Welcome everyone to the Gentrack FY 2023 Earnings. My name is Gary Miles, I'm the Chief Executive. Just a couple of housekeeping things. Online attendees can submit a written question at any time by clicking Ask a Question button on your screen during the presentation, and phone attendees can listen and ask questions after the presentation. We'll take all the questions after the presentation. First of all, it's great to be here. John and I are in Melbourne, headed up to Sydney tomorrow. I'm actually in the region for about three months because there's so many exciting things going on across Australia, New Zealand, and the broader Asia area. So I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of you face-to-face over the coming weeks. Let's jump into the results.
So if we go to the financial headlines, we had a strong year. I'm really pleased with the performance of the company and our people. I want to thank them for all the extra efforts to deliver these results to our shareholders and the value that they've driven to our customers. So revenue was up from NZD 126.3 million in FY 2022 to NZD 169.9 million this year. That's a 34.5 increase. The utilities business had an increase of 36.7, while Veovo increased the revenues by 21.3% to NZD 21.9 million.
An important statistic is if you exclude the underlying insolvencies that were in the B2C business in the U.K., which we think are behind us and the industry, our underlying revenue, a whopping 47%, which is a very substantial set of momentum that we have behind the business, taking us into the new year. To try to quantify, because we've been transparent throughout the process with all the insolvencies, the Bulb and other U.K. insolvencies amounted to a one-time revenue in the year of NZD 27.6 million that we do not expect to continue through into next year. EBITDA, one other comment on revenues, ARR, was also up materially from NZD 69.4 million to NZD 105 million, up more than 50%- 51.2%, excluding the insolvent customers.
So, we continue to try to drive more AR out of our business, and as we land G2, this is a big, big focus for our company. It'll allow us to do a lot of that better. EBITDA is also brought us a good result. I just would like to reiterate that we expense all of our R&D, and our EBITDA numbers increased from NZD 8.1 million to NZD 23.2 million in the period, a 185% increase. Cash is also strong performance, cash on hand of NZD 49.2 million. I will reiterate that we have no debt, and we also have a facility. Being able to invoice our customers and collect our cash is strong in this company.
It's a very, very, very good indicator to whether we're leading a tight business that delivers well, and we're able to invoice for our work. So I'm pleased with the results, and once again, I'd like to thank all the parties that contributed to this. On the back of that, we're gonna upgrade our outlook. The strong underlying growth... I'm gonna read this, so excuse the verbatim. The strong underlying growth in both utilities and Veovo means we were able to upgrade our revenue guidance for FY 2024 from the prior guidance of being between NZD 157 million-NZD 160 million, to being at least in line with FY 2023 revenues at NZD 170 million, despite the loss of one-off revenues of NZD 27.6 million from insolvent UK customers.
Against this higher revenue guidance, EBITDA is expected to be between NZD 20.5 million and NZD 25.5 million, which is a 12%-15% range. This compares to our previous guidance, which would have given a range between NZD 19 million and NZD 27 million. Some of the Bulb and other revenues were higher EBITDA revenues, so as we move into the new year, we are continuing to invest in our expansion. We see a strong pipeline there. I've been very clear that we think a few players are gonna lead this market globally, and we're cautious about spending money incorrectly. I think we're doing the right thing, but we're seeing very, very strong opportunities afield. As the industry transforms over the next 10 years, conquering this business and riding with it for the next 20 years is important.
So we're looking to continue to make investments around that as well. So let's go to the business. I want to have one quick summary slide, and then we'll go to our scorecard. So, we are consistent by saying that, all the utilities on the planet need to transform. The cloud exists, systems are very old, the legacy players are forcing upgrades and end of life. They are not fit for purpose for the new energy transition, and water also has a compelling need to change just because the systems there are very, very old... and they need to do many things to do digital engagement, and adopt AI, and to automate better, and to adopt smart meters, et cetera. And the energy transition itself is changing fundamentally.
So we see this opportunity being one of the largest on the planet, the energy transition, and we're at the heart of that. We have a leading proposition to the market, and I summarized four points here. First of all, we launched our G2.0, which is a best-in-class billing, CRM, and energy management and water management stack. It's tightly integrated to Salesforce, it's cloud native, it's highly configurable, and it's built to drive this transition. It's resonating very well with our customers, our existing customers in our pipeline, so we're encouraged our strategy was a sound one. We can deliver transformations. We continue to see some of the smaller players that are new entrants, that were competitors, having difficulty to deliver major transformation projects.
