Hello. One second. Now we're ready to go. Welcome. My name is Ben Tranier, CEO of Energy One. With me today, I have Andrew Bonwick, Chairman of the Board, and Jason Mabee, the group CFO. Today, we're really delighted to be here.
We're going to present another year with strong results and highly strategic acquisitions that will really accelerate our ambitions. Quick housekeeping. We'll present the fiscal year 2026 results in details, but also, we wanted to keep some time at the end for the acquisition proposal, so we slightly shortened the deck compared to what we published on the ASX. The full details obviously are available on the ASX, and this way, we'll be able to keep some time for Q&A towards the end. Let's get started. Really excited.
When I joined Energy One two years ago, after I spent 20 years in the ETRM software industry, I was really on board with Energy One's strategy, and our vision remains the same. We want to be the world's leading provider for the energy trading software and services, and that's really key now as the CEO of the company. The vision remains, and that's really what we're working towards.
In terms of our value proposition, it's very strong and resonates deeply with all our customers. We not only provide broad and deep software solutions in market data, trading and risk management, workflows, which address pretty much all the challenges for our customers. We also provide highly specialized services, and that's really the combination of both that creates that unique value proposition. Please be on mute also if you don't have any questions. We'll keep the questions for the end.
Yes, that's what makes us truly unique and creates a big difference for our customers, that unique combination of highly specialized trading services, advisory, combined with our set of product and software products.
As part of our one-stop-shop strategy, we do not only focus on one area of the markets. Our true one-stop-shop really covers the full energy trading life cycle, so from the moment you trade to the moment you settle the trade, but we have actually a special focus on all the physical operations, and that's really all the shutdown trading, the balancing operation and the optimization, the dispatching of all the assets, the delivery of the energy for the grids through the scheduling operations.
All of that, really, it's not only the combination of all our products in a natively integrated platform, it's also the combination, as I said before, with specialized services, which are delivered actually by industry experts and by humans, and that's very important. That's really what our customers are looking for. Very happy with the Energy One-stop shop. It's a proven strategy, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that today.
Fiscal year 2026. If we look back at fiscal year 2026, it wasn't only a transition year where we built the foundation for the years ahead. It's also been a very strong growth year. Our recurring revenue is up 17%. It's high-quality revenue, and again, we validate our one-stop-shop strategy.
We organized the different regions and the different teams. Through all the efficiency, we really improved our margin with the PBT or underlying PBT at 51% and the underlying cash and EBITDA at 42%. We are really proud of this fiscal year. Again, it is another year of strong growth. It is really proof that the strategy is working. When I look at the fiscal year 2026, I am really proud of a few achievements, which I want to mention today. The one-stop-shop strategy is definitely validated. We have won key Tier 1 customers.
In the fiscal half year announcement in February, I announced two examples of this one-stop-shop customers. Today, I am going to announce two others just to keep proving that the strategy is really working.
We have also been working closely with our customers to build new solutions, and we are proud to also mention that we launched new products in this fiscal year. Products like Infuser Time Service Management Solutions, new solution for battery optimization called Virtual Towing, and it is also resonating well within the market.
One significant achievement was the ISO 27001 certification. It has been a key achievement for us. Cybersecurity, security is really important. It is not only important for us, but also for the markets. All the Tier 1 customers, they expect you to have such certifications, and that is just a validation of the strategy as we expand into bigger customers. We have been able to scale and restructure the leadership team, and again, I am going to talk a little bit more about that, but that is very important. We are now prepared for the next phase of growth within Energy One.
I have been focusing also on the commercial engine. That is really the foundation of the growth. The local expertise. As you know, we are operating from two regions, Europe and Australia. We have experts in both regions, but we collaborate, we share resources, we share expertise, and that is really how we capitalize on our global expertise. From a productivity perspective, Jason will quickly cover all the financial details, but we have an excellent cash discipline. We really have our expenditure under control.
We also, from an AI perspective, I do not want to talk too much about AI today, but we definitively move from exploring AI to adopting AI and industrializing AI, so it increases our productivity. Last but not least, as you have probably seen already, inorganic growth remains a large part of our strategy. I will say it is a disciplined approach. It is not at any cost.
It definitely needs to be accretive on day one for our shareholders, and it needs to accelerate our existing strategy. As you can imagine, I will talk more about inorganic growth at the end of that presentation. I am going to hand over to Jason now, and he is going to run you through the financial results.
Yeah, thanks, Ben. Must say it's a pleasure to be here presenting my first result and also first acquisition. It's been a pretty exciting first six weeks for me at Energy One. Ben's already touched on some of the key financials, but I'll just elaborate on a few metrics here for the scorecard.
The first thing, just starting with ARR, came in at AUD 64.6 million, which was up 13% on a constant currency basis, and that was in line with the guidance we provided back in May. I'll come back to ARR over the next couple of slides because I think we do appreciate that that was lower than we originally hoped to achieve during FY 2026. I'll touch on just some of the currency headwinds, as well as why we think we're really positioned well to deliver a strong result on the revenue side in FY 2027.
We're saying we're going to deliver at least 15% recurring revenue growth. Net revenue retention, 106%. That was in line with the guidance. We think it's a pretty strong result, but we also recognize there's some work to do on attrition, and I'll also come back to a slide on that shortly.
