Confirm that you can hear me, please, somebody?
I hear you loud and clear, Jill.
Yep.
Okay, 11:00 on the dot. Thank you very much. Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining the first half of the FY2025 results presentation for Energy One Limited, just to make sure you're in the right meeting. I'm Shaun Ankers, the CEO. I'm joined by our Chairman, Andrew Bonwick, and our CFO, Guy Steel. We will go through the agenda of the presentation through the slides, and then we'll allow time for questions at the end. I'd like to point out that the meeting will be recorded, so if you don't wish to be recorded or identified, please email your questions through to Guy, guy.steel@energyone.com, or put them in the chat. Recording, please.
Done.
Thank you. First slide, please, Guy. I'll just go through the highlights. This has been logged on the ASX. You're welcome to download and look at it, but I'll just read through them. Very pleasingly, this first half was the best half in the history of the company on financial metrics, which I think is a firm validation of our approach and strategy. Even better, of course, it was organic. It was organic. I think we've really done well there, and hopefully you're pleased with this result. After our reorganisation and a period of market volatility, I certainly feel we're in a bit of clear air now and growing our business and the opportunity to capitalise on all of the efforts put in by a bunch of people. The results show that our recent efforts have been fruitful.
We've delivered a net 53 new installs in the last 12 months. As you can see from the financials, we'll go through it. Our ARR in January is up 18% on the last 12 months, and margins are up. Along the way, we've improved our processes. We've better engaged with our staff, something we're particularly proud about. Found better ways of working together, and all part of our reorganization and doing things a bit differently. We have definitely enhanced our cybersecurity and other risk management processes. I'm very pleased about that as well, and we can talk to that. We do continue to innovate. These improvements have not been made at the risk of innovation, with batteries, AI, and automated trading. We have further validated our one-stop shop approach and positioning.
Lastly, we're now an important and integral part of energy markets, both here and in Europe. The company has definitely arrived. We're now a minor software player. We're a key part of the market and the way it operates now. I'll hand over to Guy, if I may, to take us through the next couple of slides, which are more financial.
Thanks, Shaun. I will move through the financial slides relatively quickly. As you can see there, revenues increased 14%. Shaun did talk about the latest ARR number being at 18%, recurring revenue. What we've seen through the half is Australia has benefited from particularly high project revenues. As we talked about in the forecast at the full year result, the FY2024 result, broker has returned back to a more typical market. We would also note that the Australian software business has been working particularly hard on their pipeline, and that's really starting to bear fruit. The quality certainly has certainly increased from where it was 12 months ago. Europe continues to grow strongly, and the EasyOps product continues its preeminence as the number one product in its space in the market.
The U.K. business also has had a particularly good half, both in terms of customer acquisition and project work as a result of that, and also from existing customers. From an expenses perspective, yes, they were in absolute numbers were flat. If people recall, we did have a number of one-offs, which were called out last year in the half one 2024 result. Once you normalize for those, expenses are up 5%, employee expenses 8%. That is certainly within the range we have talked about in terms of growing our revenue and growing our expenses by a percentage of that. EBITDA margin in absolute terms doubled.
However, if you do normalise, it was up 6% to 26% from 20%, which was a very strong result and shows the ability of the business to scale, which I think is the most noteworthy outcome in the result when you look at both the earnings and the cash earnings as well on the flow through to cash and debt. On that point, you'll note that net debt down over AUD 8 million, half on half. Obviously, the capital raise back in 2024 was a key component of getting that debt down, but pleasingly, in the current half, we've also seen cash earnings drive that debt down. Just in terms of how the result impacted by various items, I'll talk to a couple of items here. As we move through the bridge, we've talked about the one-offs last year. We've talked about the revenue growth with our consultants number.
