to slide nine, guys. It's just a little bit of color on the operating results. Just so focusing first on the second half versus the first half. We've spoken now, and if some of the other press releases we've done over time, we've highlighted now that we had eight quarters of accelerating growth. Not just growth, but eight where the growth has accelerated. That certainly occurred again in the second half. Our first half growth, which you might recall from our first half results, was up 14% like-for-like growth, but over 23% in the second half. Obviously, that combined to give us a 20% organic growth for the full year. We grew our business in every category and in every geography. Some of the organic growth figures by state, so 59% like-for-like growth in South Australia, a really great result from the teams there. Western Australia up 26%, Queensland up 21%, New Zealand up 20%, Victoria up 15%, New South Wales and the ACT up 7%. It's probably been the quieter of the markets for the last two years. The flip side of that is we see major growth potential that's just starting to come through now as the commercial multi-res markets, in particular in Sydney, start to recover. Certainly growth's shown, but weaker than some of the other states. Across our three categories we've talked about there, building trade centers up 27%, the formwork and commercial side of the business up 14%, and panels up 15%. Really consistent, strong growth right through the business from a segment and a geography point of view. Gross margin, I think, was a good news story again, up 190 points to 26.9%. Again, that's been a long-term improvement the business has made since we listed in 2017. Certainly my view is we're well below par in prior years, and I think we're starting to get up to where we need to be. You know, we certainly don't see that as a one-off or a spike. We think that's absolutely sustainable, and we've made good incremental improvements over some time. Now the product mix is changing, so obviously a sweeter mix of products weighs up the gross margin and our purchasing power is certainly improving as we get larger and our own internal disciplines as we've rolled out a new ERP system has certainly helped with pricing controls. A couple of other operating highlights. Two acquisitions during the year, which we made announcements on, contributed really strongly. Revenue of around AUD 27 million and over AUD 4 million in EBITDA from those two particular acquisitions. A new one, which was settled post the reporting date. FA Mitchell Panels business in Sydney, been around a long time, 80 years, so a really long legacy in that business. That gives us a really good platform to grow our New South Wales business, where we've got a very, very small presence in panels. So a small business, sure, and not kind of material from a financial point of view, but from a strategic point of view, a really good base for us to target the biggest city in Australia in that panels market where we've got a very good story to tell. Just with respect to receivables, been spoken about a lot in the press, obviously some of the challenges of builders in the construction sector. We had a particularly strong year there. Both our debtors days and our aged debt ratios fell during the year and the business is at the best level in the 22 years I've been here. I think our disciplines are strong. We do have credit insurance as well, which we've mentioned before, so it's a nice safety net to help you sleep at night. Certainly we didn't specifically require that this year, and our results were particularly strong. I think our team did very well on managing that particular area of risk. On the supply chain side, I've touched on that. I think our inventory growth was contained well in an environment where we're obviously strategically sourcing product when there was major shortages out there. It made sense. I think we've managed that balance quite well. Just moving on to page 10, ladies and gentlemen. This is just a new slide just quickly to split the two divisions. I guess from an audit point of view, they're two segments. Other construction products and the Panels division. A little bit more color on both revenue and EBITDA. That's it. You'll see on the next slide that simplifies our P&L. You know, I guess given we're giving you the color here. I guess the big message is that strategy change to create those two divisions. We think we're getting excellent management focus and certainly a much better potential to extract all the synergies we should, particularly out of acquisitions. The revenue split for FY22, AUD 117 million from the Panels division and AUD 292 million from the Construction Products division. You can see their good, strong EBITDA contribution from both divisions, AUD 21 million out of Panels and AUD 32 million also in the Construction Products division. The EBITDA margin, obviously higher in Panels. It's the nature of the product. There's a lot of specialty, high-end, niche, differentiated products, whatever terms you'd like to use there. Whereas the Construction Products are typically, you know, multi-building