Electro Optic Systems Holdings Limited (EOS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Electro Optics Systems Holdings Limited 2023 Half Year Results. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andreas Schwer, Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear investors. I welcome you to participate to the webinar of EOS in which we present the first half year 2023 results. My name is Andreas Schwer, I'm the CEO of EOS. With me is my CFO, Clive Cuthell. We both joined the company in August and September of last year. And we would like to lead you through this presentation, which is following a file, which we have uploaded to ASX about 1 hour ago. The presentation is structured in introduction where we will affect the half year report, give you a global market update, give you an overview about the business and in particular, about the performance throughout the first half year of 2023. Then we go into greater detail of the financial side. And at the very end, we give you a growth and growth perspective and outlook of the business. And at the end, there is time to answer questions you might have had and raised throughout the presentation. I hand over now to my CFO, Clive, to start with Slide #6.

Thanks, Andreas. And good day, everyone. As Andreas said, my name is Clive and I'm the CFO. This Slide 6 in file that we uploaded to the ASX an hour or so ago, just sets out the status of our half year report. As the slide says, we have not yet quite finished the Appendix 4D in financial statements as yet. The background to this is that the work is largely complete, but we had an unexpected delay late last week. So I'm just going to take a second to explain a little bit more about this and state to you what has happened. The -- and of course, as Andreas said, there will be the opportunity for questions at the end. The background to some of the information on this Slide 6 is that the company, as part of its contract in the Middle East, has an obligation to spend money in the Middle East or invest in a joint venture in the Middle East, and that's a standard requirement of all people in our industry that supply through the Middle East and it's an obligation to help support the growth of the local economy in the Middle East. This is the -- and I'm talking here about the offset credit arrangements that exist in the Middle East that we take part in. This is a standard process that operates in the country that we sell to in the Middle East, and there's a regime that manages and oversees compliance with our offset credit obligations, including looking at plans or business plans that we might set out to meet our obligations to spend money in the Middle East or invest in joint ventures. And also that authority improves these plans from time to time. EOS has had delays in getting the necessary approvals. So that's due to a number of things, including changes in management at the authorities in the Middle East. And recently, in the last 2 weeks, the company has been asked some questions about its compliance with deadlines under that regime. But this is not new. This has happened before in previous years and it's something that has been amicably resolved between the company and the counterparties concerned without a significant cost to the company. So we expect to deal with the questions that we've been asked about our compliance with program deadlines. And we expect to get our business plans approved by the authorities in due course. And we expect that to happen in a mutually agreeable way and without significant additional cost to the company. That's not guaranteed, but that is what we expect to happen. Matter of fact, a couple of people have already asked many questions since we fell the announcement. So I'll just touch briefly on 1 or 2 of the questions that I've been asked. One of the questions is, is there any product issue with what we're supplying to the Middle East? And the answer is no. This is completely unrelated to the products that we supply to the Middle East, and there is no issues of concern in relation to the products that we supply or the contracts of supply. Secondly, the question I've been asked is, well, Clive, what's the worst that could happen. And that's why we've included some information on Page 6 about the bank guarantee that has been issued. So there's an offset bond. As part of our obligations to meet offset credits, the company has issued a AUD 25 million bank guarantee as part of an offset bond in favor of the authorities in the Middle East. And the worst that could happen is that, that bank guarantee gets called by the authorities, and they take AUD 25 million. Now we don't expect that to happen, as I said, because we've been in this situation before, but I mentioned it so that you understand the scales involved. The company has already made a $15 million security deposit over the last few years against this bank guarantee. So if the guarantee was called, we would forfeit that $50 million security deposit and probably have to pay out $10 million to make the funding provider. But as I said, we've been in this situation before. We don't expect the guarantee to be called, but I mentioned it so that you understand the impact could be that big, but not catastrophic for the company. This has had a frustrating impact on the half year report. The company has pretty much completed all of its work on the half year report already. But this item came up -- came to a head late last week. And we are finalizing our disclosures in the half year report that will explain what I've just said, slightly more expansively in a subsequent events note. Our auditors are working with us on that, and we're just making sure that we meet all the relevant requirements in that disclosure. So it's a bit frustrating for us, and I know it's frustrating for people on the call, but I know it's frustrating that we had to reschedule this call from 10:30 to 1:00 p.m. But we did want to make sure that we got the results out today. we've included them in this presentation. And I'm going to hand over to Andreas now who's going to go through the front part of the results presentation, and then we'll come back later.

