Envirosuite Limited (EVS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Envirosuite 2023 Annual Report Presentation. Today, we're going to be hosting this from our Melbourne office. I'm joined actually by some of our environauts, and of course, Justin, our CFO. The format of today is we're going to go through the highlights, I'll do a product suite update, I'll pass to Justin for the financials, then we're going to go into a Q&A session. In that Q&A session, if you want to raise questions, you can either raise your hand and you'll come off mute and we'll ask you, or you can write something in the Q&A function, and then we will read the question out. There's a lot to unpack in the next hour, and we're really proud of the results that we have been able to deliver this year in FY '23. But first, I want to set the scene for the new investors of who Envirosuite is. Envirosuite is a technology company, a global technology company. We've built very long-standing partnerships and relationships with our customers around the world. They're really significant customers. The governments around the world, they're industrial, large multi-billion dollar industrial customers. We're helping them to drive that community engagement and the operational awareness to build out really long-term partnerships. We have a subscription model. The important part here is that, we take customers so far beyond a simple compliance platform. We're really driving significant value into there. These platforms that we have built, we're continuing to evolve our value that we provide to our customers is making sure that they are flexible and they are agile, to stay ahead of what the businesses need to operate in. Business drivers are changing. Environmental and ESG drivers are changing. As these change and evolve, we need to be able to provide our platforms to our customers so that they can drive their business operations. Today, we're going to give you some examples, some case studies around the world of how we're using our technology to help customers. Our customers are significant, as I said, from the corridors of NASA to the mining operations of BHP. We're embedded into their daily operations and we've become an intrinsic part to improve the operational efficiency of those businesses. We take events and we turn them into decisions where customers are able to act on this informed data. We're very strong in the predictive capability, taking years of understanding, using AI in certain situations, and being able to build out models that can help customers predict what they need to do in the next 24, 48 hours. But we are proud of one part. Science is at the core of everything that we do. It's our reason. It's our why. All of our platforms have got strong scientific differentiation. We are #1 in our aviation sector. We're incredibly strong within our industrial platform and our water, albeit a startup, is showing signs that it is a world-class leader. This science is the part that, we will continue to invest into. We want to make sure that, we differentiate on actual science. We're focused on 6 core customer sectors, aviation, mining, industrial, waste, wastewater and water treatment, and our product set supports that. What we have seen this year is a strong cross-selling opportunity starting to emerge. We are driving a community engagement and an operational awareness across all of them. But Envirosuite is a purpose-driven company. All of the environauts around the world absolutely believe that environmental intelligence is the key to improving the wellbeing of people and the planet. And this isn't just a problem for Australia. This is a problem that serves the entire world. And as you will see, this is fantastic for an Australian company, headquartered here in Melbourne, taking this technology to all corners of the planet. I want to do an FY '23 review. The year can go relatively quickly, and we look back and we forget the success that we have had. Q1, we had $2.1 million of new ARR. Q2 was a record quarter for EVS Aviation. Another $2 million of new ARR. Q3, $4.2 million in total sales, another $2 million in new ARR and Q4, we finished off with a record quarter, $6.8 million new sales, up 13% on PCP. Really significant contribution. That gave us the new ARR of $9.1 million for the year. And if you look on the bottom right, you'll see there that we're broken out the different product suites. Aviation grew 4.2, 7.4% growth. EVS Industrial, 4.7, 19.3% growth and EVS Water, 0.3, a 36% growth year-on-year. As I said earlier, this is an Australian technology headquartered here in Melbourne, taking our technology out to the world. We've got over 4,000 IoT devices that are connected. We operate in 45 countries with customers. We've got 250 plus environauts around the world, all specialists in their field, and over 30 years' experience in the industry. From a product part, we have 3 product segments, EVS Aviation, Industrial and Water. In Aviation, we're managing the most demanding noise, operational and community requirements. Our customers are Melbourne, Sydney, Heathrow, Los Angeles. Big customers, really important, we're driving their operational needs. Industrial, we are future-proofing the industrial sector to take on what is clearly a rapidly evolving world, certainly within the environmental aspect. Customers from BHP, Vale, Veolia. EVS Water, as I said, it's a start-up. We're starting through, but we've now got success in North America, in Europe, in Asia, and here in Australia. So, the key metrics for FY '23, incredibly strong results. And if you look at the trend there, in the last 3 years, we've transformed the organization, really strong growth in all of the areas. So, let's go through the top, $59.4 million in annual recurring revenue, which represents a 12% year-on-year growth. 443 client sites, and these are significant customers all around the world. Our stat revenue, $57.9, 8.3% year-on-year growth. The last 2, though, are really important for the business. As we said at the start of the year, we are going to be on a pathway to profitability. We've improved the gross profit now to 51.6%. And you'll see that from June 20, 32.5%, up to June 23, 51.6%. That's an incredible transformation for an organization in this short period of time. But the hero clearly is the adjusted EBITDA profit of $0.5 million. It's an improvement of $4.5 million year-on-year. Justin's going to go further into that later in the presentation. If we now break our revenue down by both product and by region, there's a couple of parts that we do need to call out. So, product, Aviation has consistently grown, $36.4 million. We also did have that churn event in the year. It was a one-off, not a core sector, not a core focus. But you'll see this is strong growth within the business. And we anticipate that, this is going to continue in the coming years as flying comes back to normal. Our industrial part has grown at 19.3%. It's now up to 21.6%. You see the growth