Gentrack Group Limited (GTK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Hi, everybody. This is Gary Miles here, the CEO of Gentrack. Welcome to our full year earnings results for FY '24. I'm here in Melbourne. We're headed up to Sydney shortly tomorrow, and then off to Auckland and Wellington next week. It's also nice to see some U.S. participants on the call. Welcome. So let's jump right into it. If we go to the opening slides on our financial headlines. Revenue was strong. We had a 25.5% growth. What's important to call out is we actually had, I think, the end of our discussions around insolvencies in the U.K. We had $27 million worth of insolvencies in FY '23 that were a one-off revenue. So that basically started our year theoretically at $142 million. So to move to $213 million was an excellent outcome. I think that the utilities business grew strongly, and we'll talk about what the drivers are for that growth. On the Veovo airports business, the Veovo business continues to roar ahead. I would like to call out because we want to try to keep things even keeled that the 45% revenue growth at Veovo did include about $6.8 million of hardware sales. So you can peg that growth kind of at a 25% path. The recurring revenues continues to grow as well, up 31%. We're happy with that to have quality of revenues is very, very important for us, and we think about a lot in our pricing and our engagement. On the EBITDA side, we were within the range. We came in at the bottom end of the range at $23.6 million. We're going to have a specific slide because if you look at the LTI, which is a range of LTI programs, some of which go back 3 years where the share price was maybe $2, there's been large share appreciation. I think several people on the call appreciate the journey we've been on. It does have some impact in that it accelerates some payments, et cetera, which we'll talk about. But if you look at the underlying EBITDA growth, if you strip those out, it's 42% year-on-year, which is pretty strong. In closure, cash is a very good indicator of how well the business is run. We closed up at 66.7%. That's after we did our -- we led the Amber investment round, Amber Electric, where we put in $12.9 million. So I just want to thank the teams here. Basically, what this means is we deliver projects well, we deliver software well, we can invoice for our work and get paid, which is pretty, pretty essential. So anyway, and we have no debt, et cetera. I think people are aware of the way we are very transparent and clear with the way we handle our numbers. So we wanted to talk about the LTI straight up. I will introduce this slide and hand over to John. But I would like to say that the LTI scheme has been a part of our success. It allows us to crystallize our objectives for our earnings per share increase for our global expansion, for the hard work associated that the team has put behind it. It allows me to attract and retain talent. So for example, we added Mark Rees, who's our CTO that joins us from Xero. So we have a way to really continue to attract the world's best talent to come with us on this journey. And I want to say thank you for the shareholders for supporting the various schemes. I think it's paying off. But let's talk through, John, the implications.

Thanks, Gary. So what you see is that the costs of these schemes are a little skewed in financial year '24. So our EBITDA includes 2 types of costs. There's the noncash accounting charge for LTIs for share-based payments. And then in some countries and for Gentrack, the U.K. is the most significant here, payroll taxes are also paid by the employer on shares when they vest at the price they vest at. So the table on the slide here shows what those costs were included within EBITDA in financial year '24 and then compares them to what they were in '23. And you can see back to the point that Gary referenced, our EBITDA before those costs is 42% higher year-on-year. So underlying margin improvement off of a higher revenue base. In terms of those 2 different types of costs, so the LTI payroll tax, we booked around about $7 million in financial year '24, mostly in the second half versus $0.3 million, so a much, much smaller number in the prior year. That $7 million is around about $4 million more than we were forecasting when we put our guidance out in May. And this follows the substantial uplift in our share price. And that has a couple of impacts. So first of all, it increases the total expected costs going to be payable over the life of those share schemes. And then it's also moving us to accelerate the amortization of that. So most of that cost now is being amortized over 2 rather than 3 years. I mean so for example, our current scheme this year, more shares vest and vest earlier when the share price is higher. So what we're expecting for this line item in financial year '25 for the current year, we're expecting that to be sort of call out a similar cost. I mean I think if the share price sort of stays at the sort of recent highs we've seen in our share price, it will probably be a bit lower, maybe $1 million or so lower. But in financial year '26, it falls substantially to less than 1% of revenue, probably quite a bit less than 1% of revenue. And then the second component, the noncash accounting charge, that was $10.2 million in financial year '24 compared to $5.3 million in the prior year. That $10.2 million was wholly in line with what we were expecting. That's the number that was embedded within our guidance back in May. And the thing to sort of think through there is that for recent schemes, whilst we do spread the cost, the accounting charge over 3 years, it's not evenly spread. And it's actually very weighted towards financial year '24. It's also not so driven by the share price in the sense that you fix that cost really at the start when you award scheme. What it means is that when we look into this current year, financial year '25, we expect the cost to fall from $10.2 million down to around about $8 million. So you put those 2 together, and we're certainly expecting to see lower costs associated with our LTIs in financial year '25 and then beyond. And that will be one of the factors that will help support our margin expansion as we go forward. So with that, I'll hand back to Gary for the rest of the business review.