That's positively impacted by the global operations completing and the move of some of the roles that were part of that into permanent staff, such as the CISO, which has obviously been a very important part of our strategy, strengthening our cyber. You can see that as we move through the numbers. Obviously, lower debt flows straight into bank interest costs. On the IT and hosting side, hosting obviously impacted by customer growth. On IT, a couple of items of note. One is the security incident and event monitoring capability, 24x7 service that we've put in, deployed across all of Energy One's services. That's fully functional. It flows into the costs and also the investment we've made in internal systems as we globalize and corporatize. Just lastly, you'll note that Shaun talked to it before.
Yes, we are managing our costs quite tightly, but that does not mean we are not going to invest in opportunities for product and growth as they present themselves. A couple of key points I would make on what we call our SaaS metrics or the metrics that drive the business. Probably churn. It does move around a little bit, but it is always very low, slightly down on previous periods. That also flows through to the lifetime value of customers. When we do our LTV to CAC, that is also improved. The reason for that is obviously higher lifetime value of customers through lower churn. Also from an acquisition perspective, our acquisition, our sales and marketing costs are up slightly, but we actually acquired more accounts. The cost of acquisition goes down.
People will note from a net revenue retention perspective back in 2024 that, if people recall, was affected by a high CPI period, which flowed through into customer pricing. We were passing through CPI of 7-8%, whereas now we're at about 3%. That to a very large extent explains that result. I guess what you'd also look at is enterprise and SaaS enterprise business is pretty rock solid in terms of its retention and the way it flows through, whereas SaaS can be a bit more choppy just by nature of the size of the customers and the customer behavior. Moving down to gross revenue retention, for people who aren't familiar with that, it's simply opening ARR minus customers lost minus downsell. That's been pretty consistent.
As we have said, typically where the volatility is in our revenue retention is around upsell and CPI depending on the event. Just one final point on this slide before I hand back to Shaun to talk about the business strategy. In terms of gross margin cash, that is simply our margin less amortization. Just remember, it is a blended margin across our software offerings, our services offerings, and also our project implementation enhancement revenue. As we have said before, if you look at software in isolation, the margins are up around the 80% mark. I think at that point, I will hand back to Shaun to talk about the more forward-looking aspects of the presentation.
Thank you, Guy. Just take a moment to recap on our strategy, which is part of our vision to be the one-stop shop for wholesale energy and renewables market wide. We have got a strong, profitable, and stable business platform for growth now after several years. Our goal is to have and grow comprehensive coverage for both physical and contract energy. Depending on how you look at that, that is either short or medium-term markets. We have a one-stop shop, or as the modern phraseology would have it, it is a platform, a platform for customers to benefit from. For multiple customer types, that is who we are aiming at, diversification of customer type. We do have very good diversification, and there is a slide up the back if you want to look at that.
For both power, electricity, and for gas, and ancillary commodities such as certificates or fuels for both customers large and small. A comprehensive platform looking after all aspects of the deal lifecycle for customers large and small in multiple geographies. Additionally to that, we offer software plus tech-enabled services for customers who do not have the capability or the desire to self-staff 24/7 desks. Obviously, energy is a 24/7, never sleeps type business. You need to be awake or operating in a 24/7 world. We have been working on building global capability to service the increasingly global landscape. We have been strong regionally, and we are piling that into a global capability by market growth and be a partner eventually and ultimately for multinationals and new territories. We have talked about an example, which I will come to that a bit further on.
Again, we want to invest in new technologies and be at the forefront of the industry. We want to service our customers and help them to grow. Very important. Managing risk and opportunity in the energy markets is the key to success for customers. Of course, we assess there's a very large opportunity out there. We do have some slides I'll come to in a bit. Just back onto sort of the metrics briefly. Like a lot of companies in our space, we measure revenue per resource, and that grew 11% during the year for proxy for efficiency. As we can see, we're now at about AUD 300,000 per employee. That's Aussie dollars. We continue to grow that efficiency through the business through one way or another, be it automation or better organization and so on.
