Hi, e veryone, welcome to the Financial Year 2024 results presentation for The Environmental Group. It's always a pleasure to get up here with such good results and be able to speak to our investors about how it's gone.
So just quickly, for those of you who don't know the company as well, we're made up of three sort of larger operating divisions: EGL, Balltek, Energy and Clean Air, which I'll take you through, and then our two organic growth areas of water and waste, but we'll come to those when I talk to operations.
Pleasure to talk to you about our results for this year. So revenue up by nearly 19% in the prior comparable period, up to AUD 98.3 million. Would've been nice to crack the hundred, but that's all right. We'll do it next year.
Normalized EBITDA up by 51.7% to AUD 10.1 million. EBITDA margins increasing very strongly from 8.1% - 10.3%, obviously driving that earnings growth higher than the revenue growth, which is great to see, we got that operating leverage through the business. Again, very strong guidance for next year to increase approximately 25% on this financial year again.
Importantly, and significantly for the business, about 50% of our revenue is now largely recurring and from service and maintenance jobs, as opposed to selling new equipment. So really good recurring cash flows and reliable cash flow streams coming to the business, and our safety track record, which is very important to us, is fantastic.
When you get to this time of the year and you start to look at the size of some of those numbers, it even surprised me. You know, 359,000 hours worked with zero LTIs is a great credit to the company and the culture of the company. So just a little more detail in those financial results.
As I said, EBITDA to AUD 10.1 million, up 52%. EBIT up 53% to AUD 7.6 million. It's great to see the balance sheet in really, really good working order, under a working capital facility of AUD 5 million and cash on hand of AUD 10.1 million. A very strong balance sheet to continue to support our growth into the future.
Highlights for what happened this year, accelerating revenue growth, especially in the second half, while improving margins. We saw EBITDA margin up sort of 20%, 27%, 28% on the prior period, just reflecting how those systems and processes improve logistics, purchasing, and doing risk assessments on those jobs continue to get just a more reliable margin.
So what we've tendered or quoted out on work is what we're actually delivering in the end. So that's very, very important to us a nd in a statutory level, you've seen EBIT up 72%. Our tax rate a little bit higher this year, unfortunately, at 35%. That's largely around timing issues and R&D costs.
Operating cash flow of AUD 4.2 million, but I do remind people that's after we've put AUD 2.8 million in working capital into Airtight Solutions, post the acquisition last year, which did come out of the adjusted for in the purchase price. So great financial results and certainly a very strong balance sheet.
If we now move. Oh, we'll just talk about this slide for a second before I go to the operating results. Just an interesting slide to reflect on as we looked at the last three years. We've now grown at a compounding growth rate of 47% over the last three years and certainly accelerated this growth in this period as well.
I think that's a consistent message coming through the business now that we're able to deliver these results on a year-in-year-out basis, and obviously trying to keep the market happy with our endeavors. Just on the operating unit side of things, so Baltec, which is our gas turbine division, I've spoken to a lot of you about the capability that we've developed in that. I'll talk to the financial results first, and then we'll talk about the outlook. Revenue for the year of AUD 27 million, up 35% and up stronger, certainly in the second half than the first half.
EBITDA number, you'll see they're up 205% to AUD 4.8 million, and the margin from FY 2023 rising from 7.8% - 17.7%, which is a fantastic increase. I have spoken about this in detail to a lot of you, saying that the IP we've developed, especially working with the gas turbine sector, that's now working in conjunction with renewable energy.
To put it as simply as I can, gas turbines used to run as baseload power providers, so they'd run 24/7. You know, be run for three or four years before a maintenance shutdown and have a 20-year sort of rough life. What's going on with the growth in the renewables sector is during the day, the sun's shining and the wind's blowing, you don't need gas turbines running 24/7.
In fact, a lot of them are uneconomic to do so. So we're now running turbines in what's called peaking load. So when the demand's there, and I guess demand also equals prices there, people will turn those turbines on at that time to feed into the market at high demand. It might be from 3:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M. at night.
But that's a completely different operating environment for the turbines that were, you know, designed and built over the last couple of decades, that were designed to run as baseload and be operating 24/7 in a very, very stable environment.
If you're now turning them on and off every day, perhaps even two times a day, you're taking the temperature of that the turbine, the associated equipment, from ambient temperature, 20 degrees- 600 degrees Celsius at full torque in nine minutes. So the change in those, the expansions of all the different metals and the thermodynamics of that system in running it in a different peaking load environment is a completely different engineering requirement.
