With me, Anna Hooper, the CFO. The format will be a typical presentation, and then we will open things up to Q&A. If you have any questions throughout the presentation, please put them into the Q&A chat below, and we will try and address them. We have got a bit of ground to cover, so we will move on pretty quick, and we will try and get this wrapped up by the half hour. For those of you that might need a bit of a refresher, at SciDev, we are focused on delivering innovative solutions to solve industry's most complex water problems. We are a portfolio of industry-leading water-centric businesses, and currently we are divided into two operational business segments.
One being specialty chemistry or chemical services, where we provide specialty chemistries into heavy industry, reducing the amount of fresh water that's consumed by these industries, increasing their operational outputs and their operational outcomes, making them better at what they do, and reducing the amount of contaminated water that's produced by these industries. Within water technologies, that business is centered around the design, construct, and operational maintenance of water treatment plants, underpinned by our proprietary technologies to remove harmful contaminants from groundwater, surface water, and liquid waste. One of the main drivers of that business at the moment is the ever-increasing global PFAS market. SciDev, we're proud to say, have what we firmly believe is a market-leading technology in our FluorofIX technology, one that's been fully commercialized here in Australia, and now one that we're successfully taking into these international markets.
We'll try and answer the question, why SciDev? We've got leading market technology. We're a technology business through and through. Each one of our business units has their own—each has their own portfolio of technology. I think it's our approach to the development of tech that really sets us apart. Each innovation from within SciDev comes always to solve a problem that a client has currently or that they know that they will have either tomorrow or further into the future. Our approach to tech development is agile. It's very client-centric, and it allows us to continue to stay ahead of the game and be a leading technology provider for our client base. We've got diversified revenue streams. We spoke about the business being a diversified portfolio of businesses.
We have different business units operating across multiple geographies, each with their own portfolio of technology and operating across a diverse range of end markets, meaning that there's an intrinsic strength in this diversification across the business, and we're not overly exposed to any one business unit, any one market, any one technology, or any one geography. We're delivering strong financials. We're on a very aggressive and steep growth trajectory at the moment. The metric that we like to put out or the picture that we certainly like to paint is that in 2018, the business did just shy of $2 million in revenue. Last year, we did just shy of $110 million. In terms of that top-line growth, we're really delivering.
We will talk a bit about, in the comment slides on the half-year result, what that means for the remainder of the half and how confident we are, which we are very confident of continuing on that organic growth trajectory at the top line. Really, when we look at our financials, the improvements in profitability, both in gross margin and EBITDA contribution, is also something that we are certainly very proud of here, and we have made great forward strides over the last number of years. Additionally, the global PFAS opportunity. Again, we have a fully commercialized, high-performance technology that we firmly believe is market-leading and the most efficient, effective, and also cost-effective technology currently available on the market for PFAS treatment. This is an enormous addressable market, a truly global problem, and one that SciDev is uniquely positioned to be able to capitalize on.
Looking at the half-year financial highlights, we did revenue of $49.9 million, which is in line or a flatline trend when compared to the PCP. It's worth noting—it's certainly worth noting—that this year's half-year revenue was impacted by a Q2. That's a seasonal downturn within the U.S. oil fields, which reduced in reduction in sales volumes from that particular vertical within the business. This was due to, again, a planned maintenance and annual leave period that happens traditionally within the oil field from around about Thanksgiving through to New Year's Day. It's worth noting when we compare this revenue of the PCP that last year's half-year results were not impacted by this downturn. This downturn did not happen within the oil field in December of last year. Taking that into account, you can see that there's an underlying growth trend within the business.
What's also important to note is that the market activity within the U.S. oil field ramped up aggressively from near enough the 2nd of January. We are very confident in the fact that our energy business has returned to its previous sales levels and also in our ability to be able to continue to grow that business and improve our top-line result over the remainder of the year. We spoke about improvement in profitability, delivered strong gross margins of 29%, and a really good EBITDA result of $3.4 million. From a balance sheet perspective, we closed the half with cash and cash equivalents of $11 million, and that hand in hand with our working capital facility that we secured with Westpac early in the half put us in a really good position to be able to self-fund our.
We continue on strong top-line growth as well as improved profitability throughout the half. That is underpinned by a very healthy and very strong business development pipeline across each one of our business units, which we'll talk to now. A bit of a segment overview. Looking at our chemical services business, as I mentioned previously, VPCP, we saw a 2% downturn. This is largely due to the impacted sales volumes this year that we did not see last year from the oil field. Some of the real highlights within that business in the half were the amount of field trials that we successfully secured and delivered within the half. When we think about the overall sales pipeline for our sales process for chemical service, this starts with receiving a water sample, bench scale product optimization through to bench scale product qualification, and then it leads to field trial.
