Welcome, and thank you for joining Worley's Investor Day 2025. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land that we meet today. We recognize their strength and resilience, and we pay respect to their elders past and present, and to all the First Nations people who may be joining us today. I'd like to bring to your attention our disclaimer, which is currently on the screen. For those that I haven't had the opportunity to meet yet, I'm proud to have joined Worley in January this year, leading our investor relations function. It's been a privilege to work with Worley's group executives supporting Investor Days in the last couple of years, and now as part of the team.
The exceptional growth opportunity for the business ahead, together with the depth of experience and strong sense of collaboration across our group executive, was the key reason for my decision to join Worley. Whilst there's some challenges and uncertainties, as we all know in the current environment today in which we operate, I have every confidence in our growth trajectory and the capability of our group executive to continue to lead from the front and deliver growing long-term returns for our shareholders. We've got a full agenda ahead. Our CEO, Chris Ashton, and various members of our group executive will be providing you with an update on our business performance, our strategy to grow shareholder value, what we're hearing on the ground, and the way that we're setting up the foundations for the opportunities ahead.
Partway through the presentation, we will invite you to join us for some refreshments. For those in the room, we'll have a short break of 15 minutes. At that time, I invite you to engage with our leadership team, also to view the interactive screens that we have in this room and in the foyer, and also engage with the display booths that we've set up in the foyer. At the end of the presentation, there'll be Q&A. That will be followed by an opportunity for those present to meet our leadership team over a light lunch then as well. Chris will now take you through our business update and strategic progress. Thank you, Chris.
Thanks, Kylie. Good to see everyone. Good to see some familiar faces. See Nathan Reilly from UBS, John from Macquarie, Simon from Allan Gray, and James from L1. Just great to see you. For those of you joining us online, appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join us virtually. You're all welcome. I think we've got a great story to tell today, continuing on the trajectory that we've been on for the last number of years. Since we launched our new purpose of delivering a more sustainable world underpinned by our values and refreshed strategy a number of years ago. Today, I want to share what's happening in our business and how we're navigating the world around us.
You will also hear from members of the group executive about how we're creating and capturing opportunities for the business in the current dynamic environment. There is probably not an environment more dynamic than that which we're facing today around the world. You will also hear how we're building the foundation of the business for growth over the longer term. As you listen today, and if you have the chance to interact with our team, we want to leave you with a clear understanding of how we're driving shareholder value and how we're delivering the long-term growth to you, our shareholders.
First, while, as I said, there's no doubt it's a complex landscape that we're operating in, we want to assure you that we're aligned with our customers who continue to invest with the agility and the flexibility built into our business to focus on what they need to achieve their goals. Regardless of the current geopolitical and economic environment, we continue to operate in a market which has experienced a significant transition and demand-led long-term growth. We have the conviction in the fundamentals supporting the growth, and we believe we're well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to us. Second, our strong competitive positioning, flexible workforce, and diversification, together with commercial and financial discipline, ensures our business remains resilient through the market cycles, which we've successfully navigated in prior years. There was no more significant disruption than that of COVID.
We managed through there. We were profitable. We generated cash, and we came out of COVID strong. That allowed us to position ourselves for the growth we have experienced in the post-COVID era. Finally, as we execute on our strategy to strengthen our market share, strengthen our market position, expand our market share, and innovate, it makes a difference to who we are and the direction we are going. We have a clear path forward to continue to grow and deliver long-term value to you, our shareholders. Our business update highlights our resilience strengthened through our diversification and agility. With a little over a month until the end of the financial year, I am pleased to reconfirm our expectations for FY2025, where we have targeted low double-digit EBITDA growth and margins excluding procurement between 8%-8.5%.
I think that result, or that commitment, that reconfirmation of the outlook is testament to the diversification we have in our organization and the strategy we have, as well as the incredible leadership and 50,000 people we've got around the world. We continue to win work with our backlog increasing over the quarter. It's about almost $300 million to $13 billion at the end of March. Importantly, since we last reported on our performance, we've not seen any material project cancellations. Our work continues on Venture Global's CP2 project with phase I engineering now largely complete. Just to recap, CP2 is the proposed development of a major LNG export facility in the U.S., which upon completion will have the capacity to deliver 28 million tons of liquefied natural gas each year.
Our team is well advanced in supporting our customer with phase I engineering and procurement, and they're expecting to provide full project delivery services for that investment. Construction is anticipated to commence in the middle of this year following FID. The majority of expected revenue from CP2 remains in the pipeline until then. When FID is announced, it will then move into backlog. It is important to mention, while this is an important project, a significant project for Worley, we're executing more than 12,000 projects around the world, including a number of other major projects at various stages of delivery. If we look at the pipeline, independent of Venture Global, which saw a scope reduction earlier this year, even though the project has grown. We will take that into consideration, and you'll see what that means when it goes into backlog.
The factored sales pipeline for opportunities in the next 12 months is up 14% over the quarter, reflecting in this dynamic environment growth opportunities, a growth in the opportunities that we're pursuing and the opportunity to continue to deliver growth to the market. Many of the customers we're working with are well capitalized with their projects proceeding regardless of the current environment. Mark and Mark, who will come on the stage a little bit later, will talk about the conversations they're having with their customers. Our bookings remain strong, and in FY2025, we'll show growth on bookings achieved over the same period last year. Year to date, we've booked $9.4 billion. You can see from the chart at the bottom of this page that these sales are well diversified across energy, chemicals, and the resource sectors.
At this point, it's important to note that while bookings are up and activity in the pipeline is looking good, we don't take that lightly. We remain vigilant and monitor the customer's decisions and the potential for any project delays. Many of you in the room know us well, but I'd like to take a moment to talk about who we are, what sets us apart, and how we are leading from the front. Worley is a global company, industry-leading experts in energy, chemicals, and resources with end-to-end capability to provide services across the value chain of our customers' assets. Our diversified expertise supports a world in transition. We maintain leading positions across transitional, traditional, and sustainable solutions in the markets we serve. People are at the heart of our organization.
With almost 50,000 people operating in over 45 countries, the work we do has a significant impact on the world and our customers, the communities in which we operate, and importantly, our people. Founded in Australia in 1971, I see John here across there, the founder. We now have annual revenues of $12 billion. We take a disciplined approach to commercial and financial management, and our business is highly cash-generative and supported by a strong balance sheet, which is in and of itself, today, if you look at our peer landscape, a competitive advantage. Our market differentiation is further extended by our ability to offer end-to-end services which address the complex needs of our customers. Whether it is in the traditional energy project space or cutting-edge sustainability solutions, we have the capability to deliver extraordinary outcomes.
The end-to-end capability not only enhances our value proposition and our ability to deliver reliable and growing returns for our shareholders, it also ensures we remain a trusted partner for our customers across the full life cycle of their assets. We have a clear competitive advantage with the right people, with the right experience, in the right places. Our purpose inspires and drives us to make a difference in the world. Our global footprint allows us to attract and retain top talent in the world and deploy that talent where it's needed. Our deep customer relationships result in trusted long-term partnerships. In 2019, at a board meeting, we had a conversation where we agreed we wanted to have a strategy that put working with our customers at the centre of what we do, not working for our customers.
That statement around building partnership is critical to our strategy. We have incredibly well-established, meaningful, deep partnerships with our customers around the world. We have respected industry expertise, and the quality delivery of what we do underpins the success that we have with the relationships with those customers. We have broader end-to-end exposure than many of our peers, and we maintain early mover positions in the high-growth markets. In particular, I want to note our low-risk contract style. Our risk appetite has always been low. We have not ever done, we do not do, and we will not do competitively bid lump-sum turnkey EPC projects. You only have to look at the peer landscape today to see the challenges that can bring to organizations.
We have a strong balance sheet, good cash generation, and appropriate liquidity supporting the strategic investments that we believe we need to make to continue to grow. The combination of these gives us an advantage in front of our customers, which gives them confidence that with Worley, we will be able to deliver the outcomes that we agree. Finally, we have proprietary technology via Worley Comprimo and Worley Kinetics and are involved in developing advanced digitalisation initiatives. Our purpose of delivering a more sustainable world, our strategy, and our values drive everything we do. Our purpose is not just a tagline. It is a commitment which guides both our actions and our decisions. We believe by addressing these global challenges such as energy security, climate change, resource scarcity, we can create long-term value for our shareholders and contribute to a better future for all of us.
Our strategy is underpinned by three pillars: strengthen our leadership in core markets, expand our market share in growth markets as well as along the value chain, and continue innovating to unlock the opportunities and drive efficiency. In focusing on these areas, we aim to enhance our competitive advantage and drive sustainable growth. Our values of life, rise to the challenge and stronger together, as well as unlock brilliance, reflect our commitment to safety, health and well-being, excellence, collaboration, and innovation. We've consistently delivered in line with our expectations and built a strong foundation for growth through disciplined execution of our strategy built on these three pillars of strengthen, expand, and innovate. One of the key aspects of our strategy is to strengthen our industry leadership and increase our share in core energy, chemicals, and resources markets. This involves deepening our services offering and enhancing our operational capabilities.
In doing so, we can build a better offering to our customers and capture emerging opportunities. Expanding into growth markets, along with the value chain, allows us to extend our relevance to our customers. Understanding their needs more broadly and taking solutions and offerings to them that meet those needs will allow us to grow. Innovation is inherent within our strategy. We're transforming how we deliver work, leveraging technology and agile processes to deliver greater efficiency. This includes adopting digital tools, implementing advanced analytics, and embracing the opportunity that artificial intelligence brings. These initiatives not only enhance our operational performance, they enable us to deliver better outcomes for our customers and better outcomes financially for you, our shareholders. In addition, we're unlocking new opportunities for value creation through proprietary tech-enabled customer solutions. Worley today is a different company than it was just a few years ago.
The foundation of this change and the recent growth has been built on the transformational acquisition that was made in 2019 when Worley acquired the Jacobs ECR business. In the four years since 2021, the post-COVID era, we've seen significant growth and diversification of our company, and we've evolved into a more resilient and agile business. In 2021, Worley was primarily focused on the traditional side of projects, and a lot of that was on the energy side. Over the past few years, we've expanded our presence in transitional and sustainable markets. This shift has not only diversified our revenue stream, it's enhanced our resilience in the face of market fluctuations. It's positioned us to continue to leverage opportunities to support our customers as they themselves transition to more sustainable practices and operations. We restructured to become, importantly, a more scalable business. The business we have today is scalable.