over the last 2 years is phenomenal growth in our business. And in our Water business is up and running with $1.4 million. We're structured in regions, Americas, APAC and EMEA. And Americas has led the path, now representing 40% of our revenue, $24 million and again, if you go back to 2 years ago, 15.2%, 19.9%, $24 million, really strong growth fundamentals. In APAC, we have dropped down to 15.2%. As we have explained previously, that is attributed to the churn event. In EMEA, though, 14.9% up to $20.2 million. EMEA finished really strongly in Q4, a strong pipeline as we go forward as well. On the left, the $49.5 million recurring revenue is up 12.8%. So let's move in now to the product suite update. So aviation up and flying again, what we have seen around the world in all parts is as the planes are starting to fly, there's confidence back into the sector, that money is starting to flow, investment is coming through. And this is really important for our customers. Customers went through a really tough period of time, we supported them through that. We're now well positioned to capitalize on that. But let's look at the results from this year. Record sales for EVS Aviation. 16 new airports were signed. We've got innovative application of our technology. The example that we gave earlier is the ANSP, and it's one of the case studies. Strong community engagement and carbon emissions modeling. And with these 2 platforms, we're able to sell that into our customer base. 188 client sites now around the world are using our technology. We are a significant market leader in this and growing at a rapid rate. So our anticipation, both from a pipeline and from the conversations we're having with our customers, is incredibly strong for aviation moving forward. We're incredibly well positioned to leverage that 188 client sites, making sure that we serve them, making sure that our technology is right, but actually adding more value to help them address the challenges that they face. There's 3 case studies we have included here. Each one is different but important. The ANSP that we have released earlier in the year is changing the way that flight comes in and out of an entire region in North America. They're wanting to address some really strong fundamentals, and we're supporting them through this. We see this as the precursor to potentially opening up this into other regions as well. I was recently in Cairo to sit down with Egyptian Airports Company, where they've gone through and they've added 5 new airports. This is the first one of significance where they've added air quality and the noise. And so therefore, we're starting to see a trend around the world where environmental intelligence is starting to take the front seat. This was actually driven from the President of Egypt to address the COP27 commitments. And Aena, as we've said previously, in a land-expanded scale, has been a long-standing customer of ours, and we're there to support them moving forward. But this insightful deployment is going to really change the way that they engage with the community. Moving to Industrial, mining is clearly the headline in this, and we've spoken about this through the year. Q4 finished off with BHP, and if you look at our annual report, there's a bit of a hero shot in there. The significance of that shot shows the scale of the mining operations that our customers are dealing with. And I want you to picture for a moment the dust that is generated from that site in any one particular day. Think about the noise that is presented. What we've seen through this year, which is different than the past, is really strong growth here. But actually, we're up-selling customers, because they're coming to us with more and more problem statements, and our scope of our environmental intelligence capability is broadening, and so we're able to actually deliver more value to our customers moving through. Bioscientific has been successful in the U.S. waste market, and we're starting to see a strong, very, very strong pipeline within waste, and that's something that our product will continue to support. If you look at the Americas and you look at industrial, there's a clear overlay there, and some of this is driven through Biden's Environmental Justice program. This is something that is benefiting us and you as shareholders, and we are well positioned to continue to leverage that, and we will continue to innovate in that path. But our industrial customers are facing these problems all around the world, and so we're well positioned again. So now 238 client sites around the world, it's an incredibly significant achievement. So, BHP, we've touched on, a fantastic logo, you can actually see them from at the window from our office, and we're glad to have them as a customer. Bingo Industries here in Australia in that waste part has a particular issue around odor, dust and noise, and we're working with them to address and help them minimize and mitigate. Urban Utility is a fantastic customer that we have in the north of Australia, addressing odor in a really significant way, and we're helping them manage their risk on a daily part. In Water, we have focused this year on validation. We've launched a new product, as I said, into North America, into Asia, Australia, and then into Europe. And it's really important that we're focused on the validation of this technology, and we have done that. We finished off the year with a strong customer acquisition of NEOM in Saudi Arabia. It's important, again, it was another hero shot in the annual report. This is a city to be built. Just to make it clear, though, the project that we have sold into is 2 existing desal plants. So they don't have to be built, they're built. We have had success with WA Water Corporation, and they've been promoting us in the industry here in Australia, because of what we can do and how we help them. So we've validated this technology out, and we believe that this technology is well positioned. We are talking to a host of different people. Sada joined at the start of the year and has opened up a lot of B2B type engagements that we are driving through. The water does take a little bit of time, and we need to be mindful of that. But the underlying technology is absolutely world class. So with this, I'm going to finish off with 3 case studies and then pass to Justin. So NEOM, as you can see there, that is a futuristic city. Again, I'd encourage you to go and have a look at it. Importantly for us, the 2 existing desal plants. WSD, as we like to call them, Water Supplies Department in Hong Kong. Incredibly complex digital twin technology that we've been able to put in there and very strong ROI that we've been able to demonstrate. And then lastly, it's around our SeweX technology here in Australia and how that's actually building out. So you've got 3 different significant case studies from customers. World class organizations that are validating our technology. So with that, I'm going to pass to Justin.

