Thank you very much, Sam. Thank you for joining us this morning. Between Dean and I, we're quite pleased to step you through the full year FY25 results and an update as to what the business is focused in for FY26. We always like to just recap for anyone who is new to our business or new to our story, like who is LGI? LGI is a domestic leader in the recovery of biogas from landfill sites and the subsequent conversion of the biogas into three main segments between our infrastructure and management stream of revenue, which is fee-based work for private landfill operators, for council landfill operators as well. We have our carbon abatement section where we derive ACCUs, or Australian Carbon Credit Units. We also have our energy segment, which is currently a core area of our growth and strategy where a lot of our CapEx is going.
You'll see through our update today across all segments, we're talking through growth and strategically growing these segments of the business. Starting off with our highlights for FY25, pleasingly, we have had a very strong EBITDA growth compared to FY24, where it's increased by 14%. That's actually at the upper end of the guidance range that we put into the market through the year as well. We're really quite pleased with that result. We've been able to increase the operating cash flow through the business as well. That's up 24% compared to the same reporting period. That's as a function of how we've transacted our ACCU bank that we were holding on balance sheet. Importantly, we've done this to help fund the growth and the capital that we've been deploying back into the business as well.
The capital level of investment across the business reached over $18 million for last financial year. That was achieved through a combination of the free cash flows, about $9.2 million, and by drawing down from our debt facility, about $9.4 million. All in, we've also signed six contracts across the financial year. Five of these provide LGI with long-term biogas rights to keep growing and establishing even more biogas into the future. Really excitingly also is a first for us, a standalone battery project that we're looking to develop with Waste Asset Management Corporation, that's a state-owned corporation in New South Wales. Looking more now in the operations from FY25, our team have had a stellar year on safety. We've actually had zero lost time injuries across the year, and that compared to two in the prior year of FY2024.
We've achieved a record rate of biogas recovery, of energy creation, and ACCU creation as well across all of those metrics. We're very pleased. All while the maintenance of our equipment and what our asset team are actually managing to achieve is at record levels of availability. Our generators achieved an availability rate of 98%, which is an increase from last year from 97%. It's well above our target of 95% also. This has all come together to help see our revenue increase. Importantly as well, we've kept a lid on our operations and maintenance costs because as net revenue has grown by 10%, our O&M and our costs to run the business have only increased by 5%. We've maintained that discipline across the business around cost control.
Really excitingly to talk about growth overall in the portfolio, we've achieved a 43% increase in our operating MW capacity across the year. That was largely driven by the upgrade to our Canberra site with two more MW coming online, and also the commissioning of our Sydney facility at Eastern Creek with Bingo. That has helped us have a nice uplift at the very back half of the second part of the financial year. We're now in a really strong position for FY2026 because we'll get the full run rate of those assets in this year also. What's also been worthy of calling out is just the efforts from our biogas team. While we've been upgrading power stations and developing a brand new one at Eastern Creek, we've successfully installed a range of new facilities for flares and upgraded a site as well.
We've brought online our flaring site at ESC. We've also upgraded Tumut, New South Wales, Grafton, we'll talk to in more detail shortly. These collectively have also helped increase the ACCU creation for the year. Again, that puts us in a nice strong position for FY2026. Bringing all this together, what we're really pleased to also announce is the extension of our contracted development pipeline, which now increases from 47 MW to 56 with the inclusion of the Bellrose Battery Project that I'll bring you through in more detail. For those who were either part of our Investor Day in April last year or simply following us remotely, the waterfall chart on the left-hand side would look familiar. We found this to be a really effective means to help everyone understand in what way the business is seeking to grow, and in particular, the energy segment for LGI.
Today's update, what we're pleased to bring to the market is both an update of what we have achieved through FY2025. That's that 43% increase in our operating MW capacity from the MW being at Mugger Lane, the new power station in Sydney. Collectively, that's a nice healthy increase across FY2025. It's the exciting news around the Bellrose contract, which adds on to this development pipeline. This brings the total up to 56 MW that we're seeking to develop over the near term. There are some updates there on the chart too, where we've removed the project for Dakaben, and I'm happy to talk in more detail through the Q&A. There are also just some subtle changes to the project sizing as a function of how the manufacturers of the batteries are now sizing those products as well.
We've just decided to provide a clear update of what that development pipeline looks like. That will be a core focus of our discussion today. The fact that our pipeline of sites or portfolios continue to increase meant that the chart we used to use here or the map was getting quite busy. We've opted for a table format. The main points of update here are the new sites that we've signed being with Jandaoe and Warwick, the Bellrose Battery Project, Grafton, Lithgow, and Taree. There's also another site which we have access to, which is in Tongkurrie, another Midcoast council site. Tongkurrie is currently going through a feasibility assessment. Depending on how that shakes out, it'll be whether or not we include it on this as a development site in the future as well.
