Good morning and welcome to Rubicon Water's First Half 2024 Results Webinar. Presenting today will be the company's CEO, Bruce Rogerson, and CFO, Andrew Bendall. To ask a question, please submit them via the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. I'll now hand it over to Bruce. Thank you, Ben, and welcome everyone to our half-year announcement. There was a couple of typos in the presentation and the announcement document that went up this morning, so they're only small typos and they'll be corrected in versions going up as we speak. So thanks for your time. For those that don't know Rubicon, I suppose we're a technology company that's been around for 28 years delivering technology to governments, water management utilities, and growers to improve water efficiency and agricultural productivity. The thematics that drive the need for our solutions are really compelling globally and in the markets particularly where we target. As I said, we've been around 29 years, but when you do the math, we've delivered over AUD 1 billion of infrastructure and services globally over that time. That technology is driving the benefits around the availability of water, the agricultural productivity, which leads to the profitability of farmers, and the environmental outcomes that come from a better management of water. 35,000 products sold globally across 20 countries. What I'm going to do today, we'll go through the numbers, and then I want to dive into more of three of our specific markets: a mature market, a market that we're well into, but at the early stages, and then an emerging market. I want to be able to demonstrate to a greater depth than we have in the past around the whys and investors should be very confident and excited about the pipeline that we've talked about at a more global level previously. With that, we'll get to sort of the overview. Our first half revenue was up pleasingly 23% on prior comparable period. As our revenue increases, the EBITDA increases much more proportionately. Loss of AUD 0.7 million, but up 84% on prior comparable year. That places us really well to return to profitability and achieve substantial growth moving forward, which is what we said at our full-year announcement. There was, however, negative cash flow in that first half as a result of delayed payments of greater than AUD 10 million. We're forecast to be cash flow positive again in Q3 in the second half, and we're confident in that position. We're confident of those near-term cash flows, which really set us up well for the future. One of the really big developments for us is an MOU signed in Egypt, and that's one of the markets I'll be delving into today, presenting significant opportunities. I mean, Egypt in itself is just mind-boggling in the investment and the infrastructure they're building in our space, and we're now really well placed there. So I'm going to dive into that. I think across the world, we have the significant investments within our target markets to grow our pipeline and contract works. It requires that investment. Every one of these markets, we can't just waltz in and talk about what we've done around the world. We have to have the infrastructure on the ground. We have to have done the work with the governments and the clients to get these systems in and working to give the confidence for the investment in our stuff. So a big part of our strategy and what we've been doing is investing in these markets, which we'll, again, I'll deep dive into a few. One of those, which I'll talk about, is the U.S., which is we're having a fantastic year in the U.S., so already in the U.S. this year, we've signed more than $18 million worth of contracts, and we have, for the rest of the year, a significant pipeline there. I'll talk more about the U.S. because that's a subject of a few of my slides when I do a deep dive there. But that's a very exciting market in a mature market. For those that the 4D, those that have seen the 4D will note that our auditors have qualified our accounts with respect to the recognition of part of the revenue from a significant contract in our Asian segment. The auditors were seeking further audit evidence in the form of a document from a relevant government bureaucratic department. And we fully expect to be able to inform the market of the receipt of that document shortly. So with that, I might move to Andrew to start talking through the financials. Thanks, Bruce. Look, I wanted to give a few high-level observations on our results for the first half, starting with the P&L. As Bruce mentioned, we're pleased with top-line results for the first half, being $ 6.1 million, or 23% higher than the previous corresponding period. These extra sales, along with improved margins, saw our gross margin lift by 49% to AUD 14.3 million for the half. Some good control on costs meant that most of this upside dropped down to our underlying EBITDA, and while still remaining at a marginal loss position for the half, it was AUD 3.5 million, or 83% better than the previous corresponding period. Below the EBITDA line, our result was negatively impacted by a number of factors, but the main ones were the unrealized FX loss that we incurred, given the prevailing appreciating AUD as at the end of the period, and also an income tax expense that related to the unwinding of a deferred tax asset during the period. The improvement in the revenue was experienced across all of our geographic segments, and in particular, India benefited from the awarding of a contract, which we were able to take up a portion thereof in the period, and as Bruce alluded to, a strong start to the US market has set that up for a good year, 65% higher