Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2026 half year results for Origin Energy. It's Frank Calabria here and I'm joined by my executive leadership team.

I'll provide a brief overview of the performance and outlook, Tony Lucas will also provide an overview of the financial results, and we'll follow that with questions and answers. You may already be aware, but you'll see that we've got additional detail included in the appendices.

Then turning to the highlights, I think the overall message for Origin in this half is a half year results that have been solid, allowing an upgrade to the full year guidance for Energy Markets. Our retail performance continued to strengthen, grid scale batteries added further portfolio flexibility, gas production was steady, and we continued to maintain cost management discipline.

Turning to the summary of the financial results, overall we've got EBITDA of $860 million for Energy Markets, which is higher than expected with continued strong operational performance. Integrated Gas also had an EBITDA of $860 million, which was in line with expectations for APLNG and LNG trading.

Octopus recorded an EBITDA loss of $89 million for the half, reflecting seasonality in their earnings, UK regulatory costs, they've invested in smart tariffs to grow connected customers, and they continue to invest in the scaling of their non-UK retail and energy services businesses. Turning to the business highlights, operational performance across the portfolio has been strong.

We grew our customer base by 96,000, we reduced our cost to serve by $32 million, we brought the Eraring battery stage 1 online and it's generating revenue since December, and it was delivered on time and on budget. Supernode 1 is in commissioning in January and we've been earning revenue on that battery as well.

All other battery developments remain on track. Through the half we committed a further $80 million to expand Eraring stage 2 battery, which will now be nearly 6 hours of storage.

As you probably all know, we've announced that the Eraring Power Station operations have been extended to April 2029, and during the period we continue to progress the Golden Beach gas storage project and have committed a further $25 million to that project. As announced in late December, Kraken announced its first standalone equity raise at a look-through valuation of US$8.65 billion, alongside a major licensing agreement that increased contracted accounts to the Kraken platform to 90 million, and they now have doubled their contracted annual recurring revenue in the last 18 months.

Octopus continued its rapid growth, it added 1.2 million customer accounts in the half, with 0.8 million, 800,000 of those accounts growing outside of the UK. The board determined a 30 cents fully franked interim dividend, which is really supported by our strong cash flow and balance sheet strength.

Now turning to the financial highlights, statutory profit for the half was $557 million, the underlying profit was 5 $593 million. The underlying EBITDA was $1,589 million that you can see there, with higher than expected Energy Markets earnings offset by the lower Integrated Gas earnings, as I say which was in line with expectations, and also a lower contribution from Octopus Energy.

Good to see our adjusted free cash flow lifting, it's up $187 million to $705 million. The balance sheet continues to be strength, reflected by a net debt to adjusted underlying EBITDA of 2 times, and as I said we've declared a 30 cents interim dividend fully franked.

Turning to our purpose, which we continue to make sure we focus on getting energy right for our customers, communities, and planet. Just very briefly during the half, what we've achieved: $23 million spent on customer hardship, lifted our customer happiness to 71%, we've expanded use of AI to improve customer experience and outcomes, we've launched new battery products, and we continue to be one of the largest east coast gas suppliers through APLNG.

For communities, we spent $232 million with regional suppliers, $14.4 million with First Nations suppliers, we committed a further 1. we committed $1.5 million of the $5 million Eraring community investment fund in the period, and through our foundation made contributions of $2.1 million and pleasingly 3,500 employee hours as we continue to contribute to the community more broadly.

When it comes to the planet, we received very strong support for our second Climate Transition Action Plan with a 94.67% vote, and the Eraring Power Station extension is not expected to impact our climate targets or ambitions. As I said, the Eraring battery is online for stage 1 and we've continued to grow that through stage 2.

We now have over 30 MW of community batteries under operation and we continue to progress the pre-FID activities for our 1.5 GW Yanco Delta project. Looking to the next slide, Origin strategy remains to lead the energy transition through cleaner energy and customer solutions, and we do that with a clear focus of continuing to deliver reliable and affordable energy along the way.

To achieve that, we've established differentiated assets and capabilities that we continue to build upon, and you can see that ranges from customer, energy supply, energy resource, Octopus, and Kraken. That turns us to our investment proposition, which combines two things: a leading Australian energy businesses with strong cash flows that are being generated and fully franked dividends and continuing to enable us to invest in the transition, and in addition to that we have a significant global growth potential through these businesses, Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies.

Energy Markets benefits from a leading brand, advanced technology platforms, advantaged assets, and cost position, and there are lots of opportunities for growth across customers, products, renewables, and storage that we remain very firmly focused on executing. Through APLNG, we have very low cost of supply, we have very strong reserves and exciting exploration opportunities, and our reserves are well beyond the export contracts we have today, a very long runway and valuable asset.

Our dividend yield is 5.3%, and that is before you take into account the franking benefit. Turning to Octopus and Kraken, Octopus is now the largest UK energy retailer, and it's scaling both in the non-UK markets and also in energy services, and that brand, which is very strong in the UK, is now building itself in more than one market.

In Kraken Technologies, we have a global technology platform that's growing rapidly and has a significant addressable market ahead of it. I'll now hand over to Tony Lucas and he will take you through the financial results.

Thank you, Frank. Tony Lucas here, CFO of Origin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. I'll spend a few minutes with you digging a little deeper into the segment results, as well as our cash and balance sheet positions.

Today's result reflects three consistent themes: the strength of our diverse portfolio, our disciplined approach to capital management, and our continued delivery of sustainable returns for our shareholders. Starting with EBITDA, group earnings were supported by stronger than expected performance in Energy Markets and an Integrated Gas contribution that was in line with expectations.

In Energy Markets, our strong and diverse portfolio resulted in a 17% increase in EBITDA. Electricity was higher, reflecting the lagged flow-through of higher wholesale pricing into retail customer tariffs, combined with lower green scheme costs and solar feed-in costs.

Gas was lower on the prior period, this reflected lower trading volumes and some legacy contracts rolling off. Importantly, we continue to expect full year gas earnings to be moderately higher than FY25 as both sale and purchase contracts reprice in the second half.

