Master Drilling Group Limited (MDI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to all our webcast viewers this morning for the 2022 Half Year Results Presentation. Joining me today would be Koos, who will give you a rundown on the mechanical cutting space and the progress made. Roelof will give us an overview of the operations under review. And then obviously, Andre, the CFO, will give us the financial overview for the period under review. Just the business the past 6 months, certainly a solid performance by the Group if we consider the headwinds faced by the Chinese economy and not to mention the super inflation that we saw in the last 6 months. Certainly, if you look at the Group revenue and the earnings, there's certainly a bullet that we've dodged and well done to the business as a whole, if we look at the Group. If you look at the business itself, certainly, one of the highlights is the strong performance in the safety space. The safety performance of the Group, the LTI Frequency Rate, which we use as a leading indicator, increased from 1.65 to 1.4 for the period under review considering the 650-odd people that we've onboarded and the limited access for some of the senior management in the South American space to visit sites, I think a strong performance by the Group in the safety space. If you look at the revenue, maybe 2 things important to report. If you look at the normalized revenue line and considering the South African rand and Chilean peso, then the revenue for the period under review should have been just north of $100 million for the period and certainly on track to reach the $200 million considering full year, certainly something which we got as highlight for the Group. If we look at the progress made in what Koos is doing, Koos has got the [ branding rights ] today to talk to the technology and the advancement made in that space. Certainly, a lot of interest globally from the miners to check and see what we're doing. And Koos will fill us in, especially on the MTB when he says later on. Pipeline, pipeline and order book -- pipeline revenue at $540, if not mistaken in that. Order book, I think -- I believe we got $240 million odd, really a very good position given where the world is today and to bolt-on going forward. If we look at the company's diversification, you probably saw recently the increase in shareholding from the A&R business from 25% to 51%, and that probably confirms our focus to diversify the business, something that was key to the business and the success of the business the past 30-odd years and certainly something that we will keep on doing, keep looking for new opportunities to try and diversify the business going forward. If we look at the -- just maybe for the -- for those who is not following the company for the past number of years, maybe the way we look at investment, the company is set up in 4 divisions. The raise boring division has been the backbone of the business from the onset; the slim drilling division, which has been around for the past 15, 18 years subsequent to the Drillcorp acquisition, the division that Koos is currently looking at; and then obviously, the digital business that we've started a couple of years ago. But back to the raise boring business, we committed in the raise boring space to spend at least the maintenance capital, which is probably equal to our depreciation for this discussion. That being said, we will -- to stay in the game, we will need to focus on the modernization of the fleet going forward. So we committed to build and stay in the game for this discussion. And by the way, and I think Roelof will allude to you guys later on to that is the current outlook for our extra-large machines and large machines, fully committed. It's the first time ever that we see today that the actual supply can't meet the demand. It's very interesting, first time ever that we've seen that. On the slim drilling division, we'll just remind you again, the Hall Core acquisition at the end of last year, and that's really contributing to Andre's bottom line. It's not been consolidated in the numbers or figures as we speak. It's a 50% shareholding, but certainly, I think the upside here is the difference in utilization in ARPOR that the slim drilling today has given where we were with utilization some year ago. If we look at the mechanical cutting and maybe -- this division and the outlook, this is where the industry is going to. And I think very, very important that the future of the CapEx spend for the Group would probably focused and concentrated in this area. And that's subject to the MTB success, obviously, shaft boring process busy with. But I think the bulk of the capital going forward is probably going to be spent in this space. The digital space, the AVA acquisition some time ago, we've got a 40% share in that business. And obviously announced yesterday and today the increase in shareholding from 25% to 31% in the A&R business, something we're very excited about. I think the future for this business, especially the growth internationally and especially South America, I think that goes without saying, I think Roelof in his slide later on cover that in more detail. So if I take a step back and I look at the future investment, again, raise boring, something we committed to, slim drilling 3 or 4 KPIs before we would invest. One most certainly be the size of the project. I think #2 is for the duration of the project. And then returns must be less than 4 years. In the slim drilling division, as I said, in the mechanical space, what Koos is doing, that is probably going to be the -- that is going to be spent and then no need to elaborate further on the A&R acquisition. So Koos, without further ado, you can cover the rest. But whilst Koos is coming, maybe just from a high level, if I look at the business today and maybe the strategy of the business and maybe the success of what we've seen today, I think it's 2 things. One is probably the relevance of the strategy today, but probably more important is the execution the last 6 months. And probably the last 18 months, 2 years, I think that's today what we see part of the success, if not all, the success. I think the execution was always [indiscernible] in the room. And I really think the management is getting that part of the business today right. Koos, without further ado, please.