These slides, quite a bit of detail on these slides, which I won't ask you to go through with me, but welcome to have a read. Suffice to say that the markets are all about renewables into the future. This one's a very good chart because it just shows you this is the Australian market where all of the growth is coming from. It's in solar, wind, batteries going forward. Obviously, unless we see nuclear, which I seriously doubt, where the coal and traditional fuels are sort of in decline. Gas, of course, remains important to the market as a transition. The aim of our forecasting is that it's going to be relatively consistent through the next period of time, just about generation at least. I have a similar slide. I can take questions on that if you like, but I have similar slides for Europe.
Right now, this is a good couple of slides coming up. You can see the target. Despite all this talk of what's happening to renewables, they installed 70 gigawatts of renewables in 2023. Absolutely staggering result, much more installed generation than the entire Aussie market. These guys are taking it seriously. I'd imagine in the future, probably all the things that are happening, they'll continue to go down that road. They're forecasting 18% a year for wind and solar to non-rooftop solars, so it's on grid scale, 9%. They have short-term markets there intraday, which are much more liquid than ours for trading. Gas, obviously, still very pivotal with now LNG significantly entering the market. Multiple markets, multiple hubs. Again, our platform offers software and services to all of the players in our one-stop shop tagline.
This next slide just talks to the intraday traded volumes. They're exploding, right? This is one particular exchange, EPEX, is one of the older ones and one of the larger ones. That's 11.5 million trades a day going through EPEX at the moment. It's crazy. It just continues to grow. The market is increasingly sophisticated with algo trading now taking over from sort of, if you like, manual trading. As you can imagine, with that number of trades, you need to have a machine to help you. We have a minority share in the algo trading market, but we have a really good share in the physically scheduled part. There are great opportunities for us to cross-sell into that and to enhance algo trading so that we can give the customers both sides of the equation. Next slide, please, Guy.
This one, just again, you've seen the slide before, but it just covers the short-term exchange markets that we're working on right now. I think that slide is still true, although I think Spain's coming along a bit quicker. Good. Just come to the highlights. Going forward now, we're looking forward. The advantage is coming from our global capability business. I'll start to bear fruit. We've took numerous examples of shared resources across the teams. Marketing activity continues strongly. As I say, 42% increase in website hits. The website alone generates some 180 leads in the half. Again, we've got a global CRM now, part of our corporatising and beefing up our IT. Better data capture, we can get more granularity and look at it much better now. As we published in the 4D, pipeline value increased by 16% during the year, measured on ARR.
The market continues to grow. Our pipeline continues to grow. We intend on making the most of that. Cybersecurity have made terrific progress improving that. Of course, it's a constantly evolving landscape. We do have this 24/7 Security Operations Centre. That's human beings monitoring 24/7. It's called SOC. We'll expect to get ISO 27001 in this year. That will be a major differentiator going forward. I know we've invested a lot. I know that it's difficult to understand where that money goes sometimes, but where it goes into giving, quite apart from the cybersecurity for both us and our customers, it gives you a differentiator. It is a moat that other vendors have to cross. Smaller vendors do not always have the capability to do that.
The larger vendors like us will have the opportunity to acquire more prestigious accounts and more detailed accounts based on that. Our platform, our one-stop approach, is a differentiator against our more pure-play competitors. We have evidence this is resonating. For example, on customer, we provide the contract management software out of the U.K., PowerOps out of France, gas operations out of Belgium, and we do the night shift from Adelaide. Truly global. I do not think there is a single vendor in the entire world who could service that account in this way. Yep, those remain open to good acquisition opportunities should they arise. We continue to explore those, likewise for any other venture or partnership that may help develop the business. As we have said repeatedly, a continuous focus on margin expansion to accompany our efforts in growing revenue.
We continue to remain as disciplined as we can. Although I should point out the caveat from that is that we will, as we've said, we will continue to invest. We'll always do that. Margin growth is a philosophy, but investment is a necessity. We will continue to do those things. Okay, questions?
