Good afternoon, and welcome to the SHAPE Australia's first half FY 2024 results webinar for the period ending 31 December 2023. Presenting today is SHAPE's CEO, Peter Marix-Evans, and CFO, Scott Jamieson. Today's format will begin with a run-through of the results, followed by a Q&A session. Investors can submit questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. I will now pass to Pete.
Thanks, Mel. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us this afternoon. We've got a slide deck that we'll lead you through. We'll move through that efficiently, hopefully with enough detail for you. But please do remember that there is, as Mel said, the Q&A function on the side or down the bottom of your screen, which, if it's appropriate to answer on that particular slide, we will, and if it's more appropriate, we'll pick it up at the end, but there'll be plenty of time at the end of the session for Q&A.
So just a bit of a reminder, a lot of you would understand a little bit about the SHAPE business, but for anyone on the call today that doesn't, SHAPE's a national fit out and construction service specialist. We've got offices all over the country, so in all states and territories across Australia, and we've got over 600 dedicated staff. Got a diverse set of capabilities across the construction specialists, so fit out and refurbishment, facade remediation, aftercare and facilities maintenance, defense, modular, and new build. And you can see across there, the various offices on the right-hand side, and also the operating entities that we have within the group with SHAPE, DLG SHAPE, our Indigenous majority-owned business, AFM by SHAPE, which is our facilities maintenance, and KLMS, our modular business in Victoria.
I'll hand over now to Scott, just to take us through the overview of the financial highlights, and then we do have another page on financial highlights later on in the deck as well. Scott?
Thank you, Peter. We've had a very strong first half for FY 2024. As you can see there, we've got revenues of AUD 412.2 billion. While marginally down on the prior corresponding period, a lot of that relates to the timing of secured works, the commencement thereof. But you'll see there in the middle of the screen, we've got record project wins of AUD 526.8 million, which is up significantly to the prior corresponding period, where we did AUD 409 million. So that's a 29% increase, which then leads into our record backlog orders of over AUD 450 million, which again is up significantly, up 24% compared to the prior corresponding period.
The results as far as EBIT goes is we've grown AUD 12.2 million, again, up significantly, up 31%. We'll talk a little bit more about that later in the slide deck. We've also produced a net profit after tax of AUD 7.5 million, up 59%. That's translated into an earnings per share, based on 83 odd million shares on issue, of AUD 0.09 per share. Following on from that, we have declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.08 per share, which is up 60% for the same time last year. That's a fully franked dividend, equating to circa 90% payout ratio, and I'll note that that is the highest dividend that we have paid since listing. We move on to the liquidity position, which remains very strong.
We've got cash and marketable securities. The marketable securities, that's something that's managed by JB Were, and they're primarily corporate bonds with investment-grade credit ratings. This is to increase our yield on our strong liquidity position. The breakdown of that is we have circa AUD 80 million in cash and 17 odd million in marketable securities. We continue to have a very, very strong identified pipeline, that being projects that we have a skill set to undertake on the right terms and conditions. That remains very robust at AUD 3.6 billion.
Thanks, Scott. Moving on to operational highlights, and apologies on the screen if that were- that wording's a little bit small, but I'll, I'll highlight them. I'll pick out any of the highlights for you, so there's no need to, to squint on your screen, depending on how it looks. So just from an operational excellence point of view, as, as we sort of talk about, from a SHAPE point of view, no incident is acceptable, and we'll continue to pursue zero harm outcomes on all of our operations for all of our stakeholders, subcontractors, and anyone that comes into contact with our operations. So our LTIFR and our TRIFR have increased slightly. So if you see the TRIFR, increased 17% compared to the PCP.