Worley has a greater presence in those countries which offer the most attractive opportunities to allow us to extend our relationships and build our capabilities in those markets, offering growth opportunities to us. Our headcount has increased since 2021, reflecting growth in our service offering expansion. We have attracted, as I mentioned earlier, top talent from around the world to support the high-quality delivery of outcomes to our customers. Andy will talk later about the growth in our global integrated delivery business, which is going to be the mainstay of our future growth. Perhaps more than ever, we are conscious of what is happening around us in the world today and how this will impact our customers and our business. I want to speak directly to how we see the current landscape, both in terms of challenge, but importantly, in terms of opportunity.
Rising geopolitical tensions, shifting alliances, tariffs, trade barriers are all impacting market dynamics. However, we see growing, ongoing, strong macro tailwinds, including the rising demand for energy, resources, and chemicals, a continued focus on energy transition and sustainability, and steady global GDP growth supported by population growth. Each of these factors on their own continue to support confidence in the long-term market growth opportunity. Collectively, they position us well for a growth opportunity-focused future. To navigate this, we plan proactively, we adapt quickly, and we work closely with all of our customers. Our differentiated customer account programs mean individual attention to their bespoke needs. Our diversification across sectors and regions gives us agility and optionality with a strong cost control and a solid capital position which underpins our resilience. Most importantly, we're able to adapt to the current dynamics while remaining focused on the future.
We can pivot to growth markets while maintaining our presence in other markets positioned for high long-term growth. Our strategy is delivering consistent through-cycle performance. Our resilience is not reactive; it is how we are built. It is in our DNA. We have a clear set of priorities which are driving value for our shareholders, and there are five that I would like to talk about and those that we are focused on to drive our strategy. Our immediate priority, as announced yesterday, is to complete the reorganization underpinned by an ongoing focus on margin growth and cost management. We are focused on increasing our services along the entire value chain through large projects and end-to-end solutions. We are growing our global integrated delivery services as well as continuing along the path of digital innovation that supports our ability to capture further opportunities.
These priorities are essential to maintain our competitive edge and drive further growth in the business. Let me drill down into these priorities a little bit more. The operations organization will strengthen our end-to-end delivery. Expanding our presence in the value chain from concept to completion is a critical priority to address the full spectrum of opportunities that our customers have. This approach enhances our value proposition and positions us as a trusted partner, particularly for large, complex capital investments. We're focused on growing our margins and optimizing our operations as well as reducing costs. This includes streamlining processes, adopting efficient technologies, and leveraging economies of scale which contribute to improved profitability. We have the capital to invest, and we're well underway with a program to continue improving our business. Scaling GID is a strategic initiative aimed at enhancing our global capabilities.
By further integrating our operations across different regions, we can leverage our expertise, share best practices, and deliver consistent outcomes to our customers. The approach not only enhances our efficiency, it also enables us to better serve our customers at a global scale. Our final priority is deploying digital through rapid development of GenAI and advanced computing to capture opportunities. Anup will talk about what we're doing in this space a little bit later, and I think it's really exciting. The pace at which this is occurring is probably unprecedented. Worley is well positioned to move at pace, to move at scale, to capture the opportunity that it offers us. We are committed to growing shareholder value by leveraging our unique and differentiated approach driven by our purpose, strategy, and values.
We are well positioned to capture growth in a world in transition and harness technology to enhance our efficiency and create opportunity. Our relentless obsession is to inspire our customers by delivering extraordinary project outcomes and value. I am going to invite Mark Brantley and Mark Trueman to the stage together with Kylie, who is going to moderate a Q&A to host and have a conversation around the operations. Kylie, over to you. Mark, Mark. All right, thanks everyone.
Great. Thank you again for joining us today. The last few years, you have had my former colleague with his deep voice for radio hosting this panel session. This year, we thought we would bring it back in-house, and I have the pleasure of hosting the session.
I'd like to welcome Mark Trueman and Mark Brantley, who will be talking about our current business operations and our strategy to continue to strengthen our leadership in energy, chemicals, and resources. Many of you would have met Mark and Mark already, but let me introduce them. Mark Trueman is Group President of the Americas. Mark Brantley is Group President of the EMEA APAC regions. As Chris noted, we announced just yesterday a reorganization of these roles, and we'll touch on that shortly. Firstly, I'd like to address a topic that I know is top of mind for you all, and that is the recent upheaval of global markets driven by the Trump's tariff introductions.
Whilst on a net basis, we've heard Chris talk about the net positive that this is for the Trump administration is for Worley, and particularly our business in the U.S., but his actions have certainly created a significant uncertainty across the globe. With this in mind, can you talk to the conversations you're having with our customers? Mark, we'll start with you first, given your responsibility for the Americas.
Sure. Microphone's working. Good morning, everyone. Good to see everybody. Before I respond particularly around tariffs, I just really stress what Chris said about the Trump administration being net positive for the business. If we look through the current uncertainty with tariffs, and really every day is a new day, and certainly my crystal ball is no better than anyone's to know where this ultimately ends up.
The tailwinds, the macro tailwinds are absolutely there around supporting energy development, approvals for projects, streamlining the whole process, and energy policy as well, which I'm happy to take questions on. In terms of tariffs, most of our customers are large balance sheet customers who are taking a 30-year view of capital cycles. We've seen essentially everything that is in post-FID play absolutely continuing as per normal. A smaller group of customers where balance sheets are perhaps a bit smaller and they're pre-FID, we're helping them to look at cost implications as best as we can predict at the current point in time and help them through with their plannings. We've certainly seen some deferrals of decisions, but no cancellations at the moment. If you take projects, 100% of TIC, 10% engineering procurement services, 50% construction, 40% equipment and materials, and that's all very rough.
It's the 40% materials. You might be looking at 2-3%, and if there's a 10% tariff, 2-3% across the TIC. For many projects, I mean, no one wants to pay 2 or 3% more, but in terms of the investment cycle, it's where all systems go. If you look at CP2, which I'm sure people will want to ask questions on, Venture Global put out some numbers, and they're looking at about a 1% increase in TIC. We're largely all systems go, but working at and watching it very closely and hoping that it all gets behind us. That's what most of the conversations are at the moment.
Great. Mark, what are you seeing in particular in the EMEA region?
Yeah, thank you, Kylie, and good to be here with everyone again.
Back everything Mark just shared, I think project certainty is what customers want, especially if they haven't got to their FID final investment decision. In EMEA APAC, we're seeing where they haven't made that decision yet. They could be slowing it down to see if we get certainty, and that's something that we try to, as Worley, to bring certainty around those projects where we can. That's where they struggle. Some of these projects from the new energy are really marginal on the return on investment for them. This, that 1%-2% that does impact, and the schedule is also, it's not just TIC, it's schedule impact. It's nice to see some customers, they pretty well have their supply chain in control, and so they're moving forward. They're not slowing down, but we do see some that are questioning when.
It's not that most of the projects they want to do, it's just the timing when they'll launch on them.
Yeah. How in particular are we helping our customers navigate this uncertainty?
Sure. We're able to bring—we have a lot of relationships with vendors and suppliers, and we bring them to the table, talk about that specific project for the customer in that country. A lot of times we can lock down and get some certainty and get confidence around that by bringing them to the table. It's always a little bit of uncertainty for the customers. We do sit there, and where we can provide that, we will, to where they can make that final decision to move forward.
Great. Chris shared our business update earlier, including an updated pipeline, shows an uptick in activity. Also, our backlog is up.
How might we see this play out for Worley in the coming months?
I'll go first. Yeah, look, there are plenty of parts of the markets that we're in across energy, chemicals, and resources that are pretty robust at the moment. For me in the Americas, if I go south to north, Latin America for us is largely a mining business. The mining sector is really strong pretty much everywhere in the world with energy transition materials, copper, lithium, precious materials, gold, silver to a lesser extent. The fundamental demands, independent of any government subsidies or policy, is robust. That pipeline, or the amount of work we're doing in the pipeline, is really strong. Up in the U.S., obviously it's our largest business. LNG is very strong, lots of government support. Obviously, we've got a pretty strong position in LNG as well.
Mining into North America as well, which historically has been fairly small for us, in fact small for the industry. Onshoring, critical minerals, becoming more strategic to U.S. government policy. Great resources in the U.S., great resources in Canada, and with support for permitting of projects, we're certainly seeing more activity there. Electric power demand for artificial intelligence and data centers. I think Andy is going to talk about that a little bit later on. We're seeing certainly increased demand for services in the power sector, which historically for Worley has been very strong. Energy transition, we talk a lot about. We've seen very high-profile rebalancing of Shell and BP in particular, but other ISEs, their investment plans are continuing.
Good news for us is we do not really care whether it is sustainable, transitional, or traditional, because we help them in our partnerships across everything that they do. Mark.
From EMEA APAC, it is a large geographical footprint and a lot of different dynamics. Coming out of the pandemic, we saw Europe and the U.K. moving pretty quickly on investment decisions around new energy projects. Now that has pulled back some. We see it tightening there. Middle East and Africa, we see a lot of investments happening. That is moving forward, and we are close to our customers there to support them. Mining is picking up, as Mark mentioned, across the world. From Saudi Arabia, we have some nice projects with Ma'aden moving forward. Here in Australia with Rio Tinto, with BHP, and some others moving forward. That is good. They have confidence to go forward.
In India, we have a big presence there, and you'll hear more about the GID, Global Integrated Delivery. We do in-country projects as well, full project delivery. Those projects are moving forward pretty robust. It varies where in the world, but we stay with our customers close and help them move forward because the need for energy is continuing to increase globally. There might be some pauses, but the outlook is strong going forward.
Great. We might now shift to talk about sustainability. Over the past few years, Worley has been very well positioned to leverage the growth in sustainability-related work, and it currently represents 52% of the work we do today by revenue. It's been core to our strategy, and it's been a really strong driver of our earnings growth over the last few years.
Now there's been a shift with customers taking a more disciplined approach to investment in sustainability. This shift has been particularly evident in Europe. Mark, can you talk to this and where you see the opportunities to continue to grow our work in that sustainability area in the future?
Sure. I'm sure all of you have seen BP and Shell pulling back from they had the overall commitments for net zero, but they had some near-term and mid-term commitments that that was the challenge. They have had to lower that. The overall commitments there, the projects that we've done a lot of studies and feeds, most of them are setting there. It's just the timing of when they'll move forward with them. I believe they'll move forward.
In other parts of EMEA APAC, we see customers that had a longer plan to get to net zero, and they're staying on that plan. It varies depending on customer and country. What we look to do at Worley is every project, even if it's deemed traditional, can we bring new technologies, ways to decarbonize, even on that project at all? The overall goal for us as an industry and commitment to delivering a more sustainable world is to decarbonize. Our teams are focused on that. They try to bring the new technologies as they go, even if it's not fully a deemed sustainable project.
Mark, Trump's had an energy dominance plan, suspended the Inflation Reduction Act funding earlier this year, currently recently made dramatic cuts to the Energy Department.