Ben did touch on cash EBITDA being very strong year-on-year result. The margin was 21% for the year. That was up 4%, but importantly, flagged the exit rate at the end of the year was 23%, and we're confident as we hit our numbers over the course of FY 2027 that we will hit that 30% run rate by the end of FY 2027. Rule of 40, I know everyone probably has a slightly different way of calculating it. We use recurring revenue and underlying EBITDA. We exceed it comfortably.
Recognizing if we use cash EBITDA, we're just a sliver under it this year, but confident with an improved result next year that we will be back above very shortly. The next slide, then come back to ARR. I think it's just worth talking a bit about why headline ARR is weaker than the 13% constant currency. What we've done here is we've taken the FY 2025 reported number, 60.4%, adjusted it back to June 2026 Forex rates. That makes it 57%.
You can see, on that basis, which is how we manage the business, constant currency is up 13%. The Forex impact down 5%, then up 13%. Hopefully, that sort of clarifies why the headline result wasn't as strong. I think it also highlights underlying momentum in the business is still pretty good.
I think that's borne out on the next slide, where we've had, as at June 30, AUD 5.1 million of contracted ARR and AUD 0.4 million very close to being contracted, and that's a 28% increase on what we had last year. That gives us, in our view, pretty strong momentum heading into the next part of the year. The pipeline measured to what we had in December 31 is up about 25%.
I think another important metric to call out is that the total size of that pipeline is about 3x the ARR growth we're hoping to achieve over the course of FY 2027. I think we're really well-positioned to hit that revenue target that we've given you. Just talking a bit about attrition. We recognize that it is an area that we'd like to improve on.
It was 5% in the first half of the year, a little higher to finish the whole year. We have highlighted here four customers that churned over the half. Together those four make about half of the full year's attrition amount. All of them left for various reasons. There is no sort of constant theme in it at all. What we are doing is making a really concerted effort to try to bring down attrition going forward.
Ben has hired a new Chief Revenue Officer who has come on board and had an excellent start to his tenure at EOL. We have also brought in a Head of Customer Success who will really be responsible, her and her team, for being across the customer relationship from the minute they join and in an ongoing basis as well. You can see on the side there, those are the key areas that that team will be focused on going forward. Did you want to add anything on the team?
No, I think you are spot on. We do not have. There is no fundamental issue, fundamental problems. It is multiple reasons. Obviously, the trading business, it is a complicated business, so people, they do not always succeed with their trading strategy, so we had a few customers where they have downsized their trading activities.
The gas industry in Australia, as you know, has been under pressure recently due to the gas prices, so it has a few impacts on certain customers. There is no structural issue with our customers or the market. It is just isolated cases, but nonetheless, we definitely are going to work closely on that and bring down the attrition to the levels we are comfortable.
Thanks, Ben. The last slide for me on this part, I just wanted to highlight here the great amount of operating leverage that we are seeing coming through the business. You can see that cash expenditure as a percent of revenue is coming down.
As we spoke about earlier, the cash EBITDA margins going up and we are spitting out a lot of free cash flow. I think that augurs well going forward. Probably worth, while we are talking cash flow, just to point out that we are electing not to pay a dividend this year. We are going to keep those funds for use in paying the transaction costs for the GMSL deal. We will come back to that a little bit later, though, as well. I think the key message here, the balance sheet is sitting in great shape going forward. I will hand back to Ben to talk a bit more about the business.
Thank you. What I wanted to do is to give a little bit of insights into the business. During, in the healthcare presentations, we actually talked about two new customers, and what I want to do in line with that presentation, I want to do the same this time, just talk about two different customers and two different cases, but very much aligned with our one-stop-shop strategy and it's another demonstration that our one-stop-shop strategy is definitely working.
In Australia, we have the case of one customer who are actually using only one of our products. They expanded their trading operations and rather than going to the market or looking at what to do, they directly engaged with us, and we discussed how we can support them with that expansion.
We not only provided more software, we also provided more services, and it resulted in an increase of ARR from AUD 100,000 to AUD 300,000. That's part of our customer centricity. We're really close from our customers, and when they want to expand, when they have an idea, when they have a new business strategy, they definitely talk to us first, and we have all the products and solutions to solve their problems.
In Europe, we've been focusing lately, not only, but as part of our strategy, on large industrials crossing the meter. Large industrials are launching a lot of energy transformation programs. They're accessing the market rather than just procuring the energy directly from the traditional energy supplier. They access the market, they trade themselves, they manage their energy exposure. In this case, it's a large industrial.
It's one of the largest steel producer in continental Europe. They recently crossed the meter to access trading markets, and they did not only need a market access solution, they really need a full natively integrated solution. It's not just one product. They wanted to translate their steel production forecast into trading profiles. They wanted to manage their plant operations. They wanted to manage their trades, deal with the workflows, compliance, send the nominations.
In a nutshell, they really needed the full scope of Energy One solutions, and that's where the one-stop-shop strategy is again revalidated. In this case, the new ARR is around half a million to start with. A gain, we have a lot of potential to expand, especially through balancing services and trading services as they start ramping up their trading operations.
In order to continue with our high growth trajectory, restructure, strengthen our management team. I have added a few truly recognized energy trading leaders in the last few months to really complete the existing team. I am fully confident we have the right team to execute on our strategy. We are fully prepared. I wanted to put some faces on top of the names so you know who is running the company.