I'd note on that, that the prior corresponding periods were very low, and I'm still pleased to say that if we compare our results to, you know, perhaps the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner accredited companies, we're still very much towards the upper end of the performance. Caveat that with, again, no incident is acceptable. Pleasingly, total incidents are down by about 6.5%. That's important to note, particularly with the additional revenue and hours that we've done throughout the year, which obviously from a total incidents point of view, would have an impact on that. Also, pleasingly, 26,500 proactive safety, quality, and environmental observations logged. So it's not all about catching people doing the wrong things, it's about people catching people doing the right things and really promoting that safety culture.
From a people point of view, our people and culture, so as we mentioned earlier, we've got over 600 loyal and committed amazing people. You would have heard me say before, that our only assets are our people, so we have a very strong commitment to both attracting the best talent in the industry, but also in retaining that talent. 6% increase in our total workforce, with 7% of them are employees being promoted, and our unplanned churn sitting still below 10%, which again is at the upper end of performance for the industry, well, in excess of industry performance. From a partnership point of view, we've touched on before our secured order backlog, a little under AUD 527 million.
That's supported by a very high client net promoter score of +87. And one of the backbones to achieving that high net promoter score is our Perfect Delivery program, which is an internal program which looks at zero defects, operations, and manuals on time within a week of handover, and achieving perfect delivery for our clients. So we're sitting at 89% of all of our projects are signed off by our clients of achieving that milestone, which is a fantastic support. Last one there on environmental and social impact. So SHAPE corporate actions. We've maintained our Climate Active certifications for our corporate operations. You'll see there touch more later on about Green Star with Brisbane office achieving six-star Green Star in the period.
To note, we're currently delivering 10 Green Star projects as well around the country, with a combined value of AUD 106 million+. And just the last note there is that we've done almost AUD 600,000 in value of goods and services and donations through our Community+ program, to give back to the community from an ESG point of view. Moving on to just revenue. So that's just... I've got two pages on revenue here, just to show a bit of the trend on the split. So some of the takeaways there, you can see from H1 or full H1, we've had strong revenue growth in WA, Queensland and South Australia.
Slight reductions in Victoria and New South Wales, where we saw probably the first quarter have some plenty of activity, but we saw some of the actual sales delay from a client sort of final sign-off. We don't have any concerns with that when we look at the pipeline for both New South Wales and Victoria. And in fact, when we look at the number of decisions pending and tenders that are submitted, where we're sort of either one of two, or where we've been indicated that we're a single preferred contractor, we're very comfortable with the positions of both of those businesses. Mentioned there a strong tender conversion rate, so 52%. Again, that's at the upper end of performance for the industry.
Means, as I've sort of always said, we don't price for practice. We identify the right opportunities with the right clients that suit our skill set, and they're the opportunities we pursue. So we have very little reduced costs in downtime and costs in avoidable works, through tendering works that are not going to be appropriate for SHAPE. Talk a little bit there on the right-hand side around origination. So we've got our bespoke CRM with some fairly sophisticated algorithms, which will give us a very strong indication of tenders as to our opportunity or chance, or opportunity of winning those. So that supports that strong conversion rate of 52%.
And I'd also note there, that, certainly from a commercial office space, we've got some very good transparency across the market, with that lease expiry, register, which allows us to provide, a level of accuracy on forward forecast for ourselves. From an execution point of view, just, a strong, record there, both investment and system and processes, across financial management, project delivery, environment, health and safety, and HRIS. These, systems and processes are all very much embedded in our operations, and do focus on mitigating risk across the business. The last one there, aftercare and maintenance. So we do have a dedicated team focusing on maintaining those client relationships. So, we like to nurture those relationships through the cycle, and that supports our 80% plus of, our work as being repeat business.
Staying on revenue, I just wanted to provide a break-up there across the revenue streams, as far as fit-out, new builds, facades, modular. So you can see there, both those graphs are actually breaking up the same sectors in different ways. So we're looking at it from the percentage of our book on the left-hand side. So you can see that commercial markets maintain their buoyancy. Our core markets show stability, and they're maintaining. But interestingly, on that left-hand side, you can see there that as part of our growth initiatives, the modular and new build sectors continue to gain traction in that area.
