Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Worley Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to your first speaker today, Mr. Chris Ashton, Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.
Welcome, everyone, thanks for joining Worley's Full Year Results for FY23. I'm pleased to be presenting these today with Tiernan O'Rourke, our CFO. Just moving on to slide two, and before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today. We acknowledge and recognize their continued connection to the land and waters, and thank them for protecting this coastline and its ecosystem since time immemorial, and for their unique ability to care for country and their deep spiritual connection to it. We pay our respects to the elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people present today, whose knowledge and wisdom has ensured the continuation of culture and traditional practices. Moving on to slide three.
I just remind you to review the disclaimer that's shown here. We'll move on to slide four. In terms of the agenda for the day, first, I'll provide an overview of our business performance and strategic progress over the year as we move further toward achieving our ambition. Then Tiernan will add additional detail on our full year results. Finally, I'll provide a market update, and we'll look at where the business is going for the rest of FY24 before opening up for Q&A. Just moving on to slide five. Today, I want to leave you with three key messages. First, we've delivered strong growth and momentum continues to build. We continue to deliver in line with that which we said we would.
Second, we continue to execute our strategy and have a clear path to increasing revenue, earnings, and margins in the near and medium term. Finally, as a global leader and trusted provider of sustainability solutions, we're leveraging our differentiated position to deliver long-term value. Moving on to slide six. What I'm going to do now is take you through our business performance, which will illustrate the progress we're making against our strategy, and that will begin on slide seven. Keeping our people safe and well remains our highest priority. We continue to enhance the way we work, and this year we've embedded psychosocial factors into our Life programs. Our safety performance remains a focus. Our Total Recordable Case Frequency Rate has reduced from 0.14 to 0.14 from 0.16 last year.
We want our people to be energized and empowered. We're building a values-inspired culture that amplifies big picture thinking, is open to possibility, and demonstrates collaboration and innovation. We're developing our people through skills and capability building. Our new Learning at Worley platform, launched in February this year, is providing flexible learning and development opportunities for our people. Moving to slide eight. We're driving progress across our sustainability programs and continue to enhance our ESG governance and reporting framework. We're focused on all aspects of our environmental, social, and governance performance. This year, we reduced our Scope one and Scope two emissions by 14%, contributing to a significant 64% reduction from our FY20 baseline. We've improved the gender balance of our graduates. Our intake in FY23 is up 48% from 47% last year.
Just this week, on Monday, 214 graduates started in our India business, 65% who are female. Our Respect at Work program focused holistically on the prevention and response to sexual harassment and harmful behaviors in the workplace. We're pleased with the level of external recognition we're achieving. Our prime ESG corporate rating by ISS makes our tradable bonds and shares eligible for responsible investment. Our gold rating with EcoVadis puts us in the top 10% of industry peers. While we're making good progress in meeting our own sustainability goals, our biggest impact lies in helping our customers as they transition to a lower carbon future. Moving on to slide nine. Our result for FY23 reflects the strong growth we've delivered as momentum continues to build and customers are bringing more sustainability-related contracts to market.
Aggregated revenue grew by 21% compared to the prior corresponding period. This reflects continued growth and demand for our services as customers look to us to help them develop innovative solutions across their traditional and sustainability-related projects. Our underlying EBITA of $635 million is up 16% on the prior corresponding period. We've delivered margin excluding procurement of 6.5%, up from 6.4 in the FY22. We expect to see further margin improvement in the future....
Our statutory NPAT for the year was $104 million, down from $243 million in FY22. This result was impacted by the $240 million loss on the sale of the North American turnaround and maintenance business, which includes $231 million of non-cash impairment of intangible. The transaction was part of our active portfolio management, which Tiernan will talk about later. Just moving on to the story about our business and how it's growing across both traditional and sustainability-related work. While our traditional business is and will remain an important part of our future, our sustainability-related work is growing at a faster rate. Sustainability-related revenue grew by 41% to $4.5 billion, up from $3.2 billion in FY22.
