Origin Energy Stock

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Origin Energy's results for the 2026 financial year. It's Frank Calabria here, and I'm joined by my executive leadership team. I want to welcome a few people. Firstly, you'll all know Andrew Thornton but welcoming his new role of Executive General Manager and Energy Supply and Operations. We welcome Alita Nicholas, the Energy General Manager for Integrated Gas. And also welcome Alicia Purtell, our new Executive General Manager of People and Culture.

I'll provide a brief overview of performance and outlooks. Tony will speak to the financial results, and this will be followed by an opportunity for all of you to ask questions.

Turning to Slide 2. Origins delivered a good result for the 2026 financial year. The Energy Markets EBITDA of $1,701 million EBITDA is towards the upper end of guidance. Integrated gas at $1,620 million EBITDA is in line with expectations for APLNG and LNG trading. And in relation to Octopus Energy and Kraken it recorded a combined EBITDA of minus $8 million, with the U.K. Retail contributing $134 million, and that's enabled funding investment in growth as they scale the non-U.K. retail markets energy services and also Kraken migrations.

There are a number of business highlights for the year. Customer accounts increased by 243,000. We achieved our $100 million to $150 million cost out target. The batteries are on time and budget, and we now have 1.3 gigawatts operational. Origin received $911 million fully franked dividends from APLNG and increased its 2P reserves at 100% there by 332 petajoules, and that's before production. The Octopus Energy team have grown their customer accounts by 2.2 million, 800,000 of those in the U.K. but now 1.4 million of them are outside the U.K. Kraken increased its revenue by 19% through the year and now has contracted accounts at 95 million at the end of June. The Kraken and Octopus legal separation is complete. And as part of that, the equity raise of $1 billion by Kraken was completed in July. On the back of that, the Board have determined a $0.30 fully franked interim dividend, and that's obviously supported by strong cash flow and balance sheet strength.

Turning to the financial highlights. You can see there that the statutory profit is $1.574 billion. The underlying profit is $1.159 billion , and the underlying EBITDA of $3.22 billion, which comprises improvements in Energy Markets and Optical Energy and the expected lower earnings in Integrated Gas. The adjusted free cash flow was very strong. It increased by over $700 million to be in excess of $2 billion for the year. That strong cash flow has led to a reduction in our net debt to EBITDA metric, which now sits at 1.6x. And I mentioned the final dividend that takes the full year dividends for the year consistent with 2025 to be $0.60 fully franked.

I wanted to touch on the data security incident. In July, we advised there'd been an unauthorized access to customer information to 900,000 customers. Our priority right now is supporting those affected customers initial notifications have gone out. We're continuing to communicate with them. We're providing support through extended customer support hours, dedicated contact number, web page and access to specialist identity and cyber support services. We've taken steps to secure our systems. We've been working with cybersecurity and forensic specialists. We continue our review, continue to work closely with the authorities and regulators. And as I commented when I last spoke to this, the matter does remain subject to an ongoing criminal investigation, which does -- will limit some of the things I can say today, but I understand there will be some interest in that.

Turning to our purpose on the next Slide 5, of getting energy right for our customers, communities and planet. And firstly, for customers, our focus right now is on supporting those impacted by the data security incident. I'm pleased that we were able to pass through our lower average prices in July for the 2027 financial year. We continue to support customers in hardship spending $40 million. And we have new energy plans being introduced that are tailored to customer usage patterns, and we remain 1 of the largest East Coast gas suppliers through APLNG.

For the communities, it's good to see that we continue to support regional procurement and First Nation suppliers in a meaningful way and also community benefits through our rating community fund and our foundation where we contribute both dollars and also volunteer hours by our employees. It continues to be a key part of what Origin stands for. I'm also pleased to advise that our recordable injury frequency rate at 2.9 is an improvement on last year.

When it comes to Planet, our Scope 1 to 3 equity emissions are down 2% and included in that is a reduction of our Scope 1 emissions by 7%. Our batteries, it's good to see both Supernode 2 and Mortlake are now operational, and that's earlier than anticipated. Also pleased to see that the ash reuse at Eraring has jumped to 77%, up from 61% last year. And we continue to apply 85% of the produced water at APLNG to a beneficial use, including agriculture. And we now have 50 megawatts of community batteries under operation.

Turning to Slide 6. We have established assets and capabilities that we continue to build on, but differentiate us. They span customer, energy supply, energy resource international markets through Octopus and also global technology through Kraken, and that's something we continue to focus on as we want to deliver the best outcomes through the energy transition.

Our investment proposition on Slide 7 remains consistent. We have energy markets and APLNG, both leading Australian energy business is generating strong cash flows, fully franked dividends and an ability to continue to invest in the energy transition and our dividend yield is 5.7% before franking benefit. And in addition to that, we now have significant global growth potential through 2 independent businesses following separation, Octopus and Kraken.

I wanted to turn just to the commodity markets because they have shifted significantly so far in 2026, and that's highlighted by the charts on Slide 8. Recent electricity prices have been impacted by both cyclical and structural drivers. We've seen unseasonably mild weather, very high base load availability and also increased renewables and battery storage. And at the same time, what we're seeing is the cost of new build is rising, and that just makes it more challenging to invest at these prices.

In the relation to East Coast gas prices, while there's been a rise in global LNG prices, you can see the East Coast remains well supplied and has been insulated from those rises and we've seen the domestic demand be lower over the last 12 months, particularly when it relates to gas-fired generation and the demand from LNG producers.

Now we also include the Japanese customs cleared crude and for people that most will be familiar, that's the index that actually flows through to our long-term LNG export contracts. It's obviously risen sharply since the commencement of the Middle East crisis, you can see on the right-hand chart. But given the time lag that exists in our LNG export contracts those higher oil prices will be realized in the 2027 financial year. And based on the current forward prices, Origin expects continued strong cash flows from APLNG in FY '27 and there will be some losses from the oil hedges in place that will partially offset this.

And then just a reminder, we've communicated this previously as part of our quarterly presentation, but it's a significant event. The separation of Octopus and Kraken has now been completed. You can see there the stake in Origin economically in both of those businesses remains at 22.7%. The graphic on the left though, is to highlight the fact that Octopus holds a 13.7% stake in Kraken when you're calculating that. Both of those businesses are well positioned to pursue ambitious growth, and it was pleasing that Kraken was able to raise that $1 billion equity and that was completed in July at a look-through valuation of USD 8.65 billion. We'll talk more about those businesses later.

So on that note, I'm going to hand over to Tony Lucas to talk through the financial review.

Thank you, Frank. Tony Lucas here, CFO of Origin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. I'll spend the next few minutes on the segment results, our cash generation and then our balance sheet.

Today's strong result reflects 3 consistent themes. Firstly, we delivered what we said we would on earnings, on cost and on the battery program. Second, we had strong cash conversion, and we strengthened an already strong balance sheet. And finally, we kept investing in the portfolio through the energy transition for what it needs while maintaining disciplined sustainable returns to shareholders.

So starting with the EBITDA. Group EBITDA of $3.2 billion reflects strong growth in energy markets and an improved contribution from Octopus and as expected, a reduction from Integrated Gas.

Energy Markets EBITDA of $1.7 billion was up 21% and at the upper end of guidance. Electricity was $179 million higher. There was really 3 drivers. We had higher wholesale costs flowing through to tariffs with the lag. We had a lower cost of energy and that lower cost of energy was partially offset by last year's unusually strong wholesale portfolio benefits, which didn't repeat.

Gas was $20 million higher as both the sale and purchase contracts repriced and partially offset by lower trading volumes. Cost to serve reduced a further $56 million this year. That's against our fin year '24 baseline, we delivered $126 million of savings before the 2 retail acquisitions, and that's delivering the $100 million to $150 million cost out target we set 2 years ago.

With the customer base growing, the battery fleet now operating and cost discipline embedded the business enters fin year '27 well positioned. We expect battery ramp -- with the battery ramp-up, we expect that to offset lower wholesale prices flowing through customer tariffs.

Turning to Integrated Gas. APLNG delivered operationally well availability improved to 96%, 82 wells driven and 2P reserves increased 332 petajoules before production, and that's at 100% APLNG level.

Earnings were in line with expectations, reflecting a realized oil price of USD 72 per barrel, the full year effect of the Sinopec price review and LNG trading gains of $140 million. As Frank indicated, the higher oil prices we've seen since February are expected to be realized in fin year '27, and that supports a continued strong fully franked distribution from APLNG.

And finally, Octopus and Kraken, our share of EBITDA improved $80 million on fin year '25 to a loss of $8 million. U.K. Retail contributed $134 million. That's the fourth consecutive year of profitability for U.K. retail, inclusive of the continued investment in smart tariffs to grow connected customers. Non-U.K. Accounts grew to -- grew by more than 50%. Energy Services improved materially on productivity and is trending towards breakeven and Kraken grew revenue 19% while investing in migration capacity or capability and product development. As Frank indicated, legal separation complete and the equity raise finalized in July, both businesses are well set up for growth, and Origin continues to build substantial long-term value through these investments.

Just turning to cash flow, which is the standout of this result. Cash from operating activities, $1.9 billion. That's up almost $1.5 billion on the prior year. We saw energy markets cash conversion above 100% with strong credit and collections activity, the warmer winter weather driving lower working capital also, and we have much lower cash tax paid. You remember in fin year '24, we had a large balancing payment in that year. We received $911 million in fully franked dividends from APLNG the CapEx expenditure reduced by $500 million as the battery build program passed its peak. So adjusted free cash flow of $2.1 billion which is up $867 million. So the underlying story here is 2 strong businesses converting those earnings to cash.

Now to focus on the balance sheet. So strong operating cash flows and dividends from APLNG more than covered the CapEx program and shareholder dividends. Adjusted net debt at 30 June '26 of $4.85 billion increased slightly over the prior year, and that's once the battery tolling increases are included.

Adjusted net debt to adjusted underlying EBITDA was 1.6x. That's below our 2x to 3x target range, again driven by strong cash performance. So just as a reminder, the metric now includes the franked credits attached to APLNG distribution. We think this better reflects the pretax nature of that metric and better aligns with our Moody's credit rating.

Over fin year '27, we expect to move into the lower end of the target range. This will be reflecting completion of the battery program and the remaining battery leases and the crack investment made in July and we will have lower LNG trading gains in fin year '27.

The balance sheet settings remain prudent given market conditions. Overall, the balance sheet is strong and flexible, with capacity to continue to fund the portfolio through the transition.

And finally, capital allocation. The Board has determined a fully franked dividend of $0.30 per share. As Frank said, that brings fin year '26 distributions to $0.60 fully franked. That's a yield of 5.6% before the franking benefit. And this represents 50% of adjusted free cash flow. It was an exceptionally strong cash year. If you look at the cash -- the dividend payout average over fin year '24 to '26, it's more like 70% of adjusted free cash flow. And over this period, we've been able to review 62% of our adjusted free cash flow has been directed to major growth projects, and that's predominantly the battery fleet, which is now generating earnings. The dividend is consistent with our policy of delivering sustainable distributions through the business cycle.

So my reflection on the result is our consistency in delivering what we said we would, earnings at the upper end of guidance battery program on time, on budget and now earning and converting to cash and a balance sheet that lets us invest through the transition while sustaining fully franked returns.

I'll hand back to Frank to take us through the business detail.

Thanks very much. Tony now turning to business performance, and we're on Slide 16. And in Energy Markets, we have delivered on our short- and medium-term targets in 2026. On the left-hand side, the electricity gross profit continues to sit above the medium-term target of $25 to $40 a megawatt hour. In 2027, it's expected to remain above the target range with the batteries coming online, and that will be partially offset by lower wholesale prices flowing into tariffs. In 2028, we do expect a moderation of gross profit as lower forward prices flow through to tariffs.

For gas earnings, they're also above the medium-term target of $3 to $4 a gigajoule. There were lower trading volumes in the 2026 financial year with the 35 petajoule GLNG contract ending just prior to it in May 2025. And in 2027, we do expect our oil JKM linked supply costs to be lower with our current contract positions. And just a reminder, the Beach Otway contract is subject to price review, which hasn't yet concluded but on conclusion is effective from July 2026.

And then just lastly, the cost to serve target, as we said in 2024, has been achieved between $100 million to $150 million. And that also is achieved even including the 2 new acquisitions that were made this year. And we also were able to lower our bad and doubtful debt with improved collections through our automated credit decision engine.

Turning to customer on the next slide. The growth momentum continues. We've added 243,000 customer accounts this year. That's both been organic and inorganic. The acquisitions of 1st Energy and Energy Locals added 135,000 of those accounts. We have a community energy services business, which may otherwise known as better networks in the residential space and businesses at 484,000 customers and we've achieved a 46% compound annual growth in Internet account customers over the last 3 years. Our churn continues to be lowest in the market, and we continued improvement in customer experience as measured by the customer happiness index. We've introduced new propositions as distributed assets increase. We have increased the number of interactions that are now being fully digital, and we continue to scale AI across our business and our virtual power plant once again grew to 1.6 gigawatts.

Now just turning to what's happening in the market over the last 12 months, in particular, what's happened with batteries, you'll see that grid scale batteries in the NEM have more than doubled in the last 12 months and [indiscernible] are able to meet about 25% of peak demand. At the same time, you can see there's greater than 4x growth in behind-the-meter batteries in the last 12 months, and that's having an impact on the shape of residential grid demand. The role of batteries and gas work well together with batteries being suited to managing those evening peaks and the short chart spikes. That means that we start our gas fleet less, that defers maintenance costs and gas peak has continued to play an important role in managing extreme and long-duration volatility events.

We build on that further on the next slide, which shows the batteries will save most days, while gas peakers and hydro will firm the seasons. And in the context of a market with the growing renewable energy there'll be more variability, meaning there will be both daily and seasonal periods of both over and under supply. So batteries will solve most days in summer and spring where we have an abundance of renewable energy. However, they cannot shift energy between seasons. And then if you turn to winter and autumn, the renewable output is less, meaning batteries are more often depleted before the demand is met. The long-duration firming of gas peakers and hydro will be required to solve those seasonal swings. And I just note that in winter we're going through now, it's been very mild conditions and we've also had very high coal availability, the highest in the last 5 years. So Origin holds the battery and gas peaking portfolio that positions it well to manage both daily and seasonal variability in a changing energy market.

Turning to APLNG, and some of this information was provided in the quarterly, but APLNG revenues declined in line with expectations. We've had lower sales volumes and realized prices. As I stated earlier, the recent high oil prices will be realized in the 2027 financial year. And costs have increased to by 5% to $3 billion as we've continued to drive increased investment in our well optimization projects, development infrastructure and exploration program. And they were partially offset by some lower payout costs. We've stated before that the cash distribution was $911 million. Just worth noting that $335 million of those dividends related to the cash generated in the 2025 financial year. And based on about a week or so ago, 40% of APLNG's JCC oil exposure for the next financial year or the 27th financial year, I should say, has been priced at USD 100 a barrel, and that's before any Origin hedging.

Turning to Slide 21. APLNG has 2P reserves of 9,619 petajoules, 61% operated 2P reserves replacement in the financial year 2016. And as you can see on the left-hand chart, greater than 50% of our reserves and resources extend beyond the existing export contracts and we also have further reserves growth potential through exploration success. On the right-hand side, you can see production of 668 petajoules for the year. The team have done a very good job delivering their program through the year. And you can see that base optimization, which we set out to achieve has now improved well availability to 96%. We now have our workover inventory to optimal levels and we've completed a number of infrastructure projects that have had benefits to debottleneck to enable that production. We drilled 82 operated wells during the year. We commissioned 92 wells and freely to note that in 2027 financial year, we'll be ramping up our drilling.

Slide 22 just highlights the way we think about our production levers. And the first 3 of those blocks really just do talk about more of that optimization activity as we focus for the 2027 financial year, probably just want to make note of the ramp-up of new well development. Our increased drilling that I just noted before will include new asset East fields. And just to note that it takes approximately 2 years for new wells to reach peak production. In relation to midterm investment, we do continue to evaluate opportunities to unlock reserves in the Asset West joint venture approval would be required for those, and that will be informed by both market and regulatory outlook.

In terms of midterm investment, we do also remain very focused on growing reserves and resources through exploration and appraisal opportunities, including the Taroom Trough. We're very excited by the Taroom Trough, and APLNG holds a large 10-year footprint across both operated and non-operated holdings. And just to note that most of that is near existing gas infrastructure.

Turning to Octopus Energy. And you can really see that the optimal brand and service just underpins impressive growth. The brand in the U.K. is a standout market leader, as you can see in that top left, and that's driving their continued growth in the U.K. market on the top right, where it really is leading the market and has grown another 800,000 customers to have 26% market share. You can see that replicating now through to the non-U.K. markets where they now have 4.1 million customer accounts. And when we think about energy services, what they're doing there is building an ecosystem of assets and platform that enables them to meet all those customer needs, and that really extends across scaling installations. It's an extra vehicle leasing fleet and they've grown their VPP to 3.2 gigawatts. The development of that business then links back into continuing to grow value and customers in the U.K. retail business and other markets in the markets that are rapidly transitioning.

On the next slide for U.K. retail really just highlights how we and they think about the business with the U.K. retail strength, and as Tony said earlier, they've reported their fourth consecutive year of profitability. And this year they earned GBP 39 per customer on that 7.8 million average customers, and that's enabling them to invest in growth. It's funding customer growth that you can see on the dark color on the right-hand bar chart in the non-U.K. markets. They've invested in smart retail tariffs in the U.K., and they've also then invested in their energy services business. Each of these businesses have a strong growth outlook. The brand and service drives customer growth in the U.K. And when you think about the large addressable market, they're now going for across non-U.K. markets, that represents another significant growth opportunity. And what we're seeing now is it's only firmed in fact, over the last 6 months is strong government and customer support for electrification and increased adoption of distributed assets. And in the U.K., that's in particular, the electric vehicles, they are catalyst for ongoing growth in the Energy Services business.

Now turning to the Kraken business on Slide 25. I said earlier, they've got 95 million contracted to customer accounts. That growth of 21 million includes the entry into the Saudi market through Saudi Energy partnership that's added 10 million accounts. And of that 95 million accounts, 52 million alive. And what that means is that they're what's generating revenue. And that translates into the revenue growth. You can see on the right-hand chart that's grown by 19% to GBP 300 million. Clearly, they continue to get contract annual revenue growth and the pull-through to the P&L is really driven by that live revenue. And they're expanding products now. They're really working across now C&I markets, water telecoms, flexibility and field services. So that continues to widen their addressable market.

In terms of financial results for the Kraken in FY '26, they certainly invested more heavily to accelerate customer migrations that particularly plays out when you are going into new markets, but also when you're accelerating migration of large accounts that they're bringing on line for live revenue. And so those costs around GBP 64 million have been incurred ahead of the revenue. And what we've done is highlight the EBITDA with and without those accelerated migration investment costs that you can see on the left-hand chart.

There are a number of achievements in FY '26. So I'll just draw out a couple. They grew the contracted annual recurring revenue by 44%, and the average EBITDA margin since '23, even including all of our delivery investment has been 35%. You can see then we've also highlighted what the underlying subscription gross margin is for that business, which is very strong as well.

So I'll now go to guidance. So I'm now on Slide 28. Energy Markets EBITDA for the 2027 financial year is between $1.55 billion and $1.85 billion. The total CapEx, you'll see as reduced since this financial year as we complete more of the batteries, and that's between $450 million and $650 million. We provided the APLNG guidance in our quarterly results, but for completeness, you can see the guidance on production is between 625 and 670 petajoules, and the CapEx and OpEx guidance, excluding purchases is between $3 billion and $3.3 billion.

We've provided guidance here for both Octopus and Kraken. On Octopus, we've guided the U.K. retail EBITDA per customer, and that's a guidance of between GBP 25 and GBP 50 a customer. And I'll just make a couple of comments as to why we've chosen that. You would have seen on the earlier slide that really optimal energy comprises a number of businesses. One, the ongoing operations and growth of the U.K. retail business but then it's making choices as to how fast it invests in non-U.K. retail and energy services. And because they do drive a lot of that growth through organic means that goes through the P&L. So we think it's more meaningful for you to understand the ongoing profitability for U.K. Retail EBITDA, and they will continue to make decisions based on the way they want to grow those other businesses and as more of that information unfolds, we're happy to share that, but we think this is a more meaningful way of understanding the profitability of the core business. And secondly, we've now provided guidance on Kraken revenue, which is growing at greater than 20% is the guidance for FY '27.

And just to wrap up, we continue to believe we have advantaged assets and capabilities for the energy transition. We've got strong cash flows and returns from Energy Markets and Integrated Gas. We've got global growth potential between -- from 2 now independent businesses. Pleased with the balance sheet strength. We've declared stable dividends at a good yield and that continues to position us well to allocate capital to the right opportunities for shareholders over the coming years.

So on that note, I will now open up the discussion for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Tom Allen from UBS.

You've noted the strength of the balance sheet and free cash flow result. And FY '27 group CapEx looks to be guided materially lower than market expectations. So considering this, the Board appears to have heard on the side of conservatism in the final dividend for FY '26? So given the strength of the balance sheet, the tailwind in APLNG cash flows coming through at least in the first half this year that you've called out. What are the main upside and downside drivers we should be focused on with respect to the Board's discretion on dividends this year. So particularly keen to understand if there are key headwinds that the Board is cautious of or whether there's scale growth that Origin wants to pursue?

Thanks, Tom. Yes, we looked quite hard at the dividend this year. I think you'll see that the cash flow is very strong this year on much higher than 100% cash conversion out of energy markets. And really, we wanted to and we've always stated that we want to keep the dividend not swing the absolute cents per share around. So when we look at the sort of 3-year average of the dividend, it is about 70% of free -- adjusted free cash flow it's about 80% of NPAT. And so just given where the cash flow was for the year, we know we'll probably end up with some of that working capital swing coming back into next year. We chose to leave the dividend where it is. I did highlight that we do expect with the tail of the CapEx and the lower LNG trading gains fin year '27 and into fin year '28 that we expect to move into the lower range of our sort of target range. And just given where the environment is at the moment, we're probably preferring to be at the lower end of our target range.

And then on the outlook for the Energy Markets divisions. Are you noting likely moderation in electricity gross profit into FY '28 as lower current futures prices coming to regulated pricing. So I'd estimate there's about 30% of the FY '28 DMO and VDO prices already factored in. So can you comment on how to frame the spread of outcomes for Energy Markets on a 2-year view? Maybe the key drivers and potential down drivers?

Yes. I think that's probably more like 40% priced into the DMO. But so you'll have a fair indication from the curves of what that number is and an indication of where the curves are for the balance. And the way to think about it is our sort of fixed energy supply costs, so that's really a rating and the renewables PPAs has been exposed as sort of that absolute price. We buy a lot of the cover for C&I from the market from swap contracts. So I don't expect that to be flowing through. So you can probably broadly use the best market sort of sales number times those sort of deltas on the forward curve to get a sort of indication of where that's heading Yes, there's still 60% to go. And we're sort of looking at the market and can obviously move around people are predicting maybe an El Nino over the summer. So it's still a fair bit to run, but I could use those numbers as an indication at the moment.

Okay. That's good. And can you just comment on Eraring in particular? Do you expect to undertake the typical annual change out that you've done in quarter of the calendar year in years gone by. And now that the government is going to support the ongoing operation of Tomago smelter that's a big source of power demand in New South Wales that will now extend beyond December '28. There's still an uncertain time line for the commissioning of [indiscernible] 2.0. Can you to understand the potential for Eraring to operate longer than the scheduled exit date at April '29?

Sure. So look, firstly, our plans aren't any different to the April '29. That remains the case today. I'll get Andrew to talk a little bit about Eraring, and then we can talk a little bit further about the market because you're right to point out there's few dynamics going on, including the announcement today, but that's worth reflecting on.

So firstly, just to you, Andrew.

Proved for a while that we can flex Eraring pretty well from the 720-megawatt nameplate down to about 180 megawatts. And that's been the way of operating for a while. We've actually been having done -- having to do less of that recently with the batteries coming in and the mild weather that we've been talking about. We're not going to do any major maintenance. So the large turnarounds that we've done in the past that were every 5 years or so, but we're still continuing to do all the maintenance you'd want us and you'd expect around to continue reliability through for the next few years. So nothing has really changed from that perspective.

I mean, Tom, you opened up on a broader question about demand growth and clearly, there's a bit playing out. You can see recent announcements around the additionality are really driven by data centers and that's flowing through over time. You've got the announcement today, which is really an announcement for government around ongoing support for the Tomago. So clearly, we think a bit about that demand growth and how we meet that over time and have to respond to that. We've got the ability to respond to the way we operate Eraring today and then we have to think of it about the decisions we make in terms of how we supply the portfolio going forward. But they all go into the mix, Tom. I don't know if you had anything else, Tony?