This is a certain skill that we have in spades, I would say, so I feel good about our transformation capabilities. The management team is strong. We're working well together. I think it's a world-class team, and not to underestimate the 5,000 person years of utility experience we have in the business that is invaluable when we go talk to customers about where they're headed and where they wanna have us help them. Our momentum continues to grow in terms of revenues, employees, customers, and value to our shareholders. We are happy to invite the investor community to join us on this essential wave of change, which once again, I think if you also believe in macro investments, the energy transition is probably the largest program on the planet.
If not, it's one of the top three or four, and those companies that will perform well should outperform the market, and I think we have a good operating engine in our business and a growing momentum. So we believe in metrics, and we believe in holding ourselves accountable. So let's go to our scorecard that we have historically put forward, that we're gonna try to focus on and achieve. So, one of the main drivers was to grow our business in our core markets. Our core markets being Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. You can look at these growth numbers. They're pretty astounding. Australia is up 22%. It can be a very strong engine. I'm super, super energized. By the way, I've been down to Tasmania, I was up in Darwin, I'm here in Melbourne. We're seeing customers across the patch.
I'm out in Perth next week, and then off to Auckland, meeting the CEOs that are doing, driving this industry forward. It's super energizing what's happening in Australia, kind of is a sandbox for innovation for the globe. In New Zealand, 83% growth. I think the numbers speak for themselves. Just to reiterate, we support over 50% of the homes and industry in New Zealand. We're clearly driving that, that, that area forward. New Zealand itself is one of the cleanest energy countries on the planet, with 85% renewables, so it's, it also a good place to be present and be strong. And then the U.K., despite the insolvencies, we're growing 56%. I think that number speaks for itself. So in, in, the next kind of, scorecard imperative, we launch G2. We need to land G2.
I've had a lot of customers-- a lot of questions from the shareholders: "How's it going with G2?" So, we landed Genesis. It's a big program. Genesis is a strategic customer of ours in New Zealand. They have B2B and B2C. It's-- they have a strong management team. Malcolm, the new CEO, has come in and given clear direction to move forward with G2 on Genesis. This is where we're priming the entire solution, including Salesforce professional services and the end-to-end SLAs for that program. I've said before that we're gonna be smart about upgrading our base to G2, so the objective is to land G2 in a couple of customers, harden it, mechanize the automate the migration, and then do a wave across our customer base. Every new sale, we're also selling G2.
We're not selling any of the older systems, so, we're a G2 shop. Around G2, it doesn't mean that they have to take the whole stack to modernize. We have modern products around meter data services, data analytics, all kinds of cloud compute capabilities, AI, forecasting, pricing and risk. I just put an example, 13 of our customers have taken on our data analytics and AI solutions, so we continue to upsell and get them on the, what we call the highway of innovation. The next scorecard activity was to reach new energy customers and grow our water footprint.
So we won Energy Australia, which is a world-leading solar and battery bundle, solution here, that I think kind of stand for the way consumers will consume and produce energy from their home in the future, with solar on the roof and batteries on the side of the house, and consume cleaner energy and make bills more affordable. So this is exciting, a very complex program that we rolled out in record time, and we appreciate our relationship, our growing relationship with Energy Australia. We closed three new Managed Services projects in the U.K. and in the water business, we have a new water win in Australia. We just finished a big, transformation in the U.K., where we consolidated three stacks onto one, and we have a Fiji modernization in our pipeline on water.
Now, let's look at the next page on expanding to EMEA and Asia. On the expansion side, as I've said before, the sales cycle for our space is about 12-24 months. We announced going international in November of this time last year. I'm pleased to say that we're starting to put wins on the board. We have a new win in the Middle East that we cannot name, but it's a super exciting energy and water project that's very, very innovative. It was a contested program with all the kind of New Age billion-dollar companies out there, and we won this under a competitive process. On the back of that, we opened our Middle Eastern headquarters in Riyadh. We also had a big airports win in the region.
