Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone, wherever you're joining us from, and welcome to Gentrack Group Limited annual shareholders meeting. My name is Andy Green, and I'm delighted to be attending this annual shareholder meeting as Chair of Gentrack Group Limited. Today, we are very pleased to welcome you as online participants through our virtual meeting platform provided by our share registrar Link Market Services. As we have advised, given the global nature of our business, we're holding a virtual meeting again this year. Our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and other key executives, and the majority of board members, including the Chair, are located in the United Kingdom or Australia. Their attendance in person at the meeting would result in significant cost to Gentrack, as well as other logistical challenges. You'll hear more on their location today later in the meeting.
We pre-recorded the introductory message from Darc Rasmussen, who is standing for re-election as a director. This is to minimize the risk of technical issues interfering with the smooth running of the ASM today. You can vote and ask questions online. To vote, you will need to click Get Voting Card within the online meeting platform. You'll be asked to enter your shareholder or proxy number to validate. Please then mark your voting card in the way you wish to vote by clicking for, against, or abstain. Once you have made your selection, please click Submit Vote on the bottom of the card to lodge your vote. Please refer to the virtual meeting online portal guide or phone the help line on 0800 200 220 if you're in New Zealand, or plus 64 9967 7751 if you're outside New Zealand.
They will be able to assist you. I'll provide you with a reminder of these instructions as we progress through the meeting. I would encourage you to send through your questions as soon as you can through the virtual meeting website. This will allow us to answer these questions at the appropriate time in the meeting. To ask a question, you will need to click Ask a Question within the online meeting platform, select the item of business, type in your question, and click Submit. Before we formally begin, I am attending this meeting from Sydney in Australia. I would like to introduce you to my fellow board members. Fiona Oliver and Stewart Sherriff are attending from Auckland in New Zealand. Nick Luckock and Managing Director Gary Miles are attending from the U.K., and Darc Rasmussen, who is attending from Palau in the Pacific.
Details of the background and experience of all directors is contained in the annual report and on the website. We will hear about the background of Darc Rasmussen, who is standing for re-election as a director during the formal business of the meeting. In addition, from the executive management team, we have our Chief Financial Officer, John Priggen, who is attending from the U.K. Also with us today are Grant Taylor from our auditors, Ernst & Young, and Toby Sharp from our solicitors, Bell Gully. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our auditors and lawyers for the work they have done for Gentrack. The company secretary has confirmed to me that the notice of meeting has been sent to shareholders and other persons entitled to receive it. The company's constitution prescribes a quorum requirement of three shareholders having the right to vote at this meeting.
This requirement has been met. I am pleased to formally declare the meeting open. Details of proxy voting are now available on the screen. I'd like to thank shareholders for their participation in today's meeting. My fellow directors and I, other than Gary Miles in respect to resolution one, due to his interest in that resolution, intend to vote all discretionary proxies we have received in favor of the resolutions as set out in the notice of meeting. The financial statements for the 12-month period to 30th of September 2022, together with the auditor's report, are set out in the company's annual report. The annual report was made available on Gentrack's website in December. Let's move on to the agenda. The order of events for this morning's meeting will be as follows.
I will give a short chair's address and I'll hand over to Gary Miles, who will give a CEO's address. We'll conduct the formal business of the meeting, which includes the resolutions of the meeting. Under general business, take questions and answers. Voting on all resolutions will be conducted by way of a poll. You'll be able to ask questions online through the virtual meeting website. I encourage shareholders who are attending online to send their questions through as soon as possible. I'll move to the first agenda item, my chair's address. The fiscal year 2022 has been a successful year for Gentrack. We won several new customers and are successfully expanding into larger customers in line with our strategy. Our people's pride and engagement is strong and continues to improve. This helps us deliver great results across our customer programs.
The group's strong revenue results were driven by a 21.6% increase in the utilities business to NZD 108.2 million. This impressive growth was achieved against a backdrop of UK insolvencies at the start of the year in the B2C energy market. Our underlying growth excluding those insolvencies was 24.3%. Veovo's annual recurring revenue continued to grow. It was up 9.2% over financial year 2021. It underpinned total revenue growth at Veovo of 7.9%, coming to NZD 18.1 million in total. EBITDA performance for the group was NZD 8.1 million- NZD 4.6 million lower than in financial 2021 after funding our planned increase in strategic R&D spend, alongside growing our sales and marketing base and investment in our people capability.
