NEXTDC Stock

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to NEXTDC Limited Financial Year 2026 Results Announcement Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Craig Scroggie, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Amber, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the NEXTDC results presentation for FY '26. I'm joined today by our CFO, Oskar Tomaszewski.

Our results announcement, presentation and annual report were lodged with the ASX overnight. I draw your attention to the forward-looking statements disclaimer in the presentation.

Beginning on Slide 4. FY '26 was the largest contracting year in NEXTDC's history. Contracted utilization tripled to 740 megawatts on a pro forma basis, and we exceeded guidance on both net revenue and underlying EBITDA. Net revenue of $405 million was up 16% on FY '25. Underlying EBITDA of $248.8 million was up 15%. Contracted utilization increased 202% to 740 megawatts. Billing utilization increased 58% to 175 megawatts.

Turning to Slide 5. NEXTDC's forward order book hit a new high, now 565 megawatts on the back of a record sales year where we contracted 495 megawatts. Every megawatt in that forward order book is a binding customer contract. Importantly, the forward order book will ramp into faster billing growth as [ David Dzienciol ] delivered clients quicker than at any time in company's history, with record revenue growth in FY '27 with 197 megawatts of new billing activation as multiple cloud and AI deployments ramp up.

Turning to Slide 6. Our strong performance was highlighted by record key operating metrics. Net revenue, which is total revenue less direct costs grew 16%. Billing utilization grew 58% during the year to 175 megawatts, and our forward order book grew to a record 565 megawatts, which will more than quadruple billing utilization to 740 megawatts by FY '30, underwriting substantial organic revenue and EBITDA growth.

We remain well capitalized to support our growth plans. Total assets of $10.2 billion, including $5.8 billion of property, plant and equipment as well as $3.2 billion of investment properties. We have available liquidity of $8.7 billion, giving us substantial balance sheet flexibility to fund our committed pipeline. Our first asset revaluations were included this year for M3 and S4, increasing reported assets and improving reported gearing.

Qualifying assets will be revalued annually. Any movements may be gains or losses. Our funding and capital strategy continues to mature. We raised $9.75 billion in FY '26, which included senior debt upsizing of $5.8 billion, subordinated notes of $750 million, hybrid securities of $1.7 billion and $1.5 billion of new equity. Further capital initiatives are underway, including partnerships with third-party capital through joint venture structures for S4, S7 and M5 as those projects continue to secure new customer commitments, advance through key development milestones and are further derisked through a growing base of contracted revenues.

We had another record development year. 42 megawatts were delivered at M3 and 12 delivered at M2. S4 is on track with its first slab on ground. Kuala Lumpur 1 opened to foundation customers, and our Edge network builds continue in Geelong, the Sunshine Coast and Darwin.

I'll now hand over to Oskar to discuss the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Craig.

Let's now turn to Slide 8, which provides a summary of our profit and loss for the year. The statutory results reflect total revenue of $496.5 million, up 16% on FY '25 and net profit after tax of $82.1 million, which includes $129 million fair value gain on investment properties, as well as the recognition of previously unrecognized tax losses. Our non-statutory highlights include net revenue, which was up 16% to $405 million.

Direct costs and power pass-through revenues rose in line with customer consumption. Our facility costs grew $11.3 million or 17%, with targeted investments ahead of record capacity expansion, including land acquisitions, headcount across new and expanded facilities as well as maintenance costs across capacity additions and expansions. Our corporate costs increased by $11.1 million or 17%, as we invest in systems and people to support new site expansion and accelerating customer deployments, with over 400 megawatts of build capacity growth expected across FY '27 and '28.

Underlying EBITDA was up 15% to $248.8 million, almost 4% above the top end of the guidance range. This year, resulting from 2 of our material customer contract wins, we have an accounting reclassification and a measurement policy change, which we'll talk to later in the presentation.

On to Slide 9. Net revenue growth accelerated in the second half, with strong growth expected to continue to FY '27 and beyond. Underlying EBITDA growth also accelerated, with the company's core operating platform now ready to deliver operating leverage and record earnings growth.

Slide 10 sets out our revenue per unit metrics. The blended rate per megawatt reflects a deliberate shift to more efficient hyperscale and AI deployments. These reflect a lower annual per megawatt rate on a 10- to 15-year initial contract term, with extension options up to 35 years. Rapid growth in billing from high-density hyperscale is rapidly changing the revenue mix, with more than 70% of billing capacity now coming from hyperscale workloads. Our new and existing facility expansions are increasingly using highly efficient cooling technologies, including liquid to chip, which is driving down the cost per megawatt to deliver capacity. and higher power volumes with more efficient cost structures are driving returns, with new hyperscale and AI deployments targeting over 10% yield on cost.

Slide 11 summarizes our balance sheet and liquidity position. At 30 June, NEXTDC had property, plant and equipment with a carrying value of $5.8 billion, as well as investment properties with a carrying value of $3.2 billion. The investment property values come from revaluing our M3 and S4 data center assets. We will now have periodic property valuations for qualifying assets going forward, with those assets revalued at least annually.

The change to investment property accounting also reduces depreciation and introduces straight-line revenue recognition for the relevant sites going forward. We have included significant detail on the accounting policy changes and the valuation process and governance in today's results materials. Our net assets stand at approximately $6.1 billion, and NEXTDC has approximately $8.7 billion of liquidity as we completed several capital initiatives during FY '26, including those previously mentioned by Craig.

Slide 12 details our debt funding profile. This slide illustrates our evolving capital structure, detailing where the $8.7 billion of available liquidity comes from and confirming all drawn senior debt at 30 June and subordinated capital is fully hedged. Importantly, due to the company's credit standing, it is no longer subject to any leverage ratio covenants. Our debt facilities are currently subject to a gearing ratio and an interest cover ratio, with contracted revenues not yet billing are included in EBITDA for covenant testing purposes.

Slide 13 details our debt funding maturity profile. Across our diversified debt capital stack, our facilities have a weighted average maturity of approximately 5 years, with no debt maturities until FY '30 and a staggered maturity profile beyond that year.

Slide 14 details our disciplined approach to capital. In the second half, NEXTDC has completed a $2.3 billion senior debt upsizing, issuance of hybrid securities with $1.7 billion of face value, providing flexible long-term capital to support growth, subordinated notes of $750 million, broadening the capital stack to include a new pool of investors and completed a pro rata entitlement offer of $1.5 billion, which was extremely well supported.

Additional capital initiatives are underway, including, but not limited to, project financing where S4 and S7 are expected to transition to a ring-fenced asset level debt structure over time ahead of formation of JVCo and JVCo itself, where we continue to evaluate capital partnership options across our development portfolio. We believe the combination of existing liquidity, additional debt and hybrid capacity, other financing options in flight as well as selective asset capital recycling initiatives provides us with multiple pathways to fund the contracted pipeline while protecting shareholder value.

I'll now hand you back across to Craig to go through our business performance and outlook for the 2027 financial year.

Thank you, Oskar.

Turning now to Slide 16. Customers have now contracted 740 megawatts. We have built 288. Demand is running 2.5x ahead of everything we have ever delivered and less than 1/4 of what is contracted in billing today. That gap is not options or reservations. It is signed customer contracts and it converts to revenue as we deliver. Billing utilization grew 58% to 175 megawatts this year, and the contracts already signed, take it to 740 by FY '30. Billing more than quadruples from here.

Turning to Slide 17, our non-financial metrics. The breakdown of contracted capacity by customer category shows 95% of our capacity is now contracted across multiple key cloud and AI customers. These customers are the key driver of density and scale, delivering operational and cost efficiency and improving returns. Interconnection by customer category shows the ecosystem is built on key network and provider partners, as well as enterprise and government customers, with ICT providers leveraging AI and cloud to deliver critical services to the enterprise.

Slide 18 sets out our capacity and utilization. We now have a total planned capacity of over 3 gigawatts across our land bank portfolio of facilities that are either open, in development or development ready, subject to development approval. S4 had another capacity upgrade this half to 365 megawatts of IT load. As customers are contracting higher density deployments often for artificial intelligence, we now expect to deliver more billable IT power in the same size footprint.

AI is also accelerating the speed of [Technical Difficulty] customer deployments, significantly shortening the time to payback and cash generation, supporting a faster pace of growth in the business. Our construction activity is matching the faster pace of customer deployments. 537 megawatts of built capacity is currently in progress and a further 130 megawatts is in plan.

In New South Wales, we added 16 megawatts at S3, the last 12 megawatts for S3, 10.8 megawatts for S6 and the first 250 megawatts for S4 is now under construction. In Victoria, we added 12 megawatts at M2 and 42 megawatts at M3. Both facilities have their remaining capacity to complete now in progress. M4's early works have commenced with 10 megawatts in progress. Expansion works are in progress across key metro and Edge locations backed by key customer wins, including material enterprise and government customers as well as strategic network cable landing station infrastructure and satellite partners.

KL1 opened to a foundation customer this year with 10 megawatts. It has a further 15 megawatts in progress and another 15 in plan. In Japan, Tokyo1's construction works have commenced with early excavation and retaining construction development underway. Disciplined site selection activities continue for additional sites across Asia.

On Slide 20, we provide a summary of our ESG highlights. As the data center landscape continues to grow as a major feature in our landscape, our focus on sustainability is crucial. With cloud and AI demand exploding, powering digital infrastructure growth sustainably is critical. This year, we published our first Sustainability Report under AASB S2. S2 Sydney received the Uptime Institute Sustainability Assessment Award. M3 is running 27% below its embodied carbon baseline, and our construction partners achieved waste diversion of 94.7% at M3.

On Slide 21, we provide a summary on our safety highlights. As our national fleet of mission-critical infrastructure assets continues to grow in size, so too does the importance of keeping our workforce safe. Across a record construction program, we delivered a construction LTIFR of 0.3 and an operational LTIFR of 2.2, both well below industry benchmarks.

On Slide 23, before I turn to guidance, a comment on the proposed energy reforms in New South Wales and at the federal government level. These proposals apply at the point of new grid connection and planning approval. Our operating portfolio and the entire 565-megawatt forward order book are unaffected. And we have written confirmation from Transgrid that its new capacity allocation policy does not apply to S4. None of these proposals are law yet, and we are engaged in every consultation, including chairing the industry's Energy Policy and Technical Committee. We expect these reforms to play to our strengths and our FY '27 capital expenditure guidance allows for these matters.

Turning to Slide 23 and our FY '27 guidance. We are pleased to provide our revenue and earnings guidance for FY '27, with net revenue of $615 million to $640 million, reflecting annual growth of more than 50%. The forward order book of 565 megawatts is now accelerating its billing ramp, with 197 megawatts of billing conversion in FY '27 and a further 221 megawatts in FY '28. NEXTDC's national metro footprint positions us for AI inferencing capability where sovereignty and data gravity require workloads to co-locate with enterprise and government.

Underlying EBITDA of $385 million to $410 million as we make key investments to deliver a record increase in data center capacity in line with contracted customer commitments. Operating leverage expected in FY '27 is accelerating in line with the conversion of the forward order book, driving rapid near-term earnings growth. Total capital expenditure for the year is expected to be between $5.25 billion and $5.75 billion as we accelerate investment following 495 megawatts of new contract wins in FY '26.