If you look to the right-hand side, which breaks it up by value, and you can see, I would note that the graph on the, on the very right, you can no doubt read that it's the half year only, but that is half year compared to full year, hence why it looks smaller. But if you look at that total, that's AUD 412 million via PCP of AUD 434 million in FY 2023, which is really just a timing thing. When we look at the backlog and number of project wins, it very much supports achieving greater results for the full year. So that's the revenue part. When I look forward to the future, and we just start to look at backlog and to pipeline.
So the graph on the left is the backlog order by sector. Backlog position, you can see, is quite diverse across sectors. We maintain that strong capability and focus on the commercial office markets. When we compare that to the pipeline by sector, you can see our reliance on that commercial office market starts to diversify as we continue to blend our book with adjacent sectors and capabilities. So we're starting to see defense, specialty, hotels, health, education, and retail. It's not to say that the office market is shrinking and the office market is not shrinking, it's we're seeing that continue to evolve. That's more looking at from a pipeline point of view. As we continue to pursue our growth and diversification initiatives, we continue to diversify that book.
Right-hand side, you can see there, that backs up the numbers we've used previously. We've identified pipeline, and how that flows through to tenders won. Just a little bit on the business diversification of projects. So the left-hand side pies, you can see, first of all, I'd make 4 points on this slide. The first one is that approximately 50% of our work is 6 months or less. That gives us some level of protection against cost of goods rising, and that sort of those sort of inflationary measures. Then we go to interior versus exterior works, and regardless whether it's new build facade or to fit out, almost 90% of our work is actually internal.
So that, again, gives us a level of protection from, not just from industrial relations, but, weather exposure and the likes. The third pie there, pie graph there is repeat work, which I mentioned earlier that in excess of 80%, so 87, 87% of our work is actually with clients that we've worked with before, that we know them and they know us, and we've pretty much chosen each other. So that just means that we're not learning new clients along the way, and we start to develop those relationships. The right-hand side was just a, just a diagram, just to, I guess, put an underline and to, talk about the commercial sector resilience.
So, as you would have seen in both our backlog and our pipeline, SHAPE remains heavily committed to the commercial office sector. But what I would note there is that the beauty of the commercial office sector is that it enjoys work across all aspects of the cycle. So if you look across, from when buildings are starting, and they get built, there's new build components, fit outs, then you've got ongoing leases, you've got tenant churn, and then asset repositioning. So whether tenants are moving in or out, staying, going, increasing, decreasing, there's always work across those aspects of the cycle.
And then what we're seeing, in particular now, as clients have a flight to quality, per se, is any of the assets that are B grade, C grade, are definitely starting to get a lot of focus on repositioning, as building owners and landlords and employers entice employees back to the office, which we're seeing a continued increase, which is, I won't go into, because you no doubt read about that in the paper on most given days. Moving on to safety leadership. So just, that's a fairly busy slide. I won't go through the numbers necessarily on the left. Suffice to say that we continue to pursue an increase in our performance, and SHAPE remain committed to our pursuit of zero harm.
So safety performance metrics, while positive, as I note, there's been a small increase in the TRIFR and the LTIFR. I guess that comes down to there's a couple of parts to it. There's increased revenue, there's increased exposure. Also, a lot of new labor coming into the market, which means that we need to be ever vigilant on our training and our onboarding, and how we bring people into the business and onto our sites. As I noted before, we still sit above average of the OFSC, which is the Office of the Federal Safety Commissioner, accredited companies, which we don't take that for granted.
And we continue to invest in those safety leadership systems and process, involving, you know, even down to developing project performance and reporting, looking at the potential benefits of AI through the exploration of how do we learn from our data, and that, and that sort of thing. I mentioned earlier the total incidents are down 6.5%, which is down from 237 to 222. And I've talked about the rest of the observations there on that page. On to sustainability. So we talked last year about measuring our carbon footprint. I'm pleased to say that despite an increase in revenue and our project hours, we continue to reduce our total emissions down to 2.912 tons.
