Smart Parking Ltd

ASX:SPZ

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning, everybody, and welcome. Welcome to the Smart Parking Q1 FY '22 Business Update. With me today, I have Paul Gillespie, CEO; and Richard Ludbrook, CFO. The format of this morning's presentation will be Paul and Richard will talk the slides that we've released to ASX, and then we'll be pleased to open the session for Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, please take yourself off mute or use the chat function. Thank you again for joining us. And on that note, I'll hand it over to Paul.

[Paul Gillespie]

Thank you, Michael, and good morning. Thank you for joining me for Smart Parking's Q1 FY '22 Business Update. I'm here in Melbourne. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Richard Ludbrook who is based in Auckland. Today, I'll provide you an update on our business activity for the first quarter of FY '22. And after that, we'll be happy to take some questions. Before I start, I'd like to highlight some key points. So if we can start with Slide 2, please. As highlighted in August, recovery is well underway in the U.K., and it's this recovery which is driving performance in our Q1 results. We're seeing strong growth and execution as we scale the business. In particular, as confidence returns, we're seeing increased footfall across our estates, and in turn, a 54% increase in PBNs issued on PCP, our best quarterly performance ever. This is also up 31% on Q1 FY '20 which was, of course, a pre-COVID year. The U.K. is the key driver of our performance today as we're seeing a temporary COVID impact in Australia and New Zealand. However, as restrictions ease, we are seeing activity return and we believe we'll be back to pre-lockdown levels early in the new year. Added to this, with the increased footfall and high levels of PBN issuance in the U.K., we are now seeing the operational gearing come through as we scale. EBITDA margins are at record quarterly levels. In short, we're a more profitable company today than we were before the pandemic. And before we move to the next slide, the last point I'd like to make is, when we first published our 1,000 site target, it was seen by some as courageous. We now see this as modest, and we're well on track to achieve this number, mainly due to the fact there is a large addressable market in U.K. of 45,000 sites. We have stroke for more M&A activity after our successful acquisition of Enterprise Parking Solutions. We've expanded our market opportunity with further recovery potential ahead of us across the ANZ region, and we're well funded for growth with $10.9 million of cash on hand. Looking now to Slide #3. As mentioned a moment ago, restrictions in the U.K. have eased and a strong recovery is underway with all metrics at around or close to pre-pandemic levels. The acquisition of EPS is a highlight of the quarter for us. A great fit for our business with 68 ANPR sites and is earnings accretive. Integration is well underway and will be [ completed in ] the half. We believe we were disciplined -- sorry, we believe we were disciplined in our due diligence, and this led to a great outcome for us. As with the U.K. earlier in the year, due to government lockdowns and travel restrictions in Australia and New Zealand, we are seeing a temporary impact to the business. However, our growth strategy is in tact, and as we saw in the U.K., we expect to see a strong recovery in the region as these restrictions lift. As with the ANZ services, we have technology orders of $3.3 million, but we've been impacted in delivery due to restrictions. However, we expect to see freedom of movement increase. And with that, we'll be in a position to deliver these contracts and recognize the revenue in the second half. Closing the first quarter with the level of sites we have, the number of tickets we've issued and the metrics heading in the right direction, we have a positive outlook for Q2. If we can now look at Slide 4, please. We're pleased with the growth we're seeing in both revenue and profitability. With revenue up 62% on PCP and up 61% on Q1 FY '20, a pre-COVID quarter, we're pleased. We can also see operational leverage coming through with EBITDA up 190% PCP and 191% up in Q1 FY '20, the pre-COVID quarter. This is an all-time record EBITDA performance for the business. As we continue to scale with further installations and our sustainable fixed cost base, we expect to see this grow further. If we can turn to Slide #5. We can see how high margins and low maintenance CapEx have translated to strong free cash flow with operating cash flow of positive $3 million. During the quarter, we funded the EPS acquisition at $1.5 million and also funded our growth CapEx, the purchase of cameras, machines, et cetera, of $900,000. Despite this, we closed the quarter with $10.9 million of cash on hand, which is up $200,000 on the year-end cash balance in June. As we've highlighted before, the CapEx requirements for new sites are low and the payback is quick. This allows us to fund our organic growth strategy. It also means we're well placed to evaluate additional acquisitions similar to EPS that will allow us to accelerate our growth in a disciplined and accretive way. We can turn now to Slide 6. We've had a strong quarter with new site additions, particularly in the U.K. with 51 sites added organically and the EPS acquisition of 68 sites. The EPS sites are being rebranded and integrated to our platform and will be completed in the half. Whilst ANZ is impacted by growth restrictions -- by COVID restrictions. We still added 9 sites to the estate, this will continue to grow, and I will look forward to updating shareholders on the progress of the ANZ services business at the AGM next month. As we've highlighted before now, our focus is to add 180 net new sites per annum with additional APAC installs that will add to the growth trajectory. This strategy makes sense as we can leverage our infrastructure in Australia and build on our existing sales presence on the ground in New Zealand. We are and will continue to disrupt legacy industry structures that provide site owners with inefficient and inadequate solutions for today's market. I called out some time ago, our growth target of [indiscernible] sites under management and we are reaffirming this number again today. As I mentioned earlier in the deck, the target issued at the time was seen as courageous by some but we are becoming increasingly confident we'll achieve this number. The total addressable in the market is -- total addressable market in the U.K. is 45,000 sites. So there is good potential for further growth to come in the years -- in some years to come. I don't propose to talk to Slides 7 and 8 as we've already covered these points in the presentation. Turning now to the last slide. As I said in August, while recovery in the U.K. is undoubtedly a tailwind for SBZ, it is a disciplined execution of our growth strategy that will deliver long-term growth and returns for shareholders. We started the new financial year well. We've delivered some good numbers in installations, PBNs issued revenue and profitability. We are confident we can continue to deliver these promises as our markets recover and our competitive position continues to grow across all of our operating territories. As we're demonstrating, smart parking is a growth company in growth mode. We have a strong organic growth strategy, actively looking to add to our growth through acquisition, similar to the likes of EPS. Added to this, we're also looking at new territories where we can operate a similar model of parking management through the delivery of technology. In short, we expect FY '22 to be a year of solid growth. That concludes the update presentation. Thanks for listening. I'll now ask Richard to open the lines for some Q&A.