products, more commoditized. The EBITDA margin are a touch lower in the Construction Products division. When you look at it from a return on assets perspective, the two divisions are almost identical at about 25% return on gross assets employed in each division. I think, you know, they both add substantial value to the business and balancing, you know, those larger high volume commodity products with the specialty products within the panel segment, you know, I think is a really good part of the business mix now. Yes, I won't focus on the rest of the table there. It just gives you a little bit of color of the breakup there, which we've been asked about certainly in years gone past. Then just a couple of points. Obviously it's not an exhaustive list, but just a few initiatives in each section. The panel side, some really good alignment on the supplier side. I guess that was one of the main aims of bringing our Panels division under the one management team. Some really good consolidated product development where there was a couple of different streams of product development happening separately. Making sure we're well aligned across Australia and New Zealand there. Product alignment, I talked about with respect to supplier partnerships. Good, strong acquisition contribution from the new business within the Panels team. We've touched about the little acquisition at Lidcombe, which is gonna give us, you know, great opportunity to expand into Sydney and a new Eco-Panels range that was launched in New Zealand, and will be launched in Australia next year. That's using a fully organic resin, which obviously is particularly pleasing and certainly a lot of the architects are chasing products like that. Just on the construction side, again, purchasing side as we get larger and as we've got more SKUs across more sites, we've got some great outcomes from focusing a procurement analyst assessing all the fine print of our business. So some good synergies being extracted there. The acquisition of the business in Wollongong, United Building Products, been excellent business and that certainly adds to the expansion of our trade centers, which has gone very well. Strong market share growth, certainly into what everyone knows has been a strong detached housing market. Our view strongly is that we've grown above par there. That's been a pleasing outcome within the construction division and a good, strong new partnership with CSR on several products that have got a particular application in medium density, which has been a segment that Big River has historically been strong into. Yeah, it's nice to partner with a major player like CSR to continue to expand our range and our capabilities in that segment. Just moving on, ladies and gentlemen, just quickly on page eleven now, the financial results or the P&L in layman's terms. Again, you might just see we've just removed a couple of line items there, given that we've got the color on the divisional side now. I'll, I won't go through that whole list just to grab a couple of points. The gross margin expansion I spoke about has certainly been a good story. The strong revenue growth, which I've touched on, came from both acquisitions and organically. Of that 45%, 20% was organic and 25 percentage points came from the acquisition. I think a good mix of internally and externally generated growth. The gross margin improvement, I've talked about. Corporate overheads, which has been pulled out in the past, which is, it's not there in the P&L, but I've put it over the side, certainly grew during the year from AUD 4.2 million to AUD 5.3 million. A lot of those are variable in nature, particularly say provision for bonuses in a, in obviously a better performing year. I think all those things, you put that together and that drove really strong operating leverage where obviously we had a blend of volume and so scale improvements, gross margin and cost, you know, well contained, which I think that's probably best shown on the next slide, which is the waterfall. Just pulling out the significant table which we put in there, I guess in detail last year. There is the share-based remuneration below the line and the acquisition costs as they've always been. In the case of the Wagga impairment, which was all taken into account in the FY21 financial year. Now that project's finished, there's an unconditional contract on the land and buildings which will settle in the next couple of months. The net result of all the provisions that were put in place last year was just a small gain of AUD 0.5 million or AUD 500,000, and that was in the provision for restoration, stock write-downs, and indeed the value of the land and buildings. Really good clean exit. The team managed that substantial process of winding down a site that had 100 staff. They've done that particularly well. There's certainly been no variation or any concerns as part of that exit. Just maybe moving on to the waterfall, that just puts a little more color on page 12. Obviously starting with our underlying EBITDA from last year of AUD 22 million. AUD 14 million of the EBITDA growth came from revenue growth. That's