So, we're pretty excited about that growth, and we are servicing the rest of Europe from London. As we've said before, we opened Singapore as our Southeast Asia hub and have very good pipeline with big tier one players across that patch. So that's pretty exciting, and we have business already in Singapore. On the employee growth side, we grew approximately 30%. More people that know our technology and know our capabilities to bring value to our customers. Our staff turnover is actually at an amazing point, an all-time low. The engagement's high. The people are resonating with our purpose and our success and the career opportunities that our global footprint gives them. It's pretty exciting.
I got to tell you that the buzz in the office and the activity around the company is really one of super positivity. In that, we, you know, we announced India in November of last year, 2022. We're now past 100 people in India, and we see that as a continued growth engine for our global delivery and support capabilities and to meet our cost to serve metrics that we need to drive. That division's becoming increasingly effective. Let's press on to the Veovo business. So, Veovo's and the airports industry is out of the pandemic. Super exciting. Airport traffic is back up to pre-pandemic levels or just thereabouts.
The airports industry was in the middle of transforming, and digitizing right up to the pandemic, and then it put everything on hold for about three years, and now there is pent-up demand. Our pipeline has more than doubled. I'm pleased to announce we have five new airport customers. We've also expanding our base with upgrades, more transformation projects, and upsales. We are bullish about the airport business. James Williamson, that runs our business, is doing a great job. Transformations across the sector are picking up pace.
I don't think we've seen the full speed or capability of this come through yet, because once again, it kind of just turned back on, and the sales process is the sales cycle is, you know, not immediate, but but we know how to tell our story, and when you double the pipeline, you know, that that should put you in a pretty good position. So once again, and the move to tier ones with airports like Schiphol and Sydney and Auckland and Luton and Gatwick is, those are all name customers, pretty encouraging. So, I'm going to stop there. I will close with some final comments, but let me hand over to John to take you guys through, ladies and gentlemen, through more of the details numbers. John?
Thank you, Gary. So first of all, turning to the group's profit and loss account. So our revenue in the year was 34.5% higher than the prior year, and that's strong growth, both at the utilities and the Veovo business. Our costs were higher, up 24%. That was to support that revenue growth and position us for going forward, as well as continuing to invest in R&D, all of which we've expensed in the year, and invest in sales. So that's both in our core markets and our sales engine in those new markets. The net result was that EBITDA was NZD 23.2 million. So that's 15-- that's a little over 15 million higher than in financial year 2022.
In addition to that, we booked tax credits on our R&D of NZD 1.6 million in the U.K. Now, that claim covers two years, and changing tax rules will make that less generous in future years. So our overall NPAT was a profit of NZD 10 million in financial year 2023, comparing that to a loss in financial year 2022 of NZD 3.3 million. So looking at our utilities revenue. So what we've done on this slide is we followed the same approach that we have in the last few presentations, where we have split out the revenue from Bulb and those insolvent U.K. customers, so that we can see the revenue from our underlying business. And the Bulb and U.K. insolvent revenue is shown here in the mauve color.
So our total revenue is up almost 37% in utility. Actually, our underlying revenues have grown far stronger, in total, up by 47%, and the recurring revenues have grown faster still, so they're up by 59%. And that's growth from a range of things. So it's both delivering on wins within the year, so in financial year 2023, as well as the wins flowing through from the preceding financial year, and of course, selling a lot more to our existing customer base. And in line with our prior guidance, we don't expect any further revenue from Bulb or those insolvent customers in the current financial year, so in financial year 2024. Looking at that underlying revenue, so all of the metrics that you see on this slide are excluding that Bulb and UK insolvent revenue.
The message here really is that it's strong underlying growth across the board, across all regions. We're now showing separately also our rest of world area to show our growing international footprint. So that's around NZD 4 million of revenue in financial year 2023, Singapore, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. It doesn't include any of the revenue from our win in Saudi Arabia. That was closed just after the year-end, and the revenue from that will flow from the current financial year, so from financial year 2024. And it's a good performance in both energy and water. Just a little bit on the cost base. So our direct costs, people hosting, NZD 12.5 million higher to support those higher revenues.
