Envirosuite Limited (EVS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Envirosuite's FY '24 First Half Financial Results Presentation. My name is Jeremy Gaedtke. I am the Director of Marketing & Communications at Envirosuite and I'll be moderating the session today. I'm joined by our CEO, Jason Cooper; CFO, Justin Owen; and our Head of Product, Andrew Barron. We're very pleased to present our half-year results to you this morning. Before we get started, a little bit of housekeeping. In terms of asking questions, we do have time for Q&A at the end of the session today. If you want to raise -- if you want to ask a question, please, you have one of two options. You can raise your hand. I'll take you off mute at the right time and you can pose the question live. Alternatively, you can use Zoom's Q&A function to write your question in and we'll go through the questions in that format as well. With that, I'd like to hand over to Jason to begin the session.

Thank you, Jeremy. We're certainly pleased to be here today to share these great results. We have an action-packed session ahead of us and each of us is going to have a bit of a talking spot. So the agenda here is come back to introducing Envirosuite for the new shareholders, go through some of the first half '24 highlights, give a product suite update and I think it's important to give context to that. Justin will walk through the financials. And then as Jeremy has said, we'll do Q&A. We really encourage people to think about the questions and come forward with those. So let's set the scene. So Envirosuite is a technology company, and we're solving mission-critical solutions for our customers around the world and that's government and the industry. At the core of this image, you can see business operations and there are 2 drivers for that that are the business drivers. What is business trying to achieve? Growth, profit, stability, and we are actually enabling that in many areas. But we've also got to understand driving that within limits, environmental and social in particular. And we're helping customers all around the world tackle these challenges. But it's important to understand that it really is the business operations at the heart of what we're improving. We are a technology company. We're a proud technology company. And we're helping organizations to manage complex operational and environmental challenges. And this is all around the world: from Canada to Chile, from South Africa up to the Nordics, and in the middle and the Middle East. We're helping our customers around the world. And we do that through different ways of demonstrating value and data. We're helping customers to drive decision-making on the platforms. But we're doing that through science and science is the core of everything that we do. And we'll continue to do that. We're known in the industry as being the market leaders. We're known in the industry as being the best and we will continue to strive forward on that as our strong value proposition and differentiation. We have some of the best customers you could ever ask for around the world, strong customer logos. From NASA solving supersonic to BHP mining around the world. And these are customers that we have really focused on. Over the last 3 years, we've set out a strategy to have customers that will be with us for a long period of time. Our land, expand and scale, and you will see that through the presentation today that is central to our long-term strategy. Well, we also said we're going to focus on 6 industry segments: aviation, mining, industrial, waste, wastewater, and water treatment. And our long-term view is to dominate each one of these industry segments. In aviation, we are already market leader by a considerable margin. In mining and industrial and in waste, our industrial platform is driving a strong growth throughout. At our core, we are a purpose-driven organization. And that is also helping us to attract some of the brightest minds in our space. We're incredibly proud of the Environauts we have working for the company around the world. And importantly, that what we have been able to attract over the last 12 months to come into the organization is continually improving that. Environmental intelligence is key to improving the well-being of people on the planet. And this picture is not by chance, it is a global problem, not here, just here in Australia. As we've done on previous financial reports, we're going to stay with the same key metrics. Annual recurring revenue is up to $60.1 million. We have 442 sites around the world. Our statutory revenue is $29.6 million, which is a 7.2% increase. Our gross profit continues to improve now achieving 52.8% and our adjusted EBITDA result of $0.1 million in the first half represents a strong continual improvement. If you look at this, and it's important to understand our business and the analysts will get this that the first half should also be compared to the first half last year. Structurally, we're always stronger in the second half of the year. And you'll see that come through. So we're certainly strongly impressed with the first half result, both on adjusted EBITDA and soon-to-be EBITDA. Our ARR growth, we'll get into a break down, where that growth has come from on the product suite slides. Important for us, we set out our strategy in this financial year, and this has been in place now for the last couple of years, but really focused for FY '24. We want to have sustained revenue momentum, but really importantly whether company is emerging into profitability. And those are the 2 key themes that we've had through the year. We have got a compelling value proposition, and we're going to be able to demonstrate that growth across the board. Aviation has seen, again, strong growth. What we have seen in the last 3 years is out of the pandemic is that plans are starting to fly and certainly, investment is coming back into the sector. EVS Industrial growth through mining and in particular, through waste. And you'll see that those 2 key results has helped position industrial in an exceptionally strong growth for the last 12 months. And Americas has got a strong, again, a strong performance, strong demand and really good customer traction. Our EBITDA result is what I want to focus though on an emerging profitability. We have gone from a result of a loss of $1.8 million in the first half last year to a result of minus $162,000 in the first half. That is a $1.7 million improvement. That's an exceptionally strong