Balancing act.
It's a balancing act.
Balancing act.
Just in terms of questions, I did get some before the session, so I might deal with them first, and then we can deal with the questions that have been asked by people on the chat today. The first question was, can you please define cash EBITDA? Is it the statutory EBITDA less payment for software? I will not go through the full question, but just to note that in the appendix, the calculation is in there. That should answer that question. The ASX release says, as we have demonstrated, we expect to deliver organic recurring revenue growth in the range of 15%-20%+ per year. I know the reference to the plus sign after the 20%. What winds or factors could cause revenue growth to exceed 20%? Shaun will take that one.
Yep, good. Thank you. I think we've demonstrated with, I'd say, alacrity that we can grow at 15%. With current ARR growth for the month of January, it has us at 18%. Our aspiration is to grow as strongly as we can. Let's be clear about that. 20% is not out of reach. 20% plus. There's no defining thing I'll point to that says it's going to make a difference at that level. I could talk to a couple of things that are indicative of that. One thing is that as you get bigger, you get more noticed, and you get more access to, if you like, more opportunity so that that can pivot you. Also, the market is growing. The market grows, we are essentially part of that growth.
If the market kicks on, then there's no reason why we won't kick on either. We'll get our share of the accounts. Yeah, it's definitely aspirational to get up there. I don't think it's an outrageous ambition. It's something we aim towards, and we've been working towards for years. I think we've got a solid data set that shows that we can grow.
Thanks, Shaun. We'll now move to the online questions. First question is from Andrew. How do you look at revenue per employee? Is there potential to material increase from the AUD 300,000 per employee level, or will you need to employ more people for future revenue growth? I think, I mean, I will pass across to John. I think, yeah, in terms of our dialogue around revenue growth and expense growth and percentage thereof, it probably largely answers that question, I think. Shaun, your comments?
Yeah, so arithmetically, it's just revenue divided by employees, not contractors. We do use it as a loose guide for how we're progressing on efficiency. Obviously, I've talked about being in some clear air now. That's where we look at the next two or three years of this space that we're in. We're not looking a long way beyond that because the world changes. At some point, investment kicks in with these things as well. We are investing. That helps to improve your efficiency. If in X years, there's another little pivot involving some big level of investment, that would probably have a material change on it. Otherwise, it is more related to getting better at what we do and the way we organise ourselves.
Thanks, Shaun. Next question is from Ron. What gives you confidence in providing FY27 guidance? Have you factored in any large contract wins in order to achieve FY27 guidance?
We have not given guidance, Ron. Thanks for the question. That is not guidance. That is an aspiration for the business and a target. I often get asked, what is the shape of the business going to look like going forward? It is just not a guidance question. It is a, what are your plans for the business? This is an attempt to answer that question with giving, what are our aspirations and our goals for the business over the next few years? We still have to deliver. We still have to deliver. Of course, we still invest. This is what we are aiming towards for the next two or three years. That is the next period of time that I ask you to focus on. This is what our forecasting suggests we can get to.
I think you want your CEO to be ambitious, and I'm attempting to be that way. That's what we're aiming for.
The backup we have in the models that the management has provided meant the board is very comfortable putting out the sort of indicators of where the company is going, capable of.
No, there's no particular big one-offs in there either. This is all, this is a growth trajectory rather than a specific forecast.
There's a couple of questions from people who've got their hands up. I'll leave them to once we've been through the online questions, if that's all right. I think given timing, that shouldn't be a problem. The next question is, Software pee,r Hansen talked about the German market being on the cusp of energy transition. How do you see the opportunity in the German market for Energy One?
