Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Energy One Limited half year investor presentation. My name is Shaun Ankers. I'm the Group CEO. I'm joined today by Guy Steel, our Group CFO. We'll be going through a short presentation about the results and what we're doing, and then we will take some questions along the way. Feel free to ask questions either through the chat or send an email or please just put your hand up and we'll get to those as well. Without further ado, I'll kick off. As I say, welcome to the half year results, FY 2022. Yeah. As we published, yes, the financial result is as follows. I'll let Guy run through them, and I'll talk to the key indicators. Just wanna quickly talk to those Guy form.
Yeah, thanks, Shaun. Just in terms of the results, and hopefully people can hear me. Brief overview, obviously, revenue up AUD 600,000 . People will obviously ask, what was EGSSIS's contribution? We've got it in the notes, the accounts, AUD 438,000. So small organic growth. I guess when we look at the result, we would point people to the recurring revenue, which is up 16%, of which EGSSIS contributed 4%. So quite strong recurring from the business. When we previously provided guidance, we did note the fact that the project income was expected to be slightly down.
In terms of EBITDA, up AUD 200,000 across the period, up 6%. Margin flat or consistent. Normalized profit before tax effectively flat. In our normalizations we've noted AUD 563,000. They include acquisition costs, the costs related to both EGSSIS and CQ Partners, as well as restructuring and structuring costs related to obviously bringing those new entities into the group. Operating cash was at AUD 1.4 million, slightly down on the previous period, mainly for timing of tax payments. Capitalized software was AUD 2.1 million.
I think at that point I'll hand it back to you, Shaun, to talk to the business in more detail.
Thanks, Guy. Yeah. I think a key message here, you know, is the recurring revenue, right? We've talked at length over the years about the fact that it is a hybrid business model and that about 20-odd% of the revenue is project related, which makes it one-off. Those projects wax and wane, the ebb and flow of project timing. Of course we had a bumper this time last year, and we just finished two major projects. Obviously COVID slowed us down a little bit in signing the bigger projects this year, the one or two large projects that go into that orange bit. You know, I'd draw your attention to that recurring revenue line. The organic revenue component of it was strong as well.
We continue to grow that recurring revenue, albeit, sort of, the top line result is affected by, as I say, the ebb and flow of projects. ARR is up 30% since we last reported. Obviously that's been helped by EGSSIS acquisition. But as I said, you know, a good deal of that recurring revenue has been organic growth. That's something we've focused on for a number of years, and we continue to grow it. Yes, to the issues related to COVID. Obviously, you know, it's slowed everyone down a little bit. I just got back from Europe yesterday, or sorry, Sunday night. I can report that the things are really picking up over there now.
People, the mood is changing just as it is here in Australia. You know, things, they're a lot more optimistic and people can get back out on the road again. That's really good for everybody and the mood is very buoyant. We'll crack on with doing that as we go forward into the year of 2022. Okay. Next slide. What we have been doing is focusing on acquisitions. As Guy said, there's two acquisitions in there. There's quite a lot of acquisition costs and consequent but indirect structuring costs, which we did have a question on that. Obviously, there's some legal type fees in there. As you grow, you have to readjust some things like employee share scheme.
We had to find a new CFO during the year, and that, you know, obviously had a bit of cost as well. We're happy to report we've got Guy permanently now. And just some legal and corporate pieces that make up that one-off line. Of course, acquisitions do come at a cost, but they do bring opportunity in the future as well. We'll continue to do that. As I say, it's been a busy time, but really good acquisitions and go towards our strategy of building out our wholesale suite of solutions of software and services for the market. I will come to that in a minute, that strategy a bit more. We've expanded into the services business in quite a big way, obviously with Belgium, with EGSSIS.
As I said, on my recent visit, I was able to meet them. A great bunch of people they are. The control room there in Aalst, which is near Brussels, and a really good team of specialists in both software and services, operating on behalf of customers. Of course, we announced CQ Energy, which is an Adelaide company that provides services and to a lesser extent, software in the Australian market, doing a very similar kind of thing on behalf of customers in that 24/7 physical energy market. That SPA has been signed, and you know, we expect to complete that hopefully by the 1st of April as we've reported.