[Unknown Analyst]

It's Ron here from TAMI. Can I ask a question?

[Paul Gillespie]

Go ahead.

[Unknown Analyst]

Just there was a mention in your favorable margin mix in Q1. And can you just explain that and whether that means that the EBITDA was maybe sort of slightly inflated because of that?

[Paul Gillespie]

Well, Q1 and Q4 are our best quarters for the year. So we've talked at length in the past the [ bank ] seasonality throughout the -- with our business, and as traffic levels grow and drop off again just during the summer -- spring, summer and early autumn months in the U.K. is a much busier time on the roads. We have a number of seasonal sites that are located in areas that I can say, seaside towns, tourist destinations, those sorts of places, and we see those sites becoming incredibly busy and are very profitable -- are profitable in the summer -- so late spring, summer and early autumn months. So that's the sort of favorable margin mix I'm talking about. What we also see, though, as we come -- we always see a smaller drop-off in -- slightly less traffic, if you like, throughout the later winter. And of course, Q3 is always the most challenging because it's the quietest quarter for cars on the road or what have you. What we've done to sort of try and mitigate that in the past is we've been trying to change our site mix to go more retail orientated or retail mix orientated. So we don't get that such a big drop in Q3. That's really what the margin mix is. During the spring, summer and early autumn months, you do tend to see a higher car count on the road, which, of course, impacts our seasonal sites, our tourist destinations, that also varies.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And just looking at the FY '21, I mean, Q3 was a loss on the EBITDA. Do you expect this year to be profitable every quarter? Do you have sufficient scale?