As of where we stand today, we've got 34 contracted sites, nine of which are power stations and 16 producing carbon credits.
Over to Dean.
Terrific. I'll cover off the profit and profitability. As Jarryd mentioned, we've hit new high levels for our gas flows, MW hours, and ACCUs. As a result, that flowed directly into our revenue. There's been a 10% increase in our revenue. The focus on managing our costs, as Jared also called out, has meant that our EBITDA actually grew by 14%, which was a great result. We did commission the two MW at Mugger Lane, and we commissioned the four MW at Eastern Creek. As a result, some depreciable assets moved from our work in progress, capital work in progress, into our depreciable assets section. Therefore, our depreciation has actually stepped up. You can see that in the chart there. The EBIT has actually increased 10%. We're pretty pleased with that. That effectively means all of that revenue increase has dropped down into the EBIT line.
There's been an increase in our interest expense. That increase in interest expense is as a result of increasing our debt facility to build out that capital program. You can see that come through as well. What's pleasing to note is that the EBITDA and EBIT margins have either been increased or maintained. That just proves out the business model that we have in terms of how we manage our revenue and how we manage our costs. We're very, very pleased that we've been able to maintain those margins. In fact, the EBITDA margin grew 3%, which is a fantastic result. Looking at our revenue specifically, the revenue skewed a little bit towards the ACCUs in this particular financial year. There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, we had more ACCUs.
I've got a chart later which shows the pricing throughout the last 12 months, and it's remained relatively steady. It's traded within a band of $35- $40. With that steady ACCU price and with us actually creating more ACCUs, we can see that ACCUs has actually grown as a function across our revenue. The realized electricity price has actually been a little bit lower than it was in FY2024. That realized electricity price being a blend of both our contracted price and the spot price and also our behind-the-meter prices. Focusing on that electricity segment, first of all, you can see that the MW hours have grown and therefore the LGCs have grown. The actual volume has grown 10%, sorry, 14% and 13% respectively. That's very pleasing as well. We actually achieved that blended electricity price of $121 a MW hour for FY25. We're really happy with that price.
The LGC price we achieved was $35.88. They're both just a tickle above where the market prices are. What we've also shown you at the bottom of this slide is the chart which shows you a year's worth of electricity price history. You can see that volatility over the last 12 months is continuing to be a feature of the electricity pricing market. The forward prices, which on average, average across the next forward period, $100 for Queensland and approximately $120 for New South Wales. Here is the carbon abatement segment. As I said, the electricity, sorry, the ACCU price has been pretty stable across the year. There was a bit of an increase in the price as we led up to Christmas. There was some, what we believe, some buying activity from safeguard mechanism compliant organizations that sort of forced that price up a little bit.
As that compliance period sort of, well, they filled their compliance requirements, we saw the price come off. There hasn't been much volatility in price at all across the last 12 months, which is actually pretty pleasing to see, to see that price being steady for the last couple of months. With the infrastructure construction segment, what we've been doing is chasing the gas. Jared talked about the fact that we're at a new high level mark for the gas flows that we achieved for the year. All of the focus on our own sites to increase the gas flow on the sites where we have rights to the gas has actually meant we've actually had a little bit less time to focus on infrastructure construction.
Having said that, we still managed to get $1.6 million worth of infrastructure construction work done within the last financial year, which was a good result. It is a little bit down on last year, but mainly because we've been chasing the gas. We're okay with that as an outcome. With the balance sheet, there's about three things to note on the balance sheet. First of all, the property, plant, and equipment's increased. You can see the healthy increase in property, plant, and equipment. That's as we've commissioned those power stations and invested in those assets. There's been a slight decrease in the holding of ACCUs. Our ACCUs, we actually lightened off that holding, turned them into cash, and that helped fund some of the CapEx, which was by design quite deliberately done.
The other thing is you can see that the debt's increased as we've built out that capital program as well. Cash flow, the revenue pretty much drops into the cash flow line. The operating cash flow has actually gone up 24%. That's a great result. We've actually managed to increase our cash conversion. Increasing the cash conversion, part of that is part of the ACCU conversion from the holding of ACCUs into cash. That's what's happening there. Here's capital expenditure. This is a new chart. We haven't shown this chart before, but I think it's a valuable chart to include in our presentation deck. You can see from this chart, there's a few things to focus on here. First of all, the sustaining CapEx, which is that light blue, is pretty consistent year on year. That sustaining CapEx being maintenance of our plant and equipment. That has been quite consistent.
The next thing to look at here is our pipework installation CapEx. You can see quite the large increase in FY2025. The bulk of that large increase, or the single largest piece of that increase, is actually the work we were doing at Eastern Creek in Sydney at the Sydney site. We're actually quite happy to increase our gas flow construction work. Increasing that gas flow construction work actually has two benefits. First of all, on sites where we get ACCUs, it actually means we get more gas flow and more ACCUs. On sites where we've got generation, it also means we've got more generation, more gas flow available for generation. We get that availability up, as Jared mentioned, the very high availability. You can see the project CapEx is actually pretty consistent over the last couple of years. It took over $13 million in both years.