obviously we're getting operating leverage when we're going up the curve and the construction cycle's improving. You know, given the construction cycle as a whole, dropped out in FY 2020, I think a lot of people thought that there's been boom times in construction right through. That's actually not the case. Cumulatively, when you look at all six construction segments, the trough was actually FY 2020. We've had a couple of years going up the curve, and that's clearly flowing through in terms of that revenue growth contribution. Gross margin improvement, I touched on obviously adds to the bottom line, in this case, about AUD 6 million additional EBITDA. The acquisition contribution, so just to clarify that's the two new businesses in Revolution Roofing and United Building Products, plus nine additional months from Timberwood Group, which in the previous period only contributed three months. Where obviously in FY22 they contributed the full 12 months. Good, strong contribution from our new businesses as well. Costs I touched on up about 14% like for like, which translates to AUD 6 million. Just worth saying 50% of those cost increases are variable in nature. So they're things obviously linked to revenue and linked to the strong market. The other 50% are more fixed in nature. I think, at say 7% cost increase, as we've expanded our business and we continue to invest in new resources as we grow, I think we've contained that issue. Obviously, I know it's a measure closely watched these days in terms of the inflationary impact on the fixed cost base. We're very conscious of that, and I think we've managed that particularly well, albeit in a rising environment. Obviously, that translates to the AUD 48 million of underlying EBITDA that we touched on in the P&L. Look, a really pleasing result, as I touched on at the beginning, a really rounded result where there was strong contribution. We still had some underperforming divisions, no doubt about that. You know, three or four of our sites were well below par, in my view. There's lots of, you know, self-help measures and business improvement that we can achieve internally, regardless of the cycle and regardless of the market. Like, you know, I guess what I'm saying there is we certainly haven't capped out far from it. Just on the balance sheet, again, I won't go through it line by line, but I think it's in pretty strong shape. Now you'll see there to grow receivables by only 17% when our headline revenue grew 45%. Obviously, those receivables include the new acquisitions. I think that shows, you know, the strong way we've managed that ledger. Our inventory's been contained to 23% growth, on a like-for-like basis. Obviously, revenue grew 20% like for like. Clearly the value of inventory is a lot higher now because of price increases. And then obviously the additional investments in volume. Certainly that, I think that was one of the key themes of the year. The smaller players in our industry, in my view, clearly struggled to get supply, whereas larger players like ourselves with really strong partnerships, and we've certainly got great partnerships with our major suppliers, allowed us to secure that volume. I'm sure that was a key driver in the market share growth that we achieved. Yeah, comfortable with the extra investment in inventory that certainly didn't choke us or strain the balance sheet in any way, shape, or form. Obviously the intangibles change is purely the acquisitions during the year. Won't go through the details of that. That's all specified in the statutory accounts. The fixed assets, AUD 6 million is higher than our typical CapEx. That's obviously as part of the consolidation project as we put all of our manufacturing capacity into the Grafton site with the exit of Wagga. It's about AUD 2 million to spend still at the Grafton site during FY23, and that project will be complete. Obviously AUD 1 million of the new fixed assets came with the acquisitions, as we acquired fixed assets as part of those deals. Our payables look higher, obviously, but the two- record months the company achieved was in May and June. Obviously that translates when you have record revenue to obviously record purchases too. That's obviously they were still sitting on the ledger or on the balance sheet at the end of June. Obviously pushed up that payables number. There's no change in our average creditor days there. Just the assets held for sale, the land and building at Wagga, as I touched on, there's an unconditional contract on. The final million dollars from the government with respect to the consolidation project funding we achieved is, yeah, will come in FY23 as well. Otherwise, I hope you'll agree it's certainly a clean balance sheet, which, you know, puts us in really good shape. Just on page 14, guys, this is a new slide we haven't had in prior years, just sort of summarizing some of the issues on the capital management side. Our total bank facility as it stands now there with the NAB is about AUD 68 million. Obviously, we had a long, strong partnership with the NAB. We've been with them for over 50 years, the company. They know our business