Within that, we've also invested in scaling the business up to meet where we think the replacement revenues will flow through in financial year 2024. We have invested more in strategic R&D. That's NZD 4.8 million higher than the prior year, and we're doing that as our underlying revenues grow. And then in financial year 2023, we've invested NZD 3.8 million in our sales effort for international expansion. So that's in Southeast Asia and EMEA, and that includes setting up and contracting that first win in Saudi Arabia. And we've done that alongside continuing to increase our investment in sales and marketing in our core markets. That's NZD 3.8 million higher than it was in the prior year. Into Veovo. It's a strong performance for Veovo, too.
Our revenues are up by a little over 21%. That includes growing recurring revenues. They're up by 60%. Our projects revenue, our NRR, is up by a little over 30%. So we're seeing very strong demand post the pandemic, strong demand for upgrades and modernization, and a lot of that uplift really is from our existing customer base in financial year 2023, and we expect the impact of new customer wins and our new customer pipeline to start to impact the business in the current year, financial year 2024. And then on to cash flow. So strong cash position. Our cash at the end of the financial year, at the end of September, was a little over NZD 49 million. That's NZD 21.8 million higher than the preceding year-end.
So what we have here is we've got a very high conversion of cash from EBITDA. We don't capitalize our R&D. We expense it, so our EBITDA converts quite readily across into cash, and that's reflective of the way that our customer contracts are structured, but also good project execution, turning our implementation revenues quickly and cleanly across into cash during the course of the year. Financial year 2023, we probably paid a little less tax than is typical of a year, and that was because we received some tax overpaid in financial year 2022. We received that in the year, and we also booked those tax credits, NZD 1.6 million, which involved an element of catch-up in financial year 2023.
Well, it's a strong cash flow, and it demonstrates that it's a strong cash generative business. So with that, I will hand back across to Gary to sum up.
I think I've said it, but I'll repeat. I'm very pleased with the progress in our core markets. I'm excited about the global opportunity and, you know, being in the heart of Southeast Asia, of Europe and London, and now the Middle East with our Saudi headquarters, which is, you know, the largest player in that region. The product strategy is, I think, the right one for this industry. I've been in the B2B major enterprise software business most of my life. I can tell you that our strategy is sound. It's great to see Genesis supporting that and moving forward with us, and I think that demonstrates that our Salesforce approach and AWS and the way we're gonna land and deliver ARR around these projects makes a lot of sense.
Our people are highly engaged. Our attrition's low. They're energized, and they're capable, so it's really enjoyable to go to meetings and watch them in action. I wanna thank our investors that have been with us so far on this journey. I think if you've been with us for a couple years, it's probably been a good couple ones. We look forward to continuing that relationship with you, and I'd like to invite new investors to join this wave because it's a sizable one, and we're excited about it. So with that, I think we'll close and move to a Q&A.
I think we're inviting calls from-
Thank you.
Phone lines first.
If you are on the phone lines and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. Again, that's star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. Management, would you like to take questions from the phone first or online?
We'll take questions from the phone first.
Not a problem at all. Your first question comes from the line of Joshua Dale from Craigs. Your line is open.
Hello, Joshua.
Good morning, Gary and John. Can you hear me okay?
We can indeed.
Excellent. Thank you. Just first question: If we strip out revenue from insolvent customers, we can work out your underlying revenue growth from FY 2023 to FY 2024 per your guidance. But how should we be thinking about underlying EBITDA growth? Is there a good way to think about the costs associated with generating that one-off revenue in FY 2023?
No, I think, I mean, first of all, Josh, we don't, I mean, we don't split out the margins by segment or customer in that way. But what we have done in financial year 2023 is used the revenue and profits from those insolvent customers, actually to invest, and I guess, preload investment in terms of where we think the replacement revenue is coming from. So we've invested heavily in scaling up the business within financial year 2023. And that's quite a cost because it's not just the physical training and recruitment of the teams in the areas where the new revenue will be. It takes a little bit of time for those resources to become productive.
So that's why when we look forward across into financial year 2024, we see overall our costs remaining relatively flat, and hence the central point of our EBITDA guidance for the next year.
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. The second question: You've obviously won two big projects in New Zealand with, Genesis and Mercury. Just looking at slide seven, you know, presumably the Genesis one is much more material to you than Mercury in terms of, I suppose, contract value and the amount of work required your end. Is that correct?