How are these developments likely to be impacting the pipeline of sustainability-related work in the U.S.?
Yeah, look, there's lots of rhetoric. Some of the areas where policy has shifted, there wasn't a lot of investment happening. He has cancelled the 45V, which is essentially the funding for the green hydrogen, which actually in the U.S. context wasn't going to work anyway. We didn't have much in the pipeline. Support for the programs that we're working on continues and has the support of the administration. We haven't seen any real impact in our business, which is good. It's building on what Mark was saying before. Our customers haven't changed their net zero commitments. They're changing the path for how they're going to get there, but everybody remains committed to net zero.
Actually, some of the larger customers, some larger American ISEs, are ramping up their sustainable investment decisions or programs, which is working well for us. I'll also add, and I said it a little bit earlier, our relationships with our customers are becoming more globalized, much more of a partnership, as Chris said. You look at their CapEx programs, we support them across the entire program. As that balance shifts, frankly, we do not care because we are supporting across the whole CapEx. A number of people in this room obviously monitor the CapEx announcements of our customers, and there has not been any real material change.
Last year, you talked to the various subsectors where you saw the greatest opportunity for work. You have touched on that a little bit, but how has this shifted in the past year?
With the rise in more traditional types of work in our pipeline, what sectors are now emerging as showing the greatest opportunity for us in the year ahead?
I'll go first.
Y ep.
I mentioned mining. The mining pipeline's good. In fact, if you look at page eight in the material that we've issued, our largest sector for sales this year will be resources. I think that that's probably a first for us and just reflects our position and the global footprint that we have in the resources sector. In the U.S., LNG, I mentioned, is really strong. Our direct air capture program with Oxy, which is really exciting. We're finishing, we'll be extracting our first CO2 in the next couple of months. We've just started phase II on STRATOS.
You may have seen some announcements with Adnoc partnering with Oxy for the next one, which the next plant, which will be down in South Texas. That direct air capture program's going well. I mentioned electricity. Alaska for oil is seeing significant investment again over the last couple of years, and that pipeline's continuing with further work, plus the whole Alaska LNG opportunity as well. A number of areas are still really, really strong, continuing to be really, really strong.
Okay. Mark, did you want to add to that?
Briefly, I kind of went across EMEA APAC briefly a while ago. The resources are really surprising how much that ramped up and it's going to continue. Talking with the customers, most of them say that the tariffs and geopolitical things are not impacting because they're committed to the long-term investment.
As soon as they can get the material out of the earth, they can sell it. It's really sold already. Those projects are moving forward. We look forward to supporting. Chemicals across EMEA APAC's challenged right now, but the customers have projects planned, and they say we're doing them. It's the matter of timing of when we're going to do it. Even though you'll see it in our numbers that it's coming down some, the pipeline's there for them to come back.
I might just add on the chemicals, which I didn't refer to. The U.S., despite all the uncertainty at the moment, really has a privileged strategic position and an abundance of really cheap gas. I mean, it's almost free, and that's supporting LNG.
But it's also supporting power generation, a number of gas turbine projects, but it's also a manufacturing feedstock for the chemical sector. We are seeing, I mean, I think we can say structural decline in Europe, but the U.S. is in a really strong strategic position there as well.
There's been a lot of talk about the competitive position that we're in, the competitive landscape and the position that we're in at the moment. Chris talked to how we differentiate ourselves, which has led to our position as a leader in ECR and the greater resilience in earnings that we have through the market cycles. I think that's a really good competitive advantage that we have. Can you talk to the reasons why our customers choose to work with Worley and Mark Brantley past due?
Sure. We've got really strong relationships with our customers.
We meet with them often and talk through, and I ask a lot of times, "Why are you sticking with us the long term?" We do not need to assume we know the answers, but a lot of the global customers like the footprint that we have. You can see it on the screen now, all the offices around the world, and we are close to about anywhere they are going to be deploying capital and doing the investment. They like that. The GID, the Global Integrated Delivery, we have talked about it earlier, and I think you will hear some more later on in the session. That is attractive for the customers. We can ramp up very quickly in India and Colombia. We are starting now for resources where we need to. They like that. I believe at scale, we can move pretty quickly at scale.
Some parts of the world, we see capital coming down and getting a little tight. Other places are rising, and we try to use those resources and that expertise in those projects. They like that scale that we can bring with nearly 50,000 people.
Mark and I spend a lot of time together meeting with our major customers so that we bring that global footprint. We will in our new roles as well. We are seeing more centralisation and globalisation, so central accountability for how customers are delivering their programs. For them to be able to find, we do not have a lot of peers with the global footprint that we have got. That is definitely an advantage for us. One for me, maybe I will add two more.
One, as I think about my new role as well, our ability to deliver the major projects with full EPC or EPCM. It is not just about the people. Our delivery platform is a real competitive advantage to us. If you have got a chance at the break, Joe Bonnett, I think it is the one on the right-hand side, the session, look at how our digital approach to advanced work packaging. We are very much at the front of the industry. I think that is one of the things that really excites me about my new role, actually, to be able to go in and that predictable delivery of major capital projects is increasingly a differentiator for us. The last one I would add is just if you look at the competitive landscape, it has really changed. Chris mentioned it as well.
A number of our competitors, there has been consolidation, and obviously, we have been part of that. A number of our competitors have moved away from energy, chemicals, and resources, in particular, a couple have focused on government services and infrastructure. A number of our competitors have found themselves in a spot of bother with having taken on lump sum turnkey contracts or extended the balance sheets beyond perhaps what they should have, and in some cases, a combination of both. Our financial position allows us to invest in our digital journey and a number of other areas. That is a competitive differentiator for us ourselves. Our customers see that.
Just on that topic of competitive advantages, another thing is our people.
Last year, our Chief People Officer, Vikky Pink, who's sitting here on the table today, talked about our ability to attract talent, our commitment to upholding our high safety standards, and how important diversity and inclusion is to our business. Can you talk about how that positions us competitively?
I'll go. One of the great things in Worley, and it's always been in Worley, I've been with Worley for 30 years, has been the fact that you bring yourself to work. If you're bringing yourself to work, you're going to get the best out of everybody who comes. That culture and that, it's the values of the organization. Chris talked about our values. Having a diverse, inclusive workplace is just critical to who we are. It's not about having a program. It's our values every day.
We will continue that going forward. We are attracting good people. We have got a great story. We have got a strong position. We are very future-facing, and we are attracting the right people, and we are retaining the right people.
I ask people all the time. I go to the different offices or on the team's calls, and I will ask them, "Are you happy? How is it going?" It is good to hear. It is not 100% all the time. Some people have tough things going on, but it is good to have those check-ins with our people. People like to be on a winning team. You saw the numbers a while ago, and you will see more when Tiernan and Justine get up. We are delivering on our commitments, and they like that.
As I go around to the different offices, I enjoy sitting with our new graduates that come in, and I'll talk to them about what attracted them to Worley. It's normally always around our commitment to delivering a more sustainable world and that they're going to be a part of that and make a difference in the world. Yeah, it's exciting. If we weren't winning and we were missing our commitments and all that, it'd be a little harder to retain. We can put the words about our values, but we got to live them every day, and we believe we are.
Okay. That leads us to yesterday's announcement of a reorganization of your roles within the group executive team. Effective 1st of July, Mark Brantley will assume the role of Head of Global Operations.
Mark Trueman will take on the new role of Head of Major Projects and Global Programs. Let's start with you, Mark, on major projects. Can you tell us why this is such an important part or an important area of focus within Worley, and what's the strategy to win more major projects?
Why is it important? We've always done major projects. We are doing more. And why are we doing more? It's because our customers are wanting more from us. Go back to what I said earlier about global programs, running things centrally. They've changed their buying patterns. The premiums to get lump sum are now very, very high. Our customers are saying, "We are now more open to lower risk for us, reimbursable delivery models." We aren't going to change our very conservative approach to contract risk.
I think Chris has made that very clear. With those buying patterns shifting of our customers, it means that we're in a good position. I also talked before about our ability to differentiate around our delivery platform. Moving forward, what really excites me is to differentiate even further around all the data that we have as we're buying, as we're delivering all around the world, that data and our ability to use that data with the insights. Anup will get up later to talk about our partnering in the Engine 2 and artificial intelligence. That will be that's absolutely going to be a real secret sauce for Worley because no one's going to be able to have that data and the insights that we can develop from it. Customers are wanting more from us.
We're really building up our capability, and a lot of it's on the back of Worley Parsons and Jacobs coming back together again. It's really exciting.
Mark, we've talked a lot with investors about the opportunities within the Middle East and our strong relationship with Aramco, where we have more than 200 projects that we're working with them on. These projects aren't just within the Middle East region. Can you tell us how important it is to have global scale across regions to support our customers across their global portfolio?
Yeah, sure. I touched on it earlier, that global footprint and that consistency globally.
I believe in this new structure that Mark and I are going into, that's going to help both of us to provide that for our customers because we're already working a lot of accounts that's global and multiple offices. Although we're consistent, we can do better. This shift is going to help do that. That's what customers need and want. They want trusted partners that, no matter where we deploy projects around the world, and many projects will have four or five offices working on the same project for a customer. We've got to be consistent in how we do that. That's very, very important. Moving into this new structure, I think we're going to raise the game on that as well.
Yep. Big time.
Another one for you, Mark.
Chris highlighted GID growth as being a key priority in driving greater operational efficiency. Can you talk to us about how customers are viewing this change in the way that we deliver work and how you'll continue to grow that GID?
Y eah. I've been on the GID journey working with our office in India, I guess back from 2002 is when I first started working with them. Very small at the time, and now we're 7,500 people, and that's fluctuating a little bit, but around 7,500. I remember having the discussion with customers with that offering, and they didn't want to do it. It was out of sight, out of mind. I want to see every employee in your office working or I'm not paying for it.
Now we're to the point that a lot of our customers are setting up business in India, and we're in seven different cities, eight offices, and they're setting up in those different locations close to us. They're pulling. They're saying, "Hey, why don't you put more work in India right now because you can do that and all the reasons for the consistency?" We're definitely seeing the shift, especially in the last two years, year and a half. That's going. The overall number of hours isn't where we're going to be. We're going to continue to grow this as we work with our customers. It's going to provide us they're putting teams there now that we can work together to deliver the projects globally and more consistently. Very positive path forward for us, and we're positioned well.
It's not just cost.
It's assurance of delivery. When you've got teams, when you've got consistent teams, you don't want to go and play sport with 11 different or 18, whatever your sport is, 15. You don't want to have a different team every Saturday. Using GID, we've got the commercial benefits, but you also get that consistency. What I said before as well, getting that data as well and the ability to then move to artificial intelligence and get the insights from it. That's a really important part of the GID story.
