Welcome, everybody. My name's Michael Shirley. I'm the CEO and Managing Director of Veris. Joining me today in our First Half Results webinar is Steve Harding, our CFO. We'll have time for questions at the end of the call. If you've got any questions, please put them into the chat box at the bottom of the webinar, and we'll address those questions at the end. We appreciate everyone joining us today for an update on our performance in the first half of FY 2025. As we've consolidated the performance and the operational focus of the business, we're now able to really accelerate the transformative elements of our strategy. This transformation is absolutely essential for the sustained growth and performance of Veris. We've evolved from our survey base to be an integrated professional services firm, with our differentiator being our digital capability and our application.
The essence of our digital strategy is supporting our clients through digital solutions to empower their own transformation. We're building our digital advisory consulting services with a unique position in the market. Our spatial data core provides us the capability to deliver digital twin-based solutions and outcomes, which are further enhanced through our bespoke AI solutions and analytics. As the industry shifts to be further digitally enabled, we lead that transformation by unlocking digital innovation, providing value-based solutions. Veris is making strong progress towards our vision of being an integrated digital advisory consulting firm, and the first half of this year has shown the opportunity and our progress towards that vision. So I'd just like to highlight some of the key achievements in the first half of this year. Importantly, we've been able to accelerate our transformation while still delivering a strong rebound in profitability.
Our AUD 1 million profit before tax is over a 200% increase from our prior comparable period. It's a strong turnaround, and it validates the restructuring and investment in our business. Our margin also increased by over 200% from the prior comparable period, delivering outcomes from the operational efforts in the business. Our revenue of AUD 47 million is quality revenue in the segments of the market which we've targeted as our strategic priorities. We've set a strategy to build high margin, quality revenue in sectors of growth and strength. The revenue, margin, and profit we've delivered shows the strength of the strategy and the quality of the execution. The outlook remains strong, with a consistent, clear pipeline of work for the future. Our secure backlog of over AUD 55 million shows the future is stable and growing, and we continue to show progress in the execution of our digital and spatial strategy.
Revenue from this sector is now over 20% of our total revenue. We anticipate that this will continue to grow over time. Off this base of a strong, profitable organic growth, we've now made the first of a recent acquisition with the acquisition of Spatial Vision. It's an acquisition firmly within our articulated strategy, and it accelerates the execution of our digital and spatial transformation. I'm now going to hand over to Steve, who's going to talk a bit more in detail about the financials for the first half of FY 2025.
Thanks, Michael. As we outlined in the first couple of slides, the execution of our digital advisory and consulting strategy is resulting in our operating model increasingly evolving to focus on client engagements, where we have a point of difference in our data capture, storage, analytics, and insights. The additional value we're providing our key clients is now being reflected in the margins Veris is reporting. This is demonstrating the conversion of our point of difference in the market. This strategic focus has seen our key metrics continue to improve during this first half. Most specifically, our continuing strategy of targeting larger, multidisciplinary projects with larger national clients, coupled with selective choice of projects, is continuing to generate improved gross profit margins.
This is allowing us to fund further investment in the development of our digital solutions, which are continuing to deliver a higher proportional percentage of our revenue, while also delivering higher bottom-line EBIT and PBT margins. As we move more specifically to the P&L summary, the important point to take away from this slide is that while our revenue has dipped slightly from the previous comparative half 12 months ago, the quality of our revenue has increased year -on -year. This has led to these continuing improvements in our project gross profit margins. When the current management team took control of Veris, these project margins across the business were at 24% back in FY 2020. Our focus on project management disciplines has seen these increase successively year -on -year to now being in excess of 36% this half.
This has been, in large part, an outcome of our deliberate strategy of targeting these larger nationally based key clients and the larger multidisciplinary project work that these clients require our assistance to deliver. As I noted earlier, we've demonstrated continued growth in our digital and spatial offering throughout the half, as our spatial analytics platforms and solutions continue to build traction in our target markets. Our D&S advisory teams are now contributing in excess of 20% of our overall revenue during the half. This is up from just shy of 15% in FY 2024 and circa 10% in the first half two years ago. As a snapshot of the transition the business is on, I thought it was important to highlight that during this half, Veris worked on 27% lesser number of projects compared to the prior year. Despite this reduced volume of projects, revenue only declined 3%.