No. I think that covers it. .

That's really the way we think about it. You're right. The it's likely to be electricity demand growth, and therefore, our job is to capture that and create value.

Your next question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on the results. Can I, I guess, just ask a question about Australian electricity retail. We've had, I guess, a number of regulatory proposals in Victoria. Inevitably, there's more requirements for customers on older offers. Is it still the case in your intention to maintain VDO and DMO as a general ceiling on your customer book?

Rob, it's Jon here. We've got a broad spectrum of products and customers sitting across those different products, and we will to have that. We may, in fact, have customers that achieve other types of benefits like, for example, higher solar feed-in tariffs that may actually sit above those tariffs. So we look at that as we sort of think through all of our products. As you know, we also let customers know across each of the bills, whether they can be on a better offer. And what we're trying to do over time is just continue to offer them value add multiproduct services. So yes, that don't think about that as an absolute ceiling, but it's absolutely a guide.

I guess the ACCC is going to be focused a lot more on this and something like 38% of top 3 customers were above DMO at their last review. So yes, just wondering specifically if you're changing your settings against that backdrop.

I mean, Rob, we're always mindful about -- it is a competitive market, and we continue to make sure we're passing through all the sort of lower cost that we can, in particular as we lower the cost of the retail business. We're -- I don't think I can sort of add more, to be honest, around where regulation may go other than to say that I think we're in a good position being a lowest cost provider, having a great brand and continuing to offer good products.

Yes. Well you're doing something right with the customer growth. So moving to the Kraken. Just wondering how we think about the Kraken Technologies kind of revenue and EBITDA in the past we've talked about kind of GBP 6 per live sub. I think you've done 619 and rule of 40. Are those -- and I know those were only other rules of thumb, but any extra color you could provide on thinking about that?

I think those rules of thumb remain appropriate, rob. What you can see now is just as they move into more growth and more migrations, you've got a bit of lumpiness as they implement those, and they'll come in because you don't generate the revenue until you migrate the customers. And I'd really -- that was the only idea of just sort of trying to guide that last 6 months. But in terms of the contracted, you'd look at the -- a couple of things. You look at contracted revenue growing pull-through and timing of live revenue will probably drive that. But the underlying margin and pricing for those customers I think, still remains appropriate. And so I don't think anything shifted in terms of how they think about the business.

Okay. That's super helpful. And then just within the Octopus Energy side, there's that Energy Services team. And I think you -- correct me if I'm wrong, I think you said they were kind of heading towards breakeven. Should we be thinking that that's just a function of heat pump in stores, I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but just to draw out the underlying trend?

They made quite a bit of improvement this year, and we'd expect further improvement. It's both scale and operational efficiency, and they've been -- it's both those levers. They've certainly achieved benefits as more smart meters and installation of assets has occurred over time, and that's pulled through unit economic benefits. But also they've really worked hard on the operating model in an installation business, and they made a lot of improvements there. So it's going to be through both of those. And pleasingly, you continue to see good support for that electrification agenda and the growth of those distributed assets. So those market signals, if anything, over time have only strengthened. But they're the 2 levers that are really going to go into it. It's -- you've got to do both to get the improvements they want and that's what they're working on.

Your next question comes from Ian Myles from Macquarie.

Look, just on the Energy Market side, can we just talk a little bit more about the gas side of the business? You did really well this period, but we're seeing gas pricing falling, the government reservation scheme potentially pushes the marketing to oversupply. How do you -- or are you resilient to that? Or do you face pressures on the gas side as well?

I wanted Tony to talk a bit about gas outlook [indiscernible].

Yes. Maybe I'll sort of give you a bit of the sort of Energy Markets, I guess, gas outlook. We're sort of into '27 versus say, '26 result, we would expect it to be maybe broadly the same sort of maybe just sort of slightly lower.

In terms of margin, we're finding that there's sort of maybe a slight rotation out of, say, domestic gas use into power, but it's very low at the moment. What we're tending to find is we're just getting lower volumes really through power generation probably at the moment that have not much of a margin impact in the energy markets, gas book because we don't put a lot of margin into the gas book from power sales. So at the moment, that's proving to be pretty resilient.

Maybe I'll hand to Frank for the reservation.

Yes. Just on the gas market review, we've been supportive for a well-designed one, and that really means that it needs to operate in a fashion that gives certainty over a bit longer time rather than an annual discretion. So that's where we really are focused and it should be calibrated to demand, which has got a lot of independent data, as you know, and through AER, AMO, everyone, they sort of know everything about the gas market. So those would be good features that we think if it's to achieve the objective of modest oversupply. So we're really focused on that and equitable contribution between players. But really that ability to actually not be subject to an annual discretion that creates uncertainty because that's not going to drive certainly for investment, but it also won't drive certainly for contracting by the large customers. So that's where we're focused on and we just continue to advocate for it. Clearly, just [indiscernible].

Do you see there's risk to the downside there in terms of the profitability out of that business, given the way the government is pushing it?

Well, gas prices -- effectively gas prices and Tony can talk to that, they've been pretty modest over the last year in the domestic market, so reasonably resilient, but we should add some color to that?

Yes. I mean I think it's sort of a fine balance, I think, for the government to put supply into the domestic market and then get the right sort of gas price. If you think about the sort of level of coal that's coming out of the market and sort of the price of renewables, it's a the last thing you do is want to incentivize baseload running a gas because of that price sort of differential heads in that direction. So I think it is sort of finally balanced. The gas book in the short term is a bit resilient to it. Ultimately, the Energy Markets gas book does benefit from long-term fixed pricing. So that does have a benefit from sort of slightly higher pricing, but then a lot of a reasonable amount of it is margin driven. So I think there's still a lot to play in gas reservation and how, I guess, indigenous supply can be also incentivized to come into the market over the medium and long term.

And I'd just add 1 and obviously, getting the designer, that's right. And that's an important outcome for the a well-functioning market. So whilst it remains that outstanding, that's a key look through as to when we get the design for that, which will be out in the coming weeks and months.

Okay. [indiscernible] raised another interesting issue. With the Eraring, is there a decision date or is there a point where there's no going back that you reach a stage in the life cycle that you can actually extend the life?

I think there will always be a date because you'll be making forward-looking decisions. We haven't reached that date. And just further the comment, a question earlier, I think it came from Tom or someone else that asked about, are you doing large overhauls? And when do you get to that point? So we've indicated we're not going to do 1 this year. We're continuing to maintain. But we have to assess that in an ongoing way and to make sure that we they will need to be forward-looking. And so I think there will be a time in advance of April '29, where we'll have to make a call. But at the moment, the plan really is the 1 we've articulated previously. We'll continue to maintain no large overhauls, but we'll have to assess that through time. But yes, that would be I won't put a precise timing on it, but it's certainly going to be in advance. You think about that in respect of both capital decisions and probably also people decisions and everything we give certainty to it. And I think that's worked well to date, but we have to continue to think about things in advance. We just haven't hit that point yet.

Is it fair to think it's a 12-month sort of lead time? Or is it even longer than that?

I won't be -- it might be a little bit longer than that. It might be a little bit long -- it might be a little bit longer than that. I don't have a precise time, but I probably have it. I mean I don't know if I was guessing 18 months, you know what I mean, but I don't -- I mean like 18 months in the model or anything you know what I mean, like it's that's. But essentially, if you're looking for the fact that if you're doing anything with a large asset and your forward planning, if you're thinking about 12 months and you wanted to make a decision, you just wouldn't want to put -- you wouldn't want to put that on critical path if you had to do it. So I think I would -- my sort of overarching message would be about 18 months.

Okay. You've made a big promotion, Origin is very much skewed towards the volatility side of the market that you've got lots of flexible assets and the likes. We've probably seen most of the pain in the cat market occurring out there. Just sort of intrigued what's the implications to the profitability of your gas plants and probably this is more forward-looking the profitability of the gas plants and the batteries as we're seeing sort of caps come down, energy arbs come down, FCAS going towards nothing. What's been the impact for the business?

Yes. No, good questions, and there's a number of drivers in the marketing and particularly the cat market that interplays with batteries a bit more broadly in the way we set our portfolio. So I might -- maybe, Tony, just make a couple of comments about the cap market and that and then we can open up on that, Ian.

Yes. I think as Frank said before, the markets come through a pretty benign winter and that combined with low gas prices over that period as well as batteries coming in has really seen that cap curve trade down. We sort of look at that cap curve. And it doesn't really impact, as you know, in finer 27 because it's mostly locked in and tariffs and et cetera, and some of it locked in into '28. But forward-looking ultimately that sort of cap price feeds its way into the DMO and customer tariffs, and that's really where you sort of see the impact in the peakers and the batteries. Once you're in the year, it's really about operating those to protect you protect your retail load. The 1 thing I would say about the cat market is there's still a long way to go in the transition. We still got 20 gigawatts of coal to take out. We've got gigawatts demand coming in. I don't expect winter has disappeared out of Australia in its entirety. And so there's still a lot to play out and we sort of look at maybe an $8 or $10 cap price over the long term and say would be a pretty strong buyer at that price if we could look in term. I just don't see the market not having volatility in the future given the amount of variability that's going to come into it.

Your next question comes from Amit Kanwatia from Jefferies.

Just a question. I think, I mean, you said the lower wholesale price, wholesale cost, and that's been fitting into the retail tariffs and into the customer pricing. But then just a question on the retail competition in general. And then how are you seeing those retail margins to be behaving?

Yes. It's Jon here. So we do see more competition in '26 at an industry level. I was pleased with the fact that our spread to market churn actually improved. So we still remain the lowest churn in the market. We -- as we think about margin, we think about a few things I've got confidence in the way which we acquire customers, and we try to acquire the most value for the segments. That's a differentiation through products and trying to look at multi-products and how we get the second fuel as well as the broadband grows that margin, our pricing strategy. And then as I mentioned sort of earlier to Rob, just how we think about pricing different products that may have for different segments. And then finally, there's the focus on ongoing efficiencies across the business and how do we reduce those costs to serve over time. So I think as you think about retail margins going forward, I think we're in a good position to hopefully maintain and grow those margins. as we go through it.

All right. Makes sense. And I mean, if I just think about the retail, but the other part of the business, Octopus retail. And I think I mean you're highlighting profitability, Frank, in the U.K. retail parts. And then I think you've grown international retail. You've got 1 million accounts in a couple of markets. Maybe if you can provide an update on those non-U.K. international markets? And how are you thinking about the profitability into those markets to be able to deliver something that you are kind of seeing in the U.K. market?

Yes. So they've -- they're really 4 markets they're focused on Germany, Italy, France and Spain. They had focused greater growth in both Italy and Germany, and that's why you've seen that they've really seen opportunities in those markets to grow both scale and also improve profitability. A couple of things that are going on. They've moved -- they are really -- I think 80% of their switches in the Italian market are now coming through their own channels, not through comparison websites and they've now moved to doing the same in the German market. So they're probably the 2 focus ones. So they are getting to the scale in those markets and the indicators that we're seeing there to date show they're tracking like the U.K., but there are still at earlier stages, and they haven't really participated in any inorganic consolidation in those markets, and they've just preferred to continue to grow them organically. They really haven't focused the same amount of effort into the French market, to be clear. And they've certainly are operating in the Spanish market. I think there's several hundred thousand customers there, and they've got some good growth recently. But we will continue to give signals as to that. It's certainly improving over time. They have to actually achieve that with scale over time, and that's obviously. They need to continue to penetrate into a broader customer base that they operate with in each of those respective markets. Probably the signals that you would look at probably be Italy and Germany given the scale of where they're at right now. They're the ones that are clearly scaling. But we'll continue to provide indicators as to how they progress over time because it's an ongoing opportunity that they move through.

And then if I think about Kraken business and you're highlighting 40% kind of rule of thumb to be broadly intact. But I think the margins over the last few years seems to be going down in '26 EBITDA margin is around 24% adjusted EBITDA margin. I mean, how are you thinking in terms of the medium term to be getting to those kind of historical margins that 35%, 40%?

Well, yes, they've just gone through -- I mean, as they've set up and they're now really starting to scale into new markets, and they're moving into new markets and executing a lot of migration simultaneously. They've just got quite a bit of build that's going on, and that's -- we're trying to give an indication to that, that, that build and timing and lumpiness of it is really setting what's happened over the last couple of years. But in terms of the underlying pricing margin, subscription margin, we're feeling pretty confident about that. But it's -- that proves a bit challenging that last year or so, the reason being is that they just really have front-end weighted as they've gone into new markets simultaneously and executed that. So nothing is really changing from our view overall. But we know that we'll have to continue to help you understand that, and that's what we're endeavoring to do to see you can sort of look through what's the right way to think about this business longer term.

Your next question comes from Nik Burns from Jarden Australia.

First one, just on growth stepping down again in FY '27. You called out those economics on co-Delta look challenging at the moment. Just wondering what's next for Oregon in terms of incremental growth CapEx. Where do you expect to deploy capital and buying the business from FY '28 or the need to invest at all? Are you comfortable with holding off a new investment until we see an improvement in broader energy markets conditions?

Yes. Thanks, Nik. I mean we are always making assessments about the market, and you would not think of any particular year, you're actually looking through to seeing where the opportunity lies and where the market present, and that's what we continue to do. Even if you look in the last month or so, we've got announcements about additionality for data centers as it's becoming a growth driver of electricity demand and even today, there's an announcement around ongoing growth -- sorry, in renewable demand likely to be as a result of the announcement regarding Tomago. So we're going to still continue to see underlying drivers. What sits behind that is we just have to make sure that we continue to remain disciplined around it. And we're continuing to focus on bringing Yanco Delta, but we're being very clear about where we can get that cost and how we return those assets, how we get a return on those developments. So we continue to look at opportunities across the chain. You'll see we've done some smaller bolt-on activity that Jon and the team have continued to do, and we continue to look at other wholesale market opportunities. But we're not -- we feel like we've got a good portfolio but we have to continue to participate in what we see as the long-term trend. So we'll continue to be active about it. And that's figures in our thinking, I wouldn't think anything specifically, but you do want to have balance sheet capacity that can both distribute to shareholders and invest, and we're going through a period where we feel like we've committed the right amount of batteries right now. And then we're continuing to focus on the other wave of opportunities. You can see we made an investment in July into Kraken as well. So we've got a range of opportunities across the value chain that we continue to explore.

Got it. Maybe just on APLNG. Your production guidance to FY '27, I guess the midpoint point to lower output versus '26, and you've outlined plans to increase investment there, but it will take time to see the benefits of that flowing through to production. Just wondering about if we look ahead through FY '28, do you think the investment you're stepping up in '27 will be sufficient to maintain output at optimal levels in '28? And then just I guess more of a higher question back -- I guess the question Ian asked around the divested cap reservation scheme and implications for APLNG. What's the desire to and continue to invest here when really the incremental molecules are getting out of the ground and primarily going into the domestic market given you've got enough gas for LNG. How is the weighing up that need or desire to invest more right now given the uncertainty around what's been proposed?

Yes, sure. I'll get Alita to answer the first question, and then I'll come back and give you some comments regarding joint venture and gas market review and other aspects.

Yes. Thanks very much. So we will continue to see decline across our fields. That's our natural field decline, and it has meant that we have needed to increase the investments that we're making. So what you have seen for FY '27, lower production and also an increase in the investment that we're making in drilling. We'd expect going forward that we'll need to continue to invest in our optimization activities about the same level that we have been investing to date. We'd expect that the drilling investments would hold at about the levels that we've got for '27. What I would say, though, is there are midterm opportunities. So we do have the opportunity to unlock some of the lower cost gas in Reedy Creek. That would be through an expansion of the Reedy Creek facilities that currently we've got additional gas. We don't have additional facilities in that field, but that would be subject to what happening in the market outlook and the regulatory outlook and will be a call that APLNG joint venture will need to make.

And probably just late to just add this, so the decline rate does flatten through the work that's planned and then -- so it doesn't get to give a sense for that because I think that's what [indiscernible].

Yes, that's correct. So in the last probably 18 months, you've been looking at a decline rate of about 1.5 PJs per quarter. we're expecting that over this financial year, that will flatten a bit to about 1 to 1.5 PJs per quarter. And then we'd expect in FY '28, we'd be more at around 1 PJ per quarter in terms of the decline rate.

And then what Alita highlighted, Nik, was that 1 of the investments before us right now is the facilities that would be to support and the drilling to support Reedy Creek, there's a lot of reserves. The joint venture is just pretty rational about that. They -- whilst you've got gas market reviews out there, they really would like to understand the market they're investing in. But just to continue to be a rational investor. So the appetite will be there provided they just understand the market settings. That's really the main thing, and it's right in the midst of that right now. So that will play into it. And so will the broader market. So Conoco has continued and Sinopec continue to be very constructive joint venture partners, been very -- we've spent money into this joint venture over time. But right now, I think there's a lot swinging on the gas market review. So I just need to understand that and get the confidence from that.

That's great. Just 1 final 1 for me. Just on the cost of serve savings. You've achieved your target. It's just wondering if there's any plans for further cost savings to help offset inflationary impacts in FY '27.

Yes. I mean we absolutely continue to focus on where we can reduce the sort of activity for customers and improve self-service. One of the key aspects of that is investment in AI. As we think about '27 though, we have the full year impact of 1st Energy and Energy Locals. So we'll absorb that we'll migrate those customers on to Kraken and get the efficiencies from that. There will be an additional cost that comes with 135,000 customers. We're also going to reallocate some of the costs associated with the VPP and from the Future Energy segment into the retail business. and the costs associated with the data incident. So we're working hard to offset those. I think what we've guided there is that cost to serve per customer should be flat into '27. But underneath that, there's a lot of activity going in terms of AI and other efficiencies.

I just have 1 thing to that is the retail acquisitions will migrate, as John said, over time, our cost to serve is probably broadly, I'd say probably half what their cost to serve is. So it just takes us time to migrate that and get that benefit. But we definitely see value in acquiring more customers and migrating them on to our platform.

Yes. I know ones we're pleased that we're through that transformation, the teams are continuing to focus on that. continuous improvement every day, and that will continue to provide opportunities for us going forward.

Your next question comes from Gordon Ramsay from Morgans Financial.

Sorry, that's RBC Capital Markets. Just on Kraken, and I'm not asking you for an exact date, but I just want to get my head around what's required to be in a position to IPO or spin it off? I mean, obviously, the legal separation is complete. And I guess where I'm coming from, is this purely market driven right now? Or are there additional factors at play in terms of maturing the business within Kraken or key aspects of that business?

Well, I think there's -- look, that was obviously a key step. You can see a set up independent management team a team focused on all of the aspects that would be associated with listing, including U.S. GAAP, all of the reporting requirements. They're all underway. They have been for some time, but that's key. They've just got to continue to deliver on their growth. And then the Board will make a call. But that's -- there is work underway, Gordon, as you would know, to prepare a business for IPO that continues and just to be ready, and then there will be a decision based on market at the right time. But yes, there's work underway, but that's in train, and you would expect them to be delivering against that. And they've got an experienced team that have been through this before that are now focused on them.

That's still pretty vague, Frank. Is it like a 6-month, 12-month, 18-month [indiscernible]?

Yes. I think that will be a decision for the board. There's been no committed time frame. In terms of it being ready, I would expect that it would be ready over that type of time frame as to when we make a call. I think it will be dependent on when the Board, there's no fixed time frame committed to by the Board. But if you're asking it for it to be a ready to go for it, I would expect over the next 12 months, it would be ready. And then we would make a call. And in the meantime, it's got to continue to focus on growing customer accounts, growing into new markets, and it's got to deliver those things as well. But there's no final decision by the Board, but you can clearly see we've separated the business. We raised equity in it. It has a different shareholder base and everyone will make a decision at the right time.

Excellent. And just 1 more for me. I'm really interested in your view on how batteries and gas are working at the moment and whether we're looking at this as a -- or you are looking at this as a temporary benign kind of market reaction? Or is there actually a long-term structural change here where batteries will increasingly displace gas in the market?

Yes. That's a good question. Mike, do you want to give a bit of a view on the wholesale market and then we'll...

Yes. So I think as Frank highlighted, I think in the summer, where you've got plentiful renewable output, particularly with solar, then batteries will do that daily shifting of of supply, if I can call it that. And so less need to run, as Frank highlighted in that chart, gas in the summer, where we do see it differently is the winter. And we have come through I think 2 sort of -- there's 2 or 3 things in the market that we've just seen this winter that I don't think necessarily hold going forward as 1 is you expect the weather to mean revert at some stage. We went through a particularly warm summer gas storage was high. Gas prices were low. So that's the second thing. Gas was quite plentiful. And then the third thing is you had very high coal availability. And when we look at the future, there will be less coal, it gets older. So it's less -- it has less availability. We do see the gas market at some stage sort of tightening. We're obviously the gas reservation policy to play in there and we see the weather mean reverting. So we do see gas having to play a role in those longer duration as renewables come on, but that's just something we haven't seen this winter.

Your next question comes from Tom Wallington from Citigroup.

Just wanted to ask a question on Yanco Delta and noting that you've described the project as being increasingly challenged even with this support, can you just give us a bit more color as to what these key commercial hurdles are and clarify that you're still working towards that second half calendar year '26 FID decision date? I guess more broadly, we all know Yanco Delta is a Tier 1 wind resource, and it will go a long way in replacing generation capacity once a rating does come out. I mean from my view, the market does seem to implicitly be pricing in coal for longer. However, if we do assume that we're working towards that April 2029 Eraring closure date, is it the case that CIS support needs to step up? Or is it a case that customers really need to reset expectations and we see a re-rate of forward swaps and taps?

Yes. Thanks, Tom. So firstly, a couple of opening remarks. I'll get Andrew to add to this. We agree with you. It's a Tier 1 project. The market is going to need more wind energy to be built. And therefore, we continue to focus on bringing it to a final investment decision. My comments previously are that the cost of building those assets has risen and you've got very low wholesale prices now. So clearly, we have to work through that, and that makes that challenging for newbuild economics right now. We've also got segments of the market that are going to need to bring new renewable energy on it, including data centers. So there's also that aspect associated with it. When -- I'll get Andrew to talk about that because clearly, I get Andrew to talk about Yanco Delta itself because we are very focused on getting its economics as attractive as it possibly can be because we know the market is going to need it, and that's our focus right now.

Yes. I'll just jump in there. So I mean, we're actually pretty pleased with the progress that Yanco is making from a just a pure project hitting milestones perspective. But as we've talked about, there's some sort of cost challenges that are emerging that make it challenging even with CIS support. And so I don't think we will take Fed when we get to a point that it makes sense and it's economic and we can allocate capital to it. What that means is we've got to work on costs. We've got to find opportunities to lower that cost we've talked about that we'll be using and desire to use third-party capital, and so we'll need to identify and secure a capital partner for that asset as well and that will take the time it takes. I think back to Eraring, as we said, the system does need wind for us, though, based on the April '29 date. I mean Yanco wouldn't be in place by that time anyway. And so we have a portfolio which is flexible enough, both with the assets that we have and the contracts and market positions we have to manage Eraring coming out at that time.

Your next question comes from Cameron Needham from Bank of America.

I think most of the key questions have been asked. Just 1 question from me. you've highlighted the JCC hedge position in FY '27. I'm just keen to ask what level of commodity price exposure are you comfortable running over the medium term? And I guess more broadly, is there any temptation to change hedging policy going forward just given the impact that you realized or expect to realize in FY '27?

Yes. Thanks, Cameron. Yes. So we put those hedges in basically when we saw the JCC price trend up, at least initially, the thinking there was that our outlook, particularly at the time pre the Middle East crisis was the -- both the gas and the oil markets looked oversupplied from our sort of macroeconomic view. And so the opportunity to lock in some hedging at higher prices and protect us from that oversupply was what we looked at. It wasn't necessary in this case. Balance sheet driven given our balance sheet was so strong. And I think in hindsight, obviously, would have rather been exposed to those prices. So look, I think we sort of see the oil market and APLNG exposure to APLNG in that market as a market where we can hedge and firm up some cash flows through time to help manage the balance sheet when it's perhaps a little tighter, but we're not in that position at the moment. So looking forward, I'd say from here, we'll have a much lower hedge position at least in once those hedges roll off in '27.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Frank Calabria for any closing remarks.