Our cash position improved against the backdrop of business growth, which allows us to both invest in our products and our people and generate cash in the year. Net cash at NZD 27.4 million on the 30th of September 2022 was NZD 1.4 million higher than the prior year. Financial year 2022 has reinforced Gentrack's increasing win rate and its innovation with its existing customers. We secured 6 new logos in our utilities business, including Mercury, now New Zealand's largest energy supplier, who chose to integrate their newly acquired Trustpower business onto the Gentrack platform. We see growth opportunities in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK across both the water and the energy sectors. Looking forward, we plan to expand beyond these core geographies and have launched our 50 in 15 program.
The first big step towards global leadership is striving to service 50 million meter points across 15 different countries. During the year, we secured a major new customer in Singapore, which is an example of the progress we are making in growing our pipeline in the wider APAC region. Alongside Asia, we will focus on expanding out into Europe, Middle East, and Africa from our U.K. base. Turning to our Veovo business, it's consistently grown its recurring revenue across the aviation downturn, winning new work with Norway's Avinor, as well as expanding our scope within a number of tier one airports. This reinforces our success in selling to and servicing the larger airports and airport groups, which are our key growth target. In September 2022, we launched our new composable cloud-based technology stack, g2.0.
This is a key milestone for our utilities business and brings together three technology leaders, Gentrack, together with Salesforce and Amazon Web Services. This will allow our existing customers the opportunity to benefit from greater flexibility and innovation, and positions us well to win and service new tier one and tier two operators. At Veovo, our investments in our technology during the pandemic are showing positive signs in both new customer pipeline and upsells of our existing customers. Both water and energy are essential services which should be less impacted in the event of a global economic downturn. Meanwhile, sustainability targets for energy and water are still in effect. Excuse me. As I was saying, both water and energy are essential services which should be less impacted in the event of a global economic downturn.
Meanwhile, sustainability targets for energy and water are still in effect and are driving an increasingly accelerating trend of IT and business transformations, which will benefit Gentrack. The UK government has taken corrective action to stabilize the UK B2C energy market. We've not seen any further customer insolvencies since December 2021, and we expect that this market stabilization will continue in the coming year. The government completed the sale of Bulb in December 2022, which had been in special administration. Gary will talk a little bit more about what's going on in the UK in a bit. During fiscal year 2023, we'll continue to support the administration of Bulb as we manage the exit of customers from our platform. The aviation sector is now seeing passenger numbers and travel demand returning.
We see signs that this recovery will result in new business as airports seek to invest in ways to improve efficiency and service and catch up with the pent-up IT demand that's there for modernization. We're pleased with the progress we've made in the year on sales, on delivering customer transformations, and on building our people capability and modernizing our underlying technology base. The water, energy, and airport industries are in need of transformation, and Gentrack is well positioned to capture the global market opportunity. In closing, I'd like to thank all of our customers and our shareholders for their continuing support for Gentrack, and to recognize the significant achievements of the whole Gentrack team in driving the renewal of the business over the past year. Thank you for your attention to my chair's address. We'll now move on to the CEO's address by Gary Miles.
Gary, over to you.
Thank you, Andy. It's good to be here. Let's move into the presentation. If you go to the financial headlines slide, please. On the financial headlines, as Andy mentioned, we had a growth year of 19.5% growth. As he mentioned also, had we not had the insolvencies in the UK, it would've been closer to 25% growth. We do believe the insolvency problem in the B2C market in the UK is predominantly behind us, maybe completely behind us. The government's taking major steps to secure this, some of the weaker players have been brushed out or pushed out of the market. I'm not gonna go through all the slides here.
These slides and the full presentation for this truncated version is available on our website from our annual results that we provided last November. On the EBITDA side, as we mentioned, we did have a small decline in EBITDA. This was purposeful. We invested in our people, and we launched our g2 system, which was a major investment for us and a major milestone, as Andy mentioned, in the company. Finally, the cash. This is a cash generative business. I think we do a good job delivering projects, invoicing our customers and collecting cash. It's a sign that we have a well-run shop, and we feel good about the continued cash state and the state of the balance sheet. If we move to the next slide. I've been in the chair.
My tenure now is moving into its third year. The first two years were really about putting in a strong foundation around the 35 years that we've been in business. We needed to shape some things up. I think we very effectively did that. I actually think, you know, it took us two years. It might have happened a little bit faster if we hadn't had some turbulence in the UK, but that's, you know, makes it, makes the job interesting. We invest a lot in our people. We grew our people base. We brought in a lot of new talent. I like to think of the company as being kind of an experienced startup. A lot of very, very experienced people. We have 5,000 person years of utilities experience in this business, which is a lot.