In addition, this was achieved with a 10% smaller workforce across the business. I think this demonstrates the continued transition and higher impact of targeting these larger projects for larger clients, which, when executed effectively, allow us to generate better project margins. As we turn to the balance sheet, we've demonstrated a strong focus on working capital management, which has underpinned our ability to convert earnings into a stronger cash balance during the half. Our increase in cash has been underpinned by this focus on delivery of higher project margin projects, crystallization of the working capital through continuing focus on WIP and debtor balances, while also minimizing our CapEx requirements as we continued efficiency gains in the utilization and mobilization of our existing equipment fleet.
As the broader impact of sustained higher interest rates and inflationary pressures continue to be felt across a number of sectors of the broader economy, the importance of continuing to manage our WIP and debtor balance exposures closely will continue through the remainder of the year. This focus on working capital management and the resultant operating cash flows that we crystallized has enabled Veris to continue investing in the skills and technology underpinning our internally developed digital and spatial solutions and analytics that we continue to commercialize and are contributing a larger proportion of our revenues. Importantly, continuing to build on our strong capital base positions us well to pursue organic strategic M&A initiatives that complement our digital and professional services strategy. We continue to assess these corporate opportunities that can potentially help transform the Veris offering in terms of technical capabilities, strategic leverage, or our geographic presence.
We continue to be active in this space, but as always, we'll continue to remain highly selective in anything we choose to progress. Thanks, Michael. I'll hand back to you now.
Thanks, Steve. Appreciate that update. Okay, so we'll now just talk about where we've been on strategy, and Veris continues to be on this journey of transformation. As COVID hit, we started our strategy to rebuild the business, and the first steps were to save the business through restructuring operations, focusing on areas of underperformance, stabilizing the debt and cash management approaches within the business. We continue to invest in the strategic repositioning of Veris throughout our journey. The period of stabilization was about restructuring the balance sheet, embedding operational efficiency, and implementing strong capital management, for example, in our fleet management and our equipment and capital investments. From this stable base with a strong balance sheet, we've invested to grow and position the business for transformation. This has included investment in technology, in our talent, digital strategy, and building into strong organic growth.
From this position of profitable growth, we've, as Steve's outlined, a really strong growing cash position, a robust balance sheet. We're now making good progress on our transformation. This transformation is essential to the future for Veris. We see that the execution of the digital strategy, leveraging our core spatial data, creates a differentiated business with high margin and high value. Acquisition has been used to accelerate the progress of the strategy beyond the internal and organic elements of our approach. We're confident in the future because of the strategy and the progress we're showing throughout its execution. When we talk about our digital strategy execution, it's important to understand what this means. It's not a generic digital strategy or a software sales-based approach. Our strategy is firmly based on the accurate spatial data within our environment.
It's then about using that data, capability, and our relationships to expand the client value proposition. We're using AI and analytics to develop and enhance digital solutions which provide value for our clients. The aim is to build a digitally focused advisory business at a high margin with a differentiated growth proposition. We see this allows us to develop alternative and parallel revenue streams, but with a focus on margin, not volume, and with our key clients, and not a broad low-margin transactional approach that others take. I'm excited now to be able to talk about the opportunity we have through the acquisition of Spatial Vision. It's the first of our now recent acquisitions, which will be used to build pace in our strategic execution and the transformation of our business.
Veris will acquire 100% of Spatial Vision, and we're just progressing through the final steps in that process, and we intend to complete the deal within the timeframes we've previously outlined in the market. Spatial Vision have a fantastic brand in the market with a 25-year history in delivering spatial services to government and also the private sector. Their core skills align really strongly with Veris and our strategic future. Their depth in GIS, spatial analytics, strong enterprise GIS capabilities, and a unique application development team focused on spatial platforms. They have 40 staff who will add to our capacity and capability in the areas of focus, and their strength has been in state government, federal government agency clients across a range of sectors. The AUD 9 million of revenue will be a strong addition to our core digital and spatial revenue base.
In many ways, though, this is a pretty simple deal to strategically assess. Spatial Vision, their capabilities and clients, are a strong fit with the existing Veris strategy. The combined skill base aligns to the core growth in our digital and spatial strategy. The government client relationship strength that Spatial Vision brings mirrors the growth in the government clients that Veris has been building over the last few years, and finally, they bring scale. 40 staff, AUD 9 million of revenue is a size which can be both easily integrated but also providing critical mass that's additive in an acquisition. In addition to the strengths brought to Veris by Spatial Vision, there are strong synergies that provide for an accretive acquisition aligned with our strategy. The Spatial Vision team can be easily integrated into the operational Veris business.