Which is lines up well with our looking ahead statement. We remain confident of our midterm guidance of growing revenue more than 15% CAGR and EBITDA margins of 15% to 20% after expensing all development costs. In FY '25, we expect both utilities and Veovo to show continued revenue growth and EBITDA improvement, the extent of which will depend on when business opportunities close in the year. We will look to provide further guidance on FY '25 outlook later in the financial year. So let's go to the next slide and talk about key metrics. So a picture is worth a thousand words. The team that we have here has been in the seat for about 4 years. We've had good growth across all major key metrics that we're driving towards. I do think that the head count is starting to grow on a nonlinear basis, which is pretty good. So we get more performance for our people. I think some of the early phase growth was to build some of the engines that we need around our people, our culture, marketing and finance and other things. So that can definitely flatten out more with each additional dollar we take to the top line. So we just wanted to put these slides up here because they tell a good story, and we look forward to a continued good story moving forward. So let's go through our engines of growth, which we've introduced before, and we're being consistent with. So we have the Veovo business, which grew at 25% if you strip out those hardware costs. Strong growth year after year. We're very confident in this sector. The airport sector is a fantastic sector to be in as it digitize and automates. Once again, we moved from Tier 2, Tier 3 players to also a Tier 1 player. We have a very unique situation in that we have a relatively smaller business that has a global footprint with servicing mission-critical software. So we think that can be a good mechanism to roll other things into it. And our brand is servicing us very well. If you look at the core markets of New Zealand, Australia and the U.K., New Zealand actually continues to knock it out of the park. I want to thank the teams there. A lot of that is Mercury and Genesis work and our other key customers there. Then Australia, as I mentioned here, this is a pretty consistent 20% to 30% growth region for us. The U.K. flatlined, but it flatlined because it lost $27 million of revenue from the U.K. government forced insolvency of some players there. But underlying grew 43%, which is just really, really good, strong result there. And then international, how long is the piece of strength? International for us is Asia and Europe. We've got some early signs, wins, and we'll talk about that now. So -- and then if you look at what's behind, what's important for -- when I look at the business, what's important is because it's a momentum game, right? You get momentum and it just carries itself forward, [ Connecticut energy ]. So let's talk about momentum. So first of all, doing more with our customer base, they're really leaning into us to do more. We called out some examples here. On the left, you look at some of the utility examples. I'll talk about Genesis later, but Fiji, moving them into a modern stack, taking Tas Gas and propelling it into energy and out of not just being in Tasmania, but being on the continent or in the heart of Australia, Yü Energy, Ecotricity and other lots of renewals and upgrades. SSE Airtricity, we went live with. This is not to be confused with SSE C&I business, which is the B2B business in the U.K., which is not on our stack. They were in the press recently for some billing errors and things, but that's not our stack. And then npower, there's a great -- on a LinkedIn feed, there's a great interview with Anthony that runs npower, who they're just doing amazing things and lots of great programs with us. And you can hear more about that there. On the airport side, Dubai is the top airport on the right. It's the largest airport in the world. We're building about $1 billion of revenues for that airport. You couldn't pick a better reference. And then London Gatwick, we're actually run -- have the airport control program there. Auckland, Bristol, Wellington, Christchurch, these are examples of great upgrades. And then Sydney Airport, we've just got the revenue management piece there. They spoke at our Strategy Day about a year ago, fascinating that we did with them there, which is exciting. So that's with our customer base. And once again, we keep doing more with them. If you look at new logos, which are important for us, so we had 4 new logos in utilities in the period. We had the win in Saudi with NEOM, which is going very well, on time, on budget, like we like to do it. AC Energy, we just announced, this is a new logo in the Philippines. So it's a new country. We like to talk about [ N+1 ], which is you land a new country, then you expand to other players there. So AC Energy is part of the Ayala Group, which is a big, big Philippine business conglomerate, huge investment in sustainable energy solutions. Dodo or Vocus under the Dodo brand here in Australia and then Amber Electric, which is taking our technology stack on. The pipeline looks great. It really looks good, and we look forward to continue to bring new logos into our base of customers. On the airport side, we have some great business. GACA is actually the country of Saudi Arabia that runs their -- all of the airports. Some of them are small, some of them are very large, and they have major, major global airport aspirations. And then the Manchester Airports Group, which you can see here also