[Paul Gillespie]

Well, we don't -- as you know, Ron, we don't give guidance. But what I would say is Q2 has already started very well. We have a lot more sites under management than we did 2 years ago, if we think about it as a pre-COVID environment. So we're in a far better situation than we were pre-pandemic. We've taken a lot of cost-saving initiatives and put those into practice, and we've still got those working very, very well for us. So I believe we're in a much better situation than we were in previous years. If you look at -- I mean, obviously, Q3 last year was heavily impacted with COVID, lots of restrictions in the U.K. as January, February and March were all under lockdown in the U.K. So of course, you see car count has dropped off. In fact, if we go to slides -- [indiscernible] can you go to Slide #7, please. Thank you. You see here the number of tickets issued in Q3 were significantly lower because of those lockdowns because the traffic dropped off and you'll see that in the [indiscernible] [ it also states ] on the graph. So I don't -- provided there's no restrictions wrong, I don't expect to see the same level of tickets issued as we had in Q3 last year. I would expect it to be a lot higher than that.

[Operator]

There's a question in chat for you from Richard Morrow. Are you being assisted by a public aversion in the U.K. to use public transport. Are there more cars on the road?

[Paul Gillespie]

That's a good question, Richard. In short, yes, we are at the moment. There is some assistance to that. But we -- it's interesting. If you look at average stay time graph, we're still not back to where we were pre-pandemic. Obviously, the average stay time does fluctuate. But pre-pandemic, we were averaging 90 minutes as the average stay and each car would -- average time each car would stay in the car park. So that says to me that we're still not back to that level of confidence that people had in the past. Interestingly, the office we have in the U.K. is in Birmingham, it's right next to Birmingham airport and also Birmingham International train station. And the monitory car park there at train station normally would be full by 8:00 in the morning. I was there 6 weeks ago, and it's still -- it's not even half full yet. So that's just to me, people aren't getting on the train. People aren't back at the office in the volumes they used to be. So that's, on one hand, is assisting because it's definitely more cars out in the back. People are using public transport. But it also means there's still a long way to get back to the pre-pandemic levels that we expect, which is getting back to that 90-minutes day time and seeing the average tickets go up. So yes, I think behavior is going to continue to change as that confidence grows.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

Another question on chart from Jared Schrank. You mentioned a strengthening competitive position. Can you please elaborate on this and how you are positioned compared to your competitors?

[Paul Gillespie]

Absolutely. So if we take one territory at a time. So if we look at our, let's say, the New Zealand services market today, we're providing a new product to the market or a new service to the market there by obviously managing car park's new technology through number plate recognition, which no one else is doing right now, okay? So that's obviously a very strong market position in New Zealand, that's why we're trying to grow and hire new people. Just need these restrictions to go away, and then we can really get on with it in earnest. So that's a very -- that's just what we're doing, obviously, in New Zealand. In Australia, similar, still there's legacy structures in place, lots of manned patrols, those sorts of things happening across the Queensland, estate where we're operating today and we're changing that by using number plate recognition. And so again, like with New Zealand, we want to get the restrictions out of the way and have some freedom of movement so we can be around the country, and we can make this move faster. In the U.K., it's a far more competitive environment. What we've done is strengthen our sales team. We've managed that list very carefully or the number of salespeople we have. We've also added to our account management team. That's a big step we took earlier this year. We've added another 2 heads to that team, which strengthens up those contracts. So we [ don't ] want to churn so many contracts on so many sites. And really, it's just around customer service, how do we strengthen the position, provide better services, provide customers with their relationships that they can't do without, that someone else coming in is going to be very hard to dislodge us. So that's really how we're doing it. It's better sales approach, far better account management and just to make sure we deliver a great service.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

It's as long we have. Go ahead.

[Unknown Analyst]

Paul, its [indiscernible]. Can you just provide an update on the regulatory environment in the U.K. around the parking build? I think previously you said that was in consultation period and yet what the potential impact of that is on Smart Parking?