Pleasingly, reduction in cost to serve continued with ongoing Kraken benefits, and we remain on track to deliver the midpoint of our cost out targets. As we continue to grow the customer base, bring additional grid scale batteries online, progress the Yanco Delta development, the business remains very well-positioned to deliver through the energy transition.

Turning to the Integrated Gas business, contribution was in line with expectations with lower realized prices and volumes at APLNG and lower LNG trading gains. Realized prices in APLNG reflected softer oil and spot LNG markets, and also the impact of the Sinopec price review, which was effective 1 January 2025.

APLNG continues to focus on field optimization activities, including improved production forecasting, which informs low cost drilling opportunities. APLNG remains a world-class asset and a significant contributor to the east coast gas market, with 22% of sales volumes delivered to domestic customers.

Turning to Octopus Energy, Kraken revenue growth continued. However, EBITDA was lower, this was due to investment in accelerated client delivery and growth opportunities, as well as a change in the capitalization policy for technology development costs.

The contribution from the UK retail business was lower due to investment in smart tariffs to grow flex customers and the expansion of the UK government's Warm Home Discount scheme, where we expect some recovery in FY27 of those costs. Octopus continues to invest in its non-UK expansion and in its scaling of its energy services business.

With continued customer growth across the UK and non-UK markets and the global expansion of Kraken, Origin's investment in both Octopus and Kraken continue to build substantial long-term value for our shareholders. Moving on to cash, we delivered a strong cash generation in this period.

Energy Markets cash conversion was above 100% and fully franked dividends from APLNG of $542 million. Capex reduced $400 million in the period, this reflected the fact that we've passed the peak of our spend on the battery growth projects.

Tax paid was $500 million lower due to a higher balancing payment last year for the FY24 tax return. That was a function of the higher earnings and partially franked APLNG dividends in that return.

Also worth noting, we expect a net tax refund in the second half, and that should result in tax paid of around $160 million for FY26. Our two strong businesses continue to generate the cash required to deliver our strategy execution and shareholder returns.

Now focusing on the balance sheet, we saw a small reduction in adjusted net debt to $4.59 billion. This reflected strong operating cash flows and APLNG distributions, largely offset by the capex and dividend.

We're currently the bottom end of our 2 to 3 times target range of adjusted net debt to adjusted underlying EBITDA. As we deliver the battery programs, we expect to move further into the target range over FY26 and FY27, noting a lease liability be recognized in relation to the tolled batteries as they come online.

Overall, the balance sheet remains strong and flexible. Finally, capital allocation.

The board has determined to pay a steady fully franked dividend of 30 cents per share, reflecting continued balance sheet strength and the cash generation from two strong businesses. As Frank mentioned, this represents a 5.3% dividend yield before franking benefits, and is consistent with our policy to deliver sustainable distributions to shareholders through the business cycle.

When I reflect on this result, what stands out to me is that we're consistently delivering what we said we would, we're investing selectively and thoughtfully, we remain disciplined, and we're keeping the business well-positioned to deliver for shareholders and customers through the energy transition. I'll hand back to Frank now to delve deeper into underlying business drivers.

Thanks very much, Tony. Now we'll turn to business performance, which drops into a little bit more detail based on the summary you've just heard from Tony and I before.

Turning firstly to Energy Markets, we continue to track in line with our medium-term targets there. Our electricity earnings were above the $25 to $40/MWh target range that we've set for the half.

We expect to be above that range also for the full year 2026. In 2027, we'll benefit from the ramp-up of batteries coming online, but we're also seeing some lower wholesale electricity prices in recent times, so that has an offsetting impact.

For gas earnings, they remain in line with budget at $3 to $4/GJ, and we are on track to deliver the $100 to $150 million cost savings in FY26 or by FY26. That's driven by a range of things: good deployment of technology, organizational improvements, efficiency more broadly.

What we are seeing even throughout that, despite the fact that we've achieved such a good cost reduction, is that with the non-repeat of the energy bill relief, we've got some higher bad and doubtful debts that have come through this period of time. Then turning to customer, the momentum remains very strong.

We've now had more than 10 consecutive halves of customer growth. We increased customers by 96,000 in this half, it does include a 52,000 customer accounts from the Energy Locals acquisition, and in February we also completed a further acquisition of First Energy, which will add an additional 80,000 customers to what you see on that chart.

We have an unrivaled brand, we've got the number one community energy services or embedded networks business with 484,000 customers, and we've grown the internet on a compound annual growth rate by 30 37% over the last 3 years, and that continues to grow. We're a market leader in churn and a continued improvement in customer experience, including the introduction of new propositions.

We have leading tech and product, and AI continues to scale, particularly for our customer business, and you can see there in terms of messages sent, but in voice we've now serving over 100,000 customers, up from 25,000 customers. We've grown digital interactions to our customers for up to 80% from 75%, and our market-leading virtual power plant has continued to grow.

Turning to energy supply, the generation performance has been strong. We've talked about bringing the Eraring stage 1 battery online, and you can see good early performance as shown on that left-hand chart.

More broadly for generation performance, we've had high reliability for the gas peaking and hydro fleet. We've contracted the coal for the 2026 for the financial it's largely fully contracted and that's at prices lower than the prior financial year.

For Eraring, we generated 6.4 TWh in the half, and an availability of 72.26%, which is measured after both planned and unplanned outages. On the right-hand side, our investments in storage are on track, they're both on time and on budget.

It's a 1.7 GW or 6.3 GWh program underway, and once again we are confirming our target post-tax returns of between 8% and 11%, with the front end of those asset lives at the upper end. APLNG revenue declined due to lower realized LNG prices, I'm now on slide 16, primarily reflecting oil price movements and also a contribution to that by the Sinopec price review.

Our costs remain stabled at $4.30/GJ compared to the second half of FY25. We've got higher optimization activity, we've completed key infrastructure projects and exploration through that half, and then that's been offset by reduced power costs and some lower non-operated development, but good to see we're holding that discipline of $4.30 that we gave guidance to the market last time we issued results.

Slide 17 takes us into a little bit more depth around that production optimization and mid-term supply options. Production of 339 PJ for the half is on track to deliver 645 to 680 PJ guidance for the full financial year.