This can be done and is aligned to their current operating form and easily accommodated within Veris, minimizing disruption and cost. Financially, this provides significant synergies. We can add the core of Spatial Vision while having a net decrease in operating costs across the two businesses. The technical skills from Spatial Vision business add new capabilities in the enterprise GIS area and integrated skills in the spatial and GIS analytics. The software and platforms capabilities of Spatial Vision's Lapis business add a new strong market focus for Veris. It aligns with our digital solution development capability and is a new client-facing source of revenue. Spatial Vision has a depth of government client relationships extending beyond what Veris have developed organically. This provides the combined business with a significant growth opportunity in strong new markets for Veris.
Overall, we add depth and capability, new skills, additional client relationships while delivering synergies through operational efficiencies. So if we have a look now at the market outlook and our future pipeline of revenue. Over the last few years, we've discussed our client program, the sectors in which we've chosen to focus, and we've grown the share of revenue from a core group of strong key clients and it's been an important part of our margin improvement plan. It's worth understanding the scale, the nature of the markets we've targeted, and what this presents for Veris. All of our core markets show strong ongoing compound annual growth, with the slow growth opportunity still exceeding over 7.5% compound growth. The transport market, for example, continues to grow at over 9.5%, and our addressable market is more than AUD 200 million.
Our focus in property continues to be aligned to the blue-chip clients, showing growth as the country addresses ongoing housing shortages and continued immigration. We see this to be a strong opportunity, particularly on the East Coast. Government market is significant. Our addressable market is effectively AUD 200 million. The Spatial Vision acquisition adds revenue and relationships in this sector, which provide a stronger base from which to build. The combination of water and energy focus we have in the utilities and energy markets is a new area of opportunity for Veris. I see these sectors will grow more over the next few years, and Veris will add real scale in these markets. We've previously articulated our positioning for growth in the defense sector. The addressable market in our spatial services is significant in defense, and we're growing and strengthening our position.
Overall, you can see that we're aligned to strong growth sectors in the market. All of these sectors have scale. Our clients are the quality clients of scale across these sectors, and it's a strong validation of our strategic client focus over the last couple of years. Over the last couple of years, we've consistently reported backlog and pipeline, and we've shown the conversion of that pipeline to revenue year -on -year. Despite the challenges here in Victoria, for example, we've been able to maintain and grow our combined pipeline, noting that the state of pipeline we've got here still exceeds any consideration from Spatial Vision at the moment. Our backlog is strong at AUD 55 million. Our unsecured pipeline is in excess of AUD 190 million, and we've transitioned this pipeline mix over the year to a mix of high margin, multidisciplinary, and digital and spatial future revenue opportunities.
Although engineering survey remains important, it's a lesser proportion in that future pipeline and the opportunities of greater quality and higher margin. Our mix of markets, geographies, and our national resourcing model allow us to maintain a strong outlook despite some challenges, for example, in Victoria, and we're really confident in the outlook and the growth that remains within our pipeline. So in closing, I'd like to highlight a couple of points. The first half has shown we're clearly delivering on our digital strategy. The mix of revenue shows our digital and spatial revenue now exceeds 20% of our total revenue. This mix of revenue continues to move to stronger and higher margins. Our future pipeline remains significant with a secured backlog in excess of AUD 55 million. It's showing that the business has an outlook of sustained and future growth.
We've been able to transition the business further to our digital and advisory skill sets. And once again, our cash balance has grown. We have a strong balance sheet providing stability and opportunity for the business. From the base of our organically growing profitable business, we've now acquired Spatial Vision, and it's delivering our commitment to accelerate our strategic execution through targeted acquisition and good choices, as Steve outlines. The first half shows our transformation of the business is now well progressed and creating new opportunities. Our digital transformation provides a compelling differentiator in the market, and we see some really strong progress. The outlook is positive. We see the continued path on our strategic journey, and it's delivering strong and growing returns. We do appreciate your interest that you've taken in listening today, and we're happy now to take any questions from the audience.
Michael and Steve, there's currently no questions at this point from the audience.
Okay, so look, we appreciate everyone's interest. We think that today we've shown a strong progress that Veris continues to make. The transformation towards our digital future is well underway, and we're pleased to be able to deliver that in a profitable and growing fashion that the first half has demonstrated. So we appreciate your time, and thank you for joining us today.