So we'll continue to work towards that, and to, yeah, again, continue to reduce our carbon footprint. You can see there, carbon neutral. So we, I mentioned earlier that our corporate operations have been certified Climate Active carbon neutral, which is, an achievement we're very proud of. From a Green Star point of view, I mentioned earlier that we are currently working on 10 projects, worth around AUD 106 million. But also in the period, we completed three projects, Green Star accredited, worth AUD 24.2 million. From a green power point of view, we continue to, as we renew our offices, to move towards green energy. And 58% of all of our corporate electricity is provided through green energy. Looking at the moment, carbon accounting software embedded for our operations.
So I mentioned that, I think the full year last year, that we had introduced that accounting software. So we're embedded with that, that's now embedded in our operations and sets us up well for the future as we start to report in more depth on sustainability. The last one there, five SHAPE offices have achieved Green Star or are in the process. So I mentioned Brisbane achieving that during the period, and Melbourne still pending, although I can confirm that Melbourne has now achieved six-star as well. But that's outside of the first half. So that was a lot of my voice. So apologies for that. I'm gonna move you on now to the financial overview, and Scott will just drill a little bit deeper into those numbers that he highlighted earlier.
... Thanks, Peter. As we indicated before, there's been significant profitability uplift for the half. So we'll just go into a little bit of detail. Some of those things on the slide there we mentioned earlier in the presentation, but just something that we didn't talk about, that we talk about now, is just in relation to the gross margin. So we've had quite an uptick in gross margin, so they've increased by 22%. So they're up from 7.4 to 9.1 or thereabouts. 'Cause we have benefit from a higher than usual percentage of projects being closed out in the period, and the way that the project cycle works, as we're working our way through a project, and we're continuing to generate more margin on those projects as they near the end.
Based on the amount of revenue that's turned over compared to the increased margin, we get a slight bias to an increase, increased margin. So that has assisted us there. The other thing is that we're continuing to drive efficiencies on our projects to enhance the margin. And then moving further forward into the future, and, you know, as we, you know, we talk about the growth strategies a little bit more, but we will continue to blend a higher margin work in into our book and to continue to look to improve on those gross margins. We'll also just talk about the cost side of things, while it's not on the slide there, just 'cause it'll make up more of the full story.
So costs, if you look at that in absolute terms, on our overheads, have gone from sort of AUD 27.4-AUD 29.5. So they've risen a little bit, and that's a combination of a number of things. We have had increased headcount, we've also got the inflation running pretty strongly over the last couple of years, as we all know. But one of the main differences is we are continuing to invest in a number of those growth strategies, particularly for defense, modular, and aftercare, and also the facilities. So we've just taken an additional facility in Adelaide to expand and grow our modular capabilities. And of course, there's costs that are going through there until we reach the additional capacity or full capacity.
There is a slight lag there. The other thing that's worth noting that we talked about before is that, you know, with that backlog of AUD 457.2 million, that will support continued strong revenues into H2. And we don't expect those costs to change. We expect them to remain relatively stable. So as a percentage of overheads, you should start to see a decrease as we work through the full year. And the other thing to note there is on that strong liquidity or cash management position, at 31 December, we had paid down the loan that we utilized for the KL Modular business. We paid that down.
There was only AUD 2.6 million remaining, and we've subsequently paid that off in full since the end of the half year. I'll pass back to Pete. Sorry, next page. My apologies. So we do continue to maintain a strong liquidity position, which we've talked about. The purpose of this graph is to indicate, for anyone that hasn't seen the monthly sort of life cycle, if you like, of cash or liquidity position. So this shows you throughout the course of the month, what a typical cycle looks like. And what you'll see there is, you'll see a dip towards the start of the month, and that's when we make payment runs at the start of the month.