We'll be able to crack on with our global strategy of offering follow-the-sun services. Now the largest supplier you know when that happens the largest supplier of this type of service in Australia and the second largest in Europe, which is a very promising development for us. As the slide points out, traditional software competitors of ours would be offering software-type solutions where we've gone more software with a service because for all the reasons we've talked about, smaller customers, greater opportunity you know sort of not just restricted to customers who have got their own trading desk and can consume and use software on a 24/7 basis. We're able to provide that service to them as well as an adjunct to the software business.
Those two types of sub-business lines support each other greatly. The software helps to sell services, and the services helps to sell software. As this slide points out, we're operating in a kind of an energy services sector. Going forward, as the market becomes more fragmented, becomes more physical, it's not just about contracts, hedging derivatives, and so on, trading derivatives, it's more to do with the immediacy of the near-term physical forward market, you know, day-ahead, intraday, those kinds of subjects are much more important nowadays. The market is definitely moving towards that. In Europe, they have an intraday market, for example, even for contracts.
That sort of stuff will be developing across the globe as well as we do a more immediate fast start generation and so on. You know, we've had a few questions along the lines of what's happening with the services and the, are they recurring and so on and so forth. Operational services are by definition recurring. They, you know, we're talking about people operating on behalf of customers, their long-term contracts. You know, when we talked about CQ Energy, we said that 2/3 of their revenue was recurring. Well, it's operational services, which is recurring. And again, high quality, sticky revenue, much like software licenses and SaaS businesses too.
We anticipate that, you know, in the future state of the services business, you know, 60%-80% of that will be recurring as well. There'll always be an element of one-off professional services, project implementation, consulting, that kind of stuff, the broking business in terms of CQ. A lot of it is recurring as well, which makes it high quality and very sticky revenue. Again, people contract for long period of time. I did mention in the CEO's commentary that, about margins. I had been given a question about that in the past.
You know, the gross margin for the pure SaaS side of it is well over 80%, but we have a blended margin which takes into account the one-offs, which is where we, you know, our familiar figure of 60+ GMs. You know, similar sorts of GMs are, you know, obviously on the cards for what we talk about in the future. Financial impact for these two acquisitions will be flowing through in our first full year, which would be next financial year. Obviously, this year we've got partial contributions. CQ Energy, as mentioned, with any luck, if we can get that completed by the 1st of April, we'll be able to have three months of contribution from them, which would be great. As I mentioned, two business lines going forward, software and services.
That's sort of the way that we'll organize things. We've been moving towards this for some time now, quietly, and we're happy to say that we're putting the final pieces of the jigsaw in place. Along with some organic growth and whatnot, the contributions from these acquisitions will give us an EBITDA trajectory for the full year. Obviously, this is a normalized result and you know, happy to discuss what's in the normalization so people can get a feel for it. The reality is that the company continues to grow, and it continues to grow in a profitable way and we look forward to increasing that growth into the future. Before we come to the questions, I'd just like to say that you know, this is a really exciting sector.
If there's a hotter and more interesting sector in the world today, I'd like to know about it. Green energy revolution is a major deal for all of us, something we need to do as a planet. What Energy One does is enables all of those producers and consumers of energy to meet in the marketplace. There's a marketplace. They've got goods they wanna bring to the marketplace. Energy One helps provide that bridge, get them into the market to monetize the asset. A very important role.
You know, if we can make that bridge wide and inviting, and help people to get their goods to market, that's effectively what we're doing, then we'll be able to facilitate the revolution in the green power going forward, as well as assisting companies in transition from traditional fuel sources to the future as well. There's a lot going on. It's a very interesting sector to be in, very exciting for us. You know, I can say we're very proud to be part of it going forward to net zero future. You know, we'll continue to grow into that space. Okay. Thank you. That was very brief, but I've got some. There are a couple of questions I've got.
