Okay. Thank you very much.
Six seconds.
Thank you very much. Welcome to the annual general meeting of Energy One Limited. My name is Andrew Bonwick, and I am your Chairman. In the Sydney office today, we have other non-executive directors, Ian Ferrier and Ottmar Weiss, who retires from the board at the conclusion of this AGM. Ottmar will take a few minutes to reflect on his time as a director here, as well as his significant contribution at the end of the meeting. Our group CEO, Shaun Ankers, is currently on-site in Belgium. He's joining via teleconference. Our CFO, Guy Steel, is also with us in the Sydney office. Unfortunately, Vaughan Busby, one of our directors, is in Rockhampton today with another board commitment, so he can't join us.
Also joining us online is Clayton Everley from BDO, our auditors. We have a number of shareholders in the Sydney office as well, which is great. Thank you. We confirm that the notice of meeting was duly given, and the meeting has been properly convened. Please note that only shareholders, proxy holders, or shareholder company representatives can vote. I note that there's a quorum present, either by proxy or online, and I declare the meeting open. I'd like to now give the chairman's report for this year. It's with pleasure that I'm able to report that Energy One has achieved its ninth consecutive year of profitability.
In FY 2022, Energy One continued to see the benefits flowing from the strategy of organic growth and synergistic acquisitions made in prior years, despite the impact of COVID on our major project sales, which we'd flagged in providing guidance for this year. Revenues up 16% and underlying earnings, EBITDA up 15%, both grew strongly, as did net profit after tax, which increased by 16% from FY 2021 to AUD 4.35 million. This performance is a strong affirmation of the strategy pursued by the company and delivered by its management. Recurring revenue grew in 2022, eclipsing total 2021 revenues, and it has had a compound average growth rate of 42% since 2018.
This year was marked by the acquisition and integration of EGSSIS in continental Europe, the acquisition of CQ Energy in Australia, and continuing organic growth of the Australian and U.K. operations. 54% of our revenue is earned in Europe, and management have grown the European revenues and margins every year. Australian revenue grew 6% despite the drop in project revenues, with recurring revenues up 13% in a market where we enjoy high market share. EBITDA margin in this market improved as well. We look forward to the continuing opening up of Europe to the major strategic project sales processes that are part of our revenue mix and provide long-tail SaaS revenues. We closed a major customer sale in Europe shortly into FY 2023, and Australian and European major sales activity is progressing well.
Contigo, eZ-nergy, and EGSSIS recommended the adoption of Energy One branding across the European market late last year. This started with our presentations and booth at E-world in Essen in June, which is a very big European energy conference. In the International Energy Week in August, with the main branding as Energy One. This suggestion originating in Europe is a strong indicator of good cultural integration. Continuing product development and sales with SaaS-based products of modern design and construction, and with a strong customer orientation, is a good indicator of continued growth in our market share in our largest markets. Australian sales and delivery performed well under the guidance of the Australian CEO, Dan Ayers. After a strong project delivery year in 2021, the impact of COVID meant that we had no major project in 2022.
This was mitigated by a focus on a stream of medium and small projects to deliver the revenue and to keep the development staff engaged and busy. The acquisition of EGSSIS and CQ has enabled Energy One to complete the building blocks for our announced development of a follow-the-sun, 24/7 global operational capability. We currently serve some European customers from Australia during their night shift, and the integration of the two regional businesses will proceed with cross-training and employee exchange and secondment, providing domain knowledge in both centers. We have started systems augmentation and integration using our in-house tools to provide a common user experience for operators on both sides of the world. Increasing use of automation will also allow us to continue to grow the asset serviced by Energy One without commensurate cost growth.