It's important to note inside this capital expenditure forecast, we estimate $500 million of reimbursable customer fit-out. 537 megawatts of built capacity is under development in line with contracted capacity. Accelerated expansion works for M2, M3, KL1 and S4 are all on schedule. Early works for M4 are in progress, and S5 is expected to commence construction in FY '27. Strategic metro and Edge development continues across all our sites, supporting enterprise, government and critical national network infrastructure, with colocation, inferencing, satellite and cable landing station capability featuring strongly.

In FY '27, we signed record contracts, setting us up for a record revenue and earnings growth. The operating platform is now in place, and it positions the company to scale materially through '28 and beyond. Demand from both established hyperscale and emerging AI customers continues at a scale and pace that creates an enormous opportunity for the business. As AI adoption moves from experimentation into production, demand is no longer the question.

Demand is shifting towards inference. That inference needs to sit close to the enterprise and government data it draws on. And NEXTDC's metro presence positions us for that shift. The infrastructure being built today underpins the next decade of productivity growth. And NEXTDC is proud to be building that platform at scale, at speed, safely, securely and sustainably.

Amber, we can now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Eric Choi from Barrenjoey.

I had a few questions. The first one, I'm trying to use the new info you've given us to work out what the true value of the $9.2 billion that you've historically spent on land, building and fit-out is. And specifically, you said your hyperscale yield on cost is 10% plus DC cap rates are usually 6% to 7%. So if I put my REIT hat on, it sort of suggests you're generating a 1x or 1.5x development spread on every dollar that you deploy.

So again, just through a brief investor lens, the value of what you have already spent, that could be $14 billion before I add future build and the value of your platform. So, maybe for Oskar or Craig, is that broadly correct? Because I'm also conscious I might be undercooking that development spread because you've got some other historic projects like S1 and M1 in that base as well. So, that's the first one.

Thanks, Eric. As you pointed out, those numbers, I think, are directionally right. I think that math is reasonable. I would just note that the yield on cost is a forward-looking estimate. So, won't include, obviously, the higher-yielding historical colocation business, but is focused on our expectations as it relates to the entire development for these hyperscale and AI deployments in the future.

Awesome. Can I take that one step further, Craig? Obviously, that excludes the value of your pipeline. And if I just hone in on the S4 and S7 portion of that pipeline, you're going to spend $15 billion of CapEx on that. Same rough math suggests that project could be worth $23 billion once complete. So, I think you previously said you're going to have $10 billion of debt for that. But if you take $10 billion of debt off, assume you guys have a 20% piece of the residual equity, it suggests those projects could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion for you guys, like pre any management fees, obviously, a future value. Sorry, can I just check that's broadly in the zone?

I think your comments, Eric, on S4 and S7 capital requirements are reasonable. The one thing I would make clear is that we have made no final decisions in relation to the structure of JVCo. So the commentary regarding 20% is not decided based on the conversations with the partners that we continue to undertake. There are many and varied structures that range from a number of different percentages.

So, I would just caution you to note that whilst 20% may be one end of the spectrum, there are plenty of other options and alternatives as it relates to the considerations on JVCo. So, I think that your S4 and S7 commentary is reasonable. But I would just note that no decisions on the final equity or management structure in relation to JVCo have been made, and they remain under negotiation as part of our JVCo review at this point in time.

Helpful, Craig. While I'm annoying you with so many numbers, can I just fire you one last one, which is on Slide 5. You're explicitly guiding to about $400 million of EBITDA in FY '27. If I just take Slide 5 and assume you're adding megawatts at, I don't know, $1.5 million to $2 million, is that kind of implying a $700 million to $800 million outcome in '28 and then maybe close to $1 billion in FY '29, just ballpark?

Again, I won't endorse your number. But I will say that I think it's directionally right. The key thing to watch will be the shape of the slope and how quickly revenue is activated in '27 and '28. So, whilst we have an extremely high degree of certainty over the '27 forecast and revenue and the CapEx that will flow to support it, the '28 number, we deliberately don't give out years because as the program develops, if we see the opportunity to accelerate the delivery program, that may mean that we can activate capacity earlier depending on the progress of the site development.

So again, I think your numbers are directionally reasonable. Difficult for us to give a firm number on '28 because it is subject to how fast the construction program is able to progress in FY '27. One year is a very, very long time in our business year. And now every year that moves forward, the overall speed at which we develop, deploy, activate and convert into cash is significantly accelerating.

And our next question comes from the line of Paul Mason from E&P.

Couple from me. The first one, just -- you've given pretty explicit guidance on greater than 10% target on cost for these hyperscale deals. In private, that gets talked about in the industry, but sort of we haven't heard you talk about these things in public before. You've probably been a little bit hesitant to discuss things explicitly on calls before. So, can you tell us, like, what changed that means that you are able to be as open as this now?

Thanks, Paul. Your line was a little hard to hear, but I think I got the gist of your question. What's changed is that when you considered the historical colocation business, whilst the numbers were small and the returns were pretty significant, the time at which we would sell and over what period of time and what period the facilities would fill was really the uncertain or unanswered question. And we were designing facilities for an unknown future.

The key point of difference when you are doing build-to-suit at scale and you go from doing 10 or 20 or 50 megawatts to doing 250 or 500 or even potentially 1,000, the economics essentially are locked at the contract point. The costs on the estimate for the development, the long lead time items, the bulk procurement, the negotiation with the general contractor, all of those variables are certain on day 1 at the outset. And so as we start to think about a more mature financial position for the company, those conversations with joint venture partners show us that whilst the returns in the scale business in deploying tens of billions of capital may be lower than the traditional or historical colocation business, they are absolutely certain.

And that gives us a high degree of confidence to be able to take a more mature approach and have a higher degree of certainty over what the returns will look like on these scale projects. So, that's the key change for us in communicating what our return expectations are is that once we have negotiated the contract with the customer and have the build cost in place with a high degree of certainty of the return.

Okay. Great. And just the second one. Just on your comments on Eric's question about potentially being able to move things forward depending on the pace of development on your sites, maybe just, like, are the customer contracts actually framed in a way where there's not like a fixed billing date, but you're actually able to start billing as soon as you hand things over? Or is there like a change to sort of normal contracting that's gone on there to enable that? Yes, sort of -- what's sort of the difference there versus previously when you have like a fixed date?

A couple of comments, Paul. First one, obviously, for Dave Dzienciol and the commercial organization, this year was a record year, selling 0.5 gigawatt was a really great result. I think it was probably 4 or 5 years in the making land bank, preparing for those scale sites to be putting us in a position to take advantage of that. So it wasn't 1 year's worth of work. I mean, the team did an extraordinary job on the execution side, but there's probably 4 or 5 years of historical work gone into putting us in a position to be successful.

As it relates to then delivering those, almost every customer would take the capacity as early as we can deliver it. Now, there are a number of factors that come into play when we are doing BTS that are different to doing colo and preparing shells because largely, the delivery program is just fit-out. The reason you can't build 250 megawatts of inventory is that every hyperscaler or foundational model player or neocloud has a different design requirement. And given the significant variability of those designs and the sheer speed at which the GPU architecture itself is continuing to change, just this year was the first time that we had locked a gigawatt scale reference architecture. So, designing single sites for more than 1,000 megawatts of capacity, the reference architecture for those designs didn't exist before that.

And so now as we enter this new age and we are required to plan for the development of these multiple 100-megawatt single buildings and over a campus, there may be many of those, it does mean that we can speed up the development if we are able to largely produce a manufacturing style of methodology for deploying the site. So off-site containerization, manufacturing, the preparation of the transmission infrastructure for scale power and then delivery of those, which would speed up our time to activation.

So, there is a very, very good chance that as we are improving the manufacturing methodology of containerizing the development of the sites at up to 1,000 megawatts or greater, we will be able to very significantly increase the time to cash by simplifying the construction methodology and playing a larger assembly on the site style of role. So Paul, it does mean that my expectation is over time, whilst we haven't started a construction program given the variability of design requirements, historically, it may have taken us 18 months to build capacity and deliver it. My expectation now is that we can go from ground to fully operating facility within approximately 9 months.

And the question comes from the line of Jonathan Atkin from RBC Capital Markets.

So, a question about Slide 17. And is there any way to unpack the composition of the order book? You give kind of cloud and AI, but any way to kind of think about notionally the mix of traditional cloud operators versus neoclouds versus LLMs and other types of AI start-ups? And then I have a follow-up.

Thanks, Jon. We haven't split it out. Probably just give you one comment. As it stands today, all of that business is largely -- the majority of it is AA credit-rated counterparties or better. So whilst we do have some neocloud customers in addition to the traditional hyperscale customers, those neocloud customers are backstopped in contract by NVIDIA for a decade or more. So where we have minimum decade to 15-year long contract agreements with up to 35-year options for our hyperscale customers, we are very pleased with the outcome of NVIDIA's role in financially backstopping our AI cloud customers in that category.

So today, I wouldn't necessarily need to split out the number because in Australia, all of the AI deployments are for inferencing, not for training. The regulation hasn't changed. The regulatory environment in relation to training of models has not changed. That may change at some point in the future, but certainly no indication on whether that will or what time frame that could happen. So, all deployments today are hyperscale or backstopped by NVIDIA of scale on 10 or 15 minimum year agreements with out to 35-year options. So the credit quality question for us is the primary one that we need to consider. And when that credit quality for the large majority of all of the 0.5 gigawatt we signed in FY '26 is AA or better, that would be how I would answer your question.

That's very clear. And you answered most of my second question. But when you get to, say, the non-AA or better category that is backstops, what do you think about kind of yields? You've talked about 10%. But is -- to you, is there an opportunity for yield enhancements by dealing a little bit more with that latter category? How do you think about target development yields for the latter category versus the former category, in other words?

Jon, the forecast we've given is obviously a conservative one. Any time you make these commitments, you need to carefully consider that we are 100% certain that we can deliver on those promises. And whilst they are forward-looking statements, we have a very high degree of confidence that, that will be the minimum expectation. Where that starts to lean into upside is based on the scale of the deployments.

And so what I can tell you based on the S4 site today, we've made those estimates on a 365-megawatt site at the minimum yield on cost. But as you start to consider sites like S7 at 650 megawatts or even the recently acquired Melbourne M5 site at 1,200 megawatts of IT load, there are substantial opportunities to improve yield on cost given the sheer volume of containerization and the manufacturing style of methodology and approach that we're taking to the construction of the sites [Technical Difficulty].

The other key engineering point of difference for us outside of the actual manufacturing-led approach to the construction is that those build-to-suit hyperscale campuses for a 1 gigawatt DSX reference architecture will be single-story buildings. So, once you have slab on ground and in-ground services activated, the time line is quite certain because we're not building up, we're not exposed to weather and other things as much as you would be in a multistory development. So, single-story developments of 1,000 megawatts or greater certainly have an opportunity to improve on our minimum yield on cost return expectations for a site like S4 at 365 megawatts. So yes, I do believe that, that opportunity exists, Jon.