So it's the Genesis contract is a really big transformation for them, and it's very important for us as our first G2 upgrade of our existing customer. So it'll be a big program for Gentrack. I mean, it's going to enable our New Zealand region to continue to grow at very high growth rates year on year.
But, you know, Mercury is big suppliers in the region. They're the, you know, the two biggest. They both need a lot of support. So, you know, we don't like to try to compare contract sizes, but, you know, they're both good customers, really good, and good potential.
Okay, thanks. I suppose what I was getting at is, you know, that's kind of hard for us to gauge the materiality of each contract as you announce them. So any sort of detail on the differences would be useful to the extent you're willing to reveal that.
Yeah, I think it's really just hard to be able-- You know, they're sort of commercially confidential contracts. It's hard to sort of disclose the size there. What we are expecting, though, is the, as a combination of the two, we are expecting our New Zealand region to grow well over 50% again, year-on-year, in financial year 2024. We really do see it enabling that region to grow strongly.
Yeah, that's helpful. You continue to build up cash and not pay a dividend. What do you intend to do with the cash? Do you have any plans for that?
No, I mean, look, we keep this position under review, that we certainly do. So we do look at that. And I think at this point in time, we are developing our thoughts on M&A. I think we would be interested and are interested in, I think, expanding out our technology, you know, looking for interesting and innovative parts of technology that would expand onto our utilities platform. I think that's an area of interest for us. I think in addition, we can see that there would be scope to act as a sort of consolidation in the airport space with perhaps bolt-on businesses in the over. So those are sort of the themes and areas that we keep under review. But look, it's an area that we are just-...
Very mindful of as our cash balance grows, and we'll continue to talk about that.
Maybe, maybe I can just add, because I think we'll get asked this question every hour for the next four days. So maybe just to be a little bit more prescriptive on it. We were not in a position. It would have been silly of me, while we were building our core, to go spend money trying to consume other companies. It just wouldn't have made sense. We're, you know, we believe in - we prefer small wins to big mistakes, and you need to be careful with M&A. But now we have a lot of momentum, super capable organization. So now we can look at this, and we are looking at it.
If we don't find something that makes a lot of sense to do with it, then we'll probably, you know, move to give some of it back. But we need a little bit of time with that. I think it's reasonable, given where we are. So that's, that's our thinking.
Exactly, exactly, Josh-
Just one last question from me, hopefully an easy one. What can we expect that UK R&D tax credit to look like in future years?
Yeah, look, it's actually quite difficult. It's quite difficult to be too precise. So, the steer I was trying to give is that the NZD 1.6 is covering two financial years. So, it's going to be lower going forward because it won't be two financial years. I think, it's a little uncertain exactly the scope of what that tax credit will cover in future years in terms of legislation, so that will have a little bit of impact. But the best guidance I can give at this point is, this year was two years.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, guys, and well done on a solid result.
Thanks, Josh.
Thanks, Josh.
Before we continue on to the next question, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on the phone, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Jules Cooper from Shaw and Partners. Your line is open.
Thank you. Can you hear me, Gary and John?
We can, Jules.
Excellent. Look, congrats on another impressive result. I guess, you know, some fantastic wins this year, you know, on the back of Genesis and the Middle East win. Gary, how is this building your confidence in being able to achieve the medium-term targets that you've outlined previously? And if we think about those, I think it was, you know, mid-teens revenue growth and the EBITDA margin moving up to that sort of 15%-20% level. I'm just sort of interested in how your confidence may be building in that now that you've had some, you know, really successful sort of validation here of the strategy.
Look, we'd like to be a sleep-well-at-night stock as far as what, you know, we say we're gonna do, and then we deliver it. So we haven't changed our forecast. We narrowed the EBITDA a little bit. We didn't change it. The midterm guidance stays the same. I think in reality, we need to see what our win rate is with this growing pipeline overseas, which is not a major influence on that long-term guidance, because or midterm guidance, because we have such strong growth in our core markets also. But if the international stuff starts to really convert, then we're gonna be in for a good interesting ride. I think we need some time to figure that out.