Thanks, Jason. And good morning and looking forward to take you through our financials for the period. At the end, I'll hand back to Jason to take us through some concluding comments. Looking at our financial performance for the year, I think the standout for us, of course, is our adjusted EBITDA profit for the year of $480,000. I think the important piece on this one is reflecting on what we said to the market previously, where we were transitioning to adjusted EBITDA profitability on a run rate basis during FY '23. Having achieved it is a great outcome and it reflects a number of different items within the P&L. Most notably, we look to our performance at the revenue line. Of course, we talk about recurring revenue. It provides us surety of our income. We can measure it. We know it's coming down the pipe given the length of our customer contracts. I've mentioned previously that non-recurring revenue or what we sometimes refer to as our project revenue can sometimes be a bit lumpy, but we did note that H2 was going to result in a more solid finish for the year. This, of course, has occurred as we had anticipated, so giving us that growth in the revenue and the result that we were looking for. I think the important number for me on this one is the improvement that we've had over the year of $4.4 million as it reflects the effort across each of the items within our cost base. Turning to gross profit and our margin, as Jason said earlier, we showed on the highlights, achieving a 51.6% gross margin, gross profit, is a significant improvement over prior years. This has really been achieved through a number of factors, most importantly being our ability to scale through efficiency in our implementation process, not to mention now the work that we've been doing on hosting costs and our transition to AWS, again, all contributing to this result of this line. On our operating expenses, we've got the gross numbers here. I've got some analysis on that further in the presentation, so I'll capture that a little bit later in terms of impacts, growth, potential and result for the period. Turning to key metrics by product, we've seen, focusing on our average revenue per site, our ARPS, we've seen a very slight decrease in the aviation number, reflecting a constant pressure, I guess, on the sales organization that they get from certainly me and Jason as well, but nothing significant of note there in comparison to prior years. When we look at industrial and water, we have seen some sizable increases there in terms of customers we're looking at, but also the expansion that we're making into our existing customer base. The other more pleasing point is where we're heading in our EVS water. Again, early data points, but we're seeing that the average revenue per site at 80,000 is in line and has increased from what we were seeing historically and what we had originally, if you like, forecast in our original assessment of the EVS water business. Again, early data points, but certainly pointing in the right direction. Moving on to the churn number, we've mentioned and previously discussed our churn event within the aviation business. If we extracted that particular line or that particular churn event from the number, we'd be back at the churn percentage that we had otherwise enjoyed in aviation historically, and in this case, it would have been below 2%. In relation to churn for industrial, slight decrease from the same period last year, and we were around 6% last year, down to 4.8%. It would be remiss of me not to mention some of the, what are the examples of the type of churn and churn events that we experience? Typically, they come down to budgetary constraints from our customers. And in sum, we've had an end of contract. Sorry, we've had an end of contract or the personnel within the business have changed, and they haven't yet grasped what the platform was doing and the solutions that it was providing to their problem areas. In terms of that low churn rate, those customers still represent a great opportunity for us to go back and reconnect and recontract with. I think the important piece is that we're not seeing churn events in that space directly as a result of competition. Down on the recurring revenue as a percentage of total, we continue to see strong percentage there with aviation sitting at the 89%. Moving to our waterfall for recurring revenue through to ARR, I think, many of you are aware of how we measure ARR. We do take into account contracts that we've signed and that are in the implementation process. So, that represents the major number here at $6 million. What this represents is the opportunity of $6 million in ARR that's going to convert into revenue over our implementation, or within our implementation timeframe. In terms of implementation, we continue to see success in driving that number down. We've spoken about, in the past, some of the supply chain issues that we've had. They've now completely gone, and we're now able