Germany is like a market within a market in some ways. In Europe, it is a big market. It is slightly separated from the rest of Europe in some way. I mean, it is integrated, obviously, but it is a sort of market within a market. That is probably the best way to put it. All these markets, whilst they are transnational, do have local features. Of course, Germany is a market that we all, all vendors will be taking an interest in, focusing on because of the size of it. Obviously, Hansen's offering is a little bit different to ours, addressing a slightly different segment. We have high hopes for Europe in general, and not just in the sort of traditional market that would include Germany, but also in the emerging markets because Europe just keeps getting bigger and heading east and heading south in terms of energy.
We want to focus on all of it.
Next question is from Stella. Question for 30% cash EBITDA margin target. What is your gross margin assumption to achieve that? Do you need acquisitions, new product development, innovations, or large project wins that may incur above business-as-usual cost step up? Again, I will go to Shaun in a second, but I think we've largely answered that from it does become a mathematical mechanical exercise in terms of if you, obviously, if you limit your staffing growth, that will flow through into margin as well. Yes, we would expect to increase our gross margin. As Shaun talked about, I mean, we've not factored in any specific acquisitions or new product development in that number.
Yeah, the word I'd use is trajectory, Stella, because that's what we're aiming for. It's nothing. Yes, there'll be stuff inside there, but it's where we're aiming towards with our revenue growth and our cost control. Rather than anything in particular or newsworthy, this is the pathway that we're working on for the next two or three years.
Of the next questions from Andrew, of the 23 new customer installs in FY 2025, what were the key products driving this success? I think I probably answered this question to a certain degree when I went through the financials and talked about the growth we're seeing in Europe, particularly EasyOps. I mean, if you look at in customer numbers, the EasyOps product will have higher customer numbers because it's a lower ticket size. It's not at the enterprise level. Whereas obviously, when you look at Australia and the U.K., where they're quite customers, higher dollar number. I think Shaun there probably.
Yeah, in terms of new installs, to take up Guy's point, the new installs are dominated by our sort of shorter-term trading products, more like perhaps SaaS-related, more lightweight. Two-thirds of the new installs will be in that area, and the rest will be in the more enterprise end. They do move along a higher clip. Largely, the ticket size is a little bit smaller. That just explains that's an example of where the market moves, and we move with it.
Next question is, is the growth in algo trading a risk or weakness to your manual trading? How are you addressing this?
Thank you. That's an excellent question.
That is an excellent question.
Thanks, Steve. Algo trading is all intraday short-term in that sense, right? Be it on the physical market here in the U.S., like for batteries, or in Europe in a more kind of on the exchanges. Those markets are now too fast for humans to get involved with. That trading aspect of kind of being in and out, you saw 11 million trades a day just on one exchange in smaller intervals. That is very much a machine-led activity. What we do on our 24/7 is not that. What we do is more scheduling of assets and trading at a more contracts and sort of medium-term level, but also keeping the physical side of the market in balance, which is keeping the asset in the market, making sure that it is dispatched, making sure that the customer's making their expected revenues from it.
Whereas the algo trading is a particular type of high-frequency trading, we are, if you like, not trading in the market. We're operating the assets in the market. Hopefully, that's explained it, but it's an excellent question. Thank you.
If we were operating a wind farm, for example, what we'd do is we'd set the wind farm up at the start of the day to respond to anything that happened in the physical market. Back in the wind owner's office, there will be a whole lot of bright guys with screens that are algo trading the output of the wind farm and nibbling it backwards and forwards and those sort of things. They are quite separate activities. The guys back in the wind farm head office will be using our software to send their algo trade communications to the market quite often. We aim to provide a variety of products.
That's right. If you like, our humans be monitoring the machines. That's what we do. Next question.
Next question is from Stella. Previously, you noted FY2025 to spend $1 million on ISO. How much was that spent in half one? What are your main competitors? What are your main competitors' stage in achieving that?
I mean, I think in terms of the ISO spend in the business, we previously had the global operations project. Now it is more integrated with the operating teams. It is actually led by our CISO. It is a joint across cyber and ISO. In terms of spending, it would actually be quite difficult to pull it apart as to what is ISO-specific. What I would say in terms of the overall spending, it is consistent with what we have previously flagged investment.
