Origin Energy Ltd Ord

Okay, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Origin Energy 2024 half-year results presentation. I'm Frank Calabria, and I'm joined here in Sydney today by the Origin executive leadership team. And while I'm on the topic of the team, many of you have seen that we made an announcement a couple of weeks ago that after six years at Origin and a career spanning more than 40 years, Laurie Tremaine has decided to retire in July this year, something he has been planning and also discussing with me for some time. And so while we have a few more months with Laurie at Origin, I would like to take this opportunity in front of all of you to acknowledge just the key role he has played in the repositioning and growth of Origin, and also as an integral member of the executive team. As we said in that announcement, a process has commenced to identify a successor, and we will share more information at the appropriate time. And I know many of you will get an opportunity to see Laurie over the coming days and weeks. So congratulations, Laurie. Slide two contains the outline for today, which most of you should be familiar with. This will be followed by an opportunity for you all to ask questions. Just pausing on the introduction slide, I just wanted to really outline the first section. So in this first section, we'll go through Origin's value proposition, how we're tracking on the execution of our strategy, key financial highlights for the half year, and also, very importantly, our continued focus and commitment to support customers and communities. which is more important than ever. And I'd like to share some of the specific things we're doing, but just also to continue to remind you that's at the core of the purpose at Origin. And as I said, we're never more important than the times we live in today. So just turning to slide four. Origin represents a unique energy transition value proposition. In energy markets, we have a retail business with scale and strong differentiated capabilities. We have a flexible generation portfolio that is difficult to replicate and increasingly valuable. And we have growth opportunities through emerging businesses and also investing into the transition. The energy transition is global, and through our investment in the rapidly growing Octopus Energy, we are creating value from this. Firstly, through their world-class enterprise software platform, and also their energy transition business, which you'd know through their UK retail business, but rapidly growing internationally and through energy services. Third dimension to the proposition is gas, which will play an increasingly valuable and critical role that is already today and for the future energy mix for many years to come. And I think that's increasingly appreciated. Our integrated gas business as both shareholder and operator of the high quality APLNG gas resource is reliably delivering gas and did that again in the last six months and also delivering very robust cash flows. I'll expand on the value proposition over the coming slides for those three aspects of Origin. It's worth just reflecting right now though over recent times at Origin, the corporate activity that you're no doubt aware over the last year or so and the strong business performance both stand out for me. Clearly the corporate activity has shone a spotlight on our business and what I believe to be an advantaged position that we hold. At the same time, I'm also proud of the strong business performance the team have delivered over this period. So both of these have enhanced our confidence on strategic direction and also our capabilities to execute. And I think equally important, we're excited about the opportunities ahead and getting after them. I think we've got good momentum and you've seen over recent times our investments in the Araring and Mortlake batteries. We've increased our stake in Octopus and we made the acquisition of two retail aggregator businesses, just to name a few of the things that have been underway. It is also timely with those two events over the last six months to evaluate our key strategic choices and our investor proposition. And so consistent with our message at the end of last year, we are actively working on this and we'll share more with you over the coming months. We do have an evolving view on capital allocation preferences and Laurie will discuss on our views in his section and expand on that a little further there. But overall, our beliefs are that there are good transition investment opportunities that deliver growth and equally the need to deliver good returns to our shareholders is paramount. So now turning to the financial highlights. Our underlying profit of 747 million is up from 44 million in the corresponding half in 2023. Our underlying EBITDA has now grown to 1.995 billion. Our balance sheet is healthy, and for many of you that have been on the journey with Origin, you would be pleased, like I am, to see that our adjusted net debt to underlying EBITDA is now at 0.9 times EBITDA. Our pre-tax return on capital employed over a rolling 24-month basis is 12.1%. And on the back of the business strength and performance and the confidence I mentioned earlier, we have declared an interim fully franked dividend of 27.5 cents per share fully franked, which is up from 16.5 cents per share for the equivalent period. On slide six, I outline our ambition to lead the energy transition through cleaner energy and customer solutions. This should be a slide that's familiar to you all and our three strategic pillars and how we create value. This was launched in early 2022 and it has been our clear focus. And the reason I include that is to remind everyone as we turn to page seven or slide seven, we did at the same time set ourselves ambitious medium term goals to achieve when executing our strategy and also to hold ourselves accountable to. And we highlight the summary of those achievements on this slide, which I won't go through in item. You can see them all, but they'll be covered throughout the presentation largely. Now turning to that value proposition and peeling it away further. So slide eight highlights the value and growth drivers of energy markets that underpin that value proposition. Those growth and value drivers should be familiar to you based on the rainbow chart that you may have seen in the last results presentation that talked about the trajectory over the medium term. Our retail business has scaled strong brand and now has all customers on the Kraken enterprise software platform, which is an incredible achievement. They're not easy projects to do. So we're very pleased by that. And from which we will drive further benefits. Wholesale gas is a competitive strength through the combination of the assets and contracts we have. And we've recently concluded the beach contract price review that strengthens our medium term earnings outlook. Turning to wholesale electricity and our existing power asset base, we are continuing to engage with the New South Wales government on the timing of closure of Araring. And I'm just reminding everyone that we have the largest thermal peaking fleet, which is becoming more valuable as flexibility is more valuable as the market continues to increase towards more renewable energy. And we are growing renewables and storage. We have a pipeline of battery storage projects, some underway and more to come, and we'll share more on that. We now have 1.2 gigawatts on our virtual power plant, well on our way to achieve our two gigawatt target in a capital light way, and we are developing a portfolio of renewable and development options. Just pause on this at the moment because at the time prior to the bid by Brookfield and EIG, we had stated that a target of about four gigawatts in both renewables and battery storage by 2030. And while we are evaluating this, this should be your starting point, not the 14 gigawatt that was put forward by Brookfield. And I just do that to guide you as to where to start from. And that's where we're thinking now. But we'll continue to evaluate that. Turning to retail, I talk about that scale, strong brand and leading platform. You can see that we've delivered more than 300,000 customer accounts in growth since the financial year 21. We're advancing the product offerings we take to market. We've invested in new channels and segments, and we have over 78% of our customers interacting with us digitally. I talked about that leading platform being Kraken to put 4 million customer accounts onto that and to deliver that through this time. We feel like we're in a very strong position. It's a platform that has a number of advantages. It's low cost to scale. It has rapid development. It's a modern platform. It has AI capability. And at the same time, we've built a new business in retail with an operating model and ways of working established that align to the way Octopus leads its retail business. This is all pointing to the benefits that we're delivering today, but it's fair to say that we've got more to go. We can see the improvement in customer happiness over the last six months. We have an improved differential to churn to market, and we certainly have a customer-centered culture and high engagement continuing to go forward. And we have cost-to-serve improvements underway, which I'll expand on. We have delivered them, but we've got more to go in a more challenging cost environment. And then turning to that wholesale electricity position that we hold today, both existing assets and going into the future, you can see there the preeminent thermal peaking fleet, which is going to be very difficult to replicate, but also has more value through the transition we'll actually expand on in a moment. We have a pipeline of battery storage opportunities. Araring Stage 1 is under construction. We've taken the investment decision on Mortlake. And in respect of Araring Stage 2 and Darling Downs and Templars West, we're well underway. And our target would be that there would be further investment decisions on those projects in the 2024 calendar year. And you can see there just the growth in the VPP that I talked about earlier. The team have done a good job to add over 300 and something megawatts in the last six months. And exactly why do we believe flexibility in this asset portfolio or this combination of portfolios provides us with both increasing value and growth over time is really highlighted as you turn to slide 11. What you can see there is the changing market increasingly makes flexible generation more valuable. Not only can you see the intraday volatility arising through the evening peaks as a result of solar during the day, but what you're also now seeing is just the higher frequency of negative prices that year on year continue to grow dramatically. And that value is actually indicated or represented by the average cap prices that you can see on the right-hand side, giving you an indication that the market's also valuing this more every day. So we do expect increased value opportunities for the combination of that peaking fleet, VPP, and the introduction of those battery projects, which is exciting for us to see. Turning to Octopus at a high level, you can just see the exceptional growth, not only in its retail business where it's now number one power and number two gas retailer by customer accounts, but also that you can see the exceptional growth of the Kraken software platform, which is now over halfway towards what was a very ambitious goal. I remember telling people that they had an ambition of going to 100 million accounts by 2027. We're now in 2024 and they're over 50 million. And what you now see is them expanding into new utilities with the water and broadband, and it now has a presence in 16 markets. Those two things have driven a rise in value and the way we've shown that here is based on the equity raisings by investors that they have introduced over time, but continue to be supported by existing investors. And that continues to drive the valuation with significant interest in the market for their services on the Kraken platform and the strong growth margins and customer growth. But they're also now growing increasingly into international retail and services and flexibility. Talked earlier about just the importance of gas. And I think this slide highlights two things, just the high quality resource that we have at APLNG of low cost reserves. And you can see that just the continual strengthening of that reserve base and the large contingent resources being converted over the last six years on that chart. And the team, I think, have established well a track record of continuing to improve, optimizing the network and creating value from the asset. And the combination of those two things you can see is delivering strong, robust cash flows, which are very valuable. Touched earlier on the fact that core to our purpose, but even more core to the communities and customers today is the support we provide them. It is really at the heart of what we need to do as Origin. And you can see there that we have done a number of specific things over the last six months. When you look at customers, we do support them every single day through our teams out there, but some of the specific things are is that none of our customers on our Power on Hardship program had any price increases at the last round in July 23. We'll spend up to $45 million providing support to customers of Hardship this year, which continues to grow year on year. And we have no origin customers paying above the regulated determined offerings, which is the VDO and Victoria and the DMO and other markets. We also continue to reach out specifically to community to provide assistance and customer support with billing and payment and queries, recognising that we need to engage with the community and customers in a variety of ways to make sure we can help them on this journey. In terms of our communities, our foundation contributed another $1.4 million in the half. We've kicked off our community initiatives in Ararang's Community Investment Fund in the first round. It's gone out for over 270,000. That's growing as we speak. And we are providing support for financial counsellors in terms of how they can also support the community as we go through some of the things we talked about with our customers. We do contribute a lot to community organisations, and we continue to focus on growing our spend both regionally and with our Indigenous suppliers, and we've done that again this year. So on that note, I will hand over to Laurie for the financial review and come back to you and talk operations after that.

Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. Obviously, it's a privilege to be presenting to you for what will be the last time, but... but more importantly, perhaps a high quality and clean result. So as is typical, I'll start with a profit bridge on slide 16. Underlying profit increased 747 million with higher earnings from each of our businesses. The recovery of earnings in energy markets was a key driver, along with improved commodity hedging and LNG trading results in integrated gas. Our share of the octopus result was a net loss of 41 million compared to an 88 million loss in the corresponding half year. Tax on underlying earnings increased by 288 million, largely due to the stronger energy markets result. On slide 17, operating cash was a net outflow for the half year, reflecting both higher working capital and higher tax payments. Energy markets trade receivables were 260 million higher, mostly related just to the timing of receipts, but also an approximately 90 million increase due to slower mass market collections, partially associated with higher cost of living environment our customers are experiencing. A $60 million higher bad and doubtful debt expense has been recognised given this collection performance. Working capital has also increased due to timing impacts from green certificate purchases and traded LNG cargoes. Income tax payments of $447 million were $315 million higher than the corresponding half year due to the 2023 true-up tax payment, which included tax on higher APLNG unfranked dividends. Other payments include $77 million of transaction costs, mostly associated with the unsuccessful takeover process, and $55 million of Kraken stabilisation costs. Capital expenditure for the half year was higher than usual, with a larger proportion allocated to growth, including the eraring battery and early phase spend on renewable projects. Sustaining capital was also higher with major planned outages at the Araring and Mortlake power stations. We also completed two retail channel acquisitions in the period and the sale of the LPG Pacific business. Slide 18 shows distributions from APLNG in the current year are expected to be lower, consistent with lower effective oil prices. Origin received healthy distributions net of oil hedging of $657 million in the first half, and we expect between $1.2 and $1.4 billion for the full year. As foreshadowed, APLNG will fully utilise carried forward tax losses in the current financial year and is expected to commence paying company tax instalments. Distributions from APLNG later in this financial year are therefore expected to be partially franked. The cash tax burden will shift over time from Origin to APLNG. Moving next to our capital allocation framework on slide 19, Origin has entered a new phase of capital management with leverage low at a debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.9 times. We're now engaged in investing for growth, including construction underway on the Araring Battery, the recent FID on the Mortlake Battery, and the recent decision to increase our equity position, our Octopus Energy. These investments are expected to lift leverage back to the lower end of our target range. Our expectation is that renewable investments will largely be funded off balance sheet. Given our stronger balance sheet position, this is the right time to revisit our capital allocation framework and dividend policy. And we'll be doing so over the coming months with the intent to share this with investors at an investor briefing session expected in April or May. In the meantime, reflecting our lower leverage and confidence in the financial performance of the business, the board has determined a fully franked interim dividend of 27.5 cents per share, a substantial increase over last year's interim dividend of 16.5 cents. Energy markets half year earnings shown on slide 20 increased $813 million, reflecting an earnings rebound in the electricity business following a period of under recovery of wholesale costs. Slightly offsetting this, costs to serve were up $92 million. Electricity gross profit increased to $950 million from an unsustainable $39 million in the first half of the 2023 financial year. The recovery of higher wholesale costs from prior periods flowing into retail and business customer tariffs represented over $500 million of this increase. Lower generation fuel costs primarily due to the impact of the coal price cap contributed $245 million and lower spot purchase costs on a larger short position and lower contract procurement costs contributed a further $141 million. Gas gross profit increased by $10 million, with higher wholesale prices flowing into customer tariffs, largely offset by the non-repeat of JKM trading gains in the prior period and also lower volumes. Cost to serve increased, mostly reflecting higher bad and doubtful debts due to higher bill sizes, cost of living pressures, and additional compliance steps that have resulted in delayed disconnection of non-engaged and non-paying customers. On slide 21, origin share of Octopus underlying EBITDA was a $12 million loss, improved from a $83 million loss in the first half of 2023. In the first half of last year, there was a material under recovery of dramatically higher energy costs reflected in lagged UK retail tariffs. The non-repeat of this issue was the main driver of the improved results in the current half, along with growing customer numbers. These impacts were partially offset by higher bad and doubtful debt expense and rising renewable energy prices. The UK retail business is seasonal and we would expect higher earnings in the second half of the year. The Kraken licensed business is profitable and continuing to grow. Frank will later show the growth of the international retail and services businesses While growing rapidly, they're not yet profitable as they build scale, which explains the increased EBITDA loss half on half. Finally, it's worth noting the Octopus Group would have been profitable in the period, but for a couple of adjustments, including a non-repeatable prior year adjustment and a valuation adjustment to a short-term funding agreement with the UK government associated with the bulb acquisition. Turning now to integrated gas earnings on slide 22. Origin share of APLNG earnings were down 249 million with lower global oil and gas prices impacting both LNG and domestic gas revenues. Production was up 3% reflecting strong field performance, particularly from the successful reduction of the well work over backlog and effective well and gathering network optimisation. Stronger production enabled seven spot cargoes to be delivered in the period up from three in the first half of 2023. Operating costs were $89 million lower with lower royalties associated with lower prices, reduced gas purchases and lower downstream maintenance activity. Oil hedging resulted in a net gain of $9 million compared to a loss of $180 million in the 2023 half year. LNG trading activities generated a gain of 77 million benefiting from a favourable hedging locked in during the period of extreme disruption in global gas prices. We continue to expect substantial gains from LNG trading over the 25 and 26 financial years. Other origin only costs have reduced, particularly with the exit of our upstream exploration assets. And with that, I'll pass you back to Frank for our operational performance.

