Good morning and welcome to the 15th Annual General Meeting of NEXTDC Limited. My name is Doug Flynn and I'm the Chairman of NEXTDC. Thank you for attending and let me take a moment to outline today's proceedings. You'll have the opportunity to participate today irrespective of whether you are here in person or attending virtually. For those online, the platform will allow you to ask questions via the website and to vote using the electronic voting card.
Links to the online guide can be found in your AGM notice letter in the notice of meeting, or you can also go directly to the investor section of the NEXTDC website. A link can also be found in the portal you are now viewing. If we're experiencing any technical issues that have an impact on aligning the two audiences attending this meeting, I'll assess the circumstances and communicate with you further. I have been informed that a quorum is present. Accordingly, I declare the meeting open.
Let me introduce you to my fellow directors. Here with me in Sydney are Mr. Stuart Davis, Dr. Greg Clark, Ms. Jennifer Lambert, Mrs. Maria Leftakis, Mr. Steve Smith, Mrs. Debbie Page, AM, and Tuan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim. Also joining us via conference facility is Dr. Eileen Doyle. As you'll be aware from our notice of meeting, Mrs. Debbie Page and Mr. Ibrahim are joining us at the AGM as directors for the first time, and I extend them a warm welcome.
I would also like to recognize and sincerely thank Dr. Greg Clark and Ms. Jennifer Lambert, who are retiring from the board this year. They've given many years of service to NEXTDC and we're very grateful for the contribution to the company. Our CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Craig Scroggie is also in attendance today, together with our Company Secretary, Mr. Michael Helmer. On your screen, you'll also see our leadership team, and each of them are joining the AGM today.
Our CFO, Mr. Oskar Tomaszewski, will be managing the shareholder questions on the web interface, so I will refer to him when it comes time to answer any questions shareholders have submitted. The notice of meeting was made available to all shareholders on 10 October 2025, and I will take it as read. I can confirm that the holders of approximately 457 million ordinary shares, or 71.23% of the company's total shares outstanding, have submitted their proxies.
The annual financial statements of the company and its controlled entities, as well as the reports of the directors and auditors for the year ended 30 June 2025, have been published and distributed to shareholders. They can also be accessed at our website. Our auditor, Mr. Brett Ertushel from PricewaterhouseCoopers, is also present. Brett is available to answer questions relating to the conduct of the audit and audit report and accounting policies and the preparation of the financial statements.
The auditor's report is in our annual report, which is also available at our website. Now, today I intend to provide an overview of the performance in the past financial year, and our CEO, Mr. Craig Scroggie, will update you on business activities. After that, we will turn to the formal business of the meeting. As part of receiving the financial statements and reports, we will also take questions in relation to the board, management, or the auditor.
Now, because we're conducting today's meeting both in person and online, I'll explain the process to ensure you are clear on how to use the platform to vote and ask questions. For those joining us online, voting on the resolutions will be conducted by a poll using the electronic voting card you receive after clicking the Get a Voting Card button. Our shareholders can submit written questions on general issues or specific resolutions during the meeting by clicking on the Ask a Question button.
I encourage shareholders who have questions to submit them as soon as possible. If you have any trouble using the platform, please check the online guide on the NEXTDC website or contact the helplines shown on the screen. If you're attending in person, there are also some matters to note. You should have registered your attendance as you entered the room today. If any member or proxy holder has not registered their attendance at the door, please do so now.
Staff from MUFG Corporate Markets are here to assist you. Visitors are also registered electronically on MUFG's meeting registration system. If you wish to speak on a matter at an appropriate time, please raise your hand. Once a microphone has reached you, state your name and, if applicable, the name of the shareholder you represent if you are a proxy. Please put your mobile phones on silent and we ask that recording devices are not used. With that, I will move to my address.
Once again, good morning and welcome to NEXTDC's 15th Annual General Meeting. Thank you to shareholders joining us here in the auditorium at our S3 Sydney data center and to those tuning in via the virtual channel. We value your engagement and support. Now, despite a rapidly evolving marketplace, we remain clear about our purpose: to create shareholder value by delivering the most trusted, sovereign, and scalable digital infrastructure, enabling continuous intelligent flow, system scalability, and unstoppable progress.
I will speak to governance and stewardship, which includes board renewal and financial strength and capital discipline. I'll update you on remuneration alignment as well as the governance standards we hold ourselves to as we scale rapidly. Following that, you will hear from our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Craig Scroggie, and Craig will cover the operating environment and growth strategy in more depth.
We've continued to plan for an orderly renewal of the board. As noted in the annual report, we extend our deepest thanks to Jennifer Lambert, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, and to Dr. Greg Clark, both of whom will retire at the conclusion of this AGM. Their contributions have been invaluable to the company's growth and success. As part of our succession planning, I'm pleased to formally welcome two highly credentialed new non-executive directors who joined the board effective 1 November 2025, Mrs. Deborah Page and Mr. Jamaludin Ibrahim.
Mrs. Page brings deep experience across audit, finance, capital markets, as well as governance, and currently serves on several ASX-listed boards. Mr. Ibrahim brings more than four decades of experience in technology and telecommunications. Including tenures as Group CEO of Axiata and senior roles in Maxis, DEC, and IBM. His experience also extends to serving on boards in Malaysia and internationally. Our annual corporate governance statement sets out our approach to board composition and independence.
As of 30 June 2025, eight directors served on the board, seven of whom are independent non-executive directors. We review composition regularly to ensure the right mix of skills and perspectives are available and focused on balancing continuity with fresh insight. FY 2025 was a record-setting year on a number of fronts. From a selling point of view, NEXTDC secured 72.2 MW in new contracted utilization during a reported period, representing a 42% growth on FY 2024.