Thanks very much for your time, everyone. We look forward to meeting investors and analysts over the coming days, and we know everyone has got a busy day today. So we'll leave it there. Thanks very much.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us, both here in the room and also online for the Kraken Investor Briefing. I'll know many of you, but my name is Tony Lucas, I'm the CFO at Origin. And I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians on the land which we gather here in [ Barangaroo ], the Gadigal people from the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

So the format of today is a presentation from the Kraken team that will go for about an hour, then we'll have 30 to 45 minutes of Q&A, which will moderate here. That will be microphones in the room and webcast for online participants.

Before we get into the Kraken presentation, I'd just like to touch on yesterday where we reissued fin year '26 guidance for Octopus Energy. That revision was driven by regulatory changes and also trading outcomes in the U.K. retail business. It didn't change the Kraken story. -- the earnings outlook for Kraken is unchanged from what we told you and shared with you in February. The team and I are happy to talk through those changes either later today or off-line.

So to the substance of today. So about a decade ago, Origin identified that the energy transition would change the way in which energy businesses operate, the way that the market clears the way that customers will play an increasing role in helping balance the energy demand and the products that they would need would change. Technology, data and energy we're all going to play a significant role in the transition and Origin needed to become as good as it is with energy trading with data and technology.

For Energy Utilities, the technology stack underpinning this sector is holding it back. It's old most large energy businesses still run on dozens of disconnected platforms, billing, metering, CRM, compliance comms, none of which were designed to talk to each other and they're all becoming expensive to maintain. This is the problem Kraken set out to solve and why we got involved. Origin has been a customer and a shareholder of Kraken for more than 6 years. In that time, we've been consistently impressed with the product and the people behind it.

What attracted us to Kraken and took tops at the time was a shared vision on what the energy transition and the convergence of data and energy would look like in the future. And this, combined with the well governed, scalable architecture would be critical to the future of the energy system. Kraken has delivered that future for us. It's given us the foundation to serve customers better, to run our operations more efficiently, respond faster to change to regulatory change and to innovate and more recently to deploy AI to help us reduce our cost to serve.

This briefing comes at a genuinely interesting point. We're aiming for separation still on target this calendar year, middle of this calendar year and the broader technology landscape, AI, in particular, is moving fast. The opportunities in front of Kraken are real, and we're delighted the team is here today to share some of their perspectives with you. And with that, it's my pleasure to welcome the Kraken technology team.

We've got Amir Orad, Tim Wan, James Edison and other colleagues from Kraken here today. With that, I'll hand over to Amir -- Tim to start.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. Let me just do the customary disclaimer that's necessary. My name is Tim Wan, I'm the CFO at Kraken, and I'm excited to kick off our Investor Day presentation.

Now our purpose at Kraken is straightforward. We are the operating system for utilities. The value we unlock for utility is quantifiable and immediate. Our clients achieve 100% migration success, a critical advantage in this industry, along with material business improvements. This includes 40% efficiency gains, 3x increase in customer delight and the agility to innovate faster.

And thank you for the Kraken team that flow from many different countries here, including James Edison, the founder of the company hiding here at the back, who actually thought about all of this a long time ago. What I want to do is spend 30, 40 minutes going through a spectrum of what we do what are the benefits, the underlying platform, talk about AI, which is always a hot topic these days and really talk about the momentum we're having. And then we'll have time for questions.

First, the mission of the company is very simple. And actually, the introduction almost defined the mission. We are here to create a technology that redefines utilities. to unlock the new energy systems that are required for the future. The way the grid operates today is unattainable given the changes, fundamental changes that have not been going on for the last 100 years, all of them are recent and fresh.

We actually have another metric we are thinking about, which is not a financial metric, but we would like to improve the lives of 1 billion humans within a decade, and we think we can do that. All of you are aware of what's happening in the energy markets. But it's really important to look at it in 1 place to understand the magnitude of change. That change in just a few years is literally more than the entire 8, 9 years before that.

Energy is becoming too directional from 1 way to 2 way, which changes fundamentally how you do things, how you balance the grid how you bill for people to becoming distributed, the amount of energy points grew by 500x not percent, 500 tech in the last 15 years. We have the fact it's intermittent, waste renewables, and it's much more volatile. And on the flip side, we all know about data centers, AI, increased loads, it's electrification, et cetera, et cetera. All of this events, issues, challenges are hitting our clients in each and every country.

This is not unique to Australia or the U.K. or France or the U.S. Each and every country is dealing with all of these challenges, at the same time, the place kind of different criticality but they're all happening all over the world. And the problem is that the underlying infrastructure of utilities which has been static and powerful and effective for so many years is not fit for purpose anymore.

In the U.S., the average CIS customer information system, the average is 29 years old. Imagine the 50% above average, 29 years old. They have dozens of those systems that are hotchpotch together, stitch together to provide valuable service. And just the maintenance cost in the last 5 years, 6 years, have doubled off these systems, and this is all public information. And when we try to change those systems, over 50% of the projects per Gartner, over 50% of those projects fail if you look by time line, business impact or cost, over 50%.

It's a very strong, rigid but difficult to change infrastructure, which was really, really good and effective before all the changes that are happening these days. And that's driving the need for someone like Kraken. The quote above is actually from a CEO in Australia that I've met Latinos here and our core team, he said, my technology stack is limiting my ability and my team's ability to dream, really interesting quote. We believe there's another way to address this challenge. We believe it's a fundamentally different way to do it this challenge.

And I couldn't ask for a better quote than Mike Lois. This is from E.ON U.K. about the products we've done with them. So what do we do? Why do we win? I start with a very strong statement, which I usually kick for my wife. But Kraken is the most loved operating system or technology for utilities. And I'll show you that back by multiple third-party research projects. There's 4 dimensions that drive why we win and why people prefer Kraken.

The first one is we approach the challenge as an operating system that replaces numerous technologies at once. We do not believe that the future can be reached or achieved by replacing one system the other after the other. It's too risky, too painful. And if you do all of that, you'll see no rich DM game. So an end-to-end singular operating system that replaces of this fragmented foundation.

Number two, what's critical in this market, like other enterprise market, that's even more given the mission criticality, we have a 100% migration track record, 100% and is a result of a combination of a system and a unique technology, and I'll share how we work. We'll go through each one in a minute. And we undo meaningful quantifiable business results. And again, we'll go on day one. And all of that allows us and our customers to thrive even more in the AI era. When Kraken started, the focus was being data-driven and hindering driven now record AI. But this company, this technology was born with intelligence, the help of it.

So let's zoom in one by one. First, I mentioned an operating system versus just a cluster of fragmented solutions and operating system means we have on underlying data model underneath what we do with a singular AI foundation that is built into the operating system covering all the events and activities in it. and an extremely agile code base. If you have an operating system, covering so many areas in the business, you have to be very dynamic.

The technologies we replace get refreshed every 6, 12, 18, 24 months. We updated the system 200 times a day, on version 230,000 right now. And it's probably in 10 minutes at a time finishes presentation will be of a different version. And -- it is built in a sovereign secure cloud instance, which means we are allowed and able to deploy it in countries and environment, which requires the highest level of scrutiny for such mission-critical systems.

For example, we just announced Saudi Arabia, the other week, strong solvent secure environment to run the entire electric system. This operating system sits on an underlying interoperability layer, which means we bring out of the box, the connectivity and the built-in technology to connect to your different trading systems, distribution networks, various assets, physical assets from generators to EVs and even your local regulatory fines. And it's a fully open system.

When Kraken started with the first client Octopus, it was very much built for that climate sous you're not flexible enough. Over the last 5 years, we built a lot of technology to make it fully open. We went to the other extreme, where today, we have hundreds of APIs, MCP servers for queries, no code flows where you can build using business logic, new business applications and even a marketplace for third parties to put capabilities in terms of Kraken. So this is the operating system.

And when we come into a utility, we come in to a retail utility, distribution one, a water run, all of them start in the same place dozens, we just didn't have room on the site, literally dozens of legacy systems, some of them are 30-, 40-, 50-year old. Some were not being updated at all at this point. It's all crown is touching. Some of them are so help coded. If you have a new regulation, you can literally not met that regulatory climate.

And if you want to modernize something that's for a new energy product. What we have to do is change this system, this system, this system mean people in the market would acknowledge the pain of doing that. And instead, we move it all to 1 system, agile all the data in 1 place with all the functionality.

The content of our platform of our operating system is really divided into 5 layers. And they're very important to understand because we believe the future of energy requires all 5 players to be combined. You cannot read each one separately. The first one is humans. We provide the technology that engages directly with the end users and helps shape their behavior. If you give them the right incentives, written communication, right financial products or energy products, you're able to change their behavior in order to balance degree.

That includes technologies from CRM to AI agents to dynamic tariffs and I can go on and on what's under that. That is one layer. So for example, when you come in to a customer, in this area, our CRM system, let's say, Salesforce will be removed and truck and will replace that a spot dozens of items we replace.

Then there's the business operation we come in. And at the same time, this is not optional. At the same time, we go in and replace how you run the majority of your business operations from billing the most fundamental ones. -- to payments, debt management, compliance and each and every business model, you can imagine to run a large B2B or bits or distribution company, it's very similar. And that's what we deploy, so you'll see later, both core pilot and full autonomous agents to help those business processes.

Thirdly, the physical area. It's great that we can serve the humans, the customers but more and more, people are deploying smart physical assets, its solar panels, smart homes, thermostats, large risk scale batteries. And all of them, if we're not managed in real time, create a sub-optimal environment on a good day, where actually the opposite is literally a challenge on the grid. So we are basically today, right now, connecting dispatching, optimizing over 800,000 assets in real time every day to balance the grid. And when you can shape the human behavior and shape the physical behavior of assets and all the business workflow in the middle, magic starts to happen.

Now all of this is been by the intelligence layer. This will bring all the data of your company into a singular place accessible in AI machine learning infrastructure and a technology that has the mission criticality, the security, the agility that you need for 2030 versus 1980 to the last wave innovation in this space. Now what that does has allowed us to migrate extremely well because of the technology, because of what we do. Most migrations, if you think about what I mentioned before, most migrations.

If you want to modernize, you're a CEO of a large utility and you want to modernize your infrastructure, you would have a project to upgrade your CRM, you'll spend 3, 4, 5 years doing it. And then you have a project to change your call center and maybe your smart meter data, right? Each one will be a project. And it's only be very by now. You will spend a few years documenting what you need to do, then do the upgrade, then put the next project to the next one.

If you think about it, even at 95% success rate, 98% if you do it one after the other after the other, you can all the math, at the power of 10, 20, 30 systems, you're going to see why this project is almost always pay. Instead, tracking comes in and we have an end-to-end system that we can turn on, on day 1 and establish your new digital entity next to the old one. And obviously, it allows us to leapfrog and kind of move away from a lot of technical debt people have.

And then what we do with the entire company over, that will be crazy. It's high risk. What we do is move a single customer to the new platform, a single customer to the new digital platform we set up, which is end to end. So it gets all the functionality of that person. And guess what, if there's an issue, because we update 200 times a day, we update it. The day after we signed 1 more. And then 2, 5, 10, we get to do 10,000 a day, 50,000 a day, $100,000 a day, and we start to really accelerate as things get more complex, accelerate, accelerate, and at the end, slow down to face the project.

This allows us to finish an average utility migration of dozens of systems within 1 to 2 years. some less than 1, a couple of more than 2, but 1 to 2 years on average. You cannot do that. I mean it sounds great, everyone to do that, right? You cannot do that with our 2 fundamental technical capabilities, number one, an end-to-end solution. You cannot move a customer even on to a new system that only does bills, what about all the other stuff. And you cannot do that if you don't have the ability to change all the time because if you cannot change all the time, then you'll be stuck every day and you have to wait months for the upgrade of that technology.

So this is fundamentally a different architecture, approach methodology. But when you can do that, it really unleashes a totally different experience. which is why we're so proud of the track record and why if you look at the market, almost any other technology company in enterprise software in general and in this space specifically, have such a high failure rate or slow, slow, slow, long process to make a change.

And the results speak for themselves. I won't go through each one. You can see the success rate we've done with more than 40 times. This is not 1 or twice or 1 country or another. And you can see the speed of migration. This is all based on public data. Taken can do just on a unit of time, much more migration much more movement because of the approach we're taking.

Okay. it's not enough to have great technology, and it's not even enough to have a great migration. It's all about what happens on the other side of the migration. Now obviously, we picked and choose. So we don't have a single client that all of this happened in 1 client that we have in each and every client, a subset of this happening, and I'll go one by one. The first one is the consolidation, which is obvious, but much more important, the efficiency gain.

We have customers that reached 40% higher or lower cost to serve or efficiency and much at the same time, so less spend per service cost and much happier end customers, which is really, really important because in the new age, if they're happier and trust you more, they'll let you manage their assets move to new pricing plans, et cetera. It, for example, told us publicly on the record, they did in 1 year, 30x more changes to our business than we did with another very old -- shall not be named technology company. So the innovation is much faster because all the systems are connected. It's one operating system.

Employees are happier, not only the end users, employees are happier and when you let us control the physical assets were now in aggregate, dispatching 15 gigawatt hours a day. That's enough power to keep the lights on for 1 million homes, for context. That's like multiple nuclear reactors. So the ability to shape human behavior and shape assets and choose when to use them allows us to shift the energy, which obviously allows to reduce the classic DAC curve and the MAX capacity, which is always a bottleneck in the energy systems.

So I mentioned AI as the last point. These days, everyone likes to ask questions bout AI. So let's zoom in for 5 minutes and talk about what we're doing there and how the market is it as well. First, I mentioned we built this technology Foundationally, think about AI -- sorry, thinking about data and machine learning at the bottom. We didn't call it AI or LLM, called machine learning and data. But that, because it was built in recent times and built for that from the ground up, we have the foundation for all your AI and data needs of today and the future. And it's really important.

Let's go one by one. First, the infrastructure, having the UniFi data model or running on a modern database that is accessible in real-time to machinery models means that can be the starting point for your needs. It is verticalized. All we do is energy and utilities and energy is 95% plus of that. So it's verticalizing domain specific and codified to the energy needs and provides the context for your models down the road.

Out of the box, and I'll show you examples, we have in the product, numerous productivity tools which are running on various technologies within the AI family, the lamps prediction models and the like and tools to manage and optimize your assets. You can configure those tools yourself, you don't rely on trucking or some SI to come in and make changes. That's what we provide.

And as important, we are big believers that vendor lock is an evil thing okay? You should not be forced to use our AI models. You can use your own AI models. So it's all open and you can plug your own models on top of Kraken on the data embedded in the Kraken apps in various ways. You can actually run inside the Kraken window a third-party application in that. So fully open.

And I mentioned data. To understand the magnitude of data today, right now, every day, we process already more than 15, 15 billion, 15 billion new data points. Some of them in such high speed that we're talking about 20 times a second, we have telemetry of generation assets, batteries, solar panels, market data. We have the device data. Almost 1 million devices we connect to all the time. And all the information about them, literally, your cars, batteries, starters and is it fatigue or not, so you don't turn it on and off all the time and impact your car's battery, if you have an EV.

And customer data for what is already contracted to be over 90 million accounts in homes. All the information in 1 place from the meter data, all the way to your debt situation to what you said last night to the agent in the call center and the ability go home. All of that is connected. All of that is combined from the beginning, and AI loves data and context and that provides it.

We provide technologies from the 3 layers of different AI use cases. We started already 5, 6 years ago with massive amounts of machine learning predictive models, massive amounts to optimize the grid, which we use every day. We then added 2 years ago, Copilot technologies, Copilots are where we provide LLM-based technologies, agent models to amplify the behavior of an agent. It does not replace the person it amplifies the personnel. I'll show you a live information in production, it's running worldwide what it does. But think of from real-time summaries of the phone call that came in to what you should tell the person before they ask the next question to suggest an e-mail response, et cetera, et cetera.

And we've recently launched full agentic autonomous agents that can replace humans. So imagine middle of the night, there's some outage somewhere, everyone are calling in. We don't have enough people on the call center, the machines, the AI can answer fully autonomously within the limits and boundaries of the regulations you let it act upon by itself. So all 3 are real production working systems, some of them 5 years old, some 2 years old.

I mentioned the Copilot production results from 2 years of information. Number one, and this is classic for Kraken. You'll see both efficiency and higher satisfaction. Usually, they come at the expense of each other, right? If you are more efficient, people are less happy, more efficient and more happy. 30% productivity gains to the agents that are guided by the copilot, they save time per call, and the customers on the other side of the phone color e-mail are happier.

And the number on the top left, 89% is the one I like the most. This means that when AI recommended an answer or behavior to the agent, 89% of the time, they say, yes, do exactly what you're commended. So if you write an email today in Gmail and offers some suggestions. It's like saying, your email is good enough, keep it as is incented. So 89% accuracy rate, if you like, where we just let the AI do its thing, live data and multiple customers all over the globe.

The other question I get asked a lot, this is not our slide, [indiscernible]. So the other question I get asked a lot when I meet investors is around, yes, but AI is coming out and some kid can just tell to write your entire product and everything will change. So I met Ernst & Young, and they built this really smart framework, which is, they call it the SaaS battery ground and feasibility. It's a long name but it is a really smart thing. They analyze the entire SaaS universe and divided it into those 4, 7, 9 dimensions based on functionality and criticality and we will have company names for each one as a sample.

And they said, look, if you're on the right-hand side, good luck, right? It's not going to be fun because if you are a point solution automation software, single purpose, no network effect, no switching costs, your cut. That's one extreme. And the more we go to the left side, you're getting to deep vertical SaaS, companies like Epic in the health care space, domain system authority. That's where the actual information is kept where you have the data ownership, high switching costs, you have the complexity of the domain expertise, compliance, things like Okta, regulatory expertise. We actually call it liability transfer value, which is not way to say an infrastructure, real mission-critical. So it's a very interesting framework.

And zooming on the left, you were really smart, we're really strategic or really lucky, but we very objectively, if you read the description, there cannot be a more extreme example than Kraken sitting in that bull's eye because if you look at infrastructure software, we are literally the real-time system managing those assets in real time. Just for context, take money. We're moving around tens of billions of dollars a year just in the money going through the mission-critical systems reading those smart meters multiple times a second or over a few minutes as mission-critical as it gets.

Governance, we both provide the tools to adhere into endless regulatory requirements to monitor the regulatory reality at scale. And you can go on and on. When we come in, people remove SAP and Oracle, which are the examples here. actually turn them off. And we become the system of record, that's the official name or system of authority with that information set does not see it elsewhere. We are that repository for all that information. And obviously, the deep vertical expertise, which comes with the compliance and the necessary things.

But it's not just a fun stability, we actually see something more exciting happening the more AI is capable, the more we thrive with it, which is really interesting. And I'm not talking about internal efficiencies. Talk about the actual business value of the technology, AI needs rich data and rich context to be effective. If you go to the utility today, you'll find that, that context and data is locked in multiple spaghetti systems. So the AI cannot could not latch onto cannot tap into all of that information.

So the more people want to deploy more than AI tools, they come to Kraken to be that today here that removes this old spaghetti and they put on top. And the need to connect to a modern MCP service, real-time technology, agile AI models change literally every day. You have to keep up with that. 84. That's more than the Apple Zoom, I don't know, pick the company you like the most, stock 84. The legacy vendors came at 21 and there was a subset that was actually negative, which was not right here who we are. But was second, and there's actually a worse subset. That is our customer base.

In the U.K., The Times just released a few months ago, the list of the top companies to work for in the U.K., in the main newspaper. And they went after the biggest companies. So 2,000 employees, which are huge companies, right, hospitality chains, et cetera, travel. And for the first time, we had 3 energy companies in the top 10 companies to work for. All 3 are cracking clients. The employees of those companies are much happier than ever before. And it makes sense you hired good people that really want to do their job and you give them lousy tools. They don't like it. You give them better tools to do her job. You empower them. They actually market. It's not -- they have 1 screen versus 22 every day, they like it.

And lastly, the end user, the customer, the homeowners that we service or service through the crack technology are on average to measure trust pilot, which is like an industry score happier after Kraken than before and happiest in a comparative set. We are very proud of that because you can achieve one of those usually at the expense of the other 2, to achieve all 3 together, we will exist a lot.

So I shared what we offer, why it's important, the technology behind it. That's not about business momentum. We have just crossed a few months ago, the 90, 9-0, 90 million accounts on the platform, not all of them at in production, but signed being delivered million. The recent addition, which we announced last week, 2 weeks ago, Time flies was in Saudi Arabia. It's a classic example that the national electricity company chose to move its entire infrastructure on top of Kraken, kind of country level decision, if you like. And these are the types of big partnerships we're looking at as we continue to grow.

I mentioned customers love us, but put the love aside, it's very nice, it's where the business translation of that love. The length of a contract today would do is very long, 5 to 10 years and there's a lot that ask us even for more, but we are doing 5 to 10 years. Our gross retention rate is over 99%. We mentioned the Net Promoter Score, 75%, this is new. This is from the last 18 months. 75% of our customers now use more than 1 Kraken product. So one of the ways to really measure if someone enjoys working with you, do they buy other products. They do. 75% now have purchased more than 1 product, and that drives business momentum and unit economics.

It's a very large market. We can go now and debate the exact figure in each dimension here. What's really important is it's a large market to begin with just in energy, power and utilities. And if you add other utilities like telcos, it's even larger, but it's large enough either way. And what's important to understand is even as is, in this market, because of the energy transition, many companies are switching. So as a large market, even before the growth of demand within that market with a major transition from the 29-year-old systems to modern ones.

And then the market is growing very fast because of those smart assets, energy optimization, grid optimization needs that are coming to play. There's more EVs every day, more solar canorous every day, more batteries every day. almost exponentially. So that is driving the growth of the market. So we have both a large market that is changing also generational shift, and it's growing due to those new technologies that no one thought about 10 years ago.

We like this slide. I don't think we can say a lot about it. The next in 5 years, you can reach your own conclusion. And Kraken has officially this year, becoming fully separate from Octopus. I've been in the role for 3 years, we have built and evolved our leadership team over those 2 years because we're already running completely separate from octopus for the last 2 years in every operational way. It's just the legal holding that is now the last step removed that is happening in the next few months. And we built the leadership team. This is extremely experienced, but it brings a combination of enterprise software, SaaS, scale and energy expertise altogether. It's a very unique plan. because our maniacal focus on one domain in a super important domain.

And to sum it up, it's just the beginning. If you think about the opportunity, if you think about the needs, if you think about the dramatic change in landscape, if you think about the exponential adoption of those technologies. If you think about the win-win-win, employees are happier, end users are happier and your P&L is better. We believe there's a massive opportunity to build the company here and 1 that lasts for many, many years to come.

So with that, we'll stop here. Tim and I will be happy to take your questions. Hopefully, this was a good foundation for the next 30 minutes.

So we'll do some questions in the room. But for those online, type your questions into the chat, and we'll ask them on your behalf. So thanks very much.

It's Dale Koenders from Barrenjoey. Entirely exciting sort of outlook. There's a lot of focus on sort of what you've delivered so far. Are you able to help us with sort of what's your bag or what does success look like in the next 3 or 5 years? Or what are the next targets that you're thinking about? .

So from a business point of view, we would like to be at the forefront of that energy modernization and each and every company that is looking to transform. We'd like to do that with them. And that is the focus of the business. That requires global presence that require us to continue to add capabilities to this end-to-end platform. It requires continuing the track record because trust is really important here and to keep providing value to the existing clients, right, continuously to innovate Almost all our expense is on technology innovation. Most people most spend, everything goes to more AP, more capabilities to continue that flywheel. .

You set targets for customer numbers and annual recurring revenues that you...

He sets all the targets, not me.

So an amazing success story. When do you think we will be in a place to set the next set of targets?

Yes. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, we're not sure on any new numbers today, but I would say if you look at the -- if you step back and look at the business that we're still very early penetrated just in the existing TAM, that we really have a long runway for account growth over time. We have -- we've -- the way we think about the business over the long term, will have world-class operating margins. We have -- we'll continue to have a strong growth rate. We're in investment mode right now, and we'll continue to -- our focus is really grow the business and win share.

Ian Myles from Macquarie. Really interested in U.S., you went very well in the U.S. market, but it hasn't probably been as -- or doesn't appear to have been as successful in terms of getting that conversion rate like in the U.K. or in Europe. I used to understand what the resistance has been in that market when you tell us that they're running on 29-year systems, which really I'm surprised this don't work.

So I think I would debate the question, the U.S. focus of the company started in earnest in the last 2 years. 2 years ago, we had no executive in the U.S. we had maybe a dozen employees. We had a couple of tiny clients just to demonstrate the technology. Since then, we have landed and publicly we're able to share that because that's not always the case. One of the largest utilities in the U.S., National Grid.