Cash continues to build and the payment terms are in line with the relevant security of payments legislations across the country in the different states. You'll see a dip there around about the 20th of the month, and that's in relation to New South Wales. Their payment terms are 20 business days, so we make a fairly substantial payment there to New South Wales that obviously represent a fair component of our business, and then the cash will then build back up, and then we make another payment run, so there's Queensland, WA, and then that depends on whether that's. It is before the end of the month or after the end of the month, depending on, well, how many weekends there are effectively in the month.
But we continue to apply rigorous cash management to maximize our position on cash for obvious reasons. Obviously, you know, we wanna have a good, strong liquidity position for the business, but given that the interest rates and the 13 interest rate rises over the last couple of years have, you know, obviously continued to help us and will benefit from those interest rate rises. We also obviously maintain strict capital management procedures because we do have a number of prequalification requirements and external financial assessments that are part of our tendering activity.
The next couple of points there, it just shows you that the average daily balance of cash and marketable securities for the, for the last six months, or those six months through to 31 December, was AUD 78.5 million. And the lowest minimum balance of each of those months was AUD 59 million. So very strong position. We also do have very strong operating cash flows of AUD 78.5 million, and strong EBITDA to cash flow conversion rates. Peter?
Thanks, Scott.
... So bear with us, we are on the home straight. Just a few more slides, and then we've got a few questions that have come in, and we will get across to them. So I just wanted to talk through, I mentioned in our pipeline and earlier on in the deck, our growth strategy, and the focus on pretty much on three pillars. So I just wanted to just give you an update on where we were going on them. So the first one was the growth into non-core market sectors. So you can see there, again, there's a lot of numbers there, but, hotels, health, retail, education, and defense. So we call it the non-core markets as far as not commercial office sector.
If you look across those, you can see the various results, noting that that's a half year compared to a full year. But if you look at hotels, we're quite stable in that growth area. Health, we're seeing a good increase. Retail, seeing a good increase, and this is increased for the half compared to the prior full year. Education, quite a strong increase there. And defense continues to increase. I would note on defense that, whilst we're seeing an increase there, there was a small delay, or a delay experienced with defense in the Defence Strategic Review. And we're still continuing to see the defense Department of Defense and defense primes reassess their pipelines for the work.
We understand it's still there, and I think, you know, obviously following the papers and that sort of stuff, with the push for the Navy and that sort of stuff, we're going to continue to see that work come out, albeit we did experience a small delay in that pipeline, but we're not anticipating that to impact our any forward forecast for our defense work. And we still continue to see that as a key growth area going forward. The next one was our capability expansion, which covers facades, modular, and new build. Again, on the right-hand side, you can see the half year as compared to a full year. And I guess I'd note there that new build, we're seeing a significant increase.
Facades remains fairly stable, and we've noted before that the facade rollout is a very organized and structural process as we roll through with building owners, as they bring their buildings up to code and get them compliant. And then modular, obviously, a significant increase, particularly on the back of our ongoing investment there. Noting that we've got the Victorian operations for modular, and we have opened a facility in South Australia, which we have commenced producing modules down there on the back of, again, a sector that we see some good growth opportunities in. Finishing now on the third pillar, which is our geographic expansion.
So, apart from our offices, across the mainland state and territories that we've been in for some years, in the last sort of year, we've opened the Gold Coast, Newcastle, and also established a presence in Tasmania. You can see the growth there from the half year to the full year. And I'd suggest that the growth in each of those areas has been strong as we continue to target those markets, leveraging our existing relationships into those markets, and certainly enjoying some success on the tender front. So that covers off our slide deck. Sorry, a slide behind for your geographic expansion. That covers off our slide deck there, and just leave us with questions, that we're almost at the half past mark, so I'll hand back to you, Mel.
Thanks, Pete. Scott, we might start off with the question we've received over email in regards to the AUD 97.9 million call-out on the financial highlights. Can you just tell us how is this made up, including what amount represents capital? What is the value of the marketable securities, and what other cash does this represent?