Subsequent to year-end, we also increased our senior debt facilities by AUD 3.5 billion, taking total available funding to AUD 6.4 billion. We remain focused on optimizing the cost of capital. Demand for digital infrastructure has evolved, and so must we. Our business now operates across hyperscale campuses, metro and regional colocation, as well as edge infrastructure supporting subsea cable landing stations, as well as remote data services for industries such as mining and energy.
We are simultaneously scaling domestically and expanding across international markets and have established strong regional development capability by building in Kuala Lumpur. We are taking our development expertise to Tokyo and have based our regional leadership in Singapore. Now, delivering these programs requires discipline. Land and power and connectivity have to be secured well ahead of demand, as well as being backed by advanced design, engineering, and operational capabilities.
Without these fundamentals in place, delivery of next-generation digital infrastructure is not achievable. Stakeholder trust and engagement remains a hallmark. We engage actively with governments, regulators, customers, investors, and lenders across Australia, Asia, and the United States. I particularly acknowledge the Premier of New South Wales and his team for launching the Investment Delivery Authority. This initiative aligned to the scale, speed, and certainty our sector requires.
We also recognize the support of Austrade and Australia's diplomatic channels as we pursue cross-border opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region. The accelerating adoption of cloud and AI continues to redefine infrastructure demand, and NEXTDC is positioned to enable that transformation both within and beyond our shores through the delivery of sovereign and sustainable data center services. At the board level, we meet regularly with major shareholders.
This takes place both directly and through our remuneration and nomination committee to ensure your feedback informs our deliberations and decisions. Let me restate what we set out in the notice of meeting. Delivering large-scale data center infrastructure in a rapidly growing, capital-intensive sector carries high execution risk. Exceptional leadership is therefore a critical success factor. Under Craig's leadership, we have built and retained a world-class senior team for more than a decade and developed a strong management bench.
Over the past two years, that talent has been actively targeted by new entrants and incumbents alike, often with offers at multiples of the current packages. We operate in a sector where international competitors and private capital dominate, with less than 10% of data centers globally trading as public companies. We're faced with the reality that the standard ASX pay frameworks are not competitive for attracting, rewarding, or retaining the people needed to deliver our growth objectives and create shareholder value.
Remuneration structures in private markets can differ materially from ASX norms. That landscape made it necessary and informed the board's decision to introduce a fully at-risk, one-off growth incentive plan, GIP, for the CEO, executive leadership, and a select group of critical senior management personnel. The GIP is aimed at driving sustainable market outperformance, and the fully at-risk rewards are aligned to long-term shareholder value creation.
This year's annual report details related FY 2025 adjustments to fixed remuneration and incentive opportunities, while also outlining our FY 2026 approach in more detail. The GIP was announced on 24 February 2025, following extensive engagement with institutional investors and advisors. It reflects the realities of a competitive global market for experienced digital infrastructure leaders.
Our approach to remuneration is solely focused on growing shareholder value over the long term, and we acknowledge that it won't always be popular or meet the tick-the-box parameters of proxy advisors who are solely assessing it against ASX norms. Operational efficiency and sustainability remain central to our license to operate, underpinning our ESG commitments and the trust our stakeholders place in us. Strong governance is foundational to NEXTDC's sustainable growth.
Our board and committees are active in stewardship of financial reporting, risk management, remuneration, and investment decision-making. During FY 2025, we collectively focused on strengthening the company's risk culture, maturity, and preparing for looming mandatory climate disclosure frameworks and standards. In line with evolving global sustainability reporting frameworks, NEXTDC has always advanced its application of double materiality principles.
This approach recognizes that material issues extend beyond financial impacts to include the company's broader environmental and social responsibility. By assessing both financial and societal dimensions, we ensure our disclosures provide a more complete picture of long-term value creation, resilience, and accountability. Our FY 2025 ESG report and corporate governance statement set out the structures that support oversight across audit and assurance, ESG performance, succession, remuneration, and risk.
We remain 100% committed to lawful, ethical, and responsible conduct built on continuous improvements in the depth and quality of risk management and reporting. Security and sovereignty remain central to our brand promise and customer value proposition. The annual report details a multi-layered approach we apply to physical security and cyber resilience and notes our certified strategic status under the Australian Government Hosting Certification Framework.
This is the highest level of Commonwealth security certification. At the close of FY 2025, our contracted pipeline exceeded all that we've built to date. This is a clear signal of accelerating demand for trusted AI-ready infrastructure and positions us for strong ongoing growth in revenue and EBITDA over the coming years. We will continue to scale domestically and internationally, partnering with governments, cloud service providers, GPU as a service platforms, and critical infrastructure partners to build resilient ecosystems.
NEXTDC sits at an opportune intersection of two defining trends: the rise of sovereign AI and the digitization of every facet of the economy. The decisions we make now about land, power, design, and engineering, capital works, and partnerships will shape our relevance for decades. Now, before inviting Craig to speak, a few acknowledgments. First, to my fellow directors for their diligence and counsel, noting in particular the significant contributions made by our outgoing directors, Dr. Greg Clark and Jennifer Lambert.
Secondly, to our executive leadership and senior management, who have stewarded the business through a year of rapid growth while strengthening our operating and governance foundations. To the broader team who come to work every day committed to NEXTDC's success. Thank you for your contribution to building one of the most strategically important infrastructure platforms in the Asia-Pacific region.
Our people remain the foundation of our performance. Their expertise, innovation, and safety focus continue to define standards by which our industry measures itself. Finally, to our shareholders, thank you for your continued support and for the candid feedback you provide throughout the year.
We encourage your questions today. We're here to listen and engage. We are confident in the path ahead and the value our company will create over the long term. The best is yet to come. With that, I'll hand over to Craig to discuss the operating environment, our growth agenda, and the opportunities we see across Australia and the region.
Thank you, Doug. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Whether you're here in the auditorium at our S3 Sydney data center or joining us online from around Australia or beyond, it's a pleasure to stand before you to show our progress and also look forward. I will share with you the details about another great year in our journey, provide some insight into the exciting opportunities that are before us, and then articulate how we intend to execute on that opportunity.
