The Environmental Group Limited (EGL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to The Environmental Group Limited Half Year '26 Financial Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jason Dixon, CEO, who is joined today by Mr. Gareth Nicholls, CFO; and Mr. Paul Gaskett, Chief Commercial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for the results presentation for the first half. As mentioned, both Paul and Gareth are here with me as well. So I'll take you through the slide deck, and then I'll be happy to assist in answering any questions you might have for us. So a good half year for us in what was reasonably difficult from an operational point of view with a lot going on within the business at the same time. Revenue up about 9% to $58.9 million. EBITDA up 26%, which is pleasing to $4.9 million and 54% of our revenue now recurring, which is fantastic in terms of the consistency of the cash flow coming in the way the business is function. Pleasingly, 205,000 hours worked again without an LTI. So that's one of our key KPIs within the business, and we're particularly pleased to have achieved that number again. So just to take you through the key highlights for ours for the half. Obviously, as I mentioned, revenue up close to 9% to $59-odd million. EBITDA up 26% is very good. Our balance sheet remains strong with net assets of $45.6 million. One of the big things we achieved within the half, and I guess it's very visible to our business, but less visible to the investors is we upgraded our company-wide ERP system, which will give us much better data capabilities and allow us to really do more analysis into the business and making sure that we've got very, very timely data. So this data becomes live on every business unit every day. That required the consolidation of 3 legacy systems into a unified solution. We turned our ERP on the February 2, and it's gone very, very well, which is unusual to say that about an ERP, but we're invoicing through the ERP. We're making payments through the ERP, all the time slips and all the job allocation. So it has been successful. But it's a credit to the team at EGL as to how much time and energy we put into doing that and now achieved a great outcome. The other thing we did in the half is relocated multiple business units. We've talked for a long time about the OneEGL approach, and it's getting all those business units into that one centralized facility in each state so that we're cross- communicating, we're cross-selling and working as one company. So the way it always falls, unfortunately, you have a bunch of leases run out of their time frame, so you take that opportunity to move. So we actually moved 7 different premises during the half, which is an enormous undertaking by us and obviously interrupts the business in some regards. But at the same time, we've become a truly unified EGL now all under the one premise in both Queensland and New South Wales. And we also had to relocate Western Australia because we've grown out of it. So highlights to me for the half. Energy revenue up 39.8% to $34.1 million is a fantastic result and EBITDA up 32.6%. That is in the backdrop, as I mentioned, we did move 5 energy sites during that period as well. And waste, terrific up to $2.3 million in revenue and was up on $600,000 in the PCP. So a very, very good result from a business that we only really started on a couple of years ago now. We'll talk more about PFAS later, but we've now got an on-site PFAS testing device that can give results within an hour. So instead of the test results handing off to an ALS or something, we can now do it on site and give our customers an immediate insight to what's going on with their facilities and assets. So that's a great development through the period. And Paul will talk to you further about another piece of equipment that we procured during the time frame that's a really interesting move forward for us as well. I won't take you through the results on this table. Obviously, they're reconciled back to the underlyings and all the one-offs through there as well. So just the highlights, as I mentioned, sorry, 54.3% of our revenue is now recurring. That includes maintenance service contracts and routine servicing. You'll see I mentioned further on. We now do about 14,000 services a year, which is an incredible number, and we've got about 150 service technicians getting around. And it's always the model that we wanted -- the shift this business to -- since I commenced back in financial year '21, it was 44% recurring revenue, 56% projects. We're now up to 54% and growing. So that change in business mix just gives us really steady cash flows and means that we become a more predictable business, I guess. So that recurring revenue will continue to grow and our target is to get up to about 70% of the business in total. So just in terms of the operating units, as I mentioned, EGL Energy, another terrific period, a standout result. I already mentioned, 14,000 services and 69% of that entire revenue coming through EGL Energy is recurring. The reason it's so strong for those of you who don't know, if you got a boiler of 2 megawatts, it requires a service inspection every 5 weeks throughout its life to make sure it complies with the standards and the regulations around having a pressure vessel. So that's just guaranteed legislated recurring revenue for us. So it's a terrific