Hi, everyone, and, this is Gary Miles, CEO of Gentrack. Welcome to our half year 2024 results. Let's jump into it. There will be time for questions, obviously, at the end. I always try to start the call with a little bit of perspective. I spent the weekend in. We're in Auckland now, and I spent the weekend in Auckland, and, this is a great photo. I went on a bike ride with these two gentlemen yesterday. Pretty long one from Auckland around, Devonport, I think, around the harbor. They're a little too fit for me, but the one in back is account manager for Wellington Airport and many other airports, and the one in front is our general manager.
What's a great story about this, we just signed this upgrade at Wellington, and you know, we service Christchurch and Auckland, also here in New Zealand. Dave, our General Manager, his father was actually involved in building that airport. So there's just and there's a ton of pride going on in the Veovo group and lots of activity, and I want to appreciate the hospitality that New Zealand has given us on this visit. If we move on to the results, the results are good. I'm very pleased with the performance of the team. We had revenue of NZD 102 million. You can see the headline numbers here. I'm not going to focus a lot on that. 21% growth.
The 21% growth is pretty remarkable in the fact that we had NZD 19.7 million come out of insolvent customers in the U.K., the last of which went insolvent in FY 2022. So, we foresee that that storm being well behind the business. The Veovo business performed exceptionally well, close to 50, 50% revenue growth. We said in prior reviews that the Veovo pipeline looks strong, and we were confident in the pipeline, and I think it's showing through. There is some hardware in that number, NZD 3.8 million. That's exceptional, so we want to count that out, pull that out specifically.
Then EBITDA is up, and what's important about EBITDA, because this is a really important number that it's not so easy to see through, but the NZD 19.7 million that we had in the prior period was very high margin revenue. So this underlying revenue performance is really shows through that we're moving the revenue, the EBITDA needle in the right direction. And then you can see the cash results. And just to remind the audience that we put approximately NZD 13 million into Amber Electric in the period. So once again, good results. Yes. So let's press on. John will go through in more detail. We have an upgrade on both revenue and EBITDA. I'm going to read it here.
Both utilities and Veovo continue to grow strongly as a result of recent wins and customer upgrades, and so we were able to upgrade our previous revenue guidance of at least NZD 170 million for FY 2024 to a new guidance, circa NZD 200 million for the year. Against this higher revenue guidance, and we'll continue to invest in strategic R&D and international expansion. EBITDA is expected to be between NZD 23.5 million and NZD 26.5 million. This compares to our previous guidance between NZD 20.5 million and NZD 25.5 million. Now, if we move into some of the details, we've talked about the utilities business as being a 4+1 growth engine. So as you know, we're in seven countries today. Our large countries are New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K.
For the utilities perspective, New Zealand is growing at 81% on the back of new wins here and a strong customer book. Australia continues to grow in the mid-20s. This has been very consistent, and we see this to continue for quite some time. New Zealand, by the way, will have a big book of business in front of us with contracts already won. The U.K. actually shrank in the period, but that $19.7 million came out of the U.K., so the underlying growth was higher at 62%. Those growth engines, and then you add Veovo to it, approximately, you know, 49% or 50% in the period, have allowed us to put these results forward. What we do say, though, is that we have international ambitions to lead the energy and water transition globally.
We've entered the Australia, sorry, the Asia Pacific market and the Europe and the Middle East. We'll talk more about the pipeline coming up, but the international business grew to NZD 8 million, but that's where, obviously, the large long-term potential is. And that's the way we are thinking about our business, is performing in the core, and then to continue to target this international opportunity as the energy markets and water markets transform. So let's go to the next slide. A little more detail on that. The pipeline across Southeast Asia is looking promising.
The interesting aspect about Southeast Asian utilities is most of them are, you know, national or pseudo national carriers, or their national carriers are broken into several regional players, but big books of business, very large meter point counts, and long sales cycles. So we're in the fight in several countries in Southeast Asia, and that continues to progress but will take time. Across Europe and the Middle East, we have that Saudi win, we opened our Saudi HQ for the Middle East on the back of that very green and clean project. NEOM is a kind of reference for the region, as the region tries to transform the Middle East. And then we have a growing team of investments across Europe as we make headway into that area.
In Australia and New Zealand, I've talked a bit about them. I would like to say that, here in New Zealand, we're up for the Hi-Tech Company of the Year finalist, which is being decided on Friday. We would love to win that. That would be fun. We do play to win, but, we'll see how that plays out. That's an exciting, little bit of news. On the technology front, we called it with g2.0. We made the right decision to embrace Salesforce inside. The industry has a problem, and that it keeps paying to integrate a CRM on top of a biller that's a waste of money, and we've done it in a R&D organization. It just makes a ton of sense.