FY 2025 has been a defining year. It has reaffirmed our purpose while testing our speed and resilience in an increasingly competitive market. Today, we find ourselves standing at the center of one of the most transformational shifts in modern history. The worlds of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and high-performance GPUs are converging to reshape the global economy for the AI era, and NEXTDC is right at the heart of it.
FY 2025 reflected another period of strong growth across all our key operating metrics as we either met or exceeded our original financial guidance range for the year. Net revenue rose 14% to AUD 350 million, while underlying EBITDA grew 6% to AUD 216.7 million. These are strong results built on a foundation of high-quality people delivering operational excellence to deepen our long-term customer relationships. We achieved a 42% increase in contracted utilization and a record 72 MW of net new sales in the 12 months to the 30th of June 2025.
At the end of the financial year, we totaled 244 MW of contracted utilization, of which 111 MW, or about 45%, was billing at the end of FY 2025, with the remaining 134 MW, or about 55%, due to progressively contribute to billing's revenue over the FY 2026- 2029 financial periods. Interconnection revenue also grew strongly, up 7% to AUD 30.2 million for the year. As AI adoption accelerates, interconnections will be a critical enabler of our success.
Our award-winning Axon platform facilitates connections to every location within our DC footprint, as well as over 750 clouds, telco carriers, and digital service providers, positioning the company to capture that growth. Best of all, this is just the beginning of a global acceleration to build tomorrow's AI infrastructure. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang estimated that between three and four trillion would be invested in AI and data center infrastructure globally by 2030.
The sheer scale of capital deployment should focus the attention of every owner, operator, and investor. This is not incremental growth. It's the beginning of a new industrial revolution. It's a re-architecting of the digital economy, and at NEXTDC, we moved accordingly and have laid the foundations for success. This is a capital-intense industry. In FY 2025, we strengthened our balance sheet to support the next wave of expansion.
Following a $3.5 billion uplift in our debt facilities, we now have $6.4 billion in total capacity and finished FY 2025 with $5.5 billion in pro forma available liquidity, including $5.3 billion in undrawn debt facilities. The new structure offers more favorable terms: no maturities until FY 2030 and just two financial covenants, giving us great flexibility and a lower overall cost of capital. Importantly, under the interest cover ratio covenant, contracted pro forma revenue not yet billing are included in EBITDA for covenant testing.
This treatment enhances covenant flexibility and debt capacity, with FY 2025 adjusted EBITDA more than two times reported underlying EBITDA. Across Australia, we've never seen builds at this scale or at this pace. With that in mind, safety first remains our number one priority. Our current development program is unprecedented, with 121 MW of built capacity in progress at the end of 2025 and a further 100 MW in planning.
In Sydney, customer-driven AI factory deployment works continue across S3 and S6, while planning works have commenced for S4, a site that is expected to deliver more than 300 MW when complete. Meanwhile, we're advancing the development and approval processes for S5 and S7, which are targeting 80 and 550 MW, respectively. Collectively, Sydney 4, 5, and 7 will be flagship hyperscale AI factory campuses that represent approximately one gigawatt of capacity once complete.
In Melbourne, we're now targeting 120 MW for M2 to support customer demand, while M3 has now emerged as one of the largest and most advanced facilities of its kind in the southern hemisphere, with 200 MW of IT power planned within that single campus footprint. At M4, which will be central to the Fisherman's Bend Technology Precinct, we're targeting 150 MW and progressing through state government planning approvals. We are very pleased to see the Victorian government's continued support for this AUD 2 billion investment in the state's infrastructure.
Across our national footprint, we're expanding to meet customer demand where it matters most: in Darwin, Perth, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, and beyond. These developments extend our core-to-edge strategy, ensuring customers experience the same resilience, interconnection, and security, whether their workloads sit in a hyperscale campus, a metro, a region, or the edge. Our domestic development pipeline now totals more than 500 MW outside of Sydney and Melbourne, encompassing projects in development, planning, and evaluation.
This includes AI factory expansions at B2 in Brisbane and P1 in Perth, new regional infrastructure in the form of D2 in Darwin, and work that has also now commenced at SC2 on the Sunshine Coast. We're also planning for new facilities in Geelong, the Gold Coast, as well as a second facility in Adelaide.
Strategically located near power, connectivity, and subsea cable routes, such as the Japan, Guam, Australia South, Darwin, Jakarta, Singapore, and Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth cables, these facilities bring digital infrastructure closer to where data is created and consumed, reducing latency and enabling real-time AI and IoT applications across enterprise and government sectors. Our hyperscale customers demand next-generation power density at scale.
Above all, they need it delivered at speed. These priorities go to the heart of what defines NEXTDC: speed, scale, sovereign, secure, and sustainable. Beyond our shores, our first international developments are taking shape. In Kuala Lumpur, construction of stage one at KL1 has risen very quickly, with 10 MW of contracted utilization already secured ahead of completion.
The site topped out in September and is due to open in the second half of 2026, with the first 15 MW of capacity to be followed by a further 10 currently in planning. Our secured anchor capacity for KL1 ahead of opening is a clear signal of the strength of demand for premium sustainable data center infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and we are already in negotiation for opportunities to build in a number of other strategically important Asian cities.
In Tokyo, we secured our first site, introducing 30 MW of premium digital infrastructure in the heart of Japan's most connected city and just steps from the iconic Tokyo Tower. Positioned within one of Asia's richest network and cloud ecosystems, that site will give customers direct access to Japan's dense interconnection fabric and hyperscale growth corridors. Construction in Japan is expected to commence before the end of this calendar year.