We will now take our next question from the line of Tim Plumbe from UBS.

Two questions from me if possible, please and apologies. But going back to that activation profile, I guess the 73-megawatt announcement that you guys did at the end of July is kind of the newest bit of news that we've had the least of bit amount of information on. Craig, I've just conservatively assumed that it's pretty back-end weighted, and you mentioned there might be scope to accelerate that. But is that just fair to assume that like all the other AI contracts, once it does deploy, it basically accelerates and is fully deployed relatively rapidly?

And then when you mentioned site development, et cetera, are there any other constraints that we have to think about in terms of availability of gear, ability to be able to unlock and draw down on the power? Or is it purely just how quickly you can build the site?

Thanks, Tim. As it relates to the 73 megawatts that we announced most recently, obviously, that NVIDIA deal and having NVIDIA, obviously, as a partner on that was a really important strategic piece of business because that will continue to grow. That 73 megawatts is under construction, will be delivered in record time. Obviously, we're already forecasting a relatively short activation period. So, I think that the FY '27 number is clear that it is back ended. So, your observation is correct. And that is that, yes, it will activate quickly, but it will be back-ended for the time frame for that to turn on. But it will all turn on largely at one time. So the activation schedule itself doesn't have the type of ramp that you would have traditionally associated with a cloud style of deployment that would have been ramped or grown into.

As it relates to your question on constraints, there are many in the long lead time category. One of the benefits of scale that play to our advantage as a company versus many that are entering the industry don't have the history or the balance sheet or the existing supplier relationships is when you're securing hundreds of generators, you can deploy them depending on where you need them at any given time. I think our size, scale, financial capability puts us in a very strong position to manage those constraints effectively. And as we move to more manufacturing style of construction methodology, it does allow the LEGO pieces to be moved around the construction program depending on the time requirements.

The third point that you asked in relation to power, of course, as we have made very clear as it relates to the existing development program, certainly, the 0.5 gigawatt that we have contracted in FY '26, we have all of the certainty required in order to deliver those programs and the power that's required. We did put a reasonably succinct summary of the current legislative issues into the pack in order to help people understand what is certain and what is uncertain as it relates to federal and state government changes on the regulatory requirements and capital contributions and augmentation costs further upstream in the energy system that would be potentially required to be paid.

So, I would just add to that, Tim, that none of those things are certain for the future developments for us as a company and for the industry broadly. There are no clear outcomes as a result of those determinations. But they certainly don't change the degree of confidence that we have over the existing program. They will be considered as it relates to all of the future program outside of things that we have currently contracted.

Great. I had another question, but recognize there are a few subpoints there. So I'll leave it for other people to go.

And the next question comes from Andrew Gillies from Macquarie.

Just a quick one on debt. Like high-level unlisted assets could comfortably run LVRs sort of above 60%. You obviously made some changes to the accounting for these hyperscale only or build-to-suit assets. Like it would sort of suggest that financiers are quite comfortable with higher gearing levels, especially relative to how the equity market might think about it. Can you just give us a bit of a steer on how you think about like reported group level metrics and maybe why the way that we would look at things might not reflect how your financiers are thinking about it? Just really interested in the cadence given you're talking about project financing and eventually JVCo, which sounds like it's closer as well. That would be great.

I'm happy to take that one. Thanks for the question, Andrew. And there's a few elements to it. To keep it brief, the way the financiers look at the capital stack is a little bit different to the way that, I guess, you may look at it traditionally. If you have a look at the subordinated capital, $1.7 billion of hybrids and the $750 million of subordinated notes, as far as senior lenders are concerned, that is subordinated to them. There is a reasonable amount of flexibility in that capital structure. So, they don't look at it like equity, but they do understand that it is subordinated to them, and therefore, that capital does not go directly to covenants.

If you then sort of extend the question out to project finance and some of the other flexibility that we have in further financing developments, we have a certain percentage of our assets that are granted as security for the senior debt facilities. Within that, we have flexibility to move certain projects around. So for example, if we wanted to, we could exclude the S4 development from the guarantor group, which would allow us flexibility to fund the development of S4 through project finance.

And then we're approaching essentially project financiers, with those project financiers looking at the S4 development underpinned by very highly creditworthy counterparty under long duration contracts and have a conversation -- have a sensible conversation with them as to how best to finance that project. Project finance is quite a healthy market. There's quite a lot of volume in that space. And the nature of our counterparties, the fact that we've got a very strong track record of developing our facilities on time, on budget, gives that market a lot of confidence and appetite to finance those sorts of projects.

And as far as the senior lenders are concerned, again, that project is excluded from the guarantor group, and therefore, it doesn't go towards the covenants that we report and that they see. So hopefully, that gives you a bit more insight into how the lenders think about funding and how they get comfortable with our funding structure.

Yes. Certainly. And then maybe just moving to another quick one. NVIDIA overnight, obviously, started talking about the removal of revenue share agreements on antitrust concerns. I'm sure you guys have probably had some conversations there. It doesn't sound like it's affecting the capacity backstop. But if you could maybe talk to NVIDIA's support for the industry remaining on that capacity backstop side and maybe the impacts the lack of revenue share might have on these new neocloud customers, although I do appreciate they are a relatively small part of the contract book at the moment.

Thanks, Andrew. I'll take that one as well. The credit quality of NVIDIA is obviously very strong. I think they're AA rated and have provided significant support to the industry. We take a lot of comfort in the backstop that NVIDIA has put in place. The exact contractual nature of their arrangements with NCPs or neocloud operators is a matter for them. We're less affected by any revenue-sharing arrangements. We just take a lot of comfort in the fact that NVIDIA is a backstop. And obviously, that significantly helps get us comfortable with those counterparties, and it also obviously helps those counterparties finance their deployments as well.

And our next question comes from Siraj Ahmed from Citi.

Maybe 3 questions. Just first one, Craig, '26 was a record year, right, close to 0.5 gigawatts of contracting. Just in terms of '27, how are you thinking about it? Do you need to get the DAs for S7, especially the power allocation? And how are you just thinking of contracting this year? That would be great.

Thanks, Siraj. As it relates to '27, we don't need to do anything that we haven't already done. So, 100% of everything that we require to deliver our FY '27 numbers is already locked in. As it relates to '28, I would just restate my earlier comments that depending on progress during '27, that will help us understand the activation schedule and our ability to deliver on time or potentially deliver early in some of the '28 components. So as it relates to development approvals or power, we do not require anything in the '27 forecast that we don't already have. But obviously, as it relates to new developments in future years, '29 and '30, we would like to see the development approvals for S5, S7, M5. S5 and S7 have been in the state's significant development approval process for quite some time.

And I won't forecast how long it will take the government to make a decision because that is their responsibility. But they have been in the approval process for considerable time, and we have addressed all issues that we are required to clarify in order for those development approvals to be granted. So, it's my expectation that those will move forward, and we will begin construction of them as soon as we possibly can. On our side of the program, early works, ground readiness, designs, long lead time, item procurement are all in place. So the moment that we receive those final development approvals, the programs to deliver S7 and S5 will immediately be undertaken.

Got it. Craig, can I just clarify? That's super helpful. So on S7 specifically, this new wind power requirements and the Transgrid allocation policy, you don't really expect that to hold S7 back from a time frame perspective?

Well, I think we don't know what we don't know at the moment. The government haven't made a clear policy position. Certainly in a regulatory sense, that's not law. There's a lot of policy discussion. So, we will see what the final position is on cost allocation. But I guess the point I would make, I think, is important, Siraj, regardless of what happens with the cost arrangements on network augmentation, doesn't really change anything for us insofar as how those costs would have historically been dealt with. We have been required to pay transmission infrastructure costs for as long as we've been developing data centers.

Some of the further steps that the governments are looking to legislate on renewable components are already undertaken by our customers. So if we compartmentalize the responsibilities on the power regulatory side, the first category is the things that we have always controlled and been responsible for, the building and development of the substation, the funding of the transmission infrastructure in order to get the electrons to site. But our customers have always been responsible for the second category, which is the procurement of the electrons themselves. And on larger sites, that will only continue to be true.

And so some of the regulatory considerations as it relates to the further upstream augmentation costs that may flow into the net generating cost that will be an output of the cost per megawatt to deliver power at the site will still be the responsibility of our customer. I think we have a high degree of certainty over things that we have always controlled. There is a little bit more uncertainty for our customers as far as their final net energy cost is concerned as it relates to that energy procurement determinations.

But again, I'll just state that no determinations have been made and there's no current legislative proposal and those are the things that are being reviewed at this point in time. So, we will certainly continue to stay highly engaged. We're on all the relevant energy and advisory committees with government and through the industry association. I think we're well positioned at the table, providing good advice and feedback to government on what is practical implementation and obviously, practical to support the continued growth of the industry in Australia.

Got it. And just last one, just on M5. That's a large set of 1.2 gigawatts. Doesn't sound like your future builds are being underwritten by neoclouds, right? So is there an increasing mix of frontier labs that you're seeing that's sort of 1.2 gigawatts in these new build-to-suit sites? Or is it still hyperscalers that's driving your sort of pipeline?

Pipeline options, reservations are at a level that historically we've never seen. Demand really is insatiable. And whether it's a hyperscaler, the neocloud or the model builder, there is an enormous amount of optionality on how we would consider selling sites of M5 size. And so at the moment, we continue to engage with customers on the M5 design and how potentially that would be sold to them under what structure, what JV structure. So yes, they are all live conversations. But as far as the right customer is concerned, Siraj, the right customer is the best credit quality at the best price to generate the highest return for our shareholders. So, plenty of optionality in front of us right now as far as that is concerned.

And our next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies.

I've just got one question. So, you've reclassified the 3 assets into investment properties in FY '26. Are you considering any further assets in the future? And does it have to be single-tenanted sites? Or could it be a colocation site as well?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Roger. I'll take that one. We'll continue to assess sites on a case-by-case basis. I think it is likely that we will have further data center sites that are accounted for under lease and investment property accounting. S7 springs to mind. We haven't made a determination on that one at this point, but that's certainly one we're keeping an eye on. It does very much depend on the nature of the underlying customer base though. In the more traditional sites where we've got lots of smaller customers, some of who might take a quarter rack, it gets very messy if you try and apply lease accounting.

And if you have a look at our peers, especially here in Australia, who also use lease and investment property accounting, many of them have less than 10 customers that take large chunks of capacity. So it's relatively straightforward to adopt that accounting treatment for that style of business. which is what you're seeing from us. So it will very much depend on the site characteristics. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the larger sites that are really well suited to large customer deployments doesn't have to be a single customer. It could be a small number of customers, say, 3, 4, 5 customers who each take a significant portion of the overall site. I think it's reasonable to assume that, that type of deployment would lend itself to lease and investment property accounting.

Right. Okay. And maybe just a follow-up. As the valuation of these assets goes up, does it mean that you've got more headroom against your debt covenant?

