Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ventia Full Year Results Call 2024. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Dean Banks, Managing Director and Group Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Darcy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to everyone listening in today. Thank you for joining us for our 2023 full year results presentation. I am Dean Banks, proud and privileged to be the group's Ventia. I'm joined today by Stuart Hooper, Ventia's CFO, and our CFO designate, Mark Fleming, who I look forward to introducing to investors over the coming weeks. Following the presentation, Stuart and I will be happy to take questions. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge their ancient and ongoing connection to the lands, waters, and communities. On all the lands in which Ventia operates across Australia and New Zealand, I want to pay my respects to the traditional custodians and their elders past and present.
We also recognize and celebrate the heritage and culture of New Zealand, where our teams engage with local iwi and communities across the country. Now to the main pack, and first to safety. As always, the safety of our people is our highest priority. It is our license to operate, and good safety performance is paramount to our continued success. This period, our total recordable injury frequency rate improved by 11%. Our serious injury frequency rate improved by a significant 62% through our relentless application of the critical risk protocols. One of our critical risks is road safety, which is the number one cause of work-related fatalities across Australia and New Zealand. Our All Roads Lead to Home campaign was launched in May and has resulted in a 5% reduction in speeding events for vehicle fleet- to- date.
I'm pleased our collective efforts to shape positive behaviors across our business are driving an overall improvement in our safety results. To the results. It's been an excellent year for Ventia. Our results again reflect the reliability and stability of our business. We've maintained momentum, building upon our first-half result. These full year results are not only consistent with our guidance, but in many instances, exceed expectations. Each sector has delivered revenue and EBITDA growth over the year, and as a group, our earnings have outpaced the market, increasing our market share while delivering sustainable growth for shareholders. Dividends grew in line with NPATA as we again paid out 75%, delivering an increase in dividends of 12.5% year-over-year. We achieved full year revenue of circa AUD 5.7 billion, up 9.8%. EBITDA was up 10.8%, with margin increasing slightly to 8.2%.
In terms of our bottom line, NPATA was up 12.5%, representing 2.5% of outperformance on the top end of our guidance range. Operating cash flow conversion was stable once again at 88.8%. Work in hand reached AUD 18.1 billion, which I'll cover in more detail on the next slide. These financial results reflect strong demand for essential services we perform, the diversity of our portfolio, and the strength of our business model. As I said, work in hand has grown to AUD 18.1 billion. For Ventia, there's never been a shortage of opportunities, demonstrating the robust demand drivers underpinning our total addressable market. That said, our focus is always upon quality and not quantity in our order book. Over the last two years, we have significantly invested in the relationships with our largest clients, resulting in the spend of our top 10 clients increasing by 23% CAGR.
The top 10 clients' revenue is spread over 38 contracts, representing the material diversity of these strategic partnerships. In 2023, work in hand growth was lower than originally expected, primarily due to the delay of 2 large government procurement processes, namely the Defence Base Services contract and New South Wales land and social housing. As a consequence, Ventia was awarded short-term extensions for these contracts in 2023. 2024 is therefore an important year in respect of our work win, with a number of tenders currently in progress. Encouragingly, our qualified pipeline continues to grow, and we enter 2024 with a good start point and a high level of revenue secured. Let's now look at a selection of strategic contract wins from 2023. First, the Defence maintenance contract valued at AUD 393 million. This contract delivers equipment maintenance to support the Australian Defence Force.
As previously reported, we also awarded a one-year extension to the Defence Base Services contract valued at AUD 550 million, comprising end-to-end service on prescribed basis around Australia. In New Zealand, we won a two-year extension on Auckland Council contract with a value of AUD 170 million, which is a good turnaround story on a contract that was previously underperforming. Telco has had a fantastic year of work win. Illustrated on this page are two new contract awards from NBN and one contract extension from Telstra, with a combined value of over AUD 750 million. Infrastructure services won the year-long contract to maintain EnergyAustralia's power station in the Latrobe Valley until its scheduled closure in 2028, positioning us well for any potential remediation work which may occur post-closure.
In the transport sector, we secured Transurban's Queensland Road Network contract valued at AUD 210 million, strengthening our partnership with a premier private toll road operator in Australia. These wins demonstrate our deepening strategic relationships with clients and compelling value proposition while validating our strategy to redefine service excellence. Sustainability, for me, goes beyond reducing our environmental footprint. As one of the largest essential infrastructure services businesses in Australia and New Zealand, we have an opportunity, indeed an obligation, to lead the way. In 2021, we set ourselves ambitious ESG targets. On top of these targets, today we are announcing our Net Zero ambitions, which were submitted to SBTi for validation late last year. We aim to reduce Scope 1 and 2 absolute emissions by 42% by 2030 and achieve Net Zero across all scopes by 2050.