It now represents, coincidentally, 41% of our aggregated revenue. This trend is reflected in our factored sales pipeline, where 77% is sustainability related, compared to 56% last year. This is a leading indicator that we're making good progress toward achieving our ambition of deriving 75% of our revenue from sustainability-related work by FY26. Moving on to the next slide. We've transformed as a business, and through the disciplined and focused execution of our strategy, we've consistently delivered improved key metrics over the past four reporting periods. Our early mover advantage in sustainability is providing us access to new and growing markets. We're seeing an increased demand for our services, and we've grown at a faster rate than the broader ECR market. We achieved double-digit annualized earnings growth in our EBITA, which further demonstrates we're delivering on our strategy.
Our strategic investment in growth areas is delivering accretive returns. We've seen opportunities in our factored sales pipeline translate into backlog and then into revenue. This year, the process has added over $1.8 billion to our backlog. We're focused on margin growth. We've delivered what we said we would this year, achieving an EBITA margin, excluding procurement, of 6.5%. Our capital management position has improved over the year. We've restructured our syndicated bank facilities, securing improved terms and pricing and extending our debt maturity profile. We successfully issued our second sustainability-linked bond for $350 million. Our cash conversion is 86.6% on a pro forma basis, and this is within our target range.
Of course, we're going to continue our disciplinary approach of delivering on our strategy. I believe we are set up well for future growth. Moving to Slide 11. Our leading indicators give us confidence of future increased earnings in the near to medium term. Our factored sales pipeline continues to grow and is up 46% on the prior corresponding period. Our rolling 12-month bookings indicates our project wins are trending upward for both traditional and sustainability work. We're now seeing our backlog grow by 14% across the year on a pro forma basis. We recently announced a significant win with Venture Global. A limited early scope is currently included in the backlog. The majority of the project value remains in the factored sales pipeline until after final investment decision is made. That is expected later this year.
This is in line with our usual approach. Turning to slide 12. Our customers look to us as a trusted partner, to bring the solutions they need based on our leading position in the markets we serve. We have a long track record of delivering complex, integrated projects which enable the energy transition to move along its trajectory. With our global scale and experience, we're able to deploy resources to support our customers at a time when there is growing demand, which gives us a competitive advantage. Around half of our revenue come from our top 20 customers, and of that top 20, 85% have net zero Scope one and Scope two commitments by 2050 or sooner. The majority of these are long-term customers, and we're supporting them in their transition to a lower carbon future.
We are, however, starting to see a change in customer mix, with new and emerging customers entering our top 20 by revenue, allowing us to access new pools of sustainability-related investment. Moving to Slide 13. We're seeing continued strong growth across all those regions in which we work. We continue to secure strategic wins across both traditional and sustainability-related markets, particularly across growth areas of our strategic portfolio, such as carbon capture, utilization and storage, low carbon hydrogen, battery materials, and low carbon fuels. The US Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Bill continue to drive investments in the US. An example of this is 1PointFive South Texas sub-project, which has been recently awarded a significant federal grant and is an important step in the scaling up of Direct Air Capture technology.
We continue our relationship with 1PointFive. Recently, I was at the groundbreaking ceremony for their first commercial Direct Air Capture project in West Texas. We maintain a strong and long-standing relationship with customers. With Shell, we have just signed an enterprise-wide framework agreement to support their global projects. Moving on to slide 14. Global energy security concerns are increasing demand for LNG terminals and midstream capacity expansion, which in turn is driving increased capital investment. In May, we announced that we agreed substantive terms for a reimbursable EPC agreement for Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 LNG terminal in Louisiana. Construction of phase I will focus on speed to market as we deliver the project using a highly modularized approach to enhance construction efficiency as well as safety. This project is important.
It opens up an addressable market for us, which was previously been dominated by lump-sum turnkey EPC projects. Reimbursable EPC aligned with our risk-adjusted commercial models and low risk appetite. This project alone will more than replace the volume of work divested through the North American turnaround and maintenance business, and it's a significant win historically for Worley. With that, I'm gonna hand over to Tiernan to take us over some of the more detailed financials.
Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. In my view, our financial results today demonstrate three things. One, that we can deliver consistent earnings growth. Two, that margin expansion in FY2023 positions us for further upside in FY2024. Finally, as Chris mentioned already, capital management is now in a very strong position to support this growth. Turning first to slide 16. Our aggregated revenue of $10.9 billion is up 21% on FY2022. We've seen strong growth in our procurement revenue at margin, reflective of our project mix, and when you exclude procurement revenue, growth is 14% over last year. Importantly, all our regions contributed to this achievement. Looking at group profit, we've delivered an underlying EBITDA of $635 million, up 16% on FY2022.
I know Chris has already talked about these numbers, but they're important to reiterate. We've also delivered an underlying EBITDA margin, excluding procurement, of 6.5%, which is up marginally on FY22. Reminding you that included in this margin is the money we spent, $37 million, on strategic investments, which was in line with forecast. There are only two one-off items excluded from underlying results this period. First, the shared services transition. This transition project is now complete, and the future cost of operating this new offshore service will be included in underlying costs from FY24. Second is the divestment of the North American turnaround business, the sale of which, as Chris mentioned, we announced at the half-year results in February.
It's important to say at this time that we currently do not anticipate any one-off items being excluded from underlying results in FY24. Our statutory NPATA is $104 million, compared to $43 million in the prior corresponding period, and of course, this was impacted by the sale of the North American turnaround business. Our cash conversion was around 87% for the full year, taking into account pro forma adjustments for the sale of the North American turnaround business and prepaid software costs, both of which were noted at the half year. I'll share more on our capital management plan at the end of this presentation. Moving to slide 17. Both EBITDA walks here on this slide exclude procurement and have been pro forma'd for the sale of our North American business divestment.
In the top year-on-year walk, we can see the margin is predominantly driven by strong volume growth, mix, and phasing. There has been a 60 basis points increase in margin, which we expect to be sustained into FY24, and the benefits from our cost savings initiatives are materially realized. In the bottom margin walk, a half-year comparison shows that rate improvements continue to come through the backlog from the first half, with the second half EBITDA margin, excluding procurement, reaching 7.3%. Our H1 , H2 phasing in FY23 is in line with our typical seasonality impacts. However, following the sale of the North American turnaround business, we expect the impact of our phasing to reduce by approximately half from FY24. Let's go to slide 18.
We are constructive from here about margins reaching between 7.5% and 8% for FY24, while EBITDA grows. Our confidence here comes because of the high success rate of converting contracts factored in the pipeline into our backlog. We have deep knowledge of all factored pipeline contracts in our Salesforce system. This means our visibility of future margins is strong. The overall pipeline isn't time-bound, but typically represents about three-five years of opportunities. We currently expect almost 70% of the factored sales pipeline to be awarded this year. This provides an indication of the pace at which opportunities are coming to market and the backlog. We currently expect around 60% of our backlog to generate revenue in the next 12 months, and that's up from 53% last year. Importantly, currency movements have this effect on backlog this year.
From all of this, the key message is that we're seeing increased margins ahead in our backlog. Turning to slide 19. Put all the building blocks together for margin expansion. You can see on the left of this slide, new work is being won at higher margins, and I've just discussed that. Our win rates continue to be high, as does sole sourced work, which is now at around 40% of our wins. Secondly, operational leverage, that we've completed the operational cost saving program, delivering $375 million in annualized savings as a. One of the consequences of taking this cost out of the business is that it gives us operational leverage, and we believe this is also supporting margin expansion as we scale efficiently.
Finally, further margin expansion will come in time from effective project delivery of lower cost, lower risk contracts, increased use of automation and digitization, and our streamlined operations. Now on to slide 20. As we head into the final year of our three-year strategic investment program, I'd like to share some of our achievements. This year, we spent $37 million, bringing our total investment to date to $67 million. As you can see from the table, hydrogen, battery materials, and carbon capture use and storage are some of the areas where we've seen the greatest success this year.
These three areas contributed an additional $1.8 billion to our compared to FY, FY22. All the growth areas are providing a platform for accretive returns in business. We're investing in organically, and we're succeeding. We are now a go-to contractor across these growth areas.