to supply our customers on a timely basis with regards to instrumentation. So, again, a solid finish to our fourth quarter does put pressure on that number in that it increases, but a result of success, I guess. I mentioned earlier the impact, or if you like, the assessment that we've done, or review that we've done over our operating expense, covering the 3 categories that we refer to in our annual report. What I have done here is given a history of where our costs have come in that as a percentage of revenue. So, we talk about wanting the jaws to open on this one in that we are able to add revenue at a lower price, if you like, than what -- or lower rate than what our costs are coming in at. What these graphs individually show is how we're achieving that. If I turn to sales and marketing, our sales and marketing captures a lot of areas, not just our pure sales organization, but includes marketing around brand as well as Investor Relations and other marketing-related, non-sales-related activity. As you can see there, we achieved some efficiencies over prior years in terms of how we've gone about closing our deals in sales and the work that we've been able to leverage around the group, or effort we've been able to leverage around the group with how the various regional sales teams operate. Of course, we continue to make efficiencies with how we run our brand marketing and our investor relations. More importantly, on this one, we can see very limited impact in terms of the restructure. What I've put here is we've done a determination on had the restructure occurred for the entirety of the year or had the impact of the restructure occurred for the entirety of the year, that would have been the impact of costs as a comparison to revenue. Turning to G&A. Again, on a raw number basis, we can see the impact into FY '23 as the number came down as a percentage. But more importantly, as we went through our restructure and aligning our cost base as a result of the restructure, we can see that we have made significant inroads to that G&A cost base. There's a number of factors that we had addressed prior to the year, including the implementation of our Centre of Excellence in the Philippines, where we've recently celebrated the 1-year anniversary for that location. And we are currently sitting with 25 seats there, but they too have embraced the hybrid working model. And we have just over 25 people in that office there. Moving to the R&D cash spend, the last one on the right. Again, within our product roadmap, we have a very defined approach that we take when we are undertaking our -- in this case, R&D. As this slide, as this number represents, it's a combination of both our expense for the year plus what we capitalize onto the balance sheet. So again, we're seeing the growth from '22 to '23, no impact as a result of the restructure. But more importantly, the growth being represented by the developments that we're making, particularly around new products, including the carbon emissions modeling module, along with the work that we're doing in improving the implementation process across the -- across all 3 products, and not to mention the work that we're doing with regards to water in terms of the development of our SeweX and Optimiser platforms. One of the things we talk about often in our business is cash flow, and we have reported for the year at the operating cash flow line a $750,000 operating cash flow surplus. This is our statutory position and represents the effort that the team have undertaken from both cash management, sales and cost management. Also I wanted to touch on the impact of the restructure that we had. I'll pause for a moment and just outline some terminology that we use within the business. We use the term adjusted, in this case, adjusted operating cash flow. The adjusted is very similar to what we see in the EBITDA measure, which is looking at the impact of the traditional items around IFRS 16 lease adjustments and share-based payments. We also include, as we've defined, the non -- the transaction costs or restructure costs within the business for the year. We've done the same treatment on the cash flow. We also use another term, which is management. So you'll hear us talk about management EBITDA, and in this case, management operating cash flows. And what they represent is effectively the underlying measure, whether it be adjusted EBITDA or adjusted cash flow, less our capitalized development costs. Because what we're wanting to do, we better understand how we manage our business from a, if you like, pure profitability, pure cash basis. In this particular scenario with our adjusted operating cash flows, we can see that had the adjustment -- had our adjustments gone through from our restructure, we would have generated around $2.6 million of cash flow from operations. As I mentioned earlier, no impact on the capitalized development costs. So we would see those coming in at the same rate. And of course, that