Sales into the services business will come from new entrants, independent renewables companies with whom we have a high market share in Australia. Energy companies struggling with out-of-hours trading support. Our ability to provide out-of-hour support has been welcomed by a number of global energy corporates, a number of them existing our software customers across the globe, and will provide a strong platform to move from out-of-hour support to broader services and software sales for these customers. With the worldwide shift from large thermal generators and big retailers to a complex web of renewables, batteries, load shifting, and multiplying market participants. The need for these operational services is growing. Energy One has a robust platform of well-regarded software and a quality existing operational services business.
We estimate the addressable market for this type of software and operational service to be in excess of AUD 1 billion over the next 5-10 years, and major customers in Europe and Australia tell us we have a unique offering in that growing market. We have announced that FY 2023 and FY 2024 cash flow will be used to invest between AUD 1 million and AUD 2 million per annum on the services business, and we look forward to updating you with our progress as we go. Our recent history has been marked by both organic and acquisitive growth. The near term will be marked by a concentration on the delivery of the very high potential exhibited by the operational services business.
We announced guidance for FY 2023 of revenues increasing 37% over FY 2022 to be in excess of AUD 44 million and EBITDA growing 33% over FY 2022 to AUD 12.5 million, and we reiterate that outlook. In the last several years, we have welcomed an interest in the company from institutional investors and the development of an ongoing dialogue with those fund managers as they invest their time to get to know the company. This led to a successful placement of AUD 7.5 million with a number of high quality institutional investors and a rights issue of about AUD 2 million earlier this year. We thank shareholders for their support of the company in subscribing these funds.
When reviewing the existing capital position of the business and assessing the potential for future business growth, the board remains mindful of the need to balance future new investment against the need to realize expected returns from investments already made. With both of these in mind, the board decided to declare a final dividend of AUD 0.06 per share in FY 2022. The ongoing availability of the dividend reinvestment plan, in conjunction with the payment of a dividend this year, last year, is intended to provide a further incremental improvement in the liquidity of our shares. I would like to take a moment to reflect on Ottmar's service to your company. Ottmar joined us prior to the float in 2007, and stepped into the chairman's role during a challenging early period for the company.
He guided your company through the establishment of our software capability and worked with the CEO and the board as we built our electricity software suite in Australia. The move into gas software and the steps we took to consider and then enter the U.K. market. The board has looked at a number of options and challenges over that 15 years, and Ottmar brought a quality skill set and a deep commercial and organizational skill to the board's development of strategy, the supervision of the delivery of that strategy, and building the shareholders' equity. He has a deep commitment to shareholder value and our core role in the success that you are seeing today. I will miss his insight. I thank him for his contribution and wish him well in his future endeavors, and look forward to meeting him in future annual general meetings.
In closing, I would like to thank my fellow directors, management, and staff for their continued support, their dedication and strong efforts during this busy and productive year. In particular, I would like to highlight the quality of this year's results in Australia and Europe, despite the disruption to travel for corporate and sales activity by COVID on both sides of the world. This is a testament to the leadership of your CEO, Shaun Ankers, and the quality of the leaders he has developed as part of his team. Thank you.
You can come again.
Okay.
Moving to the resolutions. The resolutions for consideration today may only be voted on by shareholders, proxy holders and shareholder company representatives. I propose to call a poll on each of these resolutions. Those in attendance who have not submitted a proxy vote may only vote on the provided AGM voting form, and that form is to be handed in at the end of the meeting. Resolutions 2-7 , including resolutions 5A, 5B and 5C, set out in the notice of the meeting, are to be considered as an ordinary resolution, as such, may be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote and voting on the resolution. Resolution 1, financial statements and reports. There's no requirement in the Corporations Act or in the constitution of the company for the shareholders to approve these reports.
However, I will move that shareholders approve the directors report, financial statements and independent audit report for the financial review ended 30 June 2022. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Are there any questions from the video? Thank you. There being no further questions, I seek approval that the annual report containing the financial statements for FY 2022 on a show of hands. The annual report is adopted on a show of hands. Resolution 2, adoption of the remuneration report. I now move that the remuneration report for the financial year ending 30 June 2022 be adopted. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Are there any questions from the video conference?
