Rubicon Water Limited (RWL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Rubicon Water Limited Virtual Annual General Meeting. My name is Tony Morganti, and I am the Chair of the company. This year is a particularly significant one for Rubicon as we celebrate our 30-year anniversary. We are very proud of the 3 decades of innovation, collaboration and delivering solutions that are now operating globally and helping irrigation districts, farmers and communities manage water and more effectively and sustainably. I now formally commence proceedings by declaring a quorum of members necessary to constitute a meeting in present -- is present, and therefore, the meeting is now declared open. We'll come to proceedings soon, but before we do, I'd like to note the Directors of Rubicon Water here today in the room. Our Executive Directors are Bruce Rodgerson, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director; and David Aughton, Executive Director. And Non-Executive directors are Gordon Dickinson, Lynda O'Grady and Iven Mareels.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

We are also joined by Andrew Bendall, our Chief Financial Officer; and Oliver Carton, our Company Secretary. I would also like to welcome Tony Batsakis and Ed Brennan from our new auditors, BDO, who are joining online. Dear shareholders, it's my pleasure to address you at my first Annual General Meeting as Chair of Rubicon Water Limited, following my appointment in April this year. Having previously served as a Non-Executive Director, it is a privilege to now lead the Board during this pivotal period of our company and industry. Water scarcity and resource management have emerged as defining challenges of our time. Across the globe, the convergence of growing populations and climate variability is shaping how nations, agricultural producers and water authorities approach infrastructure investment. The economic value of water, whether through direct pricing mechanisms, energy costs associated with pumping or agricultural losses due to limited access is now being quantified and acted upon with increasing urgency. In the year ended 2025, Rubicon achieved revenue of $69 million. Our strong results since -- our strongest result since listing on the ASX. This was underpinned by a substantial 42% uplift in our Rest of the World segment. Our net loss narrowed to $7 million from $11 million in the prior year while generating positive cash flows of $5.4 million. Our regional strategic transitions, including the establishment of a new joint venture in China, have been carefully managed to position Rubicon for sustainable growth in this important Asian market. While the exit from our previous structure resulted in a negative $2.6 million impact to the FY '25 accounts, this decision enables Rubicon to capitalize on future opportunities through our strengthened partnership. Our people remain central to Rubicon's success. The Board acknowledges the capability, dedication and collaboration of our teams whose expertise enables the delivery of complex projects and the maintenance of trusted global partnerships. Rubicon has built a compelling footprint of global reference projects that is providing tangible evidence of what is possible when irrigation networks are transformed with our technology. These reference installations will accelerate broader market adoption in the years ahead. The Board remains confident in the company's strategic direction and in the opportunities that lie before us. On behalf of the Board, I thank our shareholders for your continued confidence and support as we pursue sustainable growth and address one of the world's most critical challenges, water security. I hand over to you, Bruce.

Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for our FY '25 Annual General Meeting. During FY '25, as Tony said, Rubicon delivered record revenue performance in the United States, achieving $31.7 million, up from $25.6 million in FY '24. The U.S. market represents a substantial opportunity for Rubicon to capture sustained value as our proven technology becomes central to the region's response to water challenges. To provide context on the scale of this opportunity, our Australian customers have invested in excess of $760 million in our technology over the last 30 years, creating a mature marketplace with ongoing service contracts, partnerships and value-added offerings. Whilst in the U.S., we have achieved just over 1/5 of this figure with the total sales so far of $165 million since we established operations in 2005. Significantly, half of this has been generated in the past 4 years, highlighting both our momentum and the substantial growth potential in a market approximately 10x the scale of our Australian market. Increasing pressure on water availability and rising labor costs are accelerating adoption of Rubicon's FarmConnect technology. Following the $4.2 million Fondomonte Farms project secured at the end of FY '24, we built on this momentum with a further $3.1 million contract at Gila River Farms under the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation District. The value FarmConnect delivers is creating a powerful use case for the broader adoption, which is already evident in our pipeline. Again, in the U.S., our landmark contract with Turlock Irrigation District, which we secured in May, represents a major step forward. TID has been a customer since 2006, and this $2.8 million pilot for the Ceres Lateral 8 introduces autonomous operations through our Total Channel Control system. It integrates 45 additional gates and over $400,000 in customized software development. TID is now investing in network-wide connectivity to begin moving toward system-wide efficiency gains. Our Europe, Middle East and Africa market continues its exciting growth trajectory, recording revenues of $9.6 million, up 123% from the $4.3 million in FY '24. We are building a strong portfolio of irrigation districts beginning to adopt our water management solutions, further evidenced by several contract wins in this region so far in FY '26, which I'll discuss shortly. In Italy's historically significant Pontine Marshes regions, we are delivering our largest open-channel automation project in Europe. This $6 million initiative will automate 25,000 acres, targeting a 20% reduction in water withdrawals and a 40% reduction in pumped operations, which directly cuts energy costs for the region. The project scale and ambition have attracted global attention with the United Nations-led delegation visiting the site last -- in last FY '25. In Australia, Murrumbidgee's Irrigation transformation has lifted distribution efficiencies to more than 90%. In November '24, MI announced the completion of its decade-long automation project with our technology, a milestone in an ongoing partnership that continues to deliver new opportunities for innovation. To show what this level of innovation looks like in practice, we visited Murray Irrigation to capture a project on film. I'm pleased to show you this video today, which demonstrates how our technology is delivering measurable lasting outcomes. Ben, could you play the video now please? [Presentation]

So thank you, everyone, for persisting with the video there. That was -- I apologize for the quality of this video and audio there. Moving -- we're very proud, obviously, of the achievements we've made here in Australia and -- but importantly now, as we look forward, we're seeing similar momentum build in these other markets. So the momentum in Italy has continued into the new fiscal year. The company has already signed 5 contracts in FY '26, including 3 of the 18 strategic projects we flagged at our FY '25 results with a combined value of approximately $4.5 million so far. We anticipate continued expansion in the EMEA region for the remainder of FY '26 and beyond. We also recently announced the continued expansion of our -- in Costa Rica, having secured the contract for the second phase of the Guanacaste region project. This project is a significant opportunity for us in the years ahead. As we demonstrate the power of our technology and solutions via the contracted Stage 1 and Stage 2, we will position ourselves in prime position to secure and deliver on the much larger future stages. Also importantly, Rubicon recently secured a $2.3 million contract for the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District in the United States, supported through corporate environmental, social and governance, ESG, and water stewardship funding, making this our first contract funded by a private entity under sustainability commitments. We continue to work with the third-party facilitator of such ESG-driven investments and on other opportunities that will enable us to diversify the funding sources beyond government investment. This alternate funding model represents a growing opportunity for Rubicon. Around the world, major corporations are investing to become water positive within regions they operate. Our contract with Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District validates our technologies and mechanism for measurable water savings and other tangible community environmental benefits. With similar opportunities now emerging across multiple geographies, Rubicon is well positioned to support global water stewardship commitments through scalable, locally relevant solutions that address water challenges. These recent contract wins represent the first wins of the 12-month sale pipeline of strategic projects flagging at our FY '25 results. Our Indian operations are gaining momentum through the Narayanpur Left Bank Canal Phase II automation project, highlighting the national significance of canal automation solutions. Just waiting for the slides to catch up. Right. The project has been commended by federal government representatives and Australian officials, generating strong interest from neighboring states as a proven solution to address water availability and crop production challenges. In September, Rubicon was proud to receive the 2025 India Australia Business and Community Alliance Award for Excellence in Innovation, together with our JV partners Medha. The award recognizes the success and impact of our work in Northern Karnataka, which remains our largest international project of its kind. The India market continues to be a significant part of our growth plans as we work towards the contracting of significant new pipeline opportunities. We are also very focused on ensuring we evolve our commercial terms in India to allow us to better manage the risks associated with this market. Meanwhile, our strategic review of our China operations has concluded with the formation of a new joint venture holding -- which holds exclusive rights to distribute and implement Rubicon technology throughout China. Our partners, TUS Water Internet Co. affiliated with Tsinghua University prestigious Science Park and Guoxin Runze Investment Co., bring an established presence to the market -- and market access that position us for sustained participation in the Chinese market. Again, in negotiating and implementing this new JV, we've been very focused on ensuring we have secured the commercial conditions that will robustly support our future operations. At the start of FY '26, we identified 22 major near-term projects representing $184 million in potential value, including 18 projects at $122 million, which were deemed possible to contract in FY '26. Since then, we've successfully secured 5 of these projects across Europe, Costa Rica and the U.S. worth approximately $8.3 million. We are currently in advanced negotiations on further projects of focus and remain confident in significant additional awards in the months ahead. This pipeline reflects our expanding global footprint. We now operate across 23 countries supported by international investment in regional teams -- our international investment. Our international workforce outside Australia has expanded from 92 to 120 over the last 5 years, reflecting our commitment to local expertise and customer proximity. As these major projects progress across multiple regions, they will serve as tangible demonstrations of the performance improvements achievable through modern water management infrastructure, positioning Rubicon for expanded technology adoption in the coming years. I want to thank our customers and partners for the trust they have placed in our team and acknowledge our global workforce whose technical expertise and commitment to delivery excellence drives our success. Thank you.

