Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Thanks. Everyone.

We'll get started. It's just gone 1:00.

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, depending on what state you're in. David Riches, Managing Director of GenusPlus Group, and we've got Damian Wright, CFO, online as well.

This morning, this afternoon, we're here to present the half-year results for GenusPlus Group. Look forward to going through.

Obviously, if anyone's got any questions, you can either hold to the end or jump in if you require. An absolutely fantastic result.

We had a really strong half at Genus. $535 million of of revenue, $46.3 million of EBITDA, $24.9 million NPAT.

We held up the—we converted a heap of work to the orderbook, and we've held up the tendered pipeline. Cash of $178 million, and we've announced an interim dividend of 2 cents.

If we just pause there for a moment, and those that have been on the journey with us for for a period of time now, obviously, the business has really changed over the last few years, and it's just super exciting times. Take my hat off to all of the Genus management team, a very strong half, and and likewise thank the support of the shareholders that have been with us on the journey.

Some of the some of the highlights through that through that half: obviously, we won an extremely large job in our home ground with Western Power, and we managed to back on another $110 million worth of revenue to that job. The Alinta Wagerup project was a fantastic opportunity for our Energy & Engineering business.

FMG decarbonisation contract, we're seeing some of our miners work towards the decarbonisation that the rest of Australia is working towards. An outstanding effort with Genus ACCIONA JV to secure the Western Renewables Link at $1.6 billion.

Some of the highlights on the corporate side: we've executed a $429 million syndicated facility. We we appointed a new director on the board, Tony.

I welcome Tony to the Genus family. Our acquisitions integration continues.

Obviously, we've done a number of acquisitions over the years, and we feel very comfortable on integrating them into the group and going well with the ones we did over the last year to 18 months. The snapshot of the segments, for those sort of newer to the call: Genus is a one-stop shop for anything in the energy market, anything from a service item right up to a $1.6 billion transmission line or infrastructure asset.

As said before, $535 million for the group. I honestly couldn't be prouder here today.

We're seeing all three segments really, really go well. Still some room for improvement, I don't think everything's a perfect day.

We'll get to them as we go through the segments later. Still a very, very strong outcome.

Infrastructure at $345 million for the half, Energy & Engineering another outstanding performance at $151 million, and our Services business, that we're really trying to not forget about those lower-end services and stuff that'll back up our larger projects. The outlook, it's a pretty important page.

As we we had a massive conversion of of work last six months ago, and we've been able to continue to convert that work to orderbook. We've actually continued to grow our tendered pipeline as well.

We used to talk about some of the opportunities in the area, but it became quite a large number of opportunities that's out there for Genus, and we'll look more to that in the in the look-aheads for the segments. There is an absolute wide range of opportunities.

We get to see some of our work sometimes very early at Genus as a part of an asset that's getting built or or or a farm that's getting built or a connection that's that's going to happen to the grid. There's a range of opportunities, but these are the most important metrics, which is orderbook and tendered pipeline.

With not forgetting our our recurring works or our more service-y type works, that continues to grow as well. I think the main standout here is to, a tendered pipeline of another $2.6 billion is a fantastic result.

We're seeing we we are seeing significant opportunities through the group in the transition to the energy into the new energy world, and we're certainly not taking our eyes off M&A opportunities and we'll continue to bring them to market as we as they as they arise. I'll let everyone read the charts obviously through their own presentations, but, just pausing for a minute to see that continuous growth throughout the business, and and taking a step back to to realise, we had to invest in the business many years ago to build the systems to be able to do what we're doing today.

We did that. We've we've obviously paused and and reflected to our system many times over the years and made sure it's strong enough, and I think you we're we're seeing the results of that as we continue to grow without hiccup.

It's a true testament to the executive team at Genus to build those systems and keep them launching into the future. Financial overview: so record revenue, obviously, for the half up 60% on the PCP.

Record EBITDA at $46.3 million. Record statutory NPAT at $24.9 million.

Our normalisations in there is acquisition and legal costs, acquisition legal and advisory costs as per normal as we continue to look for M&A opportunities. We had to close out some old claims in one of our our acquisitions from years gone by of ECM.

That's in there. Our acquisition amortisation is $1.1 million, and a strong EPS position.