I can say that I am super encouraged with the strategic direction that we've taken the product. It really, really, really, really makes sense. The demonstration and the capabilities that we can do with this are pretty wow-ish. Some of you may have seen it. We've got Mark Rees, who's joined us in the period, as ex-CTO of Xero, that's come across and is, I think, starting to accelerate a lot of things there, which is also great. So we're happy with the technology path that we're on and that we've chosen. Just a few words about Amber, and we won't report on this every reporting period, but since we closed in the period, we wanted to highlight it that the migration for the Amber billing system to our stack is underway.
Amber's meeting all of its objectives financially that they set as part of that acquisition. We're really pleased with that. I can say that we've started the roadshow. As a matter of fact, they were here in New Zealand, meeting several of the retailers last week with me and some of the other leadership here in town, and then they were across Europe, and the interest is exceptional. So we look forward to, I think, I think, good news on that front over time. Right. So let's move to the next slide, if we may. Veovo's airports division takes off.
This is our marketing or finance organization getting cute with a play on words, but it is fitting, so we had some good wins in the period around Manchester Airports Group, Stansted, the Middle Eastern airport growth. But I just want to say something. Our move into Tier 1s is paying off. It's just fantastic. We're super excited about the opportunity. The team is performing well. We're scaling, and we're moving into Tier 1s. And you know what? Our brand and our name, we go to shows, and our brand's stand is overrun. It's in good shape.
Now, we have a lot of work to do and juggling to undergo, like any high-growth business, but we made the right call to invest during the pandemic, and it's paying off as you can see in the numbers. So I want to thank the airports team in particular. If we go to the next slide. So we've talked a lot about our purpose, to help make the world a more sustainable place for all of us. We'd like to lead in that, our part of that journey. We have a lot of, you know, employees that gravitate towards that value proposition. We have a strong global sustainability task force that's distributed. We've got lots of programs in place.
We're starting into the budget cycle for where we're going to invest in our technology next year, and it's key metrics to invest in certain technology that help accelerate the green transition, and we call those out. So I'm just putting it here because it is an important part of our business. We really, really walk the talk, and I think a lot of the investor community is also interested in this subject, and for sure, this is something that we're really really really passionate about. We have a Chief Sustainability Officer that's running all these initiatives, so it doesn't get deprioritized with all the kind of urgencies of the day. So I think we're doing the right things here, and we'll continue to do more.
The next slide, which is my closing remarks, I'm gonna try to. It's a little bit wordy, so excuse that, but maybe some people will appreciate it. So both of the industries in which we operate, airports and utilities, are undergoing major transformations. I've said it before, you cannot create waves in the ocean, but you can ride them. These industries are great industries to be in, great industries. That makes us confident about our ambition, which is to provide greater than 15% CAGR over the medium term, which comes hand in hand with leading this transition, which is our ambition. Our core markets are modernizing and advanced to most customers.
What that means is Australia and the U.K., New Zealand, are really, really kind of living in the future in many ways compared to where some other countries are going. So those countries, when they set their green targets, they look to these territories to learn from them, and they look to leaders that are leading in them. And so we, you know, we host a lot of, you know, delegations from overseas to come to these, talk to our, our customers in these countries. It helps. So that base here will, I think it validates the scale of change that other countries will need to undergo. That's important, particularly if you're a macro investor. In Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, our pipeline is strengthening and maturing.
We've had some early success, but sales cycles take time, so I've put in here very clearly, we do not expect to have a material contract signed until FY 2025. But, you know, it's a numbers game and, you know, having a sense of, you know, sales and closure rates and where you are in the discussion. We're in a lot of good discussions, which is excellent, but it takes time. For Veovo, our focus on major airports is paying off. I spoke about this. So I think we're well-placed to win and serve, so confident there. We will assess M&A opportunities as they arise. In closure, I would like to say that our register is getting broader. As at the end of April 30, we had 69% institutional investors.
We wanna thank all of the community that's helping us on this journey and participating in it. It's an exciting one, and we're looking forward to continuing to bring good, strong results. And with that, I would like to hand over to our Chief Financial Officer, John Priggen, to go into more of the numbers. John?