Kevin, on the board, you have the proxy votes.
Yes. Yep.
Correct. Yes. Any votes in the meeting will be added to the proxy votes, and we'll release the results later today, after the meeting.
Yes. There being no further questions, we'll put the resolution to a poll. Those in attendance, please vote for resolution on the voting form. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution. Final results of the poll, on this poll and all the others, will be announced at the ASX today, later today. The poll will cease 5 minutes after the closure of the formal part of the meeting. Do I have to pass this over or can I run this?
Sorry?
Do I have to pass over the?
No, you can run it.
I can run it? Okay. Resolution three, election of directors, myself, Andrew Bonwick. I now move that myself, a director of the company who retires by rotation at this annual general meeting in accordance with the Energy One constitution, and being eligible, offering myself for re-election, be elected as a non-executive director of the company be adopted. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present or from the video conference, please?
Chairman, I've been a director of many companies in my life. I've never actually seen a situation where there's not one vote cast against your reappointment. Perhaps next year I'll arrange for someone to do that just so you don't. It's your own channel.
Three. It'll be three years from now.
Well, you're right, we're getting somewhere.
There being no further questions, we'll put the resolution to a poll. If you're present in the meeting, please vote on the form. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor. Resolution 4, the grant of performance rights to the Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Shaun Ankers. I now move that for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14, and for all other purposes, to approve the grant of 87,210 performance rights to the Managing Director and CEO, Shaun Ankers, as detailed in the accompanying explanatory memorandum. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Or from the video conference? Thank you. There being no further questions, we put the resolution to a poll. If you're in the meeting, please vote on the form. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution.
Resolution 5, grant of service rights to the non-executive directors. I now move that for the purpose of Listing Rule 10.14, and for all other purposes, to approve the grant of 9,690 service-based share rights to Andrew Bonwick, 5,814 service-based rights to Vaughan Busby, and 4,845 service-based rights to Ian Ferrier. The basis and conditions of issue for the rights, and other matters are explained in the explanatory memorandum. Essentially, the directors take half of their remuneration in rights and half in cash. The grant of rights to each director will be considered as three separate resolutions to be voted on by the shareholders. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Or on the video conference, please?
There being no further questions, we put the resolution to a poll. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution. Resolution 6, approval of potential leave of benefit payments to Mr. Shaun Ankers and non-executive directors. I move that for the purposes of Section 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act 2001, and for all other purposes, to approve payments under the Energy One Equity Incentive Plan to the Managing Director, Shaun Ankers, as well as the non-executive directors myself, Ian Ferrier, and Vaughan Busby if they were to cease to hold office at Energy One Limited, as detailed in the accompanying explanatory memorandum. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Are there any questions from the video? There being no further questions, I'll put the resolution to a poll.
Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution. Resolution 7, I now move that for the purposes of Listing Rule 7.4 and for all other purposes, the shareholders ratify the prior issue of 1,666,667 ordinary shares under the institutional placement earlier this year, as detailed in the accompanying explanatory memorandum. There have been no questions provided in advance. Are there any questions from those present? Are there any questions from the video, please? No further questions, we'll put the resolutions to a poll. Undirected proxies will be voted in favor of the resolution. Thank you. The final results of each poll will be announced to the ASX later in the day.
That concludes the formal business of the meeting. A reminder that the polls will close five minutes after this meeting. Before we take questions, I'd like to invite Ottmar to address the meeting as requested by a shareholder on a video conference earlier this year.
Thank you, Andrew. First of all, thank you very much for those kind words that you offered earlier in your chat. I very much appreciate it, thank you. For better or for worse, I find myself the first director in Energy One's history to actually leave the board. That probably says a lot about the nature of the company to begin with. I've been here for 15 years now, from 2007 till now. One slight correction to your earlier introduction. No, I wasn't chairman at the time of the float. It was post the float.