If I could add just to land that point, if we have an account with multiple projects going on and their projects are ending within a timeframe and we're coming down with the workload for the people in India in our GID centres, we'll share that with a customer, and they'll move quickly to not lose that expertise. And people that learn how to work with their teams, their standards, procedures, and all of that, and that shows the values there. They wouldn't move quickly to backfill because they don't want to lose that consistency of the teams.
It would be remiss of me not to ask a question on CP2. We have been now working on that project for more than two years. We're actually largely complete through the engineering for phase I.
Assuming the FID is reached mid this year, which is what Venture Global has predicted, and then we proceed to construction, Mark might ask you about the likely phasing of the remaining work and what this means for revenue for Worley.
Sure. I get the importance of CP2. I do want to stress we've got a number of other very, very large projects that we are delivering in the United States as well and in other parts of the world. CP2 is obviously important, and it is the largest. With engineering and early procurement, 90% complete for phase I, we're actually about 20-25% of the way through the contract already. I think it's really important that that's understood that we've been at it for two years. Expectation is that we do go to site over the summer, the northern summer.
As you say, on last Monday, I think Venture Global put out their results for first gas from CP2. Expectation would be third quarter, calendar 2027. We go on site. Early works are actually we're supervising the site, but the early works will be soil remediation, piling foundations. It's only when we come out of the ground that for Worley, that's when we really start to expand. Obviously, we move towards first gas. Like Placermans and Calcasieu Pass, the first plant, we'll be bringing the LNG trains online for about 18 months after the first one. We've got a lot of work ahead of us.
All right. Thank you.
If I could just add as well, we've also got other big projects. We've got the Baytown Blue relationship. CP2 is really important to us, really, really important.
We also have six or seven other LNG projects in the US and Canada and Alaska that we're working on right now as well. I've mentioned a few times that market's pretty good. Lots of cheap gas. It's geopolitically important to the US. We see a pretty good future for us at the moment in LNG in North America.
I think we're about time. Is there any more further thoughts that you'd like to share?
Yeah. I'll share that although the markets seem tight overall, I think we just shared that we see the growth coming, and it's in the pipeline. That's great. We're moving forward to working with our customers and how to do that. Excited about the new organisation starting July 1 and how Mark and I will continue to work together.
Our customers are going to see us in the same sponsorship roles with the customers, supporting them. It gives our employees the ability to work together in a global manner. We were already doing it. It is just going to enhance that as we go forward. There is a lot of excitement out in the industry and our offices with our people. Yeah, it is exciting times. I look forward to speaking with you in the break and maybe after it at lunch.
Obviously, now is a period of uncertainty, but those long-term macro tailwinds are absolutely still there. We will get through this. The world needs us to get through it. The world needs energy, chemicals, and resources to be able to go forward. We are really well positioned. For me personally, I really like the big things. I like being on site.
I find it extraordinary every time I go on site to see what our people do. Engineers and constructors do amazing things. I am really excited about being able to focus on those large projects and programs around the world. Worley does do amazing things.
Great. Thank you very much. Would you join me in thanking Mark and Mark?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before we hand over to Andy to talk about our strategy in action, we would like to show you a video on our fast-tracked LNG import terminal in Germany.
The Elbehafen LNG project in Brunsbüttel, where the Elbe River meets the North Sea, and the site of Worley's contribution to one of Germany's most ambitious LNG projects ever, delivering one of five floating storage and regasification units in record time.
Before 2022, Germany relied heavily on Russia for more than half its natural gas supply.
The invasion of Ukraine triggered an urgent effort to build new infrastructure to access alternate gas supplies. In June 2022, Worley was brought on as the EPC partner to build a floating LNG terminal at Elbehafen. The challenge was to design and construct the infrastructure, which would typically take around two years, in just a few months. To achieve this, we needed to take a different execution approach and implement a procurement-driven reverse engineering methodology if we were to preserve Europe's energy security. Worley rose to the challenge. We exceeded our customers' expectations from a quality, cost, and schedule perspective, all while ensuring the safety of all our people.
From the start, this project has been about team collaboration and embracing a more agile approach to engineering projects. We knew we had to do things differently.
We had people in the U.K., Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, Norway, China, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, and India working around the clock and during constant change to deliver. This was a unique project because all project delivery disciplines had to run in parallel. A lot of what we did from the time-saving perspective also had sustainability benefits. We used waste heat from local businesses to provide hot water for regassification, and we used local suppliers, and we consolidated the shipments. We also designed the infrastructure to be hydrogen-ready for the potential future provision. We are really proud of the significant impact we at Worley have made.
What an amazing project. It makes you feel super proud to be part of a company that is delivering like that. Good morning, everybody. It's great to get the operational insights from Mark and Mark. I'd now like to turn to our strategy.
Chris has taken us through the strategy headlines of Strengthen, Expand, and Innovate, and how it positions us for growth. Why are we confident in our strategy? Firstly, a number of fundamentals support it, and I'd like to take you through them. The macro trends, market data, our leading indicators, and our consistent results. Combined, they give us the confidence to know that we're continuing on the right path. Finally, I'm also going to briefly talk about our priorities. Last year, we highlighted key macro trends like urbanization, population growth, geopolitics, and perhaps most notably, climate change and sustainability. We noted that while the direction of the energy transition is clear, its pace and pathway depends on balancing security, affordability, and sustainability. Indeed, this is what we've seen over the last year as governments, financiers, and our customers navigate these considerations.
Nonetheless, we're confident that the fundamentals of these macro trends will drive long-term growth in our end markets. Short-term, the interaction between these macro trends brings complexity. Our strategy is agile so that we can pivot our people and capabilities to leverage the opportunity presented in this landscape. As Chris said earlier, our resilience is not reactive. It's designed and built in. Now, as you can see, the size of our total market at over $1.3 trillion is significant. As we dig deeper into our strategy, let me present what we're seeing in the energy, chemicals, and resources sectors. Let's start with energy. In oil and gas, investment momentum remains solid. It's supported by current macro conditions, particularly the softening of the energy transition. Oil investment is selective but active, especially in operational and brownfield projects.
Gas and LNG projects are gaining traction in Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East. This is driven by supply-demand balance and energy diversification. Customers are targeting practical decarbonization and cost efficiency. We have a proven edge in these areas, delivering lighter and more efficient designs. That really speaks to that. As an example, our BP site projects alliance uses a commercial model where we share in the value from delivery efficiency savings. Through this model, we have delivered a 10% reduction to the capital program at BP Oman Kazan gas facility. We step into power and new energy. The market trends vary regionally. In the U.S., we are seeing electricity demand rising. Mark touched on that earlier due to electrification, but also data centre growth. This is driving demand for more gas-to-power, renewables, and critically, grid expansion.
Now, we're tracking almost 40 gas-to-power project opportunities in our sales pipeline today. In low-carbon markets, technologies like carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen are still a key part of the energy transition. The pace is uneven due to shifting policies and project economics. Nonetheless, many governments are reaffirming decarbonization commitments and projects with government support, or long-term offtake agreements are moving ahead. A great example of this is ExxonMobil's low-carbon hydrogen project next door to their chemicals and refining facility in Baytown, Texas. Now, while energy is a key part of our portfolio, we're more diversified today than we have ever been before, and that's by design. Our diversification really helps mitigate this market cyclicality that we're seeing at the moment, where one sector softens, others present opportunity. That balance really supports our resilience and our consistent performance.
If we step into chemicals, in petrochemicals, customers are pursuing capital-efficient expansion with modular design and flexibility, including bio-based and recycled inputs. In refining, the focus is on portfolio optimization and downstream integration. Major players are investing to reconfigure their assets to align with evolving product needs. This investment really favors refineries co-located with petrochemical facilities, and we are seeing that in particular in Asia and the Middle East, where demand remains very strong. We have strong relationships with nine of the ten top global chemical producers worldwide. We are supporting them across the entire value chain, whether it is navigating feedstock transitions, improving margins, or enabling innovation like sustainable fuels and plastics recycling. Finally, let's take a quick look at resources. As Chris mentioned earlier, this is a really key pillar of our growth and our diversification. We are currently seeing a multi-speed market.
Our global diversified customers are spending more than others, and they're doing this in a disciplined and strategic manner, using cash flows from bulk commodities to pivot their spending into energy transition materials. We have had over 120 projects awarded in energy transition metals this year alone. 120. Subsector trends also vary. Copper, gold, fertilizer, Mark touched on those earlier, are growing fastest in our portfolio. While battery materials, the spending has slowed. Even there, we still see investment opportunities in the space. We announced that we are Rio Tinto's lead integration delivery partner on their Rincón project, a new lithium project in Argentina. Our customers are well capitalized and balancing their allocation of capital efficiently.
They're spending more than the other players in the market and are doing so in regions where we already have a really strong presence, and that gives us a tremendous advantage. In summary, our strategy is tightly aligned with where the markets are heading. We continue to maintain a strong pipeline of opportunities, and they're diversified across energy, chemicals, and resources, as well as traditional, transitional, and sustainability projects. In line with what we've heard from our customers, we're seeing a near-term shift towards traditional and transitional opportunities. Our overall bookings year to date are stronger than at the same time last year. These record bookings have translated into a resilient backlog. Despite a small number of project cancellations and scope decreases that we've already shared, our backlog has increased over the quarter.
The insights we gain from our world-class consulting business and by staying close to our customers allows us to proactively position ourselves for sustained success. Our results validate our disciplined focus on strategy. We've seen 16% compound annual growth rate in aggregated revenue since the first half of FY2022, and a 17% growth rate in EBITDA. Worley's strategic and operational positioning helps us during these turbulent times and enables us to continue to deliver consistent profitability. The fundamentals are in place, the strategy is sound, and our disciplined focus on execution is delivering. We have five key priorities, Chris touched on them earlier, aligned with our strategy, all aimed at delivering value for our customers and our shareholders. As I finish, I'd like to focus on two of these priorities. Firstly, full project delivery, and then secondly, global integrated delivery.
Our full project delivery is about deepening our role across the full lifecycle of our customers' assets. That means being a partner at every stage, which means that we can offer greater value to our customers, improve project outcomes, and build on our position as a trusted full-service partner, importantly while maintaining our low-risk contract style. A key component of this is expanding our consulting business as we support our customers at the earliest stages of their projects. We're particularly focused on accelerating growth through expanding capabilities across advisory, digital, and environmental domains. What this does is help our customers make smarter decisions, gain sharper insights, and achieve, really, really importantly, achieve better and more sustainable outcomes. Finally, you've heard us talk about global integrated delivery hubs. Our GID teams in India and Colombia enable rapid scaling to meet customer demand.
Over 14% of our work today is delivered through GID. Our goal is to expand this even further. To give you a bit of a feel of what that looks like, I hope you enjoy the video that is coming up next. Thank you very much, and I will move on.