[Paul Gillespie]

Absolutely. So there's been quite a lot of change or quite a lot of movement with the build. As we shared in the last few months. There was a second consultation that came and went, and nothing's changed as a result of that. But the interesting thing and a really positive news that we're happy about was 2 things, really. There's been a change of personnel. So you would have probably seen the Prime Minister in U.K. has changed his cabinet. Had a bit of cabinet reshuffle, and he's removed or stacked the Minister for Local Government and Housing and Communities, MH Housing -- MHCLG, Ministry of Housing, Local Government & Communities (sic) Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. There was a guy called Robert Jenrick and he was under Minister Luke Hall. They've both been removed and have been replaced by Michael Gove, which is good news, okay, number one. Number two, there's been 2 other consultations come out in Scotland for parking -- a local government parking enforcement and also in London, the Transport for London, who managed the red routes around London. These are the roads, the main roads into London that have red lines on the side of the road as opposed to yellow lines. They are managed by TfL. And these 2 consultations are basically saying, we haven't reviewed the on-street parking enforcement ticket prices or levels since 2002, and they're proposing to put the price up, okay? Now that's good news, okay? Because -- and they're saying putting the price up to -- in London, that's GBP 160 in Fringe and in Scotland, I think, up to GBP 120. And what that means for our consultation is because there was a consultation around private parking operators and maybe put them in line with local government tickets and that would have been very negative for us, have that gone through because they were at a lower level. We don't really want to see that. They've changed that since the first consultation to put in a tiered approach. So again, changes in ticket value but per infringement and the type of infringement, which I see is not positive. And so they're trying to say that if someone overstays by 5 minutes, you shouldn't really charge them the same as if they're -- for using a Blue Badge bay or if they just haven't paid, all right? So that's the current conversation. Again, nothing's happened since last consultation other than the positivity around the 2 other consultations in Scotland and TfL, which I'm very positive about. And I see that as being a good thing for our industry. Off the back of that, we can't also forget the other parts of the consultation and the parking bill, which is around a singular appeal service and trying to put more regulation into the industry, which, again, I see is a good thing because it validates what we're doing. I think we're going to see higher payment ratios as a result of this going through. And I think you're going to see less cancellations and those sorts of things. So whilst there may be some changes in [ value ], I think you're going to see, like say, higher payment rate, less cancellations and just that [ normalcy ] behind a more -- mobility behind the ticket so people can take them seriously.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. Okay. Understood. And then just on the European expansion opportunity. Can you sort of elaborate on [indiscernible] timing around any go live or...

[Paul Gillespie]

No go lives at the moment. So we're obviously evaluating one market in particular that is where NPR can now be used, okay? So we have to be mindful of the fact trying to open up that services business in new territories, we have to have the ability to get the keeper details of the motorists. So the person who owns the car, we need to get their name and addressed, so we can send them a ticket in the post, okay? So that for me is -- that's the #1. The regulatory environment has to be right for us. So we can go and get those keeper details and operate in the same way. We're not interested in opening up a territory where we're just going to put people on the street in [indiscernible] jackets, that's going backwards. Our model is technology. So there is a large market in Europe right now that has -- where we can now access those details. So we're actively looking at how do we open that up, how do we get the personnel in place. Local personnel who speak the language and so on and so forth. So that's where we're at. It is early days, but the evaluation is well underway.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. Okay. And last question, just on the opportunity within Queensland and New Zealand. Have you sort of refined your understanding of the opportunity size within those markets?

[Paul Gillespie]

In terms of the total addressable market there?

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes, how many sites you think is available in those sort of 2 markets?