So thanks, Clive. Let's talk on the market update. That's Slide #7 of the presentation. The market is very bullish. The Ukraine conflict and other geopolitical conflicts and tensions are resulting in a significantly increase -- significant increase of defense spending around the globe. U.S. is benefiting from that one, and we are benefiting, in particular, due to our technology as a key differentiator. We are not serving the low technology mass market; we are serving the high-end market where quality and performance is paying off. And as such, we are asked for -- our products are asked for by our many clients in order to make a difference on the battlefield. Most foremost, also the war in Ukraine is giving us lots of potential, which resulted into signed contracts and some further potential for additional business coming up over the next few months. We have a very focused product development and commercialization approach being taken since last year. We concentrate on the product side, but we also concentrate on the market side. On the product side, we concentrate on products, which are being in actual high demand by the market. To give you just one example, Counter-UAS solutions are extremely bullish those days. That market is seeking for those type of products, in particular, in Ukraine where critical infrastructure is under threat by very commercialized low end drones coming in from the Russian side. So our counter-UAS solutions, cannon-based connected care solutions are the method of choice, the means of choice to protect the infrastructure against those kinds of threats. On the market side, we are addressing key markets, which were not served by U.S. in the past, such as Europe. So Eastern Europe around Ukraine obviously is a certain focus in those days, where we concentrate on in order to expand our business. Obviously, a key of our strategy is to stay very disciplined in terms of cost expenditures and capital allocation. And I just want to remind you that part of our go-to-market approach is that we team up with local champions in the respective countries in order to minimize our CapEx exposure. So that was part of the announced strategy, and we are following strictly this kind of strategy. Slide #8. Our strategic positioning is very much focused on export revenues. So more than 75% of our business is going into export markets with a growing tendency. What makes us also favorable for export clients other than our high-tech and leading performance and technology i's the aspect of having non-ITAR products. So we have -- most of our products are not ITAR contaminated. I mean not subject to the U.S. export laws, which makes us extremely interesting for our certain clients in European markets. Our strength, again, it's accuracy in tracking. Most of our products have a 30% to 40% higher accuracy, which is based on our 4 years of experience coming from the Space business. That's our main discriminator. And that's, again, the reason why our products are under high demand. Our technology innovation potential remains very strong. And again, we are focusing very much now on commercializing the big inventory of innovation and technology, which we have on our shelves. In total, we have sold so far more than 2,500 weapon stations that are successful in service around the world and more to follow thanks to an order book, which is very much in a kind of growth perspective. I can come back to this point in a few minutes from now. Our key product areas are the following 4 key areas. Number one is remote weapons station and Turrets. That's our backbone business as of today. Number two is EM Solutions, our Brisbane-based satellite terminal manufacturer. Also that is revenue with a strong growth perspective as of today. Number three is high-energy laser weapons, a very strategic business element of business segment, which is generating, hopefully, for next year onwards, significant revenues. And number four, it's the Space business with the biggest strategic potential, which is very small in terms of revenue generation. But again, the long-term outlook here is extremely promising. We switch to Slide #9 to the half year performance overview on what has happened. So EOS has launched in the first half of this year, 2 products. One is called Slinger. Slinger is a derivative of the R400. It is customized and specialized for Counter-Drone activities. That product has been sold the first time during the last few months. And it will be in operation also in Ukraine in a couple of months from now to protect critical infrastructure, namely missile launch bases and ground-based radars against drone attacks from the East. We also launched the R150. R150 is our latest baby. It's a lightweight weapon station, which will serve the so-called large volume market for small 4x4 vehicles in trucks where we can put 12.7- and 40.5-millimeter heavy machine guns on it. It is the most lightweight product in the market and comes with the latest technology. So we believe that R150 will contribute significantly in the future to our revenue generation potential. In terms of new orders, we have signed so far this year orders of more than AUD 400 million, which is an extremely high value. So the book-to-revenue value is really good for this year. Within the AUD 400 million, there are conditional contracts which we signed with Ukrainian clients in the order of AUD 181 million. On the working capital side, we were focusing very much on contract management, that means cash generation. So we could realize this first half year to convert more than $50 million of contract assets into cash, contributing significantly to our very favorable cash balance. Overall, we have realized $123 million cash receipts in the first half, which is 65% above the $74 million, which we generated in the first half year of 2022. So our cash balance by August 28, so by today, is AUD 83 million. Debt repayment. As you're aware of, we have signed last year, 3 facilities with Washington Soul Pattinson. We are supposed to pay back the first facility in the order of $26.9 million of debt on or before September 6, 2023, and [ U.S. ] will pay back those debts in time. So there's no doubt that this facility will be gone in 1 week from now. So let's move on to Slide #11, and I will hand over to Clive to give us more insights into the financials.