new logos that we won. James is hunting some nice -- James Williamson, who runs our airport business is hunting some nice big airport fish, so to speak, and we look forward to keep adding names like these first-class names onto our register. Then if you -- so that's momentum, very, very important. If you look at leadership, also important. We take a lot of pride in the work we do with our customers to drive great outcomes and customer experience. We like to keep our customers out of the press when it comes to regulatory fines, make sure they take care of vulnerable customers. They don't wind up in Supreme Court actions for bad billing or things like that. And we have an outstanding track record in this regard, but we also like to keep them at the top of the league tables as far as customer experience goes. So in Australia, which is the most advanced energy grid in the planet, Red Energy is the leader for customer experience, Canstar rating. Fantastic brand there. And then Ecotricity, according to Citizens Advice is 2 quarters running, Ecotricity is top of the tables there. They also use our technology, moved off of SAP onto us about 1.5 years ago, and the results are -- if you listen to that, they talk about some of the drivers, which obviously we're a part of. And then Salesforce is the leading CRM worldwide. So we like to try to continue to work with our customers and bring fantastic outcomes. And then if you look at recognition, which is important because we used to have a brand that was known in our core markets, a well-known brand. Now we have a brand that is known across Asia, a growing awareness across Europe. With the analysts like Gartner and Forrester and IDC and others' recognition, it's great. These are some of the accolades that our customers are getting or we're getting. This -- on the top left is Mercury won CIO of the Year award through digital transformation of IT -- business transformation through digital and IT. This is Nick Pudney, who was our kind of co-owner in the journey of their transformation onto our stack from SAP. On the right, you've got some of our leadership with the Asian Technology Excellence Awards, which is great recognition for g2, best enterprise software for utilities, energy and ESG tech. And the Amber wins a lot of awards, which we're the lead investor in and this is a minority investor. But they -- we successfully helped them sign E.ON Next in the U.K. That was a sought-after contract from some of the other big players in the U.K. that wanted to bring Amber in and E.ON won that. And there's another announcement coming shortly that's pretty exciting in that space. So we'll watch that. And then this is Oslo Airport that gets in Europe the Best Airport Award, which we're happy to be [indiscernible] of. So it's pretty exciting. I'm going to try to get through these last slides quickly, but it would be kind of -- I wanted to make sure that we spend a little time on g2 and the status of it. So this is the capability model of g2 from customer engagement to sustainability, billing revenue optimizations. If you look at what this stack does for us and for the industry, first of all, there's no stack in the utility sector that can do what this stack does, period. We have 37 years of IP that we've been building up, and we just can do B2C, B2B, energy and water, and then we can add in multiplay like broadband and battery and solar. It's just -- it's a very, very capable stack to take care of all the long tail of exceptions that once again, to keep people out of the courts and to make sure the customer experience is great. We -- it gives us great customer experience. We're leveraging our best-in-class technology partners. Salesforce is #1. AWS is #1, lots of AI technology in it, and Snowflake and other great data-oriented technologies. Genesis is going well. We want to thank them for their guidance with us to expand this on time, and we're very excited about the relationship we have with the Genesis team. We see increasing interest from our base for g2 and almost all of our new sales are g2 oriented. So we have a focus on driving business outcomes with the stack. We're really, really bullish about. If you look at the competitive landscape, we're in a strong position. And as this industry transforms, we will be one of the global leaders. I'm really confident in that. So if we go to the last slide on my section, I'm going to just close with the following. We are growing in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., where demand remains strong. These countries are modern energy and water environment and the rest of the world, we believe, will follow. We're seeing a lot of signs on that. We had 4 new utility customers in the year, some new countries. On the airport side, we also had strong growth across the entire -- our global footprint and some really interesting things in the Americas now picking up. They're good markets to be in. We expect growth in our base to further expansion with new customer wins in the year. So we were clear about that in our earnings statement in May that we expect those coming in FY '25. Our LTI share scheme has allowed us to attract top talent, keep staff retained and drive really world-class outcomes versus tech benchmarks. We do continue to assess M&A opportunities as they arrive. We're doing this more proactively now. And we're pleased to be in both the NZX 50 and the ASX 300. It's a great outcome for us and our shareholders, and we look forward to continuing to bring strong results. So with that, I'll hand over to John.