It really is a story of continued field optimization and us progressing our mid-term supply options. When we talk field optimization activity, we're really talking about well availability, which is good to see that it's grown to 95% over the last year, that's driven by increased workovers, deployment of artificial lift systems, formation stabilization, and we're now performing the majority of our major workovers being performed live, which has a production benefit.

We've also completed several gathering lines. A very extensive program being executed by the team there.

At the same time, in terms of mid-term supply options, they include additional processing capacity in the western asset, and we're also awaiting EPBC and other approvals to drill further wells in the eastern asset, most notably the Ironbark program. Over the last 12 months, production forecasting has continued to improve, and that's giving more and more confidence and information for us to be choosing the right opportunities to be drilled and the right optimization activity to be carried out.

Just dropping into exploration, and certainly made reference before, but we're providing further information on that, and in particular the advancing exploration opportunities in the Taroom Trough, where APLNG holds a large tenure footprint across both our operated and non-operated holdings, and most of those are near our existing gas infrastructure. To date, our activity has been concentrated along that shallow eastern margins of the trough, with the initial exploration wells delivering encouraging gas flows, and three additional pilot wells have been drilled and are to be fracture stimulated with production testing to commence this calendar year.

We've got a bit of activity underway there. In separate or other exploration activity, we've successfully fracture stimulated and completed the horizontal CSG wells in the Peat, which is the first in Queensland, another achievement there.

Very excited by our exploration opportunities and the activity we have underway. Now turning to Kraken and Octopus Energy, I did talk about the fact that these transactions at the commencement of the presentation.

The net outcome of those is that Origin maintains or retains a 22.7% economic interest in Kraken and Octopus Energy. By the way, there will be an investor day with the CEO of Kraken on the 28th of April in Sydney, which is good and gives an opportunity for investors to get a much deeper dive into that business as well.

Those series of transactions are summarized on the right-hand side, and I did go through those before. Key highlights: Kraken did its first standalone raise at US$1 billion, it's a valuation of US$8.65 billion.

Origin will invest A$210 million as part of that and get 1.5% in exchange for releasing exclusivity to the Kraken platform in energy in Australia. The major licensing agreement's another step along the way, gives line of sight to those 100 million accounts.

Give a bit of guidance as to where that US$1 billion raise funds will be deployed: 150 retained in Kraken, 850 retained in Octopus. Octopus Capital and other investors have injected a further 320 million funding in Octopus Energy, and that will also support future growth and other requirements.

I just provided the slide 20 just to give some context that you can see just really what's happened over time for this investment, and as much to identify also the investors that have come along at various points on the journey. I think it's been a very deliberate strategy to introduce investors with key capabilities that benefit the organization over time, and you can see they're very credible, and also to highlight what we've committed, which is A$1.4 billion over the journey.

Now turning to Octopus Energy's results on slide 21, they grew UK customer accounts by 400,000, they now have 14.5 million UK customer accounts, they capture 35% of switches, churn's 40% below peers, and the customer base is high quality and they have much better than market collection performance. As we highlighted before, they've invested in smart tariffs to really grow that flex customers and further customer lifetime value.

On international, they've grown that customer account base by 28%, so that's up by 800,000, they have now 3.5 million accounts in those markets. They continue to be deliberate about the choices where they invest for the growth in those markets, and they make those decisions pretty actively.

You can see there are emerging scale benefits, and we give an example there about direct acquisitions that are occurring in Italy and Spain. Germany is also, I think notably, reached 1 million customer accounts.

For energy services, they're increasing cross-sell, increasing scale, and they've improved efficiencies since the start of the year, which has contributed to a halving of the energy services investment compared to the prior comparable half period, and good to see the progress there. Turning to Kraken, Kraken continues to scale.

That competitive advantage that they have with the software platform, track record in migrations is very strong. The revenue growth matches this completion of those migrations, therefore it's not always linear.

There has been a margin impact this year by lower capitalization of development costs as the customers move into the operations phase. We've sort of guided what's really happened over the last 3 years to give you a sense for the EBITDA margin, which has been 40% over the last 3-plus years.

Continuing to invest in future growth for Kraken, that's a delivery capacity, that's capabilities including AI talent. It is really an enterprise-grade platform that's very well set up, and therefore, it's a very strong proprietary system with deep integrations and regulatory compliance, so that's hard earned and therefore puts them in a very strong position as they continue to benefit from coding technologies to accelerate product development.

The introduction of very knowledgeable investors like D1 Capital at that last raise is also good to see as we bring public crossover investors onto the register. Strong sales momentum, we're at 90 million accounts and well on our way to the 100, and I've talked about that major licensing agreement before.

Just now turning to guidance, which I'm sure you're all waiting for. Pleasingly, Energy Markets EBITDA guidance has been upgraded to $1.55 billion to $1.75 billion range, and that is up from the previous guidance range of $1.4 to $1.7 billion.

LNG trading and Octopus guidance remains unchanged. The group capex is expected to be between $900 and $1.1 billion.

We updated APLNG production guidance when we released our quarterly, and that is now 645 to 680 PJ. APLNG capex and opex guidance remains unchanged.

We've provided now APLNG cash distributions, which is what come to Origin, of between $700 and $950 million. The appendix has got further commentary on guidance for all of your information.

In closing, we still have a strong belief that we're very well-positioned for the transition with advantaged assets and capabilities. We've got strong cash flows and returns from two diversified businesses in Energy Markets and Integrated Gas, and we've got global growth exposure and value upside through Kraken and Octopus, continued balance sheet strength at 2 times debt to EBITDA, and been able to declare a stable, fully franked dividend, which is delivering 5.3% yield to shareholders before you take into account the franking benefit.

On that note, we are very happy to now hand over to questions.

Morning Frank, Tony, and the broader team. Just in Energy Markets, electricity GP margins at over 40 bucks a megawatt-hour over the half are clearly a long way ahead of your through-the-cycle margin guidance.

Looking into FY27, the result calls out new battery earnings and lower coal costs being a tailwind, but partly offset by weaker wholesale prices. Can you please refresh us on an indicative range with incremental EBITDA in FY27 from batteries, and also comment on the extent to which your electricity portfolio is hedged into FY27 just to help us understand how much of a down driver weaker wholesale prices might be, as you see them currently?