Thanks, Andreas. And for people who've just joined the call, my name is Clive, I'm the CFO of EOS and I joined in September last year. If I turn to Page 11, as Andreas mentioned, this summarizes the first half '23 financial results. As the page shows, overall, the first half result includes revenue that is up from $54 million last year to $74 million this year. That drove an improvement in the underlying EBITDA result of $9 million. The finance costs during the year were $10 million higher than in the prior year, and that is because of the debt refinancing that the company undertook in September, October 2022 which caused the company to have more debt and more expensive debt than it had in the prior year. The net cash flow from operations, which has been a very strong focus area for management over the last several months, improved by almost $48 million on the prior year. So the company generated $30 million of net cash flow from operations in the first half. And I'll just talk a little bit more about that in a second. And finally, as Andreas said, the order backlog at the 30th of June 2023 is $645 million, which includes $460 million of secured contracts and $180 million of conditional contracts. Both of these are a significant increase on the order backlog as it stood 12 months ago. If I turn to Page 12, and I'll just focus a little bit on cash flows. So the cash flow outcomes have been very important to us in the first half. And that's because we've been aiming to reduce working capital and as Andreas said, to repay debt. This is very important to us because it gives us the time to grow the customer base and to grow the product base much more, and that's going to be what drives the future growth in '24, '25 and '26, as Andreas will discuss in a minute. So as I said, the ticket to that gain is cash flow, which is why it's been a very strong focus. And as we -- as you can see on the slide, the cash balances have improved from $14 million in June last year. We had $21 million in the bank in December. We have $42 million in the bank in June 23, 8 weeks ago. And today, we have $83 million in the bank. This is driven by cash collections, which, as you can see, are up $49 million on the prior year to $123 million. We've also been very disciplined in our investment cash flows making sure that we're focused on the core part of the business and managing our investment cash flows carefully. Also, since 30th of June, as I indicated, we've had a very positive cash flow that has increased the balance from $42 million to $83 million. That's included the benefit of a tax refund that we received in July and the $44 million receipt from a customer that we delivered to during July. And as Andreas says, this means we're in a position to make the scheduled debt repayment of $26.9 million on schedule that on or before the 6 of September. If I turn the page to Page 13, we'll just look at the first of our 2 reportable segments. So in defense revenue was up 33% on prior comparable periods to $50 million. This has -- this revenue uplift has allowed the improved profitability, and as you can see, a reduction in the loss before tax. We are focused on continuing to grow the order book and the revenue so that we improve the bottom-line performance further. Customer receipts during the first half were $109 million, which is more than double what they were in the prior year. If I then turn the page to the second of our 2 segments, which is Space. The biggest part of our Space reportable segment is the EM Solutions business, which provides -- which manufactures and sells naval SATCOM terminals or antenna. This is a high-growth business that has been growing at more than 20% a year for several years. It's performance is again the reason for the strong revenue growth we saw in the Space segment. So as the page shows, Page 14 shows revenue is up 51% in this segment from $15 million last year first half to almost $24 million in the first half of this year. And again, the growth in revenues both improving the profitability line although clearly, we are continuing to focus on growing it further and make sure this business becomes profitable. The receipts on our projects can be lumpy, and that's the reason why our customer receipts during the period were $14 million, which is down slightly from the prior year. As many people are aware, this business secured a significant new contract worth over AUD 200 million to supply the Royal Australian Navy recently. And that contract was announced at the end of May, and that is expected to contribute to further revenue and customer receipts as the business goes forward. So we're not too happy with the way that business is going. I'm going to hand back to Andreas now, who is going to talk about how we're going to use the cash flow we've developed and the time that we've secured by delivering that improved cash flow to grow the business over the next few years. Andreas?