For context, that's only New York and Massachusetts, right? And for someone living in New York, that's where energy is quite complex. There's too much snow. So snow and energy don't like each other. So that has been announced this year. And I can tell you that I'll be on the stage of the CEO of National Grid next week, and she will share progress of the project, and it's way faster and more impressive than people are used to in the U.S.

Now the U.S. is 50 countries almost and each 1 will make a decision in its own pace. It will take time, but I expect us to announce every few quarters, another big name in the U.S. So I don't see any unique challenge besides the fact we started later, and we're getting the initial wins and expect to continue growing there.

And should we see momentum that when you get the first customer converted, the pace to get a second customer takes 2 years to do the first customer, it should take you 12 months through the second because the problems are sort of the same between the different customers?

Yes. In general, if you look at Kraken, your mental model should be that there's a flywheel. In every country, it's not unique to the U.S. It was in U.K., then Australia, then Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and so on and so on. The first customer takes more time than the second one for 2 reasons: there's a process. Everyone to say here, but you're working in this other country, and they're so different, and you have to show them that you can do it in their distribution network, in their trading environment, et cetera, and then to get the actual delivery and deployment in that country.

The second client benefit both. You know that country already and you have a local reference we trust way more. So 100% should expect that once you are in a country, the first one leads to second one. Third one will be faster. It will not be at the end of 1 day per deal, but it's definitely going to be faster than the initial entrance to the country. And by the way, the same is around margins, et cetera, the first deployment in a country or a market takes more energy than the second than the tenth, and that's why the flywheel is quite economical over time.

Just one final question. Your deal with Saudi Arabia is sort of slightly different in that there was a joint venture arrangement. Are we going to see more of that style because of, I guess, security concerns or other issues out there in the marketplace?

Yes. So let's look what it did in Saudi Arabia because we just announced it, and it's very exciting. There are actually deals in Saudi Arabia, all wrapped under one relationship. The first one is very peaked Kraken after a long due diligence process to be their partner for the next few dozen years to transform the grid, period, end of story.

Number two, because as you can guess, we have exactly 0 employees in the Gulf, they said, hey, guys, you need to have people in the region and we asked them to help us set up a site there and decide to build a JV that helps deploying Kraken in the region for them and future clients. So that's the second one. It's a very specific JV for delivery so we can leverage local talent and expertise versus pretend to know everything about it.

And thirdly, they said we are such big believers in the company we would like to enjoy a part of your growth so they invested the company. And we told them we are very happy to do that as long as there is no impact on decision-making, then we're more than happy to join the company and we did in a smaller minority position. So 3 deals, I think it shows the power of the partnership.

The actual licensing deal is classic. The JV, I think we'll see more in countries. We have no presence and lesser cultural access, if you like. on over country in Europe, it's not as needed, but there will be some continents we know less. And the investment, if somebody is excited to invest at the company value. It's on good.

Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Just a question on some of the other horizontal verticals that you're looking at. Can you talk to how your roots in utilities helps you with like water and telco a little bit? And then related to this question, I guess, there's a possibility in the NIM that more than half of the subs end up on the Kraken system depending on how your sales processes go. Is there a natural limit in the market to how much you can do?

It's a really good question. So let's divide into 2. First, not horizontals, it's verticals. We are in energy. We did find that there's 2 utilities, let's go one by one. Water is extremely, extremely similar to energy utilities, especially in vertically integrated regulated markets like the U.S., for example, or asset rich, vertically integrated. So we generate the water, if you can define as generation, distribute the water and then sell it and bring it to your home. They send your bill, you call them up when you have an issue, a leak, et cetera.

So very similar and some companies actually do water and energy combined Essential Energy here in Australia using Kraken, both have water services and distribution services. So not only it's very similar, it's actually under some locations on the same entity. So we found that to be a very high proximity and we started service.

By now, we have 20% of the U.K. water is running on Kraken enabled platforms. We have already at the beginning here in the region, and we expect to see more. It is, I would say, a slower look than the energy companies, if that's possible. But it is a mission-critical important market. Telcos are different. More competitive, more modern. But there's multiple energy companies that provide telecommunication services like broadband. So we do see, again, some similarities.

And we have already a couple of impressive circa clients, and we expect to see more. But to be very clear, the focus today is 100%, the focus is energy because of the energy transition, the momentum and the need of the market.

Okay. I guess the second part of my question was, is there a natural limit within the market?

So our view is if you look at the market share of Microsoft time, SAP today in the market, organic some markets. Once you become really good at it, usually, you have a large market share, but it's very natural in this market, and there's a lot of precedents not unique to us.

Okay. Maybe just one last question for me. I was curious to see that you include a nonfinancial part of your mission statement to improve the lows of more than 1 billion people, if I'm not mistaken. Can you share how you're thinking that. Do you actually have internal targets or you -- yes, just what kind of metrics you're looking at?

I'll show you something. So I carry this on me. There's no way you can see what's on it, but if we had the camera. And it says, literally, it says on one side, Kraken's big green dentin universe, that's the side. It's for the challenge going. And the other side is 1 billion people. Okay. And I carry it on me and some people carry it on them also. We do believe in the positive impact of the company, the green impact and the impact it has on people. And we have a metric. We even defined a time frame. We said within a decade. We didn't say this decade, but within a decade.

And if you think about it, a household is ex humans, right, the vehicle, a factory, but we believe we are doing something good, and we want to remember every day, a direct impact on people's lives and a positive one. preventing water leakage -- now we talked about the light on, just think about not having water. So the things we touch are really important systems. It's not a financial metric, but it is 1 our people are really passionate about. Anything to add?

Yes. I mean it's 10x kind of where we are today. And as we continue to make progress, I would hope that we would be in a position to reset that from $1 billion to maybe $2 billion. But let's get to the first $1 billion first.

[ Olivia Sayed ] from Skip Capital. I'd love to understand the migrations process a little bit more. I know you mentioned it takes 1 to 2 years. to get fully migrated. But I'd love to understand is that window of time where you can end up seeing ROI on their investment. And then how do you kind of go about the migrations?

So the second question, I can spend a lot of time. So someone here needs to stop me at some point. I'll start with the first one, because of the unique way we do the migration, you see local value immediately because the customers get better service, you can start innovating for those customers. The employees have just got a report from our CEO that I'm on the quarterly review it. And they have started the migration a few months ago, and she sent me highest is called EPS highest in the company, the team that is working on Kraken. So you see the business metrics really quickly unlike the traditional approach where you wait years writing documents, praying this system will work.

Now if you look at the total ROI, obviously, it takes more time than on day 1. So the measurement I defined I gave you is when we get all accounts live in production, there is immediate unit level business benefits from day 1. We have customers that innovated new products literally after 1 month using Kraken. Those products were only eligible for the people benefiting from Kraken versus the entire org.

One is the total ROI, depends how you look at it and do you capitalize it, et cetera. So it's a very open-ended question, but no one is doing truck and out of their goodwill. There's direct business benefits in the product. And then how we go about our migration is extremely open ended. So to have a specific question or we can chat after that, if you like, much more.

Yes. I guess I'm just curious to understand for best case customer, when and how you're able to, I guess, achieve success on being able to see return on the OpEx reduction side, and so just trying to understand like that particular part of the process versus all the benefits in employees?

I'm not evading you. It's really client by client. E.ON U.K., public information, let's go 7,000 people as part of the Kraken project. And so massive instant savings, hundreds of millions of operational a year. Other organizations have a very different culture. We're not letting go any one, very strong unions, they're not letting know anyone, but they're giving better service and starting to cross-sell as part of the relationship and you're using natural kind of movement of talent as part of that.

So it's a question it's very different by client. We give them the platform to totally transform their culture. Client by client, they choose different mechanisms to leverage that but the outcome at the end, in each device, it's quite amazing how repetitive it is. Happier employees, happier end users, lower cost, higher innovation, better regulatory stance, better energy transition momentum.

Amit Kanwatia from Jefferies. Maybe just a question around your pipeline and in terms of -- I mean, you've said 1 billion lives that you'd need to touch 10x growth in customers over the last few years, 5 years, well done on that. But if you can speak to in terms of pipeline, where you're spending most of the time in which markets, geographies? Obviously, we've seen customers like -- I mean, you've got EDF and E.ON in the U.K. market. They've got presence in their home markets as well. If you can touch base on that.

And then in terms of the competitive response, which is in terms of SAP, Oracle, I think they are developing their own kind of modern tech platforms as well as some of the other players investing into this space?

Okay. So you ask a few questions, and you kick me when I say too much. First, where we focus. We are very, very focused, but it's in multiple geographies. Our focus is on the large utilities. I think of it as a few top 100 energy companies. We're not targeting the small ones with 100,000 tons hearing there, not yet anyway. And we do that in most Western markets. So we don't do it in China, but we do it another parts of Asia. We do it in North America. We do it across all of Europe and then some parts of MENA, Middle East and Africa.

And I can tell you that our pipeline today is bigger than the pipeline, it was a few months ago, which is bigger than it was a few months before that. So the movement of the pipeline is in one direction, the right direction. And then in terms of what you mentioned, we do have some clients that started made a decision company-wide. So multi-country -- I should agree with multiple states on day 1. We have others, especially early on the picked 1 country.

As you can see, we're quite happy. So you can imagine that the direction of travel that we expect to have more countries and more decisions, positive decisions over time from those clients. It depends on the way we do decision-making, centralized versus local. Maybe we just did a project within a local country a year ago, so we want to wait a bit before we go through another one. So the time line can be a bit different.

We have multiple real examples, we're not public of companies in Europe that started in 1 country, another, and another and another. And we think that's a direct response to delivering good value in real service -- high-quality service to them.

Then SAP and Oracle, look, those have been great companies. I started my car in tech 26, 27 years ago, and there are still great companies back then. They are on a very different strategy, different topology, different architecture and different focus. They are not end-to-end operating systems. There are a bunch of tools we bought, acquired, built or do not have. They are not focused on utilities. If at all, some of them are letting go of people that they feel that were focused on utilities. They are not born in the AI data cloud era. They bought it on at various levels of success.

And some of them make way more money than we do, building big data centers got best. That's okay. It's not what we do. So I respect them. They have been very successful. Objectively, there are big differences in how we think, build and go to market than they are. And over time, I think we'll see the results of that.

Maybe just another question on the pricing structure. I mean you've said the contract length in terms of 5 to 10 years, a very high retention rate, close to 100%, over 99%, yes. So if I think about the pricing structure, I mean, given the value that you add to the customers in terms of their cost to serve, if you can provide a bit more color how does pricing moves? Is it by multiple products, suite of products? Is it growing in line with inflation? Or have you got any partnership in terms of targets, cost to serve benefits that the customers derive?

So let me take a few and I'm sure Tim will add more. Number one, we don't do risk sharing business kind of partnership on outcomes. I found that to be creating with relationships with our customers with a very simple predictable price. -- pay us per asset we service, be it a human meter, EV, what have you, and we'll deliver a lot of value. And if you don't want us to deliver value, then don't migrate that asset to the platform. It's quite simple.

Number two, our prices or the unit. The ASP, if you like, over the last few years, went up. So as we showed more demonstrated more value, more success added more capabilities to the platform, we're getting it more on a per unit basis. We do have adjustment to inflation and other objective kind of indexes to ensure that we don't wake up 1 day after 20 years for the weird relationship. It has to be healthy for both sides. So definitely, we have that alignment. You had a bunch of questions there on pricing? What did I miss?

No, I think you got them. I think we do all those things.

He approves.

Yes. useful. And just a final one for me. Just on the capability. I mean if I think about the business in terms of migration, if you can provide a comment on I mean how many customers can you migrate how the business -- I mean, how capable in terms of the manpower partnership approach with the SIs and things like that?

I will make it very short because we're monopolizing the time here. Number one, we are not -- we will not be taking deals if we didn't think we can deliver them. Number two, we've been growing our footprint on the delivery side internally, but more importantly, externally. So by now, we have a few very strong strategic partnerships all the way to the top of the firm. So if you think about name a couple Accenture or Ernst & Young, I met John at the CEO fairs in young, and we make sure we're very aligned. They see benefits our clients see benefits, we see benefits. So their percentage of involvement in our delivery efforts has been growing year-over-year, which I think is a very important sign.

And then in terms of the technology, we are seeing acceleration of migration efforts with stronger AI tools because migration is a mix of human industry expertise and technology and AI is actually a good tool to blend those 3 dimensions together to get some lift. Not massive, but the trend is clearly making it more efficient.

James from [ TDM Go ]. Just interested in your conversations with customers existing or new, particularly since Christmas, what people determine core Christmas. There seems to be a step-changing functionality. So I appreciate a lot of what you talked about in AI, and I agree with a lot of it. But just in terms of customers' willingness to commit to long-term contracts to pay subscriptions, has there been a change in either length of sales cycle sentiment from commerce? Has there been anything that's substantially changed since Christmas, and that could be positive or negative?

From a business point of view, 0 change, 0, none, from a content point of view, we're asking more questions how they can deploy AI capabilities with Kraken and things to Kraken. So I would say, a year ago, we did not ask that. And that's exciting because it happens to be what we do. When we spoke about it a year ago, we kind of glaze over and said that also the next slide. That's the only change. 0 impact on all the other stuff you mentioned.

And then I think you touched on it briefly, but just internally, adopting AI tooling, have you noticed as a leader of the organization, culturally, is it sweeping through the organization in terms of how quickly you can deploy things is the 200 leases? Is that increasing? Have you noticed any substantial changes in internal operating cadence or culturally impact on your staff?

2 years ago, we didn't have those tools, right, 2 years ago in a couple of months. So obviously, relative to that, it's totally different. We've seen in the last 12 months, material increase in internal interest, experimentation, tooling. We've made available more tools and people's usage has been growing. Is it the end of the journey? No it's a journey. And we are in a very delicate space. We want to make sure people use it responsibly, not just for defense and do stuff increase, but the trend is one directional.

I think if you talk to other CFOs, they would tell you AI tools and AI enablement investments are probably becoming a bigger part of their IT budget than any part. So it's probably the fastest-growing part of our budget as well.

Amir, we might just go online to Tom Allen from UBS who asked...

I thought you had a question.

I'll ask you later on. So Amir, could you please comment on how Kraken thinks about the value of each customer and quantify the upside on value per customer when customers adopt multiple products within the Kraken product suite. For example, what does orchestration of customers' distributed assets being for realized value per customer. And when you say customers, I mean our clients or the end customers I think remain clients.

Okay. So I'll give the nonnumeric and then Tim can add a numeric lens. First, we'll have all our clients, and we truly partner with them. Those are big strategic long-term decisions. There is a flywheel in Kraken. The more clients we have, the more plans we will have. The more we enter a new country, the more clients in that country, we will see per the question here about that effect.

The innovation because we have a single code base that grows every few minutes, if we get an innovation from National Grid, the sealed supplier choice only in the Northeast of the U.S. But once we do it with them, one day we'll see it in Portugal and we'll be able to there's a flywheel of capabilities across clients.

When it comes to flexibility, when we connect to EVs, every client we work with has a different mix of physical assets. So as we integrate with them and master the operation, the next client will find it easier. And there is some, I won't say, network effect very gently because it's not a physical note. There's a network cofactor of knowledge and experience and best practices of doing that as you connect to more devices, more assets, et cetera.

From a business model point of view, how do you think about it?

Yes. I mean I think we shared today kind of our gross retention rate, and you can kind of imply that our expansion rate is actually higher than that. So the terminal value of every customer is incredibly high just given the contract value and a contract length. So that's one.

Two, because the contract value is high, the sales and marketing is relatively low for our business. The payback for our sales and marketing cost required is in months, which is unlike many, many horizontal SaaS companies that you see. So at scale, this business will generate an incredible amount of I think very high operating margin. Now the business model, in a way, is tricky because the more successful we are in the short term, meaning the more customer we sign, the more investments we actually make on delivery upfront.

So in the beginning, generally a customer will have some negative margin. But within a 12- to 24-month period, that quickly turns and accelerates as an investment that we're making in now. So to the degree that we're more successful, there's a little bit of gross margin compression, but we think it's definitely worth the investment.

By the way, the history of this space, and some of you, I believe, known this market for many years, it works also the other way which means if you're a new technology company with only 1 client, and you've signed a second one and you don't deliver well that has a negative flyway effect on your reference ability. You probably get 1 more. If you also don't deliver them well, -- it's very hard to continue. This is a marketable of trust, really complex, really mission-critical.

So the positive flywheel literally a reverse image and some vendors in this space years ago have been through the opposite approach. So you have to be very professional about it, deliver extremely well, which is why it's so important and you get a positive flywheel. If you're doing the opposite, you get exact negative effect.

It's [ Gus ] from [ Planet Asset Management ]. I just had a question on a comment you made earlier on agents. What does it look like letting agents plug into your system for customers and end users? And how do you protect your own your own data how far do you let them plug in and take advantage of your system?

Yes. So the first thing I would say is we need to separate technology from business and regulatory decisions. Each client we work with has -- and to your question about AI. There's an extreme spread these days at the level of comfort level by country, by regulator and by customer in how much they want to let AI be involved in decision-making. Some are saying never, like we don't want any. We're curious technically over time, but at this point, don't touch it. Others are saying, we want tomorrow morning to plug some AI agents who build for internal efficiencies.

And there's a last group that says that's already have the end users talk to a machine before it talks to a human. We built our technology in such a way you refining guardrails by agent by client -- so that provides the ability to have very different kind of behaviors. When will it a third-party agent or code, just application, connect to Kraken is within a set of SDKs and APIs and commercial agreement such as we cannot just go and with all the data, et cetera.

And lastly, lastly, lastly, we were not a front-end company. So you take Salesforce, they used to charge, we changed it last week, I think, used to charge per seat. And if an agent replaced the human, they lost the seat and it was not good. We get priced by the assets we process and do all of this with. So if there's a human at the front end our agent, a third-party agent, a third-party tool, great, the more value to the client, the better because we are the underlying operating system that connects to the physical assets to meter data, the business process.

Hence, I would say our relationship with those front-end type agents is a bit more positive than some companies that make me controlling front end and are terrified from agents replacing the front end. So hopefully, that answers some of that. It's a wide topic.

[ Michael Evans ] from Quest Asset Partners. Can I ask at the end of last year, you were talking about a possible IPO in 2026. Is that still on the plans? And has the recent change in valuations challenged the $8.65 billion, which I presume the Saudis paid?

So I never spoke about some you want literally slap me if I did.

No. Yes, I won't stop you. No. I mean I think we're really just focused on building the business and winning share at this point. And just our experience is when you build a great business for the long term, that will create different paths to liquidity. And -- so I would say we're building the infrastructure to operate at scale and we're making the investments necessary to operate as if we can one day be a public company, but no decisions have been made.

And the Saudi investment at that price, has that been challenged by the change in nations of SaaS companies?

Well, I mean, we're not I would leave valuation to the professionals in this room in terms of what's fair or not. But certainly, there's been no change to any of the round, everybody is Saudi, we've already funded already, so nothing's changed.

Can I ask another question about data. And if you've got any data monetization strategies. I know you've got a Kraken software marketplace. I guess there's probably lots of wholesale traders out there who would love to get their hands on some of the flow data and orchestration data that you have. Just how you think about that, please?

No. The data is of our customers. We are a custodian. We're not going to use it for anything. The one thing we do extremely different than I would say, 99% of software companies we give our customers full access to their own data, which is a crazy concept, but most of the companies try to like a hug and lock and make it very difficult for a customer to access their own data. And I think that's an excellent business strategy for a very short-term relationship, but a really bad one for the future.

We're the opposite, as I saw here, which is why we are such a good partner for AI because they can actually access for data on a modern stack. But it's very data, their rights, 100%.

You probably get the sense to me, I can keep talking forever on this. But just the last couple of questions if there's any questions online as well, if there's any last questions, please send them through. Good way to stop there.

Thank you. No questions? All right.

All right. Thank you, everyone.

Just finally, I would like to thank, obviously, Amir and Tim and the team for shading such a long way to be here with us today. It's been a wonderful partnership we've had over many years, and we're very excited about the future prospects of Kraken. Obviously, you hear it here today. But thank you again, and thank you all very much for coming.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2026 half year results for Origin Energy. It's Frank Calabria here, and I'm joined by my executive leadership team. I'll provide a brief overview of the performance and outlook. Tony Lucas will also provide an overview of the financial results, and we'll follow that with questions and answers. And you may already be aware, but you'll see that we've got additional detail included in the appendices.

Okay. So then turning to the highlights. I think the overall message for Origin in this half is the half year results that have been solid, allowing an upgrade to the full year guidance for energy markets. Our retail performance continued to strengthen. Grid-scale batteries added further portfolio flexibility. Gas production was steady, and we continue to maintain cost management discipline.

Turning to the summary of the financial result. Overall, we've got EBITDA of $860 million for Energy Markets, which is higher than expected with continued strong operational performance. Integrated Gas also had an EBITDA of $860 million, which was in line with expectations for APLNG and LNG trading. Octopus recorded an EBITDA loss of $89 million for the half, reflecting seasonality in their earnings, U.K. regulatory costs. They've invested in smart tariffs to grow connected customers, and they continue to invest in the scaling of their non-U.K. retail and energy services businesses.

Turning to the business highlights. Operational performance across the portfolio has been strong. We grew our customer base by 96,000. We reduced our cost to serve by $32 million. We brought the Eraring battery Stage 1 online, and it's generating revenue since December, and it was delivered on time and on budget. Super Node 1 is in commissioning in January, and we've been earning revenue on that battery as well. All other battery developments remain on track. And we've committed through the half, we committed a further $80 million to expand Eraring Stage 2 battery, which will now be nearly 6 hours of storage.

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

Octopus continued its rapid growth. It added 1.2 million customer accounts in the half with 0.8 million, 800,000 of those accounts growing outside of the U.K. The Board determined a $0.30 fully franked interim dividend, which is really supported by our strong cash flow and balance sheet strength.

So now turning to the financial highlights. Statutory profit for the half was $557 million. The underlying profit was $593 million. The underlying EBITDA was $1,589 million that you can see there with higher-than-expected energy markets earnings offset by the lower integrated gas earnings, as I say, which was in line with expectations and also a lower contribution from Octopus Energy. Good to see our adjusted free cash flow lifting. It's up by $187 million to $705 million. The balance sheet continues to be strength, reflected by a net debt to adjusted underlying EBITDA of 2x. And as I said, we've declared a $0.30 interim dividend fully franked.

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

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

When it comes to the planet, we received very strong support for our second climate transition action plan with a 94.67% vote. And the Eraring Power Station extension is not expected to impact our climate targets or ambitions. As I said, there are batteries online for Stage 1, and we've continued to grow that through Stage 2. We now have over 30 megawatts of community batteries under operation, and we continue to progress the pre-FID activities for our 1.5 gigawatt Yanco Delta project.

Looking to the next slide, Origin's strategy remains to lead the energy transition through cleaner energy and customer solutions, and we do that with a clear focus of continuing to deliver reliable and affordable energy along the way. To achieve that, we've established differentiated assets and capabilities that we continue to build upon. And you can see that, that ranges from customer, energy supply, energy resource, Octopus and Kraken.

And that turns us to our investment proposition, which combines 2 things, a leading Australian energy businesses with strong cash flows that are being generated and fully franked dividends and continuing to enable us to invest in the transition. And in addition to that, we have a significant global growth potential through these businesses, Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies. Energy Markets benefits from a leading brand, advanced technology platforms, advantaged assets and cost position, and there are lots of opportunities for growth across customers, products, renewables and storage that we remain very firmly focused on executing.

Through APLNG, we have a very low cost of supply. We have very strong reserves and exciting exploration opportunities, and our reserves are well beyond the export contracts we have today. So a very long runway and valuable asset. Our dividend yield is 5.3%, and that is before you take into account the franking benefit.

Turning to Octopus and Kraken. Octopus is now the largest U.K. energy retailer, and it's scaling both in the non-U.K. markets and also in Energy Services. And that brand, which is very strong in the U.K. is now building itself in more than one market. In Kraken Technologies, we have a global technology platform that's growing rapidly and has a significant addressable market ahead of it. I'll now hand over to Tony Lucas, and he will take you through the financial results.

Thank you, Frank. Tony Lucas here, CFO of Origin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. I'll spend a few minutes with you digging a little deeper into the segment results as well as our cash and balance sheet positions. Today's result reflects 3 consistent themes: the strength of our diverse portfolio, our disciplined approach to capital management and our continued delivery of sustainable returns for our shareholders.

Starting with EBITDA, group earnings were supported by stronger-than-expected performance in Energy Markets and an integrated gas contribution that was in line with expectations. In Energy Markets, our strong and diverse portfolio resulted in a 17% increase in EBITDA. Electricity was higher, reflecting the lagged flow-through of higher wholesale pricing into retail customer tariffs, combined with lower green scheme costs and solar feed-in costs. Gas was lower on the prior period. This reflected lower trading volumes and some legacy contracts rolling off. Importantly, we continue to expect full year gas earnings to be moderately higher than fin year '25 as both sale and purchase contracts reprice in the second half.