The bulk of that CapEx across the two years is both the Canberra facility and the Eastern Creek facility in Sydney. Over to Jared for the operational performance.
Thanks, Dean. Really looking at the increases in our biogas recovery, just touching back to this point that Dean made, the investment we've made in pipework and extending our gas fields is bearing fruit. It's not just through us securing new sites and new access to biogas, but also tapping into the existing contract portfolio and really lifting up the recovered rates of biogas as being key across this last 12-month period. The sites in particular that have received a lot of time and attention, being the Canberra site at Mugger Lane, the Sydney site being Eastern Creek, are crucial to seeing the gas flow come up so that we really unlock the full value of those MW worth of generators that we have on site.
The extra sites being Tumut, Hawkesbury, Gatton, Coventry, all receiving upgrades as well, which has helped lift the portfolio's level to a record high, which is wonderful. With more biogas available and also with diligent planning to our maintenance by our asset team, that actually achieves this really high availability, but also an increase in our overall MW hour creation of electricity. That's a great result again that we've not only on the availability front been able to lift that even higher because of our team's efforts around parts and planning of maintenance and being very strategic as to when they conduct crucial maintenance work, but also just being opportunistic around timing in the market. Maintenance is best done during the day when we've typically got low or negative pricing.
That means the equipment's available and ready for when the market requires the capacity and the pricing signals are there to actually incentivize generation as well. We're also happy to update that the results for the Bunyear Battery site here in Southeast Queensland. It's achieved a 70% uplift in its price that it's realizing with the use of this battery system, the hybrid battery system. That's really, again, further providing us with a great deal of confidence of the rollout of batteries for the portfolio also. With more biogas recovery, we have had an increase in our ACCUs that we've been able to create also, both again from a function of the work we're doing in our existing sites, but also bringing into the portfolio some new carbon abatement projects. That's been great to see the ACCU creation increase.
One small call out for these numbers as well is that in signing our Clarence Valley contract, the site at Grafton, there was a one-off parcel of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) that were transacted as part of that deal. The 493,000 credits includes that. Even still, the increase in biogas does translate into an increase in ACCU creation as well. Coming down into projects, very pleased to say that the team's done an amazing job across the last 12 months preparing and augmenting our facility in Canberra for the significant upgrade. The reason why we've opted to provide a photo of it here with the call out is it is actually a very photogenic facility. It looks fantastic now that we've got all the generators on site. As of June, the batteries have been delivered. We've been able to negotiate an early delivery with the supplier being Tesla.
The team had also navigated the challenges through the year of upgrading what was a brownfield site because taking an existing facility and upgrading it is actually more challenging than building a brand new site because you're trying to mitigate the disruption to existing operations and continue the revenue creation. Across this last 12-month period, we not only landed and connected and commissioned the two new generators, but it also required us to recommission the existing four units while we were bringing them across to the new 20 MW connection. This was still achieved across the year where we were able to increase the amount of energy that we created from the site while we did this prep work for the batteries.
As I said earlier, the fact that we have Canberra now operating with six MW, it's in a very solid position for FY2026 because we will get a full run rate of that benefit through the year. With all the items that are within LGI Limited's control, we're still progressing in whatever pace we can to bring the batteries online. The best estimate we have is that they'll likely come through to operation in the second half of FY2026. Another significant project that we're really pleased with through the year was the Sydney Eastern Creek site. Remembering that we signed and announced this deal with Bingo back in February of last calendar year, effectively 15 months from us signing to having the facility online and operating is something we're really quite pleased with.
It's a demonstration of our team's ability to execute on what they said they can do and what we promised the market as well. The fact that we brought the facility online in the month of May was also very well placed for us because there was actually quite a bit of price activity in the wholesale market of New South Wales at the time. Both with the four MW being available at the Eastern Creek site in Sydney and the additional two MW that we had at our Canberra facility, that extra capacity was quite valuable to us and it flowed through positively in the financials. The site there, brand new facility, also required 41,000 cubic meters of earth to be moved. That's about 16 or 18 Olympic swimming pools' worth of dirt. It was quite a bit of material.
Brand new generators, we've got space there for more generators if the gas is actually available as we further increase the gas system. We're already looking at what can be done for the next phase of that project by working with Bingo as well. While the projects team have been very busy on those two key power stations, it's also worth just calling out the efforts from our projects and our operations team to bring online three new carbon abatement projects. The one up the top there being with Clarence Valley Council in Grafton, we're really chuffed at how we were able to help move a long-term client from what was previously a monthly O&M arrangement, us providing services to them, and transitioning that site across to a long-term contract, which we won through a competitive tender process. We won the contract in December.