The financial position: a strong cash at $178 million, net cash $127 million, $22 million in in in restricted term deposits. Our franking credits are are very healthy, but the standout is really, this new facility we've put in place giving us $278 million of headroom at December for growth.

Obviously, there is a range of opportunities, and, we've had several meetings all together where, we've lifted our pre-contracts team, some time back now to try and, really leverage into the into one the Energy & Engineering space and the transmission space. To have that type of headroom obviously is very comfortable for us to grow.

A fully franked dividend, interim dividend of 2 cents will be paid. The cash flow: so we generated $91 million in cash, operating cash flows.

Conversion rate was 199%. Our capex, we spent $34 million to date.

We are managing our capex as as responsibly and strictly as we can. With the influx of these larger projects and wanting to own the key assets on that project, we are we need to we need to invest for those projects.

Some of our key equipment you wouldn't be able to hire anyway, we we do need to buy it. We are managing that capex and want to manage that through to a $40-$45 million for the year, just depending on on how the second half goes.

We'll continue to manage capex. We understand as a business, but at the same time, we do need to feed these larger projects, or we won't be there at the start line.

We'll drop into the segments now, and and have a bit of a look at the have a look at the the, the future and and maybe talk to some of these segments. Our Infrastructure segment, which for those that are new, obviously builds a range of activities from very small powerlines to very big ones, substations, and and and anything in that, and now moving into the rail sector to see if we can push on our skill sets in the rail sector.

Revenue of $345 million. The EBIT followed down at 54% growth.

That's a 5.2% EBIT. That's similar to where we were in the last half.

We we do believe that's sort of, obviously with the larger projects coming in, we're just being responsible on how we how we recognise the revenue on those on those projects. It's we think it's it's there, and we and we've got some margin improvement to do, but I also want to be responsible and and make sure we look at these large projects.

Obviously, we've told everyone we want to get 5% EBIT out of those projects or better. We will continue to strive for that.

We have a range of other work in Infrastructure that that will work closer to our sort of, we try and aim at Genus between 4% and 8% EBIT. I think you will see, certainly I'm not not expecting that margin to come down.

It's sort of flattened out there, and we've got everyone's expectations in line with with a far bigger business. I think it's a fantastic result, and we are continuing to look at these bigger projects as they come in alongside the smaller, more typical projects we've done over the last 10 to 20 years.

HumeLink is fully fully underway now. The last activity to start is stringing, but, all other activities are up and running.

We are building HumeLink. It is a live project.

It's we're spending time, we've got a management team on site. We're going well.

ACCIONA is our JV partner. There's a lot of effort going into HumeLink.

Far, it's a it's a great job. We are we we're getting on with it, we're doing it, and we're going to build it.

We have no issues at this point in time with HumeLink or our JV relationship or any of those things. We'll continue to strive to a to the outcome.

At this stage, there's 18 months, 18-20 months to go, we'll just continue to build that. TasNetworks ECI, which we spoke about over the last 12 months, that'll wrap up over this next half, and we look towards the start date for TasNetworks.

This is a massive opportunity for Genus Infrastructure. It's, a fantastic client down there at TasNetworks in Tasmania.

It's a it's a job we've built plenty of times before at Genus. It's it's right in our sweet spot.

We're we're really looking forward to getting that job started in this half, we're hoping, and we will and start to see the revenue come through from TasNetworks over the into next year, over the coming three or four years. Hunter Central Coast, another major project.

Early works was done, there was some early works done at the end of last year, but construction's started now, and we're underway at Hunter Central Coast. We'll see that revenue come through over the next two years.

Western Power clean energy, that was already a massive project for us, and we backed in another $110 million. That's it's it's become a very significant opportunity in our home patch for Western Power.

MGC rail integration continues to go well with Infrastructure. The plan, obviously, for those that can picture what we build every day of the week, we build powerlines down the road, we build substations, we build, pit and pipe electrical, overhead electrical.

That that all sits in the range of utility power work. It's no different in the rail, there there's there's there's a raft of opportunities in substations and and lines and overhead lines and and service and maintenance in rail, and that's really where we want to see is how we can use our skill sets from all of the things we've learned over the years and and pivot that into into the rail work.