very well. We are certainly pleased about our relationship with the bank there. Obviously, that's AUD 10 million higher than last year, we did get an additional acquisition tranche during the year that is undrawn at this stage. With respect to our term debt, which you can see totals AUD 46 million, we've split that. We split the timing of that or the expiry date, for want of a better term. Thirty of the 46 run through to FY25, the other 16 in FY27. I think that's good, you know, risk management as well. From a working capital performance. Now I touched on that 18% working capital sales ratio. That's obviously helped with respect to our overall balance sheet performance and gearing dropping to 15.9% versus 18.7% last year. Dividends, we touched on, obviously record dividends, fully franked. You know, the business has still got AUD 20 million franking credits. So, it's important we distribute those to the shareholders. That's exactly what we're doing. I think, and then just the final few key dates for the dividend down the bottom right. I won't go through those, but that's for everyone's information for the final AUD 0.10 dividend that's payable in October. Just moving on to the cash flow slide, guys. That's 15. As I touched on there, the operating cash flow before interest and tax or cash conversion, you know, particularly strong at 88%. That was 82% last year. Just calling out the funding we got during the year from the government as a separate line item rather than leaving it blurred up in receivables. Four million last year, five million received this year. As I touched on earlier, one still to come. Obviously that generated strong operating cash flow of 40-odd million or 37 after tax and interest versus 14 the year before. Really strong cash generation from the year. I touched on earlier, despite several debt-funded acquisitions, net debt was largely in line with last year. I think that puts our balance sheet in strong shape. The only other points over the right-hand side in the notes there I might touch on. I mentioned on the CapEx there, AUD 6 million, a little bit unusually high for us. 65% of that was related to the big consolidation project. Otherwise just staying business CapEx in the other parts of the business. On the contingent consideration from a cash perspective, was year two of the earn-out deal in New Zealand, obviously pleasing. They hit all their targets. The Pine Design or the Dry Creek business we have in Adelaide, again, year two of the targets were achieved, as were year two of the Townsville business. As I've always said, I'm probably the second happiest guy when we're paying earn-outs because it means the business is going well. The vendors are usually reasonably pleased about it as well. Just from a dividends point of view, purely from a cash perspective, obviously that's what's been paid during the 12 months, whereas obviously I've touched on the AUD 15.5 that's actually declared for the year. I'll just move on from cash flow there. Just with respect to the outlook, guys, you know, there's a few uncertainties. Clearly, the board are juggling a whole range of economic issues, you know, as all businesses are, to be honest. We see that the addressable market across all five or six construction types, which we have an exposure to, which you'll note on page three, you know, what our various ratios are in the construction segment. When you put that in the pot, and then we look at the forecasts for each of those key segments, we still see that our addressable market will grow, you know, quite modestly, low single-digit percentages for FY23. Clearly that's, you know, the ratio will change, which I think a strong improvement on the multi-res and commercial markets, which have actually already started. Yes, the pipeline looks solid, but that change is already starting. I think a moderation is expected in detached housing and the alterations market. The pipeline is very full, so we don't expect that to happen anytime soon. You know, the lag in our assessment in terms of construction starts versus approvals in the residential space over the last two years is a cumulative 30,000 start lag. That's starts lagging approvals. We think that's the catch-up that's still gotta happen, hence why we're confident about the pipeline. I think looking forward, you know, some moderation is expected in those two segments, offset by really strong growth in civil, commercial, multi-res and our remanufacturing sector, you know, which continues to be strong while every economy is strong. Price growth we still expect. Obviously, you know, as we went through FY22, there was a range of price increases. Obviously, we're now at the, you know, towards the peak of the cycle. We're certainly seeing that slowing. My own personal opinion is the price rise cycle is just about out of puff now. We've actually seen a couple of price reductions from some suppliers. I think that strong inflationary impact on building products is certainly starting to slow, albeit that we'll have a full twelve months now at these more elevated levels. That certainly augurs well for revenue. The pipeline I've talked