On the right, we've also provided some examples of differentiated solutions we're developing that will further contribute to increasing our natural share of these new and emerging markets. In FY24, we forecast to invest the remaining $33 million. This will continue the scaling up of growth areas, development of differentiated technology solutions, and delivering front-end consulting capabilities. This strategic investment initiative, will complete by the end of FY24, unless there are further accretive returns to be made, and we'll make that decision towards the end of the year. Turning finally to slide 21. Throughout the year, we improved our capital management position. As I shared in Investor Day, our capital management is structured around funding our growth and delivering increased value to shareholders. We now have good liquidity and access to flexible, competitively priced debt.
Chris mentioned it already. It's worth reminding, this year, we issued a new sustainability-linked bond for $350 million. We renewed our syndicated bank facility on improved terms and pricing. This allowed us to extend our debt maturity to almost four years. Our long-term strategy includes having maturities with less concentration by year. Looking forward, our weighted average cost of debt is estimated to be between 4.3% and 4.8% in FY24, up on FY23, driven mainly from increases in base rates, partially offset by consistent cash flows, reducing usage of debt and better pricing on the refinanced syndicated facility. Our cash conversion ratio for the year is 87% on an underlying pro forma basis, which reflects strong cash flows while also allowing us to invest working capital into growth.
Our target conversion range remains at 85%-95% of underlying EBITDA. DSO was stable and leverage reduced significantly year-on-year from 2.5x to 2.2x as earnings improved. We've maintained stronger liquidity levels given volatile economic conditions. Finally, on active portfolio management, I've mentioned previously that it is an important component of our strategy. The sale of the North American business area this year is simplifying our business and allowing us to focus on high-margin, sustainability-related contracts. You will continue to see us sell some smaller businesses, like our recent announcement of the sale of our global recruitment and contractor management company. While this was a small business, it follows the same logic of aligning our portfolio to our core capabilities. We'll continue to tidy up our portfolio in this way.
In summary, this result demonstrates momentum against the building blocks of our strategy, and we're well set up for the future. I'll now hand back to Chris.
Thanks, Tiernan. Look, before I take you through our outlook, I'd like to briefly focus on our transformation as a company, followed by a market update. If we just turn to slide 23. Over the past four years, Worley has transformed as a business through the deliberate actions we've taken. We've been making good progress in line with our strategy. Our GICS reclassification from energy to industrials is external acknowledgment of the transformation journey we're on, and reflective of the progress we've made to diversify our business and provide sustainability solutions, energy, chemicals, and resource markets.
As we face into an extended upcycle in our markets, we see a future of opportunity and sustained growth. Moving on to slide 24. We provided an update across each of our sectors at our recent Investor Day, and I encourage you to look at this.
Overall, we're seeing capital investment by our customers growing at a rate faster than that compared to the overall energy, chemicals, and resource markets. In addition to this growth, new and emerging customers and major projects are generating opportunities for further upside. Moving on to slide 25. We expect the FY24 aggregated revenue, excluding procurement, to grow on an FY23 pro forma basis as new and emerging customers and major projects generate further upside. We also expect procurement volumes to grow further on FY23. We expect underlying EBITA margin, excluding the impact of procurement, to be within the range of 7.5%-8% in FY24. Moving on to slide 26. Before we move to Q&A, I'd like to remind you of our key messages.
We delivered strong growth and momentum continues to build, and we continue to deliver in line with that which we said we would. We're executing our strategy and have a clear path to increasing revenue, earnings, and margins in the near and medium term. As a global leader and trusted provider of sustainability solutions, we're leveraging our differentiated position to deliver long-term value. Finally, I want to recognize what has been delivered is because of our incredible people, led by the group executive, of who I could not be more proud. An A-team who focuses not only what they need to deliver as individuals, but also on how they deliver as a team. That concludes the presentation, and we'll look forward to taking Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for the first question. The first question comes from the line of Richard Johnson from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Chris, can I just start with your helpful comment that you made about the legacy business being up 10% in volume terms over the year, and I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit. One of the things that's become apparent from comments made by some of your peers is that the hydrocarbon market, in particular, ex-US, is growing really quite rapidly now, and I was just wondering if that was your experience or what your thoughts are about that?
Yeah, look, we, we are seeing that traditional, as well as sustainability-related markets are growing. One to the other, while we are seeing good growth in the traditional work, we're seeing a faster growth in the sustainability-related space. We are, we are experiencing and benefiting from the increased investment in the traditional space, Richard.