We know a lot about the industry in which we focus. We, you know, we grew the business, as I mentioned. We've always been a good delivery company. The last two years, we really honed this blade very effectively, and we have a reputation for being, I think the best in the industry at delivering major transformations on time and on budget. This is something that will serve us well in our future growth strategies. We launched our g2 stack, which is composable, cloud-native, modern architecture that's gonna be great for our existing customers, and it's resonating well with our pipeline that's continuing to grow on the marketplace. Some of, I've got here a few excerpts from some PRs that we...
This is a subset of press releases that we put out recently. Andy talked about some of them, the Mercury win to consolidate off of SAP onto our stack in New Zealand with the Trustpower acquisition. This is now the largest energy supplier in New Zealand. npower and E.ON came together and migrated off of a very old legacy system and a SAP system onto a consolidated platform. npower in the UK is the largest power company by volume, energy company by volume in the UK. We had several other wins along the way, Andy mentioned some of them. Most importantly, we have happy customers that are referenceable, and we're doing more and more with them, which is that together with the new wins has continued to fuel our growth. We had some important partner announcements.
We lean heavily into the AWS technology and relationship. They are the global cloud leader, and, you know, as a leader, we like to position ourselves close to partners like that. We integrated Salesforce into our g2 stack. It is a state-of-the-art CRM to go attack the incumbents of this space and to dislodge them with new, modern, innovative technology, so with Salesforce inside. This trilogy stack, as we call it, between us, Salesforce and AWS, as a very viable solution for future energy and water companies, is resonating well with the market. If we go to the next phase. We had the first two years of stabilizing. We've announced in November that we're going global. I think we're doing it in a measured but ambitious state.
How are we gonna make our numbers that we forecasted the business? First of all, we have new business that we want in all of our core markets, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. We need to implement these booked wins. We plan to upsell g2 to our install base. This is an amazing opportunity for our customers and for our top line. As Andy mentioned, we are targeting tier ones and tier twos. We're fit for purpose for their scale, and we like the size of those projects. They're very complex, and we like the complexity. We're using Singapore as our Asia base. We have an office there now, and we're using the UK for our EMEA base.
These are our two target areas, and we've strengthened India a lot as a center to help deliver and develop our technologies, and we'll continue to lean into this more and more, this center. To go up, unseat the incumbents, the likes of SAP and Oracle, we plan to do this together with our partners. We're excited about it. It's a growth opportunity and a growth story. To look at some of the highlights on the financials, if we could go to the next slide. Two years ago, excuse me, I need to touch base on the Veovo business also. The Veovo business, I just wanna remind the shareholders, is an important part of our business. It was a Rule of 40 company or division before the pandemic.
The pandemic obviously had a major impact on air traffic, travel and airports' revenues. The industry went into a bit of a hibernation phase for a two-year period. We did not follow suit. We continued to invest in our technology to modernize it. We held the top line relatively well, very well compared to the industry. We actually grew AR during the period. We were confident during the period that the industry would need strong players to help it rebound out of the pandemic. There was a move to digitize airports prior to the pandemic. It started in about 2018 and was picking up momentum.
It was shelved during the pandemic, and now we're seeing this kind of pent-up demand start to open up in the form of new tenders and sizable tenders that are coming in. We're bullish about the Veovo business. We actually put some forward forecasts for the Veovo business also as a standalone to show that we're confident in its in its scale and capability to add to the overall Gentrack Group. I think there's three main growth drivers here. One is growth in our core markets for utilities. The second one is our global expansion, initially into Asia and EMEA. The third one is the return to traffic in the airports industry. If we go to the next slide, you can see. Now, I'm not gonna get into all the numbers on the slide.
Once again, this full presentation is on our website. You can see that we had some initial targets that we put out less than two years ago for FY 2024 of NZD 130 million in sales. We came out in November, and we retargeted this number up to NZD 150 million. We have good visibility on this number, and we're confident about it. Then forward growth past that as some of the drag on growth comes out from the Bulb business and other transactions in the U.K. as those systems unwind. We also had some new news today. I'm going to read the news that just recently, most recently came out, which is more good news, I think, about our ability to execute and under a lot of circumstances.
I'm gonna read the guidance that was updated this morning. In FY 2023, we now expect to earn NZD 25 million from managing the exit of a major U.K. customer, which is NZD 12 million more than we had previously guided. This additional revenue and the associated EBITDA benefit is expected to be a one-off increase and will be recognized substantially in the first half of the year. In line with our previous guidance, we do not expect significant revenue from this customer beyond the current financial year. Our guidance for FY 2024 of revenue of approximately NZD 150 million and EBITDA margin of 12%-17% remains unchanged.