Sure. You've hopefully peeled away, we're obviously not giving guidance today, but you are picking up correctly and we'll take these in turn.

We've got a battery and coal tailwinds. We've certainly been setting ourselves up for '27.

The key variable that's playing itself out now is the way wholesale prices will flow through to the default market offer. You're right, you've got all of those playing out.

I'll give a overall view on the coal, I'll ask Tony then to give a little bit more depth on the battery, and we can give you a bit of the drivers around that. You've got the key drivers there.

In terms of coal, we've certainly well on our way to contracting coal, and well progressed, and that's looking at prices to be below a cost below what we've contracted in '26, and '26 was below '25. We've still got to actually complete the contracting of that coal over time, but that's where we're tracking at the moment.

On batteries, you're right, we'll see an uplift in the battery earnings. Tony, did you want to just add anything further to that in terms of we do give some information where COD is occurring, but there will be uplift?

We would expect uplift obviously into FY27 from a full year contribution from those batteries. We haven't guided specifically on what that EBITDA is, but you should sort of take that range that we give, that IRR range, and can sort of back-solve what that might be.

Coal costs we are seeing lower than where we've contracted this fin year. Then probably sort of offsetting that is, or not offsetting it entirely, but sort of a headwind as you've called out really is we would expect that the lower forward prices to make their way into lower mass market DMO tariffs, and potentially see an eye rates as we contract that book.

In terms of where we sit in that GP range, we originally put that out there as a target range once we'd got through sort of our five to a 3 to 5 GW build-out in renewables over the short-term renewables and storage, and it was to reflect the retirement of Eraring. We have called out we sit above that or near the top end of that when we've got Eraring in and those investments coming online.

Without guiding '27, I'd expect to be the top of that range.

Yeah. Tom, just the last comment, you made a comment about using the term hedging, and certainly the wholesale team have been active and I'd say even proactive early on in terms of what we do in respect of '27.

If that's the reference you're making, certainly we've been pleased to be able to work actively on that and well in advance. The one thing that is yet to play out, as is just how wholesale prices and the DMO flow in, and then what flows from that in terms of the retail book.

That's probably the key variable that'll play itself out over the coming months.

Great, thanks Frank, thanks Tony. Follow-up question, the interim dividend at 30 cents per share fully franked I think is the first time since half year '22 that Origin hasn't lifted the interim dividend year-on-year.

Just in the context of having upgraded guidance in both Energy Markets and APLNG, leverage at the bottom end of your target range, can you comment on whether we should interpret this as a hint of the potential for an incremental capital commitment over the coming period of scale, perhaps at Golden Beach given you've spent more there, or Yanco Delta, or potentially within APLNG?

Thanks, Tom. We've probably gone through a period where we were obviously paying no dividend for a while, and so increasing the dividend through the period.

When we look forward, we've got oil prices probably, potentially a bit lower, they're holding up in the high 60s at the moment. We've got the tail end of the capex on the battery program, and then we've got the sort of the impact, albeit not a cash impact, of the change in the accounting methodology for the battery.

We sort of see gearing in that range that we've indicated, we'll get through the rest of the capex spend, we'll see what other opportunities are there, see where oil sort of settles. We feel sort of comfortable at where we're setting the dividend at this time.

Tom, we'll continue to actively manage capital between the opportunities before us and returns to shareholders, and we will continue to review that based on what Tony's just talked about.

Thanks for that. You've been clear that the capital framework seeks to deliver a sustainable dividend, is this a sign that recognizing the volatility in oil markets that you've called out, coming to the end of the battery capex, is this at that sustainable level now or there's still capacity to pay out more?

It's sort of I don't want to forecast where dividends might go, but the way you should think about it is when gearing was particularly low, sort of sub-2 times, you could absorb sort of economic cycle and commodity cycle impacts a lot easier and increase the dividend. I think we would be sort of challenged that we're under-geared at that level.

In the 2 to 3 times we feel that's the appropriate gearing given the commodities prices that we're exposed to, we don't sort of look at necessarily a progressive dividend, but as those business cycles started to improve cash flows, that could be a potential opportunity, but we'll balance that against what options we've got in front of us equally.

Thanks, Tony and Frank, for your responses, that all makes sense.

Thanks, Tom.

Morning, team. Thanks for the update.

Might start on APLNG, the Taroom Trough's getting a lot of focus at the moment. I remember years ago we had some oil shows coming out from deeper intervals in Condabri, but with this exploration program planned, could you share a bit more detail on what potential resource volume you're looking at and what the success criteria might be to inform potential developments, whether it's a flow rate or other metrics?

Okay. Andrew, do you want to pick that up?

Thanks, Henry. As Frank called out earlier, the the main purpose of this update was to say, firstly, we've restarted our exploration program after a number of years of very low activity, and secondly, we have a very large position, I think the largest position of acreage and tenure in across the Taroom Trough, which runs pretty much north to south along our along our tenure from both an operated and non-operated perspective.

We drilled a well in in the Condabri Deeps a few years ago and it was it it performed pretty strongly, but we didn't get to frack it all the way down, post the deeper than the coals. What we've done this year is we've gone in and drilled an additional three pilot wells.

We've done that now, that's telling us that and, that's telling us that the reservoir is consistent with what we thought, well logs are supportable, everything looks good, but we have to critically go back in and frack it, and that'll tell us ultimately the deliverability and the true potential of the play. That's going to happen sometime mid-year.

Really, we we agree with the with the thinking and the commentary that, the Taroom Trough's a potentially very significant play, but it is still early stage and there's a number of tech technical and economic uncertainties to be resolved. I think all that says is, post post the well test after the frack in the middle of the year, we'll know a lot more and, there's a pretty good opportunity for us because, as Frank mentioned, that the the acreage that we have is right near our existing processing facilities, and in particular in in Condabri there we we have ullage that we could connect into the these wells into pretty quickly if it if it goes well.

Thanks, Andrew. Second one, sticking to Integrated Gas, called out the ongoing investment into Golden Beach here.

Could you just share a bit of detail on what agreements already in place there and potential timing for the developments, any costs that Origin would need to support, either on-balance sheet or off-balance sheet through contracting?