business. Advanced Boilers continued its strong performance as part of the group. It's doing a lot of services now cross-sold, that includes manufacturing of our PFAS plants, fabricating of components for all other jobs and supplying control panels to the entire group. So the diversity of having that big manufacturing facility with Advanced Boilers and their capabilities has been a terrific upgrade for the company and what we're able to do internally and taking out third-party suppliers and doing it ourselves. As I already mentioned, we did have a few operational inefficiencies with 3 Tomlinson sites moving and 2 Advanced Boiler sites during this period. So it's great that we're able to still have that revenue growth and maintain that EBITDA in a period that was operationally very difficult for them, but leases determine that time frame at the end of leases. And we got it done, which is great. As you know, historically, we've always looked at adding further things to our product line without necessarily buying the companies or buying the businesses. But doing deals, we did the deal with Fulton Boilers last year that has gone really, really well for electric boilers and vertical steam boilers. And I'm very pleased to say that, we've also agreed to distribute Gestra products now in Australia, and they're a leading range of valves and controls for the boiler industry, and we were supplying these across the entire boiler industry. So that's another wonderful add-on into our business that will continue to help us to grow revenue. So EGL Energy, very pleasing. So Baltec, if you look at it sort of face value revenues down and EBITDA is down a little. You just need to bear in mind the type of work that Baltec does. So we do about a dozen projects a year that are reasonably high value. And there's just timing of when we get going on those projects. We're coming off the back of obviously the highest ever record PCP. But we secured a number of projects in from, I guess, September on last year through to December. The engineering is now completed on all those. So the way we do it is we do all the engineering first, get all the drawings done, and heads off the fabrication. We obviously book revenue on those types of contracts as a percentage of completion. That's driven by the dollar value. So it's not really until we get into the fabrication side of things that you start to book a lot of that revenue. So we've got all 4 of those projects going to fabrication in the second half. So you'll certainly see a very good half out of that business. The big project we announced back in, I think, September from front of mine, was about AUD 11 million. We've just started fabrication on that now. So unfortunately, from a numbers point of view, the first half doesn't look as strong as we would have liked, but it's just simply timing, and we'll certainly make all that back up in the second half, with everything now in fabrication. In terms of the industry, the pipeline of work is still absolutely terrific. We all know that data centers and AI are driving turbine growth around the world and the use of turbines to supply those data centers power. The numbers, they're something in the order of up 50% on the prior years in terms of order numbers coming through. We can now see order books out to 2030. So we've got huge visibility on what's going on. We've got enormous amount of RFQs in the door, and it's just trying to really keep up with that work and fit it all in our pipeline, but a great industry outlook for us and set to continue for many, many years to come, and we certainly remain the leader in the market in terms of silences and silences for peak and load turbines. Just to remind you, Pelican Point job was delivered during the period, that was a very large job where we did the install, which we don't traditionally do. I think it's only the second install I can recall we've done. That was in Australia and South Australia. There was no one else in Australia could have done the install, so we did it. The way we did it, though, was to get completely off risk and say we'll do it at cost plus, which we did at a lower margin compared to what we typically sell at. But at the same time, there was 0 risk in us taking on an installation job. Remarkably, we did a brilliant job and congratulations to our teams. We finished 2 days early, which you never hear on a project of this size and slightly under budget for our clients. So it was an exceptional outcome and a job very, very well done. So I guess we'll now go back to our normalized and not worry about installing 300-tonne stacks with 790-tonne cranes. It was a challenge, but also a great learning curve for the company. In terms of Clean Air, I'm very pleased to say that we've now started to see a change in the market and improved market conditions. throughout the course of the latter part of the year. We did do site consolidation as well and implemented some business changes to prepare it for growth. The good news, I guess, we've received an engineering order for a portion of the lithium plant, which will be the first one in 3 years, I guess, after the lithium price crashed. We've got the agreement to the Part 1 engineering and then the full supply agreement is expected to be awarded in the coming months. Having done all the engineering for it, clearly, we consider ourselves to be the clubhouse leader to win that project, and that will be