Thanks, Clive. We start with our order backlog and the orders, which we took on board over the first half of year 2023. So we got an order from a Western European government in the order of $51 million, which has been delivered already in July of this year. So all the cash for the revenues were realized in the actual year, which was a great success story. We also realized a AUD 202 million contract by the Australian Navy in favor of EM Solutions. That's a contract, which is running over 7 years, but with a very front-loaded cash and revenue profile. And this contract, which is the framework on with the Australian Navy is considered being a kind of door-opener for a significant number of other major navies to come up over the next 2 years. We signed 2 contracts with Ukrainian in customers totaling up to $181 million. Those contracts are conditional on testing, approval and some customary wartime conditions. So first of all, we are still waiting for an export permit from the U.S. government to be allowed to transport U.S. cannons into Ukraine for test. That's the reason why we have performed 2 weeks ago, a significantly important test campaign in the U.S. and could demonstrate in front of Ukrainian clients that our systems are even better than we have specified. So the customer was very enthusiastic. They went back home, their test reports are underway. And we will see whether those tests are sufficient in order to proceed with the contract or whether they still want to insist on a local test to be done in Ukraine, which is the kind of standard term in Ukrainian contracts. But if you're lucky, again, the test in U.S. may be sufficient, at least for one of those contracts. So once the test documentation has been formally finished, we expect that Ukraine MOD, we provide the approval and this hopefully with result in unconditional confirmed orders coming in, in purchase orders of batches of 25 or 50 systems each. So we go forward to Page #17. We talk about our growth opportunities. So I just want to recall that the revenues of U.S. group was mainly depending on the success of a single product line, which is called R400. R400 is also the product which we are selling to the Middle East clients predominantly. We have now widened up our product base by the introduction of the R150, the formal launch was a couple of months ago. This system is perfectly suited for very light vehicles, but it's also perfectly suited to go into future unmanned ground vehicles. And this is a market which is coming up pretty soon. We expect the R150 becoming a best seller on the market, and we are preparing ourselves with the right level of production capacity. We've also launched the counter drone kinetic system called Slinger in the first half of this year based on our proven world-leading accuracy and technology the customers are convinced that we have a leading edge in particular in the Counter-Drone application. Why is it more important to have high accuracy in Counter-Drone than ground-to-ground? A ground-to-ground target typically is of the size of 2 x 5 meters vehicle type of target, whereas a drone is the kind of cross section of 20 x 20 or 20 x 50 centimeters. So it's much smaller. So accuracy is much higher importance, and that's the reason why we believe. And we are very optimistic that our market share in Counter-Drone applications will be significantly higher than in the kind of classical ground-to-ground application. So also here, we have realized the first test batch of systems which go out to the market. And one batch of those will be going to Ukraine to protect critical infrastructure in Ukraine against drone attack. So again, this is revenue, which will come in soon from now over the next 2, 3 years. We're also going to formally unveil to the market, the R800 that is just in the counter-UAS configuration. This is the bigger brother of the R400. It's probably the most powerful, the most -- weapons station in the market competing against unmanned drones, which come in at 4x the mass, the weight and 4x the price. So we believe with the R800, we will have a very significant chance also to enter into the market area where U.S. was not present in the past. This will lead to significant revenues over the next 3 years to come. And then from '25 to '27, we expect that the unmanned ground vehicle market will starts to grow significantly. We have already realized some sales, but obviously, those kind of customer bases of UGVs is quite limited. Still, it's more in the kind of exploratory phase, but we expect that operational units and battalions will be procured and staffed over the year 2025 to '27 and follow on. Our appreciations are perfectly suited for those kind of unmanned ground vehicles. Why is that the case? It's the case because of 2 major features. The first feature is our reliability. We have the most reliable products on the market. Our mean time between failure is 90,000 shots. It means only after 90,000 shots, you have a failure in the system, which is usually far beyond the lifetime of the barrel of those systems, for example. And the second point is, thanks to our high accuracy and the high performance of the system, you have a much higher first-hit probability. That means you need much less number of rounds to eliminate the target. That's, for UGVs, of utmost importance because on those UGVs, you have no chance to reload the ammunition. So here, our onboard ammunition needs to be sufficient to complete the mission, which is the case in our -- with our type of systems. So those are the 2 arguments why we are convinced that we have a leading edge for UGV applications, which will be more and more dominant application in the long run. So more and more manned armored vehicles will be replaced with -- run by robotic unmanned ground vehicles. We go to Slide #18. On the directed energy, the so-called high energy laser weapon market. We have developed a 36-kilowatt prototype laser weapon, which is currently being tested in Australian Desert in front of 9 governments who have sent delegations to witness the test -- to witness how we shoot on drones with this kind of laser weapon. This is, I think, the only test outside the U.S. in the actual year. This kind of technology is scalable up to 100 kilowatts. We have based our system on a very robust