The sort of disclosed there how much we've put into the project to date and we've committed another $25 million. The project is making good progress.

As far as timing, and it'll be likely that we'll participate both as an offtaker and an investor of some kind moving forward. A couple of things to be timing, we'll take FID when, as you'd expect, once we've de-risked the project from a regulatory, procurement, and commercial perspective.

There's still a fair bit of work to go on that front before we sort of want to put out a view on timing of an FID and operations. Ultimately, it'll be a billion-dollar-plus project if it goes ahead, but it's not intended that Origin will be the majority of the equity or anything like that, and so we'll need to bring in partners, and so we'll have choices ultimately into how much we want to invest at the time when we get our arms around the project and the economics.

That's great. Thanks, Andrew.

thank you very much, and thanks for the results presentations today. Just interested about battery returns and the comment that the front end of asset life is expected towards the upper end of your guided returns in 8 8% to 11% post-tax IRR.

What's the expected difference between front and tail end?

I'll get Tony to give his.

Thanks, Gordon. In the past we've guided that we think that we'll be at or even potentially above that target in the front end.

Then when we took FID on those projects, Gordon, if you remember, batteries sort of get their revenue from three components. Firstly, there's the cap price, secondly, the arbitrage spread during the day, and finally, ancillary services.

On that latter one, we would forecast that those ancillary service revenues fall through time as more of the kit, I guess, that comes into the market can offer those services. Equally, when we took FID on the projects, we wouldn't have banked necessarily that you shouldn't think that we banked necessarily that cap prices remained at the level they were when we took FID.

We expect, potentially sort of both of those, the cap return and also the cap premium and also the ancillary to fall through time. In some cases, when we run scenarios, it might be right at the sort of tail end of that range, equally we've got scenarios that don't fall as much as that, and we would say that they're more solid in the first 5, 7 years than they are in the tail end.

Thanks, Tony. Just one more from me, and this is not for you because it's a technical question, sorry.

On the Taroom Trough, when you're talking about drilling a horizontal well, can you give us an indication of what the length of those wells would be and the number of frack stages? Oh

yeah, thanks, Gordon. Andrew here.

No, they're verticals at the moment into Taroom Trough, you might be talking about we're doing a horizontal frack in Peat, but as far as the Condabri Deeps wells, yeah, they're going to be vertical frack wells. Still think it's competitively sensitive on frack stages, etc.

I will say that where we're drilling on the eastern flank, it's a bit shallower, which we see a bit shallower than the rest of the trough, and so we see that as an advantage obviously on well costs.

Sorry. Peat, what kind of well are you drilling then on Peat?

This is a deeper play and it's the first time, as we understand it, that the industry in the CSG industry in Queensland will have done a horizontal frack well. Clearly we've done lots of horizontals before, but this is the first frack well.

It's about a 1-kilometer lateral. In addition, probably the reason for calling it out the way we have is, in addition to potentially opening up the Peat acreage to a future development, it's actually a number of other areas that are quite deep and quite tight, and if we can prove that we can do horizontal fracks, it probably opens up some other areas like in Spring Gully that we haven't gone after at this point.

It's a test to see what we can do in horizontal fracks in Peat and beyond.

All right, thank you, Andrew.

Morning, team. Thank you.

Just a question on the Energy Markets, and if I look at the skew of the business first half, second half, I think last year it was 53%, 47%, and given you've upgraded the guidance in Feb for full year '26, how do you see that to be evolving for this year, please?

Sure. Thanks for the question.

In terms of split, we would probably I would expect more evenly weighted, perhaps sort of slightly maybe 1% or 2% higher in the first half at a total EBITDA level.

Right, okay. This includes the contribution from the Eraring, I think which is a benefit in second half.

More so, if you can speak to how you see the hedge book and how the wholesale price volatility, which was very low in the first half, but how do you see that to be evolving as well?

There's a couple of things I guess that if you remember sort of end of last year we had quite a lot of volatility in that second half, very late in the second half of the prior fin year, and so we're not necessarily forecasting that we get that sort of level of volatility, the book will be positioned particularly well for that if that was to occur with the peaking fleet. Really the electricity book's probably a little bit stronger first half, second half.

In terms of the gas is probably the key call-out. We would traditionally normally have a stronger first half in gas in a normal year.

What we've seen this year is just the roll-off of some trading contracts and the re-contracting and changing nature of the book. We've got a stronger second half than we have first half, so that's a probably a different weighting to what you normally would expect out of that gas book.

Right. Maybe just a question on Eraring, and you've made a decision to extend this until fiscal '29, and then at the same time you're saying you're not going to do any major maintenance from here.

Maybe if you can speak to how do you see all four units to be operational for the next few years, and any obligations from the government to keep the asset operational as part of your deal with the New South Wales?

Hello Amit, it's Greg Jarvis. Look, we're very confident about maintaining Eraring out to April '29, the Eraring Power Station is in good order.

We're very confident not doing any major outages. I think the important thing here is that with a changing market there'll be opportunities where we can take our units when there's low demand and high capacity and do proactive management.

By doing that will improve the reliability, pretty confident about extending these units out to April '29.

All right. Last question, if I can move to Kraken and formal separation, maybe useful to provide an update on the process from here and the potential pathways to unlock value for shareholders, particularly given the recent volatility in the equity markets in the tech space?

Yeah. Thanks, Amit.

Clearly what you can see has happened since we last reported to the market is that a series of transactions have been set up so that this business can separate, and it's now set up to be able to pursue independent paths for both businesses. That might include an IPO of Kraken, but we're not in a position to confirm anything on that today.

That's certainly a choice available to the investors. We obviously continue to be supportive of both of them, but clearly you can see that it's now on a path for both of those, and that's an active consideration.

You can see those steps of demonstrating action, but as to timing and final decision, I haven't got anything further to add today. The main focus is that it's ready to pursue whatever path we choose.

I think investors that have come in, it was very clear about the investor base we wanted to bring in on this transaction. D1's led that out, but there's a number of others, and so we feel we're well placed to have now a cap table that enables us to take several paths, and that's what the focus is right now.