One was, I think I have answered the one about what's in the normalization, but we can come back to that. With the other number one, what is the contribution that we've allowed for from CQ? We've allowed AUD 1 million EBITDA. Guy, have I got that correct?
Yes, that is correct.
Okay. I've got some questions here. How do I find the questions?
Yes. There's a couple of questions online.
Can you read them out, Kai? Can you see them?
I can. The first question's from Steven Sizer, and effectively the question is, what are the business's plans for expansion in Asia-Pac and also the U.S. markets?
Yeah. Asia-Pac obviously a massive market, but a lot of it is still sort of bilateral. There's very few sort of you know, deregulated marketplaces there, Singapore, Philippines, and so on. We are alive to those opportunities, but there's not at the moment a large opportunity in power, and particularly for trading on you know, exchanges and the like in those marketplaces. But obviously LNG is still very active. That's something that we can get involved in as well already. We are interested in Asia, but it traditionally has not been one of the primary markets for this sort of industry. As for the States, we have the States on the horizon, and we are adopting an entrepreneurial approach to that.
As opportunities arise, we'll review them. Obviously, again, with COVID, everyone's been slowed down ever so slightly. Can't get over to meet people and that sort of thing. At the moment, we've been focusing in the near term on our European and Australian strategy. Of course, we will pursue the States as soon as the opportunities present themselves. Does that answer your question, Steve? Great. If so. Okay.
Yeah. Great. Thank you.
Cool. Claude Walker, go ahead, mate.
Sorry. The next question's from Claude Walker. Another really good question. Probably plays right into your strategy. Doesn't move to recurring services revenue expose the company to greater wage costs through inflation? And can this be addressed or this risk be mitigated through the adoption of automation such as software?
Yeah, 100%. Of course it does, you know, but we're already in a very specialized industry, Claude. You know, we've got people in software. Energy and software, you couldn't get much more specialized than that in the software sense. It's a very high quality people industry, already. But yes, to answer your question, obviously services does attract, it's a people industry as well, but automation is key to our strategy. You know, we've been doing automation for some time now. Or as a product, you know, there's a product called enFlow we're very proud of. We're assisting customers to do this kind of work on their own account via automation. It's an exceptional product.
We consider it to be unique in the industry for doing this kind of work. We'll be, to use that old expression, eating our own dog food when we use enFlow for our own automation purposes for services. It's the key to getting the economies of scale and also the economies of scope out of that business as well. Instead of you know, there's no theoretical reason why you kind of have 1,000 customers that you provide the services for, and you're obviously not gonna have 900 traders doing that. We really wanna be able to get that across the business as it unfolds. You know, our business is already you know the services guys, CQ, and also our European companies already have automation.
Automation as a general concept is something that we're keen to promote anyway to the future as your question alludes to.
The other aspect of that, Claude, is the biggest issue that people face in 24/7 services in a single market is the night shift and getting people to work overnight. It's not only expensive, it's also really hard to keep people alert and to get them to take on unsociable hours. Whereas, with our follow-the-sun capability, we won't have a big exposure to night shift. We'll have Australia supporting Europe in their nighttime and vice versa. Automation and follow the sun provide us with an enormous variety of tools to avoid wage cost inflation and to provide good working environments for the people in these sectors.
Thanks, Andrew. Good point.
Thanks a lot.
It's a good point from a selling perspective as well. I'm glad Andrew brought that up because we all know, right, intuitively know that 24/7 is tricky. Night shifts are tricky for everyone across the globe, it doesn't matter which industry you're in. Just asking people to work nights, so it's been a challenge. If you can sort of get away from the reliance on a night shift by having two long day shifts, then you're providing a real benefit to customers that's not just based on just on costs.