back to the substantial projects that TAPC has done over the history of the company that have just been wanting for the last few years. Both businesses, Airtight and TPC have won significant work in the recent months and should deliver a much, much improved second half in FY '26 the order book for Airtight is very good. And as I said, TAPC has already won several really good jobs. And hopefully, we win this lithium plant as well, which will have the business, I guess, back to where it used to be and how it traded. The introduction of dry fogging systems that I've spoke to you about in the past, it's a new product into our portfolio, and it's been a great successful product. We've -- every trial, I think we've now undertaken with the client has resulted in a sale. It's a great technology again that we brought to Australia -- sorry, the agency for in Australia that we've done again, no capital invested, great returns for our shareholders and another way to grow the business, especially through the waste industry. So last operating segment and EGL Waste Services. I guess, it's great to see the traction we're getting from when we started the business back in financial year '25, $2.3 million revenue and it made about $750,000. The PFAS Extraction Technology has achieved a really large milestone. I guess, part of that might actually be in this half. We installed a very large PFAS plant, which we're currently commissioning. That's running particularly well and has commissioned up terrifically. It's on a soil wash plant, and it's the first of its type in Australia. The plant that we've done it on is from a global supplier. And certainly, when it's commissioned up and running, we'll be talking to that global supplier about having the unique capability now being able to get PFAS out of soil wash facility. So that's been a huge achievement for the company, again, and just to have the plant commissioned up so well on such large volumes is a credit to our teams and what we've achieved. Market change in PFAS, I guess, probably back in September, when we saw the NEMP 3.0 come through, changes to legislation, the way people need to look at PFAS and its disposal. So I guess in the background, it's gone from chatting to clients about what we can do for them to suddenly getting serious about clients needing plants. It's driven really not by the EPA that we expected, but driven by industry where the water authorities are saying we can't have PFAS getting into our facilities anymore. That's led to a number of units being priced in the marketplace right now, and it's across a variety of facilities, landfills for leachate, councils, water authorities. So that really has ramped up over the course of the last 6 months, and I'd imagine we'll have a fairly strong half again with sales of new PFAS plants, I hope. The state-of-the-art vessel, which Paul can talk to you about later, we bought that in the last half as well. And what it allows us to do is test biosolids organics and soils at Vic Univer where we do all of our development work, and we can do it as a simulation to a full-size plant. So the client can provide us with their waste stream, and we can get the PFAS out of that and tell them exactly what their results will be from our scale plant in the field. And that's really terrific for our clients that we're processing the actual waste stream and then giving them actual results that would have occurred. So that's a great initiative we move forward on and opening up the market to biosolids and organics and soils is terrific. We've joined forces with Dashton Engineering. It's not an acquisition for those that asked me about it. Dashton Engineering wanted to come and join our group, which is terrific. And that allows us to undertake small waste plant upgrades, perform repairs and manage ongoing plant maintenance contracts. So that addition has really completed the service offering that we've got in waste. And we're still awaiting the award of a major C&D facility in New South Wales. And we will start commencing the build on the Queensland C&D plant very, very shortly. So waste continuing to perform well and PFAS in my view is sort of getting really underway as we speak. So in terms of the outlook, our guidance is maintained, increasing the earnings of 15% to 20% of normalized FY '25 EBITDA, obviously, up 26% in the first half, which is a good indicator. The growth initiatives that we put in place, things like Gestra and this new testing capability within EGL Waste will continue to help to grow the business. But we did invest, and I can't emphasize this enough, how much we invested in the last half into the ERP implementations to get better visibility on how the business is running and improve the profitability going forward. All of those site moves to really get that true OneEGL cross-sell, which is very relevant for people like Airtight that will do the installation of dust suppression systems but doing on EGL Waste Services client sites. Recurring revenues continue to strengthen into FY '26. And obviously, we'll continue to grow the company as we have over the last 4 years. I think we've grown about 32% compound annual growth rate, and we'll continue to try and grow the business sensibly for our shareholders and hopefully delivering great value. So moderator, that's me running through the presentation. I'm happy to hand back to you and move to questions if that works.