Okay, thanks very much, Laurie. Now commencing the operational review, and we'll start with energy markets. And I'm now turning to slide 25, which shows the trend of electricity forward prices and how this flows through to the regulated tariffs, or what you may know as the DMO and VDO. The higher prices, in this case, it's the New South Wales electricity forward price, so it'll be indicative of the DMO. The higher prices that occurred between April and December 2022 that you can see there on the chart have fed into the determination of the tariff for this year, the FY24 tariff shown by the dotted blue line, and has been a driver of the electricity margin recovery. Now, based on the forward prices over the last 12 months and that are continuing now, we're expecting the tariff for the next financial year in FY25 to moderate. And you can see that through the yellow solid and dotted lines on the chart. Turning to the right-hand side, the cost of coal for Araring has also reduced since those peaks in 2022. That has contributed to our margin recovery. The coal price cap that's in place until June this year, and at the same time, you can see the market price for coal has also reduced. And so what you can see going forward in the bottom point there is that the team over the last several months have now contracted or hedged about 70% of the expected coal volume requirement for the next financial year. And when you're referencing where we're buying that coal, it's at or about that 5,500 index, not the 6,000. As I mentioned earlier, the last point on our RRing is that there's ongoing engagement currently underway with the New South Wales government. Now, turning to gas on the next page, gas margin in origin, as I said, was a source of strength, and you continue to see that it's underpinned by a strong supply portfolio. That portfolio, to remind investors, is comprised of fixed supply contracts, transport flexibility, which, when we combine it with our gas peaking plants and large, diverse customer base, brings us together to have that strength in the market. And we have concluded, looking on the right-hand side here, we have concluded the beach price review and are pleased with the outcome. The half-year gross profit has moderated to be broadly in line with the periods before the second half of last financial year. The trading gains in that period have not repeated, and the JKM exposure that we've hedged in in this first half is at higher average prices than during that period. But you can sort of see the trend there as to where the margin per gigajoule is, and it's going back to what we've achieved over prior periods of view. if you look prior to that half to FY23. Now turning to retail. We have built a strong competitive advantage. When you look at, we've re-platformed the customers onto Kraken. It's now translating through the customer experience. We've got a leading brand. We've strengthened our channels to market. And we now have also a 10% uplift in customers engaging exclusively through digital channels. What we've also done is that we've acquired two retailer aggregator businesses in late 2023, One Bill and MyConnect. And these businesses are contributing both to customer growth and customer experience and also lowering our average cost to acquire. So the combination of these capabilities are bringing the competitive advantage that I just talked about to life. And if we turn to the next page, we've been delivering consistent, strong growth. We grew our customer accounts over the half by over 60,000, taking a value-based approach. That's a combination of us bringing all of those things together, products, pricing channels, and renewables. And you can see the improvement to the churn differential on the right-hand side. And one of the features of that is our approach to multi-product bundling, which continues to advance. And talking about a couple of the growth opportunities in energy markets, you can see the community energy services businesses has grown and so has our broadband customer accounts. And we're continuing to focus on growing those businesses. In the case of CES, it's a strong business with a good growth profile and low churn and very pleased to see we're continuing to maintain strong customer experience as we grow broadband scale and capability. Now turning to the next slide, slide 30, we are now in the benefit realisation phase. We have built a new retail operating model and it's underway and that benefit realisation is underway following the migration of the customers. On cost benefits, we're currently in a more challenging environment with cost of living pressures, additional compliance measures being implemented as we improve efficiency. And on the latter, you can see that we've made improvements with all the technology CapEx savings realized. We've reduced the retail workforce by 13%. Employee productivity benefits are on track. But in terms of delivering net benefits in the half 24, those have been offset by the growth initiatives, both in retail and across Xero, the hire bad and daffle debts and compliance activity. And we still do have additional resources as we extract the benefits and continue to improve the way we operate. We continue to pursue further improvements on cost reduction and extend our cost to serve advantage. However, it will take longer to mitigate those with the cost environment headwinds. Turning to the VPP on slide 31, it has continued to scale, and you can see there that we've grown it to 1.2 gigawatts. That's 366,000 connected services. And we are continuing to focus on the growth that'll come through uptake in solar batteries and EV, and also as we build the Spike customer base. And we also will continue new customer propositions, and we're very close to launching a number of those. What we've demonstrated on the right hand side is really to show you specifically in the example of our electric hot water heating profile and also an EV profile, just how that benefit can be realised by shifting load to times of low demand or high supply, whether that be overnight or where there's an abundance of solar energy. And we're applying and actively managing that to a bunch of customer cohorts now and continuing to refine. Our focus today has been on scale, connections, technical capability, and it's increasingly moving towards the customer propositions while we continue to scale. Very excited by what we've been able to achieve in that regard. Origin Zero has continued to grow. What you can see there, it's made good progress accelerating businesses, customers to net zero. The number of large businesses, customers on broader services has grown to 6% and we're securing long-term decarbonisation partnerships with key customers, including orchestration behind the meter asset solutions and co-investing in energy services projects. In the case of EVs, we now have more than 90 businesses signed up to EV fleet and subscription products, and we're driving the growth to now have more than 600 EVs on those products. So very pleased to see the building of the Origin Zero businesses as we work with large business customers on their journey to net zero and bring them all along on that, no matter where they are today in that regard. Turning to Octopus Energy, You can see it's just a fantastic brand and also core customer experience. It really is an energy business that has quite a key strength. And it does that while it maintains a cost to serve advantage. And it's also built that trust. And you can see that through some of the measures there. And it was evident really in 2023, probably most notably by the outstanding organic growth. If you looked at the pink on the right hand chart. And to grow 600,000 customers choosing to go to Octopus in that period is really a testament to just how well they are regarded by customers and performing that NPS differential. And at the same time, you can see the impact of the bulb and shell acquisitions on that scale by the purple acquisition bars on that right-hand chart. Slide 35 highlights really the impressive growth trajectory of Kraken. Now here we've highlighted Core, and you should think about Core being the platform that we've just implemented and the enterprise software we've just implemented at origin. And Kraken flexes their VPP offering to third-party customers and what they're increasingly utilizing in their own retail business. When it comes to the core Kraken, 19 million customer accounts added in the half. And you can also see that Kraken Flex has grown impressively. It now has six gigawatts of contractor capacity for what you would call large-scale assets. That's their Infralight Flex, and that includes up to 50% of the batteries on the UK grid that are bidding into the ancillary services markets. And when it gets to Smart Flex, it's really all about, I think, the EVs, heat pumps and home batteries being connected similar to what we're doing here in Australia. Now, Octopus is also scaling and investing in both international retail and services business. And this is the first time we've broken that out because that's where their investment is going. They have really rapidly grown in largest markets outside of UK, being Germany, France, and Japan that they've targeted. But they're clearly in a rapid growth phase for those markets. And thought we just would highlight the services business. They operate a renewable generation assets under management. It really is an asset management business. but this focus on growth in heat pumps, solar and EV charger sales, and they have an EV fleet that's grown to around 13 and a half thousand vehicles. They have their own heat pump technology. And as you know, there's a lot of support for heat pumps to displace the gas boiler in the UK market. And they're actively going after that. And you can see that growth rate there over the last 12 months or so. Turning to integrated gas, You can see there the sustained strong production. Production was up 3% in the equivalent period last year. It's been driven by well and field optimisation activities and reducing the work over backlog. And it was also supported by the operation of new infrastructure that's increased gas processing facilities flexibility. It was also very pleasing to see how the unplanned production turned down due to the LNG vessel power outage at Curtis Island in November was managed and just how well production recovered achieving a record production operating daily rate of 1,632 TJs a day in December, really supporting the resilience and sustainability of the strong production. which has us then looking at the revenue on slide 39, clearly all price, realised all prices down, $84 US compared to 109 in the equivalent period. The average domestic sale price that we get in the market stays well below the net back and continues to play an important role in the domestic market, does APL&G. The revenue has decreased on the back of those lower oil prices on the LNG export contracts. And in the half, we delivered seven spot cargoes, up from three, the equivalent half. You can see there that the cost per gigajoule on the right-hand side on that blue line has remained relatively steady compared to the previous financial year in the half. There has been increased activity, both work overs and operating well activity, but the strong field performance and that continued optimization of the network has just enabled us to defer the ramp up of the drilling program. And that highlights the strength of resource, but also the continuous improvement to get more value out and maintain that cost profile. And then the next slide on 40 just really does break down our continued focus and approach on how to deliver that, which is really on the short cycle, low cost supply initiatives. And so it really means working from the top to the bottom. It starts with optimizing existing wells where we've improved the well performance with the operation of artificial lift pumps and also reducing bottom hole pressures. And both of those are contributing. The well availability has improved from reducing the wet weather backlog and also the work over performance. The infrastructure de-bottlenecking through interconnected pipelines but also upgrading our spring gully water has enabled us to get more out of the existing fields and add to that flexibility I talked about. And with the focus on these, it has enabled well development deferral, which we continue to target. That really highlights the approach that the team and Integrated Gas are going after and yielding good results. APL&G, just turning to 41, it continues to play an important role supplying the gas to the domestic customers on the East Coast. And the domestic sales volume have remained consistent as a percentage of total sales. Now, the Australian government, you'll be all well aware of the gas market code and what's been undertaken in the gas industry. It's good to see regulatory certainty now under that code. They've granted APLNG a conditional ministerial exemption from the $12 price cap under the gas market code, and it is subject to conditions including a commitment to supply gas to the domestic market. It is good to see this clarity and certainty and APL&G has entered into sales agreements for an additional 9.6 petajoules to the domestic market in calendar year 2024 at the regulated price of $12. So that's a good development over the last six months for the gas business and industry. Now turning to Outlook. Now, all of our guidance is provided on the basis market conditions and regulatory environment do not materially change. Firstly, for energy markets, we've lifted the guidance to 1.6 to 1.8 billion. This excludes our octopus energy. And the improved guidance really reflects improvement to both electricity gross profit and gas gross profit. and is offset by higher cost to serve. So they're all contributing to the uplift and the overall performance of the business and pleased to be able to communicate that upgraded guidance. In the case of Origin's share of Octopus Energy EBITDA, it's expected to make a positive contribution of less than $100 million this year. There are improved earnings from the UK retail business. It is seasonal and it will be stronger in the second half. And there will be the ongoing contribution in the second half from the Kraken licensing business as it grows. It is partially offset by the not repeating of the recovery in margins from the lag in regulated tariffs reset that happened in the second half of last financial year. They are investing money into the international retail and energy services business and the full year impact of the bulb acquisition accounting adjustments and rising renewable energy prices will also have an impact. But it's a business growing rapidly and you can see the drivers of that growth are impressive. And in turning to FY25, energy markets EBITDA, consistent what we said previously to you, we do expect the EBITDA to be lower compared to this year. And it really is all about the reduction in the electricity gross profit as the regulated customer tariffs are expected to be lower in line with those wholesale costs that I showed on an earlier side. But we will expect also to have lower costs to serve. It does assume when we make that statement that current forward energy prices are maintained and also priced into the customer tariffs. Turning to the guidance of integrated gas, I think it's fair to say that we have maintained what we have previously communicated as guidance. Good to see that despite the events in November that we've maintained that production guidance of 680 to 710 petajoules. The unit capex and opex guidance continues to be $3.90 to $4.40 a gigajoule this financial year. And the drivers of that increase from the previous year are that weather-related catch-up of workovers and the higher not-operated development. But we are doing lower cyclical maintenance. And we provide the unit CAPEX and OPEX guidance for FY25 and 26, which is expected to be lower than this, at $3.60 to $4.10 a gigajoule. It will be following delivery of this optimisation in production, the cost-to-supply initiatives, completion of the cyclical maintenance program and expected lower power costs. And I just repeat what Laurie had said earlier, the cash distribution is expected to be 1.2 to 1.4 billion net of origin hedging from APLNG this financial year. You can see there the LNG trading guidance expect to make 60 to $90 million in 24 and that range for the combined years of 25 to 26 is 450 to $650 million. Thank you very much for your patience listening to this and we'll now hand over to the team and look forward to hearing all of your questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Tom Allen with UBS. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Frank, Laurie and the broader team. Without trying to pre-empt your views on the potential uses of a strong free cash flow profile in your new distribution policy that we'll expect in the coming months, can you please provide more colour on how we should estimate the capital demands on the energy markets business into the medium term? So should we assume that growth capex every year for the next six years covers your battery build-out? Are there other scale opportunities on the radar? And should investors continue to assume that Origin's will only contract renewable offtake, or would there be circumstances where you might develop renewables on balance sheet?