Thank you, Gary. So looking first at the group's P&L, you can see there that revenue is up 21%, and that's strong growth at both the Veovo and Utilities businesses. Our operating costs are up by 31%, so that's both to support that growth, but we're also investing more in strategic R&D and in business development to drive that international expansion. A little bit more of that later. And then just to call out a note here that Veovo's costs in half year 2024 include a higher amount of partner costs than they would typically do in the prior period. And again, that's just to support the mix of revenue we see in the first half of this year for Veovo. Our EBITDA is at NZD 12.3 million. So we previously signposted that the prior period included one-off profits from solar customers.
So that NZD 19.7 million in revenue from Bulb and from others was actually quite high-margin revenue. In terms of our investment in Amber, so we account for that as an associate, and what that means is that we book our share, so 10%, of its results since the date of our investment, so since the first of February. And we show that in our P&L below EBITDA. So it, for the first half of this financial year, that includes Amber's February and March results, and those are in line with what we were expecting. So looking at the utilities revenue, as in previous presentations, we've shown separately, the revenue from Bulb and other U.K. and solar customers. That's the move that you see in the diagram, so the NZD 19.7 million.
Those customers fully exited by the end of last financial year, so you don't see any of that rolling forward into the current financial year. That means that it's really strong underlying growth, up over 60% compared to the prior period. Now we have high levels of non-recurring revenue, so project revenues, in the first half of financial year 2024. We call out some of the major projects that have started in the period. So, we call out the Saudi Arabian win, the g2.0 transformation at Genesis Energy, but really that's a minority of that number.
So that NZD 28.9 million that you see for non-recurring revenue in the first half of financial year 2024, that's actually spread across quite a wide range, quite a number of our large customers, and it's spread across all of our regions. Quite a diverse and broad revenue mix there. In terms of our recurring revenue, so that's increased by 49% over the first half of last year. So that's the CMRR and TRR that you see in the chart. And that's really from wins and upsells from the prior period flowing through, first of all, actually into the second half of last year. We saw an uplift over the first half within last financial year, and then again flowing through and uplifting into the first half of this financial year.
Looking a little further at the utilities, revenue mix, we show here the revenue by region. So, U.K.'s total revenue has fallen by 5%, so that's impact of losing Bulb in the prior period. You can see that without that, underlying revenue growth in the U.K. is actually very strong, up by 62%. In fact, it's, it's strong underlying growth, across all of the regions in the utilities business. The rest of world here, in half year 2024, that now includes revenue from our contract in Saudi Arabia, so that's adding a new country to, to Singapore, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, that were there in the comparative period as well. Now, we always, show here our revenue, customer concentration in terms of the contribution of the top 10 customers.
It's typically a little north of 50%, so in the sort of low 50% mark, low 50s. It's moved up to 61%, and that's really the impact you see of quite a high level of project revenue coming across that, that top 10 customer list. Turning to the utilities cost base, you can see the NZD 10 million increase in our direct costs. So that's the people costs, hosting those, you know, those direct customer related costs, and that's to support the higher revenues. But I also want to call out here, the step up in the higher level of investment in strategic R&D. That's increased by NZD 3.2 million compared to last half year. We continue to expense all of our R&D in the year.
And we've also actually a little more than doubled our investment in, business development and international expansion. So that's in, opening up the fronts in Asia and Europe and the Middle East. So that's gone up by NZD 1.6 million over the prior period, and our spend in the first half of, financial year 2024 was NZD 3 million. So the message here actually is that we're taking some of the margin from the higher revenue we're now seeing in financial year 2024, and we're reinvesting that into future growth. Looking at the Veovo business. So you can see here the revenue is up by 49%, and that's driven by those new customer wins, particularly in the U.K. and the Middle East.
So Manchester Airport, London Stansted, very large airports in the U.K., and in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. So that's leading to a high level of non-recurring revenue, of implementation revenues, which at NZD 7.6 million is more than double the prior period. And as Gary referred to earlier, that includes NZD 3.8 million of revenue from the sale of hardware and related services that we source from our supply networks, that's bundled up in the implementation, the project fees that we charge the end customer. And the reason that we note those is that that type of revenue and the cost related to it can be quite lumpy between halves and even between financial periods. In terms of our recurring revenue, that continues to grow well. So it's up by 16% compared to the prior period.
So that's the wins, the upgrades from, from prior periods, from last year in particular, flowing through into, recurring revenue in, in this half year. So lastly, looking at the group's cash flow. Cash at the end of March was NZD 39.3 million. We continue to be debt free. We do retain an undrawn NZD 25 million credit facility, undrawn, which we've had for a little while now. Our underlying cash that we generated in the period was NZD 3 million, and that was before investing NZD 12.9 million in Amber, in February. So our Amber investment was partly funded by cash generated in the period and partly by cash that we held on the balance sheet at the end of last financial year.