than the same period last year. Under the cash flow, from a cash flow perspective, it was a difficult half. Delays in a significant amount of Asian segment customer receipts resulted in a net operating cash outflow of $ 8.5 million. Part of these outflows were funded by our unsecured working capital facility during the period. Our investment cash flows remained stable and relatively modest at around about $ 1 million. At the balance sheet, we saw some movement between contract assets and inventory, which reflected the improvement in the sales as it transfers out of inventory into that contract asset category. Net debt on the back of that operating outflows was up AUD 10.3 million for the period. And we saw our non-current liabilities higher, reflecting the term debt component of our new HSBC facilities. Thanks, Andrew. So the big driver for the investment in Rubicon Technology is water stress. And that was the case in Australia, where we had our Millennium Drought and saw a really significant ramp-up in the investment in our solutions. And it's why we target the markets we do around the world. So we can see these markets: Chile, USA, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Egypt, Kazakhstan, India, China. These are all the markets where we have the resources on the ground and are building our markets. Now, across these markets, the water stress and the global thematics is just daily new data from global figures like $58 trillion of economic value at risk, the Colorado River declining at such huge rates. In Morocco, six years of consecutive drought, some irrigation districts just not operating at all. Egypt is one of the countries that I'll dive into today. Mega water projects, just mind-boggling, the scale of what they're doing. India, India is not an easy market, but it's massive. It's the largest market for irrigation in the world. And the investment happening and what the success of our solutions really drives us, and it's a massive opportunity. Even Kazakhstan is another one. The Prime Minister saying water is no less important than oil and gas. Globally, all these thematics, it doesn't matter where you go, there's water stress. Looking for solutions across the irrigated land, which is 70% of the world's water is used in irrigated agriculture, and that's where our technology is. So what I'd like to do is dive into the U.S. and talk about that as why, as an investor, you should be excited about the future of Rubicon purely on the basis of the opportunity in front of us in the U.S. We're obviously many more places than that, but let's go through some data on the U.S. As I said in the intro, year to date, we've signed $18 million of projects. So a big ramp-up. So that's signing of projects as opposed to revenue, obviously. But that's 40%. The projects we've signed this year in the U.S. are 40% higher than our record revenue in that market. So it's moving. We have been in the U.S. since 2006. Our products are well regarded. We've got an incredibly strong competitive position in 150 districts. Part of those signings was one of our largest ever contracts in the U.S. in November, where one of the signature districts and a district that the rest of the country looks to signed us for a $4.2 million project. There is coming slides I'll show the funding, and we are working with districts to put projects and proposals together to access the funding. One of the big drivers is the value of water. So the beauty of the U.S., as it was in Australia, is it's a mature economy, and there's a trading and a value put to agricultural water. And in the early 2000s, the value of water in Australia went through the roof, which drove a big investment in infrastructure, including ours. The value of water in the U.S. is going through the roof now. So water fees in the U.S. are saying they're 25 times higher than what farmers have paid for the last 75 years. The value of water is approaching $700-$800 an acre-foot, which is really significant and a massive step-up. And trades are being made. And we can see here some of these articles, Imperial Irrigation District signing a $77.6 million project, which saves water for Colorado, $400 an acre-foot elsewhere. So we're really seeing a material change in the value of water, which is then driving the investment in the technology. On top of that, the government, on the back of the crisis in the U.S. in water, is putting substantial money forward. So the Biden government has signed a drought resiliency measure, $15.4 billion, of which the first component was $23-$26, with an estimated $2.8 billion of that dedicated to projects to create long-term durable benefits. And it's important for that. The wording in the note I have below, so the eligible proposals for long-term solutions must result in verifiable water savings demonstrating viability for full implementation, providing monitoring to ensure benefits are realized, reduce water diversions, and/or provide environmental benefits and ecosystems habitats. If you had to write a summary of what our solutions and our technology is, that's it. And we are heavily engaged with a big client base in the US about putting quality proposals together to access as much as we can of that funding. So in this slide, I want to talk a little bit about the history. As I said upfront, we've delivered AUD 1 billion of infrastructure and services globally over our lifetime. Of that, AUD 736 million was in Australia. Now, here's that history. The early 1990s and early 2000s, we're pulling the technology together, basically selling products on business cases around things like OH&S and individual payback periods. The big change happened for us in the