We did talk to it very briefly at the half-year update. Our team was able to mobilize the site by February, and the work that we completed by April of this year already resulted in a 120% increase in the amount of gas that we recovered from the facility, which again is really quite telling of our team's skill and experience in just tapping in and chasing that biogas. Very similar story with the site at Tumut as well. We worked with the client, which is a private landfill operator, to help them through a process of installing the initial system, completing more upgrades, and we've already been able to increase the recovered biogas by over 110%. We've already replaced the flare with a larger capacity. We have even more abatement capacity there on site. Lastly, to the site at the very bottom is ESC.
I think it's just worth acknowledging with this site, while it is very small and it's at the very lower end of our carbon abatement projects, it just gives you a demonstration of the scalability of our business and that we can operate from these very small regional waste facilities right through to the larger, more metropolitan ones as well. It was great to see the ESC site come online also this year. Now looking a little bit more forward and in the energy segment, we're really excited to talk now publicly about the arrangement that we've come to agree with Waste Asset Management Corporation, or WAMC. WAMC are a state-owned corporation which holds the responsibility for managing a number of very large and old landfills in and around Sydney and some parts of New South Wales as well.
The particular site here is the Bellrose landfill in which this agreement sits with. Essentially, the site had a landfill gas collection system for some years, and that operator had made a choice to move on from the facility. WAMC were looking at what ways they could potentially unlock some value from it, and they ran a public tender process which LGI participated in and ultimately won. What we now have the exclusive rights to look at is the development for LGI to design, build, and operate a battery energy system. That's a 12 MW, 24 MW hour battery that we're proposing. We're really excited about this because it aligns very tightly with our strategy to expand our flexible energy segment assets. This will help us have even further protection from downside pricing in the wholesale market while also enhancing the upside potential of the energy that we create.
The beauty of the national electricity market is that we can deploy an asset like this at Bellrose, and we can actually, through the network itself, effectively transfer the energy that we have generated from one location into the battery, or we could choose to charge the battery from the wholesale pricing that's available as well. There's an even greater level of flexibility, and it will add to more of our revenue potential in the future when it comes online. Again, talking to the scale of our business, while we're very excited about adding more to our MW development pipeline, we're equally excited to bring online even more carbon projects. Across the year, there were five new long-term biogas rights contracts that we signed through FY25. They're listed there on the left, and they range from Queensland through New South Wales.
Ultimately, work has already commenced here in our workshop in Eagle Farm, and you can see the flares that we've begun fabricating. The team are well prepared to strategically bring online these new sites throughout FY26. Collectively, these sites will help even further increase the ACCUs that we create across FY26 as well. What we'd like to just highlight also within the market is the energy market. It's continuing to evolve. It's still evolving in a way that we have for some years been observing, and we're quite comfortable with the evolution, and some might say the volatility. There are two main distinct points with these charts that we've got in front of you today. Starting off with the chart in the top right, we've presented that material before showing the typical 24-hour price curve for Queensland and New South Wales.
What we've continued to see is the daytime part of the 24-hour curve coming down and the peaks in the afternoon and the morning being more pronounced, which is a key driver of why we're looking to enhance our portfolio with batteries to give us this flexibility. Looking at the charts on the left-hand side, what we're trying to demonstrate to you here is the way that we actually see the opportunity in the energy market is around the separation between the top 25% quartile and the bottom 25% quartile of that pricing in the day. If you look at a battery-only installation, as we are now happy to talk about for Bellrose, the way in which those assets will operate is they'll naturally charge at the low price points and they'll discharge at the higher price points.
What you can see on the charts that we've got on the left is the Queensland and the New South Wales market pricing of those quartiles, and it's actually been trending up, indicating that there is a greater spread or a separation between those quartiles day on day over time, which is a key area of interest for us around how we see ourselves well placed to facilitate the energy transition and deploy assets into that part of the market. The chart here is just a further explanation around the extension of our project pipeline. There's significant growth that we have in front of us out through FY26 by bringing on the batteries in Mugger Lane.
As I said, all going to plan, those batteries will be operating in the second half of this financial year, and that will really see us lift the earning potential from our Canberra facility up in a similar way that we've been able to achieve with our Bunyear site. Equally exciting is the news around the Bellrose project. It is placed on the waterfall chart now to help you understand over time how we see our portfolio growing and reaching out to this 56 MW capacity that we're talking about. While we will be working through the process of obtaining the necessary approvals for Bellrose and the connection agreement, we'll naturally keep the market informed of our progress there. We're anticipating that that project will come through to fruition over the next two financial years' time, essentially.
The chart down the very bottom is just as a recap to say that our focus is not solely on the energy section of our business. We actively look to grow the contracts we have, which we get the biogas long-term rights. This chart helps show that. We've increased the number of sites we have under management year on year for the last few years now, and it's sitting at a CAGR of around 6%. That's very strategic because we're quite keen to keep a diversified revenue base. We see that there's immense opportunities in locking down the long-term biogas rights on even some of these smaller sites because they may actually grow into larger opportunities or possibly even power generation in future years also. Exciting to talk about for FY26 is that LGI is expecting to grow at FY26 EBITDA by between 25% and 30% compared to FY25.