In the short term, no. In the short term, in order to make sure that there is stability and there aren't any adverse accounting policy changes either for us as the borrower or the lending group, our covenants are on a constant accounting basis. However, in the medium to longer term, as we change or replace our common term fees, I think it's reasonable to assume that the adoption of investment property accounting, which over time will result in higher valuations and higher balance sheet values will result in us being able to accommodate more gearing on the balance sheet.

We will now take our next question from the line of Fraser McLeish from MST Marquee.

Just 2 quick ones from me. Oskar, I think you said the cost per -- or the cost to build has been coming down with the larger capacity builds. Just wondering if you could give us an update on what your kind of latest cost per megawatt for those large deployments is, please? That's the first one.

And second one, just on the straight-line revenue recognition under the new accounting. I assume that means that we're going to see higher revenue per megawatt and EBITDA for -- than we would have done otherwise under the old accounting certainly in the early years.

Fraser, I'm happy to do the first one. Oskar can do the second. As it relates to the larger developments and what an updated cost per megawatt may look like, it's not possible for us to put a single cost per megawatt on future developments because every future development now for hyperscale or AI is a build-to-suit specific to the customer's design. So the cost per megawatt of those larger builds in every case will be specifically unique to the customer's design and the requirement, the availability, the volume of liquid to chip versus air, whether the site is using recycled water or using more power specifically because it's not using water. So, there are many variables now that make the traditional colo business cost per megawatt, not something that you can simply put one number on because every design will be unique.

Oskar, you can do the second one.

Sorry, just taking myself off mute. Yes. So the short answer is, as we provided disclosure in relation to FY '26 and FY '27, the impact on FY '26 of the straight-line accounting treatment is less than $1 million. The impact on FY '27 is approximately $10 million. So in the first half of contract terms, we will tend to report higher revenue than we otherwise would have. And then in the second half of contract terms, we will report lower revenue than we otherwise would have.

Net-net, over the life of the contract, the recognized revenue and the recognized earnings are exactly the same. It's just a different way of accounting for things. The final point I would note is the lease accounting treatment where we straight-line revenue is entirely consistent with the sort of accounting that you see elsewhere in the industry. So if anything, it brings us a little closer in line with some of our domestic and international peers.

We will now take our next question from the line of Nick Harris from Morgans.

It's just one on S4. Just given you've already signed a sizable customer contract and you're building now, which I presume is fixed price, so you kind of netted off the key risks on both sides of that. Are there any other key milestones NEXTDC would need to complete before you could potentially sign that JVCo or third-party funding deal? And I'm thinking about it in the context of S4 capital requirements, but also S7, could you actually have this all lined up specifically with S7 if you're able to lock in a customer in construction and put it in the new vehicle ahead of actually the funding?

Thanks, Nick. So just to restate the question, S4, could we move with the JVCo structure ahead of the 115 megawatts that's still there? In order for us to get the very best return outcome for shareholders, the timing of that requires us to lock in the final 115 megawatts that we have available, that we have secured power for to sell on the best terms that we can. And so it's in our best interest and the best interest of our shareholders for us to sell the balance of S4 at the highest possible rate of return to have then fully completed a 365-megawatt site to AA or better credit quality counterparts that would allow us to get the very lowest cost of funding into the S4 vehicle. That's partly the reason the earlier comments relating to the timing of JV see it as a ring-fenced asset financing vehicle first.

And so sequencing becomes the primary driver based on the #1 priority being maximizing return for shareholders. And so it's our intention to secure a contract for the balance of 115 megawatts, and then that will give us 365 megawatts fully sold and contracted that we would then undertake the capital recycling process on -- in the JVCo structure. So, that is the current plan as it relates to the sequencing of S4's joint venture program.

And our next question comes from James Druce from CLSA.

Just actually following up on Eric's first question, just wanted to clarify something. If you do have a -- just theoretically have a hyperscale lease, you have a GC signed and you sell it to a partner in a JV fund, you've substantially transferred most of the risk of that development to the JV partner. Do you recognize a profit or development profit in underlying earnings upfront at that point? Or is that not going to underlying earnings?

I think your comment on processes and procedures is correct. Oskar, you can comment on the accounting outcome, even though the -- I'm not sure it's certain, but Oskar?

If it's one-off in nature and not particularly certain or predictable, we normalize for it. So, we strip it out of underlying EBITDA. So as you would have seen, we booked some revaluation gains. We don't consider that part of our underlying EBITDA because they are somewhat unpredictable and one-off in nature. And similar to development profits, we don't expect to account for those as part of underlying EBITDA because they can be quite lumpy and one-off in nature. We'd rather provide investors with visibility on the underlying profitability of the business.

Yes, I get that. But I suppose you are rolling out like a hyperscaler business though as well, right? Is that fair?

Yes. Look, to the extent that there are development profits, we will obviously book them, disclose them. They'll be on the front page of the P&L. As part of our underlying EBITDA adjustments, we provide a lot of visibility and clarity in terms of what adjustments we make. To the extent that investors take a different view, it's very easy for investors to make their own adjustments as they see fit.

Yes. Sure. One more, if I may. How do we think about the binding contract risk for, say, the 67 megawatts in the forward order book in FY '30? Are you actually taking on -- what construction risks are you taking on for that, for instance?

Well, we take on 100% of the construction risk. That is our job. And the timing and the forecast of those out years in '28, '29 and '30, they are all fully contracted. So as far as the binding nature, there are no reservations or options. Everything that has been included in the revenue ramp slide is 100% contracted and will be delivered. So the entirety of those are 100% committed and contracted, and we are 100% responsible for delivering them.

What I'd also just add -- sorry, what I'd also just add is the fact that these capacity deployments are booked in advance gives us obviously a lot of visibility and a lot of flexibility with regards to ordering long lead time equipment. Different proposition if we were thinking about forecasting what sort of business we may do in FY '30 versus having it contracted and having visibility. So the fact that we have that business booked in upfront does actually help quite a bit in terms of locking and managing our costs in as we go.

Okay. And can you provide a bit of a sense of the wriggle room you have on delivery dates for that capacity, say, in FY '30? Is there like 18 months, 12 months? Like how does it work?

Well, as far as the contracting schedule is we've given the dates that the contracts need to be delivered under as far as any further timing of that. If we can deliver some of them early, we may deliver some of them early. But I'm not sure I understand the question exactly.

So, where I'm going at is if you look around the world, like 50% of projects are running more than 6 months late. Now, Australia might be an exception to that. But obviously, there's increasing risk around labor in particular. I know you guys are trying to sort of ameliorate that. But I'm just trying to understand that capacity that you're delivering in FY '30, like what asset does that pertain to? Have you started building it? Just trying to understand the actual risk around that delivery and what happens if things actually get pushed out a bit?

Well, the delivery risk is significantly lower because if you consider the capacity that we have sold and contracted, that FY '30 component is the tail end of all of the other delivery handed over in a sequence every year. So, we're obviously building all of that. It will be ready early. And if the customer can take it early, we may hand it over early and activate revenue early. So the risk component is materially less on the out year than it is on current year because the building will have been fully built and delivered well in advance of the tail end being handed over.

Next, we have a follow-up question from the line of Siraj Ahmed from Citi.

Just a quick question. Oskar, you mentioned that you're looking at selective asset recycling, right? Can you just maybe elaborate on that as to what sort of assets, how should we think about that?

Siraj, that was a comment in relation to what we previously disclosed in JVCo. So, S4 and S7, I think it's reasonable to assume that M5 would be another asset that we would consider doing a JV on.

So it is just a JV comment.

That completes our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the conference back to Mr. Craig Scroggie for his closing remarks.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate you all joining us today.

Before we close, a housekeeping note. We have our Investor Days in Sydney and Melbourne next Monday and Tuesday, and they are currently fully subscribed. So if you have registered, obviously, we look forward to seeing you there. The venue is S3 Theater in Sydney and the M2 Theater in Melbourne. They do require security registration. So, there will be no walk-ins on the day. Please ensure you have registered and secured your ticket for the event. I will be joined by our C-level leadership team. And we'll have the opportunity to spend plenty of time on further Q&A with investors and analysts. So, I look forward to those days.

There's 3 things to remember from today's call. FY '26 was the largest contracting year in our history, with contracted utilization now at 740 megawatts. Every megawatt of the 565-megawatt forward order book is a binding customer contract, and it takes billing to more than 4x today's level by FY '30.

Lastly, the capital is in place to rapidly grow our business. $9.75 billion were raised, $8.7 billion of liquidity and no debt maturities until FY '30. The contracts are signed and the capital is raised, and our job in FY '27 is execution. That is where our focus is.

Thank you for joining us today for the results call. Thank you to our customers, our dedicated team members and to our shareholders. Bye for now.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning. and welcome to the 15th Annual General Meeting of NEXTDC Limited. My name is Doug Flynn, and I am the Chairman of NEXTDC. Thank you for attending, and let me take a moment to outline today's proceedings.

You'll have the opportunity to participate today irrespective of whether you are here in person or attending virtually. For those online, the platform will allow you to ask questions via the website and to vote using the electronic voting card. Links to the online guide can be found in your AGM notice letter, in the notice of meeting, or you can also go directly to the Investors section of the NEXTDC website. A link can also be found in the portal you are now viewing. If we're experiencing any technical issues that have an impact on aligning the 2 audiences attending this meeting, I'll assess the circumstances and communicate with you further.

I have been informed that a quorum is present. Accordingly, I declare the meeting open. Let me introduce you to my fellow directors, here with me in Sydney are Mr. Stuart Davis; Dr. Greg Clark; and Ms. Jennifer Lambert; Mrs. Maria Leftakis; Mr. Steve Smith; Mrs. Debbie Page AM and Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim. Also joining us via our conference facility is Dr. Eileen Doyle. As you'll be aware from our notice of meeting, Mrs. Debbie Page and Mr. Ibrahim are joining us at the AGM as directors for the first time, and I extend them a warm welcome.

I would also like to recognize and sincerely thank Dr. Greg Clark and Ms. Jennifer Lambert, who are retiring from the Board this year. They've given many years of service to NEXTDC, and we're very grateful for their contribution to the company.

Our CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Craig Scroggie, is also in attendance today. together with our Company Secretary, Mr. Michael Helmer. On your screen, you'll also see our leadership team and each of them are joining the AGM today. Our CFO, Mr. Oskar Tomaszewski will be managing the shareholder questions on the web interface. So I will refer to him when it comes time to answer any questions shareholders have submitted.

The Notice of Meeting was made available to all shareholders on 10 October 2025, and I'll take it as read. I can confirm that the holders of approximately 457 million ordinary shares or 71.23% of the company's total shares outstanding have submitted their proxies. The annual financial statements of the company and its controlled entities as well as the reports of the directors and auditors for the year ended 30th June 2025, have been published and distributed to shareholders. They can also be accessed at our website. Our auditor, Mr. Brett Entwistle from Pricewaterhouse is also present. Brett is available to answer questions relating to the conduct of the audit and audit report and accounting policies in the preparation of the financial statements. The auditor's report is in our annual report, which is also available at our website.