Not only will we be able to provide the services to the new entrants who don't have those capabilities internally, we are also keen to try and, you know, deal with other blue chip type customers who are wishing to outsource their current, their current shift operations, but they may have trouble staffing as it is. Now, you know, I've got a lot of anecdotal evidence out there that this is happening already. You know, there's a large U.K. utility that's setting up an operation in Singapore for their own purposes, so they can have that long day, and there's other examples. It's definitely a thing.
We hope that we'll be able to provide that service on behalf of, as I say, to outsource from bigger companies as well as providing services to the smaller guys. Now, CQ and our European companies, eZ-nergy and EGSSIS, are very experienced in these areas and have been doing a great job for a long period of time. We're putting this together with a kind of software side of it as well to provide both sides of it. It's not pure service, and it's not pure software, so it's a real solution set that we're selling now. That combination of benefits is something that goes beyond just price, 'cause you can imagine trying to set up your own desk and staff it. It's a very difficult job.
Someone asked me about the moat, or it was mentioned somewhere else about that moat and how difficult it would be for a competitor to set up. Well, I think you probably could answer that question yourself, right? You can do it, but it's a difficult thing to do, and it's a very specialized industry. We're trading 24/7 gas and power in different, multiple different markets with multiple different client needs. It's a complex operation, so it's not as simple as getting a few people on the night shift. Us to be able to offer that, both the sophisticated software and the service together is something that we feel very strongly about compared to our competitors who are, you know, predominantly trying to do it with software. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think software's the entire answer.
That's our view on it, and we will definitely be pursuing that total solution. Any more questions came through, guys?
There are another two.
Oh, cool.
The next question's from Jason, which is another good question, which again plays into your strategy, Shaun, which is around, there's been a number of acquisitions over the last five years. To what extent are there plans to integrate those businesses into one common and integrated SaaS platform?
Well, we're definitely integrating the businesses together. We've been putting these jigsaw pieces together. The idea is to offer a global solution, right? Just at a brand level, and starting in Europe, we're collapsing those brands into just Energy One now. The product lines will remain, but we're gonna operate as one branded company and just integrate all the things that we can do in the back end, bringing the software and the service together. It's not just SaaS, it's software with a service. We're putting all that together. It'll be a project underway as soon as we can to a global, truly follow-the-sun approach.
At the moment, we have, you know, operating in different hemispheres of different businesses in a services sense, but we'll bring that together under one common technology and operational platform in the one to two years ahead.
Thank you. Do you see that that will add much cost? Often these software integrations can be fairly complicated. Do you see that that's gonna add much cost? To what extent do you see it as being a, you know, energy sink taking away from other avenues, be it further acquisitions or focus on, you know, revenue growth?
Well, there's no doubt that integration is a cost. It's an investment, though. It's an investment to produce the result on the other side. I'm sure we all agree on that. We have said that we are committed to doing that within our profitable growth behaviors that shareholders are familiar with for our company. We will be doing these things ongoing. Yes, there's some investment and, but we will be doing it with the purpose of making sure that the company always remains profitable and in a growth mode. As for integrating software, I think, you know, take a step back. In the old days, you used to try and get onto one code base, right? You can retire a product or something of that nature.
That's not so much the case anymore because the user experience these days is through a browser usually. They're not, there's not that exposure to sort of the two different, you know, might be different sort of code bases. They're not exposed to them in quite the same way. What the focus nowadays is on the user experience of making sure that it's seamless. I'll give you an example of that you'll see every day. When you log on to the bank, you'll see, you know, a very glossy kind of front-end consumer banking piece. If you wanted to go into the share trading platform, you'll often see a slight change. You can tell it's a different piece of software, but they're very good at making it look quite seamless.
It's not like you'd have to rewrite everything like it was the old thinking in the '90s. Now it's more a case of just making sure the experience is seamless. I think that's a much less of a burden because these are big pieces of software, and you don't really wanna be rewriting them. If for no other reason than the customers can't really go and absorb a new piece of software, it's, you know, it's very much an incremental journey here. You don't wanna go to them and say, "We've ripped it all out and started again." No one wants to hear that, and so it's more about making it seamless, increasing the functionality for customers, so they can see new modules and new activities and new functionalities, and making sure that the thing is constantly evolving and growing. Hopefully.