But I will repeat, I think we have a good strategy and a good set of capabilities, and we're getting better and better at telling our story and articulating our value, so that should, that should pay off. And it's good to see the airports industry, you know, helping drive that, and we're pretty confident about that. That's for sure, also. So I can't be a little more clearer than that because that's where we are.
Excellent. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Owen Humphries from Canaccord. Your line is open.
Good day, guys. Just a quick one from me, just around the execution on your strategy around winning tier ones. I know, they take time. I'll just be interested to know around, if you fast-forward six or 12 months, is there an expectation you'll have a tier one in your core markets or in new markets? And if so, does your guidance set include?
Yeah, just to be... So for the airports, we're in tier ones, which is good. In the utility business, we're also in tier ones. You know, just to be clear, Bulb was a top six. We can service that large A, B, to C book. On the B2B side, you know, the largest energy supplier by volume is our customer. We're running all of their business. We service tier ones today. Now, in terms of going out and winning new tier ones that are sizable programs, we are engaged at the table for the right conversations. We're hunting tier ones and tier twos as a business.
I think we should have some successes there, but we don't like to talk about stuff before it happens, so I just, you know, we don't have a crystal ball on that. If you look at some of the decisions that have been made over the last year, interestingly enough. There, you know, there's a lot in play, and there wasn't a lot announced, so anyway, from anybody on the tier one front. So I think that's an opportunity that's coming to a head in the short term.
Good one. And just, just, how many customers are now contracted to G2?
Two. But it's a little bit misleading 'cause I mean, G2 isn't just the entire stack. G2 is a lot of capabilities around it. As I mentioned before, 13 customers have our data analytics. More customers than that have our meter data services. We just closed a pricing and risk, which is a new G2 service that allows our customers to be able to under big industrial customers and major corporate accounts like McDonald's across all of UK or HSBC. These big corporate accounts with many affiliates or many offices allows our customers now to see which one of those accounts are profitable, the degree of profitability, and a...
It's a very complicated space to be able to do this well, so we've just won new business to do that type of service that will roll out to our base. So we have a lot of G2 capabilities. All our distributed energy resource management, like that we're doing at Energy Australia, also has G2 capabilities in it. So it's in our interest to be able to sell both components and the whole stack, which we're doing.
Well, well done. Clear result.
Great. Thanks, Owen.
There are no further questions on the phone. I would like to hand back to management for online questions.
Okay. So, first question from Ron Shamgar is, do you see Kraken as a threat, and have we lost any clients to them?
So, Kraken or Octopus Energy was able to buy some or took over some insolvencies in the U.K., like Bulb, that that ended up moving to their stack. We have not lost any customers to Kraken, that I'm aware of. I don't... Look, I know the CEO there. I mean, we, we had a chat the other day. For us, success stories are- is what this industry needs. They need to understand that it's safe, and it's rewarding to get off SAP and Oracle and the legacy systems that are at sea anchor or a drag on change for the industry. The world is a big place. There's a lot of systems out there that need to be transformed. We see, increasingly, we see that it's us and Kraken on the short list to contest over things.
We think our strategy will win out, on the day. We are not part of an energy supplier, so they're able to get a disproportionate amount of storytelling and telling it the way that it suits them. But we're an engineering shop that know how to deliver, and I think we know how to tell our story well. So, I would say that, you know, there will be three or four global companies that dominate this space around the world, and we wanna see success stories out there to move off SAP. The other thing that's kind of interesting or very interesting that we're watching, is SAP declared end of life of their utility stack, called IS-U, that's been installed, for about 25 years, and many, most of the—they're the tier. The largest supplier in the world.
They're trying to push their customer base to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, which is what their new stack is called. It's also a multi-vertical stack. It's not just for energy. We're seeing that some of the early utilities, two to three years ago, that bought SAP S/4HANA are now recontracting to move off of it. If SAP S/4HANA does not land for the industry, there's going to be a ginormous amount of work for everybody. We're inclined to focus on our strategy and execute against it. We see Kraken, but we're not afraid of them at all. We feel comfortable.
Another question from, this time from Kirk Burgess. Is there any potential to enter the North American market?
