Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the virtual Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Smart Parking. My name is Chris Morris, and I'm Chairman of Smart Parking Limited, and I'll be chairing this meeting today. As you can see, I'm a little bit more casual than the boys in black in the office there because I'm up in Palm Cove in Queensland looking at one of my businesses up here. My apologies for not having a tie on. I would like to introduce you to my fellow directors and Company Secretary present at the virtual meeting. Paul Gillespie, the Managing Director, who I must say, does a pretty good job, especially now the shares a little better space than they were about six months ago. Jeremy King, who like me has been at Smart Parking for far too long.
The beautiful Fiona Pearse, who all keeps us in line all the time and makes sure we don't do anything ridiculous. Also, Richard Ludbrook, who again, I must compliment on a brilliant job that Richard's done. If any of you know the history of Smart Parking, we've had some pretty tough things over the years, but I think the company has never been in a better state than it has been now. I would also like to welcome the company's auditors, Grant Thornton. I advise the meeting that there is a quorum present, therefore the meeting is properly constituted and declare the meeting open. My time is 10:01 A.M. or something. Your time is 11:01 A.M. if you're in the normal states that have daylight saving.
If shareholders wish to ask questions during the meeting, I confirm that there will be an opportunity before putting any resolutions to the meeting to ask questions of the board as they relate to the formal items of the business of this meeting. Slide one please, Ange. Not sure if that's the right slide.
Yeah. Keep going, Chris. This is just about the voting process.
Oh, okay. If you wish to ask questions, please do so by typing a question into the chat function in Zoom. Okay, now. We ask that when typing a question, shareholders include their name so that the board can properly address the shareholder. All questions in the first instance are directed to me as Chair.
Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will address all questions at the same time as the relevant stage of the meeting, which will be after all of the items of business and proxy positions have been presented. The notice of meeting contains details of how to vote and is also shown on the screen. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you're eligible to vote in this meeting, a new polling icon will appear. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of the resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options.
There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until voting closes. I now declare voting open on all items of business. The polling icon will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. Following the meeting, the votes will be compiled by Computershare and released to ASX later today. I now declare voting open on all items of business. Please refer to your screen for a summary of proxy votes received for each resolution. Where a valid proxy vote has been given to the Chairman without voting instructions, please note that in all cases, I intend to vote in favor of the resolution.
Information on how to access the notice of the meeting and explanatory statement dated 14th of October 2022 was distributed to all shareholders, and I will take that notice as read. All resolutions contained in the notice of the meeting and to be put to members today will be displayed on your screen, so I will not read out each proposed resolution. We will now move to resolution number one, Adoption of the Remuneration Report. You can see the votes there, which is I think most ASX company would die to have a full vote of 97% for their remunerations, which probably means we're paying Paul and Richard too much money, but no, we're not. The resolutions are shown on the screen. Is there any questions on this resolution? You got any, Richard?
No questions, Chris.
No questions.
I now put the resolution to a vote. Resolution two, allocation of equity to managing director and employee share scheme. Again, that's not bad, Paul. All right, the resolution terms and the proxy votes for Resolution two are now shown on the screen. Has anyone got any questions regarding this resolution?
Okay, no questions, Chris.
I now put the resolution to a vote. Resolution three, approval of 10% placement capacity. Resolution terms and the proxy votes for Resolution three are shown on the screen. Again, a few against there. As I explained to one of our members, I think 75% is pretty good. Any questions on this one?
Nothing, Chris.
I now put the resolution to a vote. This is a difficult one, the next one. Resolution four.
Reelection of the Director, Jeremy King. Resolution terms and proxy vote for Resolution 4 as shown on the screen. Unbelievable. 98.95%. Who doesn't like you, Jeremy?
I know. I'm gonna have to hunt her down.
Yea h. Go on.
If there's any questions? The person who's voted against, want to say anything?