result for the company. I'm really proud of that we have focused on that. We've also made strong decisions this year around the strategic rationalization of some non-core industrial customers and contracts. We're building our sustainable business. We're focusing on long-term customer contracts that will help us well into the future. I thought it would be worthwhile reflecting on what we have achieved over the last 12 months. If we break down our 2 parts, the second half and the first half. We had $5.1 million in new ARR, and we've started the year in $4 million in the first half of '24. On the bottom right, you'll see that those percentages reflect what is the top-line growth coming through. So $3.3 million of new aviation, which represents 9.1% growth on the top-line over the last 12 months. Industrial, $5.1 million we've added on top-line, which represents 26.3% growth. We're certainly excited by what the industrial platform has achieved, but more importantly, what that is opening up for in the coming years. And our water business has started to get some traction this year, $0.7 million added, which represents 63.6% growth. So a sustained revenue momentum is across the board. I'm going to focus here on 2 key points around the regions. Americas and EMEA has had strong growth. If you look at those 2 regions in particular over the last few years, we've seen continual growth coming through. APAC has had the impact of churn. That's gone slightly backwards, but it is the underlying results there are showing growth, but we're certainly excited by the continued focus on Americas and EMEA. As we emerge into profitability, we want to focus on 3 key parts here, higher quality revenue mix. That has been what we are focused on. These are long-standing customer contracts that are coming on to the platform, but also it's the quality there and the cost of revenue is getting smaller. If you look at our operating expenses, they have largely been flat, and that is testament to the strategy and to the execution of all Environauts around the world. And our gross margin, it continues to improve, and that is a focus for all of us. We're focused on the ideal customer profile that will stay with us for a long time and the value proposition that resonates to drive that gross margin improvement. Moving now to the product suite update. We hosted 2 events in the first half around aviation, and we call them FORUM23. One was held in Portugal in Lisbon. The other one was held in California in Palm Springs. We had 87 users attend the 2 forums. This was the first time since COVID has happened that we're able to get people in a room, and it was compelling to see there and witness it firsthand about how our users are actually using our technology to drive such a significant impact. And these are customers such as Heathrow and San Francisco, really important airports around the world. What we generated from that was certainly a lot of good strong case studies about where customers are using our technology and how they're solving current and emerging problems. It certainly validates to us that noise and the community engagement continues to be a strong theme for commercial aviation around the world, which is why we're focused on the commercial aviation as a sector. Also, as highlighted, the net zero targets that are now being put in place for the aviation industry, and they are real targets, and they are ambitious. And so we're certainly helping that. Out of the 2 forums, we have got now a strong pipeline of opportunities that is presenting itself certainly in the second half of this year and into next year. So competing in aviation. So we -- as I said, we added $3.3 million in new ARR. The graph on the right -- top right does show it's flat but that's taking into account the churn. So for us to get back on to a level of playing field within 9 months represents a strong demand on our platform excited by the opportunity that presents. But actually on the lower part there, you'll see a 10.3% PCP of growth in the business, if you were to take the churn impact out. Our ANSP engagement in the last 12 months, we're now in the delivery phase, and we've delivered 2 significant milestones now into the platform. And we're working with our ANSP to actually prove this out. It's an incredibly complex science that we're applying to this and it's totally unique. No one has done this before. What we are seeing though now is strong validation that this solves a significant and scalable problem. And that's something to our strategy. We want to be focusing on scalable and repeatable problems. In our Industrial platform, you'll see on the top right, the graph continues to improve. There's one key statistic though that I want to call out on this page, which is the average revenue per site. It's increased 17.5% to $95,000 per site. Now the way that we've done that is we have focused strategically on the key segments that we go after, customers that will land, expand and scale. As I said earlier, a lot of our new growth has actually come from existing customers, which is exactly what we wanted to do. We're now actually showing that we're expanding on those sites. So that lift is central to the strategy. Yes, we had some controlled churn through the year that we made the decision to do that. But that is to drive that ARPS up on the industrial side to drive the gross margin up and to drive long-term contracts coming through. So it's central to our strategy. We are seeing also a cross-selling opportunity starting to emerge in industrial. First of all, into the aviation sector, and now we're getting pulled through from the SeweX product into the Omnis platform. The outlook is incredibly strong for our industrial platform. So I want to go back to that statistic that I love 26.3% growth in new ARR in the last 12 months. We're only going to see that continue to improve in the coming years. Our water strategy has proven successful with a pivot into B2B, landing customers such as BASF, Ion Exchange, ACE Water, Origin Energy. These are customers that we know can scale through here. But really importantly, their threshold of evaluation put us at the highest point. They were -- this is new technology, very new emerging technology and now we're able to test that. So these are world-leading organizations who know water, who specialize in water, who have chosen our products to help them execute their strategy. Now with this, I'm going to pass to Andrew to give a bit of context to some of our customers.