technology, which comes in at a very affordable price deck and with a high level of robustness. That's the reason why we need is a very fair chance on the market to sell those products. It is something, which will not realize big revenues next year. But in the mid and long term, this kind of product area has a high strategic potential. Even more of a strategic potential, we believe we have in the area of space warfare. Space warfare is based on our space awareness and space intelligence capabilities, which we have developed over the last 14 years thanks to our world-class tracking capability. And thanks to our unique capabilities in terms of telescope design and construction, our technologies in the area of adaptive optics. And again, here, our capabilities in the laser subject area. All those capabilities together are required in order to be able to develop products in the area of space warfare. This is something where we need product development funding in order to develop those products and make them ready and operational for the market. It's similar to the high energy laser business. Also here, we are aiming for product development funding, as we cannot continue as we did in the past, to develop all those kinds of future technologies by in-house means. We have changed the strategy and now we are seeking for third-party funding, whether it comes from governments or from industrial partners doesn't matter, but it should be third-party funding. And we are very optimistic to get those fundings in the course of the next 6 to 9 months. Space warfare, one comment on that side, you might ask what is space warfare. Space warfare is the capability to develop or supply space-based sensors from ground by optics. This will allow the operator to prevent hostile satellites to take any picture, any image from your ground. So his ability to do surveillance is highly limited. And in more scenarios, this is of utmost importance, as you can see today in Ukraine. So we switch to Page #19. I just want to recapture what we said last year when we took over our positions here as CFO and CEO, we have ticked all those boxes here. We formulated a new strategy, a strategy which requires the company to focus on its core business and to focus on business where we can make money, businesses which have a strong growth potential and all that is based on our world-class capability in the area of pointing an accurate tracking. We did the exit of SpaceLink the money-losing business in November 2022, as promised. We also exited the Australian satellite manufacturing initiative. We had to do so as for Australian government was significantly reducing its budgets in this area, and it was unclear for us when and if we can realize significant revenues to any kind of pre investments on our side, was without any commercial business case anymore. We also have limited our CapEx this year. We focused the CapEx expenditure on our core business in order to be financially disciplined in order to realize an improvement of our financial core figures, as Clive was mentioning before. And as just mentioning, as just mentioned, we are seeking to acquire third-party funding to develop our strategic business areas, high energy laser and space. We've increased our efficiency base by having successfully accomplished a company-wide restructuring program that was happening last year from September till November. With that, we've reduced our headcount by more than 100 people by the end of 2022. We just discussed the innovation and the launch of core products. Slinger was one, R150 was another one and also the application of R150 gimbal on a VAMPIRE counter-UAS system in cooperation with L3Harris is another example of our conversion of innovation potential into commercialized products. We execute new contracts. I think the order intake of this year is close to a record for the company, most foremost into markets which are linked to Western Europe/Ukraine. EM Solutions made a record order intake of more than $200 million, thanks to this very honorable contract from Australian Navy. So our total order backlog today is AUD 645 million which is close to the all-time record. We have reduced the working capital. We have amended for the contract with our Middle East client in February 2023 which allows us to deliver into storage. We don't need to wait for the vehicles to indicate our appreciations on and then to cash in a large amount of the money which would be served, how we can deliver into storage, and that was one major reason why we could get the U.S. contract assets by more than $50 million in the first half of this year. If you look on the cash side, as Clive was mentioning, the cash significantly increased from $22 million in December '22, over $42 million in June 2023 to now $83 million as per today on our bank account. I think that's quite a success story. And coming to Page #20, please let me wrap up the situation. Cash is king. We have a very tight cash flow management. We reduced working capital and we pay our debt as planned. So the first tranche is due in one week for now, and we will serve this need and get rid of the first $26.9 million. We have started to diversify our product base and maintain our leadership in terms of key technology, which is accurate pointing and tracking. We have diversified our customer base by going into the markets in Europe and North America. Further steps will follow. Further announcements will follow over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. But the success which we have realized over the last 6 months is already a very important step forward. And obviously, we will maintain our discipline. We will stick to our core areas of business. We will not deviate from that one in order to make sure that we concentrate our limited management and engineering workforce on areas where we are convinced that we can make good revenue and earnings for the company. With this, we have concluded the presentation. I would like to thank you very much for your time and for your attention. I would like to hand over now back to the moderator in order to address potential questions which might have arised (sic) [arisen] from you, the audience in the course of this presentation.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Julian Mulcahy with E&P.