Yeah, okay. So probably, yeah, we will come back and share more with you over time. But the way you should think about it is that we do see now that the storage opportunities that you can see, we're getting a presence in each state. And the first focus is really those projects we've talked about there. And there may well be more opportunities in what I would call capacity more broadly and firming over time. In the case of renewables, our focus is actually developing projects to be construction ready, and for that to be something that Origin develops, but at that point that you would be putting them, utilizing third party capital and partners. So our objective is not to have capital associated once they're up and running. I think the question would be, do we take that through to construction or just to FID, and I think that would depend on the scale of the project in particular, but you should expect that we're not anticipating to have what I would call wind and solar farms on the balance sheet in an operating phase, but therefore you would have some capital associated with what I would call the classical development phase to the extent that we were developing them, but that would be recycled, and therefore you should think about capital in that regard. As to the requirements, as to what you might think, you've talked six years. I don't think I've given you a six-year view. I've given you a four-gigawatt view. You could probably think about that. We will review that. But that is a combination of both batteries and storage. Start with a premise of... 50-50. Like, I mean, that would be as good. Don't be too precise about it. But you could use that as an example of if you were trying to think about overall capital. But I would emphasize that we've come out of last year. I think we hold views. We're in a dynamic market where policy doesn't remain static. And we are stepping back and just making sure we assess that, evaluate it and come back very deliberately with you. over the coming months. But that's how you should think directionally. And I might just check if Laurie's got anything on the distribution aspects of that that he wanted to talk about further, if there's anything. No, I've got nothing to add. Thanks. So hopefully that's indicative.

Tom? Yeah, that's helpful, Frank. Thank you. I was hoping it might be an opportunity to refresh just on whether you could use perhaps the events impacting electricity supply in Victoria this week as an example to explain how your significant portfolio and firm peaking generation assets can outperform in an electricity market with increasing intraday price volatility and frequency of these chaos events. And do you expect to maintain such a net short generation portfolio into the medium term?

Yes, I'll open up on that. There was just one other thing that on the previous question, I think there will continue to be other opportunities on the way through the transition, but you should always think about having some flexibility for that. But when you're thinking about the core proposition, it really is focused on what I was describing to you. So that was the only other thing you'd have in your mind. Just on this particular point, what I may do, just restating, so clearly what we showed you earlier was what is becoming an increasingly, inverted commas, normal pattern on a day, okay? But no day is normal because there will be days without sun, there will be days without wind, and what you are correctly pointing out, there is an increasing prospect, or there's a prospect that there would continue to be events. What we saw this week was clearly a transmission event that tripped a large coal plant. Coal plants have operated reliably, but we cannot ignore the fact that they are aging as well. So they will continue to have surprises. So what I may get now is Greg conceptually to talk you through how that works in the portfolio. But it is highlighting one thing, and that is that the average energy price is forming differently every day. And there are going to be very sharp spikes in events. And there could be events with duration. And it's the combination of all of those aspects to the portfolio that play out. And I think that's what you're really asking. So, Greg, do you want to just maybe talk a little bit about Victoria? Maybe that's a good event to talk about what happens there.