Thanks, Jason. Yes. So let me just highlight 3 or 4 of our customers here, which are progressing their engagements with Envirosuite or net new relationships with Envirosuite. All of these customers reflect our strategy in the industry's macroeconomics. They are all innovators in their own respective industries and regions. So the first one is Biggin Hill Airport. It's the largest private aviation airfield in the U.K. It's situated just 12 miles from London City Center, which makes it exposed to a significant amount of community pressure that not every airport is pressured under. So they have been a long-standing customer of ours using our aviation technologies. They've needed to do that because of that pressure, but they're also an employer in the local region. So they have a business drive themselves to grow their impact with that surrounding community. They're a huge technology site for the Formula One industry as well. So they're looked at as contemporary innovators in their space. The pressure that they get being that close to London isn't the only pressure they have. We all recognize and see the recent trend on pressure against private aviation in flight, and they're further under that pressure. So they're looking for best and most innovative ways to help improve their social license to operate and support their region. They've been doing that with aviation and they've now through their relationship with us expanded that to the Omnis product in the EVS industrial portfolio. And what they're doing there is responding to the pressure coming from London City and their surrounding community about the impacts of air flight and travel are in and around the airport to the air quality, something that's been discussed for a little while, but it's now starting to get substantial momentum and potentially impact the social license to operate. So with both Envirosuite platforms implemented on their site, they're now looking at correlations between impact of air quality, the environmental state at the time and all of the flight traffic data that we have. And it's helped them further improve their relationship with the community and shore up their social license to operate to continue to effectively provide service to that area for years and decades to come. In the middle, we've got Ion Exchange and ACE Water. They are both a direct result of our recent B2B focus in the water technology area. They are 2 leaders in their respective industries and regions. Ace Water is located in Singapore. They do a significant amount of work with one of the world's most recognized water treatment and processing organizations, PUB who we also do work with. Ion Exchange is one of India's largest operators and that are full service providers to the water industry across India. So they're providing feasibility studies, consultancy services, maintenance, operations and optimization solutions to hundreds of facilities across the country and out of India. Both of these organizations are looking for ways to significantly improve the scalability and effectiveness of those operations, differentiating them to their customers. So what they're using the Envirosuite Optimiser and Designer water products to do is to create digital records and digital twins of as many facilities as they can. They are then putting all of their operational data in them so that they can scalably communicate and understand how effective they are working across all of the different facilities, which is a huge step forward to them when you're operating that many facilities. They're then looking to use the machine learning capabilities in Optimiser to then proactively create optimization strategies across numbers of these plants. So we're really excited that they selected us through very detailed and scientifically based conversations to know that we're going to be able to provide that to them better than anyone else can. So these are great engagements. We've already got a number of facilities up and going, especially with Ion Exchange. It's been a fantastic partnership with them, and we're anticipate -- we're excited to try and expand that over the next coming periods. And the third one on the right is Southern Water. Southern Water is a long-standing customer of Envirosuite. Their priority has always been when they're using a technology like ours, is to reduce their impact and increase their efficiency in respect to the odor that their facilities create. They've had 4 Omnis facilities running in the past number of years. And just in this last half, they've added a fifth one, further expanding their optimization across those different sites. But significantly, in addition to that, in their goal to ever improve their ability to find optimization opportunities, they've looked to our SeweX product, which from a different aspect helps operators exactly like them, improve and understand the odor that gets spread through the sewerage network itself and works very well in tandem with the decision-making making that you're making on the Omnis platform. So we're really excited to see that combination of technologies implemented on more and more sites, trying to achieve the same outcome for customers that are leading their industries and trying to improve the way that they work and helping their communities grow.