For a company like ours with a declared growth ambition, the 42% absolute reduction is going to be extremely challenging, but it is our obligation to decarbonize as soon as possible. These targets provide us with a clearly defined path to reduce emissions alongside a contribution to help limit global warming. In respect of our other medium-term commitments, as illustrated on the slide, we have made good progress across the board and are tracking well, but our execution needs to accelerate to meet our 2030 goals. We've made strong progress against both our social and governance goals. Our HESTA 2040 target was hit in February this year. We now have 40% female colleagues in our executive leadership team. Our next key target is to achieve a similar representation of females in the much larger senior manager cohort within our business. Moving now to strategy. Our strategic intent is clear.
As a business, we aspire to redefine service excellence by being client-focused, innovative, and sustainable. The results to date are encouraging, with our market share increasing from 6%-8% in total addressable market, which is now valued at AUD 78 billion. Cross-selling of our capability between sectors to existing clients is a real opportunity. This year, we have delivered AUD 93 million in cross-sell revenue, nearly hitting our AUD 100 million target and up some 48% year-over-year. Next year, our target is AUD 150 million, but this target belies what we see in the pipeline of future cross-sell opportunity. A great example of this is SKA. In December 2022, our telco business was awarded the contract, after which Ventia sought to understand more about the clients' needs. As a result, we tendered our services for the transport networks and camps, both of which have now been awarded to Ventia.
In terms of innovation, I am proud to announce Ventia's industry-leading social value measure. Ventia is the first company in Australia to have quantified the value of non-financial impacts we have on society via the Leading Themes, Outcomes, and Measures methodology, or TOMs. This tool measures the value we add in our local communities which we serve. For example, if we hire someone who is previously long-term unemployed or maybe previously incarcerated, this measure quantifies the value to society of that hire. This will help Ventia measure the effectiveness of our initiatives and provide a benchmark under which clients can compare and evaluate their chosen partners. Ventia is leading a task force alongside Social Value International to develop a new national standard and framework for Australia and New Zealand. To date, 27 clients and suppliers have joined the task force.
Ventia is proud to be at the forefront of this initiative. We hope it will shape the industry and deliver a positive impact to society. Sustainability is integral to our business and our social license. Last year, we achieved a major milestone in our plan, declaring our net zero targets to the SBTi. We look forward to confirming their validation later in the year. Alongside the validation of our targets, we will share our climate roadmap. This will lay out how we intend to achieve our targeted reductions for scope one, two, and three emissions. Now let's take a deeper dive into our financial results. For this section, I will hand over to Ventia's CFO, Stuart Hooper.
Thanks, Dean, and welcome, everyone. In short, it's been another fantastic year for Ventia, and today it's my absolute pleasure to present another set of great results.
We continue to deliver what we say we will deliver. The resilience, stability, and predictability of performance continues to be demonstrated. On the macro, 2023 was impacted by inflationary conditions. In addition, unemployment has remained low, and we have seen higher levels of churn in our workforce. These factors have put our business model to the test and, in my view, has performed superbly. Consistent with past results, we're not proposing any adjustments. These are statutory results, and investors can take our performance at face value. The business is in great shape for continued growth well into the long term. Before we dig into the detail, I'd like to take a minute to reflect on some recent trends. The graphs on the slide show solid and consistent growth in performance across 2021, 2022, and 2023.
For me, a few things stand out: consistent top-line growth in excess of market growth rates, so we're picking up share; EBITDA margins that have remained in a band, approximately sort of 20 basis points over three years, both stable and predictable; and with high conversion of MPA to cash, this supports a predictable dividend. This performance is grounded in the diverse range of essential services markets that we serve, the strength of our client relationships, and the portfolio effect that is achieved through our long-term contracts. The growth was supported by all four sectors, so let's now look at the sectors in some more detail. Starting with D&SI, while the revenue growth here was less than the other sectors at 2.4%, it's important to look at this growth in the context of the last couple of years.