For those of you who are interested, the exhaust gases coming out the back of the turbine, the primary turbine, they're coming out at about 600 kilometers an hour, 200 degrees Celsius, and about 120 decibels. So that's an incredibly abrasive environment. It's very loud, there's a lot of vibration, there's a lot of heat, and a lot of energy to dissipate.
So what we've worked on over the last couple of years, recognizing that the industry was moving into peak-load turbines, was to build a silencer, which is effectively the muffler on your car, to bring the noise of that turbine down, that could operate in that new environment of where it was being turned on and off, perhaps, as I said, multiple times a day, compared to just sitting there at constant temperature, at constant gas flow for years, where you didn't have those thermodynamics.
We believe we've created the leading silencer in the world to be able to work with this environment. It's certainly coming through in our results with the change in margin, the acceleration, the revenue growth, the acceleration of the revenue growth in the second half.
We can see the pipeline of sales out into at least 2030 that our clients are now providing us. This change in the whole dynamic in the market to having to run a flexible turbine running with our technology and our ability to deal with the noise through those silencers, we believe we're incredibly well-placed to continue to grow this business going forward. So what you saw in the second half, we'd expect to get close to repeating that for the whole of FY 2025. So very significant growth again and very, very strong margins again.
The RFQs coming to the business remain at an incredibly high level, so we've got a lot of work ahead of us to do, and as I said, I believe with the resources we've now brought into the business, we're probably at around AUD 16 million in the second half in revenue, compared to AUD 10 million in the first half.
We believe that's now a repeatable number and repeatable at the current margins. So for FY 2025, very good outlook for Baltec and that gas turbine sector. You know, our IP is really proving that we are the best in the world now. So EGL Energy, which is our boiler business, for those of you who are less familiar, very, very good business for us.
The reason it's such a great business, and on your screen, you can sort of probably see a picture of a boiler. There, the burner on the back end and the pressure vessel behind it. What makes this business so particularly strong is being a pressure vessel up at eight or nine bar, you need to make sure and certify that it's operating correctly on a very, very regular basis, which creates an enormous amount of service work and maintenance work on those boilers. At that pressure, as I mentioned, it's effectively a bomb if not operating properly.
So what the regulations require is a daily check, just an instrument check to make sure it's functioning properly, which is generally done by the company that owns the boiler. Secondary to that, you've then got a weekly check, just to make sure everything's functioning properly. Again, most likely done by the company that owns the boiler.
Then, it requires a five-weekly full check, which is a recorded, a data sheet on how the boiler is performing, which is done by your service provider, and then a quarterly full maintenance check, and an annual full strip-down and rebuild of the boiler. So it's a very complicated piece of machinery, to keep running, and it's optimum use of gas flow, and through that, we get such a large amount of service work coming through.
I'm sure a lot of the people wouldn't fully understand where EGL is today. So we were known historically, going back, you know, several years ago, as being a projects business, delivering on large projects.
We've now got over 100 utes running around with people in hi-vis vests and steel cap boots that are servicing the installed equipment and making very, very good margins out of being that service and spare parts provider.
Obviously, EGL Energy in this financial year, revenue growth of 3%, which is great to see the business continue to grow. It's been around 130 years, so quite a long-established business. In fact, Australia's oldest boiler business. That EBITDA, you can see, growing spectacularly up to 5.3 million from 3.8 million, up 41%. A gain, EBITDA margin, as was our focus that we mentioned at last year's AGM, up to 14.1% from 10.3%. So very, very strong growth within the business.
I've got a strong view again on its growth going to FY 2025. Our increase in stored capacity just continues growing that recurring revenue, and we've had very strong boiler sales, as we've been aware, over the course of the last year.
Right now, our amount of quoted boilers is probably up to threefold what I consider to be standard sort of levels coming through as we're growing in the dominance of our business. The reason for why we're getting so strong in Australia is we're the only national service provider that's 24/7 . There's no one else who does it all around the country.
So if you're a large brewery, distiller, dairy company, knowing that you can call for Tomlinson's any time of the day or night, anywhere in Australia, your boiler will be back online within a couple of hours. It's absolutely an essential service. So boilers largely used for sterilization, you know, pasteurization of milk, cleaning down of abattoirs, canning of food.