Thanks, Gary. So looking first at the group's profit and loss account. You can see that our group revenue is up by almost 26%. So that's the strong growth that we're seeing in both our business segments, Veovo and the utilities. Our EBITDA, $23.6 million versus $23.2 million in the prior year. So the underlying margin improvement we're seeing in the business in financial year '24, that's been offset by the higher costs of the LTIs. But we are expecting those LTI costs to fall as we move into financial year '25 in the current financial year and financial year '26. A couple of other items just to call out. Our NPAT now includes our share, which is 10% of Amber's loss. So that's -- so we booked $1.3 million in the year against that. And we've also got R&D tax credits of $1.7 million, very similar amount to the year before. We disclosed that as other income as opposed to sort of offsetting in the tax charge. That's just the way the accounting works for that. So moving to the utilities business and looking at the revenue. So as we've done with our presentation so far, we've set out the revenue based on the various sort of component categories of that recurring, nonrecurring. What we've also done is we have separated out the revenue from Bulb and other insolvencies, mainly Bulb in financial year '23. And that's the component part there in we exited. So we don't see that in financial year '24. What that means is when we think about the growth of that business, top line growth is almost 23%. The underlying growth is 51%. We've seen a strong rise in recurring revenues, up 33%. And that's really -- a lot of that is the impact of wins in the prior year and upsells in the prior year flowing through into financial year '24 because that's the way the business model works. Our nonrecurring revenue, it's almost doubled or a little more than doubled, up 104%. And that revenue is spread across quite a wide range of programs, and we've called out some of the key ones here. So it includes the g2 upgrade at Genesis, which started at the beginning of the year and moves forward across into this year. We see continued regulatory change across all of our markets. I mean we call out here, there's quite a large one in the U.K., market-wide part of our settlement. That's what the MHHS stands for here. But it's a feature of the industry that we're in. There's also the implementation of new wins at NEOM in Saudi Arabia. I mean that started right at the beginning of the year in October and then some contributions from sort of Vocus and Amber which started partway through. Also implementation upgrades from our existing customer base. And I've called out some of the larger ones here. So Power and Water Corporation and Solstice Energy in Australia, SSE Airtricity in Northern Ireland and Water Authority of Fiji. But really, there's strong demand across our entire existing customer base sort of for innovation and change. So as I say, it's quite a wide span of programs that make up our nonrecurring revenue. So just looking at how -- looking a little bit more -- a little further at utilities revenue and in particular, how it sort of maps out regionally. You can see that there's very strong underlying growth in the U.K., but offset by the loss of Bulb, which was in financial year '23. Australia, it's consistent strong growth there. It's been sort of high 20s. It's been 30% here for the last 2 or 3 years. And we can see that from some of the upgrades and new wins. I mean we call out some of them in the prior slide. New Zealand's growth includes the g2 upgrade at Genesis, and that continues across all of this year. Our Rest of World, so the growth there driven by NEOM in Saudi Arabia, but that category also includes Singapore, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Now we signed the Philippines contract or the first phase of that just before the year-end, main contract is done after. But it means that, that hasn't contributed to revenue in financial year '24. That will be something that starts from the beginning of this current financial year. Looking at the Veovo business. Again, we split out the different parts of its revenue in the table you see here. What we've done this time around, though, is to split out the nonrecurring revenue between the project services, people component and the hardware that combine to make that implementation revenue for the nonrecurring in Veovo. And we've done that because, I mean, it's a big step up from the prior year. That hardware revenue is quite lumpy. It's quite difficult to forecast when in the half year will land, probably booked a little more than we would forecast in financial year '24, but it's a big strong number there. So you can see though that whilst the top line was 46% year-on-year growth, when you take the hardware away, it's still growing very strongly, 25% higher. And again, that's a wide range of upgrades across Europe and APAC and those new customer wins in the U.K. and the Middle East. Our recurring revenue is up 15%. I mean that's the flow-through from wins and upsells in the prior period. And again, that's just the way the business model consistently drives those recurring revenues forward. On the utilities cost base, as you'd expect, most of the increase is there in direct costs to support people and hosting to support those higher revenues. You can also see the impact on the utilities part of the LTI that we've talked about before, but this is the utilities part of Veovo. I guess the other callout here is that we are continuing to invest more in our strategic R&D. Our target remains to spend around about 15% of our revenue, and that's what we've spent in financial year '24. And we'll also continue to invest in sales and in particular, international expansion. So the last slide I wanted to cover directly here is our cash flow. Strong cash generation across the year, underlying cash generation of just over $30 million, of which we used $12.9 million for our investment in Amber at the end of January, leaving an increase of $17.5 million in our year-end cash balance. One thing to call out here, there's a working capital inflow you can see on the page, about $7 million working capital inflow. And that includes $6.5 million that's accrued against those payroll costs because those -- most of those payroll costs are paid out in future years. Underlying that, our working capital, so our trade debtors and trade creditors is pretty flat, which is sort of where we tend to guide to. And then, of course, the noncash accounting charges added back to EBITDA. But a very strong cash-generative performance for the business in financial year '24. So we have also -- I'm not going to go through them on this call, but we've also included in the presentation the normal slides on the impact that foreign exchange has had on our results. And that's really just where we show what our results would have been if we use the exchange rates of the prior year financial year '23. There's a table in there that reconciles the way we describe revenue in this presentation, recurring, nonrecurring, CMRR, et cetera, to the way that it's disclosed in our financial statements. And there's also an additional slide this year on our LTI scheme, a little bit more information given that there's a higher costs booked in the year. So with that, we'll move on to Q&A. We're firstly going to answer questions by phone, and then we will move on to get through the online questions as many as we can in the time.

[Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from the line of Chris Gawler from Goldman Sachs.

I just had a couple. Firstly, in terms of the outlook commentary, I was just curious around the revenue guidance this year. You've made comments around retaining the 15% midterm CAGR guidance and saying that both the segments will grow this year. I'm just interested in terms of what you're seeing in the pipeline at this stage for this financial year? And I suppose, is there anything different in what you're seeing now versus a year ago when you were happy to provide more of a quantitative revenue guidance for the year?

Yes. Look, so the shift into the international arena is one that takes time. I think we've been really clear about that. We need to build a brand and then we need to run through sales cycles that are 18 to 36 months. Sometimes they happen quicker, but generally, that's the cycle that they've got. We -- I just want to say that vis-à-vis the competitive outlook, there's just not so many formidable players chasing this big global replatforming opportunity. Therefore, we feel very confident. We know how to deliver projects, which is hard to do in foreign kind of markets. And our software makes a lot of sense and super capable. And I think our sales ability is just getting stronger and stronger. So we're really comfortable with the long-term journey that we're on. And I think given international rates and success, we may look to even up that 15% CAGR at some point. At this point, what we're doing is we're entering those markets, and we're working on timing of landing those deals. And we want to just be very reliable with our numbers. So it just depends on when those deals close in the year and how much revenue we can take forward in this year to put a forecast out. So we're waiting to have some more clarity on that, and then we'll provide clarity.

Yes, sure. That makes sense. And then I had a follow-up question in terms of the head count growth as well. Gary, maybe you can talk a little bit about this. Just slowing a little bit in FY '24, but you made some comments around improving the efficiency of the workforce you already have. I'm just interested in terms of where you feel like what you're operating in terms of the capacity of your delivery organization at the moment. Is there a need to add more heads in this financial year?

So just to talk about -- so we had a big surge in hiring at the end of FY '23. So we kind of got ready for the extra work that we were preparing to have in FY '24. We also had -- we had that kind of high EBITDA revenue that we thought we could use to really kind of scale up our workforce towards g2 and other things. We also did a lot more hiring in India, has taken us over 100 FTEs there now, which gives us a positive kind of impact on our bottom line. We have a process called the [ gold line ] where we track towards oncoming work that's headed our way. And we have a pretty good machine to scale up and business school to train our people. And so we are not putting a forecast out for hiring for this year because we're not putting a forecast out at this point. So -- but I think we're in a pretty good -- we have a pretty good capability to flex that as we need to grow, and we'll do it accordingly.

Yes. And then just one final question. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the AC Energy customer win just in terms of how material that is from a financial perspective, but also the opportunities that might open up for you in the Southeast Asia space?

Yes. So AC Energy, so what happened in the Philippines is it's not deregulated at this point. The regulator is talking about deregulating that in the future. They've deregulated the B2B side. They're going to deregulate the B2C. So the consumer side is not deregulated yet. But there's players in there like the Ayala Group, which owns AC Energy that have a big investment in energy production. And then you -- so if you're an energy producer, it's good to have a big B2B book to absorb that and manage your trade and risk and things like that. And they're preparing and others are preparing for the deregulation of the industry. We have lived through the kind of deregulation in the U.K. industry and saw how it could take big market share from incumbents and move them to challengers. One of the things we want to do is help like Morocco is a big player, and Philippines, we'd like to help them navigate securing their customer base in the process of deregulation. So any new country opens up opportunities for us. I would say that, that is a g2 contract, which is great. It's not a large Tier 1, but it's a nice contract to have and a profitable one and one that we think we can build upon.

Your next question comes from the line of Cameron Halkett from Wilsons Advisory.

If I can just follow up on the comments just around sort of the outlook statements and guidance. Given you've reiterated the more medium-term targets, and Gary, you maybe mentioned there before, you might even consider sort of lifting those at some point. Are we to consider with the absence of a formal FY '25 guidance that Gentrack are very comfortable with securing wins? It just really is coming down to whether it's second half FY '25 or some of those deals fall into FY '26? Can you, I suppose, just underpin, I suppose, the rationale there?

Yes. Actually, Cam, I think you set that out in the right way. I mean we're confident about growing. We haven't given specific numbers in financial year '25. So we're not expecting people to go out there and change their forecasts. And I think it's really just -- it's a dependency on how that profile across the year plays out. Good pipeline. We're confident that we can succeed on it.

And I suppose I think around -- go ahead, go on, Gary.

I think on the new win front, we'll see our core markets as well as international. So I think let's don't lose sight of that. Yes, all of our core markets.

