Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the VivoPower International PLC fiscal 2021 full year earnings conference call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kevin Chin, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome everybody to our earnings result call. I'm going to start on page two of the presentation. In a nutshell, it's been an unusual year. We've had results impacted by COVID lockdowns, but we've also delivered some transformational milestones which have really transformed the growth trajectory of the company. Group revenues were down 16%. That compares to $48 million for the previous year. As I mentioned, that's driven by COVID-19 related lockdowns, which caused operational disruption and project delays in our Australian business. That figure includes a $1.4 million contribution from Tembo for the eight months that we owned that business since acquiring it back in November 2020. That's slightly below where we expected it to be, again, based on border closures that impacted deliveries to Australia. Gross profit declined as well by 11% due to the fall in revenue.
This was partially offset by some margin improvements. Gross margins increased from 14.7% to 15.6%. As a result of some efficiency gains, we were able to eke out a Critical Power Services in Australia. Our overheads increased deliberately due to investments that we made in people systems, IT equipment, in particular for underpinning growth OpEx to support hyperscaling. That includes $1.9 million invested directly into Tembo, and that's principally the recruitment of hardware, software, and embedded engineers. There was $1.1 million of non-cash share remuneration that was shared amongst the team. EBITDA declined due to principally the increase in overheads, our underlying EBITDA fell to $1.4 million versus $3.9 million profits in the prior year. To clarify, that's a loss of $1.4 million. We also incurred just under $3 million of non-recurring charges that primarily related to final litigation costs pertaining to the former CEO.
That figure also includes some transaction expenses relating to the purchase of Tembo. Of note, our balance sheet was significantly improved versus this time last fiscal year. That was principally because of $32 million in net proceeds raised from equity issuance through an F-1 and through an ATM facility as well. Our cash balance at the end of the fiscal year rose to $8.6 million from $2.8 million. In terms of where we've invested the rest of the monies that were raised, $7.1 million was invested to purchase Tembo. We invested a further $5 million, just under $5 million, in terms of growth OpEx, as previously mentioned. $6 million is obviously attributable to the cash increase. We reduced net debt by $9 million, or rather, debt by $9 million. $3 million went to non-recurring costs, and $2 million went to other costs, as well as interest.
The Tembo acquisition obviously has delivered a transformational change to the business. Pleased to report that we're tracking ahead of schedule as far as where we thought we would be, particularly with respect to global distribution partnership agreements that have been cemented, and commitments for almost 5,000 electric vehicle conversion kits to date. We've also signed a binding LOI with Toyota Australia, which was announced in June. We continued to make investments in engineering, assembly, and production capabilities, and will continue to further invest in R&D going forward as well. We also achieved a major milestone in terms of our Sustainable Energy Solution strategy. We signed our first full suite SES feasibility study, which we are confident will lead into contracted projects, and that's with a leading English Premier League football club, Tottenham Hotspur, in relation to both their training grounds as well as their stadium in North London.
We also gained full ownership of the remaining 50% equity interest in the U.S. solar joint venture for nominal consideration. I'll unpack further in terms of a new strategy that we are rolling out for that division. Moving on to the next page. This is a quick snapshot of the 12 months that was. This time last year, we were navigating a very uncertain environment, with COVID lockdowns and a very difficult path forward as far as our cash position was concerned. Obviously, that's been transformed. We've really pivoted from hyper turnaround mode to hyper scale mode now. Going forward, this is all about driving the Tembo business as well as the broader SES business for us. On the next slide, this sets out the key objectives that we communicated this time last year and put ourselves to account for.
I'm pleased to report that we delivered near flawless execution. Credit to the team here. We completed 16 out of the 18 objectives that we had set for ourselves. The only misses were securing new strategic development partners for our longer-dated sites in the U.S., and we didn't quite complete the digital transformation solutions that we wanted to roll out to optimize data analytics. I think someone may need to go on mute if possible. Thank you. Just got some background noise. On the next slide, this is the board and leadership team. We beefed up the board, as well as added to the leadership bench. We recruited Jos van der Linden as MD of Tembo in the Netherlands. We hired Gary Challinor in Australia, Director of Sustainable Energy Solutions, and we also recruited James Howe-Richardson as our General Counsel.
Joining us on the board was Gemma Godfrey during the year. We've also assembled an advisory council that has a very good mix of automotive, hardware, software, renewable energy, and digital transformation capabilities. Moving on to the next slide. This is the profit and loss summary for the year. Unpacking further on the numbers I presented before. As mentioned, group revenue is down to $40.4 million. Better than what we had expected given what we had to contend with in Australia. Nonetheless, we're not happy about that result. Gross profit was down as well. EBITDA, -$1.4 million versus $3.9 million in the prior year. That translated into group loss after tax versus statutory of $8 million versus $5 million in the previous year. Statutory EPS of -$0.49 versus -$0.38 in the prior year.
I won't go through the next two slides, which go into some depth in terms of reconciling underlying EBITDA to IFRS, as well as EPS to IFRS. I can handle any questions in the Q&A section if anyone's got queries on those. Moving on to the balance sheet. Net assets increased to north of $40 million versus $17.9 million this time last year. Total assets increased, largely reflecting the increase in fair value attributable to the U.S. solar portfolio, for which we acquired the remaining 50% for a very nominal consideration. In addition, as I mentioned before, net debt has been reduced by just under $9 million to $14.5 million, and that is principally with the largest shareholder, AWN, in Australia. Importantly, we were also to remedy the net current asset deficiency that we had last year.