So that things that I mean, hospitals, of course, for sterilization, so they've got to be reliable and running 24/7. So as the only ones who can provide that nationally, it puts us in a very, very strong position with those larger clients to secure them on long-term contracts, and you're seeing that come to fruition.
The other major move we made in the last half, and I think this is a great move for the company, is we secured a national distribution agreement for Fulton products in Australia. They're a world leader in boilers and heat transfer equipment, and I believe this is a very significant commercial opportunity.
So it really extends our product line. Our boilers at Tomlinson's Ignite traditionally have been very large, what are called package boilers, for heavier industry, somewhere in the order of 3-4 MWh, up to 16-MWh boilers, so very large scale. Fulton do a smaller range than what we've traditionally done in Australia. They've got an extensive range that's from 250 kW up to a couple of megawatts in their boilers, and it's servicing a different part of the market.
So rather than those large industrial boilers, it's servicing commercial and lighter industrial sector, which is a part of the market we haven't been particularly strong in. They've also got some really, really great technologies, and the way we're moving in terms of carbon emissions in Australia, a lot of our clients have looked at doing electric boilers to try and bring down the carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, in the large-scale boilers, the 6+ megawatt boilers, electric boilers simply are not competitive at this point in time. They're about 3× the operating cost, and then the amount of money to be spent on the infrastructure to bring the additional power to site through transformers, new transmission lines into site.
We've often quoted clients, you know, AUD 1.6 million electric boiler, but by the way, the site work's gonna cost another AUD 5-7 million in capital to get it running, and it's gonna be at three times the operating cost. So not a viable piece of equipment at that size. At the smaller end of the range, sort of below the 1.2 MWh, you probably don't need to upgrade your transmission lines, you probably don't need to upgrade your transformers.
So it can come in an existing infrastructure platform as a very viable product. Fulton, being a world leader in technologies, they're also doing hybrid boilers. You can fire it on gas instead of having a big power draw down, then move it over to electricity to run it more efficiently and certainly with a lower carbon footprint.
We've looked at this opportunity with Fulton and gone, "It's a big part of the market in Australia, where we're present. We've got our hands on absolutely world-leading technology." Some of these hybrid technologies have not been available in Australia, and we're the first ones to bring it in.
Fulton are actually releasing sort of version two in the next couple of months, which we're very excited about. Historically, to give you an idea of quantum of scale of what this could move, if you went back to when Fulton had a large presence in Australia a decade ago, they were doing AUD 10- AUD 14 million worth of sales per annum. Obviously, no representation or completely underrepresented in Australia until we picked up the agreement earlier this year.
We think we'll be doing AUD 6- AUD 8 million of sales of Fulton product within the next 2-3 years, at very good gross margins. It's an incredibly competitive product in our marketplace. Roughly the cost of what it currently would to purchase an Australian-built boiler of the same ilk is roughly our sale price in Australia.
So we make very good margins, be very competitive, and have brought the world's leading technology into Australia in a market that we weren't in, so very excited about where this business is going and what it means for growth. The other thing about where we are at the moment in this sector, we have very large amount of demand for our services and products.
As I said, after you install an increasing service base, that means you get an increase in recurring revenue. We'll be looking at increasing our service teams around Australia and adding further people to that sort of fleet of 100 utes and service technicians to continue to grow that part of the business as we've got a bigger installed capacity.
Again, I'd be forecasting a strong financial year for EGL Energy in FY 2025. We just drop down to EGL Clean Air. There's two major parts of this business that you'd be aware of. The easiest way to think about it, for those who are not technical, is one's wet, one's dry. So gas and vapors are typically wet air emissions products. Dust, particulate matter, are basically dry.
So the two parts of the business that look after that, it's TAPC does the more wet side of things. Flue gas scrubbing systems for rare earths from lithium refineries, wet and dry scrubbers does that sort of wet side of the business. Revenue, reasonably flat year-on-year, up 2.6% to AUD 17.4 million. EBITDA down a little, as with margins.
We're finishing off a couple of our larger jobs in that business. We finished off the Covalent Lithium refinery, and we're getting to the end of the Hastings hydrometallurgical plant. So tailed off a little bit in the second half. Obviously, some projects have been postponed or gone on hold in that sector, as you'd be aware.
For those of you who follow the lithium market, it's down substantially over the course of the last 12 months. There's been a lot of projects that pulled back in their size and scope, which has slowed the growth in that business and obviously seen it sort of flat year-on-year.