Sure. Yeah. It's beginning.
I think Ian used to be chairman at that time.
Yeah, he probably was.
Yeah.
Shortly after. Yeah.
15 years and that 15 years have spanned across three different decades, the 2000s and the 2010s and now the 2020s. As I reflect on my time at Energy One, three seems to have been a number that has featured prominently. We've had three offices since I've been here. Which I know it's COVID, so two of those are also on level 13, so I'm not sure why that was. We've had three chairman, of which I was one for a while, and Ian was one, and now Andrew is the other. There's been three CEOs, three CFOs. We've had three major acquisitions in Australia and more lately, we've had three major acquisitions in Europe.
I'm not sure what those purchases actually mean in the end, but I just was interested to note that's the way it is. I would say that the best description of my time at Energy One is that it's been a very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating challenge. It's been very varied. The nature of the markets that the company operates in and the businesses that it undertakes are very different now to when we first started. I've also sort of increasingly become aware, certainly so far, that the company's business model is not really directly correlated to the general economic conditions that would prevail the domestic economy and international economy.
That's probably because the company finds itself in a very fast-growing, very fast-changing and very dynamic business environment. That the entire way that energy is created and distributed to consumers, whether it be residential or industrial consumers, has changed, and it's changing very rapidly. In reality, that change process is only at the beginning. You know, the next few decades, you know, whether it's driven by regulatory change or genuine concern about climate change or whatever, the fact is it is all changing and the shift away from fossil to green is just going to place Energy One and the types of products that it offers in a very unique position.
Certainly in the Australian market, there's no other company that is offering the products or has the opportunities available to it that Energy One does. You know, I feel very confident that the company that I'm retiring from is very well-placed in every regard. It has very strong executive management at all levels. It has a very strong board. As I just reflected upon the opportunities that are available to the company are, in my opinion at least, large and probably increasing every day. You know, the challenge will be to actually seize those opportunities and convert them to the benefit of the company and therefore the shareholders. Yeah, I've had a great time here.
You know, I'd like to thank everybody that I've worked with, my fellow board members and all the staff at Energy One. Everybody's been terrific. In closing this, I just wish the company very well and, you know, I'm still not quite a substantial shareholder anymore, but just under that 5% of the company, so still got quite a lot of shares in the company, so I'll still be taking a very active interest in terms of doing anything that I can to help and contribute to the future. Thank you.
Thanks, Ottmar. Thank you. We'll move to general questions. There's been no questions announced by email to Guy prior to the meeting, but does anybody have any questions from the floor, first?
I might ask a question.
Please, yeah.
First of all, I'm a guest in this meeting, so you're probably not used to questions, but what do you see as your greatest impediment to growth? Maybe it's for the CEO.
No, look, I think the board's been very careful over many years to grow at a rate that's appropriate to our financial resources, our physical resources and the products and services we offer. By way of example, you know, we've talked about investing AUD 1 million-AUD 2 million this year and next year on services. This is something we can afford.
Software development?
On services. On the services business. There'll be some software, some people and some other bits and pieces, admin in that.
Right.
That's an amount that we can afford. It's a conservative approach to growing into a new segment. You know, as that is successful, we'll keep looking at do we spend more? Do we spend it in a different way? Do we, you know, how do we do that? Every sale brings a risk, large and small. We have to service what the customer needs incredibly well and deliver the things that we promise. We're a conservative company. We will continue to grow. We'll continue to grow at these healthy rates and, you know, keep control of our destiny, I suppose.
My question is probably more directed than the sort of transition that you spoke about with the move to greener or carbon neutral energy. How are you sort of positioning yourself to go along with the growth in that area? And what do you see as your biggest risk to the company to partake in that growth?
Um.
Happy to hear your financials, all concerns there.