Now today, I intend to provide an overview of the performance in the past financial year and our CEO, Mr. Craig Scroggie, will update you on business activities. And after that, we will turn to the formal business of the meeting. As part of receiving the financial statements and reports, we will also take questions in relation to the Board, management or the auditor.

Now because we are conducting today's meeting both in person and online, I'll explain the process to ensure you are clear on how to use the platform to vote and ask questions. For those joining us online, voting on the resolutions will be conducted by a poll using the electronic voting card you received after clicking the Get a Voting Card button. Our shareholders can submit written questions on general issues or specific resolutions during the meeting by clicking on the Ask a Question button. I encourage shareholders who have questions to submit them as soon as possible. If you have any trouble using the platform, please check the online guide on the NEXTDC website or contact the help lines shown on the screen.

If you're attending in person, there are also some matters to note. You should have registered your attendance as you entered the room today. If any member or a proxy holder has not registered their attendance at the door, please do so now. Staff from MUFG Corporate Markets are here to assist you. Visitors are also registered electronically on MUFG's meeting registration system. If you wish to speak on a matter at an appropriate time, please raise your hand. And once a microphone has reached you, state your name and, if applicable, the name of the shareholder you represent if you are a proxy. Please put your mobile phones on silent, and we ask that recording devices are not used. And with that, I will move to my address.

Once again, good morning, and welcome to NEXTDC's 15th Annual General Meeting. Thank you to shareholders joining us here in the auditorium at our S3 Sydney Data Center and to those tuning in via the virtual channel. We value your engagement and support. Now despite a rapidly evolving marketplace, we remain clear about our purpose to create shareholder value by delivering the most trusted, sovereign and scalable digital infrastructure, enabling continuous intelligent flow, system scalability and unstoppable progress. I will speak to governance and stewardship, which includes Board renewal and financial strength and capital discipline. I'll update you on remuneration alignment as well as the governance standards we hold ourselves to as we scale rapidly. And following that, you will hear from our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Craig Scroggie, and Craig will cover the operating environment and growth strategy in more depth.

We've continued to planned for an orderly renewal of the Board. As noted in the annual report, we extend our deepest thanks to Jennifer Lambert, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, and to Dr. Greg Clark, both of whom will retire at the conclusion of this AGM. Their contributions have been invaluable to the company's growth and success. As part of our succession planning, I'm pleased to formally welcome two highly credentialed new nonexecutive directors who joined the Board effective 1st of November 2025, Mrs. Deborah Page; and Mr. Jamaludin Ibrahim. Mrs. Page brings a deep experience across audit, finance, capital markets as well as governance and currently serves on several ASX-listed Boards. Mr. Ibrahim brings more than 4 decades of experience in technology and telecommunications, including tenures as Group CEO of Axiata and senior roles in Maxis, DEC and IBM. His experience also extends to serving on Boards in Malaysia and internationally.

Our annual corporate governance statement sets out our approach to Board composition and independence. As at the 30th of June 2025, 8 directors served on the board, 7 of whom are independent nonexecutive directors. We review composition regularly to ensure the right mix of skills and perspectives are available and focused on balancing continuity with fresh insight.

FY '25 was a record-setting year on a number of fronts, from a selling point of view, NEXTDC secured 72.2 megawatts in new contracted utilization during the reported period, representing a 42% growth on FY '24. Subsequent to year-end, we also increased our senior debt facilities by $3.5 billion, taking total available funding to $6.4 billion. We remain focused on optimizing the cost of capital. Demand for digital infrastructure has evolved and so must we. Our business now operates across hyperscale campuses, metro and regional colocation as well as edge infrastructure supporting subsea cable landing stations as well as remote data services for industries such as mining and energy.

We are simultaneously scaling domestically and expanding across international markets and have established strong regional development capability by building in Kuala Lumpur. We are taking our development expertise to Tokyo, and have based our regional leadership in Singapore.

Now delivering these programs requires discipline, land and power and connectivity have to be secured well ahead of demand as well as being backed by advanced design, engineering and operational capabilities. Without these fundamentals in place, delivery of next-generation digital infrastructure is not achievable.

Stakeholder trust and engagement remains a hallmark. We engage actively with governments, regulators, customers, investors and lenders across Australia, Asia and the United States. I particularly acknowledge the Premier of New South Wales and his team for launching the Investment Delivery authority. This initiative aligned to the scale, speed and certainty our sector requires. We also recognized the support of Austrade and Australia's diplomatic channels as we pursue cross-border opportunities in the Asia Pacific region.

The accelerating adoption of cloud and AI continues to redefine infrastructure demand and NEXTDC is positioned to enable that transformation, both within and beyond our shores through the delivery of sovereign and sustainable data center services. At the Board level, we meet regularly with major shareholders. This takes place both directly and through our Remuneration and Nomination Committee to ensure your feedback informs our deliberations and decisions.

Let me restate what we set out in the notice of meeting. Delivering large-scale data center infrastructure in a rapidly growing capital-intensive sector carries high execution risk. Exceptional leadership is, therefore, a critical success factor. Under Craig's leadership, we have built and retained a world-class senior team for more than a decade and developed a strong management bench. Over the past 2 years, that talent has been actively targeted by new entrants and incumbents alike, often with offers at multiples of their current packages.

We operate in a sector where international competitors and private capital dominates with less than 10% of data centers globally trading as public companies. We are faced with the reality that the standard ASX pay frameworks are not competitive for attracting, rewarding or attaining the people needed to deliver our growth objectives and create shareholder value. Remuneration structures in private markets can differ materially from ASX norms.

That landscape made it necessary and informed the Board's decision to introduce a fully at risk one-off growth incentive plan, GIP, for the CEO, executive leadership and a select group of critical senior management personnel. The GIP is aimed at driving sustainable market outperformance and the fully at-risk rewards are aligned to long-term shareholder value creation. This year's annual report details related FY '25 adjustments to fixed remuneration and incentive opportunities while also outlining our FY '26 approach in more detail.

The GIP was announced on 24th of February 2025, following extensive engagement with institutional investors and advisers. It reflects the realities of a competitive global market for experienced digital infrastructure leaders. Our approach to remuneration is solely focused on growing shareholder value over the long term. And we acknowledge that it won't always be popular or meet the tick-the-box parameters of proxy advisers who are solely assessing it against ASX norms.

Operational efficiency and sustainability remains central to our license to operate, underpinning our ESG commitments and the trust our stakeholders place in us. Strong governance is foundational to NEXTDC's sustainable growth. Our Board and committees are active in stewardship of financial reporting, risk management, remuneration and investment decision-making. During FY '25, we collectively focused on strengthening the company's risk culture, maturity and preparing for looming mandatory climate disclosure frameworks and standards. In line with evolving global sustainability reporting frameworks, NEXTDC has always advanced its application of double materiality principles.

This approach recognizes that material issues extend beyond financial impacts to include the company's broader environmental and social responsibility. By assessing both financial and societal dimensions, we ensure our disclosures provide a more complete picture of long-term value creation, resilience and accountability. Our FY '25 ESG report and corporate governance statement set out the structures that support oversight across audit and assurance, ESG performance succession, remuneration and risk. We remain 100% committed to lawful, ethical and responsible conduct built on continuous improvements in the depth and quality of risk management and reporting.

Security and sovereignty remains central to our brand promise and customer value proposition. The annual report details a multilayered approach we apply to physical security and cyber resilience and notes our certified strategic status under the Australian government hosting certification framework, and this is the highest level of Commonwealth security certification.

Now at the close of FY '25, our contracted pipeline exceeded all that we've built to date. This is a clear signal of accelerating demand for trusted AI-ready infrastructure and positions us for strong ongoing growth in revenue and EBITDA over the coming years. We will continue to scale domestically and internationally, partnering with governments, cloud service providers, GPU-as-a-service platforms and critical infrastructure partners to build resilient ecosystems.

NEXTDC sits at an opportune intersection of 2 defining trends: the rise of sovereign AI and the digitization of every facet of the economy. The decisions we make now about land, power, design, and engineering, capital works and partnerships will shape our relevance for decades.

Now before inviting Craig to speak, a few acknowledgments. First, to my fellow directors for their diligence and counsel, noting, in particular, the significant contributions made by our outgoing directors, Dr. Greg Clark and Jennifer Lambert; and secondly, to our executive leadership and senior management who have stewarded the business through a year of rapid growth while strengthening our operating and governance foundations. And to the broader team who come to work every day committed to NEXTDC's success. Thank you for your contribution to building 1 of the most strategically important infrastructure platforms in the Asia Pacific region. Our people remain the foundation of our performance. Their expertise, innovation and safety focus continue to define standards by which our industry measures itself.

And finally, to our shareholders, thank you for your continued support and for the candid feedback that you provide throughout the year. We encourage your questions today. We're here to listen and engage. We are confident in the path ahead and the value our company will create over the long term. The best is yet to come.

With that, I'll hand over to Craig to discuss the operating environment, our growth agenda and the opportunities we see across Australia and the region.

Thank you, Doug, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Whether you are here in the auditorium at our S3 Sydney Data Center or joining us online from around Australia or beyond, it's a pleasure to stand before you to show our progress and also look forward. I will share with you the details about another great year in our journey, provide some insight into the exciting opportunities that are before us and then articulate how we intend to execute on that opportunity.

FY '25 has been a defining year. It has reaffirmed our purpose while testing our speed and resilience in an increasingly competitive market. Today, we find ourselves standing at the center of one of the most transformational shifts in modern history. The worlds of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and high-performance GPUs are converging to reshape the global economy for the AI era. And NEXTDC is right at the heart of it.

FY '25 reflected another period of strong growth across all our key operating metrics. As we either met or exceeded our original financial guidance range for the year. Net revenue rose 14% to $350 million, while underlying EBITDA grew 6% to $216.7 million. These are strong results built on a foundation of high-quality people, delivering operational excellence to deepen our long-term customer relationships. We achieved a 42% increase in contracted utilization and a record 72 megawatts of net new sales in the 12 months to the 30th of June 2025. At the end of the financial year, we totaled 244 megawatts of contracted utilization, of which 111 megawatts or about 45% was billing at the end of FY '25. With the remaining 134 megawatts or about 55% due to progressively contribute to billings revenue over the FY '26 to '29 financial periods.

Interconnection revenue also grew strongly, up 7% to $30.2 million for the year. As AI adoption accelerates, interconnections will be a critical enabler of our success. Our award-winning Axon platform facilitates connections to every location within our DC footprint as well as over 750 clouds, telco carriers and digital service providers, positioning the company to capture that growth. Best of all, this is just the beginning of a global acceleration to build tomorrow's AI infrastructure. NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Wang, estimated that between $3 trillion and $4 trillion will be invested in AI and data center infrastructure globally by 2030. The sheer scale of capital deployment should focus the attention of every owner, operator and investor. This is not incremental growth. It's the beginning of a new industrial revolution. It's a re-architecting of the digital economy and in NEXTDC, we moved accordingly and have laid the foundations for success.