What we do here is we then give a flavor of what we're expecting for the full year, to see in terms of some of those key cash flow movements. We're expecting that the working capital outflow that you see here, for the full year, we'd expect that to materially narrow. We've got an outflow in the first half. We'd see an inflow in the second half for working capital. In terms of the other main line items, so in terms of amounts we pay for tax, for CapEx, in respect to property leases and in respect of the add back to EBITDA for the accounting for our LTI scheme. That's a non-cash item that's included with EBITDA, so to get the cash, you add it back.
When we look at the aggregate of those, we're expecting that to be at a similar level in the second half of the year to what you see here in the first half of the year. So that, that brings me to the end of the slides that I wanted to present on this call. Just to note, there are a couple of additional pieces of information in the presentation. So there's a slide that shows how the way we describe revenue in the presentation, in terms of non-recurring revenue, CMRR, TRR, et cetera, the way that that then reconciles to the way that we disclose it in the interim accounts. And there's also a slide that, that looks at the impact the currencies have had on our our results in the two half years.
So with that, we're now ready for questions. Online attendees, if you've got a question, please click, ask a question box to send in your questions. We're going to firstly answer questions received by phone. So for phone participants, if you press star one now, and then the operator will provide further instructions. So-
Thank you. And your first question on the phone comes from the line of Joshua Dale from Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Morning, Gary. Morning, John. Congratulations on a very strong result. Just, my first question is on the pipeline for G2. It sounds like it's healthy, but how many in that pipeline are sort of waiting for a proof point of a smooth migration? Is there an element of that, peraps waiting for the outcome of that Genesis transformation?
... Josh, hi. Thanks for the question. Look, a lot of G2 is also in modules that are, you know, we've been adding to our core stack for the last two to 2.5 years, so that, you know, like, our data analytics is installed in, you know, 15-20 customers, our meter data services and things like that, some of the Salesforce integration, so it's not really so binary. Having said that, everybody is interested in Genesis transformation journey that's looking at our stack. And we're fully focused on delivering that successfully.
That's part of the transition that we're going through, and yeah, it's important that we land it, and you know, make sure that Genesis is in a good spot, which I think we're pretty good at doing this. But you know, all these transformations are pretty sizable programs.
Yeah. I guess I was referring to, you know, prospective brand new full stack G2 customers that might be sitting in the pipeline. You know, because migrating to a new system is, you know, there are challenges with it, and obviously they'll want to see that the migration goes smoothly, presumably. I mean, is there a bit of that or not really?
There's always a bit of, you know, that in the conversation. But the reality is, a lot of the transformation. We, at some point, and we'd be more than happy to take people through it, and we have in the past, the way we modernize our stack by ingesting Salesforce and, you know, writing some of the older technology to be cloud native, is an evolution, so it's not a complete rewrite. So, it makes for an easier landing zone for our current customers, and it makes for a much more palatable story for new customers. So I think this is something that we can manage. But any company that has an installed legacy base and modernizes, goes through the type of conversations that you're referring to, and, you know, we're navigating it well, so yes.
Okay. Thank you. Just on your European expansion, if we exclude the Middle East, are there specific countries in Europe that you are targeting, that are looking ripe for entry, perhaps due to the state of their smart meter rollout or otherwise, or other catalysts?
So we're in conversation in several countries in Europe. We don't really, really have a direct target for... We didn't, and I think I might have spoken, Josh, about this before, but we didn't say, "Hey, these are the six countries we're gonna target." What our objective is, is to find those retailers that want to transform, get to them early, tell our story, and engage and win that business. Now, if we go to a country and we win it, and then it's got several other retailers in the country, then we want to do what's called N plus one. We want to win many other retailers also in that country.
But rather than honing in on some specific targets, we're taking a general view of Europe, and then once again, we're we go to shows, we do LinkedIn campaigns, we, you know, we, we do shoe leather sales, and when we find somebody that's serious about transforming, then we, then we really focus in on and play to win.
Okay, great. And just last one from me: Have you decided on a commercial arrangement with Amber yet? Just in terms of, you know, the existing arrangement, I believe, is end customers of Amber need a direct subscription. If you are selling Amber to other utilities, will it simply be a case of, you know, that utility may be integrating Amber into a differentiated product that that utility offers? Is that how you see it playing out?
