Emeco Holdings Limited (EHL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Emeco Holdings Limited Full Year Results. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ian Testrow, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. With me today are Theresa Mlikota, our Chief Financial Officer; and Stephanie Ottens, our General Manager, Investor Relations. I'll start by touching on our results and important highlights from this past financial year and also cover our strong history of returns, followed by our outlook for FY '27. I'll then provide further detail on our individual segment performance. Theresa will take you through the detailed financial results before I finish with a closing summary and an opportunity for questions. I'll open with safety as it's our top priority. Our goal remains to operate a zero harm workplace and the engagement of every Emeco employee in the safe work practices is important to achieving this outcome. Our total recordable injury frequency rate decreased to 2.3 at the end of the financial year, reflecting continued progress in identifying risk, learning from incidents and driving ongoing improvement in workplace safety. Regrettably, we recorded 1 lost time injury during the year, a reminder that we can never be complacent on why leadership and continuous improvement in safety is so important. On environment, this year marked a significant milestone in Emeco's sustainability reporting, completing our first mandatory climate-related disclosures under the new legislative framework. Emeco's operational greenhouse gas emissions remained low at 4,555 tonnes of CO2 equivalent and primarily relate to diesel consumption in our fleet of company vehicles. Moving to Slide 5 and our results. The key message is that the business delivered earnings growth, strong cash generation and further deleveraging. Operating NPAT increased by 5%, and we delivered another year of really strong cash flow generation of $114.5 million, which enabled ongoing deleveraging of the balance sheet. Our maintenance services business continues to grow and was a key driver of revenue and EBIT growth. Operating EBIT of $148 million grew by 2% year-on-year. This also drove the 30 basis points improvement on our return on capital to 16.9%. Theresa will take you through the financial results for FY '26 in more detail later in the presentation. The business is in the best shape it has been in my time as CEO. Over the past 4 years, our strong financial performance has seen return on capital increased by 370 basis points. We've generated more than $350 million in free cash flow and have applied much of it to debt reduction, reducing leverage from 1.1x to 0.43x, a 60% reduction. These improvements are also translating into increased shareholder value. Over the past 4 years, operating free cash flow per share has more than doubled from $0.10 per share to $0.22 per share in FY '26. At 30th of June, our cash flow yield was 23%. Earnings per share has grown significantly from $0.08 per share to $0.148 per share over the same period, and net tangible assets per share increased from $1.12 to $1.51. Given the sustained cash generation and strong balance sheet, the Board has approved an on-market share buyback of up to 10% of shares on issue. The buyback represents an attractive use of capital and efficient means of returning surplus capital to shareholders while retaining flexibility to pursue strategic growth and potential acquisition opportunities, including sector consolidation. Over the past decade, Emeco has evolved from a pure rental business into a technology-led, fully maintained rental and maintenance solutions provider. We rent our equipment to our customers, provide on-site maintenance, monitor the fleet through condition-based and predictive technology and rebuild equipment and components for our workshops. This end-to-end capability is central to how we win projects and deliver value. It allows customers to focus on hitting their production targets with confidence that the fleet will perform reliably. Our maintenance capability is applied for our fully maintained rental projects. We also provide this maintenance and asset management service to our customers to look after their fleet. This is an area of the business we feel confident of growing in the upcoming years. The numbers behind this evolution in our business model are striking and highlight that maintenance services will continue to be a key growth driver for Emeco. Revenue contribution is up 40% over 4 years and 15% in the past year alone. Looking ahead, we expect FY '27 earnings to be in line with FY '26 with a weighting to the second half. We've already secured redeployment opportunities for a material portion of the fleet. Our new project pipeline will drive increased utilization forecast to be 90% for surface and 80% for underground by the end of FY '27. FY '27 expectations include CapEx of approximately $155 million to $165 million, net of asset disposals. ERP spend of around $5 million and depreciation of approximately $145 million to $150 million. We'll continue to expand our maintenance services platform to drive growth and diversification. With the strength of our balance sheet, we'll continue to pursue opportunistic and attractive growth opportunities, including sector consolidation. In FY '28, we expect the utilization run rate to deliver earnings growth in line with our 20% ROC target. Emeco's business model, combined with our position