Yeah. Thanks, Mel. So with the AUD 97.9 million, we have, as far as the cash, actual cash balance goes, it's AUD 80.1 million, and the marketable securities is AUD 17.8 million. So that's the breakdown of that, and, as I indicated earlier, the marketable securities is managed by their. Primarily corporate bonds managed by JB Were. We're invested in investment-grade securities, to enhance the yield that we generate on our liquidity position.
Thanks, Scott. And so we've got the next question from Brad: Congratulations on the result. What sort of pricing power do you have, and is there a plan to achieving higher margins in the future?
Yeah, I'll jump on that. Thanks, Brad. I guess, when you talk about pricing power, if you look at, there's a couple of aspects to our business. Our core business, which is sort of the 34-year-old fit out and refurbishment business. In each of our operations, we'd be number 1 or 2 in our markets, and I guess if you look at that from a pricing power point of view, that translates and very much supports our win rates of in excess of 50%. So that's from the core business point of view.
If we look at the pricing power as we move forward, part of our growth strategy or our growth strategy is centered around how do we continue to add to the SHAPE book, so revenue and through our work book with higher margin areas. So we look at things like defense and health, where there's higher barriers to entry, and certainly we're looking at the modular business, where there's higher barriers to entry.
... And the pricing, I guess, power in each of those markets is. It varies depending on where you are. But suffice to say, the win rates across all of those are included in the 52% by number. So I'd say that it's still supported by a very strategic and sophisticated approach to our opportunity identification, all the way through to winning those opportunities. And I think certainly for, you know, most of our operations, we've been outside of our new regional offices that we've opened recently. The youngest office is 15 years. So we've got a long track record of established relationships with supply chain and with the local communities there.
So I think all of that goes together along with our Net Promoter Score, to support that high level of tender success.
Thanks, Pete. And maybe we'll just continue... There's a couple of other questions on margins here. So, how should we think about this cost performance going forward? Are margins at a level which can be held in the near term?
Yeah, I'll answer that one. As far as the margins go, so what we were indicating before with—so where the revenue position is, and the closing out of some of those larger jobs and a number of the jobs finishing, it did assist in the gross margin rising. What will happen is, through a project life cycle, we have what we call a go-in margin and an exit margin. So there's a tendering margin where you start a project at, and through the life cycle of that project, through, you know, subcontractor lettings, value engineering, finding efficiencies, clients then undertaking changes to their project, which constitute variations.
Working all the way through to the closeout of the project and final negotiations, both from a client perspective and a supplier perspective. And throughout that cycle, as you progress all the way through, ideally and generally, you'll continue to generate more margin. So what happens now is we've got a significantly higher than usual backlog, and we'll be starting a number of newer projects. So that bias will then tend more towards a go-in position as we go through H2. And then, that will move around, subject to how much the revenue swings by. And so what we'll see is potentially a slight easing of margins into H2.
Thanks, Scott. Just on that, I think we've answered a couple of questions in terms of EBIT, our margin increase. But can you just say if there's any other elements which explain the gross margin increase of 160 basis points?
I mean, look, it's, there's what we talked about before. There's providing further efficiencies on the project. Margins can move also through the mix of the projects, as far as the size and the sector, the combination thereof. And what we also will see is the movement where we're going into the growth areas, and blending our margin with additional revenue from those growth sectors that provide enhanced margins than we're currently generating on our business as usual.
Thanks, Scott. Then one of our next questions is from Michael, and it's: Do we still maintain a major defects liability financial provision within the accounts? And if so, what is the current provision?
Yeah, so the short answer to that is yes, we do have a defects liability provision. It's currently sitting in the accounts at about AUD 4.1 million. We're currently in the process of assessing that. From the last time that we assessed it, there's been enough time that's transpired to review that, and we're continuing to assess that to come to a resolution on where that provision should be by the thirtieth of June.
