AVA Risk Group Limited (AVA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the Ava Risk Group FY '26 Results Webinar. Apologies we're starting the webinar without all the documents live on ASX. It's a busy day for the ASX, and we have lodged the results materials and understand the 4E appendix is now live. You should shortly see the other results materials, including the presentation and announcement, appear on the platform. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded. I will now turn the webinar over to David Cronin, Chairman of Ava Risk Group, for opening remarks.

Thanks, Alex. Good morning, and welcome to shareholders, investors and other interested parties joining us for Ava Risk Group's FY '26 results presentation. As Alex said, I'm David Cronin. I'm Chairman of Ava. Joining me today are Bryant Henson, our new Group Chief Operating -- Chief Executive Officer, and Neville Joyce, our Chief Financial Officer. Bryant will lead the strategic and operational discussion, and Neville will take us through the financial results later in the presentation. I also want to acknowledge Neville for the leadership he provided throughout the CEO transition period. It's certainly been a bit longer than what we initially expected, but he carried a significant additional responsibility during that period. He maintained a clear focus on the business, our people and our customers. Thanks, Neville. Before we begin, I draw your attention to the nature of any forward-looking statements and disclaimer. So today, we'll cover four areas: an overview of FY '26, the strategic growth drivers we see across the business, our financial performance and finally, our strategy and outlook for FY '27. FY '26 was not the financial year we wanted. We were disappointed with the financial outcome. Revenue at $28.8 million was below our expectations, primarily because of the timing of several significant project orders that moved beyond the year. But I also want to be clear, we had areas of the commercial organization that did not perform to our expectations. We recognize that. We have made changes, and we enter FY '27 with a stronger sales organization and much clearer accountability for execution. Importantly, order intake of $29.4 million exceeded revenue, and the majority of the delayed opportunities remain active as we enter FY '27. Gross margins were strong. We've got a very good product range. EBITDA was positive, reflecting our highly scalable cost base. But the financial result does not tell the whole story of what changed at Ava during the year. We materially strengthened the company's leadership, commercial capability and market access. We continue to validate our technology across aviation, rail, telecommunications, energy, sovereign border applications. You'll hear more about that in this presentation. We also sharpened our strategic focus around critical infrastructure and the markets where we believe Ava has the greatest opportunity to build a much larger business. So the message entering FY '27, it's rather straightforward. The platform is stronger and the priority is execution. We now need to convert backlog, delayed opportunities and the broader pipeline into revenue, earnings and cash. One of the most significant changes during the year was the deliberate strengthening of our positioning in the U.S. We brought Hale Capital into Ava because we wanted more than just capital. We wanted a strategic partner with experience and networks across U.S. federal, state, enterprise and critical infrastructure markets. Rear Admiral Terence McKnight also joined our Board. Terry brings more than 40 years of U.S. Navy and defense industry leadership and deep experience with the Department of Defense, government stakeholders and prime contractors. And we appointed Bryant as our U.S.-based Group CEO. These are not unrelated appointments. They reflect a deliberate decision by the Board to align capital, leadership and governance with what we see as one of Ava's largest long-term opportunities, the U.S. federal, defense and critical infrastructure markets. This brings me to Bryant. I spent considerable time with Bryant during the global CEO search and became convinced that his experience is unusually well matched to the next stage of Ava. He's led multibillion-dollar defense and mission-critical technology businesses at L3Harris. He served customers across 59 countries, managed thousands of people and spent 16 years at Lockheed Martin. What impressed us was not simply the scale of those businesses. Bryant combined strategy with real operating accountability, sales execution, P&L ownership, manufacturing, supply chain and scaling complex technology businesses. Bryant saw something in Ava that attracted him despite having spent much of his career leading organizations many times our size. Rather than me tell you why, I'll let Bryant explain that himself. Bryant, welcome to Ava. Over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, David. I appreciate the introduction. I joined Ava this past Monday, August 24, and I'd