Yeah, we're investing, obviously, in ISO with the staff on for cybersecurity. I think echoing what Guy said, those numbers are sort of absorbed into the management accounts. They're not separated out. They're obviously part of what we do going forward. In terms of what the competitors are doing, obviously, the big guys will have ISO. There's a lot of up-and-comers who don't. You want to make sure you're on the right side of history when it comes to ISO. That's what we're doing.
Next question is from Andrew. First half project was reasonably elevated at AUD 2.5 million year on year. What did the project work relate to? Do these projects go live in half one 2025, or will they go live in second half 2025? I think the project work, there's no one particular item. There's a number of drivers in there. All of the businesses are increased, including the EasyOps business, which charges a setup fee to customers, which falls in there. They have been working through their backlog a little bit, which has caught some of that. The other piece we talked about was broker recovering as well, which was worth about, I think, AUD 300,000 for the half compared to the prior period. It is no one particular items per se.
Thanks.
LTV to CAC is very solid. Is there scope to invest more in sales and marketing? I think is the balance of the question.
We did invest quite heavily in S&M in the last 12 months. In fact, it might even be a slide. It is certainly a slide from before. The last presentation, you're welcome to look at that. It is a highly specialised sales environment. There is obviously a limit to how much you can just throw resources at it. You have to have specialised people in it who are doing specialised things. Yes, there is always opportunity to tweak it and improve it. I think we've invested quite heavily in sales thus far in the last 12 months. As I said, you're welcome to look at the numbers. Again, we feel like we're in a position now where broadly, we're resourced and we're capable of doing things going forward and maximising our opportunity.
Of course, if the market starts to expand more or change in some way, or there's some enormous push towards fragmentation, then again, we'll just pivot. If it requires more sales resources, that's what we'll do.
Next question is from Stephen. Can you talk about how you compete versus the in-house development client teams, especially Germany?
I don't know whether or not this question is German-specific, although a lot of customers will have in-house. Not a lot. It's popular, especially larger customers might have an in-house team, or they've got a legacy system that they use and they maintain. The rationale generally for in-house is that they keep the IP themselves. There's this kind of notion that they do it, they do that, and they can control the IP, and you're not using the vendor IP. That's the sort of general rationale. It's not necessarily a cost thing. When you've got that, if they want to do it themselves, that's what they will do. Another example of where they come in-house might be more in if you're in the trading desk, if they get bigger and they want to build their own desk, you get that sometimes as well.
How we compete is that essentially, if you think about at a microeconomic level, a vendor system such as we've got here is essentially a co-op, an outsourced development. Instead of developing it yourself at $10, you outsource it to a vendor who's got 10 customers. The idea is, of course, to make $1 for that. Very simple macroeconomic example. What do we bring to the market? It's cost-effective solutions that also have inbuilt enhancements offered by other experiences with other customers. The vendors would pride themselves on having the latest functionality. The market changes. You don't have to build that or scramble to build that. I'll give you one example. I put it in the CEO report in Germany, the AS4, perhaps that's what you're referring to, Steven, the AS4 changes, which is a market communications protocol.
The German TSOs just said, "Right, you're all using this now." Everyone had to sort of play catch up. We were able to get ours up to speed ahead of that, just as we had done in prior years here with the five-minute market. Once you've done that, you've got this marketing opportunity that arises from because perhaps a customer might not have the desire or the intent to build it themselves. Yes, with a vendor model, you get that sort of best-of-breed story versus doing it yourself, where it's more about retaining your own IP.
As you would all well know, companies are not homogeneous entities. Quite often, our clients are the trading teams and the operating people. The IT sit in a back office over the back there somewhere. The operators, our clients, express often to me, and even in one of the largest energy companies in the world, he said that he likes using Energy One because if there is a change in the market, we have to deliver it on time because we have 40 people standing at the front using our software needing the change. Whereas if it was all done in-house, then he has to convince the IT group to, A, get it done on time, B, get it done on budget, and please, can we have it when the market changes? Our clients are different to the internal IT teams.