What do an offshore platform in the North Sea, an LNG terminal in the United States, and an iron ore mine in Western Australia have in common? The answer is Worley's global integrated delivery team in India, known as GID.
For 25 years, this model has been quietly transforming how we deliver projects. It started as a single collaboration between our Baton Rouge and Mumbai offices in 1999. The acquisition of Jacobs ECR division in 2019 helped to fast-track the model, adding scale, capability, and a new momentum to our growth.
Today, GID is a fully integrated global engine of execution. This actually isn't a new model for Worley. We have a global perspective that is shaped by decades of solving real challenges for our customers across geographies and continents. With every project, our team in India gains insight into what works and then applies it where it's needed next.
We have 7,500 people delivering out of eight offices in seven cities, making India Worley's engineering powerhouse. We have been delivering hundreds of projects across the globe, and we have skills and competence to deliver across the upstream, midstream, downstream oil and gas, chemicals, resources, power, and new energy.
Our teams work across cultures, languages, and time zones. We are engineers, designers, project managers, procurement experts, and consultants.
We are fully embedded in how Worley delivers projects.
We are working with our GID colleagues on some of our most high-impact work, from multi-billion dollar capital programs to landmark projects like Holland Hydrogen 1, which will be Europe's largest renewable hydrogen facility. What sets Worley's GID apart is how close the teams work. It does not feel like we are working in different offices. It feels like one team, just in different parts of the world. Seamless project delivery, that is what makes it work.
We are delivering many of BP's most complex projects through GID, like the Lincoln Hydrogen Project and BP Biofuels Program. The teams bring deep engineering expertise, and their ability to scale and solve problems has been a big part of why customers come back to us.
Our GID model is not just about around-the-clock delivery. It is about consistency, flexibility, and smart problem-solving. We combine our strengths across the world to deliver better together.
This is why our model keeps growing, with strong support from our customers.
As the world transitions to a more sustainable future, we need to move faster and work smarter. Our teams in India and a growing presence in Colombia bring the scale, digital capability, and engineering depth to help lead that change. This is Worley's globally integrated workforce, built on experience, driven by expertise, connected by trust, and ready for what comes next for our customers.
Right, we are going to take a short break now, just 15 minutes. For those in the room, I invite you to visit the booths in the foyer, have some morning tea. Please also take a look at the projects that we have on the interactive screens, both in the foyer and in this room. We will see you in 15 minutes.
Where do you dream of today?
Something is lying behind your eyes. What do you want today? I dream that I might go on. You want to stay in your eyes. Where do you dream of today? Something is lying behind your eyes. What do you want today? I dream that I might go on. You want to stay in your eyes. Where do you dream of today? Something is lying behind your eyes. What do you want today? I dream that I might go on. You want to stay in your eyes. Where do you dream of today?
I think everyone's making their way back into the room. Could you please take your seats? Right, we might get started with our next session.
For those who have not entered the room, if you could come and take your seat, I would like to invite Laura to come up and talk about process technology solutions. Thank you, Laura.
Thanks, Kylie. Earlier, Chris eloquently described how we create value for our shareholders by strengthening our leadership in our core markets, expanding into growth markets and along the value chain, and innovating to unlock opportunities. In technology solutions, we are building on the strength of our existing process technology business as we expand our technology portfolio into strategically aligned adjacencies and innovate to unlock the opportunities to deliver differentiated solutions to our customers. Today, I will, one, remind you of our approach to growing our process technology business. Two, describe how differentiated technology can enhance our competitive advantage along the value chain. Three, share how technology scaling as a service is positioning Worley in emerging technologies.
My ask is that you note your questions and then visit our booth at the conclusion of the program. First, our approach to growth. Chris described how Worley is leading from the front with globally diversified expertise, supporting a world in transition. A world in transition means that our customers' needs are changing and new markets are developing. This is creating demand for new and innovative process technology, and that's exactly where we're focused. We've maintained our consistent approach to expand and evolve our technology portfolio, blending a build, buy, and partner approach that allows us to curate a portfolio that includes established technologies that deliver immediate value and emerging technologies that position us for longer-term growth. Worley already has decades of experience in delivering proprietary technology solutions.
Our established brands, Worley Kinetics and Worley Comprimo, deliver value to our customers and our shareholders through licensed technologies and the associated products and services. We're building on a strong foundation. Turning to our second point, how differentiated technology can enhance our competitive advantage along the value chain. By targeting technologies in strategically aligned markets, we're expanding the solutions we can bring to our customers and differentiating how we engage with them. One example is our pseudo dry gas technology. Last year, I shared with you that we had reached a technology readiness level of 8 by demonstrating the technology at a large scale in a laboratory setting. Today, we're executing studies for customers to progress projects towards the first subsea deployment of the pseudo dry gas technology. That continued momentum and our whole-of-Worley approach demonstrate how our focus on scalable innovation is paying off.
Finally, third, how technology scaling as a service is positioning Worley in emerging technologies. We're not just developing technologies; we're enabling their deployment at scale. Through what we call technology scaling as a service, we're helping early-stage companies take promising technologies from the lab to real-world deployment faster and with less risk because we're able to leverage the full depth and breadth of Worley's global expertise and customer relationships. We're concentrating in strategically aligned subsectors that will position Worley at the forefront of the energy transition as a service provider and, in select cases, as a technology partner. Our flexible approach is attractive to emerging technology companies, their financiers, and our customers who are seeking to reduce the risk of first-of-a-kind technology deployment. At the same time, partnering provides an accelerated path for us to expand the addressable market for our process technology business.
Ultimately, it's about using technology not just as a tool, but as a strategic asset, one that creates long-term value for our shareholders and our customers. I hope you now share our confidence in, one, our approach to growing our process technology footprint, two, the benefit that we'll have for Worley by enhancing our competitive advantage along the value chain, and three, that technology scaling as a service will position Worley as a leader in emerging technologies. If I've successfully piqued your curiosity, please visit us at our booth in the back. Now I'd like to hand over to Anup to speak about our digital deployment.
Solving some of the most complex challenges in the world in a very sustainable way really needs big, complex machines and really smart humans. AI is really about blending those together to achieve magic. My name is Anup Sharma.
I'm the Group President for Worley Digital. Customers work with Worley because we bring innovation across energy, resources, and chemicals, whether that's conventional energy or sustainable, fully carbon-neutral technologies. We have been in the innovation business for 53 years, so we choose our partners and strategic partners through that lens. We have been a Dell customer for 20-plus years. Dell has helped us solve some very complex challenges. For example, we have a customer in North Africa. We've been asked to build 500,000,000 cubic meters of drinking water supply for the country in a very sustainable way so that 2 ,000,000 humans can get safe, clean drinking water. That is what delivering sustainability means.
I'm Summer Husband. I'm the SVP of Data Products and Applied Intelligence. The Dell AI factory with NVIDIA enables us to really drive value for our customers.
A multi-cloud approach gives us flexibility, but it's strategically important for us to have an on-prem capability as well. We have generative AI products in development in several different areas, democratization of information across all of our employees. We are developing agentic AI at Worley. The technology in this space is changing so rapidly so that things that were not possible six months ago are entirely within reach now, and having this partnership enables us to make sure we're really on the cutting edge.
This compute environment needed the dream team, and our dream team is from Dell Technologies and NVIDIA and, of course, WWT. We really think AI is here for the good of the world, for the good of countries, for the good of people. Good morning. I'll be sharing three things with you today.
First, how we're reimagining speed to value while we assure project delivery, our customers' demand for digital excellence and solutions, and, of course, the three horizons of how we think about value share. I am going to talk about one of our lighthouse customers. Thirdly, solutions and platforms that we keep adding to our portfolio in the shape of products and platforms. We're building AI for the future with a focus on 10x return and scale. It was not too long ago that GenAI captured the imagination of companies, CEOs, boardrooms. Chris often says, "We're in the predictability of outcomes business." Today, I'm happy to report that we're driving groundbreaking solutions which give us value across the customer value chain. We have a very unique opportunity to establish first-mover advantage across our peer group.
As you think about the ingredients for this to happen, we have 50-plus years of domain expertise in energy, resources, and chemicals. We have an amazing workforce you heard a lot about today, and we have 12 petabytes of context and data. That's the new gold. Of course, now we're achieving scale with an unmatched ecosystem of technology players that allow us to get to scale and speed to value quickly. Our focus on value is across three very distinct horizons. First, we had to focus on ourselves. Over the last 12 months, three major shifts have happened in the AI space. First, agentic AI. You heard Summer talk about unleashing the power of agents, agency, agentic AI that has smart capabilities to deliver value. There's been a massive improvement in robotics and physical AI. Think about drone images, robotics in factory and automation.
Thirdly, the compute of NVIDIA GPUs, which allow us finally to get to almost real-time simulation of historical data, but also synthetic data to achieve things that perhaps were not achievable even 12 to 18 months ago. We are driving this across all 12,000 projects and delivering efficiency and productivity. Our customers are very focused on expecting us, along with our peer group, to deliver deployment-ready solutions. They have made significant investments in digital and are depending on us to bring our expertise and our portfolio of solutions so that they can drive value very quickly. These solutions have to be secure by design, and the way we achieve value is how do you deploy at scale? How do you drive change management in their workforce? How do you derive value in their physical assets and then fund future investment?
If you think about our industry, and many of you have followed our industry for a long time, we fundamentally have not changed how we do capital projects for the last 40 years. Now we have a real opportunity to reimagine what this end-to-end value execution looks like. How do we deliver from pre-feed to decommissioning? A recent study, and there are a lot of studies around capital investment, states that there will be an annual spend or influx of between $5 trillion-$7 trillion of capital investment, which includes the data center power and the compute needs. We are working with our customers in a leading role to drive value from this investment. Worley is a first-principles company.
I heard a phrase recently, "We're in the kick it when it hurts asset business." For us, it's really we have to make sure that the capability of the technology exists. I've been in this industry 30-plus years, and frankly, for the first time, we have technology and compute that can bend first principles. We are able to revolutionize how we harness 50-plus years of this incredible database of capability and competency, which is represented in drawings, 3D simulation. We have a tremendous amount of domain expertise, and this allows us a leading position to cement our future for our customers. I want to talk about this ecosystem, and in March, this ecosystem is anchored with an exclusive partnership and collaboration with the NVIDIA team. NVIDIA has a tremendous portfolio of compute capability.