These two Asian projects mark the beginning of a new chapter for NEXTDC as we take our expertise, our trusted sovereign-scale infrastructure into global growth markets. We're proud to represent Australian innovation and its capability on the world stage. The next wave of growth is being driven by what NVIDIA calls the AI factory. It's a new global standard for deploying and managing infrastructure that powers the intelligence era.
These purpose-built environments unite advanced GPUs, liquid cooling, resilient power, high-speed interconnection, security, and sustainability that will enable the next generation of computing. AI is now a defining driver of digital infrastructure investment. Every AI application and process depends on the next generation of power and liquid-to-chip cooling. Our long-term engineering investments mean our data centers are already AI infrastructure-ready, designed for high-density power, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and interconnection at scale.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating everything. It is reshaping industries, amplifying productivity, and creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity, all on top of the continued demand for cloud and colocation services. Underpinning our platform growth is our Axon interconnection platform, linking more than 750 clouds, carriers, and digital service providers. As AI and high-performance workloads become increasingly distributed, this ecosystem is a critical connector that enables seamless low-latency networks across multiple platforms.
As we build tomorrow's infrastructure at unprecedented scale, we do so with a deep commitment to protecting the environment for future generations. Sustainability remains central to our strategy and values. We design and operate facilities that lead the world in energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste management. We view sustainability not as a constraint, but as a source of innovation and competitive advantage. As compute intensity and power density rise, our responsibility is to ensure that growth is efficient and increasingly powered by renewables.
Through continued design innovation, high-efficiency cooling systems, and active participation in the energy markets, we're securing cleaner, more reliable power at scale. Our goal is to demonstrate that the AI era data centers can grow responsibly, strengthen sovereign capability, while also accelerating Australia's energy transition. In FY 2025, we continue to advance our carbon reduction strategies, our renewable energy procurement, sustainable construction practices, and our circular economy initiatives.
If these programs are of interest to you, I would recommend that you read our ESG report, our climate and nature report, our corporate governance statement to understand our strategic objectives for these important initiatives. They are all downloadable from our website. None of our progress means anything unless our people are safe. Safety is our highest operational priority built into everything that we do. Whether it's on a construction site, in a data hall, or a remote location, our goal is simple: everyone goes home in the same condition they arrived.
A lost-time injury frequency rate of zero and a total recordable injury frequency rate of 1.4 puts us ahead of industry benchmarks, but the safety-first focus does not ever stop. These outcomes reflect the maturity of our safety assurance program and the strong collaboration we maintain with our contractors and independent experts. We continue to embed safety by design, engaging early with partners to reduce risks before work begins.
Our regional capability has been strengthened with a dedicated construction safety officer in Malaysia and our full safety management system now being translated into Bahasa Malay to support our Asian operations. While I was on site recently in Kuala Lumpur, I was thrilled to see 5-Point PPE fully supported, and I reviewed the site safety program with our general contractor and team.
Programs like Executive Safety Leader Interactions and Hazard Hunt are driving greater participation and hazard reporting, while 56 team members are now accredited as mental health first aid officers across the region. At NEXTDC, safety is everyone's responsibility. Innovation remains at the core of NEXTDC's success. We are continually re-engineering how we design, build, and operate, leveraging digital twins, AI-driven analytics, and modular construction to improve speed, efficiency, and customer experience.
At the heart of every achievement this year are the people of NEXTDC: our engineers, our operations team, our customer service professionals. They continue to set the standard for excellence in our industry. They are the reason we are again, in 2024, recognized by the independent industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan, as Australia's leading data center services company and now increasingly a regional leader in Asia. Our future development pipeline is very exciting, exceeding 3 GW across the region.
This includes 1 GW in Sydney, 1 GW in Melbourne, and 0.5 GW across the rest of Australia. In addition, there is a further 1 GW of international opportunities within our expansion plans. As we look forward to FY 2026 and beyond, our growth trajectory continues to accelerate. We expect net revenue in the range of AUD 390 to 400 million and underlying EBITDA in the range of AUD 230 to 240 million, supported by record contracted customer commitments and our largest ever order book.
These opportunities are larger than the entire company today, making the next few years a very exciting time for the business as we rapidly convert into billings, unlocking strong operating leverage and a step-changing growth, earnings, and cash flow. The decade ahead will be defined by exponential demand for digital infrastructure, and NEXTDC is uniquely positioned to deliver on this next wave across Australia and Asia.
As Bill Gates famously said, we often overestimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate what can be achieved in a decade. The next 10 years will be the most exciting in our history, and we're ready to seize the opportunity. In closing, I want to thank our team across every part of our business. We have an extraordinary group supporting our customers and partners who trust us with their most critical operations.
I'd like to express my gratitude to our board for their support and commitment to the success of NEXTDC, and my sincere thanks to you, our shareholders. NEXTDC stands today stronger than ever, financially, operationally, and strategically. The opportunity ahead of us is generational, and we are poised to seize it with the same focus and ambition that has defined our story and our company from the very beginning. Thank you.
Thanks, Craig. Before proceeding with the business of the meeting, a quick reminder of today's procedures. MUFG have been appointed returning officer for this meeting, and I am satisfied as to their independence. We'll be conducting all voting by poll on a poll. Every member present in person or by representative, attorney, or proxy is entitled to one vote for each shareholder. If attending online, you can cast your vote using the electronic voting card received after you register to get a voting card.
You'll then be asked to enter your shareholder number, which is your SRN or HIN, plus postcode if in Australia or country if you're outside Australia. The proxy votes already received for each resolution will be viewable on the platform as we move through the resolutions. These will be current as at the proxy voting deadline, which is 11:00 AM Sydney time on Tuesday, 11 November 2025. Any undirected proxies in my favor as Chairman will be voted in favor of the relevant resolution.
Following discussion on all items of business, I will close the poll five minutes after the meeting ends. As the results of the poll will take a little while, they'll be announced to the ASX this afternoon. Shareholders can submit questions during the meeting, and if you're attending online, you can also do so by clicking on the Ask a Question button. To ensure questions reach us in time, I ask that you submit them now if you haven't done so already.