There's a couple of major projects still due for award shortly that we're very keen to continue to move forward on. In our dust extraction and air cleaning side for particulate matter side of the business, we acquired Airtight Solutions as part of our strategy back in May 2023. The objective, obviously, was to do all forms of air pollution and dust and particulate matter we view as a strongly growing sector in Australia.
Clearly, from an OH&S point of view, unacceptable now to be directly breathing in those particulate matter particles. It was asbestos back in the 1980s and 1990s. You'll be aware of what's gone on with silica dust through engineered stone that's now being banned throughout Australia. Interestingly, as we build recycling plants now in Australia, they're being built inside to deal with air pollution and odor pollution problems. At the same time, you're then having a dust pollution problem inside.
So there's a very big opportunity there for cross-sale, and this completed us being able to deal with all aspects of the air pollution market. Airtight, in the first 12 months we own it, slightly behind expectations. Obviously, the joinery and building sector in Australia has gone through a reasonably tough time.
We saw two of the very large joinery companies close, where we do a lot of dust and particulate matter. We also had some impacts of costs associated with transferring Airtight onto our systems and platforms as we integrated them into the EGL processes. You know, it was a privately owned business.
The head office was based out of New Zealand, so there was quite a chunk of work to be done to transfer all of those knowledge and skills to Australia, the accounting, back office, and they lacked some of the engineering technical skills in Australia, which we put through EGL. So we did incur some costs there, and you'd expect to see the result continue to improve.
Where we're very pleased is, you know, part of the reason that we wanted to enter this market was dust extraction systems around that waste sector. That's gone very well for us. We've got over AUD 6 million in tenders out there right now, and that client base that we've been working on in dust extraction around the waste sector, it now includes Cleanaway, it includes Visy, it includes Bingo Bin. So we've had very good penetration into that market and starting to work with those sectors. So strategy's gone really well for us.
Importantly, a bit like what we've done with Fulton, or we've done with Kadant PAAL and Waste, we've also entered a strategic partnership for site dust suppression, and different types of fogging systems where it's around sites, might be around mine sites or rail yards, and that type of stuff.
So some very good technologies there, through Dust Control Systems Incorporated out of the U.S., and they've just put that strategic partnership together. So you'll be hearing more about that into the future. A nother one of those, you know, those agreements that we're bringing world-leading technologies to Australia to improve our marketplace. So I guess for air coming into next year, probably likely to be roughly around the same revenue number as this year.
I would certainly hope to see improved returns out of Airtight as we start to get them onto our systems and platforms, and then really understanding, you know, where the business can be grown and how to improve margins within that business. So they're the three large operating core business units. Performed very well and very strong outlook again for FY 2025. So I might just hand over to Paul quickly to talk about EGL Waste and EGL Water before I talk about the outlook for the whole group.
Thanks, Jason. Thanks, everybody. Look, it's been a good year from a waste point of view in that we have continued to develop our pipeline. Our pipeline's very strong at AUD 140 million, which is fantastic, and that's over a number of years, so it's not just what we're looking in front of us now.
Unfortunately, we didn't sell any plants this financial year, but what we're able to do is develop our service and spare parts side of servicing of the waste plants across Australia, so that is back to what Jason was saying about that recurring revenue, and we feel that it's certainly a significant part of growing in the waste services industry.
That we not only sell a plant, but we're able to service a plant, provide spare parts for the plant, on an ongoing basis. We currently do have just over AUD 2 million worth of spare parts that have been put into Melbourne through the Turmec agency agreement to allow us to continue to service the waste industry.
We still have a number of tenders that we've been working on over the course of the last twelve months, which, we believe that we'll certainly hear more on that over the course of the this next six-month period, for two large C&D facilities across New South Wales and also in Queensland.
I think the other important thing from a servicing point of view is the Kaden Pall agency agreement, which we've now got in Australia, that we're actually providing rebuilds and also spare parts and servicing across that part of the business, and as we speak today, we're actually working across servicing in New South Wales, Queensland, and also Victoria.
I think the other key part with the waste division is that it actually brings in other parts of the EGL business to bring their products and servicing in. From an energy perspective, we're able to talk to customers about autoclaves, from an air perspective, as Jason touched on, the dust extraction systems, and also waste to energy, which is obviously becoming more and more worldwide.
We're also looking at opportunities and have also done pricing for loading of product into waste-to-energy plants and also stacks from a tendering point of view, which also brings the Baltec division in. It really does allow all parts of the business to operate in the waste sector.