as Australia's largest provider of mining equipment rental with integrated maintenance services continues to deliver strong financial and operational performance. We have a high-quality customer base and diversified exposure across commodities and regions. The work we've done over the past few years to improve our operations, reduce costs and strengthen the balance sheet sets a solid foundation for growth. Turning to our operations and specifically rental. Rental demand has remained strong throughout the first half across all operating regions, particularly in gold, iron ore and coal. However, fuel supply and cost concerns and extended wet weather in Queensland in the second half impacted fleet utilization and redeployment. This was offset by growth in on-site maintenance services, which increased 44%. Surface fleet gross utilization averaged 82% and underground utilization was 67%. Rental operating EBIT improved 2% to $184 million. Emeco continues to benefit from miners and contractors seeking flexible, capital-efficient equipment solutions supported by our fleet scale and maintenance capability. Our new project pipeline will drive increased utilization, which is forecast to be 90% for surface and 80% for underground by the end of FY '27. This slide clearly shows the drop-off in utilization that occurred in the second half of FY '26. Given our strong pipeline of new projects, we're on track to recover utilization in the first half of FY '27 with a trajectory to get to 90% of our service fleet working by the end of FY '27. This utilization run rate going into FY '28 will provide earnings growth commensurate with our ROC target of 20%, which we expect to achieve in FY '28. Force remains a critical component of Emeco's business that enables us to provide fully maintained rental solutions, providing a competitive advantage in both cost and quality. The Force team provides mine owners and contractors equipment and component rebuilds in our strategically located workshops. Force also has an extensive team of field maintenance professionals that specialize in equipment diagnostics. The quality and efficiency of the work is being enhanced by our digitization initiatives. Force delivered total revenue of $277 million, a 1% increase on FY '25. Internal revenue was $121 million, an increase of 17% on FY '25, while external revenue declined 8% to $156 million with capacity utilized to focus on internal rebuild works. Force completed 143 machine rebuilds and 983 component rebuilds for Emeco and external clients compared to 137 and 996, respectively, in FY '25, demonstrating the strength and throughput of our workshop network. In FY '27, the Fortescue and XCMG program will commence with delivery of 4 battery electric prototype assets for testing and support trials to be assisted by our Force maintenance service team. Fortescue is set to increase this to a total of 110 assets by early 2029. In preparation, Force upskilled 14 personnel in high voltage mobile plant and battery electric vehicle training. This is expected to increase to 60 to 70 trained technicians by 2029. This provides Force with a first-mover advantage in battery electric services and positions the business well to support Chinese OEMs within the Australian mining industry. I'll now hand to Theresa to take you through the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Ian, and good morning, everyone. The company delivered a resilient financial performance with bottom line earnings growth, solid cash generation and further improvements in balance sheet leverage and return on capital. Group revenue grew to $792.8 million. Operating EBITDA of $292.5 million and operating EBIT of $148 million were in line with the guidance issued to the market on the 18th of June 2026. The increase in revenue was driven by growth in maintenance services, particularly on-site maintenance through the Rental segment, which grew 44% year-on-year. Maintenance services now accounts for approximately half of gross revenue, a deliberate strategic shift towards lower capital intensity earnings. This was partially offset by lower rental revenue, reflecting reduced fleet utilization in the second half. Growth in our maintenance services offering was a key driver of earnings and return on capital improvements during the year. While utilization levels were lower in the second half, depreciation expense also reduced and costs were carefully managed to protect earnings and margins. As a result, operating EBIT increased 2% with the operating EBIT margin improving 10 basis points to 18.7%. Emeco's return on capital continued its positive trajectory, increasing to 16.9% from 16.6% in FY '25, driven by higher operating EBIT and a well-controlled capital base. Operating NPAT increased 5% to $89 million with lower interest expense resulting from lower average debt levels across the period. The business continued to deliver strong cash generation in FY '26, supported by disciplined working capital and cost control. Operating free cash flow was $127.6 million after net sustaining CapEx of $153.2 million. And adjusted free cash flow was $114.5 million. EBITDA to operating cash flow conversion remained strong at 108% for the year. Early redemption of our Australian medium-term notes, combined with regular payment of interest under our new revolving facility resulted in the cash outflow for the year, essentially containing approximately 18 months of interest outflows in combination with