In 2022, D&SI grew revenue at around 23%, so across the two years, nearly 25% is a fantastic result. EBITDA still grew at 4.6%, expanding margins slightly and demonstrating disciplined cost control. Given the short-term renewal of the defense-based services contract, D&SI work in hand has remained relatively flat for the year. We would expect work in hand to jump up in 2024 if we're successful on four key defense contracts and also the land and social housing contract in New South Wales. Infrastructure services grew revenue 7.8% versus 2022 and EBITDA 2.7%. EBITDA margin percentage has remained consistent on the half, but relative to 2022 has eased slightly to 8.9%. As discussed at the half, this reflects a small shift in contract mix towards longer-term maintenance contracts, which carry a slightly lower margin but also a favorable risk profile.
The telco sector continues to see strong growth, revenue up 21.3% on the previous year and EBITDA up some 22.7%. The outperformance was driven largely by increased volumes on existing long-term contracts with strategic customers like Telstra and NBN, as well as the mobilisation of new contracts such as SCAYA and Telstra's InterCapital Fibre Build. Finally, transport revenue has reached AUD 637 million, up 22.7% on last year, while EBITDA has grown strongly, up 16.2%. Our transport sector had a good year of work win, securing the Transurban Queensland Road Network opportunity, in addition to the 12-month benefit of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and the Western Corridor contract with Auckland Transport. Margin has contracted slightly here due to lower margins achieved on some of the emergency works we performed in support of our New Zealand clients.
Overall revenue growth of around 10% has pleasingly been underpinned by the growth in all four sectors. Despite the inflationary environment impacting both subcontractor costs and contributing to wage inflation, costs have increased by slightly less than revenue, so we've been able to expand the overall group margins to 8.2% at EBITDA. This symmetry speaks to the strength of the inflationary protections within our contracts as it relates to price escalation, as well as disciplined cost control across the business. Total workforce numbers have stayed relatively consistent, but we have seen a small shift to subcontractor numbers as reported at the half. This is primarily due to the growth in the telco sector, which is largely subcontractor delivered, and increased volumes on some of our large FM contracts, which are delivered by thousands of small local family businesses. FY2023 CapEx increased in line with budgets and forecasts.
The increase was mainly driven by ongoing replacement programs in support of our fire services contract with defense and elevated work platform rebuilds to support the electricity T&D business. In addition, we're investing in the fit-outs of our central offices in the capital cities to improve the workplace experience. Changes in net working capital reflect an increase in trade and other receivables offset by a smaller increase in trade payables, and these changes are primarily just due to the timing of milestone payments, particularly in the telecommunications sector. Cash conversion remains consistent in the high 80s at 89%. The teams continue to proactively manage our cash position, ensuring late payments are followed up and clients are invoiced in a timely manner. Net finance costs increased along with the underlying increase in the BBSY base rates.
We expect that we have now absorbed the majority of the increase in underlying interest costs and would expect only a small single-digit uplift in net finance costs in 2024. To the dividend on slide 14, today we're announcing a final dividend of AUD 0.0941 per share, a 13.6% growth on 2022, which will be paid on the 5th of April, bringing the total dividend for the year to AUD 0.1772 per share. This dividend represents a 75% payout ratio of NPAT-A cash, which is at our target level. Consistent with the interim dividend, it will be 80% franked. We anticipate to maintain a franking rate of around 80% over the medium term before moving to a fully franked dividend after the benefit of our tax losses has been exhausted.
We understand that dividends are important to our investors, and we continue our commitment to providing a sustainable and growing dividend profile. Moving to the balance sheet and capital management on slide 15, our prudent capital structure continues to serve the business well. In October last year, we took the opportunity to proactively refinance the first tranche of our term loan of AUD 250 million. We pushed out the term for five years, lengthening the original tenor by two, and maintained the same margins we achieved on the five-year tranche all the way back in 2021. This is a great result and demonstrates the continued growth in our credit story. Prior to the refi, Moody's and S&P upgraded our investment-grade credit rating, up one notch to BBB flat and Baa2, reflecting the reliability and stability of our cash flows, continued improvement in credit metrics, and business consistency.
The next maturity is the tranche B and the AUD 400 million revolver, and we'll proactively assess our future funding needs alongside credit market conditions as these facilities come close to maturity. Our AUD 400 million revolver continues to remain undrawn. We have a healthy cash balance as of 31 December of AUD 339 million, resulting in total liquidity of nearly AUD 740 million. Headroom on our covenants is material and expected to be maintained. Our net debt to EBITDA continues to improve and near the bottom end of our target range, which is 1x-2x. Let's look at our capital allocation framework and some of the priorities. I think it's clear the group is in a very strong financial position. In 2023, we've invested some AUD 45 million in capital items, or approximately 0.8% of revenue.