flows into what we arrive at in terms of our management operating cash flow as an outflow of $3.2 million for the year. So again, if we compare that to the same measure for last year of a cash outflow of $9.5 million on a management basis, we've made significant inroads to how we manage our cash throughout the business. Turning to our balance sheet. We finished the year with $8.3 million of cash in the bank and no debt. Great outcome and we're very pleased with that one. We say no debt. There will be some interest there on our balance sheet for the accountants amongst us who understand how we account for our IFRA 16 leases. But apart from that, there's nothing else. I think it's also worthwhile noting that in some of our prior presentations, we spoke about the changing business model that our customers were undertaking in terms of how we transact with them from both the aviation business where we provide instrumentation and for the industrial business where, again, we provide instrumentation. For our aviation customers, the model that we work with is where we sell the instrumentation through to our customer, and that more reflects the requirement or the desire that our customers have in that aviation space to acquire upfront the hardware. Where that is particularly beneficial for Envirosuite is that we have a proprietary system operating between our platform and the noise monitoring terminals, or the NMTs that we place out. So it gives us, if you like, more security and structure around our recurring revenue in that -- within that particular product set. When we move to aviation, we are seeing a slight change to that model and that's in part reflected by the way the instrumentation operates within the business. We don't have proprietary instrumentation that we provide to our customers, whether it be on a mine site or on a waste treatment plant, but we have the ability to hook into or to connect up to third-party-provided software -- sorry, instruments. Where we have seen a change in the way we interact with our customers on the industrial platform is they're wanting to bundle the instrumentation with the underlying platform. And we're seeing that present itself in our balance sheet with that line item that we've called out as monitors and sensors, which represents in large part, sensors that we've provided to our customers that we've acquired as part of inventory and transferred to our PP&E line item. We're seeing that as an increasing element within the business and something that we fund internally and on a written down value basis at 23% was coming in at $3.2 million. I think the important piece in distinguishing those 2 product sets and the way we interact with customers, both the aviation and industrial models, as we've currently structured, are efficient and effective for how we want to run our business. Moving to revenue growth and our trend in terms of positive cash flow, which is the piece that we keep pursuing. We look at the individual components regarding recurring revenue, and we can see over that 3-year period some strong growth over each of the regions of Americas, EMEA and APAC. We also see what we can see in terms of the operating cash flow improvements on the statutory basis. Again, these are -- on the cash flow piece, this is our statutory numbers. The key number here, as I keep referring back to, is the movement from FY '22 to FY '23 of just shy of $4 million. So we see that as a significant improvement across the period. Turning to the last diagram or the last picture there is our adjusted EBITDA growth from '22 to '23, and the particular component parts that we look at as we break the business up. The first piece is on the net revenue growth, which I've referred to before. So our recurring revenue and our non-recurring revenue or project revenue we've spoken about. So the net growth that we've had there over the period. We can also see from our improvement in gross margin, our gross margin leverage. So, having a small impact enabling that net revenue to drop to our gross profit for the period. We then look at how we manage cost management over the period. And I think the important piece to note there is the net number of a 0.6 improvement. That's a 0.6 net improvement because of the investment that we continue to make in our R&D, less the savings that we've otherwise been able to identify and generate within our G&A cost line. I think the bridge gives us a very good path, if you like, for how we move on to FY '24. The cost base that we've established for FY '24, and more importantly, the revenue that we spoke about before of $6 million that's sitting in our ARR waterfall in terms of revenue that's yet to be turned on. Now, of course, I appreciate there's a lot to be digested in the slides and the quick snapshot that we've provided there in terms of finance. Of course, happy to take questions as you get the opportunity to unpack those. I will, at this point, hand over to Jason. Back to Jason.