Now let us have a look at the performance of the individual regions. Australia is very solid. Half year after half year, full year after full year, Australia continues to grow. It is not because we have a large part of the market share that it stops growing. We keep selling ETRM to the new entrants. With the batteries and all the new assets, we are still seeing new entrants in the Australian market, so it is not stopping, and we sell them our core ETRM. W e also expand into our customer base for our one-stop-shop strategy.
We get into new emerging markets like batteries, or energy storage. That is really key because it is a blueprint for our global expansion, but we also have the ability to really up-sales and cross-sales our products within our customer base. 15% revenue growth, 10% ARR. Again, we had a few delays on recognizing or billing the ARR, but as Jason mentioned, we have a strong tailwind with AUD 5.1 million ARR already contracted. In a nutshell, that is Australia, very solid, continues to grow. Same expectation for the upcoming years, so it is not stopping.
In term of Europe, we finished fiscal year 2026 with timing delays, as you already know, but we are seeing a very strong demand. We continue to scale, have now established a very solid lead generation functions together with our new chief revenue officer. We signed multiple Tier 1 customers, one-stop shop.
Again, even if it delays a little bit the billing of the ARR, then it is really a great win because it strengthens our position in that market. The reorganization is fully completed, so we should also see higher efficiency in this upcoming year. Really excited. Strong year for Europe, strong year for Australia. When we look ahead, what we are seeing is really the market is growing. The switcheroo market is growing. The target market is increasing. The expectation over the next three years is really to almost double the renewable capacity.
Big expansion of full adoption of the battery storage, with 4x expected in the next three years globally, so it is not only Australia, it is also obviously Europe. With the adoption of the algo trading and automated trading, the intraday trade volumes are really exploding, and we are expecting 5x in the next three years. It was already growing exponentially in the past few years. When you start bringing trading volumes, obviously you increase the need for trading solut ions.
The way we also looked at our market size is we have our core market, which is all the utilities, integrated utilities, trading firms, the usual players, generations, or the Gentailers of this world. This market is also growing. We see new traders joining the market every month, but we also see additional complexity. With higher volatilities, they need more system, more advanced and sophisticated solutions.
For example, with the expansion of the trading hours in Europe, they also need more services. Our core market is growing. The cross-meter expansion is about all these large consumers who are traditionally sitting behind the meter and procuring energy from utilities. We are seeing them crossing the meter and joining the energy trading markets. The example of the customer I have just presented a few slides before, it is a good example. It is a large consumer crossing the meter and really to increase our market size.
Last but not least, the energy markets. The energy market is not becoming simpler. It is actually increasing in complexity. We are seeing new molecules with carbon capture storage, CO2, being very real. We expect hydrogen to pick up in the next couple of years. It is a little bit early now, but we definitely expect it to come.
We are also seeing new business models, so the famous DERMS, so the decentralized energy management systems, also called VPP in Europe, virtual trading parties, DSOs in Germany. They are joining the markets. They have different set of business processes and problems, dynamic optimization of their demand. Again, it is increasing the market size, and I think that is a very positive message on that slide.
We align our go-to-market strategies and product roadmaps, with the market increase and with the market dynamics. We stay close from our customers. We work together to better understand their challenges, and we are really focused on four core go-to-market strategy. We target asset optimization, the asset optimization vertical, with a different set of products. We provide energy trading suite for people who want to go and start trading.
We have solution already ready for the new molecules, and we actually have quite a few successes in this new vertical. We continue pushing for the industrial and the integrated solution. We are really fully aligned with the market expansion. That is really the key message. I am talking about roadmap, innovation, staying aligned, but I couldn't do that without mentioning AI and the AI transformation.
In the last 12 months, we truly embraced AI, but again, not at any cost and always in a very controlled way with strong governance, and that is very important. We started with a small group, within Energy One, through a discovery phase. Spent a couple of months really playing with AI, trying to use it as a human collaboration. We train our staff.
We engage with five experts since we started providing that training to our staff, producing line of code, so basically as an extended capability of our development team. We went for a lessons learned analysis, and we selected four pilots. We call it the targeted programs. We looked at technology upgrades. We started another one to fully refresh our user experience in a couple of our products.
We used one pilot to develop a completely new product to solve the very specific problems in the industry, and we also used one of the pilots to increase our QA automation, so the code coverage. We finalized it, or we are about to finalize the results. Analyzing the results and the goal for the fiscal year 2027 is really to scale, fully adopt AI, and we set some targets in terms of AI adoption.
We want to deliver faster, 40% faster, and we want to deliver the higher code quality. Now, again, it's not at any cost. We're engaged with our customer. Our customer, they have a very strong expectation in terms of AI usage and AI deployment within our solution. We definitely engage with Tier 1 customers. Our CISO is in discussion with multiple of our customers to agree on how we're going to implement AI, the guardrails, the governance. We have security committees, and we're getting aligned with the new ISO certification around AI adoption for software company.
AI transformation, definitively, we see big benefits using AI, but we want to do it properly with a strong governance. This is really the engine which is behind our FY 2027 ambition. We want, and we definitively invested in customer excellence and sales capabilities in FY 2026.
It's now a commercial engine that works end to end. We hired new sales directors. We expanding our marketing capacity. We moved our business development in-house. Obviously, it takes a bit of time to see the results, but after 12 months now, we definitely can see that. It's a strong foundation for FY 2027. When we look at the metrics, without getting into too much detail, we are paying special attention to feed the demand on the top of this funnel for brand awareness, for providing more content on our websites, providing more content on LinkedIn.