If we cannot get through all the questions today or there are specific questions that we better address on an individual basis, we'll respond to them after the meeting. If we receive multiple questions that are the same or similar, we'll try to amalgamate them into one or choose to answer the broadest question, which covers off the others. To ensure all shareholders have an opportunity to ask a question today, I will accept up to two questions from each shareholder for each item of business.
I will now move to the formal resolutions. The first item on the agenda deals with the receipt and consideration of the financial reports and the reports of the directors and auditors for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. No shareholder vote is required in relation to this item of business.
However, shareholders can now ask questions or have discussion on these matters, and now is also a good time to ask questions of a general nature about the company as opposed to questions that are specific to today's resolution. NEXTDC's financial report, directors' report, and auditor report for the year to 30th of June 2025 are incorporated in the 2025 annual report, which has been sent to shareholders who have requested it and which is available on the company's website.
At this time, I would encourage any shareholder to raise any questions they may have of the auditor, which are relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the audit report. Are there shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Mary.
Thank you. That's better. First of all, thank you for hosting us here today. It's very kind, and we look forward to the catering afterwards. Thank you also for a very detailed and informative presentation. My name is Mary Curran. I'm today representing the Australian Shareholders Association with 50 shareholders and over 300,000 shares. I'm also representing myself. As you may recall, I've been here a number of times asking you questions, so I'll continue with that today.
My first question is with respect to capital expenditure. On page 18 of the annual report, the annual FY 2025 CapEx was AUD 1.7 billion, well ahead of the AUD 1.3 to 1.5 billion initial guidance and 70% up on the CapEx in FY 2024. Why was this, and is it a one-off event? The second question, underperforming NSW and ACT.
Amidst a sea of double-digit growth, a 1% revenue decline in New South Wales and ACT stands out. What happened? Did an anchor tenant leave? I note at the pre-AGM with the ASA, you attributed this to changes in power prices, but given you on Bill, this does not make sense, so kindly comment.
I'm going to pass that to Craig, firstly on the CapEx for 24 and then New South Wales revenue.
Thanks, Doug, and thanks, Mary. I appreciate the questions. It's great to see you, and thank you for the invitation to present to the Australian Shareholders Association this year. I really enjoyed it. The first answer relates to the function of power pricing, so I'll do the last question first. We had record high power prices over the course of the last 12 months, and as power prices have come down, the power that we pass through in our total revenue number has reduced.
If your energy bill at home last year was $100 and the energy prices came down, this year you only paid $50 or $60 for your energy, so that was a big saving. In the context of a reduction for us, our customers actually saved some money because the power pass-through costs went down. That's a positive in terms of customers getting better value, energy prices having come down from what they were in the previous year.
As it relates to how we measure overall revenue, we had very, very significant growth in the category that we call data center services revenue, which is what we've actually sold. A record year of new contracted billings, so our total net revenue for data center services was at a record high and will continue growing. The second question, which was the first, was in relation to CapEx and investment. We invested a little more, and there are two primary drivers.
One is we sold more last year than in the entire company's history. As a result of having sold such a significant amount in the previous 12 months, we brought forward some additional CapEx to support those customer orders. Our CapEx is very, very tightly aligned to customer orders. If we do not need to invest money without a customer supporting it, we do not.
As a result of having been very successful in the previous year, we brought forward some spending in order to deliver those contracts for our customers. In the context of overspending in a CapEx sense, it is directly related to delivering customer orders, and it is as a result of having sold a much larger amount than we had originally forecast.
Can I just sneak in one more question? Just wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on, like I've just read in the Financial Review about the data center on Christmas Island, and I'm sort of imagining the crabs on some sort of a treadmill so they can get the power there. I'm just wondering, how will these remote centers work? I mean, are they looking at places like Cocos Keeling as well? Is that actually possible?
It's a fantastic question, Mary. A couple of quick points to explain this. You would have seen the slide that we had up, which talks about the data center segments. The like example is if you talk about transport, there are cars, buses, trains, planes. There's lots of different modes. In digital infrastructure in data centers, we have hyperscale, we have AI, we have metro regions and edges.
Now, only 48 hours ago, Google landed their submarine cable in the Sunshine Coast at our data center there, and that will then connect to our new edge data center in Darwin. The Christmas Island investment for a small data center that Google have announced is actually the cable landing station where their cable will then connect and go out further through subsea.
We see edge locations as highly strategic because when we build small data centers in those locations, they then connect back to very large cloud and AI deployments. We were very fortunate and thankful for the relationship that we have with companies like Google who continue to rely on us to be a great partner to build that cable landing infrastructure.
Those data centers for scale, if you talk about the amount of power required in Christmas Island, the power is really designed for the PFE equipment that will boost the signal that takes the traffic that sits on the cable and moves it to another country. It is a relatively small amount of power, maybe some number of megawatts. I think that one was about 7 compared to a large-scale data center that we are building today, which would be many hundreds of megawatts.
It's more of a stepping-off point.
It's an edge, what we would call an edge.
Okay. Thank you very much.
That's my pleasure.
Do we have any other general questions? Here we go.
Hi, Craig and Doug. Thank you very much for the presentation. My question is, can the leadership team share some insight in how do you see the competitive risk going forward in the long run, beyond five years, perhaps? Yes, thank you.
That's a big question. I don't know, Craig, and maybe even Steve.
Yeah. Do you want to start?
Oh, you go.
Okay, I'll do it. Thank you very much. When we started the company, if you go back sort of 15 years, building a 10 MW data center was huge, and most data centers were on-premise and computers lived in customers' offices. As we take cars off the road and put people on buses, we get better sustainability outcomes. We improve customers' energy efficiency so that they can buy more powerful computers.