I think, Paul, also importantly, you've got TAPC looking at doing ammonia scrubbers for a lot of waste companies as well now, where they've got ammonia issues in their leachate ponds or their, some of their waste streams. So it really is that true all parts of the business coming in.
I remind everyone that, you know, the waste sector in Australia, it's got an annual contribution of about AUD 18 billion. About AUD 9 billion of that is around the trucks and the wheels and the moving the waste around, about AUD 9 billion of the processing that waste. So for us, as an environmental services company, it's the biggest environmental sector in Australia, and we're really starting to build a very, very strong brand presence in that sector now and Paul said, it's going through all parts of our business.
So whether it's air emission systems, odor control systems, autoclaves, and medical waste, Kadant PAAL baling the waste after it's been recycled, Turmec recycle plants. This is becoming a very important sector for us and somewhere where I'm most proud that our brand is growing so quickly and so strongly, and a great example of that is Kadant PAAL that supply over 50% of all balers in Europe.
Renowned globally as one of the best baler companies in the world. It's got over 30,000 balers installed. They came and sought EGL out in Australia to represent them. So it's just another example, like Turmec, like Fulton, of where we're getting the best technologies and the best brands in the world, and attracting them to come to Australia under our stable.
While you don't see the revenue flow directly through EGL Waste because it's being done by the divisions that actually do the work, it's an absolute key driver of our organic growth going forward. Sorry, Paul, back to you.
Yeah, no, absolutely. So I was just having water, Jason. So from a water perspective, as I'm sure everyone's aware, we've had our first commercial plant operating in Laverton, in Victoria for some time now. That there has performed extremely well and certainly met all our expectations.
We have also done a number of other trials, which we believe is certainly opening up different markets, such as biosolids, for water treatment plants and also, soils. So those trials have gone extremely well. As Jason previously said too, there's also a lot of interest within the PFAS plant to be able to treat ammonia, which our system allows for that to happen as well.
So there's just, w e have that ability to add additional waste treatment to our plant, or we can develop it within our plant as well. I guess where we're at from an EPA perspective, so we have, or the client, being Reclaim Waste, has submitted all documentation, has been through a number of iterations of questions and provided answers, which we believe the last lot of answers have been provided back to the EPA.
So we're effectively waiting for approval for the Reclaim facility to move forward. I think the positive thing out of that as well, from an EPA point of view, is that we've had no environmental accidents, incidents, or harm to the environment or persons, which is absolutely fantastic.
We are seeing that certainly the activity is gaining momentum, and inquiries, inbound inquiries, are certainly coming in more and more often. I guess, you know, part of that is the media and what's been put out on the media, but also what we've done, I guess, over the course of the last four to five months from a marketing point of view, where we've been very active on social media.
We now have a full-time marketing person within the organization that not only promotes the water side of the business, but also EGL in its entirety, and that's generating leads and opportunities as well. I think where we're seeing these opportunities it's for water treatment for waste facilities, refineries, major composting facilities, and that's really across that soil, water, and biosolids.
So it's quite a wide range of products that we're looking to treat. Although, you know, it's been a challenge of having the approvals, we've certainly gained momentum in other areas while we've been waiting for the EPA approval to come through.
I think things like the biosolids is really interesting. When you look at, you know, how the PFAS is moving through the environment, and it mobilizes very easily and very quickly in liquid. So when you've got the stormwater network and the sewer network, and you've got industrial sites that, you know, the stormwater is going off into the networks, or you're having discharge from liquid waste treatment plants, at the end of the day, it ends up at the sewage treatment plants, and that's where, you know, the sewer network comes to an end.
Where you've had the biosolids there and biosludges after the bugs have done their digestion process, traditionally, you pelletize that sludge at the end, and it's hauled off to the farmland as a soil conditioner or soil fertilizer, whatever you wanna refer to it, but basically a beneficial reuse of that product. So what was otherwise a waste product, we're getting some end value out of.
The issue that we're seeing occurring now is with the increased amount of PFAS that's been passing through those networks and ending up in the sewage treatment plants. You're seeing biosludges now that are contaminated with PFAS to an extent that they can no longer be spread to the land for beneficial reuse. So we're aware of sewage treatment plants that are now stockpiling biosludges with PFAS in them because they've got no other means of disposal.
So while we started off it, you know, as EGL Water to treat PFAS, and that was our focus early days, and certainly what we're doing down at Reclaim Waste, we're now seeing a market that's truly developing and growing. And as Paul said, while it's been incredibly disappointing waiting for the EPA to give us the final tick, we have been able to establish other markets that we should be looking into.