Right. No questions. I'll put the resolution to a vote. Other business. Just a reminder, the results of the meeting will be released to the ASX later today. If you haven't voted, please do so now. We have now completed the matters contained in the notice of annual general meeting of shareholders, and I could declare the meeting closed. Our Managing Director, Paul Gillespie, will now give a presentation, and we'll take general questions after that presentations. Questions, we'll again be using the chat function from Zoom. Thank you very much, everyone. Go, Paul.
Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Rich and I are both in the Melbourne office for a change, which is good. Normally Rich would be based out of Auckland, but it's great that we're both here to talk to you today. Today I'll take you through some slides that we lodged with the ASX premarket this morning, and that will give you a good understanding or hopefully give you a good understanding of the Smart Parking business, a year in review, a brief trading update, and also what our growth plans are for the future. After that, I'll be very happy to take some questions. Not sure why it's not showing us on the screen. Yeah. Okay. We can go to slide number two, please, Ange. Thank you.
Well, a lot of people on the call are existing shareholders, so you know who we are and what we do. For those who are new to the business, we are a proud Australian company, headquartered here in Melbourne, who specialize in the delivery of technology-led parking management services. We've developed our own proprietary market-leading technology that provides parking management services to landowners, property agents, and retailers in order to effectively manage their parking locations or sites. I'm pleased to say that having proven that we can build a successful and profitable business in the U.K., we're now leveraging our I.P. into new territories with large market opportunities, particularly APAC and more recently, Germany. Our value add is through the use of our proprietary technology. We increase compliance, revenue, and customer experience for our clients.
We know how to do this well, and we have deep experience and expertise. We have an attractive financial model that delivered FY 2022 results of AUD 8.8 million of EBITDA, an increase of 296% on PCP. At balance date, on the 30 June, cash on the balance sheet of over AUD 10 million, and we're free cash flow positive. Can we go to page three, please? Looking at this slide and our current global footprints. This page shows where we currently operate our technology-led service operation in the four territories of the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and as of the 1 January this year, in Germany.
After carrying out our territory due diligence, and we identified the markets as being a good strategic fit for us, we're able to move quickly because we can deploy our industry-leading technology, utilize our deep domain experience, and execute the plan. We know what we're doing. We've proved this in the new territory so far. To demonstrate our capability of new market entry, we need to look at our track record, as a lot has changed in the last two years. However, we opened our parking management services business in New Zealand in March of 2021. In July of 2021, we opened the Australian services business in Queensland. As of the 1 January, we opened the doors of our business in Germany. We've hired leadership, salespeople, operations, and built our supply chain. In short, we've built a base that we can now scale from.
These are large addressable markets with close to 150,000 parking sites available for us to deliver our technology and services to. Put simply, in these four markets alone, we're at the start of a long-term growth runway. On page four, we see our recovery and our track record, but also the resilience in the business to recover quickly from the pandemic, where lockdowns impacted the number of cars using the car parking sites that we manage. However, it's clear to see on this slide that we're a growing, profitable, cash flow positive business with a strong balance sheet. The key points to note on this slide are the disciplined execution of our organic growth strategy that leads to the growth in revenue, profitability, and free cash flow.
You'll notice that there is some seasonality in the business with Q3 being the quiet quarter. This is due to Q3 being the U.K. winter, where car volumes naturally drop due to inclement weather. However, as we grow our APAC business, we expect to see this even out across the year. The final point to note on this slide is there is consistent growth, and we're focused on this continuing well into the future. If we turn now to page five, please, and let's do the recap on FY 2022 or our year in review. It's fair to say I'm proud of what the team at Smart Parking have achieved over the last financial year. It was a challenging 12-month period with macro-challenges beyond our control, in particular, lockdowns and COVID disruption across all the territories that we operate.
Regardless of this, we kept our focus on executing our growth strategy. As a result of this discipline, we delivered good results. We increased revenue by 68%, reported Adjusted EBITDA of AUD 8.8 million, an increase of 296%. We converted this into free cash flow of AUD 8.1 million, which was up 624%. This free cash flow and just under AUD 11 million of cash on the balance sheet funds our growth strategy and capital management initiatives. We also passed the halfway mark towards our 1,500 sites ANPR target by June 2025, closing the year with 839 sites under management. This includes organic growth in the U.K., contributions from Australia and New Zealand, and the highly successful acquisition of Enterprise Parking Solutions.