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

Turning to the Integrated Gas business. The contribution was in line with expectations with lower realized prices and volumes at APLNG and lower trading -- LNG trading gains. Realized prices in APLNG reflected softer oil and spot LNG markets and also the impact of the Sinopec price review, which was effective 1 January 2025. APLNG continues to focus on field optimization activities, including improved production forecasting, which informs low-cost drilling opportunities. APLNG remains a world-class asset and a significant contributor to the East Coast gas market with 22% of sales volumes delivered to domestic customers.

Turning to Octopus Energy. Kraken revenue growth continued. However, EBITDA was lower. This was due to investment in accelerated client delivery and growth opportunities as well as a change in the capitalization policy for technology development costs. The contribution from the U.K. retail business was lower due to investment in smart tariffs to grow Flex customers and the expansion of the U.K. government's warm home discount scheme, where we expect some recovery in fin year '27 of those costs. Octopus continues to invest in its non-U.K. expansion and in its scaling of its energy services business. With continued customer growth across the U.K. and non-U.K. markets and the global expansion of Kraken, Origin's investment in both Octopus and Kraken continue to build substantial long-term value for our shareholders.

Moving on to cash. We delivered a strong cash generation in this period. Energy Markets cash conversion was above 100% and fully franked dividends from APLNG of $542 million. CapEx reduced $400 million in the period. This reflected the fact that we've passed the peak of our spend on the battery growth projects. Tax paid was $500 million lower due to a higher balancing payment last year for the Fin year '24 tax return. That was a function of the higher earnings and partially franked APLNG dividends in that return. Also worth noting, we expect a net tax refund in the second half, and this should result in tax paid of around $160 million for Fin year '26. Our 2 strong businesses continue to generate the cash required to deliver our strategy execution and shareholder returns.

Now focusing on the balance sheet. We saw a small reduction in adjusted net debt to $4.59 billion. This reflected strong operating cash flows and APLNG distributions, largely offset by the CapEx and dividend. We're currently at the bottom end of our 2 to 3x target range of adjusted net debt to adjusted underlying EBITDA. As we deliver the battery programs, we expect to move further into the target range over F year '26 and Fin year '27, noting a lease liability to be recognized in relation to the toll batteries as they come online. Overall, the balance sheet remains strong and flexible.

Finally, capital allocation. The Board has determined to pay a steady fully franked dividend of $0.30 per share, reflecting continued balance sheet strength and the cash generation from 2 strong businesses. As Frank mentioned, this represents a 5.3% dividend yield before franking benefits and is consistent with our policy to deliver sustainable distributions to shareholders through the business cycle. When I reflect on this result, what stands out to me is that we're consistently delivering what we said we would. We're investing selectively and thoughtfully. We remain disciplined, and we're keeping the business well positioned to deliver for shareholders and customers through the energy transition. I'll hand back to Frank now to delve deeper into underlying business drivers.

Thanks very much, Tony. Now we'll turn to business performance, which drops into a little bit more detail based on the summary you've just heard from Tony and I before. Turning firstly to energy markets. continue -- we continue to track in line with our medium-term targets there. Our electricity earnings were above the $25 to $40 a megawatt hour target range that we set for the half. We expect to be above that range also for the full year 2026. And in 2027, we'll benefit from the ramp-up of batteries coming online, but we're also seeing some lower wholesale electricity prices in recent times. So that has an offsetting impact.

For gas earnings, they remain in line with budget at $3 to $4 a gigajoule, and we are on track to deliver the $100 million to $150 million cost savings in FY '26 or by FY '26. That's driven by a range of things, good deployment of technology, organizational improvements, efficiency more broadly. And what we are seeing even throughout that, despite the fact that we've achieved such a good cost reduction is that with the non-repeat of the energy bill relief, we've got some higher bad and doubtful debts that have come through this period of time.

Then turning to customer. The momentum remains very strong. We've now had more than 10 consecutive halves of customer growth. We increased customers by 96,000 in this half. It does include a 52,000 customer accounts from the Energy Locals acquisition. And in February, we also completed a further acquisition of 1st Energy, which will add an additional 80,000 customers to what you see on that chart. We have an unrivaled brand. We've got the #1 community energy services or embedded networks business with 484,000 customers. And we've grown the Internet on a compound annual growth rate by 37% over the last 3 years, and that continues to grow. We got market-leading churn and a continued improvement in customer experience, including the introduction of new propositions. And we have leading tech and product, and we -- AI continues to scale, particularly for our customer business. And you can see there in terms of messages sent, but in voice, we're now serving over 100,000 customers, up from 25,000 customers. We've grown digital interactions to our customers for up to 80% from 75% and our market-leading virtual power plant has continued to grow.

Turning to energy supply. The generation performance has been strong. We've talked about bringing the Eraring Stage 1 battery online, and you can see good early performance as shown on that left-hand chart. More broadly, for generation performance, we've had high reliability for the gas peaking and hydro fleet. We've contracted the coal for the 2026 calendar financial year. It's largely fully contracted, and that's at prices lower than the prior financial year. And for Eraring, we generated 6.4 terawatt hours in the half and an availability of 72.26%, which is measured after both planned and unplanned outages.

On the right-hand side, our investments in storage are on track. They're both on time and on budget. It's a 1.7 gigawatt or 6.3 gigawatt hour program underway. And once again, we are confirming our target post-tax returns of between 8% and 11% with the front end of those asset lives at the upper end.

APLNG revenue declined due to lower realized LNG prices. I'm now on Slide 16, primarily reflecting oil price movements and also a contribution to that by the Sinopec price review. Our costs remained stable at $4.30 a gigajoule compared to the second half of FY '25. We've got higher optimization activity. We've completed key infrastructure projects and exploration through that half. And then that's been offset by reduced power costs and some lower non-operated development. But good to see we're holding that discipline of $4.30 that we gave guidance to the market last time we issued results.

Slide 17 takes us into a little bit more depth around that production optimization and midterm supply options. Production of 339 petajoules for the half is on track to deliver 645 to 680 petajoule guidance for the full financial year. It really is a story of continued field optimization and us progressing our midterm supply options. When we talk field optimization activity, we're really talking about well availability, which is good to see that it's grown to 95% over the last year. That's driven by increased workovers, deployment of artificial lift systems, formation stabilization, and we're now performing the majority of those -- of our major workovers being performed live, which has a production benefit. And we've also completed several gathering lines. So a very extensive program being executed by the team there.

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

Just dropping into exploration and certainly made reference before, but we're providing further information on that. And in particular, the advancing exploration opportunities in the Taroom Trough, where APLNG holds a large 10-year footprint across both our operated and nonoperated holdings. And most of those are near our existing gas infrastructure. To date, our activity has been concentrated along the shallow eastern margins of the trough with the initial exploration wells delivering encouraging gas flows. And 3 additional pilot wells have been drilled and are to be fracture stimulated with production testing to commence this calendar year. So we've got a bit of activity underway there.

And in separate or other exploration activity, we've successfully fracture stimulated and completed the horizontal CSG wells in the Peat, which is the first in Queensland. So another achievement there. So very excited by our exploration opportunities and the activity we have underway.

Now turning to Kraken and Octopus Energy. I did talk about the fact that these transactions at the commencement of the presentation. The net outcome of those is that Origin maintains or retains a 22.7% economic interest in Kraken and Octopus Energy. And by the way, there will be an Investor Day -- with the CEO of Kraken on the 28th of April in Sydney, which is good and gives an opportunity for investors to get a much deeper dive into that business as well.

Those series of transactions are summarized on the right-hand side, and I did go through those before key highlights. Kraken did its first stand-alone raise at USD 1 billion. It's a valuation of USD 8.65 billion. Origin will invest AUD 210 million as part of that and get 1.5% in exchange for releasing exclusivity to the Kraken platform in energy in Australia. That major licensing agreement is another step along the way, gives line of sight to those 100 million accounts and give a bit of guidance as to where that USD 1 billion raise funds will be deployed, $150 million retained in Kraken, $850 million retained in Octopus. Octopus Capital and other investors have injected a further $320 million funding in Octopus Energy, and that will also support future growth and other requirements.

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

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

On international, they've grown that customer account base by 28%. So that's up by 800,000. They have another 3.5 million accounts in those markets. They continue to be deliberate about the choices where they invest for the growth in those markets, and they make those decisions pretty actively. And you can see there are emerging scale benefits, and we give an example there about direct acquisitions that are occurring in Italy and Spain. Germany has also, I think, notably reached 1 million customer accounts.

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

Turning to Kraken. Kraken continues to scale. That competitive advantage that they have with the software platform track record in migration is very strong. The revenue growth matches the completion of those migrations. So therefore, it's not always linear. And there has been a margin impact this year by lower capitalization of development costs as the customers move into the operations phase. So we've sort of guided what's really happened over the last 3 years to give you a sense for the EBITDA margin, which has been 40% over the last 3-plus years.

Continuing to invest in future growth for Kraken, that's a delivery capacity, that's capabilities, including AI talent. It is really an enterprise-grade platform that's very well set up. And therefore, it is nonpublic data. It's actually a very -- it's a very strong proprietary system with deep integrations and regulatory compliance. So that is not -- that's hard earned and therefore, puts them in a very strong position as they continue to benefit from coding technologies to accelerate product development. And the introduction of very knowledgeable investors like D1 Capital at that last raise is also good to see as we bring public crossover investors onto the register.

Strong sales momentum. We're at 90 million accounts and well on our way to the 100 million, and I've talked about that major licensing agreement before. Just now turning to guidance, which I'm sure you're all waiting for. Pleasingly, Energy Markets EBITDA guidance has been upgraded to $1.55 billion to $1.75 billion range, and that is up from the previous guidance range of $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion. LNG trading and Octopus guidance remains unchanged. We -- the group CapEx is expected to be between $900 million and $1.1 billion. We updated APLNG production guidance when we released our quarterly, and that is now 645 to 680 petajoules. APLNG CapEx and OpEx guidance remains unchanged, and we provided now APLNG cash distributions, which is what come to Origin of between $700 million and $950 million. The appendix has got further commentary on guidance for all of your information.

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

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from Tom Allen from UBS.

Just in the energy markets, electricity GP margins at over $40 a megawatt hour over the half are clearly a long way ahead of your through-the-cycle margin guidance. And looking into FY '27, the result calls out new battery earnings and lower coal costs being a tailwind, but partly offset by weaker wholesale prices. Can you please refresh us on an indicative range for the incremental EBITDA in FY '27 from batteries and also comment on the extent to which your electricity portfolio is hedged into FY '27, just to help us understand how much of a down driver weaker wholesale prices might be? -- as you see them currently?

Yes, sure. So you've actually peeled away. We're obviously not giving guidance today, but you are picking up correctly and we'll take these in turn. We've got a battery and coal tailwinds. We've certainly been setting ourselves up for '27. The key variable that's playing itself out now is the way wholesale prices will flow through to the default market offer. So you're right, you've got all of those playing out. I might just ask -- sorry, I'll give an overall view on the coal. I'll ask Tony then to give a little bit more depth on the battery, and we can give you a bit of the drivers around that. But you've got the key drivers there. In terms of coal, we're certainly well on our way to contracting coal and well progressed. And -- and that's looking at prices to be below -- at cost below what we've contracted in '26 and '26 was below 25. We still got to actually complete the contracting of that coal over time, but that's where we're tracking at the moment. On batteries, you're right, we'll see an uplift in the battery earnings. And Tony, do you want to just add anything further to that in terms of -- we do give some information where CODs are occurring, but there will be uplift.

Yes. So we would expect uplift, obviously, into year '27 from full year contribution from those batteries. We haven't guided specifically on what that EBITDA is, but you sort of take that range that we give the IRR range and sort of back solve what that might be. Coal costs, we are seeing lower than where we've contracted this year. And then probably sort of offsetting that is -- or not offsetting entirely, but sort of the headwind, as you called out really is we would expect that the lower forward prices to make their way into lower mass market DMO tariffs and potentially C&I rates as we contract that book. In terms of where we sit in that GP range, we originally put that out there as a target range once we got through sort of our 3 to 5 gigawatt build-out in renewables over the short-term renewables and storage was to reflect the retirement of Eraring. So we have called out we sit above that or near the top end of that when we've got Eraring in and those investments coming online. So without guiding '27, I'd expect it to be near the top of that range.

And Tom, just the last comment, you made a comment about using the term hedging. And certainly, the wholesale team have been active and I'd say even proactive early on in terms of what we do in respect of '27. And if that's the reference you're making, certainly, we've been pleased to be able to work actively on that and well in advance. The one thing that is yet to play out, as you know, is just how wholesale prices and the DMO flow in and then what flows from that in terms of the retail book, and that's probably the key variable that will play itself out over the coming months.

Great. A follow-up question. The interim dividend at $0.30 per share fully franked, I think, is the first time since half year '22 that Origin hasn't lifted the interim dividend year-on-year. Just in the context of having upgraded guidance in both energy markets and APLNG leverage at the bottom end of your target range. Can you comment on whether we should interpret this as a hint of the potential for an incremental capital commitment over the coming period of scale, perhaps at Golden Beach given you spent more there or Yanco Delta or potentially within APLNG?

Yes. Thanks, Tom. We've probably gone through a period where we were obviously paying no dividend for a while and so increasing the dividend through the period. When we look forward, we've got oil prices probably potentially a little bit lower. They're holding up in the high 60s at the moment. We've got the tail end of the CapEx on the battery program. And then we've got the sort of the impact, albeit not a cash impact of the change in the accounting methodology for the battery. So we sort of see gearing in that range that we've indicated. We'll get through the rest of the CapEx spend. We'll see what other opportunities are there, see where oil sort of settles. So we feel sort of comfortable at where we're setting the dividend at this time.

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

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

Well it's sort of hard to -- I don't want to forecast where dividends might go. But the way you should think about it is when gearing was particularly low, sort of sub-2x, you could absorb sort of economic cycle and commodity cycle impacts a lot easier and increase the dividend. I think we would be sort of challenged that we're under geared at that level. So in the 2 to 3x, we feel that's the appropriate gearing given the commodities prices that we're exposed to. So we don't sort of -- we don't look at necessarily a progressive dividend. But as those business cycles started to improve cash flows, that could be a potential opportunity, but we'll balance that against what options we've got in front of us equally.

Your next question comes from Henry Meyer from Goldman Sachs.

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

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

Yes. Thanks, Henry. So as Frank called out earlier, I mean, the main purpose of this update was to say, firstly, we've restarted our exploration program after a number of years of very low activity. And secondly, we have a very large position, I think the largest position of acreage and tenure across the Taroom Trough, which runs pretty much north to south along our tenure from both an operated and nonoperated perspective. We drilled a well in the Condabri Deeps a few years ago. And it was -- it performed pretty strongly, but we didn't get to frac it all the way down post the -- deeper than the Coles. And so what we've done this year is we've gone in and drilled an additional 3 pilot wells. We've done that now. That's telling us that's telling us that the reservoir is consistent with what we thought and well logs are supportable. -- everything looks good, but we have to critically go back in and frac it. And that will tell us ultimately the deliverability and the true potential of the play. So that's going to happen sometime midyear. And really, we agree with the thinking and the commentary that Taroom Trough is a potentially very significant play, but it is still early stage, and there's a number of technical and economic uncertainties to be resolved. So I think all that says is post the well test after the frac in the middle of the year, we'll know a lot more. And there's a pretty good opportunity for us because, as Frank mentioned, the acreage that we have is right near our existing processing facilities. And in particular, in Condabri there, we have outage that we could connect into these wells into pretty quickly if it goes well.

Okay. And second one, sticking Integrated Gas. You've called out the ongoing investment into Golden Beach here. Could you just share a bit of detail on what agreement is already in place there and potential timing for the developments? Any costs that Origin would need to support either on balance sheet or off balance sheet through contracting?

Yes. So we disclosed there how much we've put into the project to date, and we've committed another $25 million. The project is making good progress. As far as timing, and it will be likely that we'll participate both as an offtaker and an investor of some kind moving forward. A couple of things will be timing, FID, we'll take FID when -- as you'd expect, once we've derisked the project from a regulatory procurement and commercial perspective. And there's still a fair bit of work to go on that front before we sort of want to put out a view on timing of an FID and operations. Ultimately, it will be a $1 billion-plus project if it goes ahead, but it's not intended that Origin would be the majority of the equity or anything like that. And so we'll need to bring in partners. And so we'll have choices ultimately into how much we want to invest at the time when we know when we have sort of a better -- get our arms around the project and the economics.

Your next question comes from Gordon Ramsay from RBC Capital Markets.

Just interested about battery returns and the comment that the front end of asset life is expected towards the upper end of your guided returns and 8% to 11% post-tax IRR. What's the expected difference between front and tail end?

I'll get Tony to give you some.

Yes. Thanks, Gordon. Yes. So in the past, we've guided that we think that we'll be at or even potentially above that target in the front end. And then when we took fit on those projects, Gordon, if you remember, batteries sort of get their revenue from 3 components. Firstly, there's the cap price. Secondly, the arbitrage spread during the day and finally, ancillary services. And we -- on that latter one, we would forecast that those ancillary service revenues fall through time as more of the kit, I guess, that comes into the market can offer those services. And equally, when we took fit on the projects, we wouldn't have banked necessarily that -- you should think that we bank necessarily that cap prices remained at the level they were when we took Fit. So we expect potentially sort of both of those, the cap return and then also -- sorry, the cap premium and also the ancillary to fall through time. In some cases, when we run scenarios, it might be right at the sort of tail end of that range. Equally, we've got scenarios that don't fall -- fall as much as that. So we just sort of -- we would say that they're more solid in the first 5, 7 years than they are in the tail end.

Just one more from me, and this is not for you because it's a technical question, sorry. On the Taroom Trough, when you're talking about drilling a horizontal well, can you give us an indication of what the length of those wells would be in the number of frac stages?

Thanks, Gordon. Andrew here. So no, there verticals at the moment into Taroom Trough. So you might be talking about the -- we've got there -- we're doing a horizontal frac in Peat. But as far as the Condabri Deeps wells, yes, they're going to be vertical frac wells. Still think it's competitively sensitive on frac stages, et cetera. I will say that we're drilling on the Eastern Flank. -- it's a bit shallower, which we see a bit shallower than the rest of the trough. And so we see that as an advantage, obviously, on well costs.

Okay. Sorry, Peat, what kind of well you're drilling then on Peat?

Yes. So this is a deeper play. And it's the first time, as we understand it, that the industry and the CSG industry in Queensland will have done a horizontal frac well. We see -- clearly, we've done lots of horizontals before, but this is the first frac well. It's about a 1-kilometer lateral. And in addition, probably the reason for calling it out the way we have is in addition to potentially opening up the Peat acreage to a future development, there's actually a number of other areas that are quite deep and quite tight. And if we can prove that we can do horizontal fracs, it probably opens up some other areas like in Spring Gully that we haven't gone after at this point. So it's sort of like -- it's a test to see what we can do in horizontal fracs beyond -- in Peat and beyond.

Your next question comes from Amit Kammotthya from Jefferies.

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

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question. So in terms of split, we're probably, I would expect more like more evenly weighted, perhaps sort of slightly maybe 1% or 2% higher in the first half at a total EBITDA level.

Right. Okay. And this includes the contribution from the, I think, which is a benefit in second half. But more so, I mean, if you can speak to how you see the wholesale -- I mean, the hedge book and how the wholesale price volatility, which was very low in the first half, but how do you see that to be evolving as well?

Yes, there's a couple of things, I guess that if you remember, sort of end of last year, we had quite a lot of volatility in that second half, very late in the second half of the prior year. And so we're not necessarily forecasting that we get that sort of level of volatility. The book will be positioned particularly well for that if that was to occur with the peaking fleet. So really, the electricity book is probably a little bit stronger first half, second half. in terms of the gas is probably the key call out. We would traditionally normally have a stronger first half in gas in a normal year. What we're seeing this year is just the roll-off of some trading contracts and the recontracting and changing nature of the book. We've got a much stronger -- or sort of a stronger second half than we have first half. So that's probably a different weighting to what you normally would expect out of that gas book.

Right. And maybe just a question on Eraring and you've made a decision to extend this until fiscal '29. And then at the same time, you're saying you're not going to do any major maintenance from here. Maybe if you can speak to how do you see all 4 units to be operational for the next few years? And any obligations from the government to keep the asset operational as part of your deal with the New South Wales?

Amit, it's Greg Jarvis. Look, just with -- we're very confident about maintaining Eraring out to April 29. The Eraring power station is in good order. So we're very confident in not doing any major outages. I think the important thing here is that with the changing market, there will be opportunities where we can take out units when there's low demand and high capacity and do proactive management. And so by doing that, that will improve the reliability. So I'm pretty confident about extending these units out to April 29.

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

Yes. Okay. Thanks, Amit. Clearly, what you can see has happened since we last reported to the market is that a series of transactions have been set up so that this business can separate, and it's now set up to be able to pursue independent paths for both businesses. That might include an IPO of Kraken, but we're not in a position to confirm anything on that today. That's certainly a choice available to the investors. We obviously continue to be supportive of both of them. But clearly, you can see that it's now on a path for both of those, and that's an active consideration. So you can see those steps demonstrating action. But as to timing and final decision, I haven't got anything further to add today. And the main focus is that it's ready to pursue whatever path we choose. And I think investors that have come in. They're very -- it was very clear about the investor base we wanted to bring in on this transaction. I mean D1 has led that out, but there's a number of others. And so we feel we're well placed to have now a cap table that enables us to take several parts. And that's what the focus is right now. Everyone is aware of what's happening in markets. But at the same time, it wasn't that long ago that a bunch of knowledgeable investors came in and invested at USD 8.65. And so we're still very, very focused on quite an exciting future for Kraken. It might be worth me just adding a couple of things about that because there's a lot happening in the tech space, and it's difficult for us to comment on sentiment at a very granular level. But that look-through valuation is one. The pipeline that we can see for Kraken is another strong point -- and the nature of what happens in utilities is we should never forget the fact that these are big decisions for utilities. And therefore, the sort of proprietary nature, the nonpublic data, the domain logic, the integration, the regulatory compliance and also the brand trust and delivery record are really quite important factors to be successful in this market. And the proven platform, the fact that it was cloud native, the fact that you can actually have that unified data set and you can, therefore, code and add more AI capability to it and you get an opportunity to hear directly from Air does see -- we see opportunities. But clearly, you've got sentiment in market and other things, but we do feel it is very well placed to continue to be successful. And certainly, I think they're a good organization in the sense of the way they leverage those capabilities, build those capabilities and continue to advance, and that's certainly been active.

Your next question comes from Dale Koenders from Barrenjoey.

I was hoping you could provide a little bit more color around, I guess, the rest of Octopus outside of Kraken. Just understanding how much in the sort of the negative EBITDA was seasonal? And because when we look at that seasonal swing historically from the limited data we have, it looks like sort of second half up $80 million is the best we've seen in U.K. retail. So how much of this is structural versus seasonal in terms of the first half result?

Okay. Look, when we gave the quarterly, we were guiding to the fact that it is always -- the first half has always been very little earnings come out of the U.K. retail business in itself. So that's another feature this half. But you're right, the one thing that happened in addition to that was that the warm home discount came in, which has actually cost the U.K. retailers this half, part of which or a reasonable chunk of which gets recovered the following year. So there's an element of timing associated with that. Otherwise, if I looked at U.K. retail, they would be the 2 key features associated with that. Then turning to international retail, that is -- that's a growth and a conscious choice to grow those businesses. Actually, before I come to that, just the last thing really on U.K. retail is a decision to invest in the smart tariffs. By that, what do we mean by that? It's really owning the flexibility customers that come on to that platform over time and grow value in that respect. So there's an investment that's being made by them in that. That's a choice they'll make each year as to how much they want to invest in it, but it certainly has been heavier this half than prior.

When it comes to the international, it's a very conscious decision. They're growing customers. It'd be like the early stages of the U.K., so the cost to acquire would be close to GBP 100 rather than the GBP 50 or GBP 60 they're paying in the U.K. now. So that's very much a growth story. Services is all about scaling, improving efficiency. So you would expect that to continue to get better, and that's the aim of the businesses. So I wouldn't say structural. The only thing on the accounting for Kraken and other things like that is that, that's why we're trying to give an average of that margin over time simply because the -- if you then think about you go into IFRS or other accounting, there will always be some element about what goes to development, what goes to capitalization versus expense. So that's the one thing that's probably just playing it through right now. I don't -- we just continue to expect that these business -- the U.K. business, in particular, Dale, will achieve its sort of GBP 40 to GBP 50 a customer in EBITDA. Like I mean, I think there's no change to our view around that. But you can -- I fully appreciate there's quite a bit moving around and noise in that in the 6-month period, but that's hasn't changed our fundamental view of the business.

