Capital Limited (CAPD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Capital Limited Annual General Meeting. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand over to the Board from Capital Limited. Good morning, Jamie.

Thank you very much, Mark, and good morning, everyone. My name is Jamie Boyton. I'm the Chairman of Capital Limited, and I'd like to welcome everyone to our Annual General Meeting. Quite a few people from Capital on the call today. So I'll just introduce some of the names you'll be hearing from. We have Peter Stokes, the company's CEO dialing in from Nevada; we have David Abery, Senior Non-executive Director. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming dialing in from Jersey; Catherine Apthorpe, our Company Secretary in London, along with Rick Robson, our group CFO in London; and Conor Rowley, who's actually down in Perth on our Corporate Development -- Head of Corporate Development and IR. The agenda for today is, I'll hand over to Peter. He is going to run through a brief slide presentation. Then over to Catherine to run through the resolutions. And at the end of that process, if there are questions, Conor will field the questions to the Board. And on that note, I hand over to Peter. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamie. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Annual General Meeting. My name is Peter Stokes, CEO of Capital. First slide is the normal disclaimers. I'd like to take you through the 4 pillars -- the 5 pillars that make up our organization as we continue to grow and very excited about how our organization has developed over the last year. And as we head into the future, we're setting ourselves up for continued growth across the organization. Key pillars are the Capital Drilling, which is the cornerstone of our business, where we've started and continues to be the majority of where we're focused in the business. We've had a number of new contract wins during the year and looking forward to continued growth into 2024. Capital Mining, we've had the large Sukari contract in Egypt. And we've had some further success during last year with the commencement of the Belinga project for Fortescue in Gabon. The LABS business continues to grow at pace, and we are continuing to be the largest provider of the Chrysos PhotonAssay technology in the world, and it expanded our footprint further across both Canada and Africa. Capital investments continues to be a very important part of our business both from a growth in the assets that we are stakeholders in and importantly, continuing to generate significant revenue for the broader business. And as we introduced last year, the capital innovation component of the business continues to work through some exciting new and technologies and practices that we'll talk about further over the coming months that will be released. Underpinning our business is a very strong margins. We continue to deliver best-in-class returns in margins across our business. Last year, particularly was an exceptional year for our safety performance, a key cornerstone of the way we operate in our company, and it really isn't right for us to be able to service the major customer base that we continue to focus on the cross-sell business, which I'll talk a bit further on. And we're positioned to benefit from the other investment in various sectors, particularly copper and gold. They are a large component of what we're doing in addition to the new work that we've been doing in iron ore and some lithium and other commodities that we continue to focus on. Underpinning the business is a Tier 1 portfolio, blue-chip, large mining companies. We focus on new mine and brownfield development, blue-chip miners with world-class assets across Africa. And during last year, we announced the new work that we've started for Barrick in Nevada Gold Mines, where I am at the moment. And we have a strong growth profile across the business with the balance sheet that sits under the business and also continues to drive strong valuations for our company. The guidance for the business into 2024 is $355 million to $375 million, for MSALABS, we guided to $50 million to $60 million and CapEx for 2024 of $70 million to $80 million. And you'll see on the right-hand side, the continued strong revenue growth in the business and which we're very excited to continue to see with growth of several major contracts during last year, including the start of Reko Diq in Pakistan, the Nevada contracts, which have kicked off early during this year and Gabon during last year for 40 SKUs, I mentioned. On that note, I'll hand over to Catherine, our Company Secretary to take you through the resolutions. Thank you, and I'll come back online for any questions that might come up at the end, thanks.