Just a couple of few for me. Firstly, we have had the finance cost of $16 million. Is there something else in that number? Because that's kind of what I would have thought for the full year.

Julian, it's Clive. Thanks for that. That's got the interest cost out and it's got -- it has costs associated with volumes and guarantees as well so it's got the debt cost, but it's also got the cost of bonds and guarantees and that's not a small amount.

Right. Would it be like 50%-50%?

It's a little bit -- just over 50% of it is interest.

Right. Okay. And with the replacement of the ADF units going to Europe from Ukraine. Was any of the cost in the first half number?

So there's -- no, the -- there are units that we are supplying to a Western European government that were delivered in July, and there were no costs recorded for that in the first half. We were -- the costs incurred in that will be recorded in the second half.

Right. So have you started the replacement prebuild yet?

Yes. So the remanufacture of products for the ADF will take place -- started in July and will take place over the next 6 to 12 months and that work is underway.

Right, and just a final one. So we've been the situation with Ukraine, the test has gone well, going to all the paperwork. Is there -- what could sort of cause any further delay that the shipments don't actually start this current half?

So we need to get the U.S. export license, first of all, you do the test, which is still potentially mandatory in Ukraine to happen. And second, for the actual delivery of the systems, we've received the export license from the Australian government in due time. We expect export license coming in from the U.S. over the next few weeks. But obviously, there's no guarantee as there are lots of activities ongoing in the U.S. administration. So we have to wait and see. We cannot further accelerate that one.

Right. Then does moving into winter potentially represent a delay point?

Well, we expect that if we have to do this test in Ukraine, after we've received the export license, it will take us about 3 weeks to ship the equipment into Ukraine through Poland. It's a little bit complicated logistics to get all the permits to operate that and look at the ammunition into Ukraine to do the test. The test itself, we take only about 1 week. And we expect then that Ukraine government will pretty soon then convert on conditional contract into unconditional and issue the first purchase orders, we expect the coming batches of 25 to 50 units then.

Question comes from Annabelle Holden from Canaccord.

I also had a question on the Ukraine contract. It's mostly been answered there, but am I right in thinking that the last totals are going to be that U.S. export license the testing on-site in the Ukraine and in theory, that should take 1 to 2 months before we see an outcome from conditional to unconditional?