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to engage with you. We would like to provide you with the following update, technology update. It's important to understand why Master Drilling is pursuing technology and what do we stand or we want to gain out of it. And most of it has got to do with creating value in the industry. And speaking to specific points, for instance, increased safety, reducing our exposure of stakeholders and personnel to potentially dangerous environments, also ESG, environmental, social and governance, being able to provide the best quality, increasing our productivity and then reducing our cost for sustainability. It's also important that these new technologies enables us to apply and adopt new applications in future. It's also to be able to have continuous operations, to have non-explosive excavations and to digitize our business to enable us in terms of remote operation and optimization. If you look at the image to the right-hand side, this image is an example of an integrated tool carrier. This equipment, for instance, is fitted with A&R Level 9 CAS system that controls collision avoidance between other equipment and personnel. So it talks to safety. It's got special brakes on it. It talks to safety. It's got flame approved for fire-suppression system on it that talks to safety as well. It have added auxiliary hydraulics that enables us to run other technologies of equipment as well. So it's in terms of application and productivity, there's benefits in terms of that as well. It's fitted with LIDAR technology that enables the operator to position the equipment easier. It's also easier for the operators to operate the equipment, which on the social side and depends on the projects that you're working on to upskill personnel where it makes it lot easier. If you look at the raise boring business, we're currently busy manufacturing the LP100. It's a highly mobile slot boring machine. We also are busy in the design of a next-generation box hole boring machinery. We've used 52 hours to a great extent. This will be the new generation for that technology. It is normally for slot holes that's about 1.5, 2 meters diameter. And it's very exciting for us to invest in this technology. We have ongoing interest in continuous improvement where we invest in remote drilling. We also -- if you consider our expertise in directional drilling, maybe if you remember, shaft is on the end that have been completed recently. There we drilled to a very tight tolerance shaft, about 1.4 kilometers deep where that shaft in future will be used for wasting operations. We also look at monitoring our down hole equipment for operational efficiency. Considering exploration drilling where we provide geological drilling, geophysics logging, geotechnical drilling. We also do mine dewater -- dewatering wells. A significant development that we have in that business and investment that we're making is in the robotic underground core drilling rig. And the main reason for that is and the key aspects to that technology is that in industry a lot of material is presented to the drill rig in close proximity, but it doesn't address the material handling of old system. So if you would do 1,000 meter hole, you would typically move a bit about between 10 and 15 tonnes of material in and out of the hole. And with a system like this, we can take it from the hole to a [indiscernible] and back out again and limit the manual material handling involved. We also complement this equipment with a solid removal system that will re-circulate water on the environmental side that reduces our water consumption. We think that is significant and important to do. This equipment will also be completely electrical. And we would also provide this equipment apart from operation, relocating it with an electrical unit for basically driving it between holes and between sites. The equipment is fully digitized. So that enables us to remote operate it as well as to have content autonomous control in certain processes. Looking at tunneling, our mobile tunnel boring equipment that's currently working for Anglo-American. It's the Mogalakwena project in South Africa where we're constructing the MTB Sandsloot Exploration decline. We're currently in progress with this work and currently tunneling on the decline part of access tunnel. We have successfully completed 2 key performance indicators of launching the machine from the high wall, as shown on the picture, as well as making our first tight horizontal curve, which is not common to tunnel boring and hard rock operations and which is quite significant. This work we're delivering a turnkey project and execution of an infrastructure to the client. So we're responsible on providing all the resources to the project as well as dealing not only with the excavation, but also with the logistics, the construction. We're doing engineering work with supply of auxiliary plant that services the ventilation, the water handling, the dewatering, the electrical circulation. It's a very important aspect for us to cater and to deliver all these aspects to the project. There is a considerable involvement on the social side. And you might find an object, maybe that's being mentioned under the technology part of a project, but it's important for us not to water down the social investment that we do even though it's a highly technological project. There is significant interest in supply development, enterprise development, employment, skills development, social spend and that's very important for us. Where we're currently with the project? We want to establish our capability and capacity for this type of specialized mining work, but we can provide a high-quality service to the industry. And it's important for us to get this project successful. And hopefully in the future that our client would consider the extension of this project. If you look at this technology and the world space, we think there's a great opportunity in applying this technology for twin declines, which you will have 2 systems working in parallel for fast and quick access to an underground ore body. It's mainly done for second egress ventilation and logistic purposes. And we would like to engage on projects where that would be a requirement. Through our experience that we've gained applying this technology in the mining industry, as we've gained significant interest in how everything works and we're applying that to a second-generation tunnel boring design. It's also important for us is how we would supply this capacity in the market in the future to be able to have a quality product and service. We also received considerable interest internationally. And for us, that's also an important point to consider rolling this technology out internationally in the future. If you look at shaft boring, the shaft boring system, we have taken the decision to implement this on a smaller scale just due to the CapEx extent of this type of technology on bigger shafts. So we're currently manufacturing and assembling shaft boring system. Our first one in Fochville in South