Interesting, those other markets where you'll be on a sewage treatment plant facility or on, you know, a refinery, as Paul mentioned, you don't need EPA licensing because you're going to the contaminated site. So, on one side of things, progress has been slower than we would have hoped.
On the other side of things, I think we've really established a stronger, n ot a stronger, a broader business model than we originally looked at for this segment, and certainly, as Paul mentioned, we'd be expecting to get license approval, you know, any time. We see no reason whatsoever that the EPA should not have or, you know, be issuing that as we speak, but we can't control the uncontrollable, of course.
So in terms of outlook, before we move into questions, which we're more than happy to take, very pleased to say, again, a strong outlook for FY 2025, where we're saying that we're expected to increase normalized EBITDA by about 25% this financial year. As always, we'll try and do our best and achieve better than that. Growth is to be driven by strong market demand and increasing product suite. I use those words very, very carefully.
So strong market demand, we're certainly seeing that around EGL gas turbines with the change to the renewables developing and that, and that need for a more transitional power source, and we're certainly seeing it in EGL Energy.
So very strong market demand and the increasing product suite a nd I think that there's one thing that we've been able to achieve in the last few years, the Turmec agency agreement in Australia, the Fulton agreement, the Kadant PAAL agreement, the other GBM, which is chemical processing out of Italy, that we've put in place.
All of these licenses and technologies that we've brought to Australia, they're just increasing our product suite and our offering in an absolute world-class line a nd developing that increasing product suite means that the organic growth of EGL is set to continue.
We're certainly trying to achieve that through the culture of selling multiple service lines to the one customer, and I could repeat many, many times how much now our different divisions are dealing with one customer. Very pleasingly, as I mentioned, our revenue is now about 50% recurring and growing a more reliable and stronger earning stream.
A simple case in point on that is when we sell a waste plant in Australia, call it AUD 25 million dollar waste plant, we're then doing the dust extraction systems on that plant, which might be a couple million dollars. The structural ladders and platforms, they're not gonna send from Ireland, it's uneconomic to do so. We'll engineer and have them all manufactured through EGL as a direct sale as well.
T hen we'll look at boilers and autoclaves if there's medical waste or whatever coming to that plant. So when we sell a AUD 25 million waste plant, we'd expect to have direct sales now from EGL as another, you know, AUD 5-6 million+ that ongoing service revenue that Paul's talking about.
So that's really where we see that part of the market and that product suite developing so strongly for us. As I mentioned, EGL Energy, the Fulton Distribution Agreement, is great and a lead to growth. But again, demand is very, very high right now for our boiler solutions because we're the most energy efficient in Australia, so strong forecast for EGL Energy 2025.
Baltec, as I have mentioned, having a very, very strong performance supporting the transition to renewable energy, so you'll continue to see that division grow strongly at very good margins. TAPC, I expect, or EGL Air, to be roughly sort of even year on year. As I said, unfortunately, a bit of a slowdown in the lithium sector, a bit of a slowdown in the battery sector.
EGL Waste and Water, you can certainly expect to see that organic growth part of our business, in my view, really start to gain momentum throughout FY 2025. Just in conclusion, the extended product offering, I'm very pleased with. We are valuing the IP in the company now and making sure that we're using that to strengthen our customer levels of engagement and also driving margin.
The standardization process to get repeated outcomes is very important to us, that what we sell, we're now achieving margin on, you know, 9× out of 10. We're gonna now build an ERP system across the company to make sure that we've got standard processes and procedures that any staff member can work anywhere and support wherever we have growth within the business.
As I mentioned, PFAS waste, soil and boiler, so it's looking very good. A lso, from a governance point of view, we are searching for another independent non-executive director, further progressing the board and making sure we're continually upskilling and achieving the best outcomes that we can for the organization. So, thank you very much for listening, and happy... Operator, hand over to you for any questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please type your question into the Ask a Question box and click submit. I'll hand back to management to address the webcast questions.
Yeah, okay. I'll just pick them up as we go. Running through revenue outlook for each segment, I'm not sure if I can do that and reference all of the recent client wins. A bit too much detail there, but certainly, as I said, high demand in EGL Energy. Customers have realized that while they were hoping to get a greater portion of electric boilers coming through, it's not viable either from a transmission point of view or from an operating cost point of view.