In 1965, Gordon Moore wrote a seminal white paper that said the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every 18- 24 months. It's called Moore's Law, and it's why we have all of the technology capability that we have today. As a result of the last decade, we went through the third generation of computing, which was cloud. That was the most fundamental and significant transition that we've had in the history of computing.
As we move now into the AI era, we are seeing thousands of megawatts in data center investments, and every major sovereign wealth fund and large-scale digital or traditional infrastructure investor want to be investing in digital infrastructure. The fact that we have more competitors than we've had at any other point in time, I see as the single most important motivator for continuing to run an extraordinary business, to always think about what we need to do to improve operations, to improve the quality of the product that we deliver for our customers.
The fact that we have more competitors and more capital flowing to our industry means that we have to work harder than ever to continue to be successful. I see that competition as a key driver for making sure the company never gets lazy. It doesn't rest on the success that it's had historically. What we will deliver in the next two years will be greater in size than the entire last 15 years of the company, and we are going to do that in two years.
Whilst the scale of what we have to undertake has risks and we have more competitors and more capital flowing to the industry than we have at any other time in history, my primary focus is serving our customers because today, if we do nothing other than deliver what we already sold, we will double the company in a year and a bit. If we have even more success, which I am absolutely certain we will, the company could be five or ten times its current size just in the next few years. Thank you.
Do we have any other questions in the audience here? General questions?
Craig, can I make a point?
Yeah.
I would add to that, excuse me, that question. I run a company in North America that's in the fiber infrastructure space. We're connecting data centers and buildings, and the comments made earlier today are absolutely critical. When this much capital is going into a new industry like this and AI is going to change our lives over the next decade, all these new entrants, these new competitors you're asking about, guess where they're going to try to attract people from?
From companies like NEXTDC and the company I run in North America, where you have 10-15 year veterans that know how to do this stuff. It is really, really critical in the comments that were made by Doug and Craig earlier on the remuneration to stabilize this team. This is a very advanced team that knows what they're doing.
Craig is relentless in staying ahead of the curve, and so it is critical for companies like this company and the company I run in North America to maintain your people because all the big hyperscalers and all the new entrants are coming after these people that are very, very experienced in this industry.
Thanks, Stephen. Do we have any questions online, Oskar?
Mr. Chairman, the first question comes from Steven Matthew Tate, who would like to know when we can expect a dividend reinvestment plan.
It is pretty straightforward. The company gets ever larger every single year. The data centers we build, the capital we deploy grows every year, and the company is still consuming capital. We see the earnings going up in line with the revenue, and that is going to continue, but the market is actually accelerating. Every single business case that we look at, every single investment we look at, there is a rigorous analysis, return on funds employed, and we continue to go back and revisit that.
That growth program means that it is jam tomorrow, not jam today. We are not a low-growth company or a no-growth company that is generating cash, that we are in a situation where we can pay dividends. At the point at which we get to the stage where we can pay dividends, then at that point, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for us to consider a dividend reinvestment plan, but we're still some way off that. Oskar, are there any other questions?
Chairman, the next question comes from Eileen Mary Sackett, who is asking, what do you consider to be the major risks facing NEXTDC in today's climate?
Big question. Craig.
Sure. Key risks for us, obviously, in operating a high-growth business, first most important one is having access to the talent that can continue to deliver on the size and scale of our ambition. Growing the company by 10x over the course of the next few years will not be capable without talented people, and people who have deep expertise in this industry are global in nature.
The industry is probably the single most significant technology transformation in history, and there are not a lot of resources to be able to support the sheer scale of what's happening globally. Number one risk is people for me. Number two is execution or operating risk. Ensuring that we have 100% uptime, that the data centers never go down, power, security, and connectivity, our brand promise, 100% guarantee.
Those things will never be breached, and ensuring that we operate with that level of resilience is critical for our success. It's why we had invested in the Uptime Institute in tier three and tier four certifications. Fault tolerance, ensuring that even in the event of a grid outage, a terrorist attack, any type of manmade or natural event, that when everything else is unavailable, the data center can continue to operate, to provide services to critical industries like hospitals and emergency services, air traffic control, and the operation of the energy market in Australia.
They are all fundamental brand promises for us. The third risk is obviously our ability to be able to continue to meet the demands of our customers, capital formation, balance sheet, how we manage our equity, our senior debt, all of those instruments that get implemented over time in order to continue to fund our growth. I think people, operations, and then capital formation are the three most significant issues we have to continue to pay very close attention to in terms of managing our risk.
Thank you. Oskar, any further questions?
Chairman, the next question comes from Mr. Jesse Felsinger, who would like to know, how can we promote NEXTDC products and services to the state and federal governments in Australia to promote data sovereignty for civil and defense users? How can we utilize current capabilities to improve AI abilities and efficiency, and how can we encourage governments to ensure a reliable supply of power?
I think we're pursuing all of these things very, very actively. I'm going to pass to Craig. That's three strong questions there, but Craig.
Yeah, I'll break them down into a few components. First of all, engagement both at the state and the federal level. The company is deeply engaged, probably more than any other time before. I am regularly talking with the federal ministers and the state premiers, state planning ministers, to ensure that we have the relationships to allocate the resources required to continue to scale.
If you go back a decade, a 10 MW data center obviously was big, but when you fast forward today, hundreds of megawatts, you're building very, very large-scale infrastructure that's the size of a small city. Ensuring that you have access to available power, that the company can be a key accelerator of the energy transition. Think about what is required for PPAs to be supported is offtake partners.
To accelerate the energy transition in Australia as we retire coal and gas assets, we need offtakers who are prepared to sign PPAs to accelerate new energy transition. The cost of electrons in solar and wind is going down, but the cost of the investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure is going up. The reason the energy transition is disorderly is because we're moving to a net-zero future, but we haven't made the investments in all the infrastructure that we need to move through that transition.