Fantastic. Thank you. Then on margins, this may be one for Kieran, but when I, when I think about fiscal 2024 and the impact of rate increases, is that just a full year effect of pricing that's already adjusted, or, or is there more to go from a, from, from the rate cycle over the next 12-18 months?
Yeah. Hi, Richard. Look, I, I think, with the guidance we've given you of 7.5%-8%, clearly there's more to go, because if you build from a 6.5% in 2023, and you adjust for the sale of the North American business, which was, say, 50 basis points, and then you add on the, the 60 basis points of margin that we say will carry into 2024, then you're at the bottom of that range. You know, what we are seeing, and we, and we've said it, we've both said it, that there's very good visibility in the backlog, and that's more relevant obviously for FY24. There's very good visibility of improved pricing, flowing through to aggregated revenue.
That's very helpful, thanks. While you're there, when I think about your longer term, well, your medium-term comment about double-digit margins, what proportion of that increase, or if you just give me a sense of the scale of the increase that will come from you hitting your 75% sustainability target? Just really what's mixed in that, in that, in that forecast.
Well, remember, we're not differentiating in terms of margin between sustainability or traditional. All sectors, as Chris has just outlined, are growing. The mix is, in 2024, is likely to be a little bit higher on the sustainability side relative to 2023, but not materially higher. As you said, sustainability proportion of revenue was 41%. It's gonna still grow, because as you know, it's growing faster than the traditional, but the mix won't have a major impact.
maybe if I can add to that. If you look at Richard, just our future factored sales pipeline, 77% of that is in the sustainability space. Obviously that, you know, that pipeline's got to flow into wins, go into backlog, go into revenue, but so it'll give you sort of the, the, the shape of how we see the, the future playing out.
Great, that's very helpful. Last one. You did talk about procurement revenue going up again this year. I was wondering if you could give a sense of what the number might be?
Well, I think, Richard, it'll probably grow at about the same rate as it grew in 2023.
Perfect. Thank you.
If you think about the project mix that we have, we've got a few very big projects, one being Venture Global, the other being the Direct Air Capture. The procurement revenue on those is going to build on extensive procurement revenue that we had in 2023, the projects for which will continue into 2024 as well. Yeah, I'd say it'll be continuing to grow about the same rate.
That's super helpful. Thanks very much.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next question comes from the line of Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you very much. Chris, I was wondering if you could just give a little bit more color on your comments on slide 24, please, around new and emerging customers. If I'm right, you know, the, the vast majority of your sustainability revenue and, and opportunities comes from your traditional customers, so I guess you'd answer that first. And, is there a metric-... with, that you can help us to, to kind of understand how much, you know, these new and emerging customers, you know, are, are in your numbers now and, and maybe in your, or factored into your future plans, please? You know, where's the, the upside come from? Because I know it's starting from a small base, but I'm, I'm interested in, in-
Yeah.
you know, how to, how to, I guess, benchmark that going forward. You know, are there any particular areas within your three end market segments that you're seeing particular interest in some of these new and emerging customers, please?
Yeah. Let's start with that one first. You know, what's interesting is, you know, we're seeing, you know, four areas in particular grow rapidly: carbon capture, whether it's at Direct Air Capture or at source, low carbon fuels, low carbon hydrogen, and battery materials processing. The mix of new customers entering those are varied, but I'll tell you now, on the battery materials processing, it's almost entirely new customers. Yeah. You know, if we look at the Northvolt project we're, we're doing in Sweden, and others we're doing around the world, I would say almost all of that, that market is with new customers. On the lower carbon hydrogen, carbon capture and low carbon fuels, probably a mix, but leaning toward the, the traditional.
You know, if we go forward, you know, I can see a number of, a large proportion of our work coming from new customers. You know, we've got one in Holland where we're doing a bioplastics project with, with Avantium, and that's just an example on the chemical side. You've got the energy side, you know, the battery materials. On the chemical side, you have companies like Avantium. On the resource side, you know, lithium, lithium processing is something that is emerging as well with a new suite of customers, while some of our traditional, exploring and investing in that space, we're seeing emerging customers. You know, I think going forward, we're gonna see more and more emerging customers as part of our mix.