I'll just give you an example. In the Australian landscape, if you're ten years ago, you had a few very dominant energy providers. Sort of, the Queensland Government, Origin and AGL and a few others. Energy Australia. Now, like, every new person sets up a wind farm or a solar farm, has the ability to sell electricity into the national grid. To do so, there are particular protocols that they need to obey, and they're bound to. You know, they generally need a software solution to be able to satisfy that. That software solution is provided by Energy One.
Right.
There's been 196 new
In terms of impediments, are there competitors?
The competitive-
Where do you see your biggest risk as, going into that?
The competitive landscape in Australia is very soft. We're the dominant provider. In Europe, the software and services that we offer, there's nobody else that offers software and services, so we're in a good place there. It's more of a sales environment in Europe than it is here. There's half a dozen other people that offer software in Europe. The major risks are the delivery of software and services. We've got to do the things that we promise to do, and so we've got to be conservative and careful to make sure that we can sell things that we're able to do. In the last seven, eight, nine years, we've had a consistent history of good customer service doing what we say we're going to do. I think we're very well placed. I really do.
On time delivery.
Yes. Well, that's a characteristic of our software. We don't have to bespoke do it for every single customer. You know, it's pretty much an out of the box type product. It's a very sophisticated box, I'd have to say. You know, it's very much on time delivery is a very important thing that we provide. Yep.
Soon, I think, it was all turned to SaaS. We have to prepare a seminar in Europe on insurance.
With the acquisition of CQ in Adelaide, they're predominantly a services business, but they also had a small broking business for broking energy derivatives in weather. For example, insuring weather events for a wind farm or a solar station or outage products and that sort of thing. They have a dominant market share in Australia of that sort of product.
With very well-known insurance companies.
Yes. Yeah. sub-underwriters, particularly international sub-underwriters.
We don't carry the insurance risk, of course.
No, but we broke the product. In the last couple of months, we've taken that to Europe. There's a webinar happening today or tomorrow, give or take, with European customers to introduce these products and these concepts to those customers. There are 115 people attending that webinar in Europe. It's the first one we've done. That's being listened to by traders, by operators, by specialist risk managers, by customers, by non-customers. You know, one of the variety of activities that we do to increase our reputation and knowledge across the European market, but also to cross-sell the products that we have into other markets as well. That's we see it as a-
Take an example. Sorry, just to continue.
Yes, please. No worries.
I was the only one with the questions. I come from a country. We're sort of leading the world in the production through the windmills. How many of the windmill farms or how big a portion of the windmills in, say, England do you have on the yourself?
We don't disclose individual customers.
I'm asking for a percentage.
Yes. Yeah.
The portion of the market.
We have about 15% of the English market goes through our systems overall.
Euro or the U.K.?
About 15% of the U.K., plus just under 10% of Europe. We have quite a good market share, but obviously there's a lot. It's our runway for growth. We have a lot more sales we can make in Europe and in the U.K. In Australia, we're the fourth largest generator in the National Electricity Market of the power stations that we manage through our services business. You know, we've grown strongly in Australia through CQ. We would continue to grow in Europe from that 15%, 10% base.
Do you expect the growth to come from new wind farms or to sell to existing wind farms?
Our customers in Europe would be large thermal power stations, large gas power stations, hydro, wind, solar, brokers, financial intermediaries, large industrial customers, traders. We have an enormous variety of customers. Yes, generating wind farms are some of those. No, it's the diversity of people in the wholesale energy market that we sell to. That's one of the strengths of the company. No, we're not exposed just to growth in wind at all or just to growth in anything at all.
It's on both sides, the supply and the demand side.
The demand.
Yep. The supplier and the customer.
Thank you. Anybody else with questions locally?
Just wondering about you've grown quite a bit by acquisition. I'm just wondering a bit how you're integrating those acquisitions. You seem to imply that like the Adelaide, the South Australian one, you're able to transport that-
Yes.
to Europe. I'm just wondering, it's a relatively complex product suite, you know, how complex is it behind the scenes in terms of all these businesses being added on and, you know, how you integrate the people and the IT?