We're building a very solid pipeline with very high-quality physical marketing plans. Pipeline increase, that's a result of the brand awareness and the lead generation. Sales excellence, we are using a very solid sales methodology. We're reducing the sales cycle, so increasing the conversion rates.
We maintain the win rates, faster conversions. I think as Jason mentioned earlier, the pipeline coverage is very, very strong, right? It's greater than 3x our FY 2027 targets. If I have to really summarize, we had a strong FY 2026 results, right? We revalidated our one-stop shop strategy. It's proven. It works. The value proposition resonates well within the markets.
The market is growing. The market is not stagnating. It's definitively growing, and we're seeing some emerging opportunities for the future, and I'm really excited about that. We have the right team, so we're positioned to scale. We're keeping our ambitions to reach close to 30% of cash EBITDA on a run rate basis at the end of FY 2027, and to continue growing our recurring revenue above 15% in this fiscal year.
As I wanted to keep a bit of time for the GMSL acquisition, because I'm really excited about that, we're going to jump straight into it. You will find more information on the presentation we posted on the ASX in the appendix, but it's the same, it's just a bit more details.
Now let's go directly into this GMSL announcement. One minute. Just one second. It's obvious, but I'm really, really pleased to announce the acquisition of GMSL. It's been a lot of effort. It really started a long time ago, and it's really part of our strategy, right? It's really a strategic milestone for me, and it's really how we're going to accelerate our strategy to become the leading European trading operation and software provider, and that's very important. It's a unique opportunity. The value it brings, as I said, it really accelerates our strategy.
It's not a new strategy. It's fully part of that strategy. We have the capability. We're going to expand the capability with more products, more services. We'll be able to reach a broader market because we'll have more specialized product and services. Then customer access. We're doubling the European customer base with this acquisition. It's quite unique and I'm really, really excited about that. If we look at the rationale, growth accelerations, again through expanding market access, broader capabilities for broader software, we'l l have the ability to accelerate growth.
We'll be the market leader in Europe for short-term energy trading operations, so market access, nomination, scheduling, and all the training and balancing services. Immediate revenue synergies. We don't have to wait. We'll have the ability to cross-sell and up-sales all our products from day one.
We have customer access, we'll have customer access in more than 300 customers to be able to go and up-sales. Also, if you remember, one of my last slides of the previous presentation, our commercial engine. We built the commercial engine, and it's now ready. We have all the tools, all the products, and all the processes to really execute on the revenue synergies.
On the operational leverage, that will give us immediate access to expert, and that's very important. We have growth ambition. We have a strategy. We'll be able to execute on our strategy without additional investments in people. We'll have all that access on day one. Last but not least, we'll welcome one of the largest infrastructure owner in Europe as a shareholder and strategic partner, and that's very important.
That would unlock plenty of opportunities, and we can discuss that a little bit later. I t's one of the key rationale for the strategy, for the acquisition too. In terms of the key terms, shareholder value impact, what you will get out of it.
First of all, it's a very accretive deal on day one. 35% EPS accretion on a pro forma basis. We'll be doubling our market share on day one. We'll increase our focus on Europe, and as you could have seen in my leadership team slides, most of the ELT team is actually based in Europe, that will increase our focus in Europe. We'll be having about 30% of market share in Europe, and we'll have the right focus in Europe. Then a lot of potential synergy benefits, again, that we can quickly realize in the first 18 months, and I'll cover that.
In term of cost, the estimated value or the implied value of GMSL, slightly below AUD 100 million. The shares on issue will be about 7 million shares, would result in 9.4 EBITDA multiple, and Fluxys post-transaction will have an 18.26% ownership in EOL as a strategic shareholder and strategic partner. Energy One combined, this is actually where one plus one is not equals two. One plus one is greater than two.
GMSL has a large base or large Tier 1 customer base. Blue-chip customers will have immediate access to these Tier 1 customers. With a combination of Energy One and GMSL, we have a broader software and services coverage we'll be able to expand. We'll reinforce our strategy and our one-stop shop value proposition with software and services.
We'll have the strategic alignment with Fluxys, and that will unlock, as I said before, opportunities to get into new markets, new geographies, and also validate our industrial strategy. R eally exciting. I'm going to hand over to Jason, who's going to cover some of the financial aspects of the transaction.
Yeah. Thanks, Ben. I was really excited to join Energy One recently. Then when I started and saw what the guys have been working on, I became doubly as excited about the future because it really is transformational, and I think a great deal for us.
Touching on the financials a bit, I think a really impressive attribute of GMSL is just the high-quality, resilient revenue streams. It's around two-thirds weighted to 24/7 operational services and about a third to software. They don't sort of publish the exact same metrics that we do or look at things in the same way, but I think it's safe to say their recurring revenue is a fair bit higher than ours, sorry, percentage of total, which was 91% for us. These guys are in excess of that. Very diversified customer base.
You can see a couple of the pie charts there, but the top 50 customers cover around about 90%, and the largest customer, which is Fluxys, is around about 10% of total revenue. The CAGR has been 7% over the last few years, and I know some might say, well, that's kind of a lower growth trajectory than what EOL delivers. I think what's really important to note is that they haven't been a massively sales-focused organization previously. W e think once we put our sales engine behind it, and get those cross-sell opportunities, you'll really see that lift off.