millennium drought in the early 2000s, and the price of water went through the roof. You can see over that next decade and a half, the infrastructure rolled out over Australia, and we delivered that $736 million over this period. The life cycle in a market like Australia was early entry, price of water, the capital rollout, and now we've rolled through to renewals and service and ongoing maintenance program of a reliable annual income of around the $18-$20 million mark. If you look at the US, we've been there since 2006. It's important to hear this half-year figure at the end. That's a half-year figure. We've signed $18 million already. We're going to sign a lot more this financial year as well in the U.S. Importantly, that price of water is gone, is just heading north. That combined with the government funding is really where we're saying, and we're predicting that the U.S. market is going to follow that trajectory. Now I'd like to dive into a bit of detail about that U.S. market and how much bigger it is on itself than the Australian market. Importantly, sorry, the last point would be there that that work we've done in the U.S. is not insignificant to date, even though we haven't started that. We're only at the start of that big ramp-up curve, but we've delivered $120 million of infrastructure into that U.S. market across that customer base over the last 15 years. So what we're doing here is diving in a bit more detail into what is our serviceable, addressable market. And there's a fair bit of math behind this. We've got an appendix at the back of the presentation, which goes through all the references and the calculations as to how we've come up with these figures. It's important to note the scale. So 10 times the size of Australia in the US, about 28 million hectares as opposed to our 1.62. So it's a massively bigger market. Of that, there's 10 million hectares is serviced by surface water. And working on the FAO Aquastat references, the overall water efficiency requirement there is 62%, which is meaning the potential water savings, if you could get that agricultural water as efficient as possible, is absolutely massive. Again, you can refer to the calculations in the appendix, but if we look at what the annual distribution water saving is for our space on the surface water, we're calculating that at 8.12 kilometers cubed a year. Now, that's a really significant amount of water, obviously. Sounds big, but that's the amount of water that would fill Lake Mead in the U.S. in just over four years. So that distribution water saving would lead to an annual value of the saving based on the lower-end estimates of the current value of water in the U.S. of about $3 billion. We've been able to achieve that based on our knowledge of that market, the pricing metrics per hectare, and our experience also in Australia to achieve that level of savings is an infrastructure cost of about $8 billion, which is a payback period of two and a half years and a net present value of $50 billion. So the economics is just compelling. And if you look at the US in this market, so of that $8.6 billion to cost to modernize, the cost of the Rubicon SAM, so our serviceable addressable market, our component of that $8.6 billion, if it goes ahead, is $3.23 billion. We're only $120 million into that. The price of water is going through the roof, and we're confident we're on the journey to delivering as we have done in Australia. This market. Our belief here is, and as an investor, we're working in all these markets and more. And we're chasing those areas where there's water stress and there's investment coming. And some of these markets are hard. And that's where payments and contract signings and delays and all that sort of stuff is a challenge. But the U.S. is one of our biggest opportunities in a same market where the drivers are there. So as an investor, you can really have confidence in the future of Rubicon just purely looking at the U.S. And then you look at the scale of some of these other markets that we'll dive into. It's important to note that that AUD 3.23 billion SAM we're talking about in Australia, if we applied that same mathematics and logic across the Australian market, it comes up with a AUD 480 million SAM. Our revenues to date out of the U.S. out of Australia are $730. So I think that demonstrates the conservativeness of our SAM calculations, the potential conservativeness of our SAM calculations, but also the SAM doesn't really take into account the long-term recurring revenue nature of our business. Once we're delivering to customers, we have long-term relationships to operate, maintain, and renew. So what I might do now is then look at what is the biggest market, India, and just drill down there and have a look at that. So the graph on the, I mean, the map on the right, the green there is the irrigated croplands in India. It's just massive. It's 62.5 million hectares of irrigated cropland, by far the biggest in the world. The snippet we've got here is the government of India talking about a $7.7 billion fund over the next few years to investment dedicated to developing irrigation. So already several of our projects have been funded out of the earlier versions of that fund. And this is 2023 - 2028 now. There's substantial central government funding on that. We have to date in this market delivered $90 million, including a recent significant signing. Our signature project, the NLBC project, continues to gain great references and delivers benefits to some really significant agricultural communities. And that is really driving the focus. But the timing is unpredictable, but the opportunities are undeniable. To date, while