[Paul Gillespie]

I mean there's -- we don't have a total number. So it's not like the same amount of work hasn't been done in those markets as has been done in the U.K., it's just purely because of it's newer, all right? But the opportunities in Auckland alone is significant, yes. And I'm picking Auckland just because it's front of mind at the moment, but if we look at that particular market, the reason why it's so attractive for us. Number one, we've got -- we've already got infrastructure in place there, we have sales team and we're building it. And we've also got our office there to the technology business. But Auckland as a city has poor public transport, yes. It's a mindset in New Zealand of people getting in the car. It's a very common thing. Lots of people have cars and they want to use them, and so parking is a premium. And so private land is abused regularly. And majority of car parks that we are taking over at the moment are winning, tend to be operated by tow companies or just manual enforcement, a guy in [indiscernible] jacket it sounds like. So that, for us, when we go in with our value proposition of number plate recognition, it's obviously we will be providing the equipment to the land owner at no cost to them, but we obviously maintain the infringement revenue is a good outcome. We've recently expanded there. We've now got a sales resource in Wellington as well. So we've got those 2 cities covered. So for us, I can see New Zealand growing slightly quicker. Queensland is a bit different and is a more challenging market, but still a market we like, like the look of, lots of opportunity, particularly around Brisbane and Gold Coast, Townsville and those areas. And we focused our team -- our teams are based in Brisbane and our first sites are already in Brisbane and Gold Coast. But again, having spent time with them myself, just driving around the city, which is [indiscernible] and Gold Coast, you can see a significant opportunity, retail, hotel, public -- private land car parks there are a good number of them. Gold Coast is very attractive for us because we know tourist destinations are very profitable and certainly very profitable for us in the U.K. and so that's a good place to start.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

Well, there's a question on chat from [ Ret Mawson ]. Do you know where the spare car parks are in real time and a very good idea of where they will be in a small time in the future?

[Paul Gillespie]

So we're talking about a shift focus on our technology business, absolutely. If we have a customer, we take Adelaide, for example, or Wellington City Council where we have 3,500 sensors installed, provided there are sensors in those spaces, then we know what's happening in real time. We also have the ability in SmartCloud software platform we use, that we built. We also have the ability to understand when those spaces are -- what the peak times are, so on and so forth. So we can make a good estimate as to what the availability will be in an hour's time or 2 hour's time based on historical data. We can now do the same in our -- the car parks we manage through number plate recognition. So again, we can in -- SmartCloud can tell us how many cars have come in, how many cars have left, how many cars are in the car park at a time and so on and so forth. So yes, we can provide that same data if we've got the technology there.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

There's a follow-up question from [Ret] on that. It says, do people who want to car park soon pay for this information?

[Paul Gillespie]

We have obviously -- our customer is the council, for example. So Wellington, so they pay us for access to the data. So essentially, yes, the motorist does not pay for that. The [ matrix ] there that cancel and provide the app as a free service. And in Adelaide, for example, agains 3,000 sensors installed in Adelaide. What they want there is provide the motorist with the ability to look at their phone, understand where the spaces are available, Google Map leads straight to that space and then pay for the space. So they don't pay for the information themselves, they're paying for a service to park, if you like.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

Thank you, Paul. [Operator Instructions] We have more time. And if anyone would like to ask a question, please go ahead.

[Unknown Analyst]

It's Ron here again. Just a question on acquisitions. Can you talk about the pipeline and sort of what kind of sized businesses are you looking at? Is it more like EPS kind of size? And sort of give us an idea of maybe the multiples you would pay?

[Paul Gillespie]

Certainly, I mean, the EPS deal was a good one, right? It's a great business. That was clean, tidy, easy to BD, easy to execute or far more straightforward. What you find in the U.K., in particular, there are a lot of smaller operators who will operate in the same way as EPS or may have more manual sites. And these are the sort of businesses we're interested in talking to because, a, they're slightly smaller, we can afford them. We can fund them through cash flow. And a lot of them will have a lot of manual sites where we can say, okay, we'll buy the contracts or buy the business, but then we can -- we can then turn the sites from a manual operation to technology and the number plate recognition on. So therefore, you get an uplift in revenue from the technology rather than just the people. Multiples, probably not for this call, I would suggest. I mean for us, we take every opportunity as it comes. We've got a number of opportunities we're looking at right now. It's like -- it's challenging, right? Trying to kind of get these things over the line, but we've actively tuned to a good number of companies and of course, trying to get and done, but everybody want to sell. Unfortunately, which is the challenge.