Everyone is aware of what's happening in markets, but at the same time it wasn't that long ago that a bunch of knowledgeable investors came in and invested at 8.65 US, and so we still very, very focused on quite an exciting future for Kraken. Might be worth me just adding a couple of things about that because there's a lot happening in the tech space and it's difficult for us to comment on sentiment at a very granular level.

That look-through valuation is one, the pipeline that we can see for Kraken is another strong point, and the nature of what happens in utilities is we should never forget the fact that these are big decisions for utilities, and therefore the sort of proprietary nature, the non-public data, the domain logic, the integration, the regulatory compliance, and also the brand trust and delivery record are really quite important factors to be successful in this market. The proven platform, the fact that it was cloud-native, the fact that you can actually have that unified data set and you can therefore code and add more AI capability to it, and you get an opportunity here directly from Amir, we see opportunities, but clearly you've got sentiment in market and other things, but we do feel it is very well placed to continue to be successful.

Certainly I think they're a good organization in the sense of the way they leverage those capabilities, build those capabilities, and continue to advance, and that's certainly been active.

All right. Very useful.

Thanks, team. Thanks.

Thank you.

Good morning, Frank and team. I was hoping you could provide a little bit more color around, I guess, the rest of Octopus outside of Kraken.

Just understanding how much in the sort of the negative EBITDA was seasonal, and cuz when we look at that seasonal swing historically from the limited data we have, it looks like sort of second half up 80 million is the best we've seen in UK retail. How much of this is structural versus seasonal in terms of the first half result?

Oh yeah, okay. Look, when we gave the quarterly, we were guiding to the fact that very little earnings come out of the UK retail business in itself, so that's another feature this half.

You're right, the one thing that happened in addition to that was that the Warm Home Discount came in, which has actually cost the UK retailers this half, part of which or a reasonable chunk of which gets recovered the following year. There's an element of timing associated with that.

Otherwise, if I looked at UK retail, they would be the two key features associated with that. Then turning to international retail, that's a growth and a conscious choice to grow those businesses.

Actually, before I come to that, just the last thing really on UK retail is a decision to invest in the smart tariffs.

What we mean by that, it's really owning the flexibility customers that come onto that platform over time and grow value in that respect. There's an investment that's being made by them in that.

That's a choice they'll make each year as to how much they want to invest in it, but it certainly has been heavier this half than prior. When it comes to the international, it's a very conscious decision, they're growing customers, it'd be like the early stages of the UK.

The cost to acquire would be closer to £100 rather than the £50 or £60 they're paying in the UK now. That's very much a growth story.

Services is all about scaling, improving efficiency, you would expect that to continue to get better and that's the aim of the businesses. I wouldn't say structural.

The only thing on the accounting for Kraken and other things like that is that that's why we're trying to give an average of that margin over time, simply because if you then think about, you go into IFRS or other accounting, there'll always be some element about what goes to development, what goes to capitalization versus expense. That's the one thing that's probably just playing its through right now.

We just continue to expect that the UK business in particular, Dale, will achieve its sort of £40 to £50 a customer in EBITDA. I think there's no change to our view around that.

I fully appreciate there's quite a bit moving around and noise in the 6-month period, but that's hasn't changed our fundamental view of the business.

I think that the hard thing, Frank, is just the guidance for FY26 is $0 to $150 million. When we think about the loss that was made in the first half and a seasonal swing in UK retail potentially plus 80 back the other way, it's looking like the second half might be maybe breakeven, and still not enough to get over the first half loss to hit the bottom end of your range.

What scenario do we need to actually see to hit the bottom end and the top end of that guidance range?

We give a range so you can form a view, but we do expect the second half to be much stronger. We've gone through January, it is much stronger for the UK retail business, to be clear, Dale.

There's a lot always moving around. January was a decent month for them, they go through those shoulder periods, there's a reason for the ranges around those aspects, but we're not giving a range with the objective of hitting the bottom end, we're giving a range because we would be wanting to hit in the middle of it.

That's the objective. I don't know, Tony, if you've got anything more specific on UK retail

you'd like to add? It's really the shape of the UK retail cash flow.

It is a much stronger second half in the UK retail, predominantly comes about because of the way that they pay capacity charges in the gas market and then recover that across the customer base. The revenue is really recovered across that second half period with the winter.

Predominantly that'll be where we see a stronger second half out of those. There'll be some slight improvements in energy services run rate, we're seeing good progress in that.

Non-UK retail, as Frank called out, a function really of investment, and they've swung into market and swung out of market as they've seen opportunities, but yeah, predominantly UK retail.

Thanks, guys.

Hi Frank, Tony, and everyone. First question on Energy Markets.

The final Nelson Review was released late last year. Can you talk through your thinking and your thoughts on the review and the potential impact on Origin?

Frank, you've said before if you're pretty comfortable where your generation portfolio sits, but with a recent commitment to Eraring life extension and the review now released, has your view shifted at all on the opportunities set for further investment? You've still got Yanco Delta out there, and is there an increasing need for more gas peakers and even more investment in battery storage as well?

Thank you.

Sure. We're early stages into a very large transition, Nik, I think the need for everything is going to grow over time.

Specifically back to your link to the Nelson Review, though, obviously they handed down their report at the end of last year. Probably the key thing though now that the industry and policymakers and government will actually work on is specifically the ESCM, which is the contract mechanism being recommended by the panel that will drive future investment.

That mechanism has quite a lot of work acknowledged by everyone in the detail of how those, let's call it contract structures, and that's really addressing this tenor gap. That becomes a very important piece of detail to be landed, and landed soon, so that it is attracting the right investment enduring over time beyond structures like the CIS, and that's why the government has initiated that review.

I think there's still more work to be done on that. Linking it back to what do you think the market will need, we still remain of the view that you can see there'll be a lot of batteries being built, and that's underway, there'll need to be a replacement of energy over time, and that diversification points to the fact that that energy is also going to need to come from sources like wind, which is why we remain very positive by having a very large scale, attractive wind project, so that's going to be needed in the system.

We do think there'll need to be more gas-fired generation introduced. If you had Daniel Westerman, for example, at AEMO, he would give you a very consistent message to this.