I think the hard thing, Frank, just the guidance for FY '26 is $0 to $150 million. Like when we think about the loss that was made in the first half and the seasonal swing in U.K. retail with potentially plus $80 million back the other way, it's looking like the second half might be maybe breakeven and still not enough to get over the first half loss to hit the bottom end of your range. So like what scenarios do we need to actually see to hit the bottom end and the top end of that guidance range?

Yes. Well, we give a range, so you can form a view in that. There's -- but we do expect the second half to be much stronger. We've gone through January. It is much stronger for the U.K. retail business, to be clear, Dale. There's a lot always moving around. January was a decent month for them. They go through those shoulder periods. That's the only -- there's a reason for the ranges around those aspects. But we do expect we're not giving a range with the objective of hitting the bottom end. We're giving a range because we would be wanting to hit in the middle of it. That's the objective. I don't know, Tony, if you've got anything more specific on U.K. retail.

No. It's just -- it's really the shape of the U.K. retail cash flow. So it is a much stronger second half in the U.K. retail. It predominantly comes about because of the way that they pay capacity charges in the gas market and then recover that across the customer base. The revenue has really recovered across that second half period with the winter. So predominantly, that will be where we see a stronger second half out of those. There'll be some slight improvements in Energy Services run rate. We're seeing good progress in that. Non-U.K. retail, as Frank called out, will be a function really of investment and they've swung into market and swung out of market as they've seen opportunities. But yes, predominantly U.K. retail.

Your next question comes from Nik Burns from Jarden Australia.

First question on energy markets. The final Nelson review was released late last year. Just can you talk through your thinking and your thoughts on the review and the potential impact on Origin. Frank, you've said before you feel pretty comfortable where your generation portfolio sits. But with the recent commitment to Eraring life extension and the review now released, has your view shifted at all on the opportunity set for further investment? You've still got Yanco Delta out there. And is there an increasing need for more gas peakers and even more investment in battery storage as well?

Yes, sure. The market -- we're early stages into a very large transition, Nick. So I think the need for everything is going to grow over time. Specifically back to your link to the Nelson review, though, obviously, they handed down their report at the end of last year. Probably the key thing though, now that the industry and policymakers and government will actually work on is in specifically the ESCM, which is the contract mechanism being recommended by the panel that will drive future investment. That mechanism has quite a lot of work acknowledged by everyone in the detail of how those, let's call it, contract structures, and that's really addressing this tenor gap. And so that becomes a very important piece of detail to be landed and landed soon so that it is attracting the right investment enduring over time beyond structures like the CIS, and that's why the government has initiated that review. So I think there's still more work to be done on that.

Linking it back to what do you think the market will need. We still remain of the view that you can see there'll be a lot of batteries being built and that's going on underway. There'll need to be a replacement of energy over time, and that diversification points to the fact that, that energy is also going to need to come from sources like wind, which is why we remain very positive by having a very large-scale attractive wind project. So that's going to be needed in the system. And we do think there'll need to be more gas-fired generation introduced. And if you had Daniel Westman, for example, at AMO, he would give you a very consistent message to this. Why the mechanism becomes important for that asset class is you can see that there will be a lot that plays out on an average day being produced initially by coal, then by -- more by renewables and by batteries moving it around. But we will need to have sufficient capacity for periods of time, which we've seen over the last period of time where you're going to need more than 6, 8 hours of storage, but they're likely over time to be less frequent. And so therefore, they need to be supported by a well-constructed mechanism that rewards capacity appropriately. And that's probably the one thing we would see critical. You can see it's not getting in the way of people bringing storage on like us and others, but that becomes, I think, a key ingredient. And one that I think is understood as I say, even if you talk to AMO and others, I don't think that's controversial, but it will need to be brought in.

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

Well, certainly, at the moment, we would be either investing in current mechanisms, and therefore, there are both states and federal governments with their own mechanisms, and we continue to engage with all of those. If you're asking about a long-dated asset when people are envisaging that there would be a new market mechanism coming in over the coming years, then we would need to see more of the detail associated with the ECM. We certainly are not stopping the advancing of opportunities to be clear, Nick, and we're assessing that and working on that and being ready for that. So we will make judgments. But at the moment, making a large gas-fired peaking, it would need a form of support that rewarded capacity over time.

Got it. I might stick with the theme on government reviews or my other question, just around the gas market review and APLNG. Obviously been talk around a reservation scheme being introduced there, and there's been a range of percentages that may be applied to the Queensland LNG producers. Can you just confirm, first of all, that under the ranges being proposed, there wouldn't be any incremental gas supply that APLNG will need to supply to the domestic market? And then just looking through, you flagged the medium-term investment needs at APLNG just to maintain gas supply. Does -- post the release of the gas market review, does the joint venture there have sufficient confidence on the impact of the review to approve that new investment that you're currently looking at?

I think there's further work to be done on the gas market review. A lot of work done, but acknowledged, I think, also by the policymakers, they've got to actually work through how some of the specific mechanisms work. And so my starting position, we haven't talked in the joint venture is that there needs to be some further clarity around some of those mechanisms for investment. But Andrew, do you want to add anything further given the detailed work that APLNG has been doing?

Yes. So obviously support the holistic review of all of the mechanisms that are in place in the gas market at the moment. And I think you asked a question of between 15% and 25%, would APLNG have to contribute more, I think maybe was the question. And we don't think so in the short term, but at some point, contracts roll off. And so if you look out 5-plus years, for example. And depending on what that reservation percentage is, depending on the term of the reservation, depending on how often it's reviewed, et cetera, there are a number of variables which could impact ultimately APLNG's obligation. But certainly, in the short term, as we talk about, we're a very significant contributor to the East Coast gas market. And so I wouldn't see there being any near-term impact. I think then in terms of like the length of future investment, there are a number of factors, which obviously we take into account the view of the market, the outcome of this review, they are all inputs. Certainly, we want to continue to support our supply and production irrespective of the outcome of the gas market review from the perspective we've got to meet contracts. We've just reduced or eliminated one of the constraints we had to additional drilling in the West in Spring Gully through the completion of a water pipeline between Spring Gully and Reedy Creek. So we've got the opportunity to commence drilling again in Spring Gully next year. Some of the -- probably the larger investment opportunities we've talked about an expansion in Reedy Creek processing facility. We talked about exploration as well. Some of those items, I think, where you're really making a choice to have additional length above contracts. That's where I think you've really got to have a good look at market inputs and policy inputs as well.

Your next question comes from Ian Myles from Macquarie Equities.

If we just go back to Energy Markets for a second. You upgraded guidance, but in the referencing you talked about batteries and the gas position. How have they changed from your previous guidance? Because you would have known about both of those prior. So I'm just interested in what has lifted that sort of guidance expectation.

I, Tony here. Really, in terms of where we thought going into the year where we have benefited really is, again, remember, last year, we were able to change the mix a bit on the portfolio trading in the forward market. We're able to repeat components of that in the first half. We had the lower LED and prices that materialized through the first half, which is -- and we predict into the second half, which has contributed to that. We also had sort of higher volumes out of C&I, and we've also been able to run Eraring harder than what we probably forecast at a lower coal cost. So it's just 2 or 3 sort of contributing factors that gave us a little bit more in the tank than what we would have thought going into the year. And then on the gas, we've done a little bit of what we call sort of value management in terms of tariffs in the gas book. And then we've also got some lower supply costs coming through there. So there were just a few things we've been able to do throughout the year that's enabled us to increase the outlook.

Okay. That's great. And on the -- and I just maybe ask the question a different way. You've got lower coal contracts. You put in your slide deck, the VWAP price for New South Wales base for '27 is down the better part of circa $7. You have a pretty good view of where the DMO pricing would and BDO pricing will be coming out at this point in time. Does the coal drop offset the drop in baseload prices?

Ian, is that -- that's a '27...

'27.

Yes. Well, ultimately, we won't have contracted all of our coal for '27. So it's kind of hard to make a full statement there. I think that you would sort of indicate that the forward prices the way that they have -- if you look at forward year '27 prices and how they relate to in year '26, which is kind of the important thing to look at, not how '27 has evolved through time, you'll see that, that has a reduction in the tariff of a certain amount per megawatt hour, which I think is probably ultimately more than the coal. The coal will go some way to offsetting it. But ultimately, it will depend on where we contract the remainder of that.

And then competitive dynamics in the retail market as well that flow from that. But...

Okay. And then -- okay, that's fine. On Octopus Energy, do you want to clarify, OE obviously raised implicit money through the Kraken transaction. Is that business now capitally sufficient? And I'm curious to understand, did Origin have a look at the convertible note, which Octopus Co acquired and why you didn't seek to have that own part of that CB?

Yes. Look, just in terms of the Octopus, it is capitally efficient to go forward on its independent path. And the focus for us, firstly, was around the Kraken. We -- I don't think we've -- if there's a further convertible note opportunity that might arise and there's other funding opportunities, we'll continue to assess those. But it was one that was really done by Octopus Capital, this particular one, and we were happy for them to do that. But it doesn't stop us assessing opportunities like that going forward. And so we certainly were active in a lot of the conversations around that and relationships.

You didn't say no to that opportunity.

No, no.

You weren't given the opportunity.

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

Okay. Yes. And you make a comment to Kraken EBITDA guidance of 40% over the last 3 years. Year 1 was really high, year 2 and year 3 were incrementally lower. Why is 40% the right number?

We just want to I'm not -- what we're really trying to guide over time is there's been movements around in that margin in that business over time, and we're just giving a look through over a 3-plus year view. And you can look at those averages over time as to where it's going. And also, as you go into the future, I've been asked a question about whether it goes to IPO. And I don't know what market it goes to IPO and what accounting might flow from that as well. So I think the fundamentals are, though, that they're growing that revenue base at good unit economics. And that's -- and there's certainly been some movement around investing in capability that's growing it to the business it is today. And secondly, there's been some accounting change to that. So yes, that was all it was intended to do, Ian.

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

Yes is the answer. And the objective of having -- so there has been a heavy capability build over the last, I would say, 18 months or so. You have a leadership team that's now scaling a global enterprise platform business. The objective of having EMEA come out at the end of April is for people to hear that directly, and they are set up today to deliver across multi-geographies and products and winning those accounts. And the last one was obviously significant, and it's continuing on that growth path, and that is definitely the case.

One final question. We've seen volatility in the -- obviously, the Australian energy market slipping. Is this changing your time lines of investment cycles for the gas plants and additional batteries in the system given I think for the first time, I've heard you guys talk the actual cap prices are falling in a reasonable way.

Yes. That has -- there are probably different durations to that answer, Ian. And by the way, we foreshadowed that cap prices would fall over time. Cat prices are, as you know, can be a function of volatility, and we've gone through a 6-month period where through a combination of baseload availability, good renewable output and batteries coming into the system, we saw low volatility, then you come into the new year and you're seeing more. And then we've just talked about previously and we raise it again, that winter is becoming one of the riskier periods, so we're still got to play that out. So we continue to see volatility, but cap prices will be informed by that volatility. There's a lot of batteries coming into the system. We feel very confident about the investments we've made. That's why we've given the commentary we have to date, continue to assess those. They've lowered in cost, and we've been able to increase pretty cheaply incremental capacity and duration on that. I think when you think about assets like gas-fired peakers, you're essentially introducing a 20-plus year asset into your portfolio. I think it's really around the latter half of those periods versus the front half in terms of understanding how the market would play out over the longer term. There's still a lot that's still going to come into the market. There's still a substantial amount of all of these assets that are going to come in. But certainly, as it relates to gas-fired peaking, I think because the nature of those assets may not run high capacity factors, but play a very valuable role. I think that's the one where you'd want to make sure you understand that, particularly in the outer years.

Your next question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on the result. I thought I'd ask an electricity question and give Mr. Jarvis an opportunity to talk as I think he's got plans for the rest of this year or I hope he does. Just again, in terms of...

Not yet, Rob, not just yet. yet...

Every you can. But just in terms of battery revenues, and I guess following on from Milesi's question about caps and avoided cap cost revenue. Can you give us any sense of how your thoughts are evolving? Are the new morning and evening peak products also maybe providing a battery opportunity?

Yes. Rob, look, the battery is working really well in the portfolio. There's a few things. The intraday volatility still plays out. So right now in summer, it probably lends itself to really manage the sort of the evening peak. So we're probably doing all cycles -- but you can see going forward, you can see how we can double cycle these batteries as well. So they're playing really well in the portfolio. I've got to say the other benefit we get from these batteries is we don't have to turn on gas peakers just for a 1- or 2-hour period, which is -- that leads to high maintenance costs. So we're also seeing some benefit just with the existing fleet. So we can use our sort of gas peakers more for duration events, if that makes sense. So really, these batteries -- and we're having a battery in every state. So that just gives flexibility right across the portfolio, which is playing very well for us.

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

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

To Andrew. Congratulations to Mr. Thornton. Very good. Okay. My next question is, I guess, around balance sheet for Octopus and Kraken. I guess as at June, there was some sizable current liabilities and then there's prudential requirements and things like that. I take it that everybody is pretty comfortable with that. There was also a small investment by the British Business Bank. So I'm just wondering if you can provide any color on the balance sheet strength of the 2 entities, please?

Yes. So certainly, as -- look, there are facilities in place today across the group, and they're all very well capitalized. And remember that you need to make sure that you are protected for weather events and a whole range of things, and they've always been very prudently managing that capital through both facilities, cash and a number of things in terms of the strength of the balance sheet. The recent set of transaction sets it up for the future because we need to make sure that, that energy business has enough available for working capital as well as the ongoing growth of the other businesses, and we feel confident around that. You are correct in stating that there's a variety of arrangements in the U.K. market that go -- and there's even been recent announcements that are changing some of those obligations, for example, the renewable obligation and the region budget announcement is changing -- I mean, changing to actually have some of that being managed by government rather than the industry as well. So we feel very comfortable around the balance sheet. It will be around the ability for it to continue to grow, and it's got runway today for that over a period of time, and that will be where we're really making choices around capital going forward. But yes, we feel confident about the facilities they have today and the cash that's being raised for the benefit of when these entities separate.

Yes. Great. Maybe if I can ask a slightly more direct question. Should we be thinking that there's a permanent amount of debt or nonequity capital in the structure at this point? Or is it all just still influx?

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

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Calabria for any closing remarks.

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

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our shareholders here in Sydney, those joining us online and to all my Origin colleagues. My name is Scott Perkins, and I'm the Chair of Origin Energy Limited. It's my privilege to chair Origin's 26th Annual General Meeting.

Before I formally declare the meeting open, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I would also like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of those various lands from which many are watching the webcast.

I would like to provide you with some important information to start with about safety procedures that we all need to know and follow in the event of an unlikely event of an emergency.

You will note the emergency exits in the ballroom. Should there be an emergency situation, await directions from the hotel staff. If you hear the evacuation tone, you should move to the nearest exit. For any medical matters, please contact any of the staff members available. Security will then be notified and provide First Data assistance.

Thank you.

As it's now 10 a.m. and as there is a quorum of shareholders present, I formally declare the meeting open. I'm pleased to welcome all shareholders and visitors here today. In addition to those present, the holders of approximately 1.23 billion shares or approximately 71.61% of the issued capital are here represented by proxy. I will take the notice of meeting as read.

The minutes of the 2024 AGM have been signed, and copies are available on request from the Company Secretary. Please also note that this meeting is being webcast live, and a copy of its recording will also be available on our website after the meeting.

Before commencing formal proceedings, I would like to introduce the Board and members of senior management who are here today. From your left are Dr. Nora Scheinkestel, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Deion Campbell, Non-Executive Director; Ms. Fiona Hick, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Greg Lalicker, Non-Executive Director; Ms. Ilana Atlas, Non-Executive Director; and Mr. Frank Calabria, CEO and Managing Director.

Then there is Ms. Helen Hardy, Company Secretary; Dame Joan Withers, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Stephen Mikkelsen, Non-Executive Director; and Mr. Mick McCormack, Non-Executive Director. In front of the room are other members of Origin's senior management: Jon Briskin, Executive Manager, Retail; Kate Jordan, General Counsel and Executive General Manager, Risk, HSE and Governance; Tony Lucas, our Chief Financial Officer; James McGill, Executive General Manager, Origin Zero; Samantha Stevens, Executive General Manager, Corporate Affairs; Sharon Ridgway, Executive General Manager, People and Culture; Andrew Thornton, Executive General Manager, Integrated Gas; also, Mr. Ryan Fisk of EY, the company's auditor, is also present.

The order of business today will commence with my address, following which Frank will discuss our results and prospects for the coming year. Finally, we will consider the formal business and resolutions set out in the notice of meeting. Refreshments will be served at the end of the meeting, which will also give you an opportunity to meet with Directors and management.

I will now move to my address to today's meeting. Today, we will reflect on Origin's performance over the past year and provide you with an update on our strategy, and our ambition to lead the energy transition through cleaner energy and customer solutions. 2025 was a year where across nearly all metrics, customer operations, financial and shareholder return, Origin performed well.

The benefits of long-term investments in our retail operating platform and operational reliability and productivity and in the Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies businesses delivered results and are now more clearly understood and appreciated in the broader investment market. So too is the embedded value of our portfolio, ideally suited to the tailwinds provided by the energy transition, a large customer base, a trusted brand, the nation's largest fleet of gas peaking plants, a scaled up and technologically advanced and secure virtual power plant and the reliable supply of competitively priced gas from APLNG.

Origin continues to play a central role in providing affordable, reliable energy for Australian households and businesses. We are also actively investing into the energy transition, notably with approximately $1.7 billion of battery investments, which when combined with contract arrangements will mean that we have large-scale batteries in all of the Eastern Seaboard states.

We also secured transmission access rights for our 1.46 gigawatt Yanko Delta wind farm development project. At the same time, our Retail business delivered strong organic growth in customer accounts, supported by high customer happiness scores and trust scores while reducing costs by $50 million.

Octopus Energy, the U.K. business, in which we have a 22.7% interest, continued to deliver impressive customer growth across its retail and Kraken Technologies businesses. Our achievements occurred against the backdrop of a rapidly changing energy landscape, which is creating new opportunities as well as some challenges to navigate.

The operating environment this past year was notable for the contrast between an increase in announced renewable projects and the realities of further delays in project delivery, driven by regulatory approvals cost inflation and the timing of enabling infrastructure. The level of investment activity and also change is creating additional complexity in the energy market, affecting communities and putting some upward pressure on energy and network costs to consumers.

It has become clear that the energy transition will neither be easy nor linear and it will be a multi-decade challenge with the hardest part of the journey ahead.

Now let me turn to the financial results. Origin's FY '25 financial performance reflects the strength of our diverse portfolio. On a statutory basis, we recorded a profit of $1.48 billion, up from $1.40 billion in the prior year. And our underlying profit rose to $1.49 billion, up $307 million on the prior year. Origin also received $797 million in fully franked dividends from Australia Pacific LNG with a further $335 million fully franked dividend received on third of July relating to cash generated in FY '25. This compares to partly franked distributions of $1.38 billion in FY '24.

This performance allowed us to increase shareholder dividends with total fully franked dividends of $0.60 per share for FY '25, up from $0.55 in FY '24. Origin's share price has continued to grow strongly over the past 3 years, achieving top quartile performance when compared to the ASX 50. When Frank Calabria, our Managing Director, addresses you shortly, he will provide a more detailed review of Origin's financial outcomes and the outlook for our company for FY '26.

Today, we're also presenting to you our second Climate Transition Action Plan, or CTAP, following on from our initial plan that did achieve widespread support when we launched it in 2022. Since then, our management team has dedicated significant effort to progress our strategy, ambitions and emissions targets.

In our second CTAP, we reported on the progress Origin has made in preparing our business for a lower carbon future. We affirmed our commitment to our 2030 emissions reduction targets and long-term ambition to be net 0 by 2050 as well as outlining the actions we will continue to take towards decarbonizing our business.

We have been progressing the execution of our strategy, including growing renewable energy and storage in our portfolio, progressively exiting upstream gas exploration permits in the Beetaloo, Canning and Cooper Eromanga basins. Continuing to invest in and develop new products and services to support the delivery of cleaner, smarter energy solutions to customers that allow them to unlock value from their own energy use as well as progressing community batteries, electric vehicle subscriptions, acquiring the solar quotes business to support adoption of behind-the-meter solutions and continued growth in our virtual power plant.

In 2024, we announced an agreement with the New South Wales government for the planned and progressive closure of the Eraring power station in August 2027. That agreement remains unchanged. Meanwhile, we continue to invest in the maintenance of Eraring to maximize its availability given the very important role it plays in supplying and stabilizing the New South Wales power system.

Under the agreement, we engage regularly with the New South Wales government on Eraring. We will continue to assess the market requirements over time and ultimately, the closure of Eraring will materially contribute to our emissions reductions plans. We believe our second CTAP remains appropriately ambitious and pragmatic. Your Board recommends that you vote in support of this plan today.

Alongside our emissions reduction plan, Origin continues to focus on initiatives that support our customers, our communities and contribute to a well-functioning energy system that benefits everyone. This year, as cost of living pressures continue to affect many Australians, we provided more than 38 million in targeted assistance to help customers in financial hardship to manage their energy costs.

Our philanthropic foundation, the Origin Foundation, contributed more than $4 million to community initiatives with a cumulative $45.2 million contributed since 2010. We have continued to support communities around existing assets and extended support to new regions, including near our Yanco Delta Wind Farm project, committing $31 million in contributions over the life of the project, including an initial $5 million for a new medical center in Jerilderie and another $5 million to Edward River Council.

Our Eraring Power Station's $5 million fund has supported local initiatives with $400,000 committed in FY '25 and $1.3 million spent to date. APLNG invested $2 million in FY '25 to back community and environmental projects in Queensland. Through both the essential service provided by our operations and the wider contributions we make to the communities in which we operate, Origin is unquestionably playing a positive role as Australia navigates this tricky energy transition.

During the year, we also recruited 2 new independent Non-Executive Directors who are up for election at this year's AGM. We're delighted to welcome Fiona Hick and Stephen Mikkelsen to the Board. They bring deep and relevant experience in the energy industry. We also recommend the reelection of 2 outstanding Directors, Greg Lalicker and Nora Scheinkestel.

In addition, we marked the retirement of Maxine Brenner, who served for 12 years on the Board, including as Chair of the Risk and Safety and Sustainability Committees. Maxine has made a significant contribution to Origin and on behalf of the Board, we sincerely thank Maxine for her dedication and wish her the best for the future.

Our achievements this year would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of our CEO and our management team and the entire Origin workforce. Through their collective efforts, we have navigated an increasingly complex environment in global and local energy markets and focused on executing our strategy at speed.

We recognize the trust placed in us by our stakeholders and are committed to navigating this period of immense change with care and responsibility. We are confident that Origin has the strategy, assets and capabilities to navigate the energy transition and benefit from the opportunities it presents with our shareholders, customers and communities all standing to benefit.

Thank you all for your continued support. I now invite Chief Executive, Frank Calabria, to address the meeting.

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, and a warm welcome to our shareholders attending in Sydney and those joining via the webcast.

Over the past year, Origin has continued to navigate a dynamic and rapidly evolving energy landscape. We are pursuing our ambition to lead Australia's energy transition through cleaner energy and also through customer solutions. We believe this work will enable Origin, our shareholders, communities and customers to share in the benefits of this once-in-a-generation transformation of our energy system.

Against this backdrop, in the 2025 financial year, we made steady progress against our strategic priorities. Construction advanced on our Eraring and Mortlake batteries, and we secured transmission rights for our Yanco Delta Wind Farm project.

Operational performance across our gas and generation assets remain strong, and we significantly increased our customer accounts. We built on our existing customer offerings by acquiring solar quotes and continue to support customers to electrify their homes while also broadening our community battery offering.

As cost pressures persisted for Australian households, we delivered practical support to help customers manage their energy expenses. Origin provided more than $38 million in targeted assistance for those experiencing financial hardship, including protecting them from price increases. We've invested in technology to make it easier for customers to track and manage their energy usage via our world-class app and to help our people get customers the right support at the right time.

Origin's financial and operational performance in the 2025 financial year highlights the strength of our portfolio. As anticipated, lower earnings from Energy Markets and Octopus Energy were balanced by higher earnings from Integrated Gas from Origin LNG trading.