You hear about the chips, but along with that, they have deep software and platform expertise. Frankly, Jensen himself has taken a personal interest in driving solutions in our space, and this allows us to have unparalleled access to product and engineering talent within NVIDIA. This is a game changer for us. You saw the Dell NVIDIA AI factory. That allows us to create a blueprint that is repeatable for our customers so we can configure rather than customize solutions. If you had a chance to visit our booth, we're featuring C3 AI. C3 AI has been in the AI enterprise AI business for 20-plus years. They bring solution-ready capability in reliability, supply chain management, and then we'll be doing some co-innovation with them. These solutions are focused on driving reduction in project risk, reliability and safety improvement in assets and the complex network of assets.
Of course, how do we improve, as Mark and Mark said, execution timelines for our customer? We are also partnering with the biggest companies in the world. Microsoft is one of our long-term strategic partners. We are focused on cybersecurity, this extensible data fabric you hear Satya and the Microsoft team talk about. A lot of our customers leverage the Microsoft toolset, so it allows us a direct interface on how we leverage the investments that are secure, multi-cloud. For our customers like in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where we have to have data centers and compute at the edge, you heard Mark and Mark talk about what customers are demanding. Our customers are really focused on improving capital efficiency and, in the near term, a reduction of cost of what it takes to deliver projects.
You'll see if you've had a chance to visit Joe and the booth in the back is focused on construction-ready engineering and procurement. There's a lot of uncertainty in the supply chain, and we have tools that have been battle-tested in high tech, in healthcare, and in other sectors that are adjacent to us. We're able to lift and shift that capability and build it for our customers. Our customers are also very focused on bringing a partnership ecosystem. They view Worley as a convener of ecosystem, solution-ready capability, and also driving a change in how we drive data integration and securing data and IP. As you heard Mark and Mark talk about, we are partnering across traditional, transitional, and sustainable projects. We are very focused on accelerating FID decisions.
Of course, as we do execution of the project and then handoff from the project to the operations team, there's a lot of capability that will be a game changer for our customers. Today, we're focused on one of our booths highlights, our data-centric approach. Data-centric has been talked about in our industry for 20-30 years, but frankly, we have stayed document-centric. As you will see, we've driven incredible use of simulation practice on the computer before you execute on the ground. Have a look at some of the capability that Mark articulated earlier today. Close your eyes and imagine with me 8 billion people in the world, 8-9 billion people. The country of Morocco has 70% of the world's phosphate. We've been in the country of Morocco partnering with OCP Group for the last 50-plus years.
We have a very successful joint venture. The OCP Group's vision is to feed the world's population by providing the essential elements, which are soil fertility and plant growth. They have tremendous innovation. With AI, we're able to drive end-to-end capability across their value chain, from the mine to the manufacturing facility to the port and to the farmer. As you look at the capabilities that Worley and our partners bring to this customer in the mining sector, we are able to drive asset productivity, operational efficiency, and with their latest investment in Mazinda, the first born digital mine, which will be almost autonomous. Within manufacturing, I was just with Laura and I were at Jorf, which is the largest fertilizer plant in the world. They are depending on us to partner to bring visibility, scalability of operations with generative AI, integrated operations center.
With our ports, our team on the ground has been able to create virtual capacity using lean and digital capabilities. Finally, the bold vision for a large quantity producer to now get the market signal and the signal from the farmer to say, "This is the type of fertilizer that's needed for my needs, for my crop." You can imagine that this end-to-end value chain is a dramatically different way for our customers to operate their assets and drive the change that they have to move from a resource-centric economy to an innovation-centric economy. Finally, I'd like to emphasize the work that we've been doing within Worley and our advanced development lab. Chris invested as we took the bold step of organizing for the future. I'm very excited to showcase a few solutions. The Worley AI Marketplace is ready for deployment-ready solutions.
Summer and the team are showcasing a solution that takes a very repetitive task today in the industry is around getting technical bids from suppliers. These tend to be very onerous. They take weeks. When you go back and forth with suppliers, it adds a lot of cycle time. If you have a chance, we've leveraged and unleashed the power of agentic AI and machine learning to a set of processes that, as we roll those out, will drive dramatic improvements in efficiency. Look for us. To me, technology will evolve. The needs of our customers will change and evolve. What really matters is our culture. I want to end with the leadership principles that we really not just talk about. We live every single day. I joined Worley two years ago as a customer of Worley.
The three leadership principles are very simple: create meaning, embrace possibilities, and deliver what matters. Today, 50,000 women and men got up in the morning around the world, very focused on our purpose, as you heard from Chris. They are embracing the possibilities of the future. This future-backed focus on AI and generative AI is allowing us to unleash the capability of new technology and partnering with Vicky and our people colleagues. We are uplifting the competency of our workforce so they are ready for whatever the future brings. With that, I would like to invite my finance colleague, Tiernan, my friend, and Justine to the stage. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Anup, and good morning, everyone. I noticed at the break that a lot of people in this room I've worked with for the last 22 years as a public company CFO, so I'm really glad you're here. Thank you for being here. I'm also really pleased to introduce you to Justine Travers, who is the incoming CFO. Let me acknowledge at the start the announcement, the recent announcement of my retirement from public life, publicly listed work. I have really enjoyed my time at Worley. When I leave, I'm really confident that Worley is well positioned for continued success. Justine will take over as CFO from the 1st of July, and I will be here till the end of September to really make sure that there is a smooth transition into the role.
Importantly, I hired Justine 18 months ago as part of our long-term strategic planning and succession planning. I'm really confident that with her experience and with the rock-solid financial position that she'll inherit, she will be able to guide Worley into the next phase of growth. Let me move on to capital management. I think two of the most important success factors for Worley have been operational excellence and prudent financial management. Mark and Mark talked a lot about the former, but in terms of the latter, that's what I've been spending my time doing. About four years ago, when I was onboarding, I sat down with Chris, made some observations. We talked about what we felt was a prerequisite for long-term success in this industry. We agreed that a rock-solid financial position was a prerequisite.
We set about taking deliberate actions over the next four years to achieve that outcome. Every decision we have made in that regard since has been to deliver that outcome. Case in point is last week, this time last week, Tuesday, we issued $400 million of medium-term notes. They were fixed-rate notes with a tenor of seven years at attractive pricing in the current market. That was a deliberate strategy around ensuring that we are diversifying our debt portfolio, but also replacing maturities early when we had the opportunity to do that. Why is that important? It is extremely important because it sets us apart from our competitors. There is no doubt that in this turbulent world, we are ahead of many of our competitors in terms of our financial strength, a really important part of doing business.
Of course, with leverage at 1.5 times, including the buyback that we are doing at the moment, that puts us in a very strong position to do further capital deployment. Justine will talk a bit more about that in the last slide of the deck as to what other opportunities we've got. Let me move on to my favorite topic, cash flow. I think it's obvious that we have made cash flow a priority over the last few years. We have a low capital intensity business. We have managed working capital extremely well. How have we done that? Mark and Mark alluded to it earlier. We have embedded financial discipline not only within the Worley project teams, but also with our customers. We've changed the behaviors of our customers.
What that has allowed us to do is convert income to cash much more efficiently and recycle capital really quickly. What that does for our customers is it gives them confidence. Why? Because they are deploying enormous amounts of capital into their investment programs, and they need to ensure that the contractor that they're working with is not only stable, but is financially secure. That has been our strategy, as I said, a deliberate action to put ourselves in that position over many years. Let's talk about margins, because I think you will agree that the diligence around our margin improvement over the last few years has been exceptional. In fact, in the last three years, our margin has improved 190 basis points. How have we achieved that? It's by consistently doing these things that are on this slide.
We have talked to you about these before. Number one, new work being won at higher margins. If you look at our backlog and our pipeline today, embedded in those constructs are improving margins. Why? Because we deliver high-value solutions for our customers. Remember, the majority of our income comes from professional services revenue, high-value solutions for our customers, and they are prepared to pay us for those. As Chris mentioned earlier, we are seeking to achieve and maintain high single-digit EBITDA margins and targeting low double-digit EBITDA CAGR. The only way we can do that is if there is mutual gain between Worley and our customer in terms of the value that we deliver. I think it is very evident that we are doing that. In fact, a data point around that issue is that in our most recent report, 47% of new contracts were sole sourced.
There is clearly mutual gain there in spite of increasing margins. The second area is operational leverage. We are investing in our own transformation. We are walking the talk. We are putting money where our mouth is. We are making efficient processes and the backbone systems that we use and implementing technology, as Anup has just talked about. That is extraordinarily important because we are embedding cost discipline into the business and generating a very scalable business. Thirdly, project assurance. You have seen the number 12,000 projects up on the screen a number of times. We have been focusing on making sure that the as-sold margin for each of those 12,000 projects is the as-delivered margin. Narrowing that gap has made a significant impact on the way that we deliver margins. What do all these things do collectively? In aggregate, they give us enduring capital productivity.
We are delivering accretive risk-adjusted returns consistently. We are doing it with contract terms that are very attractive to us. The last thing I'll say before handing over to Justine is that I'll just give you an update on the buyback. We have now done $110 million of that $500 million program. That is at a much faster rate and a more accretive rate than we had originally modeled. Why? Because, of course, in the last couple of months, there have been some really attractive buying opportunities. We will continue to execute that buyback program because we believe in the value of our company. We will be very mindful to maintain the balance that I've talked about financially because it is very disruptive times, but we are very committed to continuing to proceed with that. That's enough for me because I want you to hear from Justine.
Before I go, can I say it's been an absolute pleasure to work with all of you over the years from the investment community and with the Worley team. I am really now very pleased to hand over to Justine.
Thanks, Tiernan. Good morning, everyone. I've been fortunate to work side by side with Tiernan and the senior leadership team for nearly 18 months now. I lead a team of talented finance professionals across Worley's operations, group reporting, financial planning and appraisal, property, and Worley Enterprise Services. I have more than 20 years' experience in the resources and energy sectors, and I continue to be impressed daily with the depth of capability within Worley and our unwavering focus on the needs of our customers. The deliberate strategic actions which have been made by Worley and the agility and energy with which we continue to evolve the business and strengthen its resilience is something that I intend to continue to support as I take up the CFO role, ensuring that the gains that we've made and the solid platform on which to grow is protected.
I look forward to continuing to work closely with Chris and the group executive. Let's get back to capital management. You've seen this framework before at many of our previous presentations. It's an important internal framework which supports our decisions by which we manage capital effectively. It is also tightly aligned to our overarching growth strategy. It helps us communicate with you the options that we have available to us and the decisions that we make. Our focus as we make these decisions is supporting the business and delivering increasing value to you, our shareholders. As Tiernan has already mentioned, we commenced our buyback program back in March. It reflects the confidence that we have in our business, and it is an important mechanism in driving value for our shareholders. Portfolio management remains front of mind. This includes considerations of divestments as well as acquisitions.