I think that's borne in both the revenue synergy guidance that we've given, and then we're also saying that once the deal's fully integrated, post FY 2028, so starting from FY 2029, we believe we can deliver 15% plus recurring revenue growth off the combined base.
T hat confidence we can see that revenue growth lift for GMSL. Probably the other point you mentioned just on EBITDA, it's been very stable, that's for sure. You could also point out there you haven't seen a lot of operational leverage shine through. I think what I would say there is that GMSL has invested a lot in product capability, and certainly on the software side over the last few years, they've kind of reinvested in the business. Y ou haven't actually seen the fruits of that reinvestment come through in the leverage just yet.
I think they're on track to have that shine through going forward. I think certainly with us combined it'll really take off. Also worth pointing out that a lot of that investment they've made into their product hasn't been capitalized on the balance sheet at all.
I think also worth pointing out just their cash EBITDA margin is around 32%, so that is above the 30% that we are chasing over the next year. Then we put this slide in just to give you a snapshot of what the combined entity will look like. As Ben mentioned, if you look at just FY 2026 pro forma, so as if we own the business for the whole year with the share dilution, it is about 35% EPS accretive. I think important to flag a couple things on that fro nt.
One is that it does not include any purchase price acquisition-related amortization, but then it also does not include any synergies at all. I also mentioned they do not capitalize any of their development costs, whereas our policy is to. T hat is worth taking on board. That probably all is going to cover. Happy to take more questions later once we get to the Q&A. Back over to you, Ben.
Thank you, Jason. When I said it is a unique opportunity, it is actually truly a unique opportunity. It is a unique opportunity because we are talking about three parties aligned. It is not only two, it is actually three. I talked quite a lot about value creation, and I am sure you will have plenty of questions on value creation, which I am more than happy to answer.
Also to mention, GMSL is not a startup. GMSL is a very well-established company. They have been in the business for more than 20 years, and a lot of their employees have been within the company for a very long tenure, so they are truly experts in the industry, and that is very important. I am aware you may not have heard about them in Australia, but everyone knows about GMSL in Europe.
I actually worked as a partner with GMSL in my previous life, like pretty much everyone in the energy industry or European energy industry did. T hat is very important. Same with Fluxys. If you ask about Fluxys in Europe, everyone knows about them, and that is one of the key pipeline operator in the Benelux, so Belgium, Netherlands. You also have a lot of details on their website, and we also attach a presentation of Fluxys in the appendix.
I think that is why it is important. It is a three parties fully aligned. I cover the value creation, which is cross-sell, up-sells, and operational leverage opportunities. A ll of that is very real, and it will happen very soon after the completion.
What is quite unique is the combined strength, the B on that slide, Energy One will closely work and partner with Fluxys to identify and accelerate growth, to identify the opportunities and accelerate growth. It could be for recommendations, it could be by accessing new markets together, it could be by providing services or software one to each other. P lenty of opportunities to be unlocked through the partnership between Energy One and Fluxys.
Then ultimately, GMSL has been providing critical services to Fluxys for 20 years. GMSL will continue to provide these critical services to Fluxys affiliates. T hat is why it is a unique opportunity, and we are sharing the same objectives and the same ambitions. I am really excited about that. In terms of the synergies, obviously that is one of the questions.
Revenue synergies, we model it how we can actually apply our commercial engine to GMSL because GMSL again was really largely focused on providing services to Fluxys customers. We truly believe that with our commercial engine, we will be able to up-sell and cross-sell Energy One products into GMSL customer base and vice versa, GMSL products into Energy One customer base. We expect to realize in full the synergy by the end of fiscal year 2028.
In terms of operational synergies, as Jason mentioned, the focus has not been on operational efficiency, but we will definitively identify synergies through, first of all, expanding the margin, sharing common back office services, the IT contract, IT platforms, cloud providers, so infrastructures, our marketing spend for physical events, and how we invest in go-to-market investment.
A s part of our fiscal year 2027 budget and our expansion in terms of investing in more people and experts now will be able to use directly the experts and the people from both companies. T hat should also unlock operational synergies. Estimating one-off integration cost around AUD 2.5 million over two years, really to support the executions, the messaging, and to be able to extract all the revenue synergies. Key terms you want to cover it?
S ure. I think most of them were pretty well covered off earlier in the pack, but obviously, we intend to fund this through an all-scrip deal. Probably just flag that the AUD 5 million of transaction costs will be funding out of cash and a sliver of our debt facility.
Mentioned earlier that we will not pay a dividend, and so that at our 40% payout ratio we did last year, that would be just over AUD 3 million, so that will be used to help fund those transaction costs. The key conditions, be going to a shareholder vote. There will be notice of meetings sent out in the next 10 days and hoping to have that meeting by the end of September.
Fluxys will need FIRB approval to make the acquisition, and hard to say exactly when that will happen, but we are hoping by mid-November that we would have that solidified, and then targeting completion at the end of November. Probably all mentioned there.
Yeah. Just as summary of everything that was said, GMSL acquisition is a unique opportunity. It will accelerate our proven strategy, and that is why I wanted to start with our fiscal year results, because the strategy is already proven. It creates immediate value to shareholders, 35% pro forma EPS accretion, already identified synergies, EBITDA synergies that we are very comfortable with in terms of execution.
Strong focus on Europe. 70% of the combined revenue will come from Europe. A gain, I am truly excited about this opportunity. The last slide is just about timelines that Jason mentioned, so you shouldn't have any surprise. We announced today we will plan to dispatch the notice of meeting in the next 10 days, call for a vote end of September, and after receiving the FIRB approval, we will be issuing the shares. Thank you very much, and we will have 10 minutes for questions now.