refinancing costs. Operating free cash flow funded maintenance CapEx requirements and interest costs with remaining cash directed to debt reduction, further strengthening the company's balance sheet. Nonoperating items totaled $14.1 million and were mainly made up of ERP costs and defense costs, which together made up most of the total. Just to flesh out the adjustment to operating free cash flow, it is a downward one to take account of timing of sale and leaseback financing items, interest payment timing and debt facility establishment costs. Collectively, they contributed positively to the operating cash flow. But given that they are mostly timing, we have normalized them to portray the more sustainable cash flow position going forward. We have touched on the strength of our balance sheet, but I want to highlight again that we have an industry-leading low net leverage of 0.43x, and we are in the strongest balance sheet position the company has held in a decade, with net debt reducing by a further $67.8 million to $127.1 million in the period. Our receivables are mostly high credit quality with around 95% falling into the blue chip or insured category. We have good cash collections, resulting in reduced receivables and an overall reduction in working capital. Our investment in fleet grew in the period, partially due to the lower-than-expected depreciation and slightly higher investment in stay-in-business CapEx for the year versus the prior period. The balance sheet is now a significant asset, providing resilience whilst also giving us the capacity to pursue value-accretive growth opportunities as they arise. Emeco refinanced its debt facilities on materially improved terms, redeeming its $250 million AMTN facility 6 months ahead of maturity. We established a $350 million revolving syndicated debt facility and a $5 million bank guarantee line with maturity extended out to December 2030. We have approximately $315 million of available liquidity, comprising $125 million of cash and $190 million of undrawn debt capacity, providing the business with significant financial flexibility. The refinancing was an important milestone for the company, materially reduced refinancing risk, simplified our capital structure and extended our primary debt maturity profile by 5 years. The improved commercial terms reflected the strength of the business, the confidence of our lending syndicate and the significant improvement in our credit metrics over recent years. This is a slide we have touched on before, but it is worth reiterating again to highlight the building blocks to achieving our 20% return on capital. As Ian outlined earlier, our utilization is set to recover in FY '27, and this will be the key to unlocking our target of 20% ROCE in FY '28 with growth in our maintenance earnings central to achieving greater than 20% return on capital. Critical to this drive for earnings quality is the free cash flow we will generate. In the last 2 years, we have delivered annual operating free cash flow exceeding $100 million. Higher ROCE will deliver higher free cash flow. And at 20%, we would expect this to be in the order of $140 million. ROCE is a key measure for a business that invests in its asset base as Emeco does. Making disciplined capital decisions has seen an ongoing improvement in the metric over the last 3 to 4 years. I'll now hand back to Ian.

Thanks, Theresa. To summarize, FY '26 demonstrated the resilience of our business with another year of solid earnings and strong cash generation. We continue to invest and strengthen our maintenance and technology capability. This enables a fully maintained rental offering, which differentiates us from our competitors and delivers value to our customers. We are very excited about our growing maintenance service offering and consider this to be key to our evolving business model's long-term growth aspirations. In consideration of the strong cash flow and deleveraging, the Board approved an on-market share buyback of up to 10% of shares on issue. We believe the buyback represents an attractive use of capital and efficient means of returning surplus capital to shareholders while retaining flexibility to pursue strategic growth and potential acquisition opportunities, including sector consolidation. As mentioned earlier, FY '27 earnings are expected to be in line with FY '26 with a weighting to the second half. We've already secured redeployment opportunities for a material portion of the fleet coming off completed projects, and our new project pipeline will drive increased utilization. In FY '28, we expect the utilization run rate to deliver earnings growth in line with our 20% ROC target. To close, our growth strategy is focused and disciplined, increase fleet utilization, grow fully maintained rental projects, expand maintenance services, improve operational performance, digitize the business, pursue growth opportunities and consider opportunistic sector consolidation. The work we've done over the last few years to improve our operations, reduce costs and strengthen the balance sheet has set a strong foundation for growth. Thank you for your time. We'll now take questions.

[Operator Instructions] As there are no questions, I will now hand it back to Mr. Testrow for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, everyone, for dialing in to the call, and thanks to all of Emeco's employees for this whole job. Thank you.

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