Yeah, and Tom, flexibility is the key here. But look, firstly, it was an extreme weather event. And it's something we saw before when we saw transmission taking out. It's a similar event this time as well. So six towers down, large transmission towers off. Interesting for our portfolio, we buy all the power from Stockyard. That was actually turned off as well because of local fire issues. And because of that, the operations team actually turned on our Mortlake gas fired power stations. So we captured the event through turning on gas. power stations. Interestingly, those gas power stations remain on. So they've been directed by EMO to provide stability to the system in that part of the area, which is great for customers. But, you know, again, I think this is going to be a trend going forward. And quite frankly, you know, that's why Mortlake Battery is going to be an important asset going forward. So...

And there are some individual characteristics of this one that shouldn't be forgotten, even the difference between Western Victoria and the East of Victoria and covering your position and having a capacity position that enables you to do that both through your asset portfolio and contracts. And as the market goes through increasingly sharp spikes, that's where we see the benefit of increasing the batteries alongside also VPP, which has the ability to capture some of that value if you do that, as we continue to go on that. And that will enable us to then also think about starts on the gas plant for the longer events. But that's how, hopefully that gives you an indication of how we've thought about that and what we've done in these circumstances.

Yeah, thanks, Frank. Thanks, Greg. And if I can just sneak one more while I've got Greg there. I'll just note there's no mention of the negotiations with the New South Wales government on the stage withdrawal of the Araring power station. Perhaps can you guide indicatively on when this revised plan might be known? And recognising there's been low liquidity in the baseload futures, to what extent, Greg, does your team believe that the futures are pricing in a withdrawal of some Araring capacity from FY26?

Look, you know, we haven't changed our notice of closure. I've got to say, you know, we're in multiple negotiations with the New South Wales government and they continue. So I can't give you any timeframe on that, Tom. Both parties are actively engaged. It's professional.

Yep. And they're confidential. And both the government and ourselves respect that. But we're still active and underway. So that's probably the best thing. I don't want to really get pinpointed on specific times, but everyone's actively working it. And on the forward curve?

Yeah, look, you know, it's all transparent. So the market's pricing this in. There's nothing more to say. Gets a bit thinner out there.

Not sure it's priced in. Yeah.

Thanks, Tom. So the comment was, Greg, that you think that even the low liquidity in the futures is still pricing in a withdrawal of a raring under the current announced closure schedule.

Yeah, absolutely. It absolutely is transparent to the market, so there's nothing, you know, it is what it is.

Liquidity makes that more difficult to see, to the extent people putting probabilities on different outcomes, but we don't have anything further to add to that at the moment.

Sure, thanks all. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Reinhard van der Waal with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Frank and team. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the result. Another question on eraring, and I appreciate that you can't really give comments on what you're discussing with the New South Wales government, but can you at least just tell us whether you think eraring at the moment is still an NPV positive asset? based on the forward curve and your assumptions around intraday volatility?

Yeah. Look, there's no doubt that Araring has contributed value this year, Reinhard. I'm going to give you, because it is, but it does highlight to you with this change in market that I don't think the theme of challenges associated with coal plants in this market has gone away. And there's the risk that you get disconnect between coal pricing and local markets, like we saw a couple of years ago, that represents a risk. But in the current dynamic and the current way it's operated over the last 12 months, that has been positive. And it's really the predictability of that into the future that becomes the challenge over time. But the dynamic right now has been better clearly than the last 12 months. But it's not a static environment and the market's going to continue to change. The asset continues to perform well, but I don't think we've changed our view around the fact that the economics of these plants will be challenged over time. And what you're hearing right now is that we've got a note of closure in August 25, but we're in discussions with the government about retaining that for the security of the market in their view and having that insurance. But yeah, so we're happy to run that through to 25. We're in discussions about beyond that with the government, but we do still see challenges beyond that.

Good. So really in your view, it's probably for Araring, it's more the coal cost position rather than the flexibility of that plant. that you think is going to challenge the economics in the medium term?

The flexibility, there's no doubt you look at that trend over time, that's going to make more challenging for coal over time. And so we may not run at the same capacity factors over time, which is obviously goes to the unit cost of running it. The big events that can occur, though, is that you can get the dislocation between coal and electricity prices, and they're the big events that occur. So that's the principal focus. But the trend is still challenging over time when you need more flexible units and you're going to see continual hauling out of the day. But, yeah, that's going to play out over time.

Got it. Understood. Thank you. And just if you're thinking about that coal position more shorter term, I noticed that in your FY25 outlook statement, there wasn't actually an explicit mention of change in fuel cost, even though that New South Wales coal price cap is coming off. Can we read that as your coal cost position next year is probably gonna be sort of similar to the $125 a tonne? That seems to be kind of supported by the spot prices.

I think if you looked at the 5,500 index, it's a little above the 125. So I don't think you can expect it's hit that same level on a delivered basis. So if you looked at the average index over the last several months, it would be a little higher. And that feeds into our thinking. So we haven't been explicit on that, but yeah, we expect it to be a little higher. But that yellow line, I think if I recall it's yellow, will be indicative of where that's sort of sitting at over the last several months.

Perfect. Excellent. Thank you. And just one more quick question on FY25. Sorry. The net bad debt expense was obviously, it was a pretty substantial step up this year. But I mean, if I look over the next six months, you know, your electricity tariffs are going to come down a touch. You're going to have tax cuts, who knows, maybe even rate cuts at some point. Is your assumption in your FY25 guidance that that net bad debt expense does start to roll down as well into next year?

I'll get John just to give you a sense. I might make an overarching comment. We're watching cost of living every day, but we've also gone through the change in our business and we've got compliance and a bunch of things that are going through that. It might be a little early to call that, but don't take that one way or the other because we're just watching that trend right now. But John, do you want to give a bit more insight?

Insofar as the bills will ease and come off, and hence you'll see that bad debt provision come off. So our expectation is that we will get that lower in 25 than 25.

Perfect. Thanks. I'll pass it on. Thanks, Rana.

Your next question comes from Nick Burns of Jordan, Australia. Please go ahead.

Thanks Frank and Laurie and congratulations on the strong financial result. Just a couple of questions from me. The first is to Laurie. Just on the first half of cash flows, I suspect many will be surprised with the lower operating cash flow number after energy markets recorded such a cracking first half. It feels like you should be showing a much stronger conversion rate from EBITDA to operating cash flow. I do appreciate there was a number of call-outs there, and it does include APLNG tax, but can you just talk through a little more about why the conversion rate was so low in the first half, when we should expect that rate to improve, and maybe what a normalised conversion rate might look like? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Nick. Look, I think on the slide, we've tried to be absolutely as transparent as we could be. So I would read the words on the slide and also the comments I made in the presentation. I tried to call out there's a lot of timing impacts in here. And so I'll give you an example. On the On the comments on the slide, I talk about timing impacts from large business customers. And so there's about 50 million of higher debtors. And I'm looking at James McGill right now. So James and I had a good conversation about, you know, to what extent can we consider that to be timing or a business issue? And we conclude it's just timing. It's not a business issue at all. We expect those receivables to be collected. Similarly, there's some bill relief receipts we're expecting from government. You know, it doesn't get included in this result, but we fully expect to receive that. I didn't mention in my comments, we very often get timing impacts around LNG, the LNG traded cargo. So these are the ones, you know, associated with Cameron and in the past they've been associated with ENN. They're very ad hoc, those cargoes. And in this particular time, we took delivery of a cargo. We paid for it. we delivered it to a customer, we just haven't received the cash for it yet. And so that'll just fall through into January. So again, it's a timing impact on this result, but just not a business issue. And I also mentioned on the way through the fact that we have built up our green certificate inventory, partly ahead of... partly associated with the large, the LGC scheme, and partly because we've got to surrender those certificates in February, but partly also related to other schemes and just building up inventory in a rising price or rising cost environment. And so a whole lot of factors, but then I also called out, there is a business issue And it's the $90 million associated with slower mass market collections, which I suspect we may have more questions on. But I'll leave that there to say, hey, look, mostly timing, but that slower collections is the one issue that's worth us focusing on.