You know, probably, to answer your question, we can probably look at it weaving into that metric into what we share going forward.
Okay, great. Thank you. That's all I had at this stage.
Just waiting for the next question. One moment for the next questions. Next questions comes from the line of Nathan Reilly from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Chris and Tiernan. Question is ... projects. I understand that's a potential 20 million ton per annum LNG project, so quite significant in terms of potential capital investment around that. Just with that being delivered on a cost reimbursable basis, you know, how is that going to impact, I guess, value?
Nathan, you, you broke up there. Can you just ask the, the last part of your question, please? Repeat that.
Yeah, sorry about that. I'll take the headset off. In terms of the, I guess, the mix, you know, that's a very high value project. Just wondering, what will the impact be on the order books, just given you've got a high level of re-engineering?
Um
-construction revenues, too?
Well, you know, what we said is in the current backlog that you see, there's only the limited notice to proceed work. The next time we present the backlog, you will see the impact of that, and obviously, you know, a 20 million ton... You know, there are, there are parts of that 20 million ton facility which will be contracted directly by the customer, but, you know, a large portion of that revenue will come into our backlog. You know, I guess I probably can't say what it will be now, but you'll see a significant shift in the backlog, Nathan. What you see in the backlog currently is only a small portion of what will be in the backlog going forward.
That point about the project more than offsetting the impact of the shutdown divestment in terms of revenue impact, comment in relation to the impact on FY24 revenues?
Well, it will offset that. Yeah.
Yeah, because that was Nathan, Tiernan here. That was a low-margin business, the North American turnaround business. You might remember that the component was between $2 -3 billion of backlog on that business. Right now we don't have the full project in backlog, as Chris said, but in terms of EBITDA, the margins are much higher on the Venture Global business.
You know, we have the, a portion of the project in backlog and the future portion of it in the factored sales pipeline. You know, it's at a very high go and a very, yeah, high get. It's just, you know, we're just waiting for, you know, the formality of a final investment decision, and that will move in the backlog, and the revenue and margin generated from that will. As Tiernan has said, more than offset the erosion of margin coming from the sale of the North American, the North American business.
Maybe just to be really clear, the construction and fabrication and the professional services revenue mix will be similar next year, even with the Venture Global contribution.
Yeah.
earnings in 2024.
Yeah, understood. Okay, thanks for clarifying. Much appreciated.
Thanks, Tim.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next up, we have the line from Megan Kirby-Lewis from Barrenjoey. Go ahead.
Good morning. I'm thinking back on the rate benefit that you're in, and just keen to get more color on the current drivers of that, and how we should be thinking about the sustainability of that dynamic beyond FY24 would be great.
I guess the margin improvement that we are experiencing is a function of a few things. One is obviously better rates from the customers, so improved rates from the actual customer. Obviously, there's the operational leverage as we grow, benefiting also benefiting from the cost out program. Also being able to leverage technology through our through our people, our people through technology, and get a rate improvement, a margin improvement there. In terms of how sustainable that's going forward, well, you know, as I said in my presentation, you know, currently or, you know, I've said before, the business, the industries that, in which we operate, are spending about $1 trillion a year.
It's estimated, and it's well documented from various sources, that the required investment, you know, for the world to hit its net zero commitment is, is, you know, $3 trillion-$4 trillion per year. So the supply-demand dynamic that we're experiencing now, that is driving an improvement in margin performance, going forward, we expect that will be sustained. You know, the quantum of investment that is required is, is unlike anything that the world has experienced. You know, customers can't deploy that capital. They just can't deal on the ground without a company like Worley, helping them. So we, we, you know, we believe, going forward, the sustained opportunity for margin growth.
That's great. Thank you. Then just thinking about revenue growth for FY24, and the relationship to that backlog growth of 14% this year. Just wondering if there's anything to call out on the impact of the expected uplift in procurement revenue and how that's impacted that backlog? Or it sounds like most of the uplift coming from Venture may not actually be in that number yet. That would be helpful.
Yeah, the backlog currently that we've shared does not include the majority of the revenue attributed to the full project being delivered for Venture Global. It's only a small portion of it. Yeah.