So if we go to slide six, and let's look forward now and talk about our growth strategy and the drivers that will help us grow our business into the future. At this moment in time, we have three pillars for growth. The first being organic. This is our-- in our existing territories. This will be driven by a disciplined sales approach of winning new locations and delivering great customer service to our client base. The larger the estate, the greater number of PBNs issued, which drives revenue and profitability. The second pillar is new markets and growth into new territories. By proving the model in the U.K., we have successfully opened in APAC and are busy scaling this business. We've opened in Germany and have built the foundations for a successful operation in a great market.
With the confidence we've built from these recent expansion initiatives, we're now busy looking for new markets where we can leverage our IP and market-leading scalable technology. Whilst expansion into new markets does cost money, it's a cost we can manage and fund from existing cash flow. The third driver is M&A. We've demonstrated with two acquisitions in FY 2022 that we can find, evaluate, execute, and integrate M&A opportunities. We'll continue to build the pipeline and maintain a disciplined approach, ensuring we look at deals that will be the right strategic fit and deliver a return for shareholders. Let's unpack these a little bit further and move to slide seven. We've communicated regularly with shareholders that our long-term organic growth target is to get to 1,500 ANPR sites under management by June 2025.
We're on track to deliver this organic growth, and at the end of October, on this slide, we have 925 sites under management. We need to bear in mind that the four territories that we operate have a total addressable market of around 150,000 sites. Today, we have 925, so we have a huge organic opportunity to continue this growth trajectory. Of course, as we grow the number of sites under management, our revenue and earnings will also grow significantly from where we are today. On slide eight, I'd like to provide you with a little context on the process we go through when evaluating new markets. Essentially, we want to find markets where we can create differentiation between ourselves and incumbent parking management providers supplying zero tech solutions.
In short, we want to leverage our IP and parking technology into countries where the regulatory environment allows us to access the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database. That means we can access the driver's name and address, so we can send them a Breach Notice in the post when they're contravening the rules in one of our car parks. This is how our technology gives us an edge on the competition, where we issue notices by technology rather than by hand or by human intervention. We've already identified a number of markets where we can access the local Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agencies, and we're working through a process carefully in order to maximize the opportunities we go for. I will, of course, keep shareholders up to date with this during our market updates. The final pillar is obviously M&A.
We can supplement our growth through complementary acquisitions on good financial terms. We've made two acquisitions in the last financial year. They've both been successfully integrated into the U.K. business. We have the appetite, capability, and resources to do more of these deals, but we will maintain our discipline when looking at each opportunity in each location. We're focused on all three of these growth drivers, and we'll continue to push ourselves to deliver against our objectives. If we look at slide 10 now, let's see how we're trading so far this year for the first four months of FY 2023. Well, I'm pleased to say we're tracking well and ahead of the same period last year. Looking at the growth of PBNs on this slide, you can see that we're up 24% on PCP.
There's also a sharp increase in the U.K. at 207,000 issued, and more than double the contribution from APAC region versus Q4 at 29,000. This demonstrates the revenue multiplier coming through as we add sites. This is the success of our organic growth strategy that will continue. Apart from the seasonal impacts, there was a clear trend upwards. As most of you know, we updated the market last week with a Q1 trading update, so I don't intend to go into that again. However, it's worth highlighting from the Q1, from that presentation, revenue was up 21% on PCP and EBITDA up 12% on the same period.
However, if we compare properly, we need to remove the German investment from the Q1 numbers as we didn't have that, like, this time last year. When we do this, the EBITDA is up 27%. The margin grows to 28.8%. It's fair to say we're happy with the performance to date, and we'll look forward to updating the market at the half year. Looking now at slide 11, and the cash flow for the first four months of FY 2023. The group maintains a strong balance sheet and well-placed to fund organic growth and further acquisitions. We have cash on hand of AUD 10.2 million at the end of October, with operating cash flow of AUD 3 million for the first four months of the year.