Thanks, Andrew. I think that's really useful to give a bit of context to some of our world-leading customers on there. So look, with this, I'm going to have to pass to Justin to walk us through the financials.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning. I'm turning to Slide 21, our financial performance. Well, H1 has been a very strong start to the financial year for Envirosuite where we have leveraged increase in revenue, improved gross margin, improved cost management to deliver a significantly improved EBITDA at 91.1% over H1 FY '23. We do recognize that H2 is traditionally a stronger half, particularly around our recurring revenue. Now as Jason mentioned earlier, we are transitioning out our analysis and focus to EBITDA. However, we will continue to provide the adjusted EBITDA perspective to provide insight to underline for normalized results. This reconciliation is included at the back end of this deck. The takeaway from the H1 result is the improved gross margin of $1.4 million over 31 December '22. That has resulted in improved EBITDA of $1.7 million. This leveraging being a key success factor in this half year results. The EBITDA loss for the 6 months of $162,000 is a significant improvement over prior period result and it demonstrates the emerging profitability of the group. Recurring revenue continues to grow, achieving 7.9% growth with gross margin improving just over 10%. The group continues to improve gross margin through a number of initiatives, including focusing on winning and retaining high-margin customers, noting that we did transition a number of end of contract low gross margin customers during the half, customer mix where the focus is on customers with a higher gross margin and completing the transition to AWS and closing the data centers, which are scheduled to be completed this calendar year. From an OpEx perspective, we continue to monitor our costs very closely, ensuring headcount increases are implemented in order to drive business performance and support in region growth. We will cover specifics within OpEx in the following pages. Moving to Slide 22, our recurring revenue reconciliation. Growth in recurring revenue represents key metric previous with ARR presenting contracted future recurring revenue opportunities. This reconciliation, which we report, partially reconciles our monthly recurring revenue in this case, December and multiplied by 12 to provide an annual result combined with $52.6 million. Additionally, to this number, we include customers awaiting renewal within ARR. This is where a customer has come out of contract and we have forced any revenue recognition and they continue to use the platform. Closing out these renewals remains a focus for our customer success teams. Lastly, we have contracted customers that are in the process of being implemented and we are yet to turn that revenue on. Our improved deployment and implementation processes enable us to recognize revenue on a timely basis. Moving to Slide 23, our operating leverage. I mentioned earlier that our gross margin improved to -- improvement of $1.4 million has grown to $1.7 million at the EBITDA line. A demonstrable position whereby increased gross margin has further benefited from cost management, in line with our stated profitability strategy. With regards to OpEx and leverage to revenue, you may recall that EVS undertook a restructure 12 months back where both personnel and supply costs were reviewed and decision was taken to reduce those. The impact of this change has now flowed through the cost base. We continue to monitor all costs and headcount appointments with a key focus on supporting in region growth with appropriate operational appointments. Noting that EVS has corporate representation in over 30 countries. We also acknowledge the need to ensure our global workforce is appropriately remunerated, resulting in an annual increase of around 4% to 5% for this financial year. We have also undertaken the 2 key customer events as mentioned earlier, the forums which have not been held since COVID. With regard to R&D spend, we determine this figure by combining expense with capitalized R&D as being representative of total costs for the business. Delivering on our product roadmap remains a key priority along with our aviation customer ship from the data centers to AWS. Now moving to our balance sheet slide on 24. Our total cash available at 31 December was $3.2 million and this includes our capacity under our debt facility of $2.6 million, details of which I'll cover shortly. Our working capital at 31 December is influenced by a number of factors. The increase in trade receivables reflecting strong billing for the December quarter end where our total receipts since December 31 are approximately $11.2 million. Trade and other receivables normalized around the $9.5 million to $10 million mark. Additionally, we have previously noted that H2 represents a stronger half for non-recurring revenue and therefore, we've invested into inventory ahead of delivering into these committed sales, a number of which have been shipped in January. From an inventory perspective, we look to a value of around $3.5 million as being a suitable level to maintain given the global supply chain capability. While the monitors and sensors balance has reduced, this being instrumentation live at our customer site, we have added a further $900,000 to this balance in the 6 month period, the difference being amortization balance. Moving to this funding facility that we completed in the half year, the initial facility was for $7.5 million. However, under the structure of the loan, we have capacity to increase this limit as it is set at 2.5x average 3 monthly recurring revenue, so around $11 million in total. Within the funding facility terms, we issued warrants to the lender, which we had valued by an independent party at $957,000 and formed part of the capitalized borrowing costs. Moving to Slide 25, operating cash flows. Operating cash flows for H1 have been impacted by the predictable events, some of which I've covered in the prior slide. The $1.8 mil operating cash outflow has been impacted by this increase in trade receivable, the balance of which has significantly reduced through cash receipts as mentioned. Similarly, our inventory levels continue to drop as well. Taking these movements into account, we see normalized operating cash outflows for the period of around $300,000. Our cash flow for H1 is also impacted by the annual short term incentive payments to employees. This is not repeated in H2. For H1, this amount was $1.4 million. With these impacts in mind, along with the seasonally stronger H2 for non-recurring revenue and maintaining strong cost management, we see our EBITDA and operating cash flow improving in H2. We have access to additional funding under the debt facility as required. Moving on to the last slide on summary of our funding facility, key points to raise on this one. The facility is for $7.5 million. We treat -- it has the ability to be treated as an overdraft whereby we can draw down and repay as we require. The facility limit which I spoke about is set at 2.5x recurring monthly revenue, so around $11 million. And our fees for early termination as noted there is 3% in the first year, reducing to 2% in year 2 and 0 in year 3. We continue to monitor the funding facility and what opportunities we have to look to alternatives and we monitor this on an ongoing basis. I'd now like to hand over to Jason.