This demonstrates the capital-light nature of our business and reinforces that we do not need CapEx to drive revenue growth. That said, we'll continue to invest in the business where needed to drive organic growth across all of our sectors. One area in particular we will continue to invest is technology, upgrading our platform and ensuring that our client-facing systems are delivering on our strategy, which is to redefine service excellence. I've already talked about dividends. The continuation of our targeted 75% payout ratio is another big tick for investors. On acquisitions and M&A, here we're looking for capability that we can leverage across the enterprise, or filling out gaps in geography, or an opportunity, perhaps, to establish a long-term relationship with a key target client.
In 2022, we closed two transactions, Kordia and ATC Energy, both of which are fully integrated into Ventia's core systems and are performing well, having provided the expert capability to secure multiple contracts in 2023. We will continue to look for similar transactions, which we believe will provide growth and value for investors. Lastly, management of excess cash. The board and management will continue to assess on a periodic basis the highest and best use of this cash and whether various capital management initiatives are appropriate. Noting our new floor will be the new upgraded credit rating.
Before I hand back to Dean to take you through the outlook, given that this will be my last day as a CFO at Ventia, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all of our analysts and investors for your support, as well as a big, big thank you to the whole Ventia team.
Thank you, Stuart. What makes Ventia different is our most frequently asked question in investor meetings. So we've tried here to distill the big themes that we feel differentiate Ventia's business and position us for continued success moving forward. Firstly, we're clear about our strategy. We are a leading essential services provider. This is and will continue to be our core focus. Our total addressable market was AUD 75 billion in 2023 and grow to be around AUD 90 billion in 2026. This market is resilient. The services we provide are essential, and the demand for our services remains consistent, irrelevant of weather conditions, market downturns, or pandemics. We operate behind the scenes to allow people to go about their daily lives. Our contracts are long-term in nature, and we have excellent client engagement demonstrated by a high renewal rate. Client retention is critical to our success.
It demonstrates the trust placed in the strategic partnerships. Our people are our true differentiator. It's hard to quantify, but I truly believe that people are at the heart of our success. The breadth and depth of our expert capability is a critical component of our value proposition, and our ability to attract and retain the best and brightest is a key differentiator. Combine our people with our industry-leading systems and processes. This offers our teams a data-driven advantage. Our single enterprise-wide platform allows us to leverage a single source of the truth across the organization, providing data to aid better informed decision-making and unrivaled transparency across the portfolio. We have built and wrap around all our activities a strong risk and governance framework. We have a gated lifecycle approach to work win, which promotes collaboration and enables an informed risk management methodology.
This platform provides an excellent foundation for growth that gives us the confidence to invest and pursue organic growth alongside appropriate adjacent market opportunities. In respect of energy transition, as companies seek to reduce their carbon footprint and responsibly transition from fossil fuels, the demand for low-carbon services and technologies is accelerated. In many instances, we are the ESG supply chain for our clients, so it is critical that we have the expertise and offering to support our clients on their journey. Ventia has, for many years, completed energy grid maintenance and network upgrades, in addition to completing some of the largest complex environmental remediation projects in Australia and New Zealand. More recently, we have added a portfolio of long-term maintenance contracts like the three on the slide, and we see the demand for all these capabilities accelerating.
The first contract is for high-voltage minor capital works on Mercury's hydro and geothermal assets. This work assists in ensuring base load and peaking capacity is stabilized for New Zealand's North Island. Next is the West Wyalong Solar Farm. This contract involves the operation and maintenance of a 238,000 MW solar farm, generating enough electricity to power around 42,000 homes. And the final example is for the maintenance of EV charging infrastructure. We leverage our existing expertise and nationwide network in the telco sector to service part of Australia's EV network. The introduction of new electric vehicles and subsequent increase in public charging infrastructure is expected to grow exponentially until the end of the decade. Currently, our energy work is a relatively small part of our overall portfolio. However, it is growing, and our library of client testimonials and references is expanding.
We will continue to cross-sell these services to clients, and we look forward to reporting our growth in future periods. If we look at the end market for each of our sectors, we see some accelerating trends. In D&SI, we see the geopolitical tension that has increased Australia's spending on defense and a move to operationalize bases for the first time in decades. The Defence Strategic Review indicated governments would increasingly be looking to the private sector to respond to emergency disasters. Australian social infrastructure is aging and stretched, and governments are responding by increasing spending. In infrastructure services, the acceleration of the energy transition requires major transmission and distribution upgrades to enable the material influx of the large and widely distributed renewable generation required. In telecommunications, connectivity is more important than ever. The demand for data and digital infrastructure is driving network investment across all carriers.