We do provide, Megan, some color on the market analysis that we've done in the market update in the pack, which shows that the market's still growing strongly. Probably won't be growing as strongly as it did last year, but then again, we're offsetting that with increased margins and being selected in the contracts that we take on.
That's fantastic. I'll pass it on.
Thank you for the question.
Thanks, Megan.
The next question comes from John Purtell from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning, Chris and Tiernan, hope you're well. Just have had a couple of questions, Tiernan, and just firstly on cash flow. There are obviously some impacts there from the North American fields services sale and also software spend. I know you called out software spend there in the H1 , but if you can just flesh some of that out in terms of the impacts on cash.
Yeah, it's, it's pretty straightforward, John. There's, there's two things. First of all, on the North American turnaround business, we sold that business at the end of May. In our 85%-95% target range, we had included working capital recovery in June of 2023. That cash we did get, but it's shown in investing cash flows as part of the divestment of that business. There's a $172 million receipt of cash in investing cash flows. That includes the working capital that we would normally get in operating cash flow. On a pro forma basis, we've added that $43 million back into operating cash flow on a pro forma basis to compare like for like with the 85%-95%.
It's just one month of working capital that we that is just shown somewhere else. We got the cash, it just isn't shown in the statutory cash flow as operating. Then, you know, as we said, in February, we paid one major software renewal, which we had budgeted in our 85%-95% to pay for one year, but we actually ended up paying for three years. We have added back two years, the two extra years that we paid, which amounted to $25 million. They were the two add backs that get you from the raw underlying number to the 86.6%, and we think that that's a fair allocation to compare to the 85%-95% cash target.
Thank you. Just a second question. Chris, in terms of the performance of some of the different segments there, obviously Resources was, was really strong. Chemicals was not as strong in relative terms. Just, just as far as the key drivers there for, for, for those?
Well, a lot of the chemicals work that we've done, you know, was in Europe, and high gas feedstock prices certainly slowed down capital investment, caused our customers to pause... and reflect on where best they could deploy the capital. That was, that, that was that. That's what you're seeing on, on, on the, on, on the chemical side. On the resources side, yeah, look, strong result, and we're seeing that across the markets, geographically and across our customer base. On the, on the energy side, you know, really seeing, a strong push, on the, on the sustainability, especially the four areas I call out, John, you know, the CCUS, low carbon hydrogen, low carbon fuels, and, and battery materials. You know, good growth in, in the energy, side of our mix.
You know, as you would imagine, good growth on the resource. The resource specifically, you know, we're seeing, obviously copper, you've seen some consolidation in the ownership of copper assets. You know, expect to see sort of there's got to be capacity expansion in that space, and we are working on a number of early phase studies with customers to deliver that capacity expansion of copper. Also lithium is, we're seeing investment there on the resources side. The only one that I said that I would call out specifically is, is chemicals, which is, as I said, a lot of our chemical work was in Europe, and just high feedstock really caused our customers to pause.
Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Next up, we have the follow-up questions from Richard Johnson from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Tiernan, I just wanted to ask about headcounts and what labor rate inflation you're seeing at the moment. Then, following on from that, given how strong the backlog is and where utilization rate is, I mean, should we just assume that you're, you're gonna have another very big step up in headcount in 2024?
Yeah. Richard, as you know, we're, we're less focused on linking headcount to growth in revenue because of the dynamics of the margin improvement we're seeing, but also in the automation and digitization that we're doing. As, you know, to your point, we saw headcount up 6% on a pro forma basis, you know, when you eliminate the impact of the sale of the North American turnaround business, which, which, removed about 5,800 people. We, interestingly, our professional services staff are now 87% of our total workforce. The fact that we can continue to bring, attract people and retain people in this environment is, is pretty significant.
You certainly will see us increase headcount in, in the new year, and that's coming from all areas. To your point about inflationary effect, I think we saw a real flurry of inflationary impact in FY23. I think that has subsided somewhat, because I think what we did is we realigned the business to the real significant inflationary step-ups that, that occurred in 2023. More recently, in recent months, that seems to have plateaued. You know, we have forecast in 2024 for normal inflationary increases in our cost base for, for headcount. Of course, it's one of those areas that we're gonna have to continue to watch all the way through the year.