Yes. And I suppose following up on that international expansion point. Previously, you talked about how at least previously through FY '24, you didn't expect to see too much on the international front. Now obviously, we look into FY '25. So I suppose any comments you can make around sort of how international is shaping up. You've obviously spent a little bit more money this year as well through the second half, and you guys have clearly been active through Southeast Asia recently as well. So I suppose just any comments you can make around sort of how international is tracking in terms of procurement relative to what you're expecting sort of 6, 12 months ago?

Yes. Look, I think we've said before, Cameron, that Asia looks really good, but they're big deals, they're binary and they take time to get across. I mean like country or a big part of the country is energy supply. It's just a long purchasing process. But it looks good. Europe, which we said before, so Asia moved faster than we had anticipated, which is good. Europe moved a little bit slower than we anticipated, which is less good, but Europe is now picking up pace, which is great. So we just need to see once again about the timing of these.

Yes. And just lastly on that, Gary, the timing of deals and what you see in the pipeline. Anything to call out, I suppose, in terms of major geographies, verticals, whether you're seeing any sort of ramp in the water market as well? Just anything on that to sort of help us get a bit of view on where you're seeing opportunity at the moment.

Yes. So energy is definitely a more pressing kind of compelling need to change because of regulatory and SAP end of lifing their stack and all kinds of new energy services that are required. So I think that's a more pressing thing, but the water systems out there are really, really old. If you look at some of the -- even the regulated government players, they have risk register items that their billing system isn't cyber protected. So they don't want to wind up in the press. Because most of the systems that are out there don't have a CRM at all. So they want to improve their community services and their customer interaction. Smart meters are coming out in water, although slower. So water will be more of -- I've used this analogy before, transformation like more of a river as opposed to a bow wave, which you will see over the next decade in energy. But -- and we see it across the board, both for the consumer books and for the B2B books. Interestingly enough, enterprise, big business, innovation there is more complex and further ahead than in B2C. So if you can do B2B, B2C follows that in many ways. They're both different. They both have their different challenges. But to enter the B2B market is very, very hard with its complexity, and we're really good at this. So it helps us when we engage with people like AC Energy or other players that have both a B2C and a B2B book because a lot of our competitors just don't do B2B.

Your next question comes from the line of Wei Sim of Jefferies LLC.

A couple from me. The first one is just in terms of the M&A opportunities that you mentioned before and as they arise. Are you able to give us some, I guess, size, scope, guardrails as to how we're thinking about these opportunities so that we can better understand your acquisition framework?

So look, the airports business is something that we think we have a platform -- a global platform. We're in 26, 27 countries now. So we would like to add on some capabilities, some adjacent capabilities to that stack. And so we're always actively looking. In the utilities space, what we've said in the past is like our investment in Amber Electric, we probably would have done a more -- a larger percentage of ownership in that, but they're also a retailer here. So we didn't want to step into that environment, but we're interested in their technology. So there'll be some really interesting technologies that we could add on that we'd be interested to research in the utility space, energy and water or you could look at doing something more substantial of some sort of roll-up. But these are all things that we consider kind of behind the scenes and don't really project out too much. So let's just say we're looking at our options.

Okay. And just in terms of like the size of potential opportunities, is that something that -- I mean, I guess, our revenues are pretty -- they seem tied to infrastructure. So is that something that we'd be willing to gear up to or I don't know, increase, I guess, capital in order to go for larger potential opportunities?

I don't know that we would rush ahead of an opportunity to do that, but we would like to bring our institutional base, the weight of it to bear to take advantage of the capital markets to do things of scale. I think we have a stock price now that supports that. I think we have a supportive investor base that would -- that encourage us to look at deals. Scale begets scale, we get it. Moving to the U.S., you could look at doing an acquisition, for example. So we will assess each of these opportunities and their unique nature as it comes and handle it accordingly. But yes.

We've also got cash on the balance sheet for smaller add-on acquisitions with [indiscernible].

Yes, exactly.

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. And then just last one for me. Previously, there was kind of like talk about potential opportunities on AGL. I was just wondering if you might be able to provide an update on that.

Yes. So we -- AGL made that investment in Kaluza, which is a competitor of ours, owned by OVO Group in the U.K. So AGL will be their second customer for their billing stack. Hard to move from having one customer in one jurisdiction. The second and third one are a hard jump. So I think AGL is pretty committed to try to make sure they land that successfully without booking to distract themselves to other major endeavors at this moment. So I would not -- we're not in really position to comment on the inside workings of what's going on there. But I would read into it that they're really focusing on the B2C segment.

Your next question is from the line of Owen Humphries of Canaccord Genuity.