Thanks, Scott. One final question. We just wanted to get more detail on the cost performance, which looks strong. Can you talk more to the drivers there, please?
As far as the costs, as in the overheads, or the costs as in the running the projects? Just to clarify that, if the questioner could put that through. I guess if we in the meantime, jumping on both. If we look at the cost point of view from an overhead, we continue to see efficiencies in overhead, as we continue to increase revenue across the business, and you'll see that over the years, as the percentages on that comes down. That is obviously highly related to both revenue, but also into the investment. So at the moment, we're managing our cost base, to ensure that we can partake and enjoy those efficiencies as we scale the business up from a revenue point of view.
But at the same time, we continue to invest in those startup areas. So for instance, establishing a new footprint in South Australia with a factory there, a manufacturing capability. Investing in additional expertise with DFMA and modular capability. So we're balancing that efficiency of overhead with our investment in the future, to continue to make sure that we can continue to achieve those growth aspirations that we have in the business. So that's from a cost point of view. If you look at the cost performance-
... I think we've covered a lot of it in the answers, but there's a number of aspects that go into that, as into the type. Typically, again, from a you know, defense point of view, there's barriers to entry, so as you increase your work in defense, you tend to get margins that are perhaps a bit thicker than margins where there's a lot more competition. Certainly at the lower end of the commercial office market, there's a lot of players there that don't have the same level of overhead system commitment to quality and to repeat business that we have. So as we move into those non-core sectors, we start to open ourselves to the ability to achieve greater margins.
And certainly as we look into those capabilities from a new build and in particular, modular, which is why we're heavily investing in that area, we're starting to see the margins thicken up as well, so.
Well, I can probably add a little bit more to that, just from, as we indicated, that the margins, just because there'll be a slight bias towards the projects earlier on in their life cycle, and then that can be offset to some extent in relation to the overhead. So the overhead structure that we've currently got is scalable to the extent that we can, you know, perform additional revenues in H2. And therefore, the overhead percentage relevant to the revenue will then come off. So whilst margin may come off, overhead can come off, which you're looking at, EBITDA or your net profit margin, with one offsetting the other, we'll obviously be able to assist in maintaining or being in a similar level to what we're currently performing.
Thanks, Scott. And Patrick just has a few follow-up questions on the EBITDA margin. So one, do you expect more EBITDA margin increase during second half? And his understanding is gross margin will be weaker in the second half, given lower cost ratio. And will the EBITDA margin in second half be like first half?
Yeah. So as I was just saying, in relation to the bias towards the newer projects' revenue, there may be a weakening of margins in H2, which to some extent can be offset against the stability of the overheads and the scalability of the current overheads. As revenues rise, overheads won't be rising to the same extent in H2, and therefore has the benefit of keeping the EBITDA margin up relatively relative to the potential decrease of gross margin.
Yes, I guess there's no expectation that there'll be a significant difference from an EBITDA margin, 'cause as Scott's saying, there'll probably be an evening out of gross margin and overhead. And again, depending on how much revenue we can pump through the business, we're certainly sitting on a very strong backlog. We're sitting on a very positive number of tenders with decisions pending. You know, depending on the months that they sell in and how quickly they go, is just whether or not we can book and burn them before June 30. So there's a number of sort of moving factors, but we wouldn't anticipate or expect anything significantly different from an EBITDA-type margin.
Thanks, Pete. That looks to be the end of the questions. If anyone wants any further clarification, they can email me directly. I might pass back to you, Pete, for closing sentiments.
No problems at all. So thank you, thank you very much. Hopefully, it's obviously good to be sitting in front of you, delivering some good, positive results. I think the business is traveling well. The market's responding well to that. We continue to enjoy good success in our attraction and retention of our fantastic employees. Again, continuing to really drive that constructive culture within our business, which is delivering some great outcomes for our clients. Appreciate you all for joining the call, and also thank our loyal shareholders, or shareholders that have been with us, and look forward to continuing on the journey with you. Thank you very much.