the timing of some of the growth, when we IPO'd Rubicon, we expected to be much further progressed by now in India, but we're not losing market share, and the opportunity is still massive for us. Looking at the SAM calculations in the US, and I don't know to calculate the market in India doesn't have an established benchmark for the price of the water savings. We can't do those calculations about benefit-cost ratios. If we look at the SAM for us, 62 million hectares total area serviced by surface water currently is 22 and a half. A huge amount of the groundwater-fed irrigation is moving to surface, and that's a massive part of the investment being made. We've assessed our serviceable area is 14.5 million hectares. Total cost to modernize of AUD 18.4 billion, which we've calculated as a serviceable addressable market to Rubicon of AUD 7.26 billion, of which we're only AUD 91 million into. The photo to the right there is one of the main canal sites on the NLBC project, which is the project we have delivered and delivering huge benefits. If I now flip to Egypt, Egypt is a more embryonic market for us, but the opportunity again is huge. I have been 30 plus years in irrigation in Australia and globally. I have never seen the scale of the investment being made in agricultural water that's being made currently in Egypt. We have signed a partnership with a company called Elsewedy Watania, which is Elsewedy is one of the biggest industrial companies in Egypt. And Elsewedy Watania is a JV between that company and the Egyptian military to upgrade the irrigation infrastructure. So we have a partnership arrangement with them. We have a presence in Cairo. This is part of the investment we have to make ahead in building these markets. So we have an office in Cairo, staffed by our staff, and we've got our partnership. And importantly, we've signed this MOU now. So the photo here at the bottom is our Manager of Europe, Jordi Pujales, with the water minister in Egypt. And that MOU is a tripartite. It's Elsewedy Watania, Rubicon, and the Ministry of Water Resources to modernize irrigation. Again, the investments are huge. So they've got a $50 billion National Water Resource plan. And if I go to some of the metrics here, just the scale is huge. Here's a Google Maps image of the Nile Delta. You can zoom in on Google Earth to any part of that green, and it's just chock-a-block full of canals. There's over 40,000 km of canals in that old delta. The water stress in Egypt is coming. The Nile is under huge pressure, massive dam developments in Sudan and Ethiopia, and agricultural developments. They know the water stress is coming. Our MOU now is we're actively building projects, which will build the business case for projects and where we will apply our technology across some of the critical canals in the old delta. The old delta is just part of it. They are also building the new delta. Where this shot is taken here is one of the largest irrigation developments in the world in the middle of the desert. The shot that we've come out here shows those dots are center-pivot irrigators with a radius of 400 meters each. They're massive center-pivot irrigators. They're all out here. It's getting supplied by water from one of the largest man-made canals in the world, which is bringing water out of the Nile Delta out into this desert region to build a new irrigation district of 485,000 hectares. The scale of the investment is massive. The main canal and the associated pumping facilities on this was an investment of $5.25 billion. I have just been there a few months ago. This is one of my photos standing in that canal, which hasn't seen water yet. That's been built in the middle of the desert. I understand now that channel is now full of water delivering water to this market. So to go to our serviceable, addressable market in Egypt, we're talking about an irrigated area, 3.4 million hectares, of which it's dominated by surface water. So we're saying our serviceable, addressable market there is 2 million hectares. Cost to modernize is AUD 2.5 billion and about a AUD 1 billion SAM to Rubicon. We are yet to contract works in Egypt, but that is coming. And the scale of what we can do there in our partnership with Elsewedy Electric Watania and the government, this is seen as a national crisis here. So the process with the MOU and the partnership directly with the Egyptian government and Elsewedy Electric means that the procurement of these contracts will be likely to be a direct contracting arrangement based on the mutual business cases that we can put up. So we are seeing this as a huge part of our future. It won't be significant revenues for FY24, but it's part of the investment we're making in what will be a significant part of our future. I'm very confident, so summing up, first half revenue, AUD 33 million, which is up significantly, and on the back of that, significantly increased, albeit still a small loss. As I said in the announcement today, that first half result was impacted by some slowness in particularly the China market and South America, but other than both of those, it would have been an even more significantly positive result. Funding is being recognized and released in the water by federal governments around the world, and we're really targeting those places. India and Egypt, as I've been through, are significant opportunities, but the US on its own makes for a compelling reason to invest in Rubicon. We are so well established there. We've got the reputation, and the market is moving. The value of water is through the roof. Yeah. We've got much more. I've only picked a few international markets there for us today, but there's a pipeline