about, I think it's certainly been stretched. That's been well publicized in civil, in commercial and indeed in housing as well, where trades and materials have been hard to get, and there's certainly COVID-related and weather-related disruptions in the larger commercial and civil markets. Our view is that supply chain pressures will certainly ease further during FY23, which we've already started to see. Just on page 16, guys, just a little bit on the market conditions. Just moving to page 17, just on a couple of dot points on strategy. You know, with respect to the outlook, the consolidation project, not yet delivering the benefits that it can. While we've exited Wagga, you know, absolutely as planned and on time, the full investment of the new assets at Grafton is a little behind. We're about three months behind that project where there's been delays in shipping of the new equipment, and then certainly our ability to access particularly mechanical trades for the full installation of that has slowed us up a little bit. That hasn't yet contributed to the bottom line of the business, but we absolutely believe it will in FY23. Some good upside there in our view. I've chatted about our new little business in Lidcombe. Again, we think that gives us good strategic impetus to grow our position in Sydney. Look, the history of successful acquisitions, in my view, history is the best guide. From the day we've listed and before, we've acquired between two and three businesses per year. There's strong interest from vendors, the phone's ringing plenty. Obviously we're very disciplined around the multiple. We always use an average of earnings through the cycle, not just one year. As long as vendors are reasonable and rational about that, we'll, you know, we believe we'll continue to execute consistent with that history we've achieved for several years. Expanding the business is still an absolutely elementary part of our strategy, and we still see huge upside in the medium to long term to expand our network substantially. Then just on the financial side, guys, just an update. 8 trading weeks or thereabout up till now, like-for-like revenue growth's up 23%. Now, you might see a little asterisk on that slide. I guess the comparable period this time last year, July and August, there was some COVID-related construction site restrictions during that period that did vary by state. South Australia had different shutdown rules to Victoria to ACT and so forth. That period was somewhat affected, let's say. Obviously, that's strong growth, which we're pleased about, by the way, but just needs to be put in context a touch there. Certainly on inventory, where we have made investments, we see that moderating during the year as supply chains improve. I think from a cash conversion perspective, which is the final point on that slide, you know, we believe we can continue to maintain those mid-80% cash conversion that we've achieved right through the cycle long term. We believe the business will continue to generate good cash in the year ahead. All right, the final slide, the appendix I won't go through. Lots of history there for those who like to review each line item, I won't go through that. Ladies and gentlemen, that's it from me. We're just maybe open for questions. Like at the half, actually if I could hand back to the facilitator. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Our first question will come from Raju Ahmed with CCZ Equities. Please go ahead. Hi, Jim. Hi, John. Can you hear me well? Yeah, Raju, clear as a bell, mate. Okay, fantastic. Look, excellent results, so congratulations on that. I've got a couple of questions, if you allow me. The first one is, Jim, I think a couple of slides back, you mentioned, you saw gross margin improvement from the implementation of the ERP. Is there more to come on that front? Yeah, look, I think there's always more to come because, you know, we don't profess to get it right every time. We've certainly got a great team of young business analysts that are really doing excellent things in our business by crunching a lot of data. Obviously, in the past, we would have left that up to site managers just to manage day-to-day pricing and margins, but having some really sharp guys and girls, you know, analyzing that on a daily basis to see where we believe we've left money on the table and have mismanaged pricing or costs. Yes, I think there's still improvement there, Raju, and I think we won't get the same growth. I've mentioned at the half year as you go up the price rise cycle and you've got some inventory at a whole lot of lower costs as the prices have gone, that obviously aids gross margin. We probably won't get the same kicker, you know, in terms of that weighted average inventory cost being, you know, let's say in addition to gross margin. We've looked at a lot of acquisitions, Raju, across every segment, and we don't believe we're above par in gross margin at all. We believe there's still good fine-tuning to do within our business. Of course, the product mix, as I've touched on, has also been changing as we've grown some of the higher margin