Fletcher Building announces hundreds of millions more in restructuring costs
Photo:
Supplied
Fletcher Building has announced hundreds of millions of dollars of new restructuring and impairment costs, and continued a suspension of its dividend as it focuses on paying down debt.
At an investor day briefing it disclosed estimated losses for the current financial year between $573 million to $781m of significant items which will hit its full-year results to be announced in August.
Chief executive Andrew Reding said a strategic review of its businesses revealed the losses.
"We expect FY25 EBIT (earnings before interest and tax -- before significant items) to be in the range of $370m to $375m."
Specific provisions detailed included the already disclosed $251m writedown of its Australian plumbing business Iplex; $58m lost on the sale of Australian distribution business Tradelink; $12m-$15m on the International Convention Centre; $10m-$15m for defending legal action for the West Australian leaky pipes issue; and just disclosed $16.4m loss on the Puhoi to Warkworth highway.
Reding said the additional losses related to restructuring and redundancy costs, goodwill and brand impairments, closure costs and exiting onerous technology contracts.
The company said there would be no dividends for shareholders until its net debt level has fallen to the mid-range of $400m to $900m, when the dividend policy would be reviewed.
The new guidance was subject to market conditions for the remainder of June which is Fletcher Building's financial year-end. The uncertainty in the estimates related to the timing of housing settlements in its Fletcher Living unit.
The company's share price tumbled nearly 4 percent to $2.96 in early trading.
In materials presented for the investor day the company said it had made savings of about $200m and cut staff by about 620 full time positions.
It said its medium term focus would be on manufacturing and distribution of building products and materials, in a simple and decentralised structure.
In February, Fletcher Building reported half-year losses of $134m, and said it expected economic pressures to persist for the remainder of the year.
The strategic review has been aimed at streamlining its businesses in New Zealand and Australia, but it did not release any details of businesses that might be sold.
The company is also being
sued by Sky City Entertainment
for hundreds of millions of dollars over delays in completing the International Convention Centre in Auckland.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
8 hours ago
- RNZ News
Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson apologises to customers for data breach
By Nassim Khadem and Rhiana Whiston , ABC Photo: WILLIAM WEST/AFP The Qantas chief executive says the airline takes cybersecurity breaches "incredibly seriously" and has apologised to more than 6 million customers who received a personalised email on Wednesday, informing them that cybercriminals had broken through the company's defences. "What I would first like to say is acknowledge the impact to all our customers and, first and foremost, I'd like to apologise to them," Vanessa Hudson said in an interview with Channel Seven in Athens overnight. "I know this data breach is a serious concern. I know the stress that it has created for many, many millions of customers. "And so, right up front, I want to say we take this seriously and we are going to do everything that we can to communicate transparently." Hudson said the breach occurred when a cybercriminal infiltrated one of the airline's call centres and accessed a service platform that enabled them to get access to customer data. She said the criminals accessed "principally customer names, also phone numbers and frequent flyer numbers as well". "That is something that we are very concerned about and we are absolutely doing everything that we can to rectify this situation," she said. "What I can also say, though, is that that the threat has been contained and the systems are now secure, and our number-one focus is to support customers through this process." Hudson said the airline communicated with its customers "as quickly as possible" and it was being transparent. Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson. Photo: AFP / Qantas "I take absolute responsibility for the event that has occurred. As soon as I heard about it, I have focused on it basically 24/7," she said. "Part of the steps that we're taking [involves being] ... really transparent with customers, but then also obviously next week we'll be following up and giving our customers the information that they need to understand how the specific data pertaining to them has potentially been breached in this." Hudson said the company had invested "tens of millions" of dollars in cyber security and "that's been increasing year on year" but criminals were getting more sophisticated. "We take cybersecurity incredibly seriously, and we have got absolute focus right across our organisation, from training to system controls to system alerts in this instance," she said. "Unfortunately, the cybercriminal was able to get through." Hudson said Qantas was now working with the federal government to "investigate this right through to the end". "These are criminal cybercriminals and we have involved the AFP and we've involved the government cybersecurity team," she said. She noted the cybercriminals did not get access to customers' passport information, credit card