[Operator Instructions]

Maybe while we're waiting for questions, I'm happy for Paul and Gareth, have you got anything you'd like to add to what I've discussed, Paul, maybe a little bit more.

Yes. I think, Jason, in relation to the vessel that we've -- we've recently installed in Victorian University. It really does allow us to profile our clients' waste. But the exciting part about it is that particular vessel is -- we can buy it in different sizes, which allows for scalability. So we can treat larger -- much larger volumes of product, and we can actually bank it together. But the good part about it is, as I said, it really does allow us to ensure that what we're testing in test environment is going to provide the client the exact outcome in the field.

So just seeing a question come through, how many PFAS are currently in negotiation for pricing or in the pipeline? I guess there's 2 sort of separate questions there, and I'm not going to answer the first one specifically, but it's -- it's several, I will at least say that, that are out there. It got very busy in terms of responding to proposals from probably October through to January. In fact, Paul and I only completed one last week. So we're probably every 2 to 3 weeks submitting a proposal back. In terms of the pipeline, that would be many, many plants. Down to the next question. Why is EBITDA growth in second half lower than first half? I'm not sure I actually understand that. Second half is forecast to be higher than the first half. Maybe if you could clarify that question, I don't quite get that. What leads to the weaker TAPC margin? Pure volume is the answer. So obviously, you have an overhead in every business. Revenue was down $300,000, $400,000 off the top of my head. So that's just volume driven by that revenue number. We're expecting obviously a much better second half with several of those larger orders coming through now. So you'll start to see that margin improve without a doubt in the second half. So just look at the next one. Long-term recurring revenue target across the group, 70% is what we're targeting. So we do need to sell new shiny products in order to get the service work and the ongoing revenues. boiler is a really great example of that. As I mentioned, any boiler over 2 megawatts we sell, we have to do 10 services every year. So we do want to keep selling products, and we do want to keep leading field in many areas of engineering. But if we can get that recurring revenue up to 70%, that will make us an absolutely terrific business, but we will continue to sell, of course, new product as well. So next one. Strong result in the waste business, what percent is that from water? Maybe Paul or Gareth is better off answering that than me. I don't know the number off the top of my head. I would suspect it would be close to 50-50, but maybe someone else can answer that better than me.

Yes, it's probably slightly stronger from the water side in the first half. We do obviously have considerable recurring revenue in the waste in terms of the spares and supplies at the moment. So it's slightly higher than 50%, just over 60%.

So next one, please provide a bridge to outline the identified drivers and quantum to deliver a strong second half '26. Yes. So that's relatively easy to answer. In terms of the energy business, we all know that that's got a very, very strong second half as the temperature cools down, all the boilers obviously need to be run at the maximum energy efficiency. So we always have a stronger second half in EGL Energy. It's certainly April, May, June, July are absolute peak months. And what tends to happen is our recovery on our labor tends to go from about 80% to 110% when we're absolutely flat out through that period. So energy always has a stronger second half. If you look at the business in total and as mentioned in detail of the operations report, for the last 4 years, we've had about a 40-60 split first half to second half. I think last year top of my head was 35-65. So a lot of it is driven by energy and energy is now over half of the entire company into that second half swing. For the other business units, well, clearly, Baltec is self-explanatory. That we've got 4 units going to fabrication all in the half. I'm not concerned about that at all. It's just simply timing on when we got the engineering done and when we can fit them into fabrication. So we're absolutely flat out from -- actually it's right now from February through to May, fabricating all of those different plants. And of course, we book, as I said, by cost of completion and the real cost of completion comes through the fabrication. So really simple indicator. If we sold a project, let's just call it $5 million. The engineering, which takes the first 3 months, might be a $250,000, $300,000 engineering. So you've incurred 5% of the cost, so you book 5% of the revenue. You then go and put that into fabrication. So you're buying all of the components, the steel, the stainless steel -- that might be 40% of the value of the project. You'll procure all of that within a 3, 4-week period. So all of a sudden, you get 40% of the revenue then booked against those costs. So of the $5 million, you're suddenly booking $2 million within a 30-day period, even though you've already been working on that project for 4 months as an example. So it's just purely the timing of those projects coming through. In terms of Clean Air, obviously, it's one business improvement in that segment in total. The second influence that will come through is we've already picked up some great contracts in December for a job in Western Australia within the TAPC business. We've got that lithium plant that we're obviously to secure the supply side as well in the coming months. And just a general uptick, I guess, in Airtight. It's got an extremely strong pipeline, and we're expecting a very, very significant next 3 to 4 months out of there as well. And hopefully, waste will sell a couple more PFAS plants. We certainly -- we're expecting a couple very soon. So I guess, in general, we're quite confident about the second half and what we're expecting the second half to achieve. So Gareth, can you respond to the next one? Are all the ERP and relocation costs completed now?