Following successful field trial, that's when we then progress on to securing these ongoing revenue-generating contracts. The fact that we've delivered so many of these across both our energy services business and our mining business throughout the half is a great lead indicator on the top-line growth that we're expecting for the remainder of the half and into next financial year. In addition to that, it's important to talk about the developments and the momentum that we're starting to build within the Nuoer SciDev joint venture with some early revenues generated within the US mining market, which is great to see. Within water technologies, again, 6% growth for VPCP on the top line. We did see a 3 million downturn half on half. This is largely due to the phasing of revenue from the projects that we're operating in.
We are very confident in the ability of that business to grow and deliver an uplift in revenue in the second half of the year. The real callout and the star of the show of the half, in my opinion, was the fact that we delivered our first or secured our first revenue-generating contracts within the European water technology segment. Two contract wins, one in Sweden and one in the U.K., both for PFAS treatment. This is off the strength of our FluorofIX PFAS treatment technology. These early contracts are really important. The biggest milestone or the biggest hurdle that we have had in developing these markets has been centered around the fact that we have not delivered works and we did not have client references within the region. We now have that. We have multiple references.
Not only that, we've got a really good channel partner in Sweden with that first client, Swedish Hydro Solutions, who have been generating a number of leads and a number of opportunities for us since that initial purchase order. Things look really good on the European front, and great to see those first PFAS treatment wins. In addition to that, the sales pipeline or the BD pipeline for domestic water technologies business has been strong. We've had a number of new contract wins, again, adding to our confidence in being able to predict that revenue growth within the second half of the year. What have been driving these positive trends in the business?
One, we've seen that the margin improvement, and that's been primarily as a result of us successfully transitioning customers away from the lower margin commodity-style products within our energy services division across to our higher margin specialty chemistry. We've seen great growth in water and through our ability to be able to secure and deliver higher-value design and construct projects. That was certainly a big contributor to that 88% uplift in top-line revenue that we saw from 2023 to 2024. Our expanding global footprint is certainly something that's been beneficial, and that has been driving recent growth, but will drive future growth as well. All of this is underpinned by strong disciplined financial management across the business, but also a disciplined approach to capital management.
Every business at our end of the market, in that small and microcap space, has limited capital to deploy, and we're very much focused on ensuring that we're putting that capital to work in the right areas of the business that are going to give both short-term returns and generating free cash, but also delivering that long-term value for shareholders. This slide is just a bit of a retouch on strategy. The last time we spoke about this was at the AGM. We just want to run over it again. It brings us back to the idea of SciDev as being a diversified portfolio of water-centric businesses. Strategic market focus is centered around businesses with growing or, sorry, markets with growing addressable markets driven by strong regulatory tailwinds. We're centered on industrial and government clients and areas of the market that are requiring tech-driven solutions.
We've narrowed that down to sort of four pillars within the quite broad water sector where we feel we are going to play and where we can be very successful. One is in water treatment technologies that, again, a strongly established business and a rapidly growing addressable market. We're seeing a water sector and a water market that is now accepting technology at a much quicker rate than it ever has traditionally. Specialty water chemistry is certainly core to our business. PFAS remediation, we've already spoken on as being a huge opportunity and one that we're uniquely positioned to capitalize in. The other is industrial water processes. That is, again, looking at avenues within heavy industry where water is being used that we can provide added benefit going forward.
There are two key ways that we're going to be able to deliver on our growth strategy, on our growth objectives, and deliver long-term value for shareholders. We've spoke about that aspiration. We've defined the global markets that we want to play. To be successful in those areas, it's going to come down to ensuring that we've got an operating model that can support that and the essential capabilities that sit within the business that will enable us to deliver on that strategy. Our operating model is very much centered around an owner mindset. That's how we can operate as a portfolio of businesses, ensuring that our business unit heads and the teams that sit within them are empowered to drive the ongoing success of their business. They have that owner mindset.
They act like they own their business, that there's a delineation between the group and also business unit delineation, strong governance within the business, which goes without saying, but also ensuring that we are scalable and agile as we continue to grow. The capabilities that will support that operational excellence, making sure that we are the best at what we do, that we continue to develop the best technology. Ongoing capital management, obviously a very key pillar to success going forward. M&A will be something that will support the future growth of this business when we're looking at global addressable markets and global opportunities, particularly in the PFAS space.