The energy trilemma, solving that to make Australia globally competitive, we need cheap electrons, firm electrons, and green electrons. That has been the hallmark of every advanced economy. If you look at some of the challenges that we face today in Australia, smelters and other things that are getting record high energy costs are not being able to compete globally.
Australia has an opportunity to move from mining 1.0, digging up our coal and gas and shipping that overseas, to move to mining 2.0, to use our incredible resources, our renewable energy, and our people to build artificial intelligence capability to export tokens.
Token in an AI factory is knowledge, and the future for Australia and opportunity right around the world is the mining 2.0 or the export of knowledge. I think if we're able to address those things by working very, very closely with state and federal government to solve the energy challenges and the planning issues, we can have a world-class mining industry for the future of technology.
Thank you. Oskar, I think there are no further questions online.
Chairman, there is another question that has just come in. This one comes from Patrick Edward Lornam, who would like to know, general question that is a follow-up to earlier discussion. Is there a race underway to establish market dominance in AI and data centers that will see some companies fail or be taken over as NEXTDC stays upright? Might it be taken over? Might it take over competitors? What is your comment, please?
I think it's a racing certainty. In this high-growth market, there will be train wrecks. It won't be us. For sure, with the rate at which new players are coming into the marketplace and the rate of growth, I would think there will be accidents. As to whether or not we would be interested in those circumstances, it would be a case-by-case consideration, but we're certainly spending our time looking at our opportunities within the organic capability of designing, developing, building, and operating data centers ourselves. Craig, anything you'd like to add to that?
I'd only add that the single greatest way for us to create shareholder value is to build these from scratch, not pay somebody else for the privilege. Our number one focus is building capability, world-class standards, and doing it on scale. We look at everything. We assess every opportunity in every company that's in the market.
In the course of the last 15 years, I can tell you that we have seen very, very few that we would ever want to consider because of either the quality, the reliability, ultimately, or many and varied customer-related contractual issues. The most shareholder value will be created from building new infrastructure on scale.
Thank you. No further questions?
There are no further questions online, Chairman.
Thank you. If there are no further questions, I would now like to move to consider the formal motions of the meeting. I refer you to resolution one of the notice of meeting in respect of the adoption of the remuneration report. This is a non-binding resolution. No votes may be cast on this resolution by or on behalf of a member of the company's key management personnel, including the Chairman and other directors or their closely related parties.
If you did not provide proxy voting directions to me as Chairman and you are not a prohibited voter, you'll be taken to have authorized me to vote all available proxies in favor of this resolution, even though this resolution is connected directly or indirectly with the remuneration of the key management personnel. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. I would add that the NEXTDC board unanimously recommends that you vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Mary.
It's not a question, actually. It's just a comment, really. I can imagine you're very disappointed with the voting. It's obviously going to be a strike, and I don't think there's anything you can do about that. I would like to let you know that the ASA has decided to cast any open votes for this resolution. We have taken on board the factor that the personnel risk, if you like, that we need to have the best people on board.
We've looked carefully at the remuneration report, and we've worked out that it was about 17.5% for shareholders, and we think most shareholders in the room would be pretty happy getting that kind of return on their money. We will vote for it. We want you to keep the good staff. We think it's critical. We understand how competitive it is. I was at the Goodman AGM the other day, so I know they're all looking for people. Just a nod that we will be giving our undirected votes for the resolution, and so our shareholders understand that. Thank you.
Thanks very much. Are there any other questions? Are there any questions online, Oskar?
There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.
Thank you. I would like to add that the NEXTDC board sorry, if there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to the meeting to adopt the remuneration report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. Please cast your vote. This item of business relates to the reelection of Mr. Steve Smith as non-executive director. I refer you to resolution two of the notice of meeting in respect of his reelection. Mr. Smith has been an independent non-executive director since July 2019 and currently also serves as Chairman of NEXTDC's Investment Committee.
In accordance with Article 58 of the company's constitution, he has retired by rotation and offers himself for reelection. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of his experience and qualification. You can now see the details of a valid proxy lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC board, other than Mr. Smith, unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I would ask Steve to say a few words about his time on the board and then ask for any shareholder comments or questions. Steve.
Sure, Doug. Very quickly, I've been on the board, as Doug said, for six years. I am approaching my 18th year as the CEO of the second company that I've run in this space, same space that Craig. Craig and I have known each other for a couple of decades now. When he asked me to do this six years ago, I was very excited about it because I knew that NEXTDC was perfectly positioned to do what you heard about this morning. So I've been doing this a long time.
I'm approaching four decades of being in the tech and the digital infrastructure space. It's exciting, as you saw this morning, that we're playing at the intersection of some of the greatest trends in our lifetime. This company is very well positioned to take advantage of that, and it's exciting times. As Craig and Doug have talked about, it's an exciting time to be part of this company as a shareholder, as a board member, as a team member. It's game-changing, and I'm thrilled to be part of it. Thank you for your support.
Thank you. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question?
It's actually a request this time. Clearly, you're highly credentialed, and I see you've got a 98% vote, so that's fabulous. What concerns us is you don't have any shares in the company. I would like to congratulate, actually, Ms. Page and Mr. Ibrahim for buying shares recently, and I'd really like you to join the crowd. Can I talk you into it?
I appreciate you solving it for NEXTDC. I knew that was coming today. I have been so busy transforming this company in the US the last six years, I really have not paid that close attention to it. Craig and Doug and I talked about this morning. When the window opens, you will see me participate.
Thank you. Are there any other shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?
There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.
Thank you. If there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to approve the reelection of Mr. Smith as a director of the company. Please cast your vote. I now refer you to resolution three of the notice of meeting in respect of the election of Mrs. Deborah Page, AM, as the director of the company. Mrs. Page has been an independent non-executive director of the company since the start of November 2025. In accordance with Article 57.1 of the company's constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, she has retired and offers herself for election as a director.