like to tell you what attracted me to Ava. As our world continues to become more complex and governments and private organizations are navigating the critical need to increase the resilience of and harden key infrastructure, Ava is well positioned for that. I'm drawn to organizations with essential missions that leverage technology to solve some of society's most complex challenges. And as I think of some of our most pressing issues today, protection of mission-critical infrastructure has become one of the most significant challenges we face. We have a differentiated technology that has already been validated in demanding security and critical infrastructure environments, a high gross margin business model and substantially greater addressable market potential than is reflected in our current revenue base, and I look forward to working with this team to realize that potential. If we move to the next slide, for those that may not be familiar with us, I'd like to give a brief overview of our business. Ava is a global technology company that develops intelligent sensing and security platforms to help customers detect, understand and respond to the threats across mission-critical infrastructure. Our business consists of three segments: Detect, Access and Illuminate. Our Detect segment is the largest part of our business. It's principally focused on class-leading fiber optic sensing and AI-powered perimeter intrusion detection technology across many different industries and applications. The Access segment focuses on high-security access control, credentialing and electronic locking solutions. And finally, our Illuminate segment focuses on intelligent perimeter detection, illumination and imaging solutions. Our Access and Illuminate segments primarily go to market via distribution and OEM channels. Move to the next slide. I won't spend a lot of time on this chart, but the point is that we have a robust solution portfolio and serve customers across many different mission-critical infrastructure domains, which leads me to the next chart. To give you a sense of how our solutions fit, this is a layered security architecture example that shows how we protect outside the perimeter, the perimeter, as well as inside the perimeter. Our solutions include perimeter detection, buried detection, lighting, critical asset protection, biometric readers, automatic number plate recognition cameras, just to name a few. And so when you look across the robustness of our portfolio, we're a pure play that can bring to bear an ecosystem of intelligent sensing and security platforms. We take great pride in our capabilities, and it shows with the customers and partners that trust the solutions that we develop and offer. FY '26 was one of transition for us. There were a number of strategic milestones to position us to transition from technology validation to scalable commercial execution and market expansion. I will speak more to these milestones in the charts to come. We move to the next chart. One of the key strengths to any organization is its talent and its talent bench. We dramatically improved our commercial capabilities and strengthened that, focused our orders intake regionally. We continue to add additional leadership to key markets, specifically the U.S. and APAC. And we also expanded our sales approach with direct enterprise sales as well as focused channel alignment. With these changes, we expect our commercial capabilities to be a lot stronger as we move into FY '27. And as David pointed out, this will be a year of execution and particularly focused on our order intake and conversion of that to sales. Now I'd like to take you through our six strategic growth markets and where we see opportunity for growth for us. United States federal and defense market, one that I have quite a bit of experience in, for the full year for fiscal year '26, we pulled in $6.2 million of orders, largely driven by the corrections and Government Security segment. A number of significant pipeline opportunities relating to upgrades in the energy sector and other government sites, approximately $1.9 million, remain open and have been carried into fiscal year '27. Additionally, the Hale partnership strengthened U.S. commercial capability, the appointment of Rear Admiral McKnight and my own appointment are all deliberately aligned to building a more substantial position across federal, defense and critical infrastructure markets. The North America market will be a key focus for us in fiscal year '27 and beyond as we push to accelerate growth. The aviation sector, specifically in the Australian aviation sector, we have been involved in a number of paid trials at Australian airports for enhanced perimeter intrusion detection systems, supporting the Department of Home Affairs' nationwide perimeter security directive. During the second half of fiscal year 2026, we successfully completed trials at several airports and commenced additional trials at both Melbourne and Perth airports. These trials are expected to successfully conclude this fiscal