products. That's obviously weighting up our margin regardless of what's happening in the market, Raju. No, it's not capped out in our view. We've grown every half year in the ten half years since we've been a listed company, and we don't see that that's gonna all of a sudden reverse. You know, as I've touched on, I think, you know, we won't get that same kind of 190-point growth in FY23, but we don't see contraction occurring, Raju. Okay. No, that's good. The second question I had was, if we go to slide 12, this is more of an academic question. You talked about EBITDA uplift from revenue growth and an EBITDA uplift from GM improvement. Look, just to be very clear, when you talk about revenue growth, is it purely volume or is it volume plus price? No, it's volume plus price. Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, 'cause we're. Okay. Volume is very difficult in our business to measure. We have so many different SKUs, you know, 8,000-10,000, and some are units and some are, you know, linear meters and some are cubic meters and some are square meters and some are pieces and some are packets and some are boxes. Volume is a very difficult measure. Yeah, obviously, that's just purely revenue, which is always, during a year like this, a blend of extra volume and certainly the price rise or the inflationary impact is part of that number, Raj. Okay. Yeah. What I was trying to get at is, and I think in the first half, if my memory is still intact, you had quite a substantial EBITDA uplift from price increases. If I look at half on half, has there been any further sort of price contribution or has this been mostly driven by revenue? No, I think. Sorry, mostly driven by volume. My apologies. Yeah. No, I think as you've gone through the year, more is priced. I think it's fair to say, Raju, because obviously there's been- Okay further price increases happening. There's been, you know, obviously textbook inflationary impacts there. Which is also part of my thesis why I don't believe the construction sector is booming anything like perhaps the public might think because the volumes actually, I think are very, very modestly up on prior years and certainly nowhere near peak volumes. It's just that the price factor has certainly skewed the revenue numbers a little bit there. In the second half, we would've seen that inflationary impact higher than the first half, Raju. Okay. Now, that actually leads me quite well to my next question. On your second last slide, you talked about the trading for the first eight weeks, up 23%, like for like on PCP. Now, you did put in the caveat that the PCP has been an easy comp, and fair enough. I'm just trying to understand the relevance of this number or usability, I should say, of this number going forward because July 2022 has been quite wet, particularly in the East Coast. Could this number have been materially better? Can you just give some sensibility as to how we think about this flowing into the balance of the year? I think the easy answer is that the wet weather has had a very immaterial impact on Big River. I know some of the companies that are heavily exposed to civil construction, particularly if you're a contractor, then obviously that wet weather has a large impact on your business. For us, it's quite minor, and particularly because of our geographic spread. I think, you know, really we look at our daily sales and there's barely a blip from our long-term averages or from the sort of current run rate averages due to the wet weather. That's not a factor, I can say. That 23% as you touch on, not only is it a period where there was some impacts in the prior comparison period, but obviously there's inflationary impact as well, Raju. Obviously 12 months ago, pricing of those units you know, certainly wasn't the same as it is now. Look, I probably can't break it down into exact numbers for you, but there's a blend there of a weaker comparable period, and there's a blend there of the inflationary impact. Certainly from a volume perspective, there's growth there as well, and the market certainly remains strong. Okay. This leads to the very last question, Jim. I mean, you've been around for a long, long time, and you've seen, you know, gone through the cycle. How should we think about the detached cycle at this point in time? June approvals were down, on a macro at around 20%. Now it changes month to month. I get that, but that would have captured just from the start of the interest rate up cycle. How should we think about, I suppose the detached housing market, over the next sort of, 12 to 18 months, which sort of hits about half of FY23 and then go forward from there? Yeah. Look, the first thing is I think you need to look at residential, not just attached. At the moment, obviously detached got a big run-up relative to multi-res. A couple of reasons. Firstly, obviously the stimulus package from late 2020 calendar year was sort of more advantageous towards detached housing. That certainly saw the spike in approvals and in that sector. The flip side is multi-res is effectively at five to maybe even 10-year lows in terms of the number of starts, you