So the North American market is 50 different regulatory environments on the 50 states. Then let's remember, Canada and Mexico are in North America also. So it's an interesting market for us, and we don't want to open too many fronts in one go. I think that we definitely would like to go to that market. It's a large market, but we will announce it in advance and let everybody know that we're gonna do that and what that'll mean to our business, at least on the cost side, before we do so to time.
Got a question from Guy Hooper. So EBITDA margin, can you please give a bit more color around the lower margin in financial 2023 and trimming of the margin guidance for 2024? Is it a function of front-loading some of the investment required in expanding geography, and you've gone faster than expected, or is it some low-margin contract projects in there? So I think we touched on that, Guy, with in answer to the question or the questions that Josh posed. What we have tried to do in financial 2023 is actually front load a lot of that investment. The replacement revenue and the new revenue sources that we're seeing aren't all in the same areas and locations that the lost Bulb revenue was in.
We have been transitioning and scaling up the business and really taking advantage of our profit streams from those outgoing customers to do that. I mean, what it means is that do that both in our delivery capability and also in terms of our strategic R&D. I think in financial 2023, we ended up spending a little bit more than we budgeted for the year, again, taking advantage of the good results we were seeing from Bulb and insolvent customers. In terms of how that sort of plays then into our margin guidance for financial 2024, look, we've kept the central range the same. But we're now into the year itself. I think it's just appropriate to narrow that range. It's quite a transition for the business.
We're replacing a lot of revenue. So we've kept ourselves with a you know, reasonably wide range to be able to do that.
The other thing is when you're landing a bunch of new projects, you have some services component of those projects. We're trying to push as much as we can into recurring revenues, so that's put some pressure in the short term, which I think is the right decision for the business, to have less margin on the implementation cost and a more margin on the recurring cost as we recalibrate the way we price and sell our capabilities in G2, specifically.
A question from Ron Shamgar: So where do you see EBITDA margins in the next three years? So our medium-term guidance is to see EBITDA margins of between 15%-20%. We haven't changed our targeting. That's for financial year 25 onwards. We haven't changed our targets in those respect. That's where we see the business trending to. I've got a question from Xiao Yang. Expectations for PNL and cash tax payments for financial year 24? Be higher than 23, because we won't have the benefit of the tax overpaid in financial 22. We'll also have a slightly different tax mix, i.e., a little less in from the proportionally, a little less in from the U.K. than we will see in Australia and New Zealand.
I give the following sort of guidance as the effective cash tax rate, and that's... I tend to use the 28% mark, 28% of our profits before tax, but excluding the amortization of intangibles. And the 28% really is a function of that blend of the rates in the three largest areas that we're operating in. So the U.K. is 25% now, New Zealand is 28%, and Australia is 30%. Question from Blair Cooper: What are the expectations for headcount and your consulting costs in financial year 2024? So we are expecting the scaling up of the business and that training, bringing resources on, we've brought that forward into financial year 2023.
So, against the NZD 170 million of financial year 2024 guided revenue, you'd see relatively flat headcount. And to the extent that we would start to exceed that, you'd see headcount growing, I suspect. Another question in from Guy: On our financial year 2024 revenue guidance, how much of the next, at least NZD 30 million of underlying revenue growth is already contracted and committed? Keen to understand the confidence behind the at least comment. So just first of all, the NZD 30 million, so that's in reference to replacing the lost Bulb insolvency revenue of NZD 27.6 million. I think booking the win in Saudi Arabia, start of this financial year, signing the Genesis upgrade a week or so ago, really good start to the year.
I think that gives us a lot of confidence in our revenue guidance. A lot of work still to do, but it, it just gives us a lot of confidence. Is there anything you'd like to add, Garrett, to that?
No.
We've got a question in from Xiao Yang: Do you have a target on where you think the managed services element of your revenue will hit in financial year 2024, after exceeding NZD 30 million last year? And is there a long-term target for the mix of managed services revenue? I think one thing just to draw out there was that the NZD 30 million of managed services revenue included a very large proportion from Bulb. A little under half, I think, was from Bulb. And maybe a few other pieces from those and some UK customers. So our expectations is that managed services will be lower in financial year 2024. But we have brought on new customers within financial year 2023. We haven't put out separate guidance for managed services revenue.