That's, I think, roughly the kind of time frame we are thinking it could be realistic, yes.

Okay. Great. And quickly on the space segment, specifically EM Solutions, that looks really strong. Is that sort of in line with what you're expecting? And can we think of delivery of that naval contract for $202 million to be delivered in sort of linear fashion across the contract life?

Thanks, Annabelle. No, we think it will be more front loaded than linear over the 7 or 8 years. We think it will be about 70% of the revenue in the first half of the time first 3 years, 3.5 years. So we see that not so linear.

Your next question comes from Robert Richardson with ClearView Retirement.

I had a question about Army's Land 400 program. Could you outline the issues relating to Hanwha and the possibility of the turret manufacturing please?

Yes. Sure. So with the Land 400 program, when it was started, it was planned to be 450 units to be procured with a high portion of local content. Due to various reasons, the government has decided to limit the scope of this program to 129 units. And obviously, the kind of limited scope of the program is making a commercial case for localization much more demanding. So on top of that, the time line for the execution of the contract has been reduced significantly. So also the delivery pressure and the time to prepare for local solutions has been significantly reduced that was envisaged from the beginning that this might happen. That's the reason why Hanwha started with future adoptions into this race. It was from the beginning MT30, the heavy turrets, of which we wanted to derive the T2000 turret as a customized Australian-based solution. We have to see now it's up to the Australian government and Hanwha in their negotiation about the terms and conditions in terms of localization on what they will agree if it's the MT30 with little local content, the revenue potential for us is obviously more limited as if they would decide that the local content and local delivery is still a very important subject area where the equipment manufacture Hanwha has to comply with. And in this case, an MT30 turret would have a higher local content than we would expect a higher work share from within this turret area coming to the U.S. But all of that, we come on top of RWS, the remote weapon system, which has been secured from the very beginning where there is no alternative. So we have to wait and see what the outcome of those negotiations between the prime contractor Hanwha and the Australian government will be. We're not part of those negotiations. And by the way, [Foreign language].

Thanks very much. There is still a possibility of ERS involvement in the turret for the bid.

Yes, it is.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from [ James Gooden ] with who is a private investor.

Just further to the Land 400 Phase III contract, the RWS is guaranteed. Is that -- is it fair to say that is that included in your current order book? Or is that not included until it's a foreign contract?

So the RWS is guaranteed because the government has predefined to both contenders Rheinmetall and Hanwha to use our R400 remote weapon stations. So from that perspective, it could be quite relaxed from day 1. That is in a weighted fashion in our order book. We have always -- I mean, we build our order book in a way that we have given certain percentages of certain order intakes. So it doesn't play a significant role in the order book. First of all, the realization of Land 400 is not coming over the next 2, 3 years. The actual procurement comes only in 2026 and the follow-up years. So it doesn't make a different significant difference for the revenue potential over the next 2, 3 years to come. But yes, it was volume-wise included in the book, but maybe Clive wants to add some points here.

Yes. I would just add, so clearly, we expect to get this. We include this in our future plans, as we said. I'll just clarify. In the slide deck, we mentioned an order backlog that only includes work that is secured under contract. So the amounts there do not include the Land 400 Phase III remote working system. And when that is contracted, which we expect to happen over the next several months, then it will be included in that number. Hope that helps, [ James ].

Your next question comes from [ Manraj Dhaliwal ], who is a private investor.

So first of all, thanks for all the hard work over the last year and the phenomenal turnaround in the business. My question is just around the earnings for the Defence segment and -- what has to happen for you to reach a positive EBITDA for that segment? Is there a rough time line that you're working to in light of the recent contract awards? And is there any other expectations that -- or assumptions that we need to make before you get a positive EBITDA?