Solid cash flow and a strong balance sheet allowed us to increase shareholder returns and reinvest capital in renewables and storage. Underlying EBITDA for the Energy Markets division was at $1.40 billion, below the 2024 financial year result of $1.66 billion due to lower electricity and natural gas gross profit.

In Retail, we saw significant customer growth and strong performance across customer happiness and trust scores. We're starting to reap the benefits of the replatforming of our retail business to Kraken, demonstrated by our leading customer experience, lower levels of churn in the broader market and a significantly lower cost to serve which decreased by $50 million during the year.

We continue to focus on increasing the breadth of our offerings for customers. As Australian's uptake of distributed energy services like rooftop solar and batteries continue to grow, connection to our virtual power plant, which is now 1.5 gigawatts across more than 393,000 connected services, provides opportunities to unlock value for our customers and also benefits to the grid.

We saw strong growth in both battery sales and electric vehicle subscriptions in the 2025 financial year. Our gas and generation assets continue to deliver strong operational performance supporting reliable energy supply to customers and the grid. In Integrated Gas, despite slightly lower production and commodity prices, Origin LNG trading activities delivered strong earnings growth.

Australia Pacific LNG grew its reserves position and delivered reliable cash generation to Origin. Importantly, Australia Pacific LNG remains one of the largest sources of reliable gas supply for the Australian East Coast market, delivering around 1/4 of its total sales volumes to domestic customers, including retailers, power generators and manufacturers.

Octopus Energy, the U.K. business, in which Origin owns an approximately 23% interest, continued to achieve its strong customer growth both across the Kraken business and its retail businesses in the past year. Octopus added 800,000 U.K. customers to reach a total of 7.6 million and nearly doubled international accounts to 2.7 million.

Kraken contracted customer accounts were up 45% to 74 million. U.K. Retail and Kraken were profitable; however, this was more than offset by increased investment to scale non-U.K. retail and its energy services business. Origin's share of Octopus Energy underlying EBITDA was a loss of $88 million for the year.

Origin notes the recent announcement regarding the intention to formally separate the Octopus Energy and Kraken Technologies businesses, an action Origin supports to facilitate the continued growth and global expansion of Kraken.

As Scott already noted, today, we are also presenting to shareholders Origin's second climate transition action plan. This highlights our plans to progressively decarbonize the business and reviews the progress we have already made, including laying a strong foundation in customer leadership, secure and reliable energy and a path to growth of renewables and storage.

Origin will continue to take a prudent approach to achieving emissions reduction, while balancing security, reliability and affordability for supply to our customers. We believe our refreshed plan remains appropriately ambitious and pragmatic. I reiterate the Board's recommendation that shareholders vote in favor.

Looking ahead to the 2026 financial year, the outlook is positive. We remain focused on executing our strategy at speed across our 3 pillars: unrivaled customer solutions, growing renewables and storage and providing reliable energy supply to Australian homes and businesses through the transition.

Today, I am pleased to reaffirm the 2026 financial year guidance at full year results in August. Origin expects Energy Markets underlying EBITDA to be between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion. Cost to serve is expected to improve by a further $50 million to $100 million, in line with the target to achieve total savings of $100 million to $150 million by this financial year 2026.

Australia Pacific LNG in 2026 financial year, production is expected to be between 635 and 680 petajoules, while gains from origin LNG Trading are expected to be between $100 million and $150 million. Origin's share of Octopus Energy's underlying EBITDA is expected to improve to be in a range of $0 to $150 million for the year.

Turning to the important matter of energy policy. Origin continues to be a leading voice on energy policy, advocating for stable, long-term frameworks that encourage necessary investment in supply, achieve climate goals and minimize the cost for the transition for customers.

Supportive and coordinated government policies and targets are essential. They're essential to optimally structure the energy system and provide the market with the confidence to invest and advance the transition to net 0 by 2050. Current policy settings in both electricity and gas markets are no longer delivering the required outcomes for the market, all customers and reform is urgently needed.

There are a number of key policy reviews currently underway, including the gas market review and the national electricity market review. We believe these are crucial opportunities for governments to establish enduring frameworks that provide the right signals to invest and unlock supply, minimize the cost burden on customers and facilitate the achievement of emissions goals.

To that end, with the cost of the energy transition in stark focus amid persistent cost of living pressures across the economy, we have strongly supported electrification programs that help to reduce energy bills and emissions for both households and businesses. It is essential these initiatives now consider how renters, low-income households and regional communities can also access the benefits of electrification ensuring no one gets left behind in the transition.

I would now like to acknowledge our people who are crucial to Origin's success now and also in the future. We remain dedicated to fostering a workplace where everyone at Origin feels valued, respected and safe and can perform at their best.

From a safety perspective, our total recordable injury frequency rate increased from 4.1 to 4.4 in the last financial year. While our aim is always for 0 harm to our workforce, the trend reflects a combination of factors, including increased operational activity and improved reporting practices.

We conducted reviews on all serious, actual and potential incidents to identify learnings and are focused on implementing changes that strengthen the safety well-being of our workforce.

In closing, Origin's portfolio strengths, customer leadership, expanding renewables and storage and investment in Octopus Energy position us to seize emerging opportunities and support our growing customer base through change.

Our strong gas production and cash flows from Australia Pacific LNG further support reliable energy delivery. We believe the breadth of Origin's business makes us unique among Australian LNG companies and gives us an important opportunity to contribute to the energy transition in Australia and champion the benefits it will bring to homes and businesses.

Your management team and I are energized by the challenges and possibilities ahead, confident that our strategy will deliver lasting growth for our shareholders. and also positive outcomes for customers, communities and the planet. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you all for attending today and also for your continued support of Origin.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Frank. Ladies and gentlemen, I now turn to the formal business of today's meeting. It is my duty as Chair to ensure that shareholders as a whole have a reasonable opportunity to ask questions about or comment on the management of the company, the remuneration report and other items of business before the meeting today.

To achieve this, the following procedures for this meeting will be adopted. First, please note that as this is a shareholders meeting only, only holders of Origin shares, their attorneys, proxies and authorized corporate representatives are entitled to vote and to speak.

If you are here as a proxy and have been instructed how to vote, I ask you to ensure that any vote you cast is in accordance with those instructions. Second, you may ask questions or make comments on the management and operations of the company. You may also ask questions of the auditor on the conduct of the audit, the preparation and the conduct of the auditor's report, accounting policies adopted by the company and on any matter relating to the independence of the auditor.

If there are any questions of that nature raised today, Mr. Ryan Fisk of EY is available to answer them. I may also direct questions of a more detailed nature to the Chief Executive Officer, Frank Calabria; or the Chief Financial Officer, Tony Lucas; or another lucky member of the management team. However, in the first instance, all questions are to be addressed to me as Chair. I can confirm that the external auditor did not receive any written questions from shareholders prior to the meeting.

Third, I ask that you defer any questions or comments on a specific resolution until that resolution is put to the meeting.

Fourth, if you have any questions relating to your personal dealings with Origin as a customer, I ask that you speak with the company's representative, Varnia Penton after the meeting. Varnia, may I please ask that you identify yourself. There we go, Vania is over there.

Fifth, if you wish to speak today, please come to the microphone, identify yourself and state whether you are here as a shareholder or proxy holder. There are microphones in each aisle, and I'll ask you to put your questions in turn.

In order to allow a reasonable opportunity for all shareholders to speak, I will limit shareholders to no more than 2 questions or comments at a time. If you have more than 1 question or comment, please ask them together upfront, and I'll respond to both. If you have additional questions, there will be an opportunity for you to ask them once the other shareholders have had a chance to speak.

I would like to stress that it's not in the best interest of this meeting nor respectful of all shareholders attending for questions to be repeated, nor for individual shareholders to dominate proceedings with large numbers of questions. I would like to give all shareholders wishing to ask a question the opportunity to do so, and therefore, won't permit repeated questioning on essentially the same matters.

Finally, please ask your questions or raise your comments in a courteous and respectful manner.

I now move to the first item on the Notice of Meeting being the financial report and the reports of the Directors and auditor for the year ended 30 June 2025. These are now laid before the meeting for consideration. Please note this item of business does not require any shareholder vote.I now open the floor for discussion. If there are any questions? [ Natasha ], welcome back.

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you and the Board for very outstanding performance this year. The first question, you've mentioned the amount you spent on maintenance, generation maintenance. And I know there's some sort of $258 million spent with $166 million on Eraring. I also noted in the report that you said the generator engagement project agreements concerning the closure of Eraring has not been triggered as yet, and there's a question on whether it'd be triggered in 2027.

So the 2 are sort of related, is any of that money you're spending on the maintenance refundable by the government? And what are the particular circumstances for triggering the agreement?

Yes. Thank you for your question, [ Natasha ]. It's a very good one. So under the terms of the agreement we have with the New South Wales government, we have to trigger the various financial mechanisms that might compensate origin, under certain operating conditions. Those have not yet been triggered. As Frank and I both mentioned in our earlier addresses to the meeting, we are continuing to operate Eraring consistent with that agreement.

And as you know, that agreement has a potential stop date in August '27 and a hard stop date in April '29, and we remain in discussions with the New South Wales government around broader market considerations and what the role that Eraring needs to play. So therefore, given that range, we need to continue to maintain the station. There are 4 units that at Eraring.

Pretty much 1 unit comes up for repairs and maintenance every year. So over the next few years, we will be obviously synchronizing our maintenance and capital expenditure with an anticipated closure date of the station, and that remains a topic, an ongoing topic of discussion with the government, but at this point, that date range remains in place.

So just to be clear, because you're still in discussion, you've not asked when reimbursement of those maintenance costs at this stage?

No, there's no specific case for that at this point. We haven't triggered the compensation mechanism.

Yes, that's what I wanted to clarify. The -- I've a question, concerning risk and demand for energy, there's mention about AI and data centers and there's been quite a bit of concern about the amount of electricity and water, which these facilities consume and things, the demand seems to be exponential how are you managing that risk? And have you taken that in account of future demands given that it's not like it be linear?

Yes. Again, a very good question. Thank you. The data -- you're absolutely right, data centers do represent a significant opportunity as well as somewhat of a challenge for the energy system, the opportunity being it's a new customer segment and 1 that we're very close to and working, I think, on some very exciting projects with a number of the major data center developers because their real challenge is security of energy supply.

And in order to get the right kind of planning approvals and financial viability, they need a reliable partner to provide increasingly a renewable solution to those facilities and one that doesn't jeopardize overall system security. So we think we can play an important role working with data center developers to provide that sort of energy security in a way that truly complements and strengthens the system on the way through.

Thank you.

My name is [ Parthasarathi ]. I represent the Australian Shareholders Association. Following on from the earlier question in terms of security of supply and energy transition, would Origin consider -- what kind of baseload power options would Origin consider? Does it include gas as an example?

And my second question is in relation to APLNG project debt. I note from your statements that the debt will be fully paid by 2030. What is their distribution policy? And given that debt would be fully paid, does it mean that there will be greater possibility for dividends from them to Origin and in turn to the shareholders?

Thank you for the question. So as we outlined, and Frank mentioned this in his address, we outlined in our annual report and also in our CTAP. Origin is investing heavily into the next generation of renewable energy sources that will provide a balanced and reliable energy source in order to look after our customers, whether they be both retail or C&I customers.

And there are a mix of energy solutions that will contribute to that. We've talked about our very significant investment in batteries. We've also mentioned the existing gas-fired peaking fleet that we have the largest in the country and 1 that is being increasingly utilized to provide the sort of system security and balance that an increasingly renewably penetrated system requires.

But we're also looking carefully at other larger scale renewable development projects such as Yanco Delta and we'll have more to say on that in the future. Combine that with our virtual power plant, which is effectively a form of battery, a way of shifting energy supply around as we have control over those devices that amount to 1.5 gigawatts of load.

And various PPA contracts that we have existing ones and will acquire in the future. That mix will provide the kind of quality, low cost, reliable energy in order to meet our customers' needs going forward.

Your second part of your question is, again, it's a very good one. You're absolutely right. APLNG's very strong performance has enabled it to meet all of its debt refinancing requirements to date and has been a progressive paydown of the project finance. And that's a topic that you would expect us to be looking at.

And Tony Lucas and the team are engaging in some analysis on that at the moment. Clearly, we're only 1 shareholder in APLNG, but it's performing extremely well and rest assured that that's being under active consideration.

Can I also just take this moment to just pass on our best wishes to your colleague, Mr. [ Gomes ], who has been -- I think this year, the last year that [ Lewis ] is stepping down from covering origin. He's done a tremendous job for the ASA and keeping us honest with some very, very penetrating questions over a long period of time. So could you please pass on our best wishes to [ Lewis ] and the ASA for all of your diligence and hard work. Thank you.

My name is [ Jackie Mills ]. I'm from the Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales. I have a proxy this morning, and a question against this item for the Board. .

So in reviewing the 2025 full year results presentation, the CEO said that over the course of the past financial year that Origin's accelerated its strategy in support of our ambition to lead the energy transition through cleaner energy and customer solutions, yet there is not a single solar or wind project in Origin's portfolio.

There is one wind farm that's received planning approval but has not yet commenced development. So the 2025 annual report makes it clear that 78% of Origin Energy's generation remains nonrenewable, only 22% is renewable. Renewable energy generated or purchased constitutes only 1.7 gigawatts of a 7.6 gigawatt energy generation portfolio.

So this means there's a need to increase Origin's renewable energy generation around threefold before 2030 to meet its own climate transition action plan target of 4 to 5 gigawatts of renewable energy generation. However, the same plan states that development of further opportunities in the pipeline will depend on returns. Can the Board explain whether the achievement of the climate transition action plan is a threat from Origin Energy's slow pace of change.

Thank you, Shareholder, for the question. Look, I think the underlying point you make is probably one that we would be in violent agreement with, which is Origin is in the middle of a significant transition from a mix of power generation sources oriented towards thermal to a renewable one.

I would take issue with the comment in respect to the speed of our execution. You don't wake up overnight and decide to spend $1.7 billion on batteries across the state without having done a lot of work. That's a very significant project, and it's being executed in real speed.

Unfortunately, and I'll also correct in respect of any renewable projects that currently contribute to our energy supply. We do have some renewable PPAs that we've contracted that also contribute to our overall energy mix. But the overall point you make is the right one.

The absolute commercial reality is the lowest cost new electrons to enter the NIM in Australia will be renewable. That is our conviction. We've made it very clear. Of course, we need to execute that plan in a way that preserves both the reliability and the affordability of energy for our customers, whether they be retail or C&I customers.

So clearly, we are balancing the need to replace Eraring with investment opportunities that would deliver not only a more renewable and lower carbon energy mix for Origin, but one that also delivers -- enables us to be competitive in a very competitive marketplace with low cost of energy.

We've got a full agenda of projects that we're progressing at the moment. And as the CTAP outlines, there's a clear pathway for us to substitute the energy coming from Eraring, which at the moment, Eraring is profitable. There's an unusual disparity between coal prices and energy prices at the moment. But rest assured, over the medium term operating a coal-fired power station in normal market conditions.

We have got very high levels of renewable penetration at the middle of the day with negative prices is economically very, very challenging. That's -- that remains the case. Hopefully, I think that's answered your question, Shareholder.

Yes, I was aware of the PPAs in addition to that. So is the Board confident that, that target of the 4 to 5 gigawatts of renewable energy generation can, in fact, be achieved within the 5-year period?

Yes. And we set that out in detail project by project in our CTAP.

[ Natasha Lee ], again. Just hopefully a fairly simple question. There was a comment concerning the Australia Pacific LNG saying that there was that low output due the natural field decline. So what is the profile, I suppose, in the short to medium term? Is that going to impact the company and your expected requirements for LNG?

Yes. Thank you, [ Natasha ]. You're absolutely right. And as we restated this morning, the production guidance of around 635 to 680 petajoules out of APLNG. APLNG production probably peaked at around about 700 a few years ago, where we had phenomenal field performance. So we're always going to be encountering some midlife field -- natural decline field issues, and the team is very focused on implementing initiatives to continue to restore production.

So there are a range of things that Andrew Thornton and his team are working in field at the moment as it relates to workovers and other downhole technologies to address pressure issues that we remain confident we'll respond to current field conditions. But we still -- those are in trial, and we'll continue to report on those.

My name is [ Mark Grasy ]. I'm a shareholder. I just heard that there's a pipeline that runs from North Queensland down into New South Wales. And I heard it's at full capacity. And I was wondering, is there any plans to build another pipeline down this way?

Right. You're here right. The here's critical pieces of infrastructure that transport gas from the north and significant amount from the LNG producers and a significant amount from APLNG. We provide -- have provided on average about 24% of all East Coast gas demand and that goes from Queensland, South and whether supply pinch point is forecast by the independent authorities, AMO and others, is really get gas into the South and the Southern states. And in peak periods of high gas demand, that pipeline is constrained.

So one of the things that we are doing to address that is looking at various gas storage investments, Golden Beach being 1 opportunity that we've talked about in the past, which remains under review at the moment. to address that situation to enable pet gas to be supplied to our customers in the South.

Any more detailed questions on this should be directed to Mick McCormack, who was, I think the the CEO of APA when they actually built the pipeline. So he probably knows -- he knows a lot more about it than any of the rest of us in the room. So...

I'll just like to ask if you can answer quickly. If you compare the price of gas in Western Australia to the price of gas over here, I heard it's about 3x higher and the cost over there. And I was wondering why that is? If it's correct.

I think I have to take that question on notice. Mr. Andrew Thornton here down the front, who runs our Integrated Gas business, I'd encourage you shareholder to have that discussion with him. But obviously, those markets aren't connected. They're very different supply dynamics and will be more conventional, but we've also got Fiona Hick, on the board here. I'm sure Fiona would be a distinguished career at Woodside would be able to also address any questions you've got on the dynamics between West and East Coast gas. Between those 2, you've pretty much got it covered.

Yes. Because the 2 gas in Western Australia makes it much easier for manufacturing

That's right. Thank you, Shareholder.

Any other comments or questions on the financial report or the management of the company?

Thank you, Shareholder.

My name is [ Waddington ], [ Brian Waddington ]. I'm a shareholder. It's not really a financial matter, but I'll -- if you don't mind, I'll raise it now. As well as being a shareholder of Origin, my family has been a customer of Origin for many years. Last year, Origin offered us a good deal to sign up our gas and electricity at home with Origin.

That was fine. And there was a warning that it was for probably for a limited time. Well, the limited time has come up a few months ago. And Origin not only removed the discount that they had offered us, but they increased our prices. The result being that if we stayed with Origin, we would have been paying 40% more for our gas and electricity at home.

Now I wasn't happy with that. I didn't think it was fair, and I had numerous conversations with -- conversations over the web with Origin, and none of them gave any ground about offering a better deal. So I spoke to my family, and they said, let's go somewhere else. So I've taken 3 of my accounts, including another property, to other companies.

Now as soon as that happened, Origin came back to me. And because I'd actually moved, then they said, "Oh, we can do better than that." And that's a joke. You said earlier that you can trust Origin. In my case, I can't trust Origin. And I didn't -- I haven't gone back to Origin because I know that if I did, your salespeople would rip me off next year when the discount is up for renewal.

Now I don't think that's right. And I think you should do better for customers. Even though I'm a shareholder, I don't believe in ripping people off to get higher profits. I think you should be fair to people.

Shareholder, can you -- can I just thank you for raising this in the very professional way you've done? We don't want to lose your business, and I'm obviously very disappointed that we did lose those accounts, not only you as a customer, but as a shareholder as well. I can't comment on the individual nature of the plan, and I am aware that it's a conventional market practice does have these sort of lower price periods and then repricing periods.

It's something that we actually have talked to our retail team about to make sure that we're actually very clear in our advertising. And every single Board meeting we are laser sharp to ensure that we are competitive in those markets. So I'm surprised to hear that in your circumstance, we were so out of market, that sounds dissonant to me and I apologize if there's been any communication with you has been less and straightforward.

What I would like to do is invite you to speak to John, Jon Briskin, who runs all of our retail business afterwards, and we will take a look at just what has happened here because this doesn't sound like the Origin that we're all proud of, nor the way that Origin reacts in the marketplace. But I don't have the facts, and I'd like -- if you wouldn't mind, just to spend some time with John and John will come back to Frank and I and report on that matter.

Thank you for raising it.

Okay. I've reached to a conclusion that a lot of your sales staff are not out to benefit customers, they're out to rip customers off.

Well, I think that's totally wrong. I have to say that is not the case at all. In fact, the metrics that we are -- we track very, very carefully is customer happiness and you're not one of them. So customer happiness which is our consistent performance for customers when they interact with us, our pricing and our plans. This is hardwired into the way we measure success and track the underlying health of our retail business.

So I do -- I would refute that. But clearly, we've disappointed you and let you down, and we need to follow up and see what's happened. And you wouldn't mind giving us the time to do that, and we'll take a good look at it.

Okay, shareholders, I think we can -- now I'll move on, as there are no more questions. Excuse me, sorry, [indiscernible] I beg your pardon, sorry. This shareholder first and then you sir. Thank you.

[ Parbury ] is my name, [ Peers Parbury ]. Very briefly, the previous question about the difference in cost of gas between the East and West Coast, I thought it was quite an interesting one and no offense to you, but I thought that was a side step that would be very proud of. But I think there's -- I would speculate this a number of people here who would quite like to hear that explanation if you can spare 2 minutes just to give us a quick rundown, please?

Look, we don't have any significant operations in West Australia. So that's the reason why we're not experts on West Australian gas. Our gas operations are principally located on the East Coast and LNG. So they are very different very different technical process. Yes, they end up in the same LNG markets, but they're very different production process. Rather than take time up in this meeting shareholder I think the best approach that I suggested. We have got expertise here. This is of a more detailed nature. And just given our operations, I would invite you to take that up with Andrew after the meeting.

Okay. Well, I'll do that, fair enough. Many people have been told that the -- a lot of gas was sold, contracts were confirmed over -- to sell gas overseas, but they couldn't fulfill those orders some years ago. I know there's another gas supplier who's been in the press lately that definitely, that's part of their situation. Is that Origin situation as well?

Not at all. So as I'm sure you followed through our various annual reports over the years, we've got a very sizable reserve position on the East Coast in Queensland supporting APLNG in our overall integrated gas position. That enables us to do 2 things: to meet our contractual commitments, we've got 2 key contract -- key customers there, Sinopec and And that LNG goes up to China, competing with Woodside LNG from the West Coast up to China and largely is defraying emission -- more emissions-intensive coal electricity generation.

So at all points, we have -- we carefully assess that our reserves position is sufficient to do, number one, look after our contracted customers, but also importantly, supply the domestic market. And as I mentioned in the earlier shareholder question, we have been a consistent reliable supplier into that East Coast market to our domestic customers, both through APLNG and also through Origin and supplied nearly 1/4 of that supply over a reasonably long period of time.

So we do think that the reform measures that are being considered as part of the gas market review that will require suppliers like ourselves to source from their own reserves or from other reserves rather than drawing on the domestic market and then reselling it into it, would be a reform that would enhance the functioning of the market and remove artificial upward pressure on prices from those suppliers who are purchasing from the market, which we, as APLNG -- as a shareholder of APLNG do not do. We supply from our own reserves.

So the export permitting idea, I think, would address that, that, I think, structural inadequacy in kind of the current market.

Thank you, shareholder.

I think we've got one more over here.

[ William Prentice ], Shareholder. I just wanted to speak to as the gentleman that talked about his account. I had a very, very similar experience to him. I had 4 accounts with Origin. And after I went, I was bombarded. But you know what, they could have gave it to me for nothing, and I wouldn't have gone back to you guys, I'd be honest about that.

On the new supplier that I get, and I'm not sure whether it's the same with Origin, they put on there that whether or not I'm getting the most beneficial scheme that they have on that. I'm not sure whether you guys put that on there, but that was my experience with Origin, and it was very, very similar to that other person there. So maybe it's just 2 of us, I don't know. I just thought I'd bring that up.

Thank you, Shareholder. And again, I extend to you the same offer to speak to John to get a better understanding of that.

Okay. We're noting that a vote to receive or adopt these accounts is not required. I will now move to the remaining items of business. Voting on each of the remaining items of business for consideration at today's meeting will be determined by means of a poll. Boardroom, the company's share registrar, will be the returning officer for the purpose of the poll.

The persons who are entitled to vote on this poll are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders, except those precluded by operation of law or listing rule as set out in the notice of meeting and explanatory notes.

Like we have in prior years, we'll be using electronic devices to vote on all resolutions. While many of you may have used these devices before, I will now come to provide some instructions to you on how to vote.