It's important to note that this includes AUD 500,000 of investment in Germany, which will lead to future revenue and earnings growth. As you can see on this slide, so far this year, we've invested AUD 2 million on CapEx. This investment is mainly the purchasing of ANPR cameras and payment machines that we install on our customers' sites at no cost to the clients. On average, we see a payback of six months-eight months for this investment, meaning we can continue to self-fund the organic growth well into the future. CapEx is expected to increase in FY 2023 compared to 2022 as a result of the growth in sites we plan to install across all four operating territories.
Finally, on this slide, we continued to buy back and spent AUD 500,000 in the first four months of the year at just under AUD 0.23 per share. I'll now close my presentation on slide 12 and discuss really what the key priorities are and how these are underway, and we're currently executing. FY 2023 should be another year of strong profitable growth. I've said before now, we are a growth company in high growth mode. It's not lost on anyone at SPZ that we have a technology advantage, deep industry experience, and a large and timely opportunity to expand across the four countries. We have a proven business model and a compelling value proposition for our site owners. We've worked hard to grow revenue and manage our costs carefully through a difficult period, and we'll continue to mitigate challenges through keen financial discipline.
The benefits of scale are clear. We're committed and well advanced in delivering our 1,500 ANPR global sites under management target by 2025. Our global sales team is focused on adding over 300 new sites in 2023. We expect to grow in all four countries, given we've now firmly established foundations for growth. We have a strong balance sheet to fund the growth CapEx to support the installations with over AUD 10 million of cash. In conclusion, we'll continue our laser focus on executing our organic growth strategy, which has been successful to date. We'll continue to explore acquisition opportunities to accelerate our growth and enhance returns for shareholders. Concurrently, we'll continue to look at new operating territories where we can leverage our technology and expertise to facilitate our growth well into the future. That concludes my presentation.
Thank you for listening. We'll be happy to take some questions. Do we have any questions?
There's nothing in the chat room at this stage.
No.
Well, gentlemen, I think we just about close the meeting, could we?
There is a question there.
Yeah.
How is the company going with converting ANPR sites? Is that to Chris?
To you.
To me? Okay. Sorry.
Can you just speak a bit louder, please?
Yep. How is the company going with converting Enterprise Parking's manual sites to ANPR technology? Yeah. Good. We have a obviously decent pipeline of sites up there. Obviously acquired 517 sites that were all manually operated. We've been busy obviously working with the customers to get in front of them and, you know, convince them of the new potential they have with their sites. We've got up to 20 converted now. It's a little bit slower than we'd like, but we've set ourselves some pretty strong targets. As people know, you know, we only need to be able to convert many to be a very successful acquisition. Little bit slower than we like, but it's still going well and we're happy where we're at.
Okay. Next question. With the economy weakening in the U.K., has the company noticed any parking behavior changes or higher default rates on PBN payments?
Certainly not any higher default rates. If anything, you know, October was actually a record month for receipts in the U.K. You know, for us, we haven't seen anything change as yet. I guess the first change we see are the leading indicators we look at are obviously the volume of cars that goes through the estate. From that perspective, yeah, we haven't seen that drop at this stage. Of course, coming into this time of year, sort of late November, December time, December's normally quite busy. January of course is much quieter just purely because, as I mentioned in my presentation, the inclement weather in the U.K., you see fewer people out and about, fewer cars on the road. That obviously means you will see the natural seasonality impact.
No, you know, receipts are still very strong, as you can see from the cash, which is good news. Yeah, right now I'm not seeing that impact.
Okay. No other questions.
Cool.
No other questions from anybody? Okay. Well, we'll then close the meeting, everyone. Thank you for attending.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, everyone.
Cheerio. Bye-bye.