Thanks, Justin. And we will close off this part of the presentation with a little bit of the outlook. So coming back to our strategy, which we have been consistent with over the last few years, is 4 key pillars: growth, product, customer and scale. And that's all driving our profitability focus. Emerging profitability has been the theme and we are consistent with that. We have reconfirmed our position around where we're going to end up into Q4, and Justin and I are incredibly confident of our ability to execute to that plan. But looking out, the growth is there, 26.3% top-line growth in industrial. Think about the quality of those customers that are coming on and then the opportunity for us to further expand and scale those new customers. Waste has been particularly strong for us in the Americas and will continue to be. We have certainly put a stake in the ground around mining and we'll continue to invest in our mining strategy. We're seeing the grassroots of water come through into fruition, and 9.1% top-line growth in aviation shows that the aviation industry is back up and flying again. Our product will continue to improve and serve our customers. We have got some certain releases due this year which will provide tangible benefits into our customers and shore that up. And we are focused heavily around customer. This year in particular, we've been very focused around customer success. And this will continue to form a key part of our strategy. You may have seen our recent addition to the management team, Ana Rowe, and that really is to drive that role, is to drive that customer success focus. Scale is critical. For a technology company, scale is critical. I want to reinforce the EBITDA result of $0.2 million loss for this half. This is a fantastic result. And I want to thank all of the Environauts for their massive contribution to getting to this part. This has been hard work and it's been strategy and it's been execution, and I'm really pleased with that. So we'll continue to focus on this. We do believe that the company is very well-positioned, not only for the second half, but for coming years. And we're sort of well-positioned. So with that, we'll close out this part of the presentation and we look forward to some of the questions.