The Amber relationship internationally is not exclusive to us. You know, that was not part of the deal. They can run on other stacks if there's interest. We're helping them quite a bit, and I think we're pretty well aligned with their team, and there's good trust there. But it has to make sense. I mean, if that customer has an installed billing stack that they could integrate to, then we don't have the right to stand in the way of that. But we're helping them a lot, and I think that that'll pay off for us, and it'll be a good insertion point for us to have the broader conversation about the whole billing customer care stack. So that's part of the strategy.
We're really pleased at this point with the progress that the teams are making, but I want to repeat, it's not an exclusive arrangement.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks very much, guys.
Thanks, Josh.
Your next question comes from the line of Owen Humphries from Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys, and, well done. Big numbers. Again, just to, just to clarify a couple of things. One, just the, Genesis obviously is a product partner for you guys to build out the G2 offering, and you guys are obviously learning what the value you guys can derive from that product. It sounds like the migration of your core customers will occur in calendar year 2025. Just to clarify if that's correct, and could you guys give a better understanding of what the unit economics change once you guys move to the, well, to the cloud or move to G2, what the uplift is for the maintenance revenue?
... So, the transition for the install base will start in 2025. This will take time. By the way, some of our customers are government organizations, and if they're gonna do an upgrade, they may need to go get funding, and they may need to have a competitive process. So we just need to be realistic about that. But that is an opportunity for us to do an upgrade. And, what we've said before is we expect the AR to increase from 1.5x-2.5x . This is, I think, realistic. This will take time. What I like about it, though, is it's a book of business that's in front of us for the next three to five years, which is always good to have in your back pocket, so to speak.
Yeah, that's. We'll learn more as we roll that program out, and we'll share with you guys as we learn more about that.
Good one.
Thanks, Owen.
Your next question comes from the line of Jules Cooper from Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Morning, Gary and team. Look, just one from me. You've talked about material international wins from FY 25 onwards, but when we look at the commentary in the financial statements, you refer to, you know, the opportunity to grow your Australian customer base in the near term. Should we think of those opportunities in Australia as material, or it's more sort of incremental, and the material wins are sort of 25 and beyond in international markets?
You know, since I came in this business, Australia's been growing in the range of the mid-20s. We have a strong position in Australia, competitively, very, very strong teams. What's exciting about the Australian market is, there's a lot of retailers there across water and energy, and there's not some kind of major surge of all of them transforming at the same time. So they're doing it kind of in a constant flow, more like a river than a big storm. So anyway, we've said in the past that we're bullish on our Australian opportunities.
There are some big players there, and we will play to try to win those deals, and then we'll talk about them when we have them inked, and probably not before then, because that would be foolish of us. So, we have to just watch this space and see how it evolves, is the reality.
Excellent. Gary, it hasn't been lost on us that you continue to reiterate your ambitions to grow at 15%. Now, when you first outlined that, you know, the base of revenue for FY 2024 was expected to be around NZD 150, and now it's circa 200. You know, can you just maybe talk to the changes you're seeing in the industry and that need to transform? Is it continuing to build in line with your growing base of revenue? Or is it sort of really unchanged over that period? I'm just trying to sort of, you know, understand that a little bit better. You know, your confidence seems to be growing despite the bigger base constantly.
So, Jules, I may get myself in trouble here, because I'm trying to get... We've had five upgrades, and I'm like, I think that before you started covering us, we talked about the FY 2024 being NZD 130. And then you started covering us when we had NZD 150, then NZD 170, and now we're at NZD 200. We are, as I said in the presentation, I mean, and by the way, we were not intentionally misleading about that. When I started this company, it was COVID and, you know, all this type of stuff. We're really, really bullish about the space we're in. I live and breathe it every day, and the industry is on the march. It's on the march. Now, it'll go on different paces in different countries, but it's happening.
And so the real question is, you know, what will happen on the international front? We continue to perform well in our core markets. There's the pace of change is just as we said, I mean, you know, the change of orders, the regulatory changes, this stuff is good for us. But you have different dynamics. I mean, the U.K. market went through more of a surge of transformations, and so they have less behind it than, for example, Australia, which is more steady with transformations. And then so, one of the things that makes us cautious, because I think we built a... We really, really focused on trying to build trust with the investor community.