This is subject to market dynamics, operational, and project timing issues outside of the company's control. We're quite confident in our ability to do this because we have a number of assets that were brought online through FY25, and we've talked about those today being predominantly the extension to the Canberra facility, also the new site in Sydney being Eastern Creek, that in FY26, we now have the full run rate for those generation assets, while we've also been able to bring online a number of new carbon abatement projects producing even more ACCUs. We're fairly well positioned for FY26. We see that momentum being immensely powerful for us continuing forward as we roll out even more MW in our development pipeline as well. Thanks, Sam. We're happy to go to Q&A.
Thanks, Jarryd. Thanks, Dean. As a reminder to the audience, you may submit questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Alternatively, for analysts who wish to ask a verbal question, you can please raise your hand and we'll endeavor to get to you shortly. There have been a few submitted questions throughout the call and prior, so we'll kick off with them. Firstly, just on Bellrose, congratulations on the update. Can you provide any additional details on the conditions precedent and the expected timeline for satisfaction?
No problem. I'll take that question. The very nature of the arrangement is that we will look to obtain development approval and a connection agreement before LGI commits to it being a bona fide project. That just allowed for both parties to be comfortable that there wouldn't be a situation that the project would have to proceed if either unrealistic development conditions were imposed on the project or the connection costs were prohibitive and therefore made the project not viable. With both of those in mind, we see that being very reasonable, very fair between the two parties as a way of saying that those had to fall into the right position for the project to proceed. We're fairly well advanced with our preparation work on both of those fronts.
In fact, the reason why we were quite keen to incorporate the update in our full year update to the market is so that we can now actually submit the development approval, progress the connection agreement because that's actually when they become discoverable in the public realm. That's high on our projects team radar to start work ASAP.
Great, thank you. How would you expect the five new landfill gas rights contracts to impact your ACCU creations in FY2026?
Yeah, I'll take that one. Looking at our existing portfolio, if you take out the generation sites that also produce ACCUs, if you actually remove them from the calculation, we produce about on average 1,000 ACCUs a month per site. You'd be looking at around those five sites that just averages out to about 60,000 additional ACCUs. That'll be in the first year. With ACCU methodologies looking to change, it might be that those ACCUs, there's not as many into the future. Certainly looking back at our portfolio, it's averaging around that 1,000 a month per site.
Okay, great, thank you. Just on capacity, with the pipeline now 56 MW, what are the risks to commissioning Mugger Lane batteries and the newly announced contracted site within this financial year?
I'll take that one. A project of the size of both the Mugger Lane, or the Canberra site, sorry, and Bellrose is that you are required to interact with AEMO because it's greater than 5 MW in capacity. We're well across that, and LGI had started the process almost two years ago interacting with AEMO to explain to them our development plans, understand what their expectations and requirements are. We're well advanced in working with AEMO to obtain the approval to operate the batteries. AEMO is an independent body. They're also very busy with a whole heap of projects that are being brought online in the NEM.
We are being very, very clear and very transparent by saying that while the batteries are at our Canberra site and we've done as much as we can do within our control, there are factors beyond our control, which is largely the timing of which AEMO issues the approval. That's expected to occur at some point through the later part of the second half at this point in time. Similarly, for Bellrose, we've taken a fairly conservative view around the overall process of getting the approval from the council, from a planning authority perspective, the network connection approval, but then also it requires an interaction with AEMO for the operation of the batteries.
We've factored that into the overall project development, and that's how we've described it as, you know, in two or more years' time that that project will likely come into fruition on the basis that those CPs are met. That's the nature of those projects. If we were able to develop many more projects below the 5 MW threshold, you do eliminate some of that complexity by not needing to deal with AEMO, but you still have town planning and you still have network-related approval processes as well.
Great, thank you. Could you please elaborate on the 1% decline in electricity revenue? Was this just a function of market electricity pricing? Is there any way you can mitigate this variability going forward?
Yeah, I'll take that one. The short answer to that question is yes. Clearly, we had a slight increase in volume, which was great. The fact that it declined is actually price-related. The price we achieve, or the blended price we achieve, actually has three components to it. We have a hedge book, and there's pricing associated with the hedge position we have. There are some MW exposed to the spot market. We actually are exposed to that spot market. Then there's some MW that are actually sold back to behind the meter, back to the person on which site we're sitting. There are actually three components that go into forming that price, that blended price that you see that we've achieved.