[Unknown Analyst]

I'll ask it in a different way. Is the cash balance that you have sufficient for the deals that you want to do?

[Paul Gillespie]

Yes, absolutely. Yes.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

Paul, another question from [ Ret ] here on chat. Does your technology talk to third-party follow-on mobility, [indiscernible] trip planning from car to e-bike scooter for the last mile?

[Paul Gillespie]

Yes. So technology is built -- it's all -- it's completely API structure. So we can talk to any number of providers via an API, whether that be like you say, a last-mile delivery service, whether it be -- I don't know -- I think really this could be anything you want, I suppose. It's the technology is there. It's open. It's like an open API solution. So yes, we can talk to those technologies.

[Unknown Analyst]

It's [ Sagan ]. Just wanted to go back on the parking [ bid earlier ]. I think last time we spoke, the proposed changes previously was that for over stays, the ticket size would be reduced to GBP 15 and GBP 25, if it's paid within 14 days, and that certain case we're having GBP 100 and GBP 60, respectively, currently. And you're saying that if they get what they're asking around the London local charter's hub that the proposed changes will try to match your sort of numbers? Is that what you're saying?

[Paul Gillespie]

So the first numbers you mentioned, the GBP 15, GBP 25. So that's most local authorities in the U.K. If you park on street and you overstay, a parking warden comes along, puts a ticket on your car, that's the price of the ticket, okay? And the thinking was origin and then in London, it's more expensive, it's GBP 120 and GBP 70, I think, something like that. And what they were talking about is private parking mirroring the local authority parking charges. Now that doesn't work, right, on many, many levels, and they've accepted that, that it's probably not going to work. Which is why they've come back with a second consultation to put a different tiered process in place or asking what do you think? So again, nothing is happening with this [ change ], this has all been consulting with the industry. So -- and they basically said, look, we want to match the infringement to the value or the value ticket to the severity of the infringement. So if you are parking into [ disabled ] bay, you don't have a blue badge and you're abusing those bays when someone who does really need them to use them, you should pay the maximum fee, which is [ good idea ]. Or if you just turn out to a car park's pay, you just don't pay at all, then you should get the maximum ticket issued to you. Whereas if you turn on to car park, you have paid, but you've overstayed by 10 minutes or whatever or it's a small overstay, and then you'd pay a lower rate. So that's their thinking now. The reason why I mentioned the local authority tickets in Scotland and Transport for London is that the reason why they're coming out now wanting to change these or consult with the industry to change [indiscernible] on street is because they haven't been changed since 2002. So I would suggest, if it goes ahead in Scotland and Transport for London, it wouldn't surprise me if it's reviewed in England as well, which will be good news for us, right? And it makes the combination easier. Well, okay, if you want to mirror a local government if they're higher, well, that makes sense because if they're too low, then the abuse will just continue. If anything, the abuse will go up and they issue more tickets, which is not what they want, right? But also the lower the value, you use it more, you get a higher pay ratio and all those sort of things. So I think, [indiscernible] at the moment, like I say, it's a station that's been running some time. I think the change in personnel is going to continue to run for quite some time [indiscernible] gets. I don't know for sure, but that's the industry feedback I have today. And like I said, the positivity [indiscernible] to other areas of Scotland and Transport for London coming out to price up, can only be good news for the industry because it means that the deterrent is in place, and that's really what we want, and that's what our customers put us in place. There are lands being abused. They want us to come in and fix it and provide a service to them. And that's what we did.

[Unknown Analyst]

What are they proposing for short overstay infringements? My understanding is that most of the infringements for private parking operators are overstays rather than blue badge parking infringements.