They really see the value of having an independent vendor.
Just in terms of people with their hands up, Caleb, I'll get you to ask your question first. Once Caleb's done, Claude, please follow Caleb.
Thanks, Guy. Just two questions, if I may. I think six months ago, you guys partnered with PowerBot for your algo trading solutions. Just maybe some color on how that partnership's going and the lessons you guys learned in the past six months and how that defines your strategy and exposure towards algo trading going forward.
PowerBot are an excellent company who provide nice technology. Integrating with them is very important because our customers might want to use them for one thing and use us for the other. PowerBot recently got acquired by a competitor of ours called Volue, which has obviously sort of changed the landscape slightly, I would imagine, going forward without any specific information about that. As you can imagine, we've obviously sort of reassessed what we need to do in response to that. There is no doubt that we continue to look forward for all kinds of partnerships like that and others that might value the business. Yeah, good company, PowerBot. We're a great company. I can assume working with them.
Sounds good. The second question I have is, I guess, batteries. That's quite topical at the moment and quite a lot of customers are implementing batteries. Just on your current budgeting, is R&D for batteries, I guess, towards that 30% aspiration cash EBITDA margins, is that well budgeted for, or do you see you guys, I guess, increasing R&D for that component quite a bit?
We have a runway for our capitalized, as you know, is proxy for innovation or R&D. That is running about 9% of revenue now. Obviously, that gives us a war chest for R&D and innovation, which we'll continue to do. We feel like we're making good progress with that. If there's another project that requires additional response, we will react to that. I said quite clearly in the CEO report that if we did something like that, then we would give ourselves a carve-out against that goal. Because whilst we're pressing towards increasing those margins, which as we should, at the end of the day, we're not going to do it at the expense of innovating for the future. At the moment, to answer your question as best I can, it's all included and we'll keep going as we are.
Thanks, guys.
Claude .
Hi, guys. My first question just relates to, I guess, what is the average tenure of employees at the moment and how many employees own a number of Energy One shares that's meaningful to them? I guess, what are your thoughts generally on the levels of morale and cohesion amongst the company and those kind of non-quantitative measures of the health of the company? What's the latest there? I know that you've gone through some ups and downs over the last couple of years. How's the employee base looking now? How aligned are they with shareholders?
It is a stated goal. It is almost a question for the Chairman. A stated goal of the company to make all our employees shareholders. That has been going on for several years. It is a program that we are particularly proud of because we can talk to employees as they are the shareholders of the company. Every year, we take advantage of a scheme. The Australian scheme, for example, they are allowed to give AUD 1,000 worth of free shares, tax-free shares, I mean, to the employees, and there will be no tax implications for them. We have taken up with Gusto that scheme and implemented it overseas as well on a proxy basis. We have performance rights where they are required for more manager-type people. It is actually actively a goal of ours to put shares in the pocket of people.
People who've been here for a while have actually amassed a decent amount. We are very proud of that scheme. I have nothing but good feedback on the way that that's gone. As for in general about, I can't answer the tenure thing without additional information for you. We do have a mix of long-serving employees. Our longest-serving employee has got sort of 20 years under the belt, 21 years now. One of the things we are very proud of in the last year, and I put it in my report, is that we've really refreshed our P&C. We've got a global head of P&C and a team working on it. We've improved communication and feedback. We have regular staff surveys. We focus greatly on what they ask us to do.
Particularly, we've relaunched, just about to relaunch a soft launch of professional training wherein the company's going to help our team members get career paths organized, maybe do some specialist training. I don't just mean sort of on what they're doing day to day, but market training or leadership training, any of those things to enable them to sort of have a career with us, not just a job. That is something we're really excited about. It's been well received. It is just part of just generally making the whole thing absolutely seamless going forward. Everyone feels like this is a great place to work. We improve our net promoter score. That is something we're working on as well. At some point in the future, we'll probably release some data to give you a feel for how we're going.