Certainly, as the market is evolving, it is coming back to those long-term averages, which we're seeing is about $100 in Queensland and about $120 in New South Wales. To the extent that we are getting hedges in that price range, and to the extent that we're getting off-take arrangements in those price ranges, that's going to be typical in the norm. The spot market, as we actually add more batteries into our portfolio and the fleet has more batteries in it, you'll see us actually separate a little bit out from that average. Obviously, those batteries allow us to actually put our electricity into the higher price brackets within the 24-hour cycle. As we add more batteries, we'll probably see us step up from the averages. Certainly, as the last 12 months have shown, we're drifting back towards those averages across time.
Okay, great. Just one more submitted question before we move to the verbals. It looks like 3 MW have come out of the pipeline, given that it's increased by net 9 MW, but Bellrose is 12 MW. Is there any additional detail you can provide here around Dakaben and other projects?
Certainly. We took the opportunity to update the project development waterfall chart, which all in shows changes both from adding in Bellrose, as we've talked through, but also removing Dakaben as a strategic project there. The reasons behind this are that as we progressed through looking at any one project, perhaps it was cost-related or perhaps even it was simply the returns that that project was actually going to generate simply didn't warrant us looking specifically at an extra MW of landfill gas field generation at Dakaben relative to the returns that we could earn for the same capital being put into another project. We are quite disciplined in how we analyze, scrutinize the deployment of capital. We're not necessarily looking to simply expand MW at any cost. That is why ultimately we decided to remove Dakaben from the list for now.
It's also as a function of how things are changing because the initial thoughts around upgrading Dakaben to add the extra MW was as a function of gas flows. Instead, what we're now looking at is how might the site be well placed to consider both more MW of generation and batteries. Because we are very early on in that discovery process and understanding of the costs, that's the reason why the project's being dropped off our, what we were calling high conviction, but it's our development pipeline. The other change that's worth understanding is the battery manufacturer has actually changed the specifications of the batteries. When we first announced the 47 MW pipeline, the Canberra site was due to have 14 MW, 28 MW hours of battery capacity. As a function of the battery, the megapack itself is now just a different spec from factory.
We've actually seen a cost reduction per MW hour, which is to our advantage, but the simple unit metrics are slightly different. We've updated that in that slide or in the waterfall chart, both for the Canberra site and also reflecting it of what we expect to order for the Bellrose project as well.
Okay, great, thank you. Just as a reminder, analysts can ask questions via raising their hand. We'll move over to Jared at Morgan's. Jared, please unmute your line and go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Can you hear me okay?
We can hear you.
Awesome. Congratulations on a great result. Just a couple on the commodity side of things. I mean, just on LGCs, it kind of looks like you're over-earning maybe a little bit in this half, or maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but it looks like a relatively high price achieved on the LGCs in the half just gone, sort of relative to where that market's been trending. I was just wondering if you can maybe sort of touch on how you're sort of thinking about that segment. I understand it's a small part of the business, but you know, it looks like a pretty solid result there.
Yeah, cool. Thanks, Jared, for the question. First things first, we've just flipped the slide pack over to our profitability drivers. This is a chart we've shown previously in previous decks. We popped it down in the appendix because we weren't particularly going to highlight this slide, but more than happy to talk to it in the context of your question. You can see for the first couple of years, what we do here is when we listed in 2022, we've sort of taken that as base 100, and then we've actually tracked our EBITDA versus some of the underlying commodity prices. You can see for the first two years of our listing, those commodity prices were actually, those two that we've shown here were both declining, yet our profitability increased. In the last 12 months, we've seen those market, those commodity prices increase a little bit, but that's fine.
Our EBITDA is increasing as well. You can see here that this is showing, again, it's confirmation of our business model that, you know, we can achieve growth in our EBITDA despite the fact some of the underlying commodity prices are actually going the other direction. Now, specifically to your question, yeah, the LGCs are a calendar annual product. We actually had a hedge position that finished in December 2024, sorry. It was in the first half of the financial year. We had a new contract start in January 2025, which is the second half of this financial year that we're reporting on. That second contract actually had a more favorable price than the original contract. Yeah, you're quite right. Our second half is higher than our first half as a result of stepping into a new hedge position. We're pretty pleased with that.
It meant that the sort of average price across the year, I think, was $35.88 in terms of an average price, which is just a tickle above sort of what the average was for LGCs, which I think was $34 across the 12 months. We've actually achieved a slight advantage in the market on LGCs based on that hedge position that began in January.
Maybe just to follow up to that, sorry, Dean, but I guess, can I just maybe understand what portion of the book now of LGCs would be sort of hedged relative to spot exposed? I just guess sort of looking at the futures markets for some of those products, they've sort of come back quite a bit. I'm just trying to understand maybe some of the moving parts going forward.
Yeah, going forward, that hedge position stays in place for FY2026 for the full FY. It's approximately 75% of our volume.