Thank you, Bruce. We'll now proceed to the formal items of business. As this is a virtual meeting, the following rules will apply. All resolutions will be put to a poll. You will have received instructions on how to vote with the meeting documents, but if you are having any problems, please use the Zoom QA function to alert us to those issues. I'll be opening the poll soon, and polling will close once the meeting closes. The results will then be tabulated and announced to the ASX. I won't be reconvening the meeting. Our share registry, Computershare, will act as a returning officer for the poll. I note that I as Chair will vote opening proxies appointed to me in favor of all resolutions. Open proxies are where the shareholder has not given any instructions on how to vote. [Operator Instructions] I'll direct the question to the relevant person to answer. Questions may be amalgamated and only questions relevant to the business of the meeting will be answered. We hope that all will proceed well. However, we may experience technical difficulties with the Internet connection. If that occurs, I will make a determination at the time as to whether or not to continue the meeting. I advise that the company has received 48 proxies, representing approximately 81,623,450 votes eligible to be counted today. Thank you, Gordon. The formal business of this meeting will now commence, and I declare that the polling is open, allowing holders to vote on the upcoming resolutions. I propose that we take the Notice of Meeting and explanatory statement as read, and then we can deal with each item in business in turn. Item 1, the receipt of the financial report. The first item of business concerns the financial report. The financial report forms part of the annual report, which is posted on our website and was forwarded to shareholders who have requested it with the Notice of Meeting. It's not necessary to make any formal resolution in relation to the financial report or to take a vote. However, we do want to give shareholders the opportunities to ask questions on the report. Please note that representatives of our auditors are attending the meeting and questions can be directed at them through the Chair. Have you any questions concerning the financial report?

There are no questions.

There being no questions, I'll move to the second item of business. The second item of business relates to the first, in that it concerns remuneration report contained within the financial report. There is a requirement shareholders be asked to adopt the remuneration report as a nonbinding resolution. I note that the Board and key management cannot vote their shares concerning the remuneration report resolution as it -- and it requires a 75% vote to pass. Proxy numbers for this resolution and for all subsequent resolutions are set out on your screen, and therefore, I propose the resolution set out on your screen. Are there any questions?

There are no questions.

I declare that a poll be taken. Polls are now open, and you can vote on this or any of the resolutions. Moving to item 3 on the agenda. Item 3 business concerns the election of directors. The company's constitution requires that 1/3 of the directors be reelected each year and that the directors appointed during the year are elected by shareholders at the first AGM after their appointment. The persons that this applies to this year are Gordon Dickinson and Iven Mareels. I note the backgrounds are set out in the Notice of Meeting, and they both bring important skills and experience to the Board. I now propose the resolution that is set out on your screen.