In closing, I would like to, on the back of that, good news, I would like to say that we are confident about our position, and we're actually sitting here with increasing confidence as we continue to execute against our plans. If you believe in software and AR businesses and growth opportunities, as we see Gartner saying that 20% of the utilities on the planet should choose a new billing system by 2026, it's a major growth opportunity, and you believe in clean technology to help make the planet a more sustainable place, then you're in the right shareholders' meeting, and we'd like to have you on our register, and we're working hard to continue to bring value to all of our stakeholders. Thank you. Andy, back to you.
Thank you very much, Gary. Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the formal part of the business, matters requiring resolution. These are outlined in the notice of meeting. You may ask questions on each matter being put to the shareholders through the virtual meeting website. Moving to the resolutions, I propose to call a poll on each of them. As I mentioned, shareholders will be able to cast their vote using the electronic voting card received when online registration is validated. To vote, you will need to click Get the Voting Card within the online meeting platform. You'll be asked to enter your shareholder or proxy number to validate. Please then mark your voting card in the way you wish to vote by clicking For, Against, or Abstain on the voting card.
Once you have made your selection, please click Submit Vote on the bottom of the card to lodge your vote. Please refer to the virtual meeting online guide, or you can ring the help lines, which are 0800 200 220 if you're in New Zealand, or +64 99 67 7751 if you're outside New Zealand. Voting will remain open until five minutes after the conclusion of the meeting. Results of the vote will then be announced via the stock exchanges. Each resolution set out in the notice of meeting is considered as an ordinary resolution, as such must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote and voting on the resolution. The outcome of proxy votes will be displayed for your information on the slide for each of the resolutions. Let's turn to resolution one.
This is amendment to the terms of the Chief Executive Officer's performance rights. Resolution 1 concerns the amendment to the terms of the Chief Executive Officer's performance rights, which were approved by shareholders originally at the 2021 annual meeting. The performance rights approved in 2021 aligned with other executives. This year, the Gentrack board has decided to change the basis of performance hurdles for Gentrack's long-term incentive plan for senior executives from an EPS compound annual growth rate to a share price appreciation. The board's view is a share price appreciation basis better aligns with Gentrack's strategic investment strategy, provides clearer performance targets, and is directly linked to shareholder value. As a result, achieves better alignment with the interests of Gentrack and its shareholders through a clearly measurable incentive for management to increase shareholder returns.
It's now proposed that the terms of ongoing performance rights to be issued to Mr. Miles be amended such that the performance hurdles are also changed from an EPS compound annual growth rate basis to a share price appreciation basis. This will ensure that the performance hurdles in Mr. Miles' incentive arrangements continue to be consistent with those of the other senior executives, in line with the reasons for the changing of the senior management performance hurdles. Details of the proposed resolution are outlined in the notes of meeting. I now propose that for the purposes of NZX Listing Rule 4.2.4, the terms of the remaining performance rights to be issued to Gary Miles be amended in accordance with the terms and conditions as set out in the notes of meeting. Are there any questions for the board concerning the motions from shareholders in attendance online?
There are no questions on this matter from shareholders joining online.
Okay, thank you very much. Please now therefore select either for, against, or abstain for resolution 1 on the voting card. Thank you. Appointment of auditors and authorization to fix auditors remuneration is resolution two. Resolution two concerns the remuneration of Gentrack's auditor. The Companies Act 1993 provides that Ernst & Young continue in office as auditor. However, a resolution is required in respect of their remuneration. Details of the proposed resolution are outlined in the notes of meeting. I now propose that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration of Ernst & Young as auditor for the ensuing year. Are there any questions for the board concerning the motion from shareholders in attendance online?
There are no questions on this matter from shareholders joining online.
Thank you. Please now select either for, against, or abstain for resolution two on the voting card. Let's move on to resolution three, which is the re-election of Darc Rasmussen as Director. Darc Rasmussen joined the board as a Non-Executive Director in December 2019. He retires by rotation and offers himself for re-election this year. Darc's credentials are set out in the notes of meeting. I now invite Darc to address the meeting on his proposed election.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us at the Gentrack annual shareholders meeting. I am Darc Rasmussen. I have been a member of the board for the past three years. I joined as part of a process to refresh the board and restructure management with a view to help turn around the company and realize its full market potential. The board, with your approval, appointed a new Chairman, Andy Green, and recruited a new CEO, Gary Miles. The board worked with Gary to recruit a new, experienced, and highly professional management team to take the company forward. Gary came to the company with all the right experience in understanding how to build highly competitive, future-proof solutions and a proven track record of growing technology companies across global markets.