Also, Claude, in the incentive programs, a lot of them have equity weightings as well. Yeah, we're focused on getting everybody in the company to understand, as a shareholder, how the company does well.
Great. Thanks. My second question is a bit of a different tack. I guess now that the share price is better reflecting the quality of the business and management that we've got, it's obvious that fund managers who haven't had a look at the stock for the last two years are now very interested. I imagine they'll be in the ears of their broker mates and basically trying to get the company to raise capital for any reason. You guys are going to be getting a bunch of people telling you in your ear, "Raise capital, raise capital." Can the company assure us long-term shareholders that it will not raise capital unnecessarily?
If the company did decide to raise capital, and fair enough if you decide you need to, would you in that case please consider a tradable, renounceable rights offer to ensure that, I guess, the shameless guys, the shame guys that have come lately and have ignored the stock for years, that they do not get to buy stock at a discounted price now that they suddenly want it and they should have to pay the full price, the fair market price of what shareholders are willing to sell and not get any free kick, essentially?
I'll unpack several aspects of that question, Claude. Firstly, look at what we've done over 15 years, okay? We're very miserly with our stock. I think we floated with 20 million shares and we've got 31.2 million, what's this, 17 years later. And most of that extra went to vendors and people with a line of interest to the company. Yes, right? Look at what we do. The second one thing is, yes, people are always coming to us and saying, "Raise capital." Yes, there are people in the broking community that spruik the advantages of a war chest for acquisitions, okay? That's not consistent with what the board thinks is a good use of funds to just have lazy funds lying there and waiting for something to buy. No, we're not going to do that.
You'll notice that with the acquisitions where we've raised funds to fund the acquisition, we've looked at several different mechanisms. We've done SPPs, we've done placements, we've done bank debt. In each case where we need to raise money, we're trying to think about how do we maximize the value to our existing shareholders. If something like that happened in the future, we would do exactly the same thing again. What's the best optimum way to raise any funds that we need to buy something?
Okay. Thank you very much.
Does that answer the question, Claude?
Yeah, it does. It answers it in also a way that is very pleasing. Thank you very much to the entire leadership team for the continued demonstration of high integrity. I look forward to those many, many small-cap fund managers who realize they're underweight Energy One for the increasing panic for them to sit in and set in. Look, may it be another 10 years with you guys. We batted away the takeover, and we really did that because we want to be a part of this story as a multi-year compounder. Yeah, it's great news what you just said about being mightily with shares because that is just an absolutely key ingredient. Thanks for that.
Capital's very expensive, Claude.
Yeah. I think the other point from an accountant's perspective on that is we've got the cash flow to pay down the debt. Yeah, that takes care of the balance sheet.
Yeah. This is finally when we get to reap the reward of that extra sort of scary bit we took on when you took on the debt. I think your judgment in doing that has been vindicated with these results. Hopefully, we need a few more results to prove the point, I guess. It looks like now that the judgment that you made that the market was questioning a few years ago, it's now looking like that was the right judgment. Yeah, thanks, I guess.
Thank you.
Thank you. I think at this point, there's no more online questions. There is no more questions from people in the meeting unless I've missed any, which I don't believe. Unless I hear from anyone quite quickly, we may wrap it up there. Thank you all for attending. And Shaun, do you want to close with some final words?
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you everyone for attending. We've got quite a client.
Close to 100.
Close to 100 people online. I remember when we used to have two blokes and a dog. This has been really good.
They were both staff.
Thank you very much, everyone, for your continued interest in the company. We continue to do what we've always done, which is hopefully, as Claude said, act with integrity and just keep growing the business. That's what we'll continue to do. I'll see you on the next one. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you all.