Got it. Thanks for the colour there, Laurie. My other question is on your gas gross profit margin chart in slide 26. We all love it. a shaded bar chart to read from. But if I read it correctly, I think the full year 24 number, the margin looks like there would be a maximum of $4 a gigajoule. First half margin was $4.50. I guess if we read that right, then you're implying a $3.50 there about maximum margin in the second half. Can you just talk through why second half margins are expected to be at least or around $1 a gigajoule below the first half? And also, you do call out JKM exposure hedge to high average prices this year as obviously being a bit of a drag. Can you just remind us again whether this high hedge cost extends into FY25 and beyond? Thanks.

Hi, it's Tony Lucas here. The gas gross margin in the first half had a number of one-offs. It had a couple of trading deals in the first half, which won't repeat in the second half. And also we had much stronger CNI pricing in the first half of the year. A lot of our CNI pricing is calendar year. And so we expect in the second half that we'll get lower pricing when we recontract that. And, you know, that'll be the majority of the impact. There's a little bit of an impact in seasonality and retail volumes half on half, but that would be... a bit player compared to the other two in that variance.

And just on the JKM?

Do you want to take the JKM? Okay. Sorry, I didn't hear the question on the JKM.

Oh, sorry. It's just the fact that it was called out as the fact it locked in a high hedge cost this year. It's part of the reason why margins were lower this year. than, say, last year, but just wondering how that extends through the forecast period beyond FY24.

Yeah, so in the prior year, we had quite high-realised JKM hedges, which gave us probably a much higher gross margin and margin per gigajoule than what we would normally have on a long-run basis. JKM we're expecting to be lower this year.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Nick.

Your next question comes from Dale Conders with Bear and Joey. Please go ahead.

Morning, guys. I was hoping you could give some sort of colour as to the discussion on the board around the dividend and the size, the effective more than 300% payout of free cash flow. Was this a think around sort of like what was cash flow normalised for working capital or is this around excess capacity on the balance sheet or something else?

Yeah, thanks, Dales, Laurie. Look, we do have a payout ratio-based dividend, but what we've found over recent periods is just the volatility in things like working capital makes it very difficult to hit the middle of a payout ratio each and every period. And so that'll be one of the matters that we turn our minds to when we reframe that policy going forward. And so we started to do a reconciliation to say, how does how does this how does this particular dividend make sense given a payout ratio? And we just down tools on that and said, look, we'll we'll measure it again across a year rather than than an individual six month period. Because, you know, as I've said, some of those working capital matters are just timing. And so they'll they'll they'll correct themselves across the full year. And so rather I look at that dividend and say, is it affordable? And in a scenario where we have good line of sight to capital expenditure, and again, largely associated with the erring battery and a slow build in the expenditure associated now with the Mortlake battery, knowing how the businesses are both performing, some of the volatility experience in the last couple of years had come out a bit and And so we've seen a bit more stability around commodity price. So given all of that, we believed, you know, the 27 and a half cent per share dividend is the right one from an affordability perspective and also just our confidence in the business where we are today. So they were the considerations in the board, largely done.

Okay, and then tying that into, I guess, your heavily undergeared balance sheet of 0.9 times adjusted debt to EBITDA, but Frank's comment of getting to two times the bottom end of the range, is this dividend effectively, when you transition forward to the earnings in FY25, getting you to the bottom end of your range? Is that the right way of thinking about it also, delivering?

Yeah, so we have an expectation that we will move towards the bottom end of the range in you know, with a combination of the earnings that we expect, but also the capital expenditure profile and inclusive, of course, of this dividend. Now, the other point I wanted to make is we wouldn't We wouldn't have, the board wouldn't have determined a 27.5% cent per share dividend if we didn't think that was somewhat sustainable. And so we're not about to have large shifts in dividend from period to period. So we believe it's sustainable, but of course the board has to make a choice about dividends every six months and the board won't be, you know, it's a 27 and a half, doesn't become a flaw, but we had a view that it would be sustainable moving forward.

Okay, and then a final question, I guess, for Frank. When you think about the rainbow chart that's presented, I think it was about 18 months ago for the first time, How do you think about what sort of FY25 and 26 is looking like now? Is that still consistent with the vision back then or are some businesses going better or worse? Like has energy markets improved more than you would have thought?

Yeah, there was always a recovery trajectory on energy markets. And some of that strength of recovery, I think we said at the previous results, and I'd say it again now, has come forward into the 24. So, you know, 24 is certainly was stronger than when we would have stylized that chart. And therefore, 25, if you could use it in energy markets, we've said won't be as high as 24, just simply because of how that got realized over the course of this year and some of the things going better. So I think everything is, I think most of the aspects of the business have actually tracked. I think the one thing we've called out today is that in 24, good gross margin in the retail business and all of the value creation there, but the cost to serve with bad and awful debts has actually been higher as we've gone through the, what I would say, the efficiency drive at the end of implementing a big system, which is no light undertaking. Anything else in that? I think gas is moderated back to that long term average. Araring played out well this year. I think the markets played out well this year. But they're probably the, I think, retail pretty good. I think that's the only real call is that some of that benefit got pulled forward a little bit. Otherwise, the thesis remains the same.

Okay, so it's kind of second half earnings level moderated for retail electricity prices plus some growth benefits of CapEx as we think forward to 2025.

Yeah, yeah. Did you say second half at 2024 or 2025?

Yeah, as we transition from what's implied by guidance for the second half to FY25.

That's right, that's right. And some cost to serve benefit year on year. Okay, thank you. Thanks.

Your next question comes from Ian Miles with Macquarie.

Congratulations, guys. And apologies for sounding a little negative here. What do you think about the regulatory threat? You know, AGL and yourself have come out with record profits. You've upgraded guidances. You're doing really, really well. And you've got this cost of living crisis in the marketplace. Do you think this inspires the retail regulators to really crunch margins and allowances that you've got?

I think retail, I think the regulator won't be, like I think they won't be immune. One of their basis of making their decision is also to make sure there's an orderly market and to make sure it delivers what they believe are fair outcomes as a default offer. So I do think that all feeds into the, I do think that we are obviously seeing an external environment where cost of living is forefront on everyone's minds. And we've seen this before, but we are seeing it particularly play out today. So, Ian, I think... I don't know what the regulatory response, there's a methodology, but I'd expect that they will continue to consider what's the right outcome for that DMO next year. I don't think we should ever forget a couple of things though. It was only 12 months ago that we made no money in that electricity business and part of what we're seeing the strength this year is in fact that averaging over time and you'll see a little bit of that settle itself down again next year. So I just truly hope people don't take point in time and actually look at that to get a sense for what's really playing out. Because to be clear, Ian, you would have been negative for a different reason. You would have been asking where our margins were going 12 months ago. And so I just hope that everyone understands that that's partly what we're seeing today. But clearly we represent an essential service and we've got to do a good job by our customers. And we've also got to be a healthy business to continue to invest in the transition. So I just, I hope they get the balance right in that regard. But you're absolutely right about the environment we're in.

You raise an interesting question there. When you think about your energy markets business as a whole on that longer run basis, should investors be sort of thinking about Pick a number, sort of 1.3 to 1.5 billion is that sustainable sort of number, and then we have these style volatility events and other events which can ebb it up or ebb it down.