We we actually it's a it's a it's a perfect acquisition. We've been working with the founders of MGC, or I have, and yeah, it's going really well, and and we've we're very like-minded.

I think stay tuned on that. That'll be a good growth area over the next couple of years for Infrastructure.

If we if we take a, take a step back, maybe change page, Damian, but if we look at, we all sit here with our Infrastructure business on the market drivers and we look at the, Rewiring the Nation, and and it is a fantastic opportunity, but there's just so many other opportunities in this area as well if we look at the connections, the end-of-life assets, just maintenance work on transmission, and we're really starting to see that over-east revenue from transmission start to come through now with HumeLink starting to put some meaningful revenue into the last six months and and some smaller transmission opportunities that we've started over that six months as well. We're seeing that smaller business-as-usual type work and that HumeLink work, but we're not seeing 20 of those projects yet.

There's still a a long way to go from a revenue point of view on our over on our over-east expansion in transmission. They those opportunities are going to come from from not just Rewiring the Nation, that every asset needs to be connected to the grid, and whilst you're connecting to the grid, there may be changes to the grid, there may be update upgrades to the grid, and there may be end-of-life assets that need to be fixed on the grid as well.

If we take a step back from that, we we can't forget about our mining and private customers that still need need us to do their connections. Taking a further step back from that, our distribution arm, like we are still very, very strong in distribution, and that was the the the forefront of the of the of the national expansion for Genus five or 10 years ago is, we expanded in the distribution market and we continue to find new opportunities in the distribution market similar to the transmission market, which is that's really, in the in the streets and working with the utilities, keeping the lights on.

Then if we look at that, a bit more holistically again, we really we we know we've we we certainly have a huge substation presence in in Western Australia. We've we've always got, four or five substations on, on the go or starting in Western Australia at times.

We really haven't seen any meaningful revenue out of the substation market in the east as well. Some really I suppose you've got some old stuff in Infrastructure that continues to grow, we've got some new stuff that's starting to grow now, and we've got to, we've got to make sure we do a good job at that, and there's still some room for new business, with where we can take a skill set from the west or even likewise now we might be able to take a skill set from the east and put it back in the west.

I just think there's a there's a long way to go with Infrastructure, and they're and they're already looking at new areas such as rail as well on top of that. That's my my update on on the market drivers for Infrastructure.

Energy & Engineering: so, this has been a a fantastic business unit for us or segment for us. It all started with a with a $1.7 million acquisition of ECM.

That's where we started, and this is where we are today. You can see the bottom point, the electrical and instrument instrumentation work that came through from ECM, we haven't forgotten about that.

We're actually starting to to grow that. Revenue of $151 million, EBITDA of $10.9 million, a great result out of Energy & Engineering.

Over the last couple of years, we've really been able to to balance this business out with the acquisition of CommTel and Partum. It's now adding in a lot of engineering revenue alongside our construction revenue, it's a really well-balanced business.

Meanwhile, the Partum and CommTel skill sets allow Genus, anywhere in Genus, but mainly in Energy & Engineering, to to fully life-cycle their project and own the project and be that Tier 1, the the principal contractor on site, which was what our aim always was. We saw some conversions of of projects in that six months with Wagerup and Atmos, they're continuing to win work.

A few years probably 18 months to two years ago now we lifted the pre-contracts team, and we probably always had one or two projects in the middle and one starting, one finishing. We're trying to lift that up to sort of five projects going at once, and we're we're continuing to work to that strategy.

The the electrical and instrumentation part of the business, like there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of oomph in the market out there around, such assets as data centres, etc., which is a very, the skill set of our of our E&I business can can do that, and we're looking at opportunities around those those types of opportunities as well as, your solar and your BESS and your substations that we build in and around those assets. Another big driver, we really want to see a wind opportunity come in here, this Energy & Engineering with with, this slide gives you a look at some of the percentages of of green energy in the states.

We really want to add in that whole piece, like if this segment's going to become a full, power, asset business that can build any any any asset that's converting something to power. We put some notes here along the side of this page, which really tells the story on how we've become that principal contractor, through using the market growth, having strong partnerships, and proven execution.