This is a capital-intense industry. In FY '25, we strengthened our balance sheet to support the next wave of expansion. Following a $3.5 billion uplift in our debt facilities, we now have $6.4 billion in total capacity and finished FY '25 with $5.5 billion in pro forma available liquidity, including $5.3 billion in undrawn debt facilities. The new structure offers more favorable terms, no maturities until FY '30 and just 2 financial covenants, giving us great flexibility and a lower overall cost of capital. Importantly, under the interest cover ratio covenant, contracted pro forma revenue not yet billing are included in EBITDA for covenant testing. This treatment enhances covenant flexibility and debt capacity with FY '25 adjusted EBITDA more than 2x reported underlying EBITDA.

Across Australia, we've never seen builds at this scale or at this pace. With that in mind, safety first remains our #1 priority. Our current development program is unprecedented with 121 megawatts of built capacity in progress at the end of '25 and a further 100 megawatts in planning. In Sydney, customer-driven AI factory deployment works continue across S3 and S6, while planning works have commenced for S4, a site that is expected to deliver more than 300 megawatts when complete. Meanwhile, we're advancing the development and approval processes for S5 and S7, which are targeting 80 megawatts and 550 megawatts, respectively. Collectively, Sydney 4, 5 and 7 will be flagship hyperscale AI factory campuses that represent approximately 1 gigawatt of capacity once complete.

In Melbourne, we're now targeting 120 megawatts for M2 to support customer demand, while M3 has now emerged as 1 of the largest and most advanced facilities of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, with 200 megawatts of IT power planned within that single campus footprint. At M4, which will be central to the Fishermans Bend technology precinct, we're targeting 150 megawatts and progressing through state government planning approvals. We are very pleased to see the Victorian government's continued support for this $2 billion investment in the state's infrastructure.

Across our national footprint, we're expanding to meet customer demand where it matters most, in Darwin, Perth, Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and beyond. These developments extend our core to edge strategy, ensuring customers experience the same resilience, interconnection and security, whether their workloads sit in a hyperscale campus, a metro, a region or the Edge.

Our domestic development pipeline now totals more than 500 megawatts outside of Sydney and Melbourne, encompassing projects in development, planning and evaluation. This includes AI factory expansions at B2 in Brisbane and P1 in Perth, new regional infrastructure in the form of D2 in Darwin and work that has also now commenced at SC2 on the Sunshine Coast. We're also planning for new facilities in Geelong, the Gold Coast as well as the second facility in Adelaide.

Strategically located near power, connectivity and subsea cable routes such as the Japan, Guam, Australia South, Darwin, Jakarta, Singapore and Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth cables. These facilities bring digital infrastructure closer to where data is created and consumed, reducing latency and enabling real-time AI and IoT applications across enterprise and government sectors. Our hyperscale customers demand next-generation power density at scale. Above all, they need it delivered at speed. These priorities go to the heart of what defines NEXTDC, speed, scale, sovereign, secure and sustainable.

Beyond our shores, our first international developments are taking shape. In Kuala Lumpur, construction of Stage 1 at KL1 has risen very quickly. With 10 megawatts of contracted utilization already secured ahead of completion, the site topped out in September and is due to open in the second half '26, with the first 15 megawatts of capacity to be followed by a further 10 currently in planning. Our secured anchor capacity for KL1 ahead of opening is a clear signal of the strength of demand for premium sustainable data center infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and we are already in negotiation for opportunities to build in a number of other strategically important Asian cities.

In Tokyo, we secured our first site, introducing 30 megawatts of premium digital infrastructure in the heart of Japan's most connected city and just steps from the iconic Tokyo Tower. Positioned with 1 -- within 1 of Asia's richest network and cloud ecosystems, that site will give customers direct access to Japan's dense interconnection fabric and hyperscale growth corridors. Construction in Japan is expected to commence before the end of this calendar year.

These 2 Asian projects mark the beginning of a new chapter for NEXTDC as we take our expertise, our trusted sovereign scale infrastructure into global growth markets. We're proud to represent Australian innovation and its capability on the world stage.

The next wave of growth is being driven by what NVIDIA calls the AI factory. It's a new global standard for deploying and managing infrastructure that powers the intelligence era. These purpose-built environments unite advanced GPUs, liquid cooling, resilient power, high-speed interconnection, security and sustainability that will enable the next generation of computing. AI is now a defining driver of digital infrastructure investment. Every AI application and process depends on the next generation of power and liquid-to-chip cooling. Our long-term engineering investments mean our data centers are already AI infrastructure ready, designed for high density power, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and interconnection at scale.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating everything. It is reshaping industries, amplifying productivity and creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity, all on top of the continued demand for cloud and colocation services. Underpinning our platform growth is our Axon interconnection platform, linking more than 750 clouds, carriers and digital service providers. As AI and high-performance workloads become increasingly distributed, this ecosystem is a critical connector that enables seamless low-latency networks across multiple platforms.

As we build tomorrow's infrastructure at unprecedented scale, we do so with a deep commitment to protecting the environment for future generations. Sustainability remains central to our strategy and values. We design and operate facilities that lead the world in energy efficiency, water conservation and waste management. We view sustainability not as a constraint, but as a source of innovation and competitive advantage. As compute intensity and power density rises, our responsibility to ensure that growth is efficient and increasingly powered by renewables.

Through continued design innovation, high-efficiency cooling systems and active participation in the energy markets, we're securing cleaner, more reliable power at scale. Our goal is to demonstrate that the AI era data centers can grow responsibly, strengthen sovereign capability while also accelerating Australia's energy transition.

In FY '25, we continue to advance our carbon reduction strategies, our renewable energy procurement, sustainable construction practices and our circular economy initiatives. If these programs are of interest to you, I would recommend that you read our ESG report, our climate and nature report, our corporate government statement to understand our strategic objectives for these important initiatives. They are all downloadable from our website.

None of our progress means anything unless our people are safe. Safety is our highest operational priority built into everything that we do. Whether it's on a construction site, in a data hall, a remote location, our goal is simple. Everyone goes home in the same condition they arrived. A lost time injury frequency rate of 0 and a total recordable injury frequency rate of 1.4 puts us ahead of industry benchmarks. But the safety-first focus does not ever stop. These outcomes reflect the maturity of our safety assurance program and the strong collaboration we maintain with our contractors and independent experts. We continue to embed safety by design, engaging early with partners to reduce risks before work begins. Our regional capability has been strengthened with a dedicated Construction Safety Officer in Malaysia and our full safety management system now being translated into Bahasa Melayu to support our Asian operations.

While I was on site recently in Kuala Lumpur, I was thrilled to see 5-point PPE fully supported, and I reviewed the site safety program with our general contractor and team. Programs like executive safety leader interactions and Hazard Hunt are driving greater participation and hazard reporting. While 56 team members are now accredited as mental health first aid officers across the region. At NEXTDC, safety is everyone's responsibility.

Innovation remains at the core of NEXTDC's success. We are continually reengineering how we design, build and operate, leverage digital twins, AI-driven analytics and modular construction to improve speed, efficiency and customer experience. At the heart of every achievement this year are the people of NEXTDC. Our engineers, our operations team, our customer service professionals, they continue to set the standard for excellence in our industry. They are the reason we are again in 2024, recognized by the independent industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan, as Australia's leading data center services company and now increasingly a regional leader in Asia.

Our future development pipeline is very exciting, exceeding 3 gigawatts across the region. This includes 1 gigawatt in Sydney, 1 gigawatt in Melbourne and 0.5 gigawatt across the rest of Australia. In addition, there's a further gigawatt of international opportunities within our expansion plans. As we look forward to FY '26 and beyond, our growth trajectory continues to accelerate. We expect net revenue in the range of $390 million to $400 million and underlying EBITDA in the range of $230 million to $240 million, supported by record contracted customer commitments and our largest ever order book. These opportunities are larger than the entire company today, making the next few years a very exciting time for the business as we rapidly convert into billings, unlocking strong operating leverage and a step change in growth, earnings and cash flow.

The decade ahead will be defined by exponential demand for digital infrastructure, and NEXTDC is uniquely positioned to deliver on this next wave across Australia and Asia. As Bill Gates famously said, "We often overestimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate what can be achieved in a decade." The next 10 years will be the most exciting in our history, and we're ready to seize the opportunity.

In closing, I want to thank our team across every part of our business. We have an extraordinary group supporting our customers and partners who trust us with their most critical operations. I'd like to express my gratitude to our Board for their support and commitment to the success of NEXTDC and my sincere thanks to you, our shareholders. NEXTDC stands today stronger than ever, financially, operationally and strategically. The opportunity ahead of us is generational, and we are poised to seize it with the same focus and ambition that has defined our story and our company from the very beginning. Thank you.

Thanks, Craig. Before proceeding with the business of the meeting, a quick reminder of today's procedures. MUFG have been appointed returning officer for this meeting, and I'm satisfied as to their independence. We'll be conducting all voting by poll. On a poll, every member present in person or by representative, attorney or proxy is entitled to 1 vote for each share held. If attending online, you can cast your vote using the electronic voting card received after you register to get a voting card. You will then be asked to enter your shareholder number, which is your SRN or HIN plus postcode if in Australia or country if you're outside Australia.

The proxy votes already received for each resolution will be viewable on the platform as we move through the resolutions. These will be current as at the proxy voting deadline, which is 11:00 a.m. Sydney time on Tuesday, 11 November 2025. Any undirected proxies in my favor as Chairman will be voted in favor of the relevant resolution. Following discussion on all items of business, I will close the poll 5 minutes after the meeting ends. As the results of the poll will take a little while, they will be announced to the ASX this afternoon.

Shareholders can submit questions during the meeting. And if you're attending online, you can also do so by clicking on the Ask a Question button. To ensure questions reach us in time, I ask that you submit them now if you haven't done so already. If we can't get through all the questions today or if there are specific questions that are better addressed on an individual basis, we'll respond to them after the meeting. If we receive multiple questions that are the same or similar, we'll try to amalgamate them into 1 or choose to answer the broadest question, which covers off the others.

To ensure all shareholders have an opportunity to ask a question today, I will accept up to 2 questions from each shareholder for each item of business. I will then move to the formal -- I will now move to the formal resolutions.

The first item on the agenda deals with the receipt and consideration of the financial reports and the reports of the directors and auditors for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. No shareholder vote is required in relation to this item of business. However, shareholders can now ask questions or have discussion on these matters and now it's also a good time to ask questions of a general nature about the company as opposed to questions that are specific to today's resolution. NEXTDC's financial report, directors' report and auditor's report for the year to 30th of June 2025 are incorporated in the 2025 annual report, which has been sent to shareholders who have requested it and which is available on the company's website.

At this time, I would encourage any shareholder to raise any questions they may have of the auditor, which are relevant to the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the audit report. Are their shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question. Mary?

Thank you, that's better. First of all, thank you for hosting us here today. It's very kind, and we look forward to the catering afterwards. And thank you also for a very detailed and informative presentation. My name is Mary Curran. I'm today representing the Australian Shareholders Association with 50 shareholders and over 300,000 shares. I'm also representing myself. As you may recall, I've been here a number of times asking you questions. So I'll continue with that today.