From an acquisition standpoint, we continue to consider opportunities that align with our long-term growth strategy. We're particularly interested in niche bolt-ons. However, as always, we'll be measured, seeking value above all else. Of course, we otherwise retain the ability to develop the capability organically, and we have a strong track record in doing this. We also continue to assess our portfolio of businesses, and we will look to divest any businesses that are not aligned with our core strategy and/or where we can deploy capital more effectively elsewhere. Our annual investment program continues, and it's a mix of capitalized expenditure and OPEX, which is included in our EBITDA. We will continue to assess investment opportunities annually, and as always, we'll be transparent with the market as we make those decisions.
Finally, we have been consistently delivering returns to our investors through dividends, and we continue to prudently manage our net debt. Tiernan and I are focused on delivering the FY25 result and working through a smooth transition over the next couple of months. My focus, as I take over the reins, will be maintaining the strong financial discipline with which we operate today, ensuring that we deploy capital where it matters most, where it aligns with our strategy, and we will deliver accretive returns. We will make decisions which continue to support our margin growth and which drive long-term shareholder value. Finance has a critical role to play in continuing to deliver operational excellence and cost efficiencies, and I continue to be focused on leading a team and developing talent which delivers on these key enablers.
I have a bias towards action, so therefore I'll be working with the Group Executive and my team to make sure that we're supporting the strengthen, expand, and innovate strategy that you've heard from Chris, Andy, Laura, and Anup today. Of course, I'm focused on engaging with the capital markets to bring the best of Worley to our investment community. With that, I look forward to further engaging with you through the course of today, over the next few months and years, and I'll now hand back to Chris.
You've heard from our team about where we're creating and capturing opportunities for the business in the current environment, and you've heard how we're going to continue to build on the foundations of the organization for growth over the longer term, including our intense focus on deploying digital and GenAI solutions, which are impacting every aspect of our lives, whether it's professionally or personally. Let me outline again the clear set of priorities which is driving value for you, our shareholders. As I've said, our immediate priority is the operations reorganization underpinned by an ongoing focus on margin growth and cost management. We're focused on increasing our services along the entire value chain through large projects and end-to-end solutions. We're growing our global integrated delivery services as well as continuing along the path of digital innovation that supports our ability to capture further opportunities.
We continue to operate in an evolving macroeconomic environment. You can't pick up a newspaper without reading what has been done by the U.S. as leader just this morning, getting up reading about what he's saying about Russia and Ukraine, or the visit to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, or the Emirates. While there's this incredibly dynamic and in some ways uncertain environment, we're confident as a well-diversified business across sectors and geographies with strong financial stability that we're well positioned for the opportunities that lie ahead. We're resilient, resulting from the flexibility that we have, and we're able to adapt our business to the changing customer needs in the current market conditions. I started earlier today by reconfirming our outlook for expectations for FY2025.
We're targeting low double-digit EBITDA growth and expect to report an underlying EBITDA margin, excluding the impact of procurement, between 8% and 8.5%. We continue to carefully monitor the impact of the current environment on our customers and how that might impact their investment decisions, including any project delays. Importantly, as I said earlier, since the beginning of the year, we've not seen any material cancellations or deferrals. In line with normal practice, we'll provide an outlook for FY2026 when we deliver FY2025's full year results in August. That concludes the formal part of the presentation. We're going to open it up for questions. We've got all the group executives who have spoken here today are going to come on stage.
In addition to Sue Brown and Vikki Pink, Sue is our Head of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, and Vikki Pink, our Chief People Officer, is going to join us on the stage. We will have the opportunity to take questions from you who are in the room. We will not be taking any questions from those online. This session, we are going to focus to those in the room. Can I ask the group exec to come up to the stage, please? Okay, we will take questions. Look, ask any question you wish, and then I will take the question on board and point it to the appropriate group exec member. Yeah, we got a question. Okay, John, do you want to go first before? Yeah.
Thank you. Good day, John Purtell from Macquarie. Thanks for this morning. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, around major project opportunities. You've obviously sort of highlighted a range of opportunities in terms of US LNG and globally. I mean, how does Worley balance this with the need to execute on your existing large projects, obviously CP2 and OCP being some of your larger ones, and essentially not being too distracted with too many larger projects happening at once? I suspect your new structure is probably part of the answer to that.
Why don't I hand to Mark because I think the structure is, in essence, the answer to that, but I want to hand to Mark. Oh, which Mark?
Which Mark?
Yeah.
Good Mark.
That's him. Mark Trueman.
I mean, you answered your own question, John. We're already doing large projects all around the world, and we have for a very long time. Certainly, the learnings that we've had in the U.S. is that you've got to focus on the long-term relationships you've got with customers, including the smaller projects, because from big things—sorry, from small things, big things come. Mark and I are running the company at the moment this way. We're just going to shift it like that to make sure we're focusing on both. The systems, process, tools, there's a lot of overlap, but sometimes you need to do a bit more for the big projects and scale that down for the smaller things. Yeah.
Yeah, and I would just add, while we've had a mere eight-pack in Americas and we've pursued some major projects, and we didn't win some that we thought collectively we should have won. Just look back and reflect on it, no matter how—and we've got a very collaborative culture—but there's always a degree of regional centricity that will come into the pursuit of a project. An underpinning part of why we're going at this new structure is Mark will aggregate and marshal the global resource in pursuit of an opportunity, and it'll remove the risk of regional centricity and the risk of not bringing all of Worley to a global opportunity. That's core to it. While at the same time, Mark Brantley is making sure that the operations continue to focus on the non-major projects aspect of the organization.
Historically, what Mark, Mark and I have observed, when you have a large major project in a business, it can distract that part of the business from the underlying operations. What Mark did, Mark Trueman did in the U.S., was he pulled out VG and had it report straight to him. It was not distracting the business within the U.S. He denies this, but the reason one of the big reasons I like—and we have moved to this model—is because of what Mark Trueman demonstrated in terms of what could be achieved in the U.S. Yeah? We can have the best of both worlds in this structure operating under Mark and Mark.
Thank you. Just a second question, perhaps for Vikki on the people side. We've heard a lot about culture this morning. Are you seeing that translate into improved retention of your staff in terms of any metrics you can share? Also, any observations around the sort of engineering market more generally? Is it still pretty tight?
Yeah. Look, thank you for that question. In speaking with you in the last two years, we've talked about our careful confidence in our attraction and retention of our people, so both from a skills point of view and, as Anup said, from a behavior point of view, and how critical that is for our culture. We've focused on our culture very intently for the last four years. As you can see by what we've talked through today, it's not just that technical skill that people bring. It's that ability to think outside the square, innovate, and collaborate that actually makes the difference. We're very much focused on what people are able to do and how they do it. From a retention point of view, we have very strong retention across our professional services workforce, and that extends right through into our senior leaders.
We have a very strong brand, and we're able to attract the skill and capability that we need, and we're thinking very programmatically about what we need into the future. You asked me for some data. We sit just under the market standard for our retention, and we've held that position for close on two years. We're really proud of that. We work really hard on how we look after our people. Thank you.
Of course, yeah.
Hey, Megan from Barrenjoey. Just my first question, just on the focus today on the end-to-end offering for customers. Really just keen to understand how that potentially drives higher revenue for you and the rationale behind that.
What we're seeing is more and more of our customers adjust the risk profile that they're willing to go to market with and move away from lump-sum, turnkey, EPC projects and move to a low-risk appetite or a low-risk profile that fits with our appetite. What's happened over the last two or three years is a shift in the market dynamic that allows us to, if we take advantage of it and recognize an opportunity to expand our offering, we can grow the revenue. Markets that were historically not accessible to us are now accessible because of the shifting orientation of customers going to market because they recognize the reason there's a reduction in competitive environment today is because of the risk profile and the risk framework that they went to market with.
It's a shifting dynamic in the marketplace which allows us to capture more and more of the revenue, bigger share of the wallet of our customers. Mark Trueman?
Yeah, I'd add just the importance, if we are talking to end here, around the role of consulting in the business as well. I just said to John, from small things, big things come, and projects you start at the beginning. The positioning of the consulting business is really important in terms of relationships with the customer, in terms of conceptual work, feasibility, testing, or spearheading new technologies, particularly with the energy transition and some of the new process technologies. Being able to do that as well as being able to follow through for the full project delivery is really important for our customer relationships and partnering attitude.
Just a second question. Just on the backlog, appreciate that it's up on December, but it's tracking down slightly year on year. In terms of the comments around some of those delays that you're seeing, is there a usual timeframe that that could potentially flow through to cancellations? Just any additional color to help us think about that outlook?
I'll maybe open it up, and then Andy can talk about it. The year on year, you've got to be careful because we had, just after we started FY2025, we had a major cancellation of a project. Battery materials with Northvolt. We communicated that. Andy, do you want to pick the question up?
Yeah. No, I mean, as Chris mentioned, there were one or two cancellations and deferments that we've already announced that impact that. If I look to the pipeline, I mean, we're tracking over 10,000 opportunities. I think we take a very, very prudent approach to factoring those. We're constantly looking at the impact of any particular parts of the market and what might happen. I think from a pipeline perspective, I think we've got a very, very well-diversified, well-balanced portfolio of opportunities that we're looking for, that we're looking into. I think that will translate into an improvement in backlog over time. You have to look at the long-term trajectory rather than instantaneous moves.
Thanks.
Question in the back. Morning. Jordan Woods from Paradice Investment Management. Just might be one for you, Anup, just around the AI use case. We've spoken to Tiernan and Chris in the past around some of the uses, particularly in RFPs. I'm just interested around where we are in the stage from the AI use case, for example, with actual design, and whether that's years away or whether we are close, because it is something we've spoken about in the past just from the perspective of margin expansion as we move throughout the medium term. I'm just interested in terms of where we're up to in terms of that journey.
Yeah, absolutely. We took about 18 months ago, took 500 ideas across the entire business in various functions, businesses. We were really overweight in ideas from our engineering and operations team on how do we improve cycle time for customer projects. Joe Bonnett leads our digital team end-to-end across that life cycle. I'm happy to report that about 50-60% now of our resource and our products, we call these agentic AI products and platforms, are really focused on project life cycle. We've been using 3D, 4D simulation for almost a decade or more. Our customers now, there are a few large projects where we're doing complete data-centric delivery. The way we think about it is we then layer on top of that generative AI capability. The fundamental design, procurement, construction. We showcase advanced work packages.
Now, the big opportunity is with the Omniverse. NVIDIA and we're working closely with five or six other of our engineering software suppliers to stitch together not just historical data, which we have a fair amount, but if you think about a self-driving car, they only do so many physical iterations, and then the computer does billions of permutations. Just think about that being applied not just with 60, 70 variables, but now millions of variables around temperature, heat, weather, direct tie into supply chain. That is really, I think, the promise of the future. We'll be deploying that with some of our Lighthouse customers over the coming months.