know. Combine that, and the total residential picture is not a winner. This hasn't spiked way outside what might have otherwise been expected. Clearly that is why there's housing shortages. That's why rents are at, you know, rental vacancies are at record lows. I think we've got to look at all residential together. Clearly what'll happen is detached housing will moderate down because those same things that drove people to houses, including COVID by the way, people wanted to get out of high-density living and move to houses, that will pass. Our view is medium density and multi-res will grow. Obviously, immigration comes back, students come back and that trend towards city living. We think that that's part of the reason why the multi-res market looks so solid, but detached housing will moderate down. Put the two together, and we don't see any fundamental decline in residential. All right? One drops and one increases. Detached housing will stay strong for the next six to nine months minimum, just purely because of that lag in the pipeline in our view, Raju. Look, I'm not sure if I've totally answered your question. I think there's lots of factors, both social, stimulus related and economic that have changed that balance between detached and multi-res over the last few years. The raw total of housing starts is up a bit, but, you know, not crazily up. There's still a fundamental undersupply, and I think most players in property would vouch for that. That's part of the reason why the build-to-rent market is a new sector emerging, particularly which is our multi-res or our multi, you know, it's both our formwork commercial exposure into those projects as well as the fit out side. That's a whole new segment that's emerging to try and address this housing shortage. The mix will change, but we don't see any fundamental downside. Okay. In very layman's terms then, or conservatively put, if we were to assume, detached's fall is offset by multi-res increase. Growth will come from commercial, or is that too simplistic of you? Yeah, look, that's probably a fair summary or review, I'd say. Okay. All right, I'll leave it there. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question will come from Anderson Chow with Jarden. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, good morning. Jim, congratulations on a strong result. I just have two or three questions. Firstly, just with regard to something on the risk side, notice there's an increase in a provision for receivables, which is probably prudent. Can you talk about the outlook for receivables provisions and perhaps inventory provision as well in the current market environment where, you know, some of the construction companies are still having financial issues, or increasing number of them are having financial issues? Yeah, I think you summed it up well. I mean, yes, we did increase the provisions, so I think we're well covered there from a risk perspective. The flip side is our ledger is in very good shape. We have been conservative. We've gone through it line by line with our orders. We think it's prudent. But our own history and our own experience during the last year is, you know, we've managed that risk very well in my view. As I touched on also, we have that credit insurance, as I said, which is, you know, a good long stop or a backstop for us. Yeah, look, I feel comfortable with that. I think, you know, we're sensibly provisioned, but there's no major flashing lights, you know, warning lights in our business. We've had next to no exposure to any of the public collapses that have found their way into the press in the last six months. I think our total exposure was maybe AUD 11,000 to one of those maybe 15 or so companies that have found their way into the press. Hopefully, you know, the way we extend credit and the way we manage that, hopefully that's a good testament to the process because we have had no exposure to any of those large collapses. That's on the receivable side. On the inventory side, again, with a little bit more inventory in our system, AUD 70 million versus sort of mid-50s the year before, we have prudently provisioned for some obsolescence in that particular part of our business as well. We've brought some new suppliers on. Obviously, as we've found ways to shore up the supply chain, that creates some doubt about things like warranty claims or damage or obsolescence. I think the increase, which you've obviously noted in our accounts there, is prudent again. Again, no warning signs, flashing lights in our business there. I think that's just a sensible approach as the business has got larger. Certainly, yeah, I mean, obviously our business and the beauty of our market is our products don't go off, they don't have a use-by date, and there's lots of different applications for many products. Even as they're downgraded, there's still certain markets that can take those products. We don't see that as a major problem with the business moving forward in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, okay, thanks. The next question is more on just trying to understand a bit more of the margin expansion