Well done on a stellar result for last year. Just to dig into the margin guidance there. So you provided guidance of EBITDA margins between 15% and 20% the first half or the full year was 19% and the second half was 21%. Can we just kind of -- on a cash basis, can we just kind of -- is the expectation going forward that your OpEx and R&D will now exceed your revenue growth?

I think what we're trying to do is continue to keep our R&D as a proportion of our revenue around about the 15% mark. I mean when the revenue sort of moves around a little bit, you can't just flex the actual spend. So it's always going to be a slightly different number, but it's been pretty close to that. And that's certainly what we'll be targeting in this financial year and going forward.

So is that an indication of margin...

Sorry, what was the question?

I was just basically saying then the other parts, if the R&D is in line, then the OpEx and I guess, staffing costs then excluding R&D., is that expected to grow [indiscernible]?

I got -- so look, what we're seeing -- and we've seen it in this financial year, we're seeing a few things. We're starting to see the benefit that we get from investing in intellectual property and our ability to sort of charge right for that. We're also seeing natural operating leverage as the business expands. And generally, that's feeding through down into the margin improvement that you're seeing before those share-based payment, before those LTI costs. And that's what we tried to set out in some of the tables in the investor presentation. So we can see that year-on-year margin improvement. I mean we think it puts us in the right frame for the sort of the medium-term targets that we've always put out there. In fact, you can sort of see that when those LTI costs start to fall away, you sort of you're kind of in that range regardless.

Yes. And then shifting gears to the nonrecurring revenues for utilities in FY '24. I guess the first half was strong, the second half was just as strong. I guess to understand, can you just lead us through some of the moving parts and momentum in this business line as we move into FY '25? Is that a number that is expected to grow, holds? And how can we get confidence in that because given it's perceived as nonrecurring?

Yes. I mean, look, we're certainly expecting it to grow as we move forward across into financial year '25. We're not giving out sort of specific targets here. You'll sort of see that in the year just gone, financial year '24, there was quite a big step-up, I think, in the second half of the prior period. And that sort of flowed through into financial year '24, but it's been half-on-half uptick in our recurring revenue stream. And I think it just sort of -- it kind of reinforces that underlying business model. We deliver programs, they contribute to an uptick in recurring revenue. So we're quite comfortable in the way that, that's sort of flowing through.

And your next question comes from the line of Jules Cooper from Shaw and Partners.

Great results, guys, not just in '24, but over the last couple of years, and I guess that should give people confidence looking forward. I guess one of the things I just want to pick up, John, on something you've just mentioned there that if you roll the operating leverage through like '25 and '26, and we think about the guidance you've given around the payroll tax headwind reducing to sort of less than 1% of revenue, you're going to be on our calcs like certainly towards the upper end of your 15% to 20% EBITDA guidance range. And I guess with these guidance ranges, they're always sort of done at a sort of point in time. But as you sort of look forward, think about winning and participating in the energy transition for your customers, that favorable competitive landscape, where should the margin be over the longer term? Because it just sort of feels like 15% to 20% is probably undercooking it given the operating leverage we can clearly see occurring, excluding some of these LTI impacts, which are short term in nature.

Yes. I mean, look, there'll always be an accounting charge in there. So there will always be a few points of margin that need to fund the way we incentivize the team. I think we're just also mindful that as we grow and as we build up our sort of capability, particularly in regions that we sort of -- we'll make choices that we'll invest, I guess, to capture revenue growth at the expense of EBITDA margin. That's sort of been -- that's been the approach to date. We've actively taken those decisions where we see the opportunity, we'll invest. And that's why we use the 15% to 20% as that sort of medium-term guidance. When we're growing strongly, we'll see it within that range. I wouldn't necessarily say it's at the top end of the range or bottom end of the range, just as we move forward across into the medium term, that's probably the appropriate range as we're growing strongly. We'll always take the decision, I think, to invest where we can see that growth materializing.

Okay. And that's good. So closely aligned to the strong revenue growth. And I guess the flip side is if revenue growth is not as strong, then more will drop through to the bottom line.

Yes. I mean we -- yes, I mean, we carefully manage our capability and operating base based on the strength of opportunities that are ahead of us. I mean yes, we spend a lot of time and effort on that in the business.

Jules, I'll just say something. I mean I think you're right. Having said that, we really believe that there is a global energy transition. We believe that 3 or 4 technology stacks will hyperscale to meet it. You can take those stacks and amortize the cost of them across 200, 300, 400 utilities for each of them. So you drive down cost to serve and cost to deliver. And that's the way we think the world is going to shape up, and we're headed -- that's where we want to head and focus on that global 10-year run and then being on the high ground for the next 10 years. But you're right, if for some reason, unexpectedly slowed down or stopped, yes, we could move costs out and drop to the bottom line. But that's not the plan we're on at the moment.