That's now in positive territory and we've got a healthy cash balance as well. I'm going to go through the individual business units and talk about the outlook for FY 2022. Starting first on page 10 with Critical Power Services. That business has had to contend again with a number of delayed projects due to new lockdowns that have been introduced in Australia over the last month. We nonetheless do still expect them to be completed over the course of FY 2022. The state of the union in Australia is that the government there has said that they will stop lockdowns once vaccination rates hit 70% and potentially look to open international borders on a staged basis once vaccinations hit 80%. At the current rate of vaccination, the expectation is that 70% will be achieved sometime in October, and 80% will be achieved sometime in early November.
Based on these dates, we do expect a strong rebound for the Critical Power Services business from October onwards. There's been no diminution in terms of the tailwinds that underpin that business. There continues to be strong infrastructure spends that we expect will further increase to bolster the economy, both at a federal and a state level. Of course, we've got a resurgent mining sector where across a number of base minerals, base commodities rather, prices are at all-time highs, including iron ore. There is a growing contracted head of works that reflect these tailwinds for the Aevitas businesses, particularly for J.A. Martin, which, prior to the latest lockdowns, was sitting on its record ever heads of works for that business.
We'll continue to focus on leveraging the critical power capabilities to support and integrate into our broader SES strategy, and that we expect will yield some further revenue upside opportunities in time. Moving on to Tembo on page 11. In terms of FY 2022, we're very focused on delivery of orders to key markets, especially Australia. This will obviously be influenced by the supply chain and border dynamics that everyone knows about. As we emerge from lockdowns, particularly in Australia, we expect that will help to unlock supply chain blockages as well. We do expect to also see an escalation in demand from the mining and other off-road sectors that we plan to manage through the introduction of a build slot program. Managing that demand is going to be a key tension versus the supply chain obstacles that we'll need to overcome.
In addition to that, we'll continue to focus on further R&D to be undertaken in the Netherlands and the U.K., as well as Australia, to further enhance the product offering that Tembo has. Moving on to the next slide, Sustainable Energy Solutions. We will continue to focus our SES efforts on the mining and infrastructure, including sports infrastructure sectors globally. We know for a fact that decarbonization is an increasing focus of the mining industry, where 89% of executives expect sites to electrify within two decades. 61% believe next generation mines will be all electric, 83% think renewables will drastically change mining operations. We know this firsthand from being a member of what's called the Electric Mine Consortium in Australia, where we are in constant dialogue with the mining companies and the industry more generally. We expect to deliver the first SES projects with Tottenham Hotspur.
Obviously, a high-profile company, that will stand us in good stead in terms of developing further pipeline in terms of SES customers. Moving on to page 13. We've called this Vivo Solar on this deck. We announced just after rele asing this that we have changed the name of this entity to Caret Solar. Caret Solar will be focused on what's called Power-to-X applications. Power-to-X, in simple terms, means the use of excess renewable energy over and above baseload power for other energy-intensive applications. The highest profile of this at the moment is crypto mining, where we're seeing an increasing appetite from crypto mining groups to vertically integrate their operations to include the renewable generation plants.
Given the exodus of crypto mining groups out of China, in particular, there is very strong demand that we're seeing for renewable plants across the U.S. and rest of the world. Another area where we expect to see increasing demand is from the green hydrogen sector. A very energy-intensive industry that wants to be green. This will be especially the case if the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in the United States is passed, given the attractive incentives in the bill for green hydrogen developers and producers. We believe the Power-to-X potential of Caret projects, which are located in Texas and New Mexico, in areas with relatively low solar project penetration. We expect that there will continue to be strategic interest in that portfolio from various Power-to-X players. That being said, solar development in isolation is no longer our core activity.
We're very much focused on our core Sustainable Energy Solutions. Our intention is to reinvest any proceeds generated from any potential monetization of Caret projects into our core SES strategy. Turning to the last slide. These are our objectives that we're going to hold ourselves accountable to for FY 2022. The theme is to accelerate execution across all growth vectors. First one is to expand on our SES pipeline and delivery capabilities. We want to complete the Tottenham Hotspur projects. We want to further build out our engineering and sales teams to grow the SES pipeline. We want to look at enhancing our capabilities through acquisitions and joint ventures. Second one, we want to grow the Aevitas business unit to support SES.
First amongst that is to complete all scheduled works, include delayed projects, further expand the collaboration between the SES team as well as the Tembo team to further accelerate growth for Aevitas itself. We're also completing a strategic review of M&A and joint venture opportunities that could enhance growth further. Next one is to deliver on Tembo orders on schedule and on budget. As I mentioned before, we want to complete a build slot strategy to enable just-in-time assembly. We want to execute to the necessary timelines to deliver on orders and deepen our collaboration with distribution partners to accelerate delivery of conversions. We're also focused on advancing the ELV product design. Supply and quality initiatives are also front of mind.
That includes completing the engineering and mass production model for ELVs, expanding the supply chain network for key components to de-risk that, increasing R&D to improve hardware, software, and data capture to OEM standards. Next one is to cement our partnerships with TMCA, which is Toyota Motor Corporation Australia, as well as global distributors. We mentioned in June in our press release that we've been looking to work on an MSA or a Master Services Agreement with Toyota. We have a strategy to also grow our global distribution network to all continents by the end of this calendar year. In doing so, we want to secure an additional 5,000 ELV kits globally, which will bring us to just under 10,000. Last but not least, we want to execute on corporate initiatives to support growth.
As I mentioned before, this includes maximizing value of our U.S. solar portfolio, Caret Solar, via strategic initiatives. We want to complete the digital transformation and workflow automation across the group, which will really underpin accelerated scale-up. Importantly, we also want to retain our focus on B Corp impact and the triple bottom line mantra that we subscribe to. Thank you for listening in to our FY 2021 full year results presentation. I'll open it up to questions at this juncture.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Again, that is star then one to ask a question. I am showing no phone questions at this time. Pardon me, speakers, we have no questions in the queue at this time.
Okay, we bring the meeting to a close.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.