Yeah. I will facilitate that. I am just going by order I have got here. F irst off, Cam from Canaccord, did you want to ask a question?
Yep. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Excellent. Hi, team. Well done for the result in GMSL. That was a bit of a surprise. Maybe if I can just, I think sort of interest in time, I'll probably just keep it to two, since I think we're running a bit long in the session. P erhaps just the first, just with your targets for the 15% recurring growth, and then also your 30% cash EBITDA, just given GMSL is such a big acquisition, can I just confirm those targets are both organic basis, just to clear that up?
Yeah. No, that's correct. The guidance, the 15% and the 30% are all relating to our existing business, not GMSL. Although we are saying that 2029 and beyond, that 15% sort of target applies to the broader business. Y ou're right, just organic for those first two.
Yeah. Cool. The other kind of major one I'm keen to ask is, I suppose when you look at the consolidation of both businesses and you think about that cross-sell opportunity together, perhaps one for you, Ben, is there any major platforms you see within the Energy One business that you could see that would really suit their in-customer base?
Yes. If you look at the platform from Energy One that we can expand into GMSL, that's the ETRM. T he Energy Trading and Risk Management. That's a unique software. There are a few providers in that space, and GMSL doesn't have ETRM, so that's the most obvious expansion. The other expansion will be algo trading. We do have an algo trading for the European markets and end market access, which is very complementary. They have very strong, we'll say, energy delivery solutions, but they have less focused on trading software. Energy Trading and Risk Management and algo trading.
Yeah. Actually, if I can just squeeze in one last one. As we sort of into August, I suppose you've put a pretty good bridge there, I think, around the ARR and then obviously the near circa AUD 5 million that's, I think been contracted but yet to bill. Could you just help people, I suppose, think about as much of that AUD 5 million started billing as we enter this first half? Is there still a little bit of a period to go? A bit of help there would be helpful for us all, I think.
Yeah, sure. Actually, some of it's already materialized. We're pretty proud with the start in July. We had a 3% increase, so actually if we'd have looked at July instead of June, then we'll be in a better position. That's a good start for fiscal year 2027.
I would say most of that revenue will come in, I would say the first, so that will be the third quarter of fiscal year 2027, so probably around January and February. That's when most of the project will go live. Especially in Europe, the go live are mostly aligned with the calendar year. If we're lucky, we can start the billing in December. If not, then that will start in January. I want to mention that we're talking about contracted ARR, so it's not an estimation.
It's on the contract and it's part of the ramp-up. As a start of the project, we start billing a percentage, let's say 20%. Then at completion, that's when we go out of the first phase, we go to 50%, and the second phase, let's say 100%. It really is a contracted amount.
I might just add to that, just to mention that our budget currently has relatively steady ARR growth over the course of the year. That might change as we move through the year. Just to flag that that results in us reaching our target. Given the growth this year was weighted to the first half of the year, you expect the opposite next year. The year-on-year growth rates will be a bit lower in the first half but then higher in the second half, still getting to where we need to get to.
That is more or less what I was asking as well. Thanks, Jason, and thanks guys again. Well done.
Thank you.
Thanks, Cam. I have Caleb up next.
Hey, guys. Congrats on the solid start to the year and the acquisition. I will keep it at two as well. Just on the pipeline being 3x , I guess, the ARR target, does that include the battery module being shipped to Europe in this financial year?
It's a mix, I would say not yet because that's in progress. Also, when I talk about the 3x coverage, I'm also talking about a qualified pipeline. Qualified by they have the budget, they have the authority, they have the timeline, and they have the need. It's a basic BANT qualification, but it's qualified pipeline. I think that's important to mention.
Yeah.
No, it doesn't include BESS yet. It's in discussion. We're seeing adoption in Australia, and now we're planning the expansion into Europe, but it's not part of the qualified pipeline yet.
Yeah, just provide some color on how much, I guess, BESS contributed to Australian growth over the past few halves, maybe?
It's increasing. In term of percentage, I will need to confirm that, but we'll need to confirm that. It's definitively growing, let's put it that way, and we're pretty exciting in the future. Now to see the exact growth, we'll need to get back to you on that.
Yeah.
Although we don't tend to disclose product by product-
Yeah.
-percentages.
Maybe just some color on the churn. Is that mostly in services or is it a bit of scheduling ETRM, or I guess, how should we think about, I guess, what product is getting churned the most?
It's a mix really. In term of the European customers don't sign the activities. They have multiple product and they don't sign the activities, so couple of products impacted. The second European customer, they got acquired by another company, and after two years, they integrated their ETRM. They integrated the ETRM into their ETRM. In Australia then, that was mainly on the gas services because obviously the impact of the gas price on industrial.
Yeah. Got you.
A gain, the gas services in Australia doesn't represent a large part of our revenue.
Yep. All right. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, Caleb. Evan, you're up next.
Yep. Thanks. Hopefully you can hear me. Just the recurring revenue growth target of 15% for 2027, could you also give some perspectives on the ARR growth for 2027 as well? Is it fair to assume that it should be above the recurring revenue growth, just take into account the already signed AUD 5.1 million of ARR, which is obviously pretty clearly a solid starting point?