First, please ensure that the smartcard you received on registering today is inserted correctly into the device. Place your smartcard into the top of the handset making sure that the arrows at the bottom of the smartcard are inserted and facing towards you. A welcome message and your name will appear when the card is inserted correctly. When I open voting shortly, your device will become active and instructions will appear on the device screen. You may use the blue green and red buttons to navigate through the screens.

Voting options will appear on the screen. Select button 1 to vote for, button 2 to vote against or select button 3 to abstain and withhold your vote. Once you have voted, confirmation that your vote has been received will also appear on the screen. You can also cancel or change your vote on any of the items by following the prompts on the screen.

If you are here as a proxy holder, you should vote using the handset device in respect of any open votes that are available to you. If you are voting in more than 1 capacity, for example, as a shareholder and proxy holder, you can use the same handset. Your smartcard will contain all eligible voting shares in each capacity. If you wish to abstain from voting, you should select the abstain option on your handset.

I advise that subject to the voting exclusions set out in the Notice of Meeting, on a poll, every member who is present in person or by proxy, attorney or representative will have 1 vote for each share held by him or her. As set out in the Notice of Meeting, I intend to cast any available undirected proxies held by me as Chair in favor of all resolutions.

If you require assistance in submitting your vote, please raise your hand and the staff from Boardroom will come to assist you. I will now open the poll for voting and move to the remaining items of business. Your handset should now be activated, and you may submit your votes at any time in case you need to leave the meeting early, but we encourage you all to stay with the discussion and to ask any questions.

If you wish to leave early, please submit your votes on the electronic device and return it to the registry staff as you leave the room. As we move through the relevant items of business, I will give you an opportunity to cast your votes using the handset. I will also give you a final opportunity to cast your votes if you haven't already done so before I close the poll towards the end of the meeting.

The next items of business are the election and reelection of Directors. The process for nomination of Directors standing for election and reelection involves an assessment by the Board of the relevant Director's skills, expertise and his or her performance and contribution to the work of the Board during their term and in particular, over the last 12 months. The results of this assessment form the basis of the Board's recommendation to shareholders.

Let me move to Resolution 2, the election of Fiona Hick. Fiona was appointed by Directors in August 2025 and accordingly seeks election by shareholders under the ASX listing rules and the company's constitution. Prior to Fiona's appointment, the company took all requisite background checks and concluded that it was appropriate to appoint Fiona to the Board.

It is proposed that following this meeting, Fiona will join the company's Remuneration, People and Culture Committee and the Safety and Sustainability Committee. Fiona's executive career has spanned across the energy, mineral and resource sectors. Fiona has extensive experience and skills across strategy, operations, people and culture and technology implementation.

Her appointment has strengthened the Board and complements the skills of the existing Directors. Fiona is considered an Independent Director by the Board. Details of Fiona's biographical information are set out in the notice of meeting. The Board, with Fiona absent, unanimously recommends her election. I will now ask Fiona to speak to her election.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning to everyone here in Sydney and online. We all recognize the importance of energy to ourselves as individuals to families, to businesses and also to the Australian and global economies. So Origin's purpose to get energy right for customers, communities and the planet plus the diverse range of assets and great people makes for a company that I believe has a bright future.

I was therefore pleased to join the Board last month. And according to the listing rules and the constitution now stand for election at this meeting. Energy is where I've spent the majority of my career across all parts of the value chain, from exploration to projects, to operations, right through to customers. I've been fortunate to work in a variety of roles, including at different times, leading strategy, health and safety, environment, engineering and operations.

The range of roles that I've had over the last 30 years from site engineer to CEO and a number of roles in between has allowed me to develop a deep understanding of the energy sector from different perspectives and therefore, to bring a wide range of skills and experience to this role. I see opportunities and challenges ahead for Origin, a period of transformation, but with an unwavering focus on safety, customer solutions, decarbonization, operational excellence and strong values, I believe Origin is well placed to deliver this and to deliver sustainable growth.

I currently serve as a Non-Executive Director at Evolution Mining, Dyno Nobel, Baron Joy and Infrastructure WA. I believe my executive and operational skills will bring complementary skills to the Board. And I also confirm I do have the capacity to dedicate the time required. I'm deeply committed to using my experience to support Origin's strategy, governance and results. I appreciate you considering my appointment. And if successful, look forward to serving you, our shareholders.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fiona. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed that proxies be cast. You will see that 99.24% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. Undirected proxies held by me as the Chair will be cast in favor of the motion. As indicated earlier, Voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Congratulations, Fiona.

Let me move to Resolution 3, the election of Stephen Mikkelsen. Stephen was appointed by directors in August 2025 and accordingly, seeks election by shareholders under the ASX listing rules and the company's constitution. Prior to Stephen's appointment, the company undertook all requisite background checks and concluded that it was appropriate to appoint Stephen to the Board.

It is proposed that following this meeting, Stephen will join the company's Safety and Sustainability Committee. Stephen brings significant executive management and finance experience including in various senior leadership positions across the energy sector. Stephen has extensive industry knowledge with skills across financial management, business development, sustainability and strategy.

His appointment has strengthened the Board and complements the skills of the existing directors. Stephen is considered an Independent Director by the Board. Details of Stephen's biographical information are set out in the notice of meeting. The Board, with Stephen absent, unanimously recommends his election. I will now ask Stephen to speak to his election.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Look, I was very much attracted to the idea of joining the Origin board as my experience in the energy industry spans 21 years. It began at Contact Energy in New Zealand right at the start of the competitive electricity industry in 1996. I was CFO when Contact Energy was privatized in 1999. I subsequently joined Snowy Hydro in the early 2000s as CFO, and this was a fantastic grounding in electricity trading and risk management.

Following Snowy Hydro, I spent 12 years at AGL in a range of roles, including CFO, Group General Manager, Retail Energy and Executive General Manager, Energy Markets. Origin was a very strong competitor back then, and it is pleasing to see that it has only gone from strength to strength.

In the intervening 8 years since I left AGL Limited, I have been at Sims Limited, an ASX listed global metal recycler, where I am currently Global Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. I believe my comprehensive grounding in the energy markets, combined with my experience as an ASX-listed CEO in a heavy industry with trading risks provides me with the necessary background to be an effective contributor to the Origin Board.

These are indeed exciting times as we navigate the energy transition and I'm looking forward to rejoining the industry in which I spent so much of my executive career. If I may, I would like to share an observation that having attended an Origin Board meeting in September, you are fortunate to have a highly capable Board and a very, very effective management team.

I confirm that I have the capacity to dedicate the time required to be an effective Director of the Origin board. I thank you in advance for your consideration of my election today.

Thank you, Stephen. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the motion?

Mr. Mikkelsen, obviously, as you outlined, you hold an executive position and being a CEO and Managing Director of Sims Group, which is a large ASX-listed business. How will you balance your responsibilities of both the roles, particularly during times when unexpected circumstances arise in either business, example an M&A transaction?

[ Partha ], I might answer the question on Stephen's behalf. And if there any follow-ups to please direct them to him, and we'll give them the opportunity to speak. Clearly, that was a factor for both of us. And I presume both for Sims as well and agreeing to release Stephen for this role. So there is clearly a benefit to Origin, having a sitting Chief Executive with Stephen's long history in the energy industry.

And also we have been mindful of committee workload and how that can be best spread across all the directors, and that's been taken into account in terms of allocation and responsibility. So looking at our entire Board schedule with support, clearly of the Sims Board, we are highly confident that Stephen has both the capacity and the genuine interest and motivation to be fully involved in his Origin duties as a Non-Executive Director. It's an entirely fair question, and thank you for raising it, [ Partha ].

The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 99.22% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. Undirected proxies held by me as the Chair will be cast in favor of the motion. As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll.

Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Congratulations, Stephen. Let me move to Resolution 4, reelection of Greg Lalicker. Greg was last reelected in 2022 and accordingly seeks reelection by shareholders under the ASX listing rules and the company's constitution. Greg is a member of the Safety and Sustainability Committee. During his time on the Board, Greg has made an outstanding contribution to Origin.

Greg's extensive industry and strategy experience, together with his global knowledge further strengthens the board and complements the skills of the existing directors. Greg is considered an Independent Director by the Board. Details of Greg's biographical information are set out in the Notice of Meeting. The Board, with Greg absent, unanimously recommends his reelection.

I will now ask Greg to speak to his reelection.

Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, everyone. I'm Greg Lalicker and pleased to get the opportunity to speak to you for a couple of minutes this morning about my potential reelection. First, by way of background, I've been in the energy industry now for just shy of 50 years. My undergraduate degree is in petroleum engineering. I also have an MBA and a law degree.

The first half of my career, I spent working in oil and gas all around the globe, first for BHP Petroleum and then from McKinsey & Company. 20 years ago, I joined Hilcorp Energy as the Executive Vice President of Exploration and Production; and in 2017 was then promoted to CEO there, the position I continue to hold to this day.

During that time, Hilcorp has grown from being a $1 billion oil and gas company with 350 employees to a $15 billion to $20 billion oil and gas company with 3,500 employees. Regarding my experience here at Origin, I've been a Director now for the last 6.5 years. During that time, the entire Origin management team has successfully navigated a global pandemic, a series of supply chain disruptions, a global commodity price collapse and a series of corporate M&A activities, all of which took place against the backdrop of an ever-evolving energy transition.

I truly do believe that through this process, my experience as a successful CEO, my expertise in oil and gas and my perspectives on global energy markets has made a valuable contribution to the team. And I'm certain that it will continue to do so going forward.

In summary, I'd just like to say, first off, thank you for considering me for reelection. Second, I'm excited to see what the next 3 years brings. And Last, of course, I'm fully committed to doing all I can to help Origin continue to succeed. So thank you for that. I'll now turn it back over to the Chairman.

Thank you, Craig. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 98.87% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. Undirected proxies held by the Chair will be cast in favor of the motion. As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll.

Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Congratulations, Greg. Let me move to Resolution 5, the reelection of Nora Scheinkestel. Nora was elected in 2022, and accordingly, 6 reelection by shareholders under the ASX Listing Rules and the company's constitution. Nora is Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee and a member of the Nomination Committee. Nora has almost 30 years of experience as a Non-Executive Chair and Director of companies across a wide range of industries in the public and private sectors.

Nora has extensive experience in highly regulated sectors, including energy, infrastructure and financial services and in companies undergoing major technological and cultural transformation. With that experience, Nora has made an invaluable contribution to the Board. Her membership has strengthened the Board and complements the skills of the existing directors. Nora is considered an independent director by the Board. Details of Nora's biographical information are set out in the notice of meeting. The Board, with Nora absent, unanimously recommends her reelection.

I will now ask Nora to speak to her reelection.

Thanks, Scott, and good morning, fellow shareholders. My name is Nora Scheinkestel. And as Scott said, I chair the Audit and Risk Committees at Origin. Over the last few years, we've actually spent quite a lot of time refreshing our approach on risk, an essential focus in today's uncertain and rapidly changing environment. Our risk universe is pretty broad.

It spans physical market, regulatory people, technology, including cyber and climate change risks. We collaborate with the other committees and with the full Board in many of these areas. We are heavily regulated and rightly so because we provide a truly essential service. And so compliance, which is part of our remit is deeply embedded in our DNA. We look at risk through many lenses, how issues affect our customers and our business customers, how we use tools like AI to improve compliance, to provide better accessibility and experience for both our customers and importantly, also our staff.

And our internal audit program ensures we deliver on our commitments. My experience, as Scott mentioned, of major companies undergoing similar processes allows me to bring valuable insights to Origin. Looking ahead, as we're adopting new accounting standards in the year coming, including the introduction of sustainability reporting, I will also ensure through my network that our team have access to peers facing similar issues.

It's that breadth and depth of experience built up over more than 30 years as a Non-Executive Director and Chair of listed companies in almost every sector of the economy that I think equips me well for this role. I've worked in companies, as Scott said, undergoing profound disruption in their markets from all sorts of changes, technological business model changes.

I've worked in key regulated markets, banking and finance, telecommunications, energy and water. Most importantly, I know how key it is to work as a team, bringing our diverse skills and experiences to bear to ensure that we get the best outcomes for our customers, our shareholders and all our other stakeholders. Should you choose to reelect me today, then I believe I can continue to make a valuable contribution together with our team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nora. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 96.17% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. Undirected proxies held by me as the Chair will be cast in favor of the motion.

Congratulations, Nora.

Let me move now to Resolution 6, adoption of the remuneration report. The next item of business on the agenda is to adopt the remuneration report of the company. The disclosures in the remuneration report focus on the company's policy for setting Director and executive remuneration and the actual amounts paid to Directors and key executives for the year just passed.

While the vote on the remuneration report is nonbinding and advisory only, as we have done in prior years, we will take into account any comments from shareholders on the outcome of the vote when considering future remuneration arrangements of the company. Our remuneration framework is designed to support the company's strategy and to reward our people for its successful execution.

It's designed around 3 principles of attract and retain the right people, pay fairly and drive focus and discretionary effort. We balance performance metrics, which are within management's control, and those which are not, but which materially influence our shareholders' experience. We ensure our focus on long-term decision-making is reflected in the choice of short-term metrics and the long-term measures of success consistent with that focus.

We reviewed the balance of fixed versus at-risk remuneration and undertook a comprehensive benchmarking to ensure competitive levels of remuneration opportunity. As our strategy develops, so too will elements of the remuneration framework to ensure alignment. The Remuneration People and Culture Committee continues to test the remuneration framework against these objectives.

We review various alternative structures, engage openly with our major shareholders, proxy advisers and remuneration experts and seek to simplify and refine the framework in line with changing industry conditions. The Directors recommend that you vote in favor of adopting the remuneration report.

I now move that the remuneration report be adopted. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the motion? On the screen, I show how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 97.52% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. I will vote available undirected proxies held by me in favor of the motion. Voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Let me move to Resolution 7, equity grant to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Frank Calabria. The next item of business involves the granting of performance rights and restricted rights under the company's long-term incentive plan to our CEO and Managing Director, Frank Calabria. If this resolution is passed, the performance rights and restricted rights will be granted shortly after today's meeting, but will only deliver value to Frank in future years if service and vesting conditions are achieved as set out in the Notice of Meeting and the remuneration report.

These awards are part of the at-risk amounts of Frank's remuneration designed to align his interests with those of shareholders. Further details of these awards and their terms are set out in the Notice of Meeting and the remuneration report. The Directors, other than Frank, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of Resolution 7.

I will now put the award of equity incentives to the meeting. The matter is now open for discussion. The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed that proxy votes be cast. You will see that 98.37% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. Undirected proxies held by me as the Chair will be cast in favor of the motion. As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Let me move to Resolution 8, Non-Executive Director Share Plan. This item of business is the proposed approval for the grant of share rights to Non-Executive Directors under the Non-Executive Director Share Plan or NED share plan for FY '26 and '27 and '28, and for the allocation of shares on vesting of those share rates. The NED share plan is a salary sacrifice plan, which allows nonexecutive directors to sacrifice up to 50% of their annual Director's base fees to acquire share rights in the company.

Each share right is equivalent to receive a fully paid ordinary share in Origin subject to the terms of the grant. The NED share plan has been introduced to support Non-Executive Directors to build their shareholdings in the company and as a means of enhancing the alignment of interest between Non-Executive Directors and shareholders generally.

The company has had a minimum shareholding requirement for the chair of 2x the Non-Executive Director base fee. And for all other Non-Executive Directors, it is 1x the Non-Executive Director base fee. Only Non-Executive directors are eligible to participate in the NED share plan.

Shareholder approval is required under the ASX listing rules for the issue of share rights to any Director unless the shares allocated on vesting of the share rights are required by the terms of the scheme to be purchased on market. The company currently intends to satisfy the vesting of share rights by purchasing shares on market, but wishes to retain the discretion to issue shares if this is ultimately considered in the company's best interests.

The Board also recognizes that it is in line with corporate -- good corporate governance practices for equity grants to be -- to Directors to be approved by shareholders. Further details of the NED share plan are set out in your notice of meeting. Because the Directors have a personal interest in the subject of this resolution, they have abstained from making a recommendation to shareholders in relation to this resolution.

The matter is now open for discussion. Is there anyone who wishes to speak on the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes to be cast. You will see that 98.07% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. I intend to not vote any undirected proxies held by me as the Chair of this motion.

As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Let me now move to Resolution 9, increase in the aggregate cap of Non-Executive Directors' remuneration. This item of business is the proposed increase in the aggregate cap of Non-Executive Director remuneration. Approval is sought to increase the maximum annual aggregate amount available for Non-Executive Directors' remuneration from the existing limit of 3.2 million to a new limit of 3.6 million, an increase of 400,000.

The company's constitution provides that each Director is entitled to fees for his or her service, but the total amount provided to all Directors must not exceed in aggregate in any financial year the amount approved by the company in General Meeting. This amount includes Directors' fees and statutory superannuation contributions, but does not include other payout payments that may be payable to Non-Executive Directors as provided for in the company's constitution.

This also excludes remuneration paid to the Chief Executive Officer, who is an Executive Director. The current maximum aggregate amount of $3.2 million was approved by shareholders at the 2017 Annual General Meeting. Non-Executive Director fees are reviewed annually by the Remuneration People and Culture Committee.

The remuneration provided to each Director for the year ended 30 June 2025 is detailed in the remuneration report. The Chair and Non-Executive Director base fees have only had modest increases since the last time the aggregate cap was increased. For FY '26, as noted in Section 61 of the remuneration report, there was an increase to chair a Non-Executive base Director fees of $10,000 and $6,000, respectively, and no change to committee fees.

The Board believes it's appropriate to seek shareholder approval to increase the maximum aggregate amount for Non-Executive Director fees for the following reasons: the company expects there to be an increase in the number of Non-Executive Directors whilst the Board is undergoing renewal, and therefore, more of the maximum aggregate amount will be utilized than previously.

Secondly, to continue to attract and retain individuals of the highest caliber to oversee the strategic and operational priorities of the company through the energy transition and to allow for future adjustments in line with market conditions. Because the Directors have a personal interest in the subject of this resolution, they have abstained from making a recommendation to shareholders in relation to this resolution.

The matter is now open for discussion. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 98.73% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. I intend to not vote any undirected proxies held by me as the Chair on this motion.

As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Let me now vote to Resolution 10, the reinsertion of proportional takeover provisions. This item of business considers the reinsertion of the proportional takeover provisions contained in Rule 15 of the constitution. This rule was previously approved by shareholders in 2022 for a period of 3 years. But that approval and therefore, the rule ceased to have effect on the 15th of October 2025.

The Directors consider it in the interest of the shareholders to continue to have a proportional takeover provision in the constitution. And accordingly, shareholders are requested to reinsert the proportional takeover provisions contained in Rule 15 of the constitution with effect from the date of this meeting for a further period of 3 years.

We've made the disclosures required under the Corporations Act and can confirm that at the date of this meeting, there is no proposal for any proportional takeover bid.

I will now put the proportional takeover provisions to the meeting. The matter is now open for discussion. Is there anybody who wishes to speak on the motion? The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed the proxy votes be cast. You will see that 99.16% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. I intend to not vote any undirected proxies held to me as the chair of this motion.

As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Let me now move to Resolution 11, approval of the 2025 Climate Transition Action Plan. So this next item of business on the agenda is to approve the CTAP locally known CTAP or fully knows our climate transition action plan. This is the second climate transition action plan we have reported on, and it will report on the progress Origin has made in preparing our business for a lower carbon future and affirms our commitment to our 2030 emissions reduction targets and long-term ambition to be net 0 by 2050 as well as outlining the actions we will continue to take towards decarbonizing our business.

As a leading Australian energy company with operations spanning gas production, power generation, energy retailing and renewables development, Origin has an important opportunity to contribute to the energy transition in Australia and champion the benefits it will bring to homes and businesses.

Origin is also able to play a role in actively managing and mitigating the challenges created by the transition for the energy market and stakeholders. We do not underestimate the challenge ahead to achieve net 0 emissions for our business. However, we continue to believe that decarbonization is good for our customers and the environment and successful execution of our strategy will continue to support both our emissions reductions targets and value for shareholders.

This advisory resolution is not intended in any way to undermine the Board's accountability for setting the company's strategy, which the Directors recognize as their responsibility to shareholders. This resolution forms part of the company's ongoing commitment to transparency and dialogue with shareholders and stakeholders and the Board welcomes the continued engagement, challenge and support.

While the advisory vote is not binding on the Directors or the company, the Board will take the outcome of the vote and discussion at this meeting into account in determining how Origin progresses, evaluates and looks to improve upon the initiatives set out in the Climate Transition Action Plan.

I will now put the 2025 Climate Transition Action Plan to the meeting. This matter is now open for discussion. Is there anybody who wishes to speak on the motion?

[ Jackie Mills ] from Nature Conservation Council New South Wales. As we meet here today, Unit 4 at Eraring coal-fired power station is off-line and not producing energy, and it's been this way for the past 7 weeks. During this time, Unit 3 within the power station suffered an unplanned outage or breakdown, resulting in half of the power station being unavailable for 10 days straight.

In fact, for 60% of the time over the past 12 months, at least one of Eraring's 4 units were unavailable. Yet in the 2025 full year results briefing, the CEO said that strong availability across our generation fleet allowed us to maintain good operational performance. How can Origin defend this claim that Eraring coal-fired power station is providing reliable energy given it has been offline so extensively over the past year?

And I note we had a question from a shareholder earlier on the cost to the company of maintaining Eraring as it ages and what it means for the bottom line. Given the risks to shareholders of holding on to this aging coal-fired power asset and the incompatibility of the coal-fired power with the targets within this climate transition action plan, how can the Board justify keeping the door open to another extension to Eraring?

Thank you, shareholder. So let's go back to basics on this. Until there is sufficient renewable generation with the completion of large projects like Snowy and the considerable pipeline of renewable projects that are under review, some of which have gone to some others haven't. Eraring is playing a vital role not only in the stability and security of the New South Wales Energy System, but also to the affordability of the millions of customers.

Our intention is to retire Eraring. We've been very clear on that. And furthermore, we're spending billions to replace the energy that would ultimately do that for us following the retirement of Eraring. Meanwhile, we need to maintain Eraring. Your overall point is an entirely fair one in as much as the coal fleet in Australia is aging is less reliable and to some extent, some of that lack of reliability is reflected in pricing as well.

In respect of Eraring's overall performance reliability, it has been strong. One of the units that you referred to being out is out for planned maintenance. I'm not sure you mentioned that point. It's planned maintenance. Periodically, there will be other performance-related reasons for units at Eraring to be taken offline and repaired. And we do that responsibly under the terms of the agreement we have with the New South Wales government, in order that Eraring can during this transition period play the important role it needs to play.

But from a medium-term perspective for the reasons both Frank and I have outlined, operating a large reasonably inflexible coal-fired power station, when prices are negative in the middle of the day as they will be today as they are in most solar hours, is very challenging. And that's why our medium-term objective, consistent with the agreement we have with the New South Wales government and entirely consistent with our CTAP remains to retire Eraring.

Frank, did you have anything you wanted to add to that?

Just one further point, which is that having energy demand is not consistent throughout the year. And therefore, when we talk about actually being available at critical times of the year, that's where Eraring really does stand out, and particularly as you watch through the winter period and the summer period, Eraring's performance was very strong at a time when the market needed it and that's what sits behind the statement about strong performance, and that's what's recognized by the New South Wales government.

In a highly variable energy market, that's becoming more challenging, but it's an asset that performs very well for the state and plays a critical role, as Scott said, until we can bring the suite of technologies forward, which are dependent also on transmission projects being built as well. So we're very focused on getting that right. But thank you very much for the question.

Thank you, shareholder. The screen behind me shows how shareholders have directed their proxy votes be cast. You will see that 93.87% of the votes have been cast in favor of the motion. I intend to not vote any undirected proxies held by me as Chair on this motion. As indicated earlier, voting on this resolution will be by means of a poll. Please now vote on your electronic device.

[Voting]

Has everyone who wishes to vote entered their selection? If you have not yet entered your vote, then please do so now as we will be closing the poll shortly. If you're having any difficulty casting your votes, please raise your hand and a member of Boardroom will assist and come to you.

I now declare the poll closed. I will shortly display the results of all the resolutions put to the meeting today. These are just being compiled. The results of this poll will also be announced to the ASX.

Here we go. Please see on the screen, shareholders, the results of all matters put to poll today. That concludes the formal part of the AGM. I would like to thank all of my Board colleagues and Frank and the executive leadership team and the thousands of employees and contractors for their dedication and commitment in the past year.

Finally, I would also like to thank you shareholders for your ongoing support of Origin and for attending today's meeting. I declare the meeting closed. Refreshments will be served outside. Thank you all.