Thank you. Well done. Very good. So as you can see, the results, financial results, we're very proud of. The team have worked really hard to do that, but it is predicated on having a strategy and a clear drive about what we're wanting to do. So we set a strategy in place 2 years ago. We have slightly prioritized cash flow in the last 18 months, but we had 4 key pillars, growth, product, customer and scale. And through this focus inside the organization, we've been able to deliver on each one. But I want to sort of go as an outlook now and start thinking about where do we head for FY '24 and beyond. We've had a great FY '23 that now is behind us and we're now into FY '24. So, growth, a couple of key points here that we want to focus on. Land is expand and scale has been successful for our organization, and importantly, for our customers. Someone like BHP does not sign us up to a mine site without thinking carefully about this. The value that we've been able to present to BHP has been strong. We have a very strong footprint now in South America, and we're able to leverage that to drive further expansion, not only of additional software into the site, which will be recurring revenue, but also using that to sell trailers. Mining is a very clear focus for us. We have a strong value proposition in mining, and we will continue to focus in this area. Again, I want you to go back to have a look at a mining site to visualize and understand the scale of what we are dealing with. And remind you again in industrial, noise, vibration, dust, air quality, water quality. You can see all of those elements coming through and that's why it's incredibly valued to mining. I'd also encourage you to go have a look at Responsible Mining Index, which we use as a bit of a guide. We have thought leadership in that part as well. Our customers are all in that Responsible Mining Index. Companies are now wanting to be responsible. You'll start to see more of an enterprise engagement throughout the organization, as we move higher up into that value chain. It's especially present within the water sector, but also aviation, also industrial. We're going to be bringing new products into the market this year, new features into the market that we believe will drive additional revenue. So within our customer segment, if you look at 188 customer sites in aviation, 238 in industrial, we know that we're able to sell more into those customers. By selling more, we're helping our customers add more value. We are structured into 3 regions: EMEA, APAC and Americas. We are going to bottom down in the Americas, and we see Americas as a really strong growth driver for the company. That's our growth strategy. We have 3 product suites. We have 6 customer sectors. And we will stay focused, laser focused on that. We want to build a brand and awareness globally that the first point around environmental intelligence is spoken. Envirosuite is the first word on customers' and people's voices. From a product perspective, we are a product-led sales-focused organization. So being product-led, we will continue to invest into product. But this is going to be science-driven, continue to be science-driven. That's the DNA. We're not going to move from that. But with the product as well, it's actually about the stickiness, as Justin showed you. The churn rate is incredibly low in this because our product is making a meaningful difference to our customers. That part is an important element for us. We want to continue to that. Get closer to the customer to understand the customer's needs. But as I said earlier in the slide, our platform needs to be agile. It needs to be flexible. It needs to be adaptable to the environment that our customers need to drive growth. We're also investing into product infrastructure. It makes us more scalable. It's a little bit linked to the last one. But we want to make sure that the product is scalable, supportable, continue to be absolutely world-class as we strive for that development. Customer focus. It's a common part around the world at the moment around customer success and customer experience. But for us, this is critically important. Because we've added those sites and because of the importance of our customers around the world, we need to remain incredibly focused on that customer engagement. That makes sure that we are delivering what is truly a world-class customer service on our platform, our software, on our capability, and our support. The entire organization is focused around customer success. It's one of our key internal priorities for this year. But we want to be able to also focus on the measurable value creation. We haven't done the complete math to this. But if you look at the 188 airports around the world where we're helping solve noise problems and the 238 industrial sites, we are helping hundreds of millions of people around the world be able to live in cohesion without industrial asset. And that's a cornerstone for us. In scale, we want to invest into our people. As I said earlier, we've got 250 plus people globally. They're very bright people who want to be -- we don't build technology just because a computer says it, right? It's our people that build that. So, this part about reinvesting into people is critically important. But we also want to invest into technology and process to make us more efficient. Each year, we're looking at areas that we can become more efficient, the way that we can deploy a solution to our customers quicker, the way that we're actually writing our code, the way that we're breaking that down to be supportive as well. From a financial perspective, we're really focused on the scalability, the operating leverage that Justin has spoken about. That has been in our sites all year. And it's something that we will continue to do. So, the adjusted profit of $0.5 million is the starting point. You'll start to see those jaws widen. All of the key metrics that we have put up today are in line with our expectations internally. And we want to continue to push that. Next year and the year beyond, we'll continue to push the bar to make sure that we are excelling and growing as an organization. The pipeline is very strong in industrial. Aviation has come back much stronger than any of us anticipated. We've got 2 sessions coming out with customers in North America and Europe within the aviation sector. And I'm excited to be able to attend. This will be my first in-person session to these. But the customers have got compelling changing landscape. And they know that we can help them. We didn't get to #1 and stop. We want to keep going and keep going, keep growing that aviation part. Our industrial part, we know that over the last 3 years, there's over 20% compound annual growth. And our water has gone through that validation path. And we have focused heavily on making sure we see short-term revenue as well as that longer-term value creation for the business. Moving forward, Justin and I will make sure that we allocate capital correctly and that we're making decisions, black and white decisions, on where we allocate that capital and how we allocate that capital. We understand it's a very scarce commodity. So with that, we're going to go into Q&A. So Justin, maybe come back up. And what we'll do now is pass over to Jeremy to talk through any of the questions that we have got.

Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Justin. Just to remind everyone that you have 2 different methods to ask questions to Jason and Justin. The first one is to use the Q&A function of Zoom, and you can submit a written question. Alternatively, you can raise your hand, and I'll come to you, take you off mute, and you can pose your question directly that way. Chris Savage from Bell Potter does have his hand up.

Just trying to get my head around the guidance around this management EBITDA. Can you dumb it down for a simple person like me and maybe just give us some guidance around adjusted EBITDA or what capitalized development costs will be this year?

Cool. So Chris, I'll take the first one. We use 2 terms in the business. One being adjusted EBITDA presenting words typically…

Sorry, Justin, you're very quiet.

Is that any better, Chris?

That's better. Thanks.

So there we go. Adjusted is the typical measure that we've used in the past. So it represents the adjustments that you make to profit along the lines of the IFRS 16 lease adjustment and shareholding space amendments. We also make action in the adjusted calculation being in recurring all of those transaction costs and transformation costs as well. Consistent measure of what we've done in the past, no change. What we have introduced is this term adjusted EBITDA. And essentially it's adjusted EBITDA, less capitalized costs move down [Technical Difficulty], which is a number that's picked up in the balance sheet. And you can see that in the note for our PP&E under retail revenues. Hopefully that gives a little bit of clarity. We're just trying to provide us a number that we can refer to that incorporates the other big costs we have in the business or people costs, including the business. So we bring it in on that basis. In terms of next year and what our expectation is, we anticipate to retained similar levels of capitalized R&D. As you saw from the operating leverage slide, we didn't make any change on a net basis to R&D as a result of the bridge project. We've kept that same.

Can I ask you maybe, Jason, how does the pipeline compare now to this time last year and which areas of the business are perhaps the strongest?

Yes, so aviation is significantly larger than where it was 12 months ago. And that's based on the conversations we've been having with our customers around the world. What we did with our ANSP and sort of seeing where that goes through. Industrial mining is certainly stronger. There's no 2 ways about that. And I think that's been a result of the focus of the mining pipeline is really good. And then if we jump into water, we have been focused on building out a pipeline of that one using the reference cases there. So, yes, it is substantially larger today. We do a 12-month rolling pipeline. I'm not going to give you the number, because then you'll talk about that all the time. But the 12-month rolling forecast is significantly higher across the board.

And good segue into my last question. You said water will take a while. Is this the year it kicks, or are we still sort of 12, 18 months away?

Good question. It's a good question. Look, I think we're well positioned on this one, Chris. To all the signs are that the water has gone through the validation, that the customers are happy with the technology, that it solves a significant problem. We've been able to use the experience that we've gained over the last 12 months to build up relationships. We have a world-class person in Sada who's joined who's been focused on that. So, yes, I would say that this is the year. Absolutely.

Another question here that's come in written form. What's the expectation around development costs? Is it forecast to grow proportionately with revenue growth? Or are we at a point where we expect some economies of scale and those development costs will tape up as a percentage of revenue?

Just stopping the microphone. It feels like we're on a live feed. We are. So, the impact on the development costs, we anticipate them to retain the cost impact, not to a dissimilar age to what we've got this year. What that then means is that as our revenue grows, we would expect to see our leverage within R&D capitalized costs to come down as a percentage. But we would anticipate similar levels of capitalization as we've got for FY '23.

A question here from Charlie Cole. When does the company expect to be earnings per share positive?

So, I've spoken in the past in terms of the cash flow earnings positive. What we typically see is from a time we're sitting at now, on a straight line modeling basis, you'd expect that to occur over a period of around 5 to 7 months as we start to generate sufficient revenue to cover these capitalized costs. What we find is we have reliance on our non-recurring revenue or the project revenue that we talk about, and the timing of that can be somewhat lumpy. You'd see from H1 to H2 for both FY '22 and FY '23, there was a tendency for improved or a higher level in H2 for both of those years. So, the expectation, as we've spoken about at the management EBITDA level, which incorporates these capitalization costs, in that we will transition to a positive position on that measure during FY '24 on that run rate basis.

Okay. Ross Barrows has his hand up. Ross, please go ahead and pose your question.

Yes. Just a simple one, maybe a little bit more color to help us understand. Just in terms of the revenue growth, so top line growth of 8%, and yet the cost of revenue is only 1%, and you've highlighted that those draws are expected to continue. Can you just remind us, I guess, of the key components of that cost of revenue that you're able to keep flat to down, and then how we should think about that going to '24?

Ross. So, in terms of that cost base, there's an element of people effort in there. So, there's people, there's posting costs within both AWS that we've currently got, and we also have 2 data centers that we operate, 1 within APAC, the other within the Americas. We've spoken about it in the past, how we're transitioning out of these data centers and into AWS. So, of course, as that continues to unfold, we'll be able to remove those duplicated costs from within that cost of sale prospect. What we're also doing through the product development work is improving our timing and ability to implement across each of the 3 platforms. So, both the 2 key products within Water, Aviation and Industrial, and its efficiency in that implementation process and the effort required there that will further drive down the costs in that particular line item. So, that's a lot of the development work that the product team have been working on, the dev team have been working on, and we'll start seeing that benefit start to come through.

One more question here. Given that the company has now hit positive operating cash flow, will the company be looking to accelerate revenue growth to accelerate the capture of those opportunities that are out there?

I'll go first. So, the important piece, as Jason mentioned earlier, we're very mindful of the decisions we make around allocation of resources and capital. And, of course, we'd be the first to say that, where we see that opportunity to expand revenue within our existing infrastructure, of course, we will look to do it. I'm always extremely conscious of the number of countries that we operate in as a global company and the cost imposition that that puts onto the company in terms of managing contracts, customers, legal entities in those regions. So, to use Jason's term, we are laser focused on where we do spend that money and how we spend it and the regions that we spend it in. That said, we are also critically focused on the markets and opportunities that are going to present to us that generate immediate revenue opportunities.