Thanks.
I mean, the other aspect to that is that our products have been integrated for quite some time. Quite a lot of times the customers in our segment, in our niche are looking for a solution to something, and that requires us to put EnergyOffer automation with the EnergyOffer bidding with the automation product or the front, middle, back office product with the automation product. So the products do integrate quite well from the customer's point of view. The challenge for us is to put-
The bits and pieces in the background that allow us to provide that across the globe with the European software and the Australian software. It is focused on one market segment, so it's an order of magnitude easier than other sectors.
All right. Thanks, Andrew. I'd like to pick up on a word you used there, which was niche, right? We said at the beginning that energy trading, wholesale energy trading is a niche. It's a good niche. It's a great niche. Very sophisticated businesses and important mission-critical systems, but it's a niche. One of the things that I'm speaking from my own point of view now is that we're able to say with our kind of services and software model is that we wanna bust out of that niche. You know, we're talking about being able to not just supply to tier one and tier two energy companies, but in the future, deal with, you know, distributed energy resources a much larger market segment.
We are looking forward to being able to break out of that niche and as a much larger addressable market, which is very exciting for us. You know, we've got all the pieces in place. We just have to go and execute. Guy, any more questions?
Okay. The next question relates to the acquisition of CQ and just the EBITDA margins being, of course, higher than the rest of the Energy One group at 30%.
Well, obviously, it's a very good business. The founders have created an excellent business there. They're highly skilled professionals offering a very good service. Obviously there's an element of pre- and post-integration that goes on there as well. The business is a high-quality business, and when they come on board, we've already talked about what we expect the margins to be there. Obviously, there'll be some integration benefits to be had within the company, and that's sort of something we've been working on, as I say, in the next year or two. Their business is 2/3, more or less, operational services, which is recurring revenue of good revenue.
Obviously, there's a consulting business as well, consulting and broking, professional services business that they operate. Highly experienced consulting services for that as well. These are two very specialized and high quality business lines that they operate. When we get to completion there, we will publish some more analysis on the margins for everyone to have a look. But you know, I just wanna get to the point where they're inside the group first, so hopefully from April, and then we'll be able to discuss it a little bit more.
Thank you, Stella, for that question. That ends the online questions, Shaun.
Shaun, do you mind if I ask a question?
Sure thing, Dan.
Yeah. Just, in terms of the guidance that you've given, what's being factored in terms of contract wins, if any? And then secondly, just on the organic growth, where is that being driven from? Is that any particular geography or module? I'm just trying to get a little more color around that. Thanks.
Guy, do you wanna just answer that quickly, and I'll join in with some color?
Certainly. In terms of the guidance and the organic growth, I think it's, you know, coming from, you know, fairly consistently across the groups. The acquired businesses, or particularly in France, have had a good half, and Australia has likewise as well. It's fairly evenly split across the group when you look at it from that perspective. I'm sorry, just the first part of the question. Apologies. I'll just get you to repeat that.
In terms of the guidance, what's being factored in?
In terms of contract wins, so we don't have any major contract wins factored in. What we're seeing at the moment, I mean, Shaun's already talked about the, you know, the larger customer wins and the project work. We probably expect that environment to continue a little bit given, you know, we're just emerging from COVID. What we are seeing is activity in some of the smaller customers and renewables, which obviously Shaun talked about that being an important part and emerging part of the strategy.
Yeah. Thanks, Guy. So Daniel, to your question, it's, there's no major, you know. It's the organic growth, the medium size and the smaller customers. If there's a big signature, then that'll get reported. Obviously, you know, we've gotta get out, we've gotta get the signatures, meaningfully in this financial year. There would probably, you know, if a signature comes in June, then it's gonna sort of fall into the next year. The reality is that, we have a good pipeline of, you know, those major projects that we're working on, and it's just a matter of getting out there and trying to meet customers face to face and, you know, hopefully win a couple.