year. Success in these trials creates a path for implementation of our advanced fiber optic sensing technology in the Australian aviation sector, and we see fiscal year '27 order opportunities to exceed $2 million. Energy. We believe energy infrastructure represents a growth opportunity, and India shows that potential. We successfully fulfilled a $2.7 million contract to deploy fiber sensing technology to a critical pipeline in the Indian energy sector. This builds on our prior success in Indian defense and provides a significant reference for other opportunities across pipelines, storage, processing and other critical infrastructure. India remains an important FY 2027 growth market across both energy and defense. Sovereign border protection. Sovereign border protection is a complex issue and will be an area of focus with increasing government demand due to domestic politics as well as geopolitical instability in some regions. During fiscal year '26, we supplied our detection systems for border protection in Latvia, building on earlier successful deployments to another Eastern European border. A key opportunity for us in sovereign border protection is in the Middle East. It's approximately $2.8 million that was delayed from fiscal year '26 due to the ongoing regional conflict, which delayed customer procurement activity. We will continue to monitor the ongoing conflict, and we'll work with our customers accordingly to bring that order in. I also want to highlight our appointment as a prequalified supplier to the Australian Department of Home Affairs Border Protection Technologies panel, recognizing our fiber optic sensing solutions suitable for government border security applications. The appointment is for an initial 5-year term commencing from July 1, 2026. This positions us to access a broad and recurring pipeline of Commonwealth contracts, enabling streamlined procurement and faster deployment of our intrusion detection systems across critical infrastructure. Furthermore, beyond the revenue potential, I anticipate the panel membership to strengthen our visibility with key government stakeholders as we continue to service the sector. Rail and transportation. The Sydney Metro deployment with UGL represents a strategically important reference installation for our Aura Ai-X corridor intrusion and optical detection system. During fiscal year 2026, the company successfully tested object detection capability on the live rail corridor, which was a critical milestone towards project completion. We have seen expanded scope into additional transport infrastructure, demonstrating the potential for technology adoption to grow with the customer once performance is proven. Completion of the Sydney Metro is expected to make a broader set of Australian rail opportunities addressable to us and provides a reference for international opportunities as well. Telecommunications and subsea. The seabed is now a security domain and a national security priority. We're seeing increases in bad actor actions against subsea infrastructure. And for us, it's an opportunity for continued collaboration with Telstra, including data collection from our Aura Ai-X, which is deployed on the subsea cable in Northern Sydney, and participation in Telstra marketing initiatives demonstrating protection of critical telecommunications infrastructure. The strategic importance of subsea and terrestrial communication networks is increasing, creating a significant long-term application for fiber sensing across cable landing infrastructure, terrestrial routes and network facilities. As we think about our Access business and our next-generation credential platforming, we entered into a 5-year master supply and services agreement with UniKey to co-develop the 5-year next-generation NFC/BLE reader form factor. The agreement includes minimum purchase commitments and is anticipated to generate approximately $4.6 million of revenue over 5 years, subject to successful completion of the co-development products. The development of our updated reader range remains on track, and we expect market launch and distribution in fiscal year 2027. The focus in Access remains on growing U.S. distribution using the dormakaba network. The company is actively pursuing end user engagement opportunity stemming from dormakaba PRO-Alliance, dormakaba's largest U.S. marketing event, which the company participated in, in March of this calendar year. The UniKey agreement, alongside the refreshed reader range in the dormakaba distribution network, provides a clear platform for growth in North America, Europe and other markets. For Illuminate, the strategy is deliberately focused, which is growth through distributor and OEM relationships, expand in the United States and use the installed Detect customer base to create cross-sell opportunities for higher value proposition offerings and solutions. This approach is intended to increase revenue while maintaining discipline around fixed cost investment. With that, I'll turn it over to Neville for our financial performance update.