We just need to be cautious about the international front until we have more proof points, and we're trying to be, you know, we didn't. I didn't talk about the underlying growth almost at all, because we don't want to, you know, trigger expectations that are in our core markets that are that high for the long term. I mean, you know, the rates that we've seen this last period, for example. So, but, but anyway, we need to continue delivering in our core markets, and then see what the success rate is at international, and we will report on it as soon as we have the numbers to do that. So sorry not to be a little more precise, but I think that's just the reality of where we are at the moment.
No, that's perfect. Great result. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Gawler from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Gary and John. Can you hear me okay?
Yes. Hey, Chris.
Yeah, we can.
Great. First question, just on the FY 2024 guidance, just noting that it does imply that revenue is flattish half on half, the second half versus the first half. Just wanted to get your thoughts around the visibility on project work, and whether there's any conservatism embedded in that guidance.
Chris, it's John. The question came through a little disjointed. I think I've kind of got the gist, so hopefully I'll answer in the right way. I think you're sort of asking about, in terms of the full year guidance, it's implying relatively a flat sort of picture, half one and half two, and sort of some of the sort of dynamics around that. I think that's where the question was coming from. So look, you know, I think it, I mean, that's exactly what the financial year 2024 guidance is, is implying. You know, we put out there it'll be circa NZD 200 million, so it's kind of gonna be similar to the first half. There's always a level of variability when you're looking at project revenues in terms of executing that across a period.
We've got really good visibility clearly for this financial year. We're building up, you know, a good book of business in terms of our project revenues for beyond that. So look, I think we're really, you know, we clearly were very comfortable that we could see that increasing level of certainty in that flow of work that's enabled us to come out with the upgrade from around, you know, from at least NZD 170 million to NZD 200 million. I think I've answered the question, but as I say, it was a little bit difficult to capture it.
No, no, that's fine. Thanks for that. Thanks for that, John. And just, second question, noting some of the commentary around, Market-wide Half-Hourly Settlement in the U.K., do you mind talking about that a little bit more and how material that opportunity could be to the U.K. business?
Look, I think it sort of demonstrates it's one of the, you know, it's one of a number of areas that is helping us to, you know, increase our revenue profile this year. We'll have seen some of that, actually happen in the first half of the year. We've got line of sight of that going forward. I think it demonstrates in the markets that we operate, that there'll always be a level of non-recurring revenue through regulatory changes. And in the U.K., this is a relatively large one. And, you know, it's gonna, you know, it'll help us for a little while to come, I'm sure.
But just to stress, it's one of quite a range of different contributors to our revenue performance that you're seeing in the first half of the year, and that's leading us to upgrade our guidance.
Yep, that makes sense. That's all from me.
Your next question comes from the line of Guy Hooper from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, team. Maybe just, I guess, on that point around the guidance uplift. I mean, a lot of those large, lumpy projects, you know, like Genesis, were, I guess, known at the time of the 170. Could you talk a little bit about what's changed, or where those upgrades have come from since then?
Yeah, certainly. So look, I think, you know, the heart, you know, the thing that we've always got to think about when we're giving guidance is the certainty of actually securing and delivering on what's quite a large pipeline of activity. The Saudi win and Genesis Energy, they were known about, including our 170. We've still got to execute on those, of course. There's still a level of uncertainty in operating and executing in a new country, so you'll always operate there with a sense of caution. But actually, we've seen, we've seen a wide level of success across a number of customers and across all of those regions. You know, we talked about the market half, you know, the regulatory work in the U.K.
There's other upsells in the U.K., from profit and risk, for example. We've been successful in the U.K. business in terms of extending out the managed services work that we lost, when Bulb exited. In Veovo , I think, again, it's all very well having the likes of more work in Saudi and large U.K. airports on our pipeline. It's obviously another matter of actually securing them early enough and executing them on them early enough to start to make a difference in this financial year. So it really has been quite a broad, you know, a broad-based success across the first half of this year, and I think we started the second half well, too.
... Great. Thank you for that. And I guess just one last question for me. I guess on the EBITDA guidance, I mean, well flagged that you were going to, I guess, increase or pull forward some investment, should the revenue come in higher, which you're clearly doing. Can you talk a little bit about, I guess, where some of that investment is going, so what you've pulled forward, or maybe how that cost base has been scaled at a certain revenue level?
Yeah, certainly. So look, I mean, you're right. When we sort of, I think it was on the earnings call in November, I think when we were asked about what we would do if revenue was starting to come ahead of, you know, our of our guidance back then, and I think we were clear that we would look to reinvest part of that margin to grow the business if we see the opportunity to do so. So, we've increased, in particular, the business development teams and support. A lot of that's focused on international expansion, not all. And it's not just salespeople, it's pre-sales, it's solution architects, it's the support structure that enables us to, you know, to target business in those markets.