Great. Thanks, Jason. Before we get started with the questions, as a reminder on how to ask questions, you can raise your hands and I'll take you off mute and you can pose a question live or you can type a question in via the Q&A function. And we'll move through the questions in that format as well. So first question is a question around gross margin. So what's the source of the improvement in gross margin? And I think going back to your comment around where we see gross margin improving in the medium term, how does that stack up against the 80% sort of average gross margin that we typically see with other software businesses?

Okay. Thanks, Jeremy. I'll start and then throw it to you, Justin. Look, certainly we're focused here on recurring revenue. So the basis of our business is the ARR recurring revenue. So we are wanting to drive more and more subscriptions onto the platform across aviation, industrial and water. That has a very strong GM improvement to the business itself because it is the core software that we're providing them. We are also focused now on the expansion, and we've seen this demonstrated now over the last couple of years where we land a customer, but it's the expansion capability, and this is true in all products. Now you think about aviation, you've got 190 airports. We're now able to add software, software, software on top of those sites. So our strategy is what other software capability can we have to support that? Support costs don't go up. The customer is there, the customer is happier. In industrial, we're tying more and more operational control into that. So the underlying business premise, right, is land the customer and expand through. The last part of GM improvement is we have invested into technology to make sure then that we can deploy quickly, turn on quickly, service quickly, and that also drives that GM improvement and scalability. Anything to add?

Yeah. Just emphasizing those ones. Certainly carbon emission is one that we've spoken about in the past in terms of a software product that we can simply add on as a software addition, no additional instrumentation required in that regard. We do look at a combined gross margin when we report here in terms of non-recurring and recurring revenue. And it is fair to say that at the recurring revenue, we would be -- recurring revenue on software, we would be seeing that as being in that 80% mark. Recurring revenue has other components within it, not just software. And we don't enjoy the gross margins of the 80%, but we certainly look to see that around the 60% to 70% mark. And on the non-recurring side, so think instrumentation. We have 2 types of instrumentation, that which we manufacture ourselves and sell. On the aviation side, we would see gross margin on that as being around that 50% to 60%. And on third party software under our --

Third party hardware.

Third party hardware, sorry. We would see that at a lower gross margin. So there is a mix that we monitor on all of this. We also recognize under industrial that not every customer requires instrumentation and we can have opportunities that come in that are just pure software and software revenue which would be at the altitude. So there's a couple of factors that we look at for all of these, but I'm constantly looking at how we can improve our delivery capabilities within going live with that.

Very good. Thank you. A question from Paul Bridgman around the G&A line. So why has G&A increased by that $900,000? And second question, when do you expect net profits?

Do you want to explain the G&A? And --

Sure.

Bit of the outlook?

So the key piece in looking at our expense base is we undertook the restructure 12 months ago where we looked at both employee costs and our supply costs and made some changes there. With any cost for a half year or under our employment costs, G&A is significantly impacted with people. And of course, it takes into account the salary increases that we put through effect in 1 July this year. We have also during the half year put some additional resource -- limited resources into the various regions to assist with the growth in those regions, particularly north and South America. And into EMEA.

Profitability. So net profits here. So look, certainly the point there is emerging profitability this year and then into FY '25 and beyond, certainly we will be in a sustainable, profitable basis.

Great. Thanks, guys. A question from Eric Tan around the STI to employees. So can you give a little bit more color around some of the general KPIs that go into that? And he's sort of prefacing this question with given there was not much revenue growth in the business over period.

Okay. Thanks, Eric. So we've certainly set a strategy at the start of the year and we have key executives and key people in the company that are given specific targets. So this will be around ARR growth, it will be around profitability drivers, it will be about turning revenue on. It will be turning transformation into projects. So that is a specific one for the individual and what we're trying to drive, to drive the overall achievement of the company.

Good. Thank you. Follow up question from Ross Barrows on the G&A. You mentioned appointments made in the Americas and EMEA. Can you expand on those appointments and are there any other material appointments that need to be made?

Yeah. I'll go with that. So certainly what we are seeing is growth potential in the business, but it is going to be around customer success and the support. So we want to make sure when we add customers on that they're using the platform correctly, that they're getting maximum value coming through. And so we're seeing certainly in the Americas and EMEA, new customers coming all the time. So this is going to be largely around that.