Okay, great. Appreciate that. Maybe just on ACCU, sorry, while I'm on the commodities, I'll stick to the two questions, but just on the ACCU side of things as well, you did sort of call out the integrity issues there as well, but clearly getting some strong volume growth. I guess maybe if you could just give a bit more detail in terms of what potential volume impacts your portfolio of sites, maybe relative to some of the relative sort of the baselines that are sort of required. I'm just trying to understand any sort of volume risk that there might be in terms of your existing portfolio.
That's a good question, Jared. We've been very active in this review, which was initiated by the federal government. The fact that they now have actually published a paper on it, which we've further responded to, there's a copy of our response on our website. It's also available through the DECU website as well. Yes, overall, we are supportive of the approach to improving the integrity, the consistency in baselines, and having a method where historic projects are also re-equated in the new method is definitely what we are supportive of. There will be an impact in the first year when the method comes into effect to our existing sites.
What we're actively doing now and have been for some time is we're looking to bring in new sites and further increase the overall volume of gas that we recover from our sites to try and counteract whatever initial impact there may be in the creation of ACCUs from our facilities. We are quite comfortable with this. We see this as just a way of progressing the industry as a whole towards an approach where you have sustained genuine abatement that's achieved above and beyond the default levels. That's really what the reward of the ACCU is supposed to represent. We're aligned with that outcome. It's then on the business to manage the progression of that in time to try and smooth that out. We're quite comfortable.
Perfect. Thanks, guys. Just one more, if I could, just on the CapEx piece. I mean, I think previously you got it maybe a couple of results ago about through this period, you know, 70% relative to sales. I mean, sort of been a bit below that since then. I'm just, and you know, a few projects have been knocked on the head. I'm just trying to understand sort of the outlook now. We've just got the one other contracted site and the new battery wind to go. On the basis that, you know, a lot of the Mugger Lane spend has been already played through, I assume, and we're just waiting on final approvals before that gets installed.
Yeah, cool. What I can talk to is we've got committed CapEx for the next 12 months of approximately $8 to $9 million, which we're already aware of, and we've already committed to actually spend those money. In terms of CapEx beyond that for the next 12 months, it depends a little bit on how we go with some of the approvals and the timing of those. We do expect to receive those approvals, and the sooner we receive them, the sooner we'll activate the CapEx program on any particular site. Bellrose is an example of that. As soon as we get the appropriate approvals, we'll begin putting together an order for the batteries. It may well be that we go with Tesla again. We're obviously familiar with the product. We'll get that priced up, and then we'll put that order in.
We're not going to be in a position to do that until we've got the appropriate approvals. It depends a little bit on the timing as to when we actually progress that CapEx schedule against some of these other CapEx programs. The expectation is that we would work towards building out both those two new projects within the next two to three years.
Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the questions.
All right, thanks, Jared. Next question comes from Abe at Jaws. Abe, please unmute your line and go ahead.
Hi, Jared. Hi, Dean. Good result. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, I can. Thanks.
Cool. Thanks, guys. Just on Bellrose, great announcement. I'm just curious whether there is a flowing or a generation opportunity on site that you guys can tender for in conjunction, I guess, besides the battery opportunity you have.
Yeah, it's a really good question, Abe. There is obviously, by very nature, who the landfill owner is, being Waste Asset Management Corporation. They own the landfill. There is an existing landfill gas system at the Bellrose site, which is currently being operated and serviced by another landfill gas provider. That's all a part of what the nature of our offer was when we first interacted with Waste Asset Management Corporation for the Bellrose piece. We came in very clear initially saying, this is the opportunity we see with the battery, but also complementing that is our core business in recovering biogas. That's just a very honest ongoing conversation we're having with Waste Asset Management Corporation. Our focus is the development of the battery first and foremost, but if we're able to also unlock any value in our adjacent businesses or business activity, we're certainly open to these discussions.
Can you give a guide as to what CapEx will be associated with the 12 MW of batteries? Would it be a similar quantum like Mugger Lane? Would it be $1 million per MW installation plus the battery purchase price?
The short answer is at this stage is no, not really comfortable to give guidance. The reason around that is actually the connection costs. We have experienced some quite varying connection costs on recent applications to distribution companies, varying from sort of $1 million to multiples of millions of dollars in terms of the actual connection costs. It really does depend on that, Abe, unfortunately. I'd love to be able to give you a number at this stage, but because we're actually beginning that journey on our connection application, I can't really nail down a CapEx number for you at the moment. I'm sorry, but as soon as we are able to nail down a CapEx number, we'll certainly let the market know.
What's quite comforting at the moment, though, is we have observed battery prices continuing to decrease on a per MW, per MW hour basis. The team are just very active in working with the networks around all the various ways that we can possibly get the poles and wires part of the project up as well. In some instances, you can engage your own contractor. In other instances, you have to actually engage directly with the network authority. Sometimes even when they tell you you have to use the network authority, we try and challenge them and we try and keep them honest with market pricing as well. That's just our approach, to try and get the best outcome for LGI.