So that's driven increased amount of our boiler sales being the most gas-efficient in Australia. So I'd expect to see strong top-line growth in energy, as I mentioned, with Baltec, we'd expect to see strong top-line growth there again.
The major customers, and recent wins that we've had through Baltec, they're most of the customers that you'd be aware of. They're either the OEMs, like the Siemens, the General Electric, or the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, or Mitsubishi Power around the world, where there's new installations, where we're doing the upgrades or retrofits to run as peaking loads.
They'd be the companies you're very, very familiar with, the, the AGLs, the Origins, that are providing, multiple sources of power into the grids in Australia now. So the PFAS question, I think I've announced about the recent dialogue with the EPA and why the process has been so delayed. I can't give an exact answer for that. My view is, the EPA Victoria is likely to be, pushed for resources.
I think, given that the current state of the debt levels in Victoria, so probably struggling there to put resources on it. I guess my other view was, you know, when you're bringing a chemical that listed on the Stockholm Convention as persistent organic pollution, you bring it on one site to accumulate it and treat it.
The EPA probably view that as being relatively risky, and they're probably a bit risk-averse. But, given, as Paul mentioned, we've had zero environmental incidents, zero health and safety incidents, it's pretty hard to see how it would not be approved on that front. We're very confident that it will be approved. We're just not confident of which day that will actually come into the office.
So the next question is about EGL and margins up a lot on track ongoing contract renewal. So I think over the second half of 2024, that's probably a reasonable representation of where we've got the margins to now.
Do I describe it as steady state? No, I think we can continue to improve. I don't think you'll see the rate of uplift, which I'm sure most of you would say you wouldn't expect to see that continued rate of uplift, but there's room to go, both on the cost of doing business, leveraging our IP to get full margins, and delivering as best we can. I would have thought in other contexts, the more we drive service revenue, the higher the margin will go.
Service compared to new sales is clearly higher margin, so changing that business mix will continue to drive margins up over time. So what is the impact of rare earth and lithium client work on new business pipeline, existing contracts being pushed or canceled? Yeah, that's a good question, and it's a relatively small part of our business now.
So if you looked at lithium and rare earth plants, we're probably doing AUD 5- AUD 6 million a year through that part of the market, so it's, I guess, roughly 5%-6% of our current revenue. Clearly, the amount of projects has pulled back. If you're looking two years ago, we would have had a list of 5%-8% to tender on. At the same time, now it's probably two or three that we're tendering on.
There are some really good contracts in the pipeline now that would see that business busy through until 2027. We have not seen anything being canceled, that certainly has not been seen at this point in time. You know, they're keen on price, so we have to be keen on our pricing as well, and it's clearly slowed up, but we do not see that market disappearing.
Longer term, we're going to need the minerals, be it lithium or be it critical minerals for maintenance in the economy, so we expect that market will return and will return strongly. That's probably why I'm saying, I guess, EGL clean air to be reasonably flat year- on- year. Tumik clients in the pipeline, yeah, going very, very well. As Paul mentioned, AUD 146 million in the pipeline.
The clients there are the major waste companies in Australia, are certainly in that pipeline o f the AUD 146 million, Paul might be able to comment more accurately. There's probably seven or eight tenders that are active in there. Is that roughly right?
Yeah, correct, across Australia and New Zealand.
Yep. A s we mentioned, too, that are sort of, you know, very eminent in their award. So that pipeline continues to remain very consistent. The next one, can you talk to the pipeline and contract work for Baltec, and to the degree this underwrites FY 2025? Last time this year, contract work was at AUD 27 million.
Yeah, so thanks for the question. Yes, it clearly underwrites where we're going in FY 2025. I can't remember the exact number offhand. Andrew Bush is on the call; he might remember, but I think we have about AUD 40 million off the top of my head in work in hand. Obviously, you don't get through all that in one year, but with the level of RFQs coming in, the work on hand. Sorry, Andrew, you can-
Yeah. Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. So clearly, that will help to underwrite that business for the year. You know, there's only a limited amount that you can resource up and grow year on year as that demand comes through.
I would expect that if you took the second half, much stronger than the first half, and looked at sort of doubling that, that's where the business is cycling at the moment, and then we'll push to grow further from there. The significance of the Fulton agreement, I hope I've sort of addressed that. In my view, this is one of the most important strategic moves that EGL's made in the time that I've been here.