But I think the sheer scale of what we achieved, with the administrators at Bulb, you know, that, that's a very high mark, we feel. I think as we move the business and we roll it forward, beyond financial year 2024, I don't think we see that, I don't think we see the managed services component necessarily keeping pace with the rest of the revenue growth. So I think that, I think that probably addresses that question. Another question... We've got another question from Xiao Yang: Can you provide some comments on the capacity in your implementation and support workforce, and the need to scale up if you close on your expanded pipeline?
Yeah, I think, I mean, I can answer that. If we close on our expanded pipeline, we will need to scale up, mostly to do deliveries, some of it to do support. But, I mean, this—we had 30%+ growth this year, to service projects. To be able to go out and hire and train well is a competitive differentiator, and then to be able to deliver programs in other countries is hard to do, and the fact that we can do it, I think is—and we have that, and our wherewithal is super important for this global challenge. Super important. So as we win new deals, we'll scale up, and we'll deliver.
I think a related question here, but in terms of our pipeline, how many or what would be the proportion that involve full stack sales in both utilities and airports versus modular sales? And how does this compare to 12 months earlier? Sort of comment on the deal velocity, the movement through that sales pipeline.
Yeah. So the airports business fundamentally has two main product sets, passenger flow and airport operations, and so we see those as, you know, winning. Usually, we win one, and then we upsell the other one. In the utilities business, the upsales, like data analytics and meter data service and all these things I talked about as G2 services, those are generally not sold to new customers as point solutions. They're sold to existing customers to bring value to those customers. So all the new pipeline that we're talking about is for a, it's for a transformation off of a legacy system to a new modern stack and a new ways of working, a way of working for the customer. So they're all transformations of the end-to-end system.
Okay, so a question from Phil Campbell. UK Water opportunity, can you describe the size of the pie, the timing of smart meter rollout and scope for Gentrack to win business? And, what was the reason of Severn Trent going with Kraken?
Funnily enough, we didn't, unfortunately, we didn't, we weren't in the process. So I, I can't really comment. The water opportunity is fairly sizable in the U.K. I would reiterate that I think the water opportunity around the globe is also sizable. We have not put a number on it and taken that out. I can say that all the remaining water customers we are having a dialogue with now, with the way the water companies buy is they buy in a regulatory buying cycle. And, and we... You know, there's a lot of pressure in the U.K. on sewage priorities, so we'll see how many of those translate into transformations or not over the next couple of years.
Just to be clear, in Australia, we also have a strong water business, and, you know, we're winning deals here as well. So we'll continue to push forward. And by the way, the Saudi deal has a water component. We're in other water discussions in the new territories, so, we see water as important.
A question from Owen Humphries: Is the Middle East a tier one client? And were the SBP payments, I think the one-off payments, they're included in OpEx. Declines flat, half on half. How is that achieved? Look, in terms of... I mean, it's a, it's an... In terms of the question over OpEx, all the costs around securing and winning that are in OpEx in financial year 2023. We don't roll up anything onto the balance sheet. And whilst the contract was closed immediately post the year, the costs involved in closing that contract were all in financial year 2023.
So Saudi is a unique environment where they've got a regular state, Saudi E lectric Company. It is not the Saudi Electric Company. There are some programs in Saudi Arabia that are super innovative, high-aspiration builds, and they wanna be completely 100% green. Really, really the new age of energy, as it transitions towards supporting also non-carbon capabilities, and it's one of those programs. It's an exciting one, and it's a sizable one for us, but it's not Saudi Electric Company.
I think the balance of questions really are all on the same theme.
Maybe I just on one thing on. So John says the balance of the questions are on the same theme. If we didn't get to your question and we're not seeing you, then reach out to us, and we'll—if you feel like we didn't answer it, we'll try to answer it. I would just like to close on the following: We just finished our budgeting process a couple of months ago. We had a debate whether we'd push our EBITDA up into the top end of the range or where we left it now, and we have decided that we think it makes the most sense to continue to invest in this opportunity. The rev top line growth is significant, and what's nice about it is it gives us long-term. You know, you hunt, hunt today, so you can eat tomorrow.
I think that's the right decision for creating long-term value. So I think on that, we will close and say thank you.