The other piece to, I guess counter those increases is how we're funding and what we're looking at to cost effectively manage that cost base, which we previously mentioned, our Philippines office or center of excellence as we refer to it, where we have a headcount of just over 25 people covering a number of corporate activities and customer success. So when we're looking to leverage or leverage or assist and fund our growth, we are looking at where we can do it in terms of locations of labor, Philippines being a key one for us. And we've also had opportunities presented within Chile, Santiago.

Question from Bob and Scott around the Americas and EMEA, which are looking to be very outperforming regionally. Can you speak to what some of those regional opportunities are for the second half and which regions are you most excited about?

Yeah. So look, coming back to mining and waste in the industrial part, what we are seeing is a strong pipeline of opportunities. Now, clearly this is not selling an ice cream on the corner shop. We're in big engagements with some of these world leading mining companies. So we won't tell who it is. That would be wrong. But certainly some of the logos that are already within our portfolio, we're talking about some significant expansion but also scale. So we're now talking about adding on additional size. So certainly in the second half, you will see that. Waste has proven particularly strong for us in the Americas. And there's 2 types of customers in that. There is the private operator, the waste management of the world, and there's the other one, the ADA accountings of the world. And so the value proposition is slightly different for both. But really we see that really hitting a strong mark. What's exciting about that is we can turn the revenue on quickly, instrumentation is off the shelf, we can go through, strong impact on community and it's driving their corporate agenda. So that's certainly a strong part. What we have also seen though is the Middle East opening up for us and Middle East is representing quite a few different customers both in the aviation space and the industrial. We're certainly excited. Andrew touched on Southern Water around the UK. I think the U.K. does represent considerable growth opportunity for us moving forward. Coming back to aviation. In the Q2 release, we actually mentioned 18 of the 25 airports. It's 18 of 18 of the key airports, right? The other 7, there is growth there, but we have got such a strong presence here and such a brand and so that's where we've got to build through.

Good. There's a question here around the non-recurring revenue. So can you give a bit more color as to the variability of non-recurring revenue and our line of sight on that line for H2?

Sure. I'll jump on. And Jason, please. Traditionally, we've seen H2 as being a stronger, non-recurring revenue half and we have data points on that year-on-year. Sort of we see that as a significant opportunity for us. Now, there's 2 forms of our non-recurring revenue. One is on our instrumentation sales to new customers. So we clearly have one side on those projects because they come up as instrumentation sales for new customers and clearly, we focus on those ones because it gives us the ability to turn revenue on the recurring revenue line quicker. So that becomes a fair piece for us. And yes, we have good clear lens line of sight for those ones. The other comes down to our customers who are looking to refresh some of their instrumentation on site. And our sales team globally are constantly in discussion with their customer base, looking at what opportunities and what needs that customer has in terms of expanding their footprint within their site for monitoring and also replacing some of the instrumentation that has been there for a period of time. We have a regular cadence meeting with our sales organization on a monthly basis, looking at what our non-recurring revenue pipeline and opportunities look like. And it gives us the comfort knowing that H2 will be stronger.

Very good. One question here is around so just observational cash balance. So can you talk a little bit to how business is managing cash? And then the other question which is somewhat tied to that is, are we anticipating that we need to do a cap raise?

It wouldn't be a half year result without those questions. Thank you. I'll take it through the wall. We look at a snapshot. Always the difficulty with the business when we take a snapshot at 31 December. Coming up to 31 December, it's a half or quarter end for many of our customers and for us. And we have increased billing coming through at that point in time. Our increase in trade receivables and other receivables is outlined in our balance sheet. Significantly higher, of which we have since received over $11 million of cash, which is higher, if you like, than what would occur normally. So we're seeing that the cash receipts are coming in and our normalized receivables balance is now coming into line at around that $9.5 million to $10 million. Moving to inventory. We've also invested into inventory in the lead up or into the opportunities that are coming through in H2. And we want to be in a position that we can deliver on those in a timely manner of which we have already shipped instrumentation out. We see our inventory balances being more normalized around that $3.5 million to $4 million. So we can see that cash is becoming available out of those 2 mines. And when we look to H2 from a cash flow perspective, we know that we don't have the one-off event that occurs annually in H1, which is our SDR payments that I referred to. And also we have a stronger H2 in terms of non-recurring revenue. So those items plus the additional facility potential within it from our funder, we are in a position to manage cash through to H2 or through H2.