Yes. I'll answer that in a couple of different ways. Firstly, the products are extremely complex, but the job that they're doing is the same in Australia and Europe and Belgium and France, right? 19 countries or something, you know. Do I turn a power station off? Do I turn it on? What contract do I sell? How much energy I need to buy today in different markets.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Integrating the products is relatively straightforward because in order to install them, we need to connect them up with SAP and the finance system and the display system and everything. There's quite a lot of expertise within the company in terms of making the product suite work smoothly together. The acquisition of EGSSIS in Europe and its integration with eZ-nergy, we have very similar product suites. They're literally going through at the moment saying, "We'll have this one and this one and this one and this one." Okay? Rationalizing the product suite there. That's going very well. The acquisition of the people is just as important. The first stage is always to get the stuff out of their hair they don't like.
Integrating the finance systems, taking the accounting away, just make sure we're on the same email domain, all those sort of housekeeping type things, so that the people in the business can focus on the thing that they do really well, which will be selling software, selling services, and so on. Right? Over time, we wanna make sure that the vendors of those businesses stay with us for a reasonable period of time. You'll notice that all of the acquisitions have a mixture of cash and shares. The shares is so that the people that come along with us are with us for a period of time and share the risks that the shareholders do in the acquisition of those companies. Yeah, we aim to keep people in the business for a long while.
You know, within Contigo, which is one of our older acquisitions, there's still a very, very substantial number of people within that business that have come along with us because it's a very specialized set of skills. You know, the customers know them and we wanna hang on to them. We just want to enable them to do what they do really, really well, better sort of thing. Yeah. The other integration that I think is important is that we run a very good software business in Australia, and we do that by doing the simple things well. For example, if the contract says the price is gonna go up to CPI on October the first, make sure the price goes up. A lot of our products are sold based on seats.
You know, how many seats you got, counting the number of seats they're using, and increasing the bill when they use more seats. All that sort of sensible stuff. All of the programmers, they wanna do really well for the customer. In a software business, the customer says, "Can I have a little green spot here?" The developer will say, "Yeah, sure." Right? "Fill out a statement of works, and I'll put it into the next thing and, you know, you pay for it, and we'll put it in," sort of thing. Those sort of disciplines are really important as well. Our, you know, the management's approach to integration is quite sophisticated and, at this stage, all those things are going very, very well. Very well.
Could I just ask about Europe? Is Europe or is it every country got its own licenses and challenges?
Every country has its own electricity licenses and challenges. In Australia, the energy market on the East Coast is different to the energy market on the West Coast.
Yeah. Yeah.
'Cause the Westerners didn't wanna do what they did on the East Coast, right? They had three nodes, one in each state, right? Europe has a lot of those same sort of things. Austria has three different grid operators. Belgium has two. France has got one, but that's the French. Each of those countries has the potential for sale of our products. We're in 19 countries at the moment, I think.
Yeah, I believe we're covering 19.
Yeah. Which all gone up since the last presentation. Yes, that difference means that you know, our ability to provide software to each of those markets is really important. That's a key part of the way we sell. We announced a sale to a large corporate. I talked about a large corporate sale earlier this financial year. That takes us into another new region. The customer is working with us, paying us to go into another region. That's sort of part of the way we grow.
How do you share that news with the shareholders? Do you release updates on your-
Yep. The last update was the 23 of August, which was the presentation around the full-year results. That presentation is designed to provide information about the financial performance, about the structure of the business, and about our outlook as well. Yeah.
You can see all the stock exchange announcements on the energy-
Oh, as well. Yes.
Right. Sorry, on your website you have. Yeah, there's an investor section. Gotcha. It doesn't get released to the ASX. Yes. No, it does.
No, it does. It mirrors what's on the ASX.
Right.
So we-
I mean, I think you've got some good news to share really.
Oh, definitely.
If you do it in the annual report, I think that's a little bit.