M&A and being good at M&A internally is something that's going to be very important for us in order for us to ramp up our operational capabilities and operational presence within these regions and ensure that we are in the right place at the right time with the right technology and the right operational support to be able to deliver. Our outlook will be to continue the momentum that we've been building year on year. We've got a strong, robust balance sheet, a good cash position, and a strong working capital facility or a solid working capital facility to allow us to continue that organic growth trajectory. Growth in the oil field will be focused on diversifying our customer footprint within that market and driving the growth of our catch and excellent product lines in particular.
Again, focusing our efforts in increasing sales volumes of our higher margin for Biotree chemistries. Within the global mining market, we'll be leveraging that joint venture, but also looking to secure new contracts directly. Within our water technologies business, we know that we have a huge or strong ability to grow our domestic water technologies business. We'll be leveraging the strength of our FluorofIX and RegenIX technologies to be able to grow our water technologies division internationally. Outside of that, we will certainly be exploring inorganic opportunities as they present themselves to increase the regional operational capability and, again, to ensure that we have all that we need to fully capitalize on that growing PFAS opportunity. That marks the end of the presentation. We will move on to Q&A. We have Sarah Stewart that's going to facilitate the questions. Over to you, Sarah.
Thanks, Sean.
We've just got two questions coming to the Q&A so far. The first one, both related to the Trump administration. There is a lot happening in the U.S. with the Trump administration. Can you talk to us or put a bit of color on what your potential exposure to the tariffs are, please?
Yeah, thank you for that, Sarah. I'll hand that one over to Anna to answer.
Okay. In the States, the business, the oil and gas business we have over there, they do not import very much directly. Most of what we are importing is through U.S. companies, or most of what we use is through U.S. companies. Having said which, some of what we are going to be impacted by tariffs because they are bringing in from various places. Not a whole heap from China, but from other parts of the world.
The way the industry is set up in the U.S. is that we are able to reset our prices on a regular basis. We reset the prices as we need to. None of the prices are locked and loaded for more than, I guess, two to three weeks or period. We will be able to react accordingly. The industry moves around, or the prices in the industry move around according to the sort of input prices. That is normal. We will be able to sort of manage the tariffs as and when they arise.
Thank you, Anna. Sarah, over to you again.
Thanks, Anna. Sorry. Second question also related to the Trump administration. What are your predictions around the market impact of the potential changes to PFAS regulations in the U.S.?
Thanks, Sarah.
Look, that's been a big question, but one that's been raised internally for some time now and certainly one that we've been addressing in the market recently. I think what is happening is what we predicted, and that is that there will be very little reversal or unwind on PFAS regulations that have already been established. That goes through the designation of PFAS under CERCLA in the environmental space and the drinking water, in particular, the drinking water regulations. They're locked and loaded. They're going to be very difficult for the current administration to unwind. It is very unlikely that, given the potential public reaction, that they are going to be unwound. What we did expect and what we are seeing is a delayed rollout of any new regulation or any new legislation surrounding PFAS. That talks to some more of the industrial generation of PFAS contaminated waste.
Certainly in the wastewater treatment sector, in the sewage sector, we're not expecting to see any huge advancements in regulation in those areas with the current administration. Our focus within SciDev is immediately on the remediation sector. That's the market that's available to us now. That's certainly not going anywhere, and that's certainly growing at the moment. In the more medium to long term is positioning ourselves and securing revenue in the drinking water side. In terms of our immediate addressable market and the areas of the market that we're focused on, we're expecting and are seeing very little impact at the moment.
Thanks, Sean. Another question just come in about what is the percentage of your annual revenue that is purely from the sale of Nuoer products?
Over to you.
My construction business represents about 20% of our business, and of those, maybe 70% or thereabouts, the sales are from Nuoer products. Let's say about 15% of our sales are from Nuoer products. Most of those sales are into Australia. They're not in, we don't import Nuoer products, or very little Nuoer products is imported at this stage into the United States for sales in our oil and gas business.
All right. That's great. Thanks, Anna. Sean, that's all the questions we have for today.
Great. Thank you very much, Sarah. Thank you, Anna. Thanks to everyone else for taking the time to join us. We are ahead of time, which is a first at a SciDev webinar.
Yeah, we're certainly very excited to see what comes for the remainder of the financial year and very confident in our ability to continue to grow this business. We will keep the market posted as things develop, and we'll talk to you all soon. Thank you very much.