of opportunities, both across established and emerging markets. We are confident in reconfirming our guidance to returning to profitability this financial year. So that's the end of the presentation. I might throw back to you, Ben, for questions. Yeah. Thanks, Bruce. Just a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please do so by the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. Bruce, we've just had a request for a comment on the auditor's report regarding revenue recognition. Yeah. As I said, there was a component of revenue on a contract where our auditors have held the view that they needed to see further evidence of the security of cash flows, if you like, and payments on that contract, so that evidence is in the form of the agreed form of that evidence, in a document we're trying to seek that we will receive from a government entity, and it's not a contractual agreement with Rubicon. It's one step removed from that, so we had obviously planned for and expected to have that before our announcement. It is what it is that we'll have that document in the next shortly, and when we do, we'll inform the market of that. Thank you, Bruce. Another question. What is the revenue value of all contracted work in progress? We might have to come back on. We might have to take that on notice because there's a lot of contracts in. It's a lot of markets and a lot of contracts. So I think I understand the question is how much do we have contracted beyond what we've currently recognized? That is a calculation across a dozen markets probably that we need to. We can come back to. Thank you. We'll go back to that individual. Another question. Just one about partnerships. How critical are they in expanding your market reach? Super critical. In the markets where, I suppose, the Western business culture, if you like, in Australia, the US, even Europe, the partnerships aren't as critical because we understand the cultures more. The rules, regulations, everything are more common to us. But as we move to some of the more embryonic markets, places like India, China, Egypt, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, these markets we can't operate in, and nobody could without the local quality partners. And that's a huge part of the investment we make as we're building the business, doing the due diligence to make sure we've got the right partners, the right ethics, the right contacts, the right technical skills, and the right motivations to be aligned with us as we grow the business. And I am very confident we have, despite the challenges, and when I talk about challenges in India, we have delivered AUD 90 million worth of work there over recent years, predominantly through our main partner. In places like that, we've definitely got the right partners. We've got the right partners in Egypt, Morocco, in China. So yeah, critical in all those markets, and it takes time, and it takes investment to build those relationships and do the due diligence to make sure we're signing up the right partners. Thank you. Another question. Do you feel the rate of adoption of the technology around the world is faster than what we've experienced over the last 10 years? It's starting to ramp. Yes, definitely. It's a market-by-market proposal. So certainly, the rate of adoption in Australia was, as evidenced by the graph I showed, that was from 2003, 2004 onwards, the rate of adoption went through the roof, and that infrastructure rollout was there. Certainly, in the U.S. now, we are seeing a huge ramp-up, and not just in surface water automation of these supply networks, which is our core business, but also in the on-farm investments, in those big agricultural farms, and also in other type things. If you look at Egypt there, it's absolutely mind-boggling, the investments that are happening there, so yes, we are seeing the rate of adoption. I think the other thing that's happening is acknowledgement that it's not just the physical infrastructure you have to get right. To achieve the water efficiencies that are required through these networks, the technology is key, both in terms of software, the instrumentation, and the control is all critical to it. And we are certainly seeing the funding coming through, the proposals coming through, and that will lead to the growth and expansion of our business in all the markets that I've shown. All right. Thank you, Bruce. That concludes the Q&A segment of the webinar. We'll get back to some other questions, any other questions that come through later today. I'll now hand it back to you, Bruce, for closing remarks. So I thank everyone for attending. And clearly, I suppose, just restating that when we listed Rubicon, this was not the first few years that we anticipated having. But the market is moving, and we are very confident in where we're going and our place and the competitive advantage we have across all these markets. But some of these markets we acknowledge are relatively tough places to do business and unpredictable for a company like Rubicon. That's where clearly I've highlighted the US and the fantastic opportunities there. But we can't ignore these big markets where the investments are happening, and that's what we've structured the company up to do. So whilst it's been a somewhat less than optimal journey over the recent period, and as highlighted by the accounts and the notes in that this year, this path, we and my board are fully optimistic about where we're going here, about that pipeline and the fantastic opportunity and growth we're going to deliver over the next few years. So I thank existing investors for their patience and look forward to delivering in the time to come.