The differentiated infrastructure for each carrier provides material build and maintenance opportunities. In transport, population growth and immigration continue to drive the need for new roads and increase maintenance on older assets as usage increases and congestion challenges emerge. In short, we see opportunities across all of our sectors. We have strong strategic customer relationships and testimonials with expert capability alongside a national workforce that we believe delivers a compelling value proposition. In summary, 2023 was an excellent year for Ventia. We've built a solid platform to deliver upon our future growth ambition and look forward with confidence. We have delivered strong growth in revenue, EBITDA, and MPA. Positive momentum is building across the organization, and we are continually upgrading and expanding our capability. I'm therefore in a position today to announce our 2024 guidance range for MPA, which is growth of 7%-10%.
I trust this outlook will illustrate and demonstrate the predictability and reliability of this business. I'd like to close by thanking Stuart. He's been an invaluable asset to Ventia for the last nine years and for me over the last three. We wish him well in his future endeavors. Finally, I would like to offer my appreciation to all our stakeholders: our board, employees, subcontractors, suppliers, clients, and shareholders. Thank you for being part of the Ventia family, and thank you for your continued support. I look forward to working alongside you in 2024 and beyond. I will now open the lines for any questions. Thank you, Darcy. I'll hand back to you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from John Patel from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Dean and Stuart. And Stuart, thanks for all your help, and I'd like to wish you all the best going forward. Just had a few questions, if I could. Dean, just in terms of timing of contract renewals across defense and social infra, obviously it's been sort of continuing to shift to the right. What's your sort of latest expectation on timing and your confidence around those renewals?
Yeah, John, good morning. Thank you for your question. In terms of contract renewals, I wish it was in my control. I think the good thing is we are the current incumbent of those contracts, and that's a solid base to start. As you know, for defense, they put out a new schedule for the procurement process, which runs through 2024, potentially into 2025, and they extended our contracts in 2023 largely through to the middle of 2025. We'd like it resolved as quickly as possible, like you. I just reiterate the fundamentals here for us. We continue to be a long-term strategic partner to defense. The business has demonstrated a really good renewal rate, and as you see in our presentation, we have renewed a couple of contracts with defense in 2023.
We are bidding for four contracts within a portfolio of contracts for defense where we are currently the incumbent, not always the only incumbent, and we would hope to maintain that position going forward. There is one further contract where we're not currently the incumbent, but we will proceed with an offer to defense. It is a competitive landscape, but on those five opportunities, we have been shortlisted, and we look forward to hearing news of conclusion around that as soon as possible. In terms of the opportunity here with New South Wales Government, I would hope that opportunity would be concluded by the half year, but I think it'll certainly be, if not the half year, in quarter three. That process is well developed. Indeed, they are down to starting to talk to preferred bidders for certain regions, and we sit in a favorable position from that perspective.
Thank you. In terms of second one, and appreciate your comments there around the essential services nature, I mean, we are seeing more fiscal pressure around in terms of state government budgets under pressure. Are you seeing any impact there in terms of overall maintenance spend and on your business?
John, I would just say that as per the presentation, I think what we are seeing is pressure around the demand drivers. So particularly population growth, which is helping us out from a labor perspective, but is driving demand for the key assets that we look after. So as per my update in the presentation, more people using the roads, schools, hospitals. So I think there's a balance between, clearly, there is fiscal pressure, and we understand that in an economy where there's still a high inflationary environment, but those essential services have still got to be delivered. So we balance that off. And one of the key things that I believe is part of our value proposition is our ability to bring the best value proposition to those governments that procure them.
Therefore, there is logic to utilize Ventia to deliver those services and probably demonstration of cost saving to that particular client. I think there will continue to be pressure, but I think that is offset by the demand drivers we're seeing for the services we provide.
John, just on that one, I'd just add that if you think about the portfolio effect that we see, the end markets, as they do flex, which they absolutely do flex across time and perhaps even across states, you see the portfolio effect coming to play. As a result, margins remain pretty consistent.
Got it. And just the last one regarding capital allocation and your strong balance sheet. I mean, is it fair to say that you look at acquisitions first and then potentially consider additional cash returns if you can't find those? Is that a reasonable way to think about it?
Yeah, John, that's the most difficult question of the three. So while I ponder the answer, I'll answer Stuart.