Thanks, Bryant. A snapshot of a key scorecard of the financial metrics across FY '26 is presented here. A few things that I specifically want to talk to. As David mentioned from the outset, revenue at $28.8 million was lower than what we did last year, primarily reflecting a number of key orders, which we expected to receive and fulfill in FY '26, which have been carried over into FY '27. And that's reflected in this scorecard, as the $6 million in delayed orders. We did increase our backlog slightly. Sales order intake was higher than revenue, and effectively, we grew our sales order backlog to $6.8 million. Of that $6.8 million, $2.6 million of it is in long-term recurring revenue contracts. The remaining $4.2 million relates to hardware orders and service installations associated with some of those orders. Most of that $4.2 million is expected to be delivered in FY '27. The contracted annual recurring revenue will be crystallized to revenue over many years. Margins within the business have remained really strong. And at a segment level, they are very consistent with what they've been in previous years. At a consolidated level, we target a margin range of 60% to 64%, and margins for the year just ended came in at 63%. Notwithstanding a lower revenue number than what we had expected, we were still able to deliver a slightly positive EBITDA. That result really reflects the fact that a lot of our technology build has been completed, and we have a very stable and leverageable operating cost base, which is critical for us as we move forward into FY '27 with the expectation of being able to grow revenue to improve earnings. And lastly, at June, we had a cash balance of $6.7 million. That balance includes $1.4 million, which was remitted to us on the 30th of June associated with the Indian contract that Bryant alluded to earlier on, but was physically only processed by Westpac on the 1st of July. In terms of the underdelivery on revenue in FY '26, as mentioned, that was below what we had provided in our guidance we provided in March and April, driven by the fact that we had a number of those orders were delayed. None of those orders have been lost. Our expectation at this stage is that they will all be closed in either Q1 or Q2 of FY '27. Perhaps the one which has the most uncertainty in timing is the one that Bryant has already called out associated with border protection in the Middle East. But certainly, the signs that we're receiving on that contract continue to be -- or that opportunity, continue to be encouraging. We do start FY '27 with a significant backlog. We have a strong pipeline, which we will talk to shortly. In terms of the financials themselves, from an income statement perspective, as I said, revenue of $28.8 million delivered a very marginal positive EBITDA outcome in the year just ended. Our ability to actually deliver that positive EBITDA outcome is really driven by the fact that our cost base has stabilized and, in fact, was slightly lower than what was incurred in FY '25. In terms of FY '26 financial statements, we did take up an additional impairment charge associated with the remaining goodwill that sits on our balance sheet. And we also wrote down slightly the value of intangible assets in the Illuminate sector. The increase in finance charges that are reflected there primarily relate to interest associated with the convertible notes and associated transaction costs. And you will see in our financial statements that associated with the Hale transaction, we now carry a financial derivative liability. In accordance with accounting standards, that liability needs to be restated at each balance date. Clearly, for the year ending FY '26, that restatement has returned a positive outcome for us. Nonetheless, we strip that out from our underlying operating performance. Balance sheet, as mentioned, cash at $6.7 million, including the receipt that we picked up on the 1st of July, but was remitted to us on the 30th of June. The increase in receivables is really driven by the timing of key projects in FY '26, in particular, the Indian order, which was fulfilled in June, but we will receive a chunk of that payment in Q1 of FY '27. The other key thing to call out in the balance sheet is the increase in borrowings. That increase in borrowings mainly relates to the Hale transaction. And as disclosed in the financial statements, you will see that, that transaction gets split between a value ascribed to the convertible note and then some values which are also ascribed to the derivative liabilities associated with the warrants that were issued and also the put option that exists in that transaction. The reality is, while those items have been split across three liabilities in the balance sheet, the full $7 million is reflected as a borrowing cost in the balance sheet, net of transaction costs, which were incurred associated with it. And then lastly, from a cash flow perspective, a slight increase in working capital related to the timing of Detect shipments in Q4. As I mentioned before, some of what we ship, particularly to fulfill that Indian order, will be collected in Q1 of FY '27. We continue to invest significantly in our Aura platform, which is the core capability in our Detect business, and we need to maintain our position in terms of being market-leading technology in that space. We also invested in the year just ended in the Access business around a refreshed reader range that Bryant spoke to when he reviewed the Access business. And most other items in the cash flow statement are as expected. You can see the net proceeds from the convertible note of $6.4 million represents a $7 million that was contributed by Hale, net of transaction costs of approximately $600,000 associated with the completion of that transaction. So before I hand back to Bryant, from a financial perspective, the critical thing for us is to leverage that technology and leverage that stable cost base. We've been able to sustain high gross margins. And certainly, we are not seeing any indications in the market that we expect to see an erosion of those markets. Because our technology is developed, we can expand revenue without significantly adding to the working capital requirement in the group or to the operating cost base in the group. We have a number of sectors where we have land and expand potential. The best demonstration of that is the work that we have -- are in the process of completing with Sydney Metro and the ability to leverage that project to drive additional opportunities in that sector in Australia. And clearly, we have an established and premier technology platform for which we have blue-chip end users who are paying for the use of that platform. All of that really says our challenge and opportunity in FY '27 is to continue to convert opportunities from our sales pipeline to drive revenue growth into the future. And with that, I'll hand back to Bryant.