The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of her experience and qualifications. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC board, other than Mrs. Page, unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I would ask Deborah to say a few words about her election and background and then ask for any shareholders' comments or questions.
Thank you, Doug, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be able to address you today as I stand for election to the board of NEXTDC. I won't repeat my CV because it's outlined in the notice of meeting. Suffice to say, I'm a qualified chartered accountant, and in my executive career, I held both audit partner and senior finance roles in a number of different industries across a number of years, obviously. More recently, and over the last 25 years, I've actually worked as a non-executive director.
I've held board and audit and risk committee chair roles across a range of industries, which, appropriately for this appointment, include property, technology, and the manufacturing sectors. I very much look forward to working with Craig and my fellow directors and the management team as the company continues its absolutely stellar growth. It's an exciting sector to be part of, and I feel very privileged that I've been invited to join the company's journey as we proceed.
I particularly look forward to contributing my experience to the company's strategic execution, particularly in regard to joint ventures, contract management, and third-party capital in due course. Finally, I would like to thank Jennifer for the very detailed handover she's given me. It's been very much appreciated, and she's done an excellent job, and I hope I can live up to her standards. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any shareholders online who wish to ask questions or make comments?
There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.
Thank you. If there's no discussion, I now put the motion to approve the election of Mrs. Page as the director of the company. Please cast your vote. I now refer you to resolution four in the notice of meeting in respect of the election of Mr. Ibrahim as the director of the company. Mr. Ibrahim has been an independent non-executive director of the company since the start of November 2025. In accordance with Article 57.1 of the company's constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, he has retired and offers himself for election as a director.
The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of his experience and qualifications. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC board, other than Mr. Ibrahim, unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I would ask Jamal to say a few words about his election and background, and then ask for any shareholder comments or questions.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you. Good morning. Oh, sorry. Good morning. Doug, fellow directors, management team, and the shareholders. I spent eight hours last night to come over here, so I have a bit more to say than just a few words, if you don't mind. It is truly an honor to be part of the board and to offer myself for election. By way of introduction, I spent about 40 years, out of which about 17 years in the world of IT with IBM and subsequent to that, Digital Equipment Corporation.
After that, I spent about 23 years or so in telecommunication, first with Maxis, the company in Malaysia, and also another one in Malaysia, Axiata Group, which operates in 10 countries in ASEAN and South Asia. I retired in 2020, and since then, I've been quite active in many non-executive positions, multiple industries, including airline, fast food industry, and many, many others.
Until recently, I was also on board of another transportation company, and I had served for a couple of years at a national level in Malaysia as the member of the Economic Action Council and also, separately, a member of the National Digital and 4IR Council, both chaired by the then Prime Minister of Malaysia.
In short, I've worked with Malaysian companies, with regional and international companies, private company, public listed company, GLCs, which give me balanced local and international perspective on growth, governance, and, of course, risk management across diverse markets and cultures. I guess with this experience, I hope to contribute to NEXTDC vision and plans. You can see here just now how aggressive it is.
I hope to be able to contribute to that plan. While I do not claim to be an expert in Asia, I hope and I believe my experience can and should complement the deep Australian and global expertise already on this board. I'm truly excited to join NEXTDC and to have the privilege working with my distinguished colleagues on the board and the management team. I hope to contribute to its growth story and including its regional expansion. On a personal note, I've always had great affection for Australia. Four of my children actually study in Australia, and I love Australia. Thank you.
Thank you, Jamal. We can't applaud. We didn't applaud for Debbie and Steve. All right. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?
There is one question online directly from Mr. Ibrahim, and this comes from shareholder Eileen Mary Sackett. Eileen would like to know, "It looks as if you have many and varied demands on your time in Malaysia. How will you find the time to properly serve NEXTDC?
Okay. It's true that I have many varied and many demands of my time in Malaysia, but it's actually relative to what I've been working on the last 40 years, it's quite practically nothing. I've worked very hard, and the reason I joined here is because I think I can commit my time with full commitment to the company. There is no question about that.
Thank you. Are there any further questions, Oskar?
There are no further questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.
Thank you. If there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to approve the election of Mr. Ibrahim as a director of the company. Please cast your vote. I now refer you to resolution five in respect to the approval of the grant of performance rights to Mr. Craig Scroggie. Listing Rule 10.14 requires the approval of the shareholders to be sought where the company intends to issue securities under an employee incentive scheme to a related party. Mr. Scroggie is considered such a related party.
The proposed issue of performance rights constitutes the giving of a financial benefit. So we also seek shareholder approval. In his role as CEO, Craig is key executive and plays an important role in the growth of the company's business and strategic objectives. A summary of the main terms of the proposed grant, the vesting conditions, and the valuation of the rights are included in the appendices which accompany the notice of meeting.
For the broader market context and information on the competitive environment for talent in the sector this year, we also provided additional commentary, which you can find in Appendix B and C of the notice. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. Sorry.
The NEXTDC board, other than Mr. Scroggie, unanimously recommends that you vote in favor of this resolution. Given his interest, Mr. Scroggie makes no recommendation with respect to this resolution and is precluded from casting his vote. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?
There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.
Thank you. If there's no discussion, I now put the motion to approve the grant of performance rights to Mr. Scroggie. Please cast your vote. Resolution five was the final resolution, and so that concludes the formal business of the meeting. If there are no further questions, we'd like to—if there are any further questions, we'd like you to ask them now. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any shareholders online who wish to ask a question?
There are no further questions online, Chairman.
Thank you. Okay, my thanks to you all. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the closure of AGM. If you intend to vote on the formal business of the meeting, you should now finalize and submit them as voting will close in five minutes' time. As mentioned, the results of the vote will be published on the ASX later today. Now, with sincere thanks to all of our shareholders, I now declare the meeting closed. For those at the venue, I look forward to also speaking to you as we catch up over refreshments. Thanks very much.