Thanks, guys.
Did that answer your questions, Dan?
Yeah, it does. Thank you. Cheers.
I see Jason. Jason asking a question.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks, Shaun. Just interested in your view of,
Some of the material and discussion historically has been that the growth in renewables and battery storage and the number of players is likely to expand significantly in Australia and overseas. I'm just wondering if you can comment on whether or not you're already seeing that and what the implications might be for organic revenue growth for the business over the coming few years?
Well, you're spot on. I mean, that's what we're banking on, right? We're banking on this explosion in new power generation. It's not just our supposition, right? Every regulatory authority around is predicting huge requirements for new generation growth. You know, when we look at electric vehicles, for example, you know, I suppose the common sort of thought process is that, you know, we're replacing coal with green power.
I mean, yes, that's true, but we're actually gonna need more electricity because as we move to an electrified economy, you know, electric vehicles being a case in point, like when you have an electric car, you know, you're not using fossil fuels anymore to power it, but then you suddenly, you know, you need some electricity to power it. So, I think in this country alone, they're talking about we'll need three times the generation. It's the same all over the world. There's massive requirements for electrification. As we transition off gas in the future, you know, our homes and cooking will be, you know, we're gonna coming off gas into electric. So we'll need power generation of all shapes and varieties. That's gonna come from a variety of sources.
I think intuitively it's absolutely true. It's, you know, it's axiomatic that this is going to happen. Since no one's building coal stations in the future and possibly nuclear, you know, it's likely to be from distributed energy resources. And that's an acronym, but essentially that means, you know, things like solar, wind, batteries. It also means on the demand side, you know, like, you know, your vehicle, your electric vehicle will become a source of power to the grid in the future. You can push it back in and already solar PV at home is doing that. There's gonna be a much more interesting and nuanced landscape out there of the grid. You know, we're relying on that from our business perspective.
We're relying on being able to help service that and bring it to the fore. Now, has it been happening in the last year or two? I think it's been on hold a little bit for a variety of reasons. But across the globe, it definitely is. And you know, we've just heard yesterday, you know, two big batteries being built now. One in where Eraring is, and there's another one going in as well. These things are starting to happen. The market's taking the initiative in some ways and just getting on with it. You know, it's like Bill Gates said, things happen slowly, then suddenly they happen quickly. We all want that.
We all wanna get to net zero, and we wanna get there as quickly as possible. As a business, we want that to happen. Yes, it's been a little bit slow. Yes, it will progress. It's gonna happen anyway. Like, for no other reason than I think something like 2% of the new cars in this country are electric. In Britain it's 25%. Imagine if we started, you know, people started buying electric vehicles at that rate, what that would do. There's an awful lot of things that are happening to the market. They're not necessarily policy driven. They're happening anyway.
Very exciting times and certainly we're banking on being right on the front of that wave and being able to help facilitate it for the benefit of the planet, but also for the benefit of the shareholders.
Thank you.
The other thing that's happened that's caused the enormous growth in the services market is, you know, prior to, say, 10 or 15 years ago, the new generation was built by the utilities. They would internalize the finance and they'd internalize operations, and they'd internalize construction. Whereas, environmentally friendly generation of all types has been brought about by professional development groups. You'll have a developer who'll outsource their finance to somebody. They will EPC the construction. They will outsource services and software where it's efficient. These efficient operators, like ourselves in Europe and CQ here, are very, very efficient operators of these assets. It's been very popular among the professional people that are building renewable energy, not just here, but across the world.
Thanks, Andrew. Are there any more questions? Happy to keep talking about the subject all day if you like, but I realize we've got a timetable, everyone's got a timetable, so please feel free to fire any more questions. No? Okay. Well, thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate everyone dialing in and taking an interest. Happy to elaborate on this more as things unfold. Of course, we'll keep everyone informed as situations develop and as news is forthcoming. Thank you very much once again. Have a great day.