We've had a very welcome set of questions from those around the table. Thank you. I'll come back. Is there any from the video conference at all? Don't be shy. Come on in.
Andrew. Can you hear me? This is Andrew Tan here.
Andrew, go for it. Yeah.
G'day. Just firstly, thanks, Ottmar, for his long years of service to the board and shareholders. That's been well appreciated. Thanks, Ottmar. Just had a question about the 24/7 services kind of progress. You know, you're integrating it, doing a 24/7 style service and investing that capability. How's that going? Like, has that been slower than expected?
No, no. The it's progressing according to expectations at the moment. The project requires the recruitment of some key people, like a project lead, a specialist in global cyber. We've put on a global head of HR. That's all happened. Actually the people that I just mentioned, the project lead, I think, is on his third visit to Europe with Shaun and Elissa, our HR as we speak. They're here there for two weeks. The working together to integrate the systems is proceeding and the design of interfaces and those sort of things has gone well. We have at least two. We've had an Australian in Europe for a while and has come back. We've got a European. The second one's arrived. Yep.
Who are working in the Adelaide office. We've transitioned some European customers across to the night shift in Australia, as I talked about well. It's going very well, Andrew, and in our report to shareholders for the half year results, we'll provide another update.
I guess from an external viewpoint, how do we gauge the success of that strategy? Like, what are the milestones that we should be looking for?
You know, we've said that it would be 18-24 months as a program. We expect to see some results in the first 12 months. Yes, the first six months would be that release to shareholders in February, and we'll give you a substantial update at that point in time.
Okay. I guess with Europe opening up again and business returning to normal, I noticed in one of the press releases that you signed 25 new logos since 1 July. I guess how is the market? Is it opening up? Are vendors or energy participants now looking for software again?
It's opening up reasonably well, Andrew. One of the things that the managers noted, that management noted in the E-world energy & water in June. You know, that's an enormous conference. You get, you know, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people turning up. They noticed this year that all of the Europeans attended, but none of the Americans. You know, attendance was something like 80% of what it would be in a full year. It is opening up, but it's gonna take a little while. Certainly the sales processes and the strategic sales processes are going well. The Contigo people are very pleased with the way that is all going.
Sorry, I'm just jumping around here. I think I read in your address that some of your large corporates are now using your 24/7 service. Is that incremental or is that just more that they're getting service from Europe rather than Australia for those night shifts now?
There are some very large customers that we have in Australia that we also have in Europe who have 24/7 operations now. Several of those in Europe and in Australia are discussing with us our doing their out-of-hour service. That sale hasn't happened yet, but the discussions have certainly gone very, very well.
Okay. That would be incremental work if you do succeed there?
Yes.
Just lastly from me, I guess the Australian market, you know, you typically have done one-two large projects each year. Last year, you know, it was a bit of a lull on that.
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah, what's the pipeline looking in Australia for large projects?
If Dan was here, I'd get him to answer that.
Andrew Bonwick, if you like, shall I answer that?
Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. Hi, Andrew. The pipeline's good. At this stage, we are in the process of trying to land some of these fish. The pipeline is as we expect it to be. It's just a matter of well, especially with larger clients, it takes a bit of time to get them over the line. You know, the extended procurement process, and it always has been. It really is a matter of just making the timing is more or less in their hands than in ours, whereas smaller clients, as you know, they can move a bit quicker. We're working on it and of course, by the time February comes along, we'll be able to provide additional information.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Andrew.
Any other questions from the video floor?
Thank you, Andrew. Given we've got Clayton in attendance, whether anyone's got questions for the auditor.
As well. Yep. Yep.
Any other questions from the physical floor? No. Okay. If there are no further questions, then I will close the meeting. We have traditionally had very, very short meetings, and this meeting has gone for 45 minutes, which is nearly twice what we would normally have, because of the questions. Thank you very much for the questions that have been asked, and I will close the meeting. Thank you.