Yeah. Nothing to add. I think it's -- we've got a strategy. We know what we've got to do and we've got line of sight of that. So.

Good. Another question from Ross Barrows around the new sites. One pending start item on the reconcile ARR side. It has been very stable at around $6 million for the past 4 halves. Can we talk a bit more to how that $6 million moves in and out? Does that $6 million get delivered within a half and then restocked back to that $6 million again with new sites or what does that mix look like?

Let me jump in and we'll pass you. So as you appreciate it and Justin gave the definition of that, right, so we're constantly adding new sites. Our focus is how do we reduce time to turn that revenue on. So there's people in the business who -- that's their core focus, right, to turn it on. We also though sometimes it's dependent on our customers. So you're always going to have a healthy backlog in there. Now that may go up to $7 million, it may drop down to $3 million, but it's going to oscillate through. So I think the confidence you're going into the second half of the year with $6 plus million there to turn on ready to go gives us confidence. Line of sight that we've got that it's booked, it's ready to go and we're driving forward. So you will see that change. It's not a perfect formula and it will maybe go up to $10 million as we start to scale further in the future.

The only thing I would add in on that is there is a drive and seen a number of businesses over many years is we run cadence on a quarterly basis. So you tend to see opportunities close out and become contracted at end of the quarter, not always in the first day of the new quarter. So you tend to see that build up coming into the end of the quarter, which as we then go over quarter end, it's well and truly within our implementation processes and is scaled down in, if you like, month one, month two.

Good. We'll make this the last question, just conscious of time. So it's a question from Gordon Campbell. What's the corporate comms program around engaging broker communities to promote this positive outlook? He's given the good barbecue analogy here. We can see sausage, but what about the sizzle? The market doesn't seem to be taking notice.

Yeah, look, it's a good question and I think that's on Justin and I to continue to promote the story and the company. I think the results are fantastic. We're incredibly pleased. We were given a very clear direction strategy to the company. Let's focus on getting profitability. We're a fraction away and we've done it and we've grown and I think that's a fantastic result. So yeah, we do have to get that out and we will continue to promote.

Fantastic. Well, that concludes the Q&A component of the session. Jason, I'll pass back to you for final remarks.

Thank you very much. So look, once again, I want to thank our staff around the world. I think the Environauts this year have done a great job. We're a technology company, but it is people that build out the technology and deliver that value to that. I'm incredibly excited by the new talent that has come into the organization and so we have seen a significant transformation over the last 3 years. But I want to focus on the outlook. We have got a healthy pipeline. It's a very healthy pipeline. We have got a value proposition in the industrial part that grew 26.3% on the top-line in the last 12 months. We have to continue to focus on that. Yes, we are managing the sales and marketing spend to doing that, to drive forward on that profitability part, but we know that that is a incredibly strong value proposition. So we need to do it. Customer success is critical for this type of business and you look at successful tech companies around the world, you want users to use a product, we've got that. We've just got to support them. So that customer success is absolute backbone of our internal strategy and we communicate that with our customers as well. There's scalable growth now, right? It's land, expand and scale. It's having the technology in place, it's focusing in on that scalable growth to push through. Certainly excited by the quality of the customers that we've added to our group, but to our community. That was especially strong actually in the forums around that sense of community, sense of engagement. Our customers are there, they're wanting us to succeed, they're wanting us to drive this forward. It was very powerful in that part. So we know that we've got incredibly engaged users moving forward. So look, as a company, we have to continue to focus on that profitability and as we emerge into that part, we should celebrate and then we should strive for higher growth at the bottom-line result as we do on the top-line growth. So thank you to Justin, Andrew and myself, Jeremy for coming, and also thank you to the investors. Q&A is always good, some really good insights and learnings on that one. But we're certainly proud of the first half results this year.