Why the mechanism becomes important for that asset class is you can see that there'll be a lot that plays out on an average day being produced initially by coal, then by more by renewables and by batteries moving it around, but we will need to have sufficient capacity for periods of time, which we've seen over the last period of time, where you're going to need more than 6, 8 hours of storage, but they're likely over time to be less frequent, and so therefore they'll need to be supported by a well-constructed mechanism that rewards capacity appropriately. That's probably the one thing we would see critical.

You can see it's not getting in the way of people bringing storage on like us and others, but that becomes I think a key ingredient. One that I think is understood, as I say, even if you talk to AEMO and others, I don't think that's controversial, but it will need to be brought in.

Right,

from your perspective, there still needs to be more work done before you feel confident moving ahead with any further investment decision there?

Certainly at the moment we would be either investing in current mechanisms and therefore there are both states and federal governments with their own mechanisms, and we continue to engage with all of those. If you're asking about a long-dated asset when people are envisaging that there would be a new market mechanism coming in over the coming years, then we would need to see more of the detail associated with the ESCM.

We certainly are not stopping the advancing of opportunities, to be clear, Nik, and we're assessing that and working on that and being ready for that. We will make judgments, but at the moment making a large gas-fired peaking, it would need a form of support that rewarded capacity over time.

Got it. I might stick with the theme on government reviews on my other question just around the gas market review and APLNG.

There's obviously been talk around reservation scheme being introduced there and there's been a range of percentages that may be applied to the Queensland LNG producers. Can you just confirm, first of all, that under the ranges being proposed, there wouldn't be any incremental gas supply that APLNG will need to supply to the domestic market?

Then just looking through, you've flagged the medium-term investment needs at APLNG just to maintain gas supply. Does post the release of the gas market review, does the joint venture there have sufficient confidence on the impact of the review to approve that new investment that you're currently looking at?

Oh,

I think there's further work to be done on the gas market review, a lot of work done, but acknowledged I think also by the policy makers they've got to actually work through how some of the specific mechanisms work. My starting position, we haven't talked the joint venture, is that there needs to be some further clarity around some of those mechanisms for investment.

Andrew, do you want to add anything further given the detailed work that APLNG's been doing?

Obviously support the holistic review of all of the mechanisms that are in place in the gas market at the moment, and I think you asked the question of between 15% and 25% would APLNG have to contribute more, I think maybe was the question, and we don't think so in the short term, but at some point contracts roll off, and so if you look out 5-plus years, for example, and depending on what that reservation percentage is, depending on the term of the reservation, depending on how often it's reviewed, etc., there are a number of variables which could impact ultimately APLNG's obligation. Certainly in the short term, as we talk about, we're a very significant contributor to the east coast gas market, and so wouldn't see there being any near-term impact.

I think then, in terms of the linked to future investment, there are a number of factors which obviously we take into account: the view of the market, the outcome of this review, they're all inputs. Certainly we want to continue to support our supply and production irrespective of the outcome of the gas market reviews, from the perspective we've got to meet contracts.

We've just reduced or eliminated one of the constraints we had to additional drilling in the west in Spring Gully through the completion of a water pipeline between Spring Gully and Reedy Creek, we've got the opportunity to commence drilling again in Spring Gully next year. Probably the larger investment opportunities, we've talked about an expansion in Reedy Creek processing facility, we've talked about exploration as well, some of those items I think where you're really making a choice to have additional length above contracts, that's where I think you really got to have a good look at market inputs and policy inputs as well.

That's great, thank you very much.

Good morning, guys. If we just get back to Energy Markets for a second.

You upgraded guidance, which in referencing you talked about batteries and the gas position. How have they changed from your previous guidance, because you would have known about both of those prior?

I'm just interested in what has lifted that sort of guidance expectation? Oh

so hi, Ian, Tony here. Really in terms of where we thought going into the year, where we've benefited really is, again, remember last year we were able to change the mix a bit on the portfolio trading in the forward market, we were able to repeat components of that in the first half.

We had lower LRET and feed prices that materialized through the first half, and we predict into the second half, which has contributed to that. We've also had sort of higher volumes out of C&I, and we've also been able to run Eraring harder than what we'd probably forecast and at a lower coal cost, there's just a two or three sort of contributing factors that gave us a little bit more in the tank than what we would have thought going into the year.

Then on the gas, we've done a little bit of what we call sort of value management in terms of tariffs in the gas book, and then we've also got some lower supply costs coming through there, they were just a few things we've been able to do throughout the year that's enabled us to increase the outlook.

That's great. On the, maybe ask the question a different way, you've got lower coal contracts, you put in your slide deck the VWAP price for New South Wales base for '27 is down the better part of circa $7.

You'd have a pretty good view of where the DMO pricing and the VDO pricing would be coming out at this point in time. Does the coal drop offset the drop in baseload prices?

Ian, is that a '20 that's a '27?

Yeah, '27,

yeah. Ultimately we won't have contracted all of our coal for '27, it's kind of a hard to make a full statement there.

I think that you would sort of indicate that the forward prices, the way that they have, if you looked at forward fin year '27 prices and how they relate to fin year '26, which is kind of the important thing to look at, not how '27's evolved through time, you'll see that that has a reduction in the tariff of a certain amount per megawatt-hour, which I think is probably ultimately more than the coal. The coal will go some way to offsetting it, but ultimately it'll depend on where we contract the remainder of that.

Then competitive dynamics in the retail market as well that flow from that, but yeah.

Okay. Then, okay, that's fine.

On Octopus Energy, just to clarify, OE obviously raised implicit money through the Kraken transaction, is that business now capitally sufficient? I'm curious to understand, did Origin have a look at the convertible note which Octopus Co acquired and why you didn't seek to have that own part of that CB?

Look, just in terms of the Octopus, it is capitally efficient to go forward on its independent path. The focus for us firstly was around the Kraken.

If there's a further convertible note opportunity that might arise and there's other funding opportunities, we'll continue to assess those, but it was one that was really done by Octopus Capital, this particular one, and we were happy for them to do that. It doesn't stop us assessing opportunities like that going forward, Ian.

We certainly were active in a lot of the conversations around that, and relation to this, good

and fine. You didn't say no to that opportunity?

No, didn't say. Octopus Capital agreed and we were aware.