The Services segment, probably more of our newer segment and started with just Comms for those that a bit newer to the call. We know we we bought a We had a very small Comms piece, and then we bought another Comms piece, which was a a an a business out of admin called Tandem, which we rebuilt and and looked at opportunities around that Comms piece.

From there, we we moved our asset management part of the business into this segment and and added on vegetation over the last 12 months. An absolute This this business, it was a loss-making segment for us when we first started if you take yourself back two or three years.

An outstanding effort. It's got a bit of a more modest growth to this business, but it's a services business.

It's long-term contracts. It's really, really it's a it's a very, very strong contracting play, and that's what we want this business to be.

We want all the long-term, 10-year type type contracts if we can get them, certainly three- and five-year contracts, in this part of the business. We've been working at building a like we did with Energy & Engineering a few years ago, building the foundations of of getting this business to a size where its foundations are strong, it's ready for either to win that large, multi-year contract because there is that's that's what they've chosen to do and that's the opportunity, or likewise M&A.

Both of them, you need a strong foundation, and that's what we've been doing. True credit to that is we've seen a lot of growth through the PFA business over the years, and we've been able to maintain healthy margins.

Our Telstra and NBN relationships continue to to be strong, and now stepping into some multi-year vegetation management contracts. Where to next for Services?

We we could put up the charts of the total spend of Comms and the total spend of asset management and vegetation, but, realistically, these are our three service areas at the moment. On the right-hand side of the page is, why aren't we looking at some of these areas?

We need to take our skill sets or add on new skill sets and take them into these areas on the right-hand side of the page, which are very close to what we're already doing, or we're already doing them—e.g., mining, for example. We're already doing a lot of work for mining.

Why can't we leverage that service piece into there? Everyone knows the size of the pie with the defence work, we are, we'll continue to monitor opportunities there.

Facility management, once that that's where the really long-term contracts come. Water: water is, how can we not take, this is a we do a range of asset management for our power utilities.

We need to move that into those water utilities. Social social infrastructure as well, which is, like roads and and public transport and things like that.

Again, how do we take our our our asset management business and grow it in these areas, or vegetation management? Obviously, telecommunications is a massive piece.

I certainly don't believe telecommunications is finished yet. I was away on the long weekend in in with my family on in on Australia Day, and and you go to a small town and you can't even download a a very simple page off the internet.

Obviously, we've still got a long way to go in my opinion with with remote telecommunications or towns, and that's where we want to be as a partner to NBN and Telstra to roll that work out. Other metrics, and certainly some very, very important stuff on this page, it may be towards the back of the presentation, but our injury our injury our injury statistics are at 3.5.

We have an aim to be under 3, and we're going to keep striving that. Without safety, we are nothing.

Make that clear. I can speak for half an hour prior to this, on all the good things and all the opportunities in front of us, but getting our people home at night safe, or getting them home the same as condition they came to work is by far the most important for us, and also making those people feel comfortable that the safe systems of work does have does, as experience.

We've got 20 years of of experience, not quite 20 years at at in PL Powerlines Plus and through to Genus, of actual real-life experience that goes into our safety systems, and we're not going to stop investing on that so that it's ready for the growth as we go. Sustainability and ESG: we will need to follow the Corps Act and the requirements around that moving forward, and we've we've we've got the right consultants and we've done a lot of homework on that, we're well in front of the curve and ready for that.

Our apprentice and trainees: we we are working hard here. We have seen some some growth in it, but not as much as we want.

This is a key focus area. We need to train more people.

We did do a massive overseas drive over the last couple of years. That has worked very well, and we welcome all those people into our family.

We we also need to continue striving to train local people and local young people. We we want to continue to put effort into this, and hopefully we see the outcome of more effort over the next couple of years.

Talking back to those systems and and, the hard work that got put in over the last 10 years to see to see the people now nearly 2,000 people and us handling it and and not under pressure is because we've done the work in the past. That sort of wraps it up, everybody.

I'm I'm happy to take some questions from there if there's any online.

I'll jump in with a couple of questions, David. Congrats on a good result, and thanks for taking my questions.

Just firstly, if we look at the tendered pipeline, it's good to see that it's grown versus the FY 2025 balance. Just keen to get some colour on the mix there.