Yeah, and I would add to that. Sorry, Richard, I would add to that, that, yeah, when, when you see the headline inflation rates, you know, we, we the pay in, you know, the, the inflationary impact on the business is not close to the headline inflation rates. You know, we've, we've, we've taken, and we've always taken, obviously the, the, the inflation rates into consideration, but, you know, the, the, the cost increase that we experience, and of course, being reimbursable, it's passed through to the customer, it's not close to headline inflation levels.
Got it. Thanks. It's very helpful. I appreciate it.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Next question also comes from the line of Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research . Please go ahead.
I was so flustered by being early in the queue, I forgot my second one. Tina, this is for you. I, on slide 21, you've got a bunch of helpful capital management plan metrics there. I guess maybe a little bit further to where John's going, but in your signing of contracts now, are you able to, I guess, tighten up on some of these metrics in terms of tightening up on days, days outstanding, and other cash flow related metrics with customers as opposed to just the margin? The second question is, just you're obviously within your target range for leverage.
Can we assume, like, if you have another year where it strongly performs like it has here, and, you know, I get that you've sold a business, so that's a bit different. How, how low will you let leverage go, and, and what are your options once leverage gets to the bottom of that range, please?
Yeah, Scott, on your first question, we are seeing an ability to propose better terms and conditions in the contracts that we have. First of all, we're signing lower risk packs. Where a lot more risk was handed off to contractors, say five years ago, a lot of those risks have now been eliminated from contracts. On the cash side, particularly, we have seen some major customers reduce their DSOs, again, because we can ask for that now, because they are flush with cash. It's not like they're short of it. We are taking those opportunities when they arise.
Particularly on larger contracts, we are looking to try and make them as cash neutral as possible because there are opportunities for certain contracts to forecast cash flow in advance so that we, we actually make up the cash that we outlay in a month, you know, almost immediately. Yeah, there are, there are really good opportunities to do that, and, and we're I, I think the focus on the 85%-95% has changed behaviors across the organization, and that's what Chris and I wanted to do. In terms of the leverage, we, we, we said we reset the leverage target between two and 2.5 times in February, but, but we said we wanted to trend towards two times.
le with the level of growth that's ahead of us that the leverage will go below that. I think we'll be underutilizing debt, given the WACC that I talked about, if it goes much below two times, given the cost of equity. But nonetheless, it would be a very nice position to be in, to be in the area of having a 1 handle on the leverage number. I think the purpose of that slide is to show you the opportunities that we have ahead of us. It's all linked, right? We talked about ending the investments schedule this year.
That is one area if you think that there are returns more accretive than paying down debt, then, you know, it's another area that we continue to invest in. We can also continue to pay down debt. Perhaps there are some inorganic opportunities, yet multiples remain high. Then, of course, the final thing is that while we're growing back into our dividend payout ratio, if we don't have accretive returns to, to increase our dividend. We've, we've got lots of options, and I think that slide is designed to, to show you as that emerges, you know, the decisions we're making on that issue.
Okay, great. Thank you. That is definitely... Thanks.
Thank you for the questions, Viren. I'd like to take the last questions from Neeraj Sharma.
Hi, guys. Just a quick one from me, following up on Richard's question. Given capitalization is sustained, you know, north of 90% for, for a while now, the, your comments around digital and automation, that target of 80%, is that, is that outdated? Is it scope for, for that to sort of increase?
I think that's a fair question, and, you know, we'll, you know, it's just been a historical, historical metric. You know, a market that is unprecedented, and it's probably worth looking every visit. We take that question on board. Yeah.
Appreciate it. Thanks.
Thank you for the closing remarks.
Look, I just want to thank everyone for their interest in joining today. Certainly, you know, we have a number of meetings over the next few days and next week, happy through Lorraine, or if there's any further questions, to certainly come back to us and we'll support answering those as best we can. Just want to thank everyone for the support. Again, I want to recognize the Worley workforce and the leadership team that have delivered the results that we've shared today. I'll end there. Thank you.
That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.