Thanks, [ Manraj ]. So I'll just go to the slide that you're probably looking at, which is Slide 13 on the Defense segment. It's very clear that the key to profitability in the Defense segment is the revenue base. So the revenue during this period, as you can see, is $50 million. And we do have -- we have a target gross margin in that business of about 40%. And if you do the maths, you'll see that you'll be able to work out what the breakeven point is in order to get to a positive loss of positive result for tax. So we are very focused on 2 or 3 different things at the moment. And the biggest area of focus continues to be cash flow but that's to grow the order book so that we can drive the revenue growth. And we expect to make big strides towards profitability in the second half of this year and during calendar '24. You'll sense I'm being a little bit cautious. We have not given specific guidance publicly on when we expect the group to become profitable or any of the particular divisions. So I'm not going to speak specifically to that except to say that we intend to grow the revenue base by securing new orders and the way that Andreas has outlined. We see particular opportunities in markets in the U.S. and in Europe. And we also see opportunities in the -- particularly in the directed energy space as well as some of the areas that Andreas mentioned earlier, including counter-drone. I hope that helps answer the question, [Manraj ].

Your next question comes from [ Roy Dela Luminous ], who is a private investor.

My question is related to direct energy weapon. I remember recalling to read a couple of articles how Lockheed Martin working on their own and is at the moment, I think you have some if I'm not mistaking it was 100-kilowatt direct energy weapons. And my question is like when we're testing 35-kilowatt are direct energy weapons for our situation is in terms of competition with the giants like Lockheed Martin. Are we behind or...?

Yes, very good question. Thanks for that and giving me the opportunity to explain it in greater detail. So we are addressing different markets. So first of all, the U.S. government is funding the U.S. price with more than $1 billion per year in laser weapons system, $1 billion per year. They are targeting for systems with power levels of up to 500-kilowatt long-term 1 megawatt because their application is a completely different one. They're not targeting for the counter-UAS market they're targeting for counter missile, counter rocket, counter hypersonic vehicle activities, where they need power levels, as I was just mentioning. U.S. is focusing on the counter UAS market, a market to defeat drones of plus 1, 2 or 3 for which we need power levels just 100 maximum 150 kilowatts. That could be the sufficient and there's no benefit in going higher than that one. We do not want to compete against the big U.S. primes on those hypersonic defense equipment. That's not our turrets. We don't have the funding for that and we cannot compete that. But another important aspect is those huge weapon systems under development in the U.S. of 100 to 300-kilowatt will not get an export license to be exported, not even into U.S. markets. Currently, the threshold value is about 20 kilowatts. So the U.S. brands are not allowed to export anything of more than 20-kilowatt power level. So that gives us as having an ITAR-free system, the opportunity to act without this kind of U.S. competition on the non-U.S. market with our type of product. Does this clarify your question?

Yes. And then also a second question is related to U.S. market. I remember like U.S. was getting -- was supposed to get a clearance in terms of exports to U.S. market. And when we can see the first contracts, like what's the update on that?

Yes. So yes, we got after 2.5 years agreements last year in autumn to be able now to supply to the U.S. market for also is a prime contract for even for classified programs, which was a big step forward. We have certain tenders ongoing. We also received the first orders in smaller quantities, in particular for counter-UAS applications, but also for robotic applications. So we seem to become the equipment provider of choice for the U.S. Army for counter-UAS applications. It's not formalized yet, but we're on a very positive path towards that position. And this obviously will be a door opener, not only for large procurement quantities in the long run on the U.S. side, but also a good showcase for other NATO arms around the world to purchase our equipment for those kinds of applications. Again, counter-UAS and robotics is something there our tracking and accuracy is paying off much more than for the normal kind of ground-to-ground application for manned vehicles.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Schwer for closing remarks.

So again, I want to thank everybody, not only for the time being with us today. I also want to thank everybody for the loyalty to stay to U.S. during our very turbulent times in 2022. Clive and I was telling you from day 1 that our business philosophy is different from what the past was. We say what we think, and we do what we say. So hopefully, you could realize that we have exactly executed what we were mentioning last year in September, what this company's strategy will be and where we will focus on. And we will continue like that 100% transparency. We want to build up a relationship of trust with all of our investors, and we want to grow the business in those terms together with U.S. partners for the long run. Again, thanks for staying with the U.S., and hopefully, we'd see each other pretty soon again. All the best to you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.