Yeah, sure. What I can say is the target is 15% or more of recurring, but at this stage we expect to hit 15% or more on both total revenue and ARR as well.
Okay. Good one. Maybe just coming back to the customer attrition, please. It obviously looks like a big chunk of those were in-housing. Do you want to just speak to how you're managing that going forward? How you're trying to manage that in-house churn especially, please. Thanks.
There is nothing really I can do if a customer goes bankrupt or the trading strategy doesn't pay off as he expected. What I can do is enforce contracts and increase the renewable period and the term of the contract. I think it really helps to smooth the attrition. It's also getting closer to our customer. I think if we get closer to our customer, we have the opportunity to resell or revalidate or represent our value proposition, and I think that's key. The second aspect is also through upsells and cross-sells. The more products, the stickier our solution gets.
Okay. That is clear. I am just going to sneak one more in. You gave some comments around the low-hanging fruit for the revenue synergies, but when we think about some of the upside over the next two to three years, what products or modules really start to underpin more of, I guess, an upside case for that revenue synergy number that you are thinking of?
I think one of our strengths is actually we are diversified and we are not focusing only on one product. That is also how we are able to sustain our growth because there is always something happening in the energy markets, but we are positioned across multiple verticals, so it is not only one product.
In the, I would say, very near term, we will definitively see a lot of potential in the ETRM markets and the market access through algo trading. In the near future, it can change, and then that can become best in our ability to sell our Australian BESS solution. Through the workflow automation tool, also that we actually migrate it to a better technology and start bringing agenting options to it, then could also play a game in the next two years. The answer is, it is not a single product. It is right now for the near term, yes, we are identified as a few, but midterm and longer term, that is really the mix.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool. Thanks. Pass it on.
Thanks for that. John from Unify, you are up next.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions today. Congratulations, both of you, on presenting the full set of results. A couple from me, firstly, just on GMSL. The original inception of Energy One's business in Europe was obviously several versions of the energy space that you have consolidated. In Australia, you have a large exposure to gas. This business looks like pretty strong in gas. Can you talk about the existing Energy One business' exposure to gas versus electricity markets and GMSL and where that blends you out at versus Australia, for example?
Yeah. GMSL started with gas, and that is true. GMSL also pivoted to electricity about 10 years ago, so the exposure of GMSL is not gas as it started, but it is now a more balanced exposure across gas and electricity.
I think I will answer the question that I see on screen at the same time, if you compare it to our existing gas business called Axiz, GMSL is actually a bit different. GMSL is really focusing on services and specialized services, provide services on trading, balancing services, but also operating infrastructure. GMSL has the only license to actually operate some of the U.K. assets on behalf of customers. Even if you look it from above, you think, "Oh, it is two gas businesses." In reality, it is not.
The business in Belgium, Axiz, they actually also were providing a lot of services and solution to operate assets, so gas assets, but literally power plants and the power produced by the power plants. It goes into that direction.
On GMSL, it is more on providing highly specialized services to operate infrastructure, manage, for example, the LNG. Very strong with the LNG and the import of gas in Europe, which actually becoming increasingly relevant since Europe does not have any supply by pipeline from Russia anymore. I think it is different. GMSL, it is not gas only. They diversified the revenue from gas only to power about 10, 15 years ago.
Thanks. A couple more from me. This one-stop shop concept or where there's the real one-stop shop, like we've seen non-recurring revenues coming through, all the transactional sides across the group coming through pretty flat year-on-year. Just talk about the importance of services in driving that uptick in acceleration in ARR that you're seeing, because this business looks a little bit heavier in this side.
I think, services actually, I truly believe that services is going to play a very big part in the energy trading space in the future. The reason is everyone talks about AI and automation, but someone will have to monitor the assets. Someone will have to send the nominations. When something is going wrong, you need to have someone to operate a battery. If you go one step further, you need to have someone monitoring the nuclear plant.
In Fran ce, 70% of the electricity production is coming from nuclear plants, so you can't fully automate that. We're even seeing that from big Tier 1 customer. They're actually requiring more and more trading services and balancing services because they've automated most of it, but they still need someone to monitor and act, a human, when something goes wrong. Actually, I truly think that's going to play a big part of the expansion in the one-stop shop strategy.
Particularly if you get customers other than the traditional utilities that have done it all their lives.
Correct. That's absolutely right. When you have an industrial which is crossing the meter, to fully staff a 24-hour roster or shift, you need six, seven FTEs. That's a lot of cost, especially if you can automate most of it, but you still need to have someone available 24/7. The more, the smaller when you start having smaller participant crossing the meter, accessing the market, they still need to monitor the assets, dispatch the assets, and react to market conditions. That's truly the value that we're providing with these services and the acceleration with the GMSL acquisition.
Understand. It's an interesting concept, and you look like you're a bit ahead of your time. I'm just going to sneak one more in, probably for Jason Mabee. Underlying expenses in the second half decreased, and that's against a larger business there. Should we assume that that's a good run rate with some marginal increase to come into the second half? I think previous commentary has been, "We'll grow revenues at twice the rate of what we're growing costs." Is that a good base to take into next year? Data usually low into the first half. Just your comments there.
Yeah. If you look at the cost split, it was roughly equal, I think. Yeah, a bit lower in the second half. We did a lot of our hiring early, and so didn't have to add more to the FTEs in the second half. Yeah, I think going forward, I would say half of revenue is a reasonable sort of forecast for cash expenditure going forward. Thanks, John. I've got a few more questions. Claude Walker, you're up next.