Yes. So all moves have predominantly occurred for the relocation costs. So that expenditure has been completed in the first half. The ERP went live this month. So there are still some costs being incurred over the next 2 months as we go through the final phases and any minor issues we may have, as you'd expect with all major ERP implementations. Do you want to talk to the next question was other expenses were $3.9 million compared to $1.6 million last year. That is purely for those 2 -- or not purely, but predominantly due to those 2 reasons we've just mentioned, the ERP and the consolidation of sites, those 2 drove big changes in that line this year.

Yes. So the next one is does the waste division have any processing volume revenues from the PFAS wastewater plant? I'm not sure whether that's referring to in the half or in total. So the predominance of that sort of maintenance fee on the lead retrieval will start to come through quite shortly. The Monster plant, we just finished should be commissioned up by the end the month, and we'll turn the metering on that plant at this -- at that point in time. So that's really sort of getting underway now. There would have been a small amount off the top of my head from the other existing plant out at Laverton in the first half, but you'll start to see that next quarter and obviously coming through FY 2027 as well. Pipeline across the segments. Yes, I can do that as best I can. So in energy, obviously, that's reasonably consistent. We know that boilers are essential across any industries where you need sterilization, so you can hang on to a boiler and keep it running for an extra 6 or 12 months or whatever you need to do. But it's an essential product. So when your boiler is gone, you need to replace it. Any new hospitals need boilers. Meat processing facilities, dairies, all of that. So pretty consistent there in terms of the pipeline. The only comment I'll make there is Victoria is fairly soft for capital spend at the moment, but we all know the state in Victoria and the amount of debt that Victoria is in. So Victoria is a bit softer than normal, but the rest of it is as expected. Pipeline for Baltec is absolutely exceptional. As I mentioned, we've got visibility out to 2030 on gas turbines now from many of the OEMs. I don't believe you can get a build slot with one of the OEMs now until very late 2030. We've seen capacity and this is public information Gareth, what was the capacity change in Mitsubishi for them to produce the turbines that we looked at? Was that 50% increase in production capacity in the next 2 years?

Yes, correct, 2 year doubling of production capacity over a 2-year period is their aim at the moment.

Yes. So we're seeing that come through broadly in that whole sector that, the big OEMs, the Siemens, the GEs, the Mitsubishi are all scrambling to increase their capacity -- production capacity to meet demand. So very, very good outlook there. I won't go back on Clean Air. I've spoken to that as well. So no pipeline in Baltec is terrific, as usual in Energy and Clean Air, I guess, the lithium plant back online, that's very good. How much of PFAS plan inquiries being driven by regulations versus customers being proactive? Paul, I will hand that over to you, but that's -- that's a very good question because it's disappointing on one side and very good on the other. So Paul?

Yes. I'd say probably 50-50 at this point in time. So there definitely is some clients out there that are trying to be very proactive and I guess, market leaders in their industry from a waste processing plant side of things. So they understand that it is coming down range and they want to be prepared to protect their assets that when that regulation really does get pushed on them that they can continue to operate. In terms of are we still having to educate the market on need for PFAS removal. I think not as much as what we were. There's a lot in the media now. So that is really, I guess, undertaking a lot of that education process at this point in time.