I think the other thing just to call out there, Jules, is that in a long -- very long term, if we -- 10, whatever years from now, 10, 15 years from now, the terminal margin would be higher than that range, which is what we've said consistent.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay. No, I think you've been very clear on that. Just maybe one other, and I guess it's following up from one of Owen's questions. Just in the utilities business, the nonrecurring revenue now 1/3 of the total revenue reported. Is there any sort of directional guide you can give us for your expectations as they stand for '25 as to whether that continues to increase as a proportion of revenue? Or does it moderate a little bit? How should we just think about that nonrecurring revenue in next...

I think in financial -- yes. I think we want to move to a few online questions. I've got some time. So just on the proportion of our recurring revenue, the mix in '25, I mean, it will stay high. And I think the exact proportion really will depend on how those deals fall. And I think that kind of works through. So just moving to some of the online questions. And any we don't get through, we will look at and come back and answer. In terms of -- I've got a question here in terms of the risk that Kraken or Kaluza expand into C&I billing and any signs of this so far?

There were some early signs of Kraken trying to do this. I hear that program may be rolling back, but I don't want to spread rumors. It's very hard to do. And I think they've got some B2C challenges that they're trying to sort. So -- and I don't think Kaluza has got that on the cards. I don't think -- I don't want to speak for them. But at this moment, I think landing AGL is taking a lot of their focus. It's really hard to do B2B. So that will take a long time for those guys on that, certainly a lot. The next question?

So we saw some things in the press, I guess, the E.ON prepaid billing error and just sort of any implications in the U.K. from that.

Yes, I think that, that was on -- that we just spoke about Kraken, a GBP 14 million fine. I think the fine is one thing, but the other thing is what it does to the press of the brand. I think we really, really have an excellent record of keeping our customers out of these fines. That's something we have a real differentiator. So yes, I think that's something that is probably not super happy about. Yes.

So another question, another online question. Is it more likely large deals will land in the first half or the second half?

We're done. We'll just come to it as soon as we have our forecast.

And then I think a lot of the online ones that we have already covered. I mean there is one here in terms of succession planning for you, Gary. What's the Board thought about in this regard?

So we take succession planning very seriously. So for each of the LT members, we have a succession plan set of targets that obviously applies to me as well. We have a roster of very strong. My LT is strong. There's some good successors on that group, and we're always looking, particularly when we fill a new spot for the right talent that can step into the role in case something happens. I'm not planning to leave anytime soon. So I don't think it hurts to do. But yes, it's important. We look at it. We're not -- it's not the Joe Biden thing. Sorry to bring politics into it. I couldn't help myself. Yes.

I think most of -- if I look through the online questions, most of them we've touched on or covered already. I think we might have time for one more online question -- one more phone question.

Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Dale, Craigs Investment Partners.

I'll keep it brief. Just one question on Amber. I think you mentioned you sold it to E.ON Next in the U.K. Can you just help me understand how it works in terms of does it make sense to sell to other utilities in the same market, too? Like could you have 5 or 10 utilities offering the Amber product in the U.K.? Or would that not make sense at all? If that's the case, there are obviously implications for the addressable market as well. Could you comment on that?

Yes. First of all, we help facilitate that sale. We did not sell that through us. We were helping them because their success there, I think, gives us more room for success across Europe. And we do have some other sales that haven't been -- or another sale that hasn't been announced yet that we were more intimately involved in. I think exclusivity of technology is something that is -- you don't want to give out flippantly, you'd like to sell to everybody. Amber -- with Amber, we're trying to move the world towards cleaner energy, and that's the drive there. And the more players that do it, the faster we move that direction, just like the rest of our g2 stack. So yes, I think that's the strategy to sell to many players in the market as possible.

Brilliant. Just last question -- sorry, Gary.

Sure, Josh.

Last question, just in terms of full-stack g2 implementations, Genesis and NEOM, I believe, are the only 2 you have at present. What are you seeing out there in terms of receptivity outside of those? Is there a sense of prospects waiting and seeing how implementations go with those 2? Or do you think there's an appetite to commit even if no reference customers quite exist just yet?

Well, the way we built g2 is we didn't -- it's not all brand new. We add a lot of capabilities to it and that are new, but it's not all brand new. So it's an easy path to move toward if you're one of our existing customers. But it is a change program. So if you're a regulated water company, for example, you need to get funding from your investment cycle. So this will take time. We've said it will take time, and we also want to harden it fully. But we feel like we're at that point now. And almost every one of our conversations with our pipeline is about g2. And then the customer base is leaning into g2 at different levels, but we'll see that uptake as we forecasted. Sorry, Josh, to cut. I just think we're at the top of the hour. So thank you, everybody, for all the questions and the continued support, and we look forward to seeing you around soon. So thank you all.