I think, I mean, M&A, probably what you've seen is some reasonably opportunistic approach to date, John. So I think that will continue. We do see small bolt-on opportunities. We look at a lot, as I've sort of said to you in the past. That said, the ones that fit the model, fit the operating model, where things will definitely jump on, but they're not big investments. I think more in the medium-sized space is going to be an ongoing focus, and they're the ones, I think, which would have a bigger impact for the business and perhaps use more of perhaps the surplus cash that sits there on the balance sheet.
John, if I may, I mean, I just add a couple of headlines to that. I mean, clearly, we're paying out 75% of our cash conversion of MPA, so there is a limited surplus. I think I'd just, again, reiterate the market fundamentals. We delivered AUD 5.7 billion of revenue in a market that was AUD 75 billion and growing at 6.6% CAGR. So our first priority is to drive organic growth. But I think beyond that, clearly, if there are opportunities to bring essential services into our business through non-organic opportunities, then we'll look at that.
And the good thing is, as Stuart said, the two opportunities where we've made acquisitions in the last two years have actually been really good additional components of our portfolio moving forward and really successful acquisitions. Definitely a consideration that we'll look at, but I would just make the point that I think we've still got lots of material headroom for organic growth, and that should be our first priority.
Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Roy Harrison from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
G'day, guys, and thanks for the presentation. Again, I would just like to congratulate Stuart on your wonderful stint at Ventia, and I wish you the best going forward. A couple from me, just following on from that M&A conversation, you spoke about plugging a few gaps, whether it be geographies or certain industries you're looking to look at opportunities in. Could you maybe elaborate a bit more on what geographies or industries you'd potentially like to move into or you think you don't have the capability now and you would like to acquire that capability?
Yeah, I'll first crack. So thanks, Roy. Look, the way we think about it is that we're a national provider. So we're a national provider, Australia, New Zealand. We've got real strong capability across both countries. So as a result, when we think about M&A, it's not necessarily a key gap. We've always got capability. We can move into another area or build out. What we do see, though, as it relates to opportunity is perhaps given the cycle of long-term maintenance contracts, there might be a particular client where they've already let out work for an extended period of time, say three to five years per the normal cycle.
So there might be an opportunity to get in with one of those clients, which is probably something which is slightly different than to a capability gap. But they're the types of things which we used, both the Cordia transaction and also ATC Energy, to do, which was to get us in with some particular target clients and then change the go-forward trajectory of the business.
Yeah, I'll just echo the points. I think Stuart's hit the nail on the head that if you look at the two acquisitions that we've made, ATC Energy gave us capability that we have elsewhere across Australia and New Zealand in Victoria and helped us accelerate the relationship with some key clients there. And then the Cordia gave us in-business capability. There was an extension of telco capability that we've got today, which I think therefore was very, very logical and expanded our capability as an organization. So they're good examples of things we're looking for, but obviously, we continue to pursue the right opportunities for our business if they become available in the market. And I would say our pipe's quite wide.
Rather than say we're focused on X, Y, or Z, I think we're considered open-minded to the right opportunities as long as they fit with the current capability of the organization.
Thanks, guys. And then maybe working hand for the utility segment went down this half or this year. Are you confident that's going to rebound in the next 12 months, and what kind of opportunities are you looking at or that are coming down the pipeline?
Look, I think, as Stuart said, it is a portfolio, and you have to look across what is changing within those particular aspects. I think, as Stuart talked about in the presentation, we are seeing a lot more maintenance opportunities in that space. We are starting, as you saw from the energy transition update, some smaller opportunities come in the business that I think will yield bigger opportunities in the future. I think if you still look at the revenue versus where they are, they've got quite a healthy pipeline in front of them, very good client relationships, good renewals this year. But I think there is a lot of opportunity in that particular sector, and I'd like to see that move forward in 2024 and beyond.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me. I'll pass it on.
Thank you, Roy.
Thanks, Roy.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Banks for closing remarks.
Darcy, thank you for your facilitation. To everybody who's joined the call today, thank you for your continued interest in Ventia. To all of the team here at Ventia, I'm really pleased and proud to be able to deliver the results today. I'd just like to amplify the point that was made as well about Stuart. We wish him every success for the future. He's been a really, really valuable asset for our business. I would equally say I'm really pleased to be introducing Mark to the organization, and I think he brings a lot of ASX experience, which hopefully will mean we continue to deliver really positive results moving forward. Once again from me, thank you for your time today, and we look forward to talking to you again soon.