So my first question is with respect to capital expenditure. So on the Page 18 of the annual report, the annual FY '25 CapEx was $1.7 billion, well ahead of the $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion initial guidance and 70% up on the CapEx in FY '24. Why was this? And is it a one-off event?

And then the second question, underperforming NSW and ACT. Amidst a sea of double-digit growth, a 1% revenue decline in New South Wales and ACT stands out. What happened? Did an anchor tenant leave? I note at the pre-AGM with the ASA, you attributed this to changes in power prices. But given you on build these, this does not make sense, so kindly comment.

So I'm going to pass that to Craig, firstly on the CapEx for '24 and then New South Wales revenue.

Thanks, Doug, and thanks, Mary. I appreciate the questions. It's great to see you, and thank you for the invitation to present to the Australian Shareholders' Association this year. I really enjoyed it.

The first answer relates to the function of power pricing. So I'll do the last question first. We had record high power prices over the course of the last 12 months. And as power prices have come down, the power that we passed through in our total revenue number has reduced. So if your energy bill at home last year was $100 and the energy prices came down. This year, you only paid $50 or $60 for your energy. So that was a big saving. So in the context of a reduction for us, our customers actually saved some money because the power pass-through costs went down. So that's a positive in terms of customers getting better value, energy prices having come down what they were in the previous year.

As it relates to how we measure overall revenue, we had very, very significant growth in what the category that we call data center services revenue, which is what we've actually sold. So a record year of new contracted billings. So our total net revenue for data center services was at a record high and will continue growing.

The second question, which was the first, was in relation to CapEx and investment. So we invested a little more and there's 2 primary drivers. One is we sold more last year than in the entire company's history. So as a result of having sold such a significant amount in the previous 12 months, we bought forward some additional CapEx to support those customer orders. Our CapEx is very, very tightly aligned to customer orders. If we don't need to invest money without a customer supporting it, we don't. So as a result of having been very successful in the previous year, we brought forward some spending in order to deliver those contracts for our customers. So in the context of overspending in a CapEx sense, it's directly related to delivering customer orders, and it's as a result of having sold a much larger amount than we had originally forecast.

And can I just sneak in 1 more question? Just wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on -- like, I've just read in the financial review about the data center on Christmas Island. And I'm sort of imagining the crabs on some sort of a treadmill, so they can get the power there. So I'm just wondering how will these remote centers work? I mean, are they looking at places like Cocos Keeling as well? Is that actually possible?

A fantastic question, Mary. A couple of quick points to explain this. You would have seen the slide that we had up, which talks about the data center segments. The -- like examples, if you talk about transport, there are cars, buses, trains, planes, there's lots of different modes. In digital infrastructure and data centers, we have hyperscale, we have AI, we have metro regions and edges.

Now only 48 hours ago, Google landed their submarine cable in the Sunshine Coast at our data center there, and that will then connect to our new Edge data center in Darwin. The Christmas Island investment for a small data center that Google have announced is actually the cable landing station where the cable will then connect and go out further through subsea.

We see edge locations as highly strategic because when we build small data centers in those locations, they then connect back to very large cloud and AI deployments. So we were very fortunate and thankful for the relationship that we have with companies like Google, who continue to rely on us to be a great partner to build that cable landing infrastructure. But those data centers for scale, if you talk about the amount of power required in Christmas Island, the power is really designed for the PFE equipment that will boost the signal that takes the traffic that sits on the cable and moves it to another country. So it's a relatively small amount of power, maybe some number of megawatts. I think that 1 was about 7 compared to a large-scale data center that we're building today, which would be many hundreds of megawatts.

So it's more of a stepping off point.

It's an edge, what we would call an edge. It's my pleasure.

Do we have any other general questions? Here we go.

My question is, can the leadership team share some insight in how do you see the competitive risk going forward in the long run, beyond 5 years, perhaps? Yes.

That's a big question. Craig and maybe even Steve.

Do you want to start? Okay. I'll do. Thank you very much. When we started the company, if you go back sort of 15 years, building a 10-megawatt data center was huge. And most data centers were on-premise and computers lived in customers' offices. And as we take cars off the road and put people on buses, we get better sustainability outcomes. We improve customers' energy efficiency so that they can buy more powerful computers. In 1965, Gordon Moore wrote a seminal white paper that said the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 18 to 24 months. It's called Moore's Law, and it's why we have all of the technology capability that we have today.

As a result of the last decade, we went through the third generation of computing, which was cloud. So that was the most fundamental and significant transition that we've had in the history of computing. As we move now into the AI era, we are seeing thousands of megawatts in data center investments and every major sovereign wealth fund and large-scale digital or a traditional infrastructure investor want to be investing in digital infrastructure.

The fact that we have more competitors than we've had at any other point in time, I see as the single most important motivator for continuing to run an extraordinary business, to always think about what we need to do to improve operations, to improve the quality of the product that we deliver for our customers. So the fact that we have more competitors and more capital flowing to our industry, means that we have to work harder than ever to continue to be successful. But I see that competition is a key driver for making sure the company never gets lazy. It doesn't rest on the success that it's had historically.

What we will deliver in the next 2 years will be greater in size than the entire last 15 years of the company, and we are going to do that in 2 years. So whilst the scale of what we have to undertake has risks, and we have more competitors and more capital flowing to the industry than we have at any other time in history, my primary focus is serving our customers because today, if we do nothing other than deliver what we already sold, we will double the company in a year and a bit. And if we have even more success which I am absolutely certain we will. The company could be 5 or 10x its current size just in the next few years.

Do you have any other questions in the audience here, General questions?

I would add to that question is I run a company in North America that's in the fiber infrastructure space. We're connecting data centers and buildings and the comments made earlier today are absolutely critical. So when you're -- when this much capital is going into a new industry like this, and AI is going to change our lives over the next decade. All these new entrants, these new competitors you're asking about, guess where they're going to try to attract people from. From companies like NEXTDC and the company I run in North America, where you have 10-, 15-year veterans that know how to do this stuff. So it's really, really critical in the comments that were made by Doug and Craig earlier on the remuneration to stabilize this team.

This is a very advanced team that knows what they're doing. Craig is relentless and staying ahead of the curve. And so it is critical for companies like this company and the company I run in North America to maintain your people because all the big hyperscalers and all the new entrants are coming after these people that are very, very experienced in this industry.

Thanks, Steve. Do we have any questions online, Oskar?

Mr. Chairman, the first question comes from Stephen Matthew Tate, who would like to know when we can expect a dividend reinvestment plan.

So it's pretty straightforward. The company gets ever larger every single year, the data centers we build, the capital we deploy grows every year, and the company is still consuming capital. We see the earnings going up in line with the revenue, and that is going to continue but the market is actually accelerating. Every single business case that we look at, every single investment we look at, there is a rigorous analysis of return on funds employed, and we continue to go back and revisit that. But that growth program means that it is jam tomorrow, not jam today.

We're not a low growth company or a no-growth company that is generating cash that we are in a situation where we can pay dividends. At the point at which we get to the stage where we can pay dividends, then at that point, I think, it will be perfectly reasonable for us to consider a dividend reinvestment plan, but we're still some way off that. Oskar are there any other questions?

Chairman, the next question comes from Eileen Mary Sackett, who was asking what do you consider to be the major risks facing NEXTDC in today's climate?

Big question. Craig?

Sure. Key risks for us. Obviously, in operating a high-growth business, first and most important 1 is having access to the talent that can continue to deliver on the size and scale of our ambition. Growing the company by 10x over the course of the next few years will not be capable without talented people. And people who have deep expertise in this industry are global in nature. The industry is probably the single most significant technology transformation in history. And there are not a lot of resource to be able to support the sheer scale of what's happening globally.

So number one risk is people for me. Number two is execution or operating risk. So ensuring that we have 100% uptime that the data centers never go down, power, security, and connectivity, our brand promise, 100% guarantee. Those things will never be breached and ensuring that we operate with that level of resilience is critical for our success. It's why we had invested in the Uptime Institute in Tier 3 and Tier 4 certifications.

Fault tolerance, ensuring that even in the event of a grid outage, a terrorist attack, any type of man-made or natural event that when everything else is unavailable, the data center can continue to operate to provide services to critical industries like hospitals and emergency services, air traffic control and the operation of the energy market in Australia. They are all fundamental brand promises for us.

The third risk is obviously our ability to be able to continue to meet the demands of our customers' capital formation, balance sheet, how we manage our equity, our senior debt, all of those instruments that get implemented over time in order to continue to fund our growth. So I think people, operations, and then capital formation are the 3 most significant issues. We have to continue to pay very close attention to in terms of managing our risk.

Thank you. Oskar. Any further questions?

Chairman, the next question comes from Mr. Jesse Felsinger, who would like to know how can we promote NEXTDC products and services to the state and federal government in Australia to promote data sovereignty for civil and defense users? How can we utilize current capabilities to improve AI abilities and efficiency? And how can we encourage governments to ensure a reliable supply of power?

I think we're pursuing all of these things very, very actively. I'm going to pass to Craig. That's 3 strong questions there, but Craig?

Yes, I'll break them down into a few components. So first of all, engagement, both at the state and the federal level. The company is deeply engaged probably more than any other time before I am regularly talking with Federal ministers and the state premiers, state planning ministers to ensure that we have the relationships to allocate the resources required to continue to scale.

If you go back a decade, a 10-megawatt data center obviously was big. But when you fast forward today, hundreds of megawatts, you're building very, very large scale infrastructure that's the size of a small city. So ensuring that you have access to available power that the company can be a key accelerator of the energy transition. So think about what is required for PPAs to be supported is offtake partners to accelerate the energy transition in Australia as we retire coal and gas assets, we need off-takers who are prepared to sign PPAs to accelerate new energy transition. The cost of electrons in solar and wind is going down. But the cost of the investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure is going up.

The reason the energy transition is disorderly is because we're moving to a net zero future, but we haven't made the investments in all the infrastructure that we need to move through that transition. So the energy trilemma, solving that to make Australia globally competitive, we need cheap electrons, therm electrons and green electrons. And that has been the hallmark of every advanced economy.

If you look at some of the challenges that we face today in Australia, smelters and other things that are getting record high energy costs are not being able to compete globally. Australia has an opportunity to move from Mining 1.0, digging up our coal and gas and shipping that overseas to move to Mining 2.0 to use our incredible resources, our renewable energy and our people to build artificial intelligence capability to export tokens.

Token in an AI factory is knowledge and the future for Australia opportunity right around the world is the Mining 2.0 or the export of knowledge. And I think if we're able to address those things by working very, very closely with state and federal government to solve the energy challenges and the planning issues, we can have a world-class mining industry for the future of technology.

Oskar, I think there are no further questions online.

Chairman, there is another question that has just come in. This 1 comes from Patrick Edward Lorne, who would like to know general question that is a follow-up to earlier discussion. Is there a race underway to establish market dominance in AI and data centers that will see some companies fail or be taken over as NEXTDC stays up right, might it be taken over -- might it take over competitors? What is your comment, please?