[Paul Gillespie]

It's the mix, we issued tickets for any number of reasons. I mean, the other thing was they want to put a higher price on whether it's permit holders only or like a drop-off area. So we manage a lot of -- so for example, in retail, shopping centers, for example, we might manage the main car park, but we also manage the loading zone, which is a no parking area and it's only a 20-minute drop-off. Well, if you park there, you're getting a ticket for the maximum penalty and we've got a lot of those areas. So the mix -- it depends on sort of what place you are, one of our [indiscernible] predominantly is retail, then all the tickets that we're issuing would just be overstays, like small overstays. For us, we have a good mix of sites. So those are drop off areas, permit holders only, all those sorts of things, which would carry a maximum penalty. But again, it's -- for me, if I was a betting man, I would say that there will be some sort of change that will be mainly around the appeal service. Is the value of ticket going to change? I really don't know at the moment. The feedback I have today, given the other consultations out there is, I find it hard to believe they are going to change something, like in the near future around the value.

[Unknown Analyst]

So worst-case scenario you see is -- the worst-case scenario is a potential, say, a change in the value in of the ticket, but maybe better payment rates for those tickets?

[Paul Gillespie]

And we see that already in our own estates because remember, not all sites that we have, we issue tickets at the maximum level, so GBP 100 and reduced to GBP 60 if payable in 14 days. Some sites we have, we're issuing tickets at GBP 85 and then obviously, [indiscernible] 40% if you pay within 14 days. And what we see on those sites is a higher level of infringement, okay? So we issue more tickets on those sites because people look at it and think, well, I mean, I can cope with that if I get a ticket, if they catch me, I don't mind, I'll cope with that. And that's the thing, right? And that's why the local government sees such high levels of infringement in some areas because people don't care, they can afford the GBP 25 or the GBP 50 or whatever it's going to be. So then there's cheap base parking. Outside of an event area, if we look at Manchester, for example, it's a good example. Yes and your mates want to go and see Man United play. Why would you bother with going to pay for parking somewhere? Just stick your car on street outside the stadium and cut the GBP 25 fine because there's four of you in the car. It's no big deal, is cheap parking. And that's the way that people view it. So therefore, you have to have some sort of deterrent in place to make sure that it is a infringement, it is a penalty notice or a charge rather, not penalty. And so that's what they're grappling with now is to make sure that -- because if they've set fees low, there's going to be an increase in tickets, which is what they don't want. If they keep them at the right level, then you're going to see a similar level of tickets. And it's really to us and our strategy continues, which is about winning sites, put them on [indiscernible] and delivering a great service to our customers.

[Richard Ludbrook, Group CFO & Company Secretary]

Very good. Well, we'd be pleased to take any further questions off-line. Either send them to Paul, Richard or myself, and we'd be delighted to help with them. And on that note, I might ask Paul to close with some final remarks. Thank you.

[Paul Gillespie]

Thank you, Michael. Yes, I mean... Okay. Mike. Please bare with me for one second. I do apologize, technical hitch, here we go. I have completely lost my -- I do apologize. Okay. I mean, I guess what I would like to leave you with is just really the key points I made at the start of the deck. We clearly that there is a recovery underway and the business -- we know a lot of business has been hit by COVID, had the challenges of drops in revenue have you, which we've seen. And the reason for that is the drop in footfall. But of course, in our key market today, and we believe we will see the confidence return in other markets. But the key market being the U.K., we're already seeing that footfall increase. And with the 54% increase in PBNs, we believe that's really coming forward. We absolutely believe there's going to be a return to pre-lockdown levels of traffic and infringements in New Zealand and Australia, which is why we believe those markets will increase. And of course, with that, we'll see our operational gearing continue to grow, and those EBITDA margins be maintained due to our fixed cost base. So to us, we've got a positive outlook for Q2, positive outlook for FY '22 and keen to update the market further at the AGM next month. But again, as Michael said, if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to drop me an email or give me a call. We'd be happy to help. And with that, unless there are any other questions, I thank you very much for your time, and then we'll speak to you again soon. Thank you.