Okay, understood. Just one more if I may, before jumping in the queue, on slide 29, I suppose the waterfall and getting to your 56 MW capacity, that 11 MW contracted site, two questions. Is that narrow, firstly, and does that include any of the new contracted sites you have, I guess, under feasibility study?
It's a good question, Abe. It does not include any of those newly signed sites that are under feasibility. We kept the contracted site reference because that was consistent with our investor day back in April of 2024. You can look through the broader set of materials that we've put out today. You would notice that we have actually provided an update on our contract that we have with Shoalhaven Council for the Narrow site, in that if we are to develop a power station at that facility, we actually have access to a longer contract term, being another 25 years. That's actually a key point. This comes back to the point that Dean Wilkinson made around connection costs have been moving around. In some instances, they've been quite high.
What we discovered in our early development proposals for Narrow was the cost to connect was substantially higher than we had ever budgeted or forecast. It needed us to go back and work with the council at what was available, what would help this project actually work. It's quite crucial for it to have a longer contract term so that we can obviously get a return on our investment and the project works for us and that it also works for the landfill owner. It's great that we now have the commercial framework that allows us to now be a bit more comfortable to proceed further. As we lock down a price for the connection and we have a bit more certainty around the timeframes, I think at that point we'd be happy to name the site as Narrow.
The concept of keeping the waterfall chart with contracted site was just for consistency to what we put out in the market back last year.
Yeah, perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Abe.
Thanks, Abe. A couple more submitted questions. Dean, can you talk to the uplift in D&A you expect in FY2026, given the commissioning of projects in the latter part of FY2025?
Okay, so the uplift will incorporate a couple of things. The uplift will not only be that we have the increased run rate for revenue for Bingo, we'll actually have 12 months' worth of depreciation for Bingo as well. Oh, sorry, for Sydney, Eastern Creek. As a result, yes, there will be an increase in depreciation as having 12 months' worth of depreciation on that site. The same for the Mugger Lane site, the Canberra site. We had approximately six months' worth of depreciation for that. We're going to actually have 12 months' worth of depreciation for the extra two MW there. The actual battery that's going in at Mugger Lane, we're expecting that to be, as Jared said, in the second half of this financial year.
As a result, we will be moving it from our CapEx WIP into our depreciable assets towards the back end of the financial year. Probably we'll have a minor impact in terms of uplift on depreciation. What will have much more of a significant uplift on depreciation is the fact we'll have a full 12 months' worth of Eastern Creek, Sydney sitting in that depreciation number. There will be a step up in FY2026 as a result of that.
Okay, great, thank you. Just on the Sydney, Eastern Creek site, any additional color you can share post the commissioning around performance, particularly in the last couple of months?
Yeah, we've been averaging from a generation perspective between 3 and 4 MW' worth of generation per hour across the 24-hour price point. The reason why I say it's been averaging between that is we have actually been discovering, since we brought the facility on in May, the proportion of energy which Bingo consumes and then the proportion of the energy which is then surplus and traded into the market. We're optimizing the surplus energy above Bingo's needs as to how much of that is actually traded into the wholesale market at the right price point for LGI. This again is just demonstrating both our business model and how dynamic we are, but also the dynamic team which operate these assets. That's how Bingo's been operating. We're quite pleased with it generally. We've already started looking at what might a further upgrade to that facility look like.
Is there the potential for more biogas, which would allow us to put more generators down? If the site simply doesn't have enough extra gas, we've already started looking at whether we could incorporate batteries.
Thank you. Just one final question. Can you please bridge how we go from 32 sites in FY2024 to 34 in FY2025, while also signing six new sites in FY2025, please?
Yes. That's based on the sort of contract timing and when we actually announced contract timing. Effectively, what happened at the beginning of FY25, way back in July of 2024, we actually were signing contracts in July. What we did is we actually announced them as part of our contract set at the end of last year. The 32 actually incorporated, I think it was actually four contracts that were actually signed very early in the financial year. Point taken. It looks like we've only increased by two, yet we're announcing six contracts. It's as we sign those contracts and as we make the announcements rather than pure financial year.
Yeah, great. I think that's clear. Thank you. I think that's it for the questions we have today. Should there be any follow-ups, please feel free to send through to either myself or Dean. With that, I'll just pass it back to Jared for any closing comments.
Thanks very much, Sam. Again, just recapping the great work from our team across FY2025. It's been fantastic to see a plan come to fruition, both which you can observe through our operational metrics, our safety and our quality, and our financial achievements. Also, just again emphasizing the strong position we're in for FY2026 because of the momentum that we've built from FY2025. It's going to be another great year for the business of continuing to extract more biogas, create more ACCUs, creating more renewable energy while we strategically look to grow the business even further with new sites and more flexible assets in the energy segment as well. We're pretty excited. Thanks for your time, everyone.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. That concludes today's session. Have a great day.