If you look... Yeah, look, I think without me anointing the 1.3 as a particular thing, but I understand your point because if you looked at that trend over time, that composition may have changed a little over. But if you really step back from the sort of average dollars per megawatt you make in an electricity business on a gross margin, if you looked over time and... and looked at this year and offset the last couple of years, you'd be back to that long run average of about $20 to $30 a megawatt hour. And so I do think that sort of supports your view that we think that that will play itself out. Now, obviously, we're working hard to capture more of the share of that in the market if we can, but that's probably a reasonable view. And we've seen some ups and downs in gas. So I don't think that's a... Before investment, I'd say, Ian, before new investment, then that's not a bad thought. And obviously we continue to improve the business, but that's probably not a bad thought around that. Yeah.

And maybe to give us a bit more colour on Kraken, particularly, you know, it's conquered the UK market, or rephrase it, Kraken Octopus, it's conquered the UK market. In the markets like Europe and Japan, How much is driven by the Octopus brand or the joint venture trying to be the dominant position versus the instances you're generating are actually the platform for them signing up new existing retailers onto the Kraken platform?

Yeah, no, good question. Third parties have obviously entered up, have signed up in the UK market where obviously big outside the market in Australia. I think the Tokyo Gas Joint Venture was an entry point into the market, but it also demonstrated its capability in a market outside the UK. So I think Tokyo Gas deciding that it's going to therefore migrate a much bigger customer base comes off the strength of the platform's ability to deliver for them. I don't think they would make a decision that wasn't well considered. So I actually think they all have been reinforcing in the case of the Japanese market example. So I think then when you get to some of the other markets, then that will come down to the decision by customers. But a lot of them have had good experiences because, as you know, both EDF and EON are Europeans that are operating in the UK market. And they're operating in these markets now utilising Kraken, albeit in a small way. So they're demonstrating that it actually does operate. I think that's partly the way they think about both growth in retail, but also the opportunity to go and licence Kraken over time. So it genuinely is an enterprise platform that it's extending beyond the UK market. And you can see that even now going into water and broadband. So that's how they think about it. I wouldn't think that they're thinking that the joint venture, they'll be hopeful for that joint venture in the UK to continue, in Japan to continue to grow. But that's got a couple hundred thousand customers. Tokyo Gas has got 11 million accounts. And so they're going to have to deliver for that customer to really drive that value over time as well.

And maybe you could talk about Kraken in the context of Origin itself and you actually implementing in your business in Australia. I noticed your $55 million stabilization. I'm sort of curious. That doesn't sound like a positive word, stabilization. But how you've actually managed to... not on the cost side, but from the consumer side, generate flexibility or what's it actually delivering you in that day-to-day market sense?

I'll just make an overarching, and John will open up and be able to talk to you exactly those benefits that what we're seeing right now. And in relation to stabilisation, it's the particular phase that literally after the customers come onto the platform, you've got a particular amount of activity before you go just into BAU and we're in that phase. So John will describe that as well. But John, do you want to just talk a bit about what you're seeing, particularly the tech realisation benefit, but also how you see the benefits? Sure.

And I mean, clearly, these are complex programs. And in undertaking the program, we've had effectively built a new business. So we've gone from two businesses to one. And through that stabilisation, you have a bubble workforce, you have wind down and decommission costs. And so those costs reflect that. The point now is that we actually now have the white space of having gone through migration. We've got a fantastic cloud-based system. It's modern, it's AI-enabled. We're seeing the benefits of lower CapEx spend already as we've had to implement a number of regulatory changes quite cheaply. We're seeing the productivity benefits as our FTE now reduce. And we're in this phase where we're seeing things like customer happiness just starting to really take off and we're seeing improvements in churn. So I think that this next phase is all about benefit realisation, continuing to extract the productivity benefits, but also looking at the opportunity for us to continue with multi-products, continue the integration into our VPP proposition. All those things are now starting to look ahead of us.

Okay.

Well, that's great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ian.

Your next question comes from Rodco with NS. Please go ahead.

Good morning and congratulations on the result and also to Mr. Tremaine on your announcement and your contributions to Orygen. Just first questions, I guess more in the nature of a modelling question. Just thinking about the first half energy markets EBITDA implies a second half run rate of kind of at the midpoint 650 mil, and Mr Burns identified that a lot of that would be the gas margin. Is there like an electricity headwind in the second half that we should be looking for?

It'd be a combination of gas and electricity, and Tony described the gas. I'll kick off and Tony can add if he wants to add anything further to this. Probably the key thing is that there's an element of seasonality in the electricity business because of the cost... really to hedge associated generally with the summer months. That tends to be the difference for us. So that will mean on average, outside of other events, you would expect to see second half lower than the first half. And then it comes down to the competitive dynamics in the market. We've seen some, recently we've seen some discounts

rising activity wise it's probably not it's still not very high but we certainly see higher discounts so we're making an assessment on that um tony anything else no i mean the majority or maybe half of it is would be just the seasonality impact of um you know buying more expensive sort of summer hedges in that in that um calendar Q1 period. And we did have some small prior revisions to load that would come in in that first half, which we don't expect to repeat in the second half either.

Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Really appreciate that. Just, I guess, a question about the, without wanting to preempt your April, May investor update on capital allocation policy, should we be thinking that's mainly about refinements to the distribution policy, or should we also be contemplating any other changes to company configuration? And I guess just to call that one potential scenario, I guess Conoco was prepared to be the operator of APL&G and buy a little bit more of it, or are those conversations all kind of finished now?

Yeah, Rob, obviously Dividend policy will be one part of that. But to be honest, some of the questions that have been asked this morning sort of, you know, do cover the other topics. So, you know, if we talk about, which clearly we have for some time now, talked about taking renewables off balance sheets, well, exactly what is the aspiration for renewables? So reconsider that. If you're taking them off balance sheet, you know, what are the options and which options do you prefer and how are you going to pursue that? And so the whole bunch of issues like that that we want to reconsider and we want to give ourselves a little bit of time to do that rather than rush out. You know, I'm Nothing about the APLNG administrative arrangements that would be part of that at this point.

Rob, distribution policy falls out of strategic choices, and so you would expect us to, and what we see ourselves. We will make sure we step back and just review all of that in the context. I wouldn't anoint one specific thing or other, but it's telling you all that we're not just barreling on business as usual. We are actually just thinking about it to make sure we make a considered decision as we go through this next phase. And so you just would expect us to make sure we do that. There are some things that I think for the momentum we're going after are no regrets. We're just going straight after it and we're clear on many, many things. But I just think it always is appropriate that we just step back and make sure that we're clear about that to our investors and we'll factor all those things into account.

Yeah, great. Thank you. Maybe just a final question from me on Octopus. And Octopus's position in the UK energy supply market is now, I guess, amazing. Just wondering if you can give any colour on what is the aspiration further in the UK market? Is there more to grow or is there an inflection in that business model in the UK?

Look, I think it's gone to a point where it's actually now sitting with a very significant position in the market. And obviously, it's benefited from some inorganic. I think the key thing for us is, if you'd looked at that last 12 months organically, that's been very impressive. And I don't know how to predict what that organic would play out over time. But you'd have to say that it's actually set itself a target to be a key player in the market, and it's there now. And so... I wouldn't expect more organic to pop out at this particular...inorganic to pop out.

John? Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. The only addition I would make to that is that they haven't been necessarily active in terms of large discounts to grow customers. Customers are really attracted to the brand proposition.

to the service proposition so that's flowing through and i think that 600 000 is pretty amazing yeah so that's the one thing that's more difficult to predict but you're right they're um they're benefiting from that um and that's that's the only sort of as john's done a better job than me just the way to characterize that the one thing though you can see that that's enabling is that brand position is as they think as they move into the ev market and as they move into heat pumps and that is really where I think you'll find that they're focused a lot on growth, and that's principally in the UK at this point in time.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Gordon Ramsey with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, Gordon.