I think one of the drivers has been, as we've mentioned in the past that we thought this is going to be driven largely by sort of EPA-based legislation over time. The EPA is probably not as active as we'd like to think they should be within that market and controlling discharge of PFAS into the sewer networks. But when you think about it, no different to your bathroom at home, that water ends up going to the utilities down at their wastewater treatment plants or the sewage treatment plants. If that's got PFAS within those liquids, it's then contaminating those assets at the other end. So we're really finding it the water utility companies that are saying, stop contaminating our assets and they want the source of the PFAS, stopped at the point of discharge, whether it's a liquid waste treatment facility or however else it's getting into the industrial sewer network. So we're finding that -- that side of the licensing because, for example, in Melbourne Southeast Water provides licensing for trade waste disposal into the sewer system. They're really pushing back very hard now on people who are putting PFAS into the sewer networks. And obviously, quite interesting, there's conversations about they'll withdraw licenses from facilities, which would, in actual fact, shut businesses down should they go ahead with that. So employee expenses increased $6.7 million to $8.4 million. No extra employees is the answer to that question. I couldn't give you the specific number, but we probably went from about 225 to about 280 over the course of the year. And broadly, we're sort of 3% to 4% pay increases. So it's not -- we're paying people millions of dollars because we're all a bunch of rock stars. It's just purely driven by employee numbers, which obviously helps to drive the revenue growth, of course. Acquisitions on the horizon, not at the moment. We've got nothing on the going. Obviously, we bought Advanced Boilers May last year or April, May last year. That's gone particularly well. We always keep our eye out for acquisitions, of course, where it's a good strategic fit, but nothing right now. We'd like to think, I guess, over time, we'll grow the business roughly 50-50 between acquisitions and organic growth, but you need a willing seller and a willing buyer and who knows when that may ever happen into the future, certainly nothing right now. That's the next one, confirm how many PFAS plants being sold and generating recurring revenue streams? So there's -- this right, 1, 2, 3 sold delivered, one generating recurring revenue now. Next one will be Paul in a couple of weeks.

Yes. Yes, that's correct.

And then another one being installed this half.

Just finalizing the commissioning.

Yes. And another one going in this half as well, which will be doing the same. Sorry, does the implied strong second half to deliver the 15% growth for the full year continue the trends towards recurring revenue and that setup? Yes. No, that's exactly right within that question. The recurring revenue continues to grow. Off the top of my head, and Gareth can correct me if I'm wrong, I think in November, it got to 59%. So certainly, the more installations we do of boilers, et cetera, then that continues to grow that recurring revenue. Obviously, once the PFAS machines turned on, same thing again, that will start to drive further recurring revenue. How have the Australian boiler subsidiaries -- subsidies, sorry, I misread that. I could not answer that question, and I'm not aware of the subsidies that you're referring to. Our boilers are large industrial boilers. You can get grants for efficiency upgrades, but I don't believe it's had an impact on our results as far as I'm aware. I'm not sure whether -- you're aware, Gareth, that it's not something we discuss regularly. It's done within the business unit.

No, not at this stage.

Referring to the cash flow. So the cash flow is obviously has been driven by those couple of major events of the ERP and the movements. I think we had around about 83%, 84% cash flow conversion and obviously, project timing. So we'll see very good cash flow again in the second half. New Zealand -- so Paul can speak to this. I know -- I don't know where New Zealand. I think we're installing later this half. Paul, can you address that in the New Zealand.

No, that's correct, Jason. So that has -- that wasn't in the first half.

Great. Okay. Second half, New Zealand we get underway on that nerve. So next question, strategy for PFAS in U.S. through 374Water. There is no strategy there. The 374Water technology, as far as I'm aware, still to this point in time has not been a success. So we haven't been moving forward with 374Water. They haven't been able to prove an economically viable model to us. PFAS had an incremental revenue in the half delivered next year, EBITDA. Is this the kind of margin? Look, that's quite a difficult question to answer. So as we sell units, obviously, we make a very good return on that capital sale, but then the margin on the recurring revenue is strong as well. Going forward, it's probably a question I'd rather deal with when I've had some time to run through the numbers with the guys. But that is the type of margin you'd expect and as best as I can answer that question now. Yes. There's a question about marketing the company. Any other questions from anyone before we wind it up? No. Okay. Well, I'll hand back to you then, operator. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Appreciate it. And no doubt, we'll catch up with a few of you face-to-face over the coming days and weeks.

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