And compared to the first half of last year, in particular, again, we're making sure that our strategic R&D, you know, is also firmly focused on. So, you know, we want to make sure that we can position the business to continue to transact on that pipeline of opportunities that we can see above us. And we'll also look to see if we can, you know, we'll also always look to see if we can scale our capacity and capability, you know, to enable us to grow the business in future periods. Those are the sorts of areas that we try and direct that level of spend to.
Great. Thanks, John and Gary, and congratulations on the strong result.
Your next question comes from the line of Wei Sim, from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you guys hear me?
We can hear you.
Okay, great. My question is on the Veovo. Can you talk a bit about what kind of opportunities we have from going into the Tier 1 airports, as you mentioned, having those coming into the current portfolio, and also, you know, what kind of opportunities we see from high speed rail?
So, look, with the— Is that Wei? Did I get that right? Hi, Wei. So—
Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Gary.
Yeah. Hi. On the Tier 1 airports, I think it's pretty material. And there's a lot—You know, we're supporting 160 airports now. It's actually a pretty big number, and so we have this global reach. And we're pretty bullish about the opportunity in the Tier 1. I think we've posted some good Tier 1s in the period in the last year. I think we'll continue to do that. The rail is less material. I wouldn't read too much into it. We're quite frankly pretty stretched with, you know, the opportunities on airports itself, and so there's some merit to focus.
I would look to that area as the low-hanging fruit, and we like to say that low-hanging fruit is also fruit. So we will just kind of try to get to that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think that's the way I would look at it.
Okay, got it. And just one more, which is just when we think about the utilities market and energy versus water, you know, from the work I've been doing on the water side, it, it looks like a bit more of a difficult market just because, you know, I think there's areas where it's unmetered, it's harder to track, so on and so forth. So just, you know, how, how do we think about the opportunity of, of water relative to the energy? Thanks.
So that's a great question. It's kind of, it's a little unfair because water, in many ways, is not as, as, as sexy as the energy transition, although you could, you know, you definitely need it more. You know, we're encouraged by the water discussions that we've started now in New Zealand, as the government's moved Three Waters into its rearview mirror. That's interesting. That'll take time. The water business in Australia, we have a strong water proposition there. It's very complicated water in Australia, so to be able to do it well. We've talked in the past about water in the U.K. for the big book of business that's out there, starting to transform. But it's less of a compelling moment.
The really interesting about water is actually the, a lot of what they're trying to do is they're trying to transform their CRM. And what the industry is starting to understand is that to put a CRM on top of a really old billing system is kind of a, a super risky path and probably a waste of money, and then eventually you need to upgrade your billing. So we're trying to convince the industry that it's better to upgrade to integrated CRM and biller, and that's resonating well back to our strategy. The water systems will transform at less of a urgent pace than energy, but they have to transform over the next 10 years. There's a lot of them.
That's where our relationship with Salesforce, I think, will help us a lot, too, because they have a broad reach to, you know, municipalities and many countries. So that's gonna be a slower burn, but we're taking it seriously. We love water, and I think that will help us with our growth ambitions.
That's perfect. Thanks, Gary. Thanks, John.
And there are no further questions on the phone. I would like to hand back to Gary and John for any online questions.
Got a question here from Phil Campbell. What is the sales cycle for Asia, for Asian expansion? Who are the major competitors, and are Gentrack margins lower, given lower margins for retailers, given lower pricing in that region?
So I'll take that one. Hi, Phil. So in Asia, the sales cycles are long because the book of businesses are big. As I mentioned before, a lot of them are countries or, or big kind of regions in a country. I would say 24-30 months is a sales cycle that's probably realistic to paper something. In terms of margin, you know, it's like anything. I mean, the volumes are very big, so even though your price per meter point may be lower, if you've got a huge country that you're servicing, then you can find a way to make money, and we're pretty comfortable with that. So we're bullish on Asia, but there's several binary things there, so I don't want anyone to get too far ahead of, ahead of itself on that.
In terms of the competition, I'm not really crazy to talk about competition on open lines. There's some older players that are entrenched out there. You see some of the newer players. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, the entrenched ones are SAP and Oracle, obviously. But we're comfortable with competing against both those groups. So, yeah, I think that's what I'd like to leave on that point, Phil, if I could.