He and his team laid out an aggressive transformation plan that they have been executing against very successfully over the past couple of years. The company has performed well against this plan, and we continue to expect to meet all our defined targets. It's an honor and a professional pleasure to be a member of the Gentrack board, working with the other board members and our highly effective management. I have had the good fortune to have led and participated in a number of highly successful transformations and high-growth companies. When I look at Gentrack, I see all the indicators that it will be successful in realizing its full potential.
I thank you, the shareholders, for the confidence and support that you have given the board so far. I hope that today you will support my re-election as a member of the board and give me the opportunity to continue to contribute to the growing success of Gentrack. Thank you very much. Thank you, Darc. The board has determined that Darc Rasmussen is an independent director for the purposes of the NZX listing rules. The board unanimously supports the re-election of Darc. I now propose that Darc be re-elected as a director of Gentrack Group Limited. Are there any questions for the board concerning the motion from shareholders in attendance online?
There are no questions on this matter from shareholders joining online.
Thank you. Please now select either for, against, or abstain for resolution three on the voting card. That concludes the formal part of the meeting. You should now submit your votes. Voting will be open until five minutes past the close of the meeting. Results of the poll will be announced on the stock exchanges after the conclusion of the meeting. I would now like to give shareholders the opportunity to ask questions, whether related to the presentations, the financial statements or the management of the company. You can continue to provide questions online, and we've also addressed questions already submitted. If we run short of time and are unable to answer your question online today, we will endeavor to respond to you after the meeting. Can we turn over to any questions we've received, please?
We have received questions from shareholders online. The first question is from Bruce Sparks, the question is, what proportion of your existing Veovo customer base has upgraded to Airport 4 technology?
Great, Bruce. Thank you for that question. Gary, over to you, please, on that one.
Right. Airport four technology is pretty new technology, so a small portion is upgraded to this. This is our SaaS version. The upgrade plan for the rest of the customer base looks positive. As I mentioned, the new tenders that we're seeing line up with the tech that we've been developing. We see this as a growth opportunity. At this point, it's a small percentage.
Thank you. Looking at the screen reminds me I should introduce John Priggen who's our CFO, sitting there next to Gary. Next question, please.
The second question is from Bruce Sparks, and the question is, what is the current status of CA+? Is it an active CGU?
I'm afraid I don't follow that question. Gary, do you?
No.
I mean, I've sort of.
Could you-
I think.
Go for it, John.
Yeah. I mean, the CA+ business, I think originated in Malta itself.
The Malta.
Isn't an active part of the business anymore.
Thank you. If you want further clarification, do submit the question again with a bit more detail on what you're looking for. Next question, please.
Third question is from Bruce Sparks. The question is, other than lots of glossy photographs and some unspecific statement on page 18 of the annual report, it is difficult to understand where the company is on its ESG journey. You have the luxury of not being required to report under the TCFD requirements until September 2024. Identifying scope two and three emissions might be quite a challenge. Have you considered preparing draft disclosure this year so you are better prepared for mandatory reporting in 2024?
The board is very actively looking at this. John, maybe you'd like to just update where we are on progress on, where we're trying to head to for next year's annual report.
I mean, essentially, the answer is a yes to the question. Whilst the disclosures are mandatory for this financial year, we're looking to use this year's annual report as a dry run to sort of conform to some of those disclosures.
Thank you. There's a very high commitment, both across the company, and of course, a lot of what we're doing in helping utilities modernize is intended to support them as they transform their businesses to a greener approach. We're looking forward to that work.
I mean.
Next question, please.
If it's okay, If you're okay, I'll maybe add some things here there.
Yeah, please.
We think the reporting against goals is helpful and important. We're pretty keen to put our money where our mouth is here. We have three very specific programs around the environment and CSR in general. One is around water and the planet and cleaner water. That's our kind of a CSR initiative. Another one is setting targets for ourselves and our own green footprint. The third one is what we call our multiplier effect, is what technology we can develop. Like, we now have a project that we're rolling out in one of our core markets around virtual power plants and taking houses off the grid. What technologies can we develop to make the world a greener place and to make water a safer, cleaner environment?
we take this very, very seriously, and quite frankly, we're You know, I think the reporting aspects are important, but how you act in your day-to-day business is most important, and that's what we're putting our focus around.
Thank you. Next question, please.
There are no further questions.
Very good. Thank you for the questions, and thank you very much for your attendance today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance at Gentrack's annual meeting. We're announcing the results of the formal business of the meeting to the stock exchanges later today. I now declare the meeting closed.