for the construction product segment. I think you kinda touched on price and volume kinda helped. Are there any other key drivers that help the EBITDA margin during 2022? How should we think about 2023 given your first eight weeks you know trading is still up very very strong on a same-store basis? I think, you know, I think it is a factor of all those things. The growth in the EBITDA margin, whether it's particularly in the construction side, was, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the trade centers, the 11 trade centers averaged over 27% like-for-like growth, so that was the strongest part. It's really good operating leverage in those particular parts of the business. Gross margin discipline, volume obviously with a fixed cost base has really driven the EBITDA margin, particularly in the construction side. Panels, slightly less growth and there was obviously, Grafton and Wagga which are part of the panels division and the closure and project there. You know, we didn't see that same EBITDA margin expansion because of that factor even though, you know, the business still did particularly well and grew. Yeah, you're right, the real growth came from the construction products where the volume's been strong and where margin continues to improve. Look, our purchasing power, obviously as we go from being a very small company to a larger one, helps and our buying power certainly has added to that gross margin. And then, you know, the sheer scale obviously has helped generate that operating leverage. We've put some extra shifts on, particularly in our frame and truss sites. So obviously then you've got exactly the same asset base, you're just using more hours. Obviously that generates particularly solid operating leverage there. Probably the key factors that have seen the construction EBITDA margin skew up so substantially. Should we be expecting potentially further expansion in that EBITDA margin in 2023, you think, from 10.9% to something higher for construction products? Seven? Yeah. I mean, I think certainly if the revenue growth continues, that's probably the. It's a very large factor. Clearly in a lowish margin business, obviously you get that top-line growth. If the top-line growth continues right through as we've seen, then yeah, we will get that margin expansion in that particular segment. Yeah. Not sure if you could comment on this, positive new supplier partnership with CSR. What sort of magnitude of impact to revenue? Should we be expecting in the next 12 months? Oh, look, it's probably not material. I mean, we partner strongly with CSR and with James Hardie and with you know a lot of large both listed and unlisted companies. Certainly from a product development, from expanding our penetration into a segment that we think is gonna grow, and that's that medium density market. I guess that's why we called it out as one of the strategic options. It's not material in terms of moving the dial on revenue. Certainly we think it's a really neat addition to that particular segment where we trade strongly with those medium density builders with a range of products and there's two strong products there that we've partnered with CSR and so, yeah, that's probably as much as I can say on that, if that's okay. Yeah. No, appreciate it. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Great. Our next question will come from Sean Kirtley with Moelis. Please go ahead. Hi, Jim. Well done on a very strong result. Just looking at the second half EBITDA of AUD 27 million, that obviously implies quite a strong run rate, you know, heading into 2023, and it sounds like 2023 has also started strong. You sort of noted that you're, you know, expecting similar cash conversion rate and CapEx to normalize from 2022, which you may have elevated CapEx. On my numbers, looks like it's gonna be spinning out some decent free cash flows. Can you maybe just comment on the company's strategy with regards to, you know, capital management and any sort of excess cash flows? Well, obviously acquisition is, you know, I think, you know, while we try to reward the shareholders and stay within the board's sort of range with respect to dividend payout ratios, and that will continue absolutely. Acquisition is still a, you know, massive part of our strategy, Sean. As you know, 23 sites in Australia and New Zealand compares to, as you explained a bit before, maybe 2,000 timber yards, hardware shops, building materials outlets. It's a very, very big market. You know, any excess funds we've got, along with our additional bank facility, you know, is really earmarked for acquisition as we continue to expand the network. Got it. That's all I had. Thank you. All right. Well done again. Thanks, Sean. Great result. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Bindon for closing remarks. All right. Thank you very much. We'll leave it there. I know it's a busy day for you, so thanks for joining this morning and look forward to catching up with you face to face for those who've got questions within the coming weeks. Okay, thank you all. Over and out. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.