Thank you, Neville. If we move to the next chart here. Look, our strategy is clear. Our goal is to build a global critical infrastructure technology company. The market pull is visible. We see proof points in border, subsea, aviation, automated rail and energy, all showing clear demand -- external demand drivers. We made a leadership reset to better align us to U.S. federal defense and the U.S. market as well as position us for critical infrastructure growth. Additionally, we've added significant talent to our team, and we will continue to build out our talent bench to best position us to penetrate these key strategic markets. Our technology is validated. As Neville mentioned, we've invested appropriately in our Aura product line, and we will continue to invest in it. We have proof points for that technology in rail, airports, energy, borders and telecoms. And as Neville mentioned, with the land and expand potential with Sydney Metro being a key proof point for us, that when our technology is deployed and we can show the value of it, there's opportunity for us to expand our scope with our existing customer base. We'll also be focused on increasing our revenue quality with FY '27 being an execution catalyst. And what I mean by that is focusing on the fundamentals, getting the right talent, the right people in the right roles, gaining access to and relationships with our customers and key partners, and a clear focus on execution while we drive our growth strategy and building the culture to support that. My expectation is that the aforementioned will help steer us to higher order intake, revenue growth and EBITDA growth. Next slide. From an orders pipeline, and this is just an example of our Detect segment, we're improving the quality of our pipeline. As an example, what you see here, we have over $100 million of pipeline opportunity, with more than 1/3 of it representing opportunities in excess of $1 million, and that's to reflect the focus on larger products -- projects where we can bring higher value proposition to our customers. So for FY '27, all about moving from our platform and building it into execution. The opportunity for us this year and beyond is really to leverage our strengths into more consistent order capture, revenue growth and cash generation. Completion of several orders which were expected to close in fiscal year '26, but have now been carried forward to fiscal year '27, will be a priority. Growth in Detect will be driven from key geographies in the United States and Asia Pac and continued focus on developing applications in key industry verticals. Growth in Access will be driven by launching the refreshed reader range that we talked about, expansion of our existing dormakaba distribution agreement and execution of a number of opportunities to grow distribution channels in Europe. Growth in Illuminate will be attributable to expansion in the United States and growth from OEM relationships. I expect that we will maintain stable gross margins across each operating segment, with our consolidated gross margin to remain between 60% to 64% and also maintain a stable operating cost base, which we've shown is highly scalable as revenue grows. With that, this concludes our prepared material. Alex, I'll hand it back over to you to open for questions.

Thank you, Bryant. [Operator Instructions] The first question that's come in is just on the order delays from FY '25 into FY '26, despite which we didn't deliver a flat year. Can we talk to growth expectations in light of this?

Yes. And in terms of the delay from '25 to '26, I think I mentioned in my opening address that we weren't happy with areas of the commercial organization that didn't perform to our expectations. We've recognized that we've made changes in personnel. We've made changes in the way that those people are managed. And we're definitely seeing an improvement before Bryant joined, and I'm sure we'll see a marked improvement now that he has joined. In terms of where those delays were, I think we've communicated with the market on that. But it's fair to say that our four regional sales leads have done a much better job even though the revenue wasn't to our expectations in FY '26 than what they had done coming out of FY '25. So we saw those sales leaders where we had some people targeting around the $2 million, $3 million sales targets exceed that to $3.9 million to over $5 million in FY '26. And we see that as a firm basis for improvement in FY '27. And that's really what gives us confidence as we go into FY '27. It's not just the backlog, it's not just the carryover of those orders that slipped from FY '26. It's the quality of the sales pipeline and the quality of the sales executives that are pursuing that pipeline. It's not to say we don't have more to go in terms of improving the commercial capability of the organization, but the foundation is there with some strong sales leaders that are now hitting targets that produce good financial returns and good growth for shareholders. I don't know if you wanted to add to that, Neville or Bryant?

I'm happy to talk a little bit about carryover projects. Clearly, there's a significant one in the Middle East, and there's a few in the U.S. and one here in Australia. And we are seeing, even as we enter FY '27, a chunk of those orders are coming in, in Q1, right? So I think the crystallization of what's being carried forward from FY '26 will certainly support growth into FY '27.

It's a very good question, and it's an observation that's certainly not lost on the Board or management, and it's something that we're definitely focused on.