To get a world-leading product in a part of the market that we haven't been active in, that's a very strong part of the market, that's 30% cheaper than the domestic supply of that product, I think it's an incredible agreement for us. You know, where do I think Fulton sales will grow to by 2026, 2027? I'd be in the order of AUD 6- AUD 8 million type of level by then.
You know, I know if you went back 14- 15 years when Fulton were fully represented in Australia, they were doing AUD 12 -AUD 14 million in sales per annum, so we'll certainly try and improve on that. So EGL world-leading technology in PFAS, water treatment, gas turbine, exhaust silencers, what plans do the company have to market this technology internationally?
Well, certainly in terms of gas turbine, it's entirely internationally. 90% of our work's offshore, as I mentioned, with Siemens, Mitsubishi, General Electric, so that is 90% offshore. It's all marketed internationally. In terms of PFAS, yes, we have commenced that as well. We're in talks with a company. That would be a U.S. representative, and we're also in talks with a company that would be a French European representative.
So both of those, we're actively talking internationally in those markets. Media recently reporting the presence of PFAS in drinking water, do you plan to enter this market segment? Not at this point in time. My answer would be that, I don't wanna be mean about our media friends, but at the same time, Australia drinks rainwater, it doesn't drink groundwater.
So it's different to a lot of other parts of the world where you're seeing big issues in the U.S. with drinking water coming from groundwater. It really is a minimum amount of drinking water in Australia that's impacted at reasonably low levels. It would be a different type of technology to foam fractionation, in my view. It would be a very, very high volume filtration technology. I think it's more of an infrastructure play for very large players at very large volumes at incredibly low costs.
So I don't think drinking water will be. You'd have to have a very low cost of capital and be more of an infrastructure play. So I don't think it's a relevant market in the Australian marketplace, to be honest. Biosolids, soils, groundwaters, industrial waters, I think is much more relevant.
What supports the FY 2025 guidance, and does it include things like tender awards getting back on track? I'm not sure how tender awards are off track, just 'cause they don't fall within a financial year. They're progressing very, very well. So as we've mentioned, there's two major waste awards that are due, so they're going perfectly fine.
PFAS getting signed off, I've addressed that. There's not much we can do when it's sitting with the EPA as a third party. AUD 2.8 million working capital adjustment for Airtight, did this unwind? So perhaps, Andrew Bush, you can address that question. I know you looked at that this morning.
Yeah, sure, Jason. So, there's a reduction in the purchase price of Airtight of AUD 2.8 million in FY 2023 due to a shortfall in working capital against the target, and that shortfall in working capital, that's all flowed through in the operational cash flow of FY 2024.
Yeah. So we, we bought the business very late in 2023. I think it was late May. The purchase price adjustment was net of a working capital peg, which was short of, so that's why we put money into working capital in 2024, as Andrew said, but it came off the purchase price, so net zero impact to us outside of where it went into operating cash flow. Issues addressed in Airtight. What sort of margins should it do?
So the issue's pretty simple. Look, it was a privately owned business, run out of New Zealand, so its level of governance and senior management in Australia was very low. We've had to change, you know, the way a private business goes about it, their levels of disciplines, reporting, all that type of thing.
Yeah, just bringing that culture along for that change and making sure that it was done calmly and smoothly. I'd expect margins should be getting up to 10% within that division before too long. Is it possible for the overall business to improve gross margins in excess of 30%? I'm afraid I can't answer that off the top of my head. I'd have to sit down and do some math.
The budget for the ERP investment, there's no budget set at this point in time. That'll be set in the next two to three months as we're working through it. Roughly, I'd expect that to be around AUD 300,000-AUD 500,000 Andrew? Andrew might have dropped. Something of that nature, but the budget's not finalized yet.
Last question for those: Can you provide further detail on the AUD 510,000 provision flagged in the accounts? I don't think that's anything particularly exciting at all. I think there's about AUD 90,000 in doubtful debts, and there's a provision against a couple of other collections. But, you know, when you're turning over AUD 100 million a year, AUD 500,000 is not a particularly big number, I wouldn't have thought.
Maybe, is Andrew back online? He might be able to address it better than me. I'm afraid it appears that Andrew and Paul have dropped off. So is there any further questions? I think I've got through that list fairly efficiently. So I'll hand back to the operator. If there's no further questions, we can probably... Thank you all very much for your attendance.
I appreciate you listening, and, as you know, I'm always available for further questions if you wanna send me an email or give me a phone call over the next few weeks or days. So operator, back to you.