Another question from Phil. What's the medium-term EBITDA margins, 15%-20%? More like bottom end of the range, given 15% CAGR. So look, I think we've continually said that while the business is growing strongly, not in financial year 2024, but beyond, when the business is growing strongly, we would target—our ambition would be to be within that 15%-20% range. If the business were not growing strongly, if we were a steady state business, I think it would be, you know, I think you'd see margins in the high 20s, early 30s, if all the business was doing was sort of incrementing revenue each year.
But during a period of high growth, where we're investing and running business development and sales teams, where we probably have a higher level of services revenue rather than revenue from intellectual property, you'd see those sorts of EBITDA margins as our target point in that sort of above 15%-20% range. I've got a question again, a question from Phil: Are you still confident of achieving 50 million meter points, and if so, by when?
Thanks, Phil. I just want to reflect back on that other comment about competition. We don't mind talking about the competition. It's more like we don't really like to talk about a region when we're in the middle of competition, because we don't want to signal any kind of competitive intelligence about a deal, to be honest. That's my instincts there. In terms of 50 million meter points, once again, this is, as we've said, this is not a metric that we measure against with our financials or our institutional base or retail base. It's more of an internal, you know, directional north star for our people to think about scale and geography. It's worked very well. So we're not gonna...
You know, I don't wanna try to get pinned down on a, 'cause it could sort of be 'cause the metric was 50 million meter points in 15 countries. It's the first step in our international leadership. It could be 40 million meter points in 20 countries, or 75 million in nine. It's so I don't want to get in a specific spot on that, but am I confident that we'll get to 50 million? 100%, because we're gonna lead this transition, and those numbers are small in the big picture of what we can go after, and I look forward to doing that. Just one other comment on the meter point rank.
We have a lot of B2B books that, you know, may not have that many meters, but they're an equivalent of 1 million, 5 million meter point customers today. So once again, we don't clock that up as such, but it's important to keep that in mind. Thanks for the question.
Okay, so another couple of questions here. One here from Guy Carson. Just asking for confirmation that insolvent customers are now completely finished with regard to impacts on the financials. So what you'll see, so in terms of financial year 2024, the answer is yes. What you'll see when we present our results in November for the full year, is that we'll again show the revenue from insolvent customers for the full year of financial year 2023. It's a bigger amount in the first half and a smaller amount, as you'd expect, because it's winding down in the second half of last year. But that's an impact that's come to an end in terms of financial year 2024 and forwards.
A question here from Ron Shamgar: "So in terms of M&A, are future deals in pipeline more like an Amber type investment or a full business acquisition?
We are not a venture capitalist group. We were interested in doing that minority investment in Amber, because for strategic reasons, to supplement and leapfrog our competitors and supplement our technology stack with a very credible, proven solution. Any type of M&A, I would, I, you know, I'm not—I don't want to get boxed in on this, but the doing a majority or a full acquisition is more in line with the type of M&A that we would like to do.
Question from Chris at Goldman Sachs: "On the international pipeline, how has that developed since you last updated the market? And also, what's the investment in the sales and marketing that you're making this year?" I'll just cover the last piece. In terms of the investment, so that's it, it's the NZD 3 million in the first half of financial year 2024, is our spend on business development for international expansion. In terms of how the pipeline has developed since we last updated the market?
You know, we have a pretty standard pipeline process from, you know, influence and qualify all the way down to through RFP and verbal win to contract closure. As I mentioned before, it continues to mature, so that means it's moving down the pipeline. We haven't really had a lot fall out. We've disqualified ourselves from a couple of deals that were off strategy just because I don't want to stretch the organization away from G2 strategically, that, that's—we don't need that distraction. That would be disproportionate to our, and maybe have us make some mistakes. So we're trying to be smart about it, but, we just need, as I said before, we need to watch how this evolves, and we'll provide more clarity over time.
Another question from Phil: "Any plans to sell Veovo and to focus on utilities?
So, we have optionality there. I think it's a strong part of our overall proposition. We have no plans in place to do that right now. We're very happy with Veovo. We've even said in the past that there's some opportunities to scale that up, that we would potentially look at. Yes, but it does give us options, and we also, just for those that don't know, we have it set up as a separate structure with a separate management team. James, who leads that, has a very strong team, and he's a super seasoned veteran, so it's not taking huge amounts of, well, distraction from the business, the opposite of it. So we're pretty pleased with the dynamics as it sits today.
We got some more? Yeah.
Okay. I think with that, I hope we got to everybody. If we didn't, please send it through and we'll try to answer you. Thank you once again for the engagement, and we look forward to seeing you all soon or hearing from you. With that, we'll close out.