I think it's a raising certainty in this high-growth market, there will be train wrecks. It won't be us. But for sure, with the rate at which new players are coming into the marketplace, rate of growth, I would be -- I would think there will be accidents. But as to whether or not we would be interested in those circumstances, it would be a case-by-case consideration, but we're certainly spending our time looking at our opportunities within the organic capability of designing, developing, building and operating data centers ourselves. Craig, anything you'd like to add to that?

I'd only add the single greatest way for us to create shareholder value is to build these from scratch, not pay somebody else for the privilege. So our #1 focus is building capability, world-class standards and doing it on scale. We look at everything. We assess every opportunity and every company that's in the market. In the course of the last 15 years, I can tell you that we have seen very, very few that we would ever want to consider because of either the quality, the reliability, ultimately or many and varied customer-related contractual issues. The most shareholder value will be created from building new infrastructure on scale.

Thank you. So if there are no further questions?

There are no further questions online, Chairman.

Thank you. If there are no further questions, I would now like to move to consider the formal motions of the meeting. I refer you to Resolution 1 of the notice of meeting in respect of the adoption of the remuneration report. This is a nonbinding resolution. No votes may be cast on this resolution by or on behalf of a member of the company's key management personnel, including the Chairman and other directors or their related -- closely related parties. If you did not provide proxy voting directions to me as Chairman, and you're not a prohibited voter, you'll be taken to have authorized me to vote any -- all available proxies in favor of this resolution, even though this resolution is connected directly or indirectly with the remuneration of the key management personnel.

You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. I would add that the NEXTDC Board unanimously recommends that you vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Mary?

It's not a question actually. It's just a comment, really. I can imagine you're very disappointed with the voting. It's obviously going to be a strike. And I don't think there's anything you can do about that. But I would like to let you know that the ASA has decided to cast any open votes for this resolution. We have taken on board the factor that the personnel risk, if you like, that we need to have the best people on board. We've looked carefully at the remuneration report, and we've worked out that it was about 17.5% for shareholders. And we think most shareholders in the room would be pretty happy getting that kind of return on their money. So we will vote for it. We want you to keep the good staff. We think it's critical. We understand how competitive it is. I was at the Goodman AGM the other day. So I know they're all looking for people. So just a nod that we will be giving our undirected votes for the resolution, and so our shareholders understand that. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Are there any other questions? Are there any questions online, Oskar?

There are no questions online in relation to this resolution Chairman.

Thank you I would like to add that the NEXTDC Board -- sorry, if there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to the meeting to adopt the remuneration report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. Please cast your vote.

[Voting]

This item of business relates to the reelection of Mr. Steve Smith as Nonexecutive Director. I refer you to Resolution 2 of the notice of meeting in respect of his reelection. Mr. Smith has been an independent Nonexecutive Director since July 2019 and currently also serves as Chairman of NEXTDC's Investment Committee.

In accordance with Article 58 of the company's constitution, he has retired by rotation and offers himself for reelection. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of his experience and qualification. You can now see the details of the proxy -- valid proxies lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC Board, other than Mr. Smith, unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I would ask Steve to say a few words about his time on the Board and ask for any shareholder comments or questions. Steve?

Sure, Doug. Very quickly, I've been on the Board, as Doug said, for 6 years. I am approaching my 18th year as the CEO of my -- the second company that I've run in this space, same space that Craig. Craig and I've known each other for a couple of decades now. When he asked me to do this 6 years ago, I was very excited about it because I knew that NEXTDC was perfectly positioned to do what you heard about this morning. So I've been doing this a long time. I'm approaching 4 decades of being in the tech and the digital infrastructure space.

It's exciting, as you saw this morning that we're playing at the intersection of some of the greatest trends in our lifetime. This company is very well positioned to take advantage of that. And it's exciting times. And as Craig and Doug have talked about, it's an exciting time to be part of this company as a shareholder, as a Board member, as a team member. It's game-changing, and I'm thrilled to be part of it. And thank you for your support.

Thank you. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question?

It's actually a request this time. Clearly, you're highly credentialed and I see you've got a 98% vote, so that's fabulous. But what concerns us is that you don't have any shares in the company. I would like to congratulate actually Ms. Page and Mr. Ibrahim for buying shares recently. And I'd really like you to join the crowd. So can I talk you into it?

I knew that was coming today. So I've been so busy transforming this company in the U.S. the last 6 years. I really haven't paid that close attention to it. Craig and Doug and I talked about this morning when the window opens, you will see me participate.

Thank you. Are there any other shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?

There are no questions online in relation to this resolution Chairman.

Thank you. If there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to approve the reelection of Mr. Smith as a director of the company. Please cast your vote.

[Voting]

I now refer you to Resolution 3 of the notice of meeting in respect of the election of Mrs. Deborah Page AM as a Director of the company. Mrs. Page has been an independent Nonexecutive Director of the company since the start of November 2025. And in accordance with Article 57.1 of the company's constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, she has retired and offers itself for election as a director. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of her experience and qualifications.

You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC Board, other than Mrs. Page, unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I'd ask Debbie to say a few words about her election and background and then ask for any shareholder comments or questions.

Thank you, Doug, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be able to address you today as I stand for election to the Board of NEXTDC. I won't repeat my CV because it's outlined in the notice of meeting. Suffice to say, I'm a qualified chartered accountant. And in my executive career, I held both audit partner and senior finance roles in a number of different industries across a number of years, obviously.

More recently, and over the last 25 years, I've actually worked as a Nonexecutive Director. I've held Board and Audit and Risk Committee Chair roles across a range of industries, which appropriately for this appointment include property, technology and the manufacturing sectors. I very much look forward to working with Craig and my fellow directors and the management team, as the company continues its absolutely stellar growth, and it's an exciting sector to be part of. And I feel very privileged that I've been invited to join the company's journey as we proceed.

I particularly look forward to contributing my experience to the company's strategic execution, particularly in regard to joint ventures, contract management and third-party capital in due course. Finally, I would like to thank Jennifer for the very detailed handover she's given me. It's been very much appreciated, and she's done an excellent job, and I hope I can live up to her standards. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any shareholders online who wish to ask questions or make comments?

There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.

Thank you. If there's no discussion, I now put the motion to approve the election of Mrs. Page as a director of the company. Please cast your vote.

[Voting]

I now refer you to Resolution 4 in the notice of meeting in respect of the election of Mr. Ibrahim as a Director of the company. Mr. Ibrahim has been an independent Nonexecutive Director of the company since the start of November 2025. In accordance with Article 57.1 of the company's constitution, ASX Listing Rule 14.4, he has retired and offers himself for election as a director. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the notice of meeting sets out a brief description of his experience and qualifications. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen. The NEXTDC Board, other than Mr. Ibrahim unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of this resolution. At this point, I'd ask Jamal to say a few words about his election and background and then ask for any shareholder comments or questions.

Thank you, Doug. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, now fellow directors, management team and the shareholders. I spent 8 hours last night to come over here. So I have a bit more to say than just a few words, if you don't mind. Well, it's truly an honor to be part of the Board and to offer myself for election.

By way of introduction, I spent about 40 years, sort of which about 17 years in the world of IT in IBM and subsequent to that Digital Equipment Corporation. And after that, I spent about 23 years or so in telecommunication, first with Maxis, the company in Malaysia and also another 1 in Malaysia, Axiata Group, which operates in 10 countries in ASEAN and South Asia. I retired in 2020. And after -- since then, I've been -- I remain quite active in many nonexecutive positions, multiple industries, including airline, fast food industry and many, many others. Until recently, I was also in a Board of another transportation company and I had served for a couple of years in the national level -- at a national level in Malaysia as the member of the Economic Action Council, and also separately, a member of the National Digital and for IR Council, both chaired by the then Prime Minister of Malaysia.

So in short, I've worked with Malaysian companies with regional and international companies, private company, public listed company, GLCs, which give me balanced local and international perspective on growth, governance and, of course, risk management across diverse markets and cultures. I guess with this experience, I hope to contribute to NEXTDC vision and plans. You can see here just now how aggressive it is. So well, I hope to be able to contribute to that plan.

Well, I do not claim to be an expert in Asia, I hope and I believe my experience can and should complement the deep Australian and global expertise already on this Board. I'm truly excited to join NEXTDC and to have the privilege working with my distinguished colleagues on the Board and the management team. I hope to contribute to its growth story and including its regional expansion.

And on a personal note, I've always had great affection for Australia, 4 of my children actually studied in Australia, and I live in Australia, Thank you.

Thank you, Jamal. We can't applaud. We didn't afloat for Debbie and Steve. All right. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?

There is 1 question online directly for Mr. Ibrahim and this comes from shareholder, Eileen Mary Sackett. Eileen would like to know, it looks as if you have many and varied demands on your time in Malaysia. How will you find the time to properly serve NEXTDC?

Okay. It's true that I have many varied and many demands of my time in Malaysia, but it's actually relative to what I have been working in the last 40 years is quite practically nothing. I've worked very hard. And I'm -- the reason I joined here because I think I can commit my time and with full commitment to the company. So there's no question about that.

Are there any further questions, Oskar?

There are no further questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.

Thank you. If there's no further discussion, I now put the motion to approve the election of Mr. Ibrahim as a Director of the company. Please cast your vote.

[Voting]

I now refer you to Resolution 5 in respect to the approval of the grant of performance rights to Mr. Craig Scroggie, Listing Rule 10.14 requires the approval of the shareholders to be sought where the company intends to issue securities under an employee incentive scheme to a related party. Mr. Scroggie is considered such a related party. The proposed issue of performance rights constitutes the giving of a financial benefit, so we also seek shareholder approval.

In his role as CEO, Craig is a key executive and plays an important role in the growth of the company's business and strategic objectives. A summary of the main terms of the proposed grant vesting conditions and the valuation of the rights are included in the appendices, which accompany the notice of meeting. For the broader market context and information on the company's -- on the competitive environment for talent in the sector this year, we also provided additional commentary, which you can find in Appendix B and C of the notice. You can now see the details of the valid proxies lodged on the screen, sorry. The NEXTDC Board, other than Mr. Scroggie, unanimously recommends that you vote in favor of this resolution. Given his interest, Mr. Scroggie makes no recommendation with respect to this resolution and is precluded from casting his vote. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any questions online, Oskar?

There are no questions online in relation to this resolution, Chairman.

Thank you. If there's no discussion, I now put the motion to approve the grant of performance rights to Mr. Scroggie. Please cast your vote.

[Voting]

Resolution 5 was the final resolution, and so that concludes the formal business of the meeting. If there are no further questions, we'd like to -- if there are any further questions, we'd like you to ask them now. Are there any shareholders in the audience who wish to ask a question? Are there any shareholders online who wish to ask a question?

There are no further questions online, Chairman.

Okay. My thanks to you all. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the closure of our AGM. If you intend to vote on the formal business of the meeting, you should now finalize and submit them as voting will close in 5 minutes' time.

As mentioned, the results of the vote will be published on the ASX later today. And with sincere thanks to all of our shareholders, I now declare the meeting closed. For those at the venue, I look forward to also speaking to you as we catch up over refreshments. Thanks very much.