information or password information. "Your frequent flyer accounts, from a customer perspective, are secure," she said. "We have not had passport information breached. We have not had credit card information breached and we have not had password information breached." Hudson said Qantas had provided "significant training" to employees but cybercriminals were getting more apt at breaching security measures. "We are going to learn from this. We are going to do a full investigation," she said. Hudson said the airline had now "strengthened and increased controls" and would continue to build its defences against future breaches. But she said the reality for all organisations was "we live in a world where our cybercriminals are global". "They [cyber criminals] are good at what they do. They are constantly innovating in terms of what we do. And so that is why we are constantly going to be improving our systems as we go forward as well." The company's reputation has been battered in recent years. That has included coping penalties for misleading customers by selling tickets on flights that had already been cancelled. Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce also faced heat in parliamentary hearings over rising profits and airfares despite growing customer dissatisfaction. Asked whether the cyber breach would further dent the airline's standing with customers, Hudson said "trust is something that is earned" and "comes from being up-front and transparent and that is what we are doing". "In this event, we have communicated to customers as soon as we knew." -ABC
1News
9 hours ago
- 1News
Delay-plagued convention centre to host medical conferences in 2026
The New Zealand International Convention Centre in Auckland will host two major medical conferences next year — after finally opening following a near six-year delay. A spokesperson for the convention centre, which was initially scheduled to open in 2020 but was delayed following a devastating fire, said both the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists would hold their conferences at the centre. The events would be held from April 30 to May 5 and November 5 and November 9, respectively. The convention centre would officially open in February next year. According to NZ Herald, nine other events had already been booked at the centre. It was expected both newly announced events would include a combined total of 3300 delegates, "generating millions of dollars in economic activity", according to a spokesperson for the centre. ADVERTISEMENT NZICC director of sales and planning, Alana Bicknell, said it was a "major boost" to secure two major conferences during the convention centre's first year of opening. 'We can't wait to extend our manaakitanga to the delegates of both conferences. We're confident the NZICC will absolutely wow them.' 'We appreciate the support from our industry partners to help bring these events to New Zealand, and also the government for their recent announcement regarding changes to the law around the advertising of medicines that have previously been a barrier to international medical conferences coming here,' Bicknell said. SkyCity, which owned the convention centre, filed legal proceedings against Fletcher Building and The Fletcher Construction Company, seeking compensation of $330 million for "ongoing delays" to the project. SkyCity said the project was nearly six and a half years behind the contractually agreed delivery date of January 2019. SkyCity claimed it was entitled to $330 million in liquidated damages from Fletchers under the contract. Fletcher Building said it would "vigorously" defend the legal action and had already paid "significant" liquidated damages to SkyCity over the delays.
RNZ News
12 hours ago
- RNZ News
Russian seizures and growing debt see Airwork Group go into receivership
Photo: lenor/123RF Long-established air freight company Airwork Group has been placed into receivership. Airwork, whose New Zealand roots trace back to 1936, has a fleet of Boeing 737 freighters and operates an air freight, maintenance, and aircraft leasing business. The company was briefly listed on the stock exchange in 2013 before a Chinese company, Zhejiang Rifa Holdings, took it private in 2017. Brendon Gibson, Daniel Stoneman and Neale Jackson of Calibre Partners were appointed as receivers. They said the move was made after a shareholder breached the company's banking facilities during the sale of the business. "This step has been taken to facilitate a structured process to identify a new owner for the business," Gibson said. "The trading performance of the business underpins the strategy to continue to trade with the support of the financiers, customers, and key suppliers with a view of immediately commencing a going-concern sale process for the New Zealand and Australian businesses and assets." In recent years, Airwork racked up hundreds of millions of dollars of losses after five of its six Boeing 757 freighter aircraft were trapped and illegally seized in Russia after the country invaded Ukraine. That forced the company to write off its value, and it became trapped in litigation with its insurers. The company sold its helicopter operations in 2022 and has since sold several surplus aircraft and engines to try and stay afloat. More recently, Airwork defaulted on a USD$83.5 million bank loan. The company employs around 180 people in New Zealand and Australia. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