I think I can just stand next to you and talk. So, I think the path to that is we've got to use our capital incredibly efficiently. And so, where we see areas that we can accelerate in a cost efficient way, we absolutely will. But we have to go to a sustainable path forward. And so, that's what we're focused on, is that sustainable path to make sure. So, I don't see suddenly we're going to go -- we are not able to invest additional money into sales and marketing. We are maintaining the product as it is today, even though we know that we've got significant ideas that we could create. But we are managing that very tightly and we'll continue to do that.

What looks like to be the final question here. Just a little bit more context around the Americas region and the great growth there. What's the penetration of the Americas region at the moment? And do we expect to see our footprint on the ground there grow to support that further?

Right. So, let's just look back to this one. So, Americas is a very large, as we know, North America, South America, we combine. I would say, the penetration of that in Aviation, we actually have got market leadership position in that part. But what we do know is we're able to add far more services, software solutions into those customers. So, we've got significant growth still there. And I understand the Aviation industry is going to go through rapid transformation in the coming years. So, we see the Americas from an aviation perspective, still strong. From an Industrial perspective, I would say we've got maybe 1% or 2% of the market. So, the TAM there is incredibly significant. So, that is going to be a focus for us. We recently had ourselves pick-off in the Americas for the industrial part and we really bottomed down onto that part. So, there's clear runway there, significant growth. We've got a good management team. It's a stable management team, strong expertise in that with really good industry knowledge. And Water, we are starting to open-up some really encouraging conversations in the Americas with some interesting players over there. So, I see the Americas as the growth curve for this company for the next 20 years.

Another question from Charlie Cole. It seems that the EVS water products have the greatest opportunity for the company but have been slower than expected to scale and contribute. If that's correct, what is Envirosuite looking at doing to speed this up?

So, understanding when you bring a new technology to market and you sell it to different sectors, you've got to be able to go out and validate it. So, as I said, we've focused heavily on the validation part. We know that we've added in additional features into the product to make it more scalable, more supportable, and time to value has been a strong focus for us. So, Charlie, to your question there, we're focused heavily on product this year. What we are now doing, though, is working through both dealing with the municipalities out there in a direct fashion as well as in a B2B environment. So, there's different parts of the value chain that can benefit from our technology. So, we've had a substantial number of conversations going through. So, Water is a focus for us. Obviously, this year is an important breakout year. We've got the validation, we've got the reference sites, and so we want to move forward. And that is, from the board to the management to the water division, a very clear focus for us. Water is an interesting space. If you look at it now from a macro perspective, the digital twin area within the water industry, it's an incredibly, let's say, naive environment at the moment. There's a lot of old technology that's out there. And so that industry has got the greatest area to improve from adopting digital twin technology. And what you're seeing around valuations in the digital water technology parts around the world is much higher multiples. And as we also know, water is incredibly important to society, to agriculture, to ecosystems. That's not going to change. Water is only going to become more relevant for us. So, we're very focused on water. We're making hard decisions in water as well, though, and we're making sure that the capital allocation in water is going to the right area at the right time.

Thank you, Jason. That concludes the Q&A component of this presentation. Jason, I'll pass back to you for some concluding comments.

Yes, thank you, Jeremy. And thank you very much for everyone for tuning in. I had a look at the number up there. It looks like it's quite a large number, which is great. Hopefully, you got something out of today with this. Again, I want to come back to the company first and foremost. I think to all of the environauts around the world. Thank you very much for the contribution that you have made to this year. Being purpose-driven organization means we really do believe in what we're doing. And also, the size of the opportunity for us is fantastic. We've got a few anniversaries coming up this week, actually, where people have been here for 25 years. And we recognize, though, the amount of effort they've done. We've also got people that started last week. And the quality of people that we have inside this organization is breathtaking. And I know that, with this team that we can achieve an amazing, amazing future. To our customers, I want to thank them for giving us the trust on this and working with us. The product of where it is today wouldn't be there without close interaction with customers and for them pushing us. The product, as shareholders, you should be proud of what we are doing and how we're helping our customers. Our customers should be proud of what we're doing because we're helping them drive their operational improvements. And lastly, to the shareholders, I want to thank you for that. It's been a bumpy year on the share price. We are doing everything that we can to make sure that the financial structure of the organization is positive, that we're growing and that we're creating long-term shareholder value. So, with that, thank you. Really good session today. There's a lot of work that goes into these reports. So, thank you certainly to the design team, marketing team for pulling it together. So, thank you.