They did tell us they were going to do that note, and like a lot of these relationships over time, we were aware that they were going to put that in there, it's not a question of saying no, it's a question of us then thinking about future opportunities with them. That was the way it was set up.

Okay.

You make a comment to Kraken EBITDA guidance of 40% over the last 3 years. Yet, year year one was really high, year two and year three were incrementally lower.

Why is 40% the right number?

What we're really trying to guide over time is there's been movement around in that margin in that business over time, and we're just giving a look-through over a 3-plus-year view, and you can look at those averages over time as to where it's going. Also as you go into the future, I've been asked a question about whether it goes to IPO, and I don't know what market it goes to IPO and what accounting might flow from that as well.

I think the fundamentals are, though, that they're growing that revenue base at good unit economics, and there's certainly been some movement around investing in capability that's growing it to the business it is today, and secondly, there's been some accounting change to that. Yes, that was all it was intended to do, Ian.

That's fine. On that, has the business now got that baseline capability of being an independent company operating, the cost base has actually done the step-up so that the incremental wins that you get and the incremental conversions are actually got really high conversion rates that we're going to get a return in the margin?

Yes is the answer, there has been a heavy capability build over the last, I would say 18 months or so. You have a leadership team that's now scaling a global enterprise platform business.

The objective of having Amit come out at the end of April is for people to hear that directly, and they are set up today to deliver across multi-geographies and products, and winning those accounts. The last one was obviously significant and it's continuing on that growth path, and that is definitely the case.

One final question. We've seen volatility in the obviously the Australian energy market slipping.

Is this changing your timelines of investment cycles for the gas plants and additional batteries in the system? Given, I think for the first time I've heard you guys talk, the actual cap prices are falling in a reasonable way.

There are probably different durations to that answer, Ian, and by the way, we foreshadowed that cap prices would fall over time. Cap prices can be a function of volatility, and we've gone through a 6-month period where through a combination of baseload availability, good renewable output, and batteries coming into the system, we saw low volatility, then you come into the new year and you're seeing more, and then we've just talked about previously, and I'm going to raise it again, that winters are becoming one of the riskier periods, we've still got to play that out.

We continue to see volatility, but cap prices will be informed by that volatility. There's a lot of batteries coming into the system, we feel very confident about the investments we've made, that's why we've given the commentary we have to date, continue to assess those.

They've lowered in cost and we've been able to increase pretty cheaply incremental capacity and duration on that. I think when you think about assets like gas-fired peakers, you're essentially introducing a 20-plus-year asset into your portfolio.

I think it's really around the latter half of those periods versus the front half in terms of understanding how the market would play out over the longer term. There's still a lot that's still got to come into the market, there's still a substantial amount of all of these assets that are going to come in, but certainly as it relates to gas-fired peaking, I think because of the nature of those assets, may not run high capacity factors, but play a very valuable role, I think that's the one where you'd want to make sure you understand that particularly in the outer years.

Look, that's great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ian.

Good morning, congratulations on the result. I thought I'd ask an electricity question and give Mr.

Jarvis an opportunity to talk seeing as I think he's got plans for the rest of this year, or I hope he does. Just again, in terms of

Not just yet, Rob, not just yet, okay?

Not just yet, get every cent you can. Just in terms of battery revenues and I guess following on from Myles question about caps and avoided cap cost revenue, can you give us any sense of how your thoughts are evolving?

Are the new morning and evening peak products also maybe providing a battery opportunity?

Rob, the batteries are working really well in the portfolio. There's a few things, but intraday volatility still plays out.

Right now in summer it probably lends itself to really manage the sort of the evening peaks, we're probably doing all one cycles. You can see, going forward you can see how we can double cycle these batteries as well.

They're playing really well in the portfolio. I've got to say the other benefit we get from these batteries is we don't have to turn on gas peakers just for a 1- or 2-hour period, which that leads to high maintenance costs, we're also seeing some benefit just with the existing fleet, we can use our sort of gas peakers more for duration events if that makes sense.

Really these batteries and we're having a battery in every state, so that just gives flexibility right across the portfolio, which is playing out very well for us.

Sounds good. I was trying to say something nice about your announcement there and do wish you all the best in your next opportunity.

Hey,

Rob, I appreciate it, and let me tell you, can I just say that I leave a good team in place and it's going to be a very smooth transition to Andrew, it's playing out very nicely.

To Andrew, congratulations to Mr. Thornton.

Very good. My next question is I guess around balance sheet for Octopus and Kraken.

I guess as at June, there was some sizable current liabilities, and then there's prudential requirements and things like that. I take it that everybody's pretty comfortable with that, that there was also a small investment by the British Business Bank.

I'm just wondering if you can provide any color on the balance sheet strength of the two entities, please?

Oh yeah, certainly, look, there are facilities in place today across the group, and they're all very well capitalized, and remember that you need to make sure that you are protected for weather events and a whole range of things, and they've always been very prudently managing that capital through both facilities, cash, a number of things in terms of the strength of the balance sheet. The recent set of transactions sets it up for the future because we need to make sure that that energy business has enough available for working capital as well as the ongoing growth of the other businesses, and we feel confident around that.

You are correct in stating that there's a variety of arrangements in the UK market that go, and there's even been recent announcements that are changing some of those obligations, for example, the renewable obligation in the recent budget announcement is changing to actually have some of that being managed by government rather than the industry as well. We feel very comfortable around the balance sheet, it'll be around the ability for it to continue to grow, and it's got runway today for that over a period of time, and that'll be where we're really making choices around capital going forward.

We feel confident about the facilities they have today and the cash that's been raised for the benefit of when these entities separate.

Great, thank you. Maybe if I can ask a slightly more direct question, should we be thinking that there's a permanent amount of debt or non-equity capital in the structure at this point, or is it all just still in flux?

Oh,

I think there are debt markets available as part of that as well. They will have some debt, but it would be a lot less debt once they separate Kraken, and so therefore it would be a combination, but they're making choices between what's the most efficient form of capital put into the business, and it is a combination of debt and equity, but the debt would be lower than what it is today across the group.

Cool. That's great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks very much, everyone, for joining us this morning. We look forward to meeting with many of our investors over the coming days, and look forward to having further discussions.

Thanks very much for your time today.