Thanks, Peter. Good morning, everyone. Now turning to the formal business of the meeting. The registrar has confirmed that the shareholders quorum is present for the meeting to proceed. This meeting has been convened to consider 13 ordinary resolutions and 2 special resolutions. Resolutions 14 and 15 are special resolutions, which require 75% or more of the votes cast for the motion to be carried. All other resolutions are ordinary resolutions and will be passed if more than 50% of the votes cast are in favor. The business of the meeting is confined to the consideration of the resolutions contained in the notice of the meeting dated the 2nd of May 2024. If there are no objections, I propose taking the notice as read. It's intended that voting on all resolutions at this meeting will be conducted on a poll rather than a show of hands. A poll reflects the number of voting rights exercisable by each shareholder and so the Board considers it to be more democratic method of voting. A poll also ensures that the votes of shareholders who have appointed proxies are taken into account in the final voting results. I hereby call a poll in respect of all the resolutions. As it will take some time to complete the poll procedure, the final results of the voting, including the proxy votes on the resolutions will be announced through our regulatory information service and published on our website as soon as reasonably practical. When you registered your attendance, you will have been given a poll card which shareholders, proxies and corporate representatives should complete and sign as indicated. Shareholders are presented with 3 options for each resolution. You can vote for the proposed resolution, against the proposed resolution or you may withhold your vote. A vote withheld is not a vote in law, which means that the vote will not be counted in the calculation of votes for or against the resolution. If no voting indication is given, your proxy vote will vote or abstain from voting at his or her discretion. Your proxy will vote or abstain from voting as he or she thinks fit in relation to any of the matter, which is put before the meeting. I should mention that for those shareholders who have already lodged a proxy form, you do not need to complete a poll card unless you want to change your vote. Please complete your poll card by marking an X, the appropriate box next to the relevant resolution depending on how you wish to cast your vote. Please then sign the poll card and hand it to me as Company Secretary at the end of the meeting. Should you require any further assistance, I'll be happy to assist you. We will now proceed to vote on the resolutions, which I will formally propose to the meeting. The full text of each resolution is set out in the notice to the meeting. Resolution 1. The first resolution as set out in the notice of the Annual General Meeting is an ordinary resolution to receive and adopt the financial statements of the company for the year ended 31st of December 2023, together with the reports of the directors and auditors. I now propose that the financial statements of the company for the year ended 31st of December, together with the reports of the directors and auditors be received and adopted. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. Resolution 2. The second resolution is an ordinary resolution to receive and approve the directors' remuneration report for the year ended 31st of December 2023. I now propose the directors' remuneration report for the year ended 31st of December 2023 be received and approved. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. Resolutions 3 to 10 are ordinary resolutions to reelect each director of the company being Anu Dhir, Alex Davidson, David Abery, Michael Rawlinson, Jamie Boyton, Peter Stokes, Brian Rudd and Cassie Boggs. I now separately propose each of the resolutions 3 to 10 to reelect each of the directors just named. Will you please vote on each resolution now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. The 11th resolution is an ordinary resolution to reappoint BDO LLP as auditor of the company. I now propose that BDO be reappointed as auditor of the company. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. The 12th resolution is an ordinary resolution to authorize the directors to agree the auditor's remuneration. I now propose that the directors be authorized to agree the auditors' remuneration. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. Resolution 13 is seeking to grant authority to allot and issue common shares up to 33% of the existing share capital, the full wording of which is set out in the notice of the AGM. I now propose this resolution is passed. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. Resolution 14, this is a special resolution relating to authorizing the Board of Directors to issue shares for cash without the shares first being offered to existing shareholders in proportion to their existing holdings, provided that such issue does not exceed 5% of the existing issued share capital of the company. The full wording of this resolution is set out in the notice of the AGM. I now propose that this resolution is passed. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. The 15th resolution is a special resolution to authorize the directors of the company to make market purchases of up to a maximum of 19,625,712 common shares of the company, the full details of which are set out in the notice of AGM. I now propose this resolution to be passed. Will you please vote now. [Voting]

I declare the poll closed. We will make an announcement of all final results of the meeting to the markets through our regulatory information service and post it on our website as soon as practicable. That concludes the voting from me. I will now pass over to Conor for any Q&A. Thank you very much.

We just had one very late question come in, perhaps for Peter. Just asking about the typical time frame it takes for MSALABS to achieve profitability and maybe talking about the difference between mine site and commercial labs.

Thanks, Conor. So we -- in the annual report, we described 2 types of laboratories that we do with Chrysos, typically with the Chrysos units, one called a commercial lab where we put a laboratory in a location that is not a mine site, and we have multiple customers come in. In those labs, we typically would expect the Chrysos units to be getting towards capacity within 6 months of going live. On the mine side, we have committed volume from the customer and those laboratories pretty much within going live will become unprofitable. So typically, in some of the -- and we talked about a couple of examples somewhere like Kibali in the DRC for Barrick, that laboratory within a couple of months of going live was -- became a profitable laboratory. Val d'Or is a commercial lab, we -- is an example too, which took about 6 months to get to the volumes that we would expect for that laboratory to become profitable. Back to you, Conor.

Just one more question around buybacks and market activity. I mean, obviously, we're not going to talk about intentions here, but what are our thoughts on capital allocation and buybacks?

Rick, did you want to do that one or do you want me to? I'm happy to.

I can overlay on your comments, Peter.

Okay. So I guess, as Conor inferred, we'll certainly consider that during the year in the annual report, we talked about Capital DI, and we talked about some of those assets that we would look to, I guess, liquidate at the right time. And we haven't made any commitments one way or the other, but would certainly be a key consideration as we look to sell down some of those assets and look to reinvest part of those funds.

Great. Thank you very much. Indeed, I think there are no further questions online. There are no questions from shareholders in the room. So to the Board of Capital. Thank you very much indeed for updating shareholders this morning. Can I please ask attendees on the line, not to close the session as we now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. Good morning to you all.