Look, and I think it's worth introducing now a decision we made earlier in the year, and that is expanding Laura's role and adding to her process technology portfolio what we're calling Engine 2, which is the complete revolutionization of how we deliver projects. Laura, why don't you talk a little bit about what you're doing in Engine 2?
Absolutely. It is a really exciting time when we look at the capability that Anup described and how it can revolutionize how projects are delivered. We have a systematic approach of how we intend to apply that state-of-the-art digital capability to how we deliver projects, both in terms of how we do our work, how we deliver the results to our customers, and then how we use that to further improve the outcomes that we can deliver to our customers and the digital assets that our customers can continue to use through the life cycle of their asset.
Yeah. Look, I expect all of you in the room will have read a little bit about agentic AI and digital humans. The pace at which that is coming into the world within which we live our lives personally and professionally and within it is a rate that it's beyond, I think, any of us could have imagined. We are looking under Engine 2, agentic AI, the digital humans. What does this mean to our ability to reinvent capital project delivery? Not just from the concept work, the consulting work, which Mark talks about, all the way through to working with our customers and enhancing their operations. Laura's tasked with working closely with Anup to revolutionize how we're going to deliver projects in the future. That future, let me tell you, isn't that far away. It is not that far away.
That has.
We are moving quickly, and we're moving at scale to make that difference.
That has a significant impact on your question, John, around capability. We are focusing really quickly right now on how do we build that capability. Our people have really great transferable skills. What do we need to buy in in attracting that right talent? Thirdly, who do we partner with, which goes back to what Anup and Laura are talking about with us.
Thanks. Good morning. It's Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies. Just a couple of questions. One on just back to the backlog and the increased, I guess, level of work in the resources space, resources and chemical space. Any comment there on potential mix impacts or margin impacts? Are they consistent with what you've been seeing or observing in the existing backlog to date?
Andy, you want to?
Yeah. No, it's a good question. I think what I would say is going back to the breadth and exposure across resources, chemicals, energy, but then also the traditional, transitional, sustainability. We've got, I would say, a broad, diverse exposure so that we're not overly exposed to one sector growing more than the other. It's largely balanced out. I think the first point really would be around diversification. The second point I'd raise would be that we're very, very focused on which customers we work with. We have a very, very tight key account program. We prefer to work with customers that want to work in partnership. I think Mark mentioned it earlier. We support them across their entire investments. If it's Shell, we're supporting them across chemicals, across energy in different regions, in traditional, transitional, sustainable.
I think the answer is we're not seeing one particular sector disrupt that trajectory of improved margins that we've got.
Okay. Great. Just one other one on a finance question. Tiernan mentioned the recent refinancing of some of your debt facilities. You've got a large low-cost debt facility coming up for renewal. I think it's in just over 12 months' time. If you can just comment, I guess, maybe on this existing or this new facility, the costing there, and I guess your plans to refile the remainder of that facility that's coming up.
Wouldn't we all love to be raising debt at those levels? That was just before COVID, and the markets were much more conducive to low-cost debt. Look, we have a blended weighted average cost of debt just over 4%. We had already planned to raise capital into 2026, not only to fund the buyback, but also to fund growth. This early replacement of that facility in just over 12 months' time will have a de minimis impact on the average cost of debt. Of course, it's more expensive. I mean, I've never seen rates like that in my 22 years as a CFO. The good news is that, and our Treasurer, David Rose, sitting right in front of you there, David's strategy is to diversify the portfolio. We're reducing the peak of the towers in terms of maturity. This seven-year tenor is expanding that.
Sometimes you've got to pay for that diversification. The good news is with our margin improvements, we can afford debt at current levels. It is far better, I think, and certainly I think Justine and David agree with me on this, that we have security of sources of capital in this environment. When opportunities present themselves, I do not think it is a bad rate that we got. It is obviously a lot higher than the rate that we are replacing. This is an overall orchestrated strategy, and this is just one of the pieces. Going forward in terms of replacing the other amounts, again, we will monitor the different markets. David, one of the things David's done in debt capital markets is what we have done in equity capital markets, is building out our exposure to all of the markets where there are opportunities to replace debt.
That gives us choice. We will execute other transactions in time. Let's be really clear. This transaction takes the heat out of that maturity. For those of you who are covering us a number of years ago when we did quite a big tower in 2023, the market was very, very challenging in late 2022. There was quite a lot of concern across the market, not just with us, that replacements would be difficult. I'm really, really pleased with that transaction.
Good morning. Thank you. It's Nicole Penny from Rimor Equity Research. Just following on the margin question and looking more medium term, how do project margins evolve as the projects move further along the value chain from FEED through to construction and finalization, please?
It gets less. Yeah. I mean, consulting is always at a premium. The work follows a value curve. Yeah. Typically, the greater the influence you have on the outcome, which is in the early feasibility consulting work, there's always a margin premium there. Yeah. Clearly, we've got blue-collar work in the field. It's a different margin. Yeah. It just follows that profile. I mean, it's not complex. It's not specific to Worley. It's not specific even to our industry. It's a curve that all industry sectors face.
Can I add, Chris?
Yeah.
It depends also what our scope is as you go through the different phases.
Oh, yeah.
If we're delivering a project in an EPCM contract, so we're doing construction management and not doing the direct-hire construction, then we continue with the professional services margin. Not every contract is the same.
Yeah.
I think the important thing that Andy said is really making sure we've got balance within our portfolio. We try and balance that out over a period of time and based on the scope of projects that we're executing on or delivering at any one point in time. That really helps us to think about a balanced overall margin as well.
Nathan? Yeah. Nathan Reilly, UBS. Question on LNG. Obviously, you've got CP2 in the pipeline. I'm just wondering how Worley is positioning itself to differentiate itself in that market. Obviously, the pricing and the reimbursable approach is one aspect, just how you're thinking about differentiating yourself in that space. I'm also curious to know whether you feel like you've got the capacity to deliver more than one project in that sector.
I'm going to ask Mark to address it because the majority of our LNG prospects, not just prospects, but LNG projects we're working on now are in Mark's current, Mark Trueman's current region. Why don't you talk to that, Mark? Yeah.
Yeah. We're very focused on making the best thing for us is to deliver our work really well and an absolute focus on CP2. We've got to deliver it, and we've got to deliver it really well. That occupies a lot of my emotional energy to make sure that we're doing that. As I mentioned earlier on, Nathan, we've got six or seven other LNG projects in the U.S. and Canada and Alaska. Alaska's the U.S. Lower 48, Canada, and Alaska that we are working on today. Some of them we will stay as an owner's engineer. In the consulting space, that's still good work, and there's still big projects that require strong owner's teams.
A couple of the other ones we think would work in really well following that we could move on into full delivery following CP2, but we're very focused on CP2 at this point.
Just picking up on the increase or potential increase use around AI and technology tools to assist engineering optimization, can you elaborate on how you think that might change the revenue and pricing model? I mean, historically, we've seen revenue and, I guess, engineering outcomes delivered on hours. Just in terms of how you think about the recovery on the investment.
Yeah. Certainly, you'll move away in the future. The commercial model will have to adapt to the fact that what we're offering is not necessarily a work-hours product. It's a data-centric product, and with that, a different model. Laura and the commercial team are looking at what the range of those models are. We're not the first company to look at what these models are, but it will change. It will change. The profitability, we still think there's an opportunity to grow profitability. Bottom line, EBITDA margin and quality of margin, the revenue profile will shift. I'm often asked about what it means to our workforce, and there's two aspects to it. It will allow us to do a lot of what we're currently doing in the back office, for example, in India, a lot more efficiently.
If you think about the role of agentic AI and digital humans, there's a future I can see where work that is currently done by shared service locations in places like India will be done by digital humans. It's just the natural evolution. That is a cost reduction approach. Importantly for us, at the front of what we do, the customer-facing what we do, it's about productivity amplification, doing more for our customers with the same number of people. That's core. One is a cost reduction, the back office type work. The front of house, it's how do we use agentic AI as a productivity multiplier. The commercial models will need to change, John.
Yeah. I was just going to add our customers, you think about the life cycle.
Yeah.
It's pools of value. We have customers that are really emphasizing getting to FID a lot faster because then you have certainty of investment delivery. The other big pool of value is during the construction phase. Mark and Mark talked about that's where you can extend a lot of schedule, but also cost risk. The third big pool of value is today, there's a lot of digital twins. When you think about the team that hands over from construction to running the plant, those handoffs have a lot of errors and handoffs. I think as we think about, we're not the first to think about this, but the customer's really interested in getting first gas and the molecules. The return on that cash investment is going to drive in a very collaborative way how we share value.
Yeah. Nathan, I'd add just one other thing. I mentioned in the presentation, we are seeing customers who are willing to share in value. Moving from output to outcome. The BP example I gave is sort of an early example of us already doing that.
It is more likely to be an orderly transition rather than an abrupt one. In other words, more likely to be a hybrid model where we are charging by the hour for a number of early services and then charging for output on others. In the medium term, it is more likely to be an orderly transition.
Okay. Yep. One question at the back.
Thanks. Maybe just one on the phasing of CP2. I mean, assuming mid-year FID is given, how should we think about the phasing in 2026 in terms of Worley's, the level of work that Worley will be doing through that year?
Do you want to offer that question to my learned colleague?
I did touch on that earlier on. Just we're already, as I said, 20-25% through our work. We've been at it for a couple of years. As we move on-site, obviously, we actually have quite a large construction team already. They will move on-site and supervise and deliver the works. You start off with, I mean, essentially, it's a swamp. A lot of soil remediation, building the hurricane protection, piling, and then into foundations and what we call anchor bolts down. We'll be working on-site. The real bulk of what Worley will be doing in terms of our direct-hire workforce is anchor bolts up. That will be more for FY2027 than FY2026 for us. Obviously, as going on-site is when a lot of procurement flowing through.
We'll be moving into the phase II engineering at the same time as well.
Okay. So we're out of time for questions. Before we close, Tiernan, just want to recognize Tiernan for his contribution to the company since he joined. And welcome effective July the 1st from Justine. Also, we've got two people in the room, one of whom is a new member of the group executive and one that was a very established member of the group executive. We've got to say old there, but established. Just Larry Calbin and Sabrina Gilman can stand up, please. Larry Calbin has been our General Counsel for 40 years. Larry will step down as General Counsel on June 30. Sabrina Gilman will take over from him on July the 1st. Larry has been a mainstay of this organization since it was formed of Worley Parsons. Before that, I worked with Larry at Parsons E&C.
I just want to recognize 40 years of absolute commitment and dedication to the organization. I welcome Sabrina Gilman, who will take over as General Counsel for the organization effective July 1. Tiernan, thank you. Larry, thank you. Welcome to Justine and Sabrina to the global executive team of Worley. Thank you.