How's the pipeline for BESS work, transmission work? Are you seeing a concentration of the tendered pipeline towards some of the larger-scale projects?

Just also keen to get your views on other markets like mining infrastructure as well.

Yeah. No, we're not seeing it.

It moves around a little bit from time to time, but no, the panels in the Services business probably sit more either in that recurring work or are new, to speak, lesser in the Services space and when it comes to tendered. Certainly, I think on a size, Infrastructure's two-thirds, let's say, and one-third to Energy & Engineering, we would normally see that be similar to that, and we can lift our pre-contracts teams and BD teams if we need to push that a bit harder if we wanted to, or likewise we can sort of hang back a little bit if we're getting very, very busy.

I haven't seen that materially change in a couple of years now. The amount of inrush is still there and still very live.

We are trying to partner with some key people in Energy & Engineering. Because you do a fair bit of early work in that, you're going to go and have a look at a big BESS project, you'll do some ECI work.

We are working with those key partners to see how long their journey is as well, and that might give us some more colour to that question. We are certainly asking those questions.

It's still very, very busy, in my opinion, and I'm not sure how to put that in a spreadsheet, but it's very, very busy.

Great. That's great colour.

Maybe just looking at the guidance, 35% EBITDA growth. I know North West Transmission Development has a fair chunk of ECI in FY 2026, but if we kind of strip that out, is there any assumptions around the major construction work that kind of flows into FY 2026, or is that more commencing in FY 2027 and contributing to that outlook?

No, it doesn't need to be here essentially is the answer to that question. It's more '27, but these projects are getting a fair bit keener today to get started from probably where we were two years ago when there's a lot of environmental constraints and things that need to be signed off.

We're seeing that free up a bit, to be honest. I think it has a chance to potentially start, I won't write it out for now, but I don't essentially need it either to look at that budget.

Understood. Just maybe lastly, if we look at the Services segment, you've now delivered two reporting periods, consecutive reporting periods with EBITDA margins in the teens.

How should we think about the EBITDA margin going forward, maybe in the short to medium term? Should we be thinking there's a floor in the teens, or potentially even grow from here?

I think we are achieving fantastic percentage results, I'd probably, if I was working on your side of certain things, I'd hold where you are at the moment. I think that we've enjoyed that margin conversion, for those that have been around a couple of seasons, you know what I'm talking about.

We've really converted that, and it came out stronger, I could see that it could do that because I knew some parts of the business were doing it early on, but it's done it probably more holistically than I pictured. A very strong result.

The idea now will be to try and hold and grow that revenue line now, a bit the same as what we've done with the other two businesses in the years gone by, or the other two segments.

Great. Thank you.

Any other questions or queries?

I might jump back on with another question if there are none. Maybe just on the M&A pipeline, how's that looking?

I know you've been a bit quiet for the last six months versus FY 2025. The cash balance is up.

Are you thinking more aggressively on acquisitions? Are there any advanced opportunities that you're entertaining?

We're certainly very keen. M&A and organic growth has worked for us now for three or four years.

We've had both, and we've been able to handle both. From a bench strength point of view, we are well and truly capable of doing some M&A activity.

We probably have lifted that size a little bit throughout this year, where you've seen us typically do some smaller acquisitions. Not to say they won't still flow from time to time.

There might be a geographical footprint we want to own or someone in the market a bit smaller is retiring, etc., right? Let's always keep that door open for a smaller piece of the pie, which makes sense for Genus.

We've lifted that size. We spent a lot of time last year just having a look at how big could we go, how small should we go, should we go left, should we go right, and where are our key focus areas around where we want to do M&A.

We have a plan on that, and we've got to execute that plan. We're going to be as responsible, disciplined as we can here, right?

When Genus says it wants to do something, it normally does. That's the business we are.

I suspect stay tuned, and we'll continue to update the market. We certainly are keen to see if we can bolt some M&A in at the right time.

Any other questions? We wrapped it up a bit early.

Maybe I went a bit too quick, everyone. Sorry.

You'll all get a bit of time back in your day. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining.

We look forward to seeing some of you over the next six months. If not, we'll see you at the next presentation.

Thanks, everyone.