Hi, Frank. The question for you is kind of more of a macro one in terms of, What we've seen in the UK, and I think I've asked you this a while ago, you know, Octopus has benefited from the move to quarterly tariffs. And if we saw something like that in Australia, don't you think that would take some of the volatility out of the earnings that we've seen from Origin? I'm talking about FY22 versus FY24. Clearly, you know, the catch-up that you're going through on that and the one-year lag has made it more volatile from my perspective.

Yeah, look, I think it'd be fair to say that at the time that the UK market moved to that and it went through those events in 22, I think I'm pretty correct in saying that that was being looked at in the Australian market at that time. But a decision by regulators and government hadn't moved to that. You are right in that you get the adjustments more frequently through time, and so therefore you don't wait to the year-end results. So you're absolutely right. Whether there's an appetite in the market to actually move to that, at the moment that doesn't seem to be on the agenda. But your thesis is right as to a benefit of doing it. It would be more frequent resets. then that would be more frequent for customers as well. So, you know, there's a sort of a, you know, you've got to think about the advantages and disadvantages of that.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And just interested in your outlook for spot electricity pricing going forward, do you see that becoming increasingly volatile? And then how do you capture margin in that environment? Clearly, you've got your gas peakers and your strong position in that thermal fleet. But I'm just assuming that you're seeing that. If you agree with that view, then how do you position the company with renewables in terms of batteries or pumped hydro? I'm just interested in your thought process there.

Yeah, it's Greg here. Absolutely. Volatility is increasing and it has been occurring for some time. So not only are we seeing some high price events, we're seeing very low price events as well. So having the right assets in the mix is incredibly important going forward. So, you know, running baseload these days is just getting more and more difficult. And really, you know, coal baseload is just you spend a lot of time maintaining these plants. And when you get no return in the middle of the day, that's difficult. So So our portfolio is well set up. It's well versed in these slides. We have a good gas peaking fleet and we are moving very fast on the battery space. So that will only increase the flexibility of the portfolio and that's a good position to have. The other comment I'd make is, you know, storage of gas as well. Flexibility around gas really supports the peaking fleet. So that's also a very important requirement as well.

So Gordon, think about, I think this is where Tom was going earlier. You're going to get, could get very immediate short priced events increasing in the market because of outages and a bunch of things. You've got to be able to respond very quickly. You've got to be able to respond on a sort of a cycle through the day that can take place because you can see that pattern I showed on one of the charts. of high solar, evening peaks. And then I think the key solve for most markets around the world is what do you do for genuine long duration storage? And while lithium-ion is operating effectively and commercially in the short end of the market, there's nothing that's really operating easily economically over the hours and hours and days. So gas is going to continue to play a role. Pumped hydro is very expensive, but that's why you'll find that I think a lot of resource and capital and innovation will go into solving long duration storage. It's one of the key things for the market to solve.

And just one other point, Gordon, is, you know, we are spending time in looking at that longer term storage. So again, we're investigating flow batteries as well as pump hydro opportunities.

Which is why we think the gas peak is, while other people are going on that, is going to play an incredibly valuable role.

Just lastly, so in terms of your, let's say, rearing, is there any incentive to invest in lowering that generation, minimum generation at a rearing? Since you're closing it in August 2025, just, you know, your competitors talking about lowering minimum generation by 13% at one of their plants by the end of FY24.

Look, you know, I mean, this is a very difficult proposition because if you underinvest in your maintenance of these machines, you can have outages which could cost you a lot of money. So we are very careful about maintenance. We have maintained our plant to a very good operational standard, and that's what is playing out. And we like the performance of Araring.

The MinGen on Araring is already below 200 megawatts a unit. I don't think it's in our plans at the moment, given it was already quite low on a MinGen relative to the average plant in the market. I think incrementally spending capital to take it lower than that, I don't think would be economic, but I don't think would be as the same economic proposition to those that had higher MinGen, minimum generation output on those units. Is that? That's correct. I mean,

You know, restarting a coal-fired plant is very expensive. So we've investigated that. It has been done around the world. But, you know, again, there are units we can get down to 210 megawatts up to 700. So it's pretty flexible already.

Yeah. That's the way we think about it. Thanks. Well, that's excellent. Thank you very much.

Cheers.

Thank you. One moment. Your next question comes from Mark Busatil with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to follow up an earlier question just in terms of the second half or implied guidance in the second half. So if you analyze that, you're looking at about $1.2 to $1.6 billion in energy markets on the second half. And I understand there's some seasonality as you've talked about it, but should we assume that's the starting point for fiscal 25 and then the additional headwinds that you've talked about mean that 25 EBITDA should be lower than that?

No, I wouldn't assume that, Mark. But it's not a bad run rate to start from. We would expect to see costs to serve. There'll still be formation of electricity margins and gas margins, but I wouldn't start from there and lower that. Definitely not. Definitely not. But it's not a bad starting point. Okay.

Okay. And then also, can you maybe just talk to what PPA prices you're seeing right now and how attractive they are for you to be signing on to them and also the duration aspect of it?

Yeah, look, PPA prices, it depends on the technology. But what we have seen is wind has increased in costs substantially. So it's more in the $90 to $100 megawatt range, which is, you know, substantial increases from the past. And solar, you know, look, that's up from the lows as well. So, you know, it's more around, I don't know, $50 to $60, say.

Yeah, but in terms of attractiveness of that is it depends on the assets. Obviously, clearly people trying to get their heads around the inflation that's gone into construction and everything like that. And is it the right time? What's the long term? And will we see those benefits come off? And the duration of those PPAs, Greg, are generally just so that... 10 plus years. They're generally closer to 15 and stuff like that for that rate. And obviously you're locking in longer. So that's a market context. So you're either developing into that or you're buying into that. Always striking a long term contract at any point. You've got to be mindful about whether you feel that that's going to be supported over time. Yeah. And so, look, we continue to assess that against the market and we're also assessing that against investors. market that's changing you know we've got a cis that's been introduced we're trying to understand that in the context so all of those things go to the mix it's um probably our viewers that it's certainly jumped up and we'd be hopeful but not necessarily bank strategy on this that that you get some better benefits in over time through construction that that take the heat out of that a little bit okay and then just uh lastly just in the past you've suggested to us that your

fixed, I guess, fixed cost base on electricity is about 15 to 20 terawatt hours a year. Is that still a fair assumption today and what would it be post-eraring?

Yeah, Tony will give you that.

It's a fair assumption today when you include eraring and the renewable PPAs and then how much we run the gas fleet. Obviously, post-araring, araring is a big chunk that drops out of that, and really that's, you know, behind our thinking about, you know, the four gigawatts that Frank mentioned going to offset some of that potential reduction. But you should post-araring, that volume will drop out.

Okay, fabulous. Thanks so much. Thanks, Mark.

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Dale Conders with Bear and Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the second question. I was just looking through the accounts and looking at the Octopus accounts in particular and noticed that the current liabilities on a 100% basis have jumped up by about $8 billion and there's a call out for about $5.2 billion gross funding agreement. Can you just talk me through what impact that the bulb acquisition from a debt repayment to the UK government is going to have for Origin? Is that all quarantined within Octopus or is there another funding call to come?

Yeah, no, it's, Dale, it's Laurie. It's all quarantined within Octopus and, you know, you called out liabilities. If you have a look, there's been a growth on the asset side of the balance sheet as well. um all as you predicted all associated with the the bulb acquisition a very complex set of arrangements but but we believe well managed and uh and and short-lived so we expect that to work its way through um over the over the remainder of this calendar year okay brilliant great outcome thanks thanks there are no further questions at this time i'll now hand back to mr calabria for closing remarks

Okay, well, thank you very much for everyone for the good questions in particular. And we look forward to catching up with a lot of the investors and analysts over the next days and weeks and hope you have a good rest of the day. So thanks for your time this morning, everyone. And thanks to the team here.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.