Hi, Ben, Jason, and Andrew. Yeah, first just want to say thanks very much for adding the slide on page 13 on attrition. It's great to see the focus on that metric. It's a really important one. My question was first focusing on just the acquisition. I know you can't know what someone else is thinking, but do you think the vendors intend to hold all their EOL shares in the long term? Also, what kind of investors are they? You've got Fluxys, if I've understood correctly, are the majority, but you've also a few percent, like there'll be a couple of percent of the company held by other vendors, if I've understood correctly.
No, the discussion with Fluxys was around funding the acquisition. I don't see an organization the size of Fluxys having a specific interest in increasing or decreasing its shareholding. I think you would see that stay stable. Y es, we don't know what they're thinking.
Yeah.
That's certainly not the approach they've given. Yeah.
Cool. All right. Just also staying on the acquisition, given GMSL has a fair bit of exposure to the European gas market, I was just wondering, because the European gas market, in particular, can be disrupted from time to time, have big price fluctuations, does that create risks that earnings from GMSL are a bit hard to predict? Is it still fairly steady in terms of how much it earns year-on-year?
I am going to answer the first part. First of all, GMSL is not focusing on gas. Historically, it is coming from the gas business. GMSL is providing experience services and specialized services and software to power and gas.
Now, when you look at the history of the revenue, you can actually see that there is no disruption. When you look over the last five years, we had COVID, we had the Russian war with Ukraine, we had the pipeline which actually blew up in the North Sea. We had 50% of the LNG coming from the U.S. That is a lot of disruption for the gas markets. We also add all the electrifications in Europe. Still, GMSL revenue had been stable and growing.
Cool. All right. That is what I thought. I just wanted to probe that a little bit. Thanks a lot for the presentation and, yeah, all the comprehensive information in those slides.
Welcome. Thanks, Claude. Amelia, you are up next.
Awesome. Thanks, guys. Just a couple quick questions from me. The first one is, could you just do the bridge for us from the 23% exit cash EBITDA margin to the 30% in 2027, and just sort of the key levers to get from one to the other?
Yeah, sure. Just to clarify, the 30% is at a run rate by the end of the year. I f you were to look at the 23% run rate, put in the 15% revenue growth, and just think about the trajectory, you should get pretty close to that 30%, or you should get to the 30%. Our current budget basically has us getting there, if we flat-line revenue and put in that cost sort of, I am not going to call it guidance, we are not giving guidance on cost, but if you were to assume half growth of cash costs of revenue, you should be able to get pretty close to it.
Okay. A re you assuming that your costs remain? What kind of growth level in the cost base then are you budgeting for?
If you assume roughly half of revenue, you should get there.
Great. Thank you. That is helpful. On the net new installs, I think you ended the year at 443, which was slightly down on last year. Obviously, there is a churn element to there too, but if you calculate or approximate it out, you end up about, I think in the high teens, versus if we look at previous years, sort of in the 50s. That is just obviously approximating from the churn levels and the revenue growth. Is it sort of now you have got much larger customers and therefore you expect the number of installs that you are doing to be much lower, or is this year a little bit unusual?
I can drop a few numbers and then, Ben, you can do it. What I have seen is, yes, we are definitely getting higher value customers on board. If I look at the ARR per customer, that was up around 14% this year, and I think the ARR per new deal is even higher than that, like about two to three times that amount. D efinitely the transition to larger customers. Maybe you want to elaborate.
Yes, that is one of the key aspects, is we are actually signing bigger deals. Especially in Europe, we used to sign like small new entrants with like a few Gentailers, and now we are signing Tier 1 customers. O bviously, it has a big impact in revenue, but not a big impact in number of installs.
Great. Thank you. Last question, which this is a little bit cheeky, but Ben, obviously, you were running the European business and Europe sales later by history and experience. Do you feel like the sales team is at a point where they're up and running at full ramp yet since you've moved into the CEO role, or a bit of work to go to get that going with you out of the hands-on day-to-day?
I hired a new Chief Revenue Officer in June. I worked with him in the past. We worked in a global company. He's actually Australian, but he's been living in Europe for the last 15 years. We have the right team in place. We're strengthening the processes. As you could see, the lead generation is already starting to show results, so I'm really comfortable with the team now. We also hired a new Head of Sales in Australia. The team is where it needs to be, and the commercial engine is running almost full speed.
Perfect. Love to hear it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Amelia. Lucky last, we have Stephen Scott from Veritas. Go ahead, Stephen.
Good morning. I'm old enough, so I'm going to be cheeky. Update on volume. Can you say anything, or we're just waiting for process to play out? Thanks.
Look, there's nothing that I can do to control or influence a player like that. I think the role of the company is to deliver superb shareholder and customer value. I think that I can say that my observation is that the senior management of this company and the employees have kicked both of those out of the park, both with the organic activity this year and the GMSL acquisition they've been working on for the last couple of months.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Well, that's it for the Q&A. Really appreciate your time today. Sorry, Ben, you wanted to wrap up.
No, thank you.
If you have any follow-up questions, get them through , for two initially, and I know we're catching up with some of you later. A ppreciate your interest in Energy One.
Thank you very much. We're truly excited, both by the results, looking ahead for FY 2027, and obviously by this unique opportunity brought by GMSL acquisition.
Thank you all for taking the call. Thank you.