Africa. It's a 4.3 meter diameter sinking machine. We will complement that with wind capacity of about 2,000 meters depth and that will be common and could be used in different machine configurations as well. The system allows for efficient turnkey work on deep hard rock mining shafts, which is important that you don't only just provide one aspect of it. And that's why we referred to it as a system to basically drive the quality of the service and the efficiency of the service. It's important for us to get this first project successful and then move on from there. We currently have a letter of intent from RBPlat in South Africa on the Styldrift mine for a ventilation shaft. We've completed the site investigations and we're currently working with them. And hopefully, we can convert that letter of intent to a letter of award. We have received considerable interest from clients on larger scope shafts. This technology, we can basically roll it up to 11 meters diameter and 2 kilometer deep shaft. And obviously, the bigger of a scope, the bigger of a value that will be generated by this technology. So we're very interested to engage and study work with prospective projects. On non-explosive mining, it's something that clients approached us. And due to the continuous operations as well as removing people from potentially hazardous areas that have taken a considerable interest in industry. We're engaging with our clients. We have specific solutions for them. And we follow a stage approach because many of these applications have a more radical engineering approach. So we're currently working on 3 projects. We finished 2 projects where we've basically done a Phase 1 close-out report. And then one project for African Rainbow Minerals, we're basically manufacturing parts and systems of a bigger concept. And we are preparing to test that on surface, on mark-up concrete blocks that will be casted to the equivalent of about 350 tonnes to simulate the concept and do validation on the concept on surface before we would take it to a mining environment. This equipment we're currently doing some further detailed design in parallel and also site investigation for application that it might move to in the future. On the digitization of the business, I think the other guys, Danie, Andre, Roelof will also talk more about it, but we've taken up a part ownership in A&R as well as AVA. And A&R is more like a underground mining-focused service provider. We -- they deal with tracking and the management of resources, equipment and people. Currently, there is about 250,000 resources being tracked in South Africa alone with the system. One of the main benefits is the warnings and the safety management that it applies in terms of Level 7 or a Level 9 in operations. It is also something where you could gain very valuable information in terms of behavior and operational performance that will be very important for the management of those operations. We currently also engaged with international clients for this business where we've used [indiscernible] the Master Drilling distribution network. There's a project in Mexico ongoing and further international interest. On AVA Solutions, it's a service that's more focused on load and haul tracking and monitoring and the open cast and surface applications in construction industry as well. It is a data-driven mine management solution. And there's very interesting developments in terms of tracking logistics from pit to ports that will increase the operational efficiency of the clients using those products. There's also been a rollout of this business outside of South Africa since Master Drilling obtained an interest in the company with operations in Brazil, Peru, USA, in Central Africa as well as Indonesia and Malaysia. So thank you very much for your interest. I hand over to Roelof Swanepoel on the operational update. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. Koos, thank you for that introduction. We started off 2020 with a very strong order book, and it was in the hands of our operational teams to perform. And as Danie mentioned earlier, I think the execution was spot on. And I believe the last year, the execution of our operational teams were very, very good. More importantly, we were able to execute this order book with a good safety performance. Although we can still improve it and we'll talk to you about later, this is still a strong safety performance. A big thanks to all the operational teams globally that assisted the Group in achieving these record results here today. And hopefully, we can keep this up into 2023. In our operational review today, we'll have a look at some key elements of the business. We will first start off with people; talk to you a little bit about what's happening in the people space, share with you some interesting insights in that area, and also, what initiatives we are driving to make sure that we have an organization that's ready for the future. We will also then have a look at our safety results. We'll talk about our high utilization rates and what's really sitting behind this driving this. We'll have a look at our regional review, as always, and give you some key insights in some of the regions around the world. And finally, we'll have a look at our strong order book and pipeline and what this potentially can mean for the business into the future. As we've mentioned in March, our people is core to our future strategy. This pillar of the business is fundamental for us. And we are currently investing a lot of resources to make sure that we have an organization that's fit for the future. In March, we reported to you a huge influx of people into the business. For the last few months, that stabilized. We're currently hovering around 2,200 to about 2,300 people around the world in our Group. In 2020, we've also updated our people strategy, focusing on 3 key elements. #1, future skills and what -- how does that actually assist the Group going forward. #2, our retention strategy of key employees. And #3, training and development, specifically these key skills that we require for the future. More importantly, I would like to touch on diversity. This is something which is key to the Group. As we've mentioned in the past, we have more than 25 nationalities working for us globally. If you look at the world map, we have an employee in every continent of the world, and that's really quite impressive. So you can imagine the type of individuals that we have and the knowledge that we can tap into around the world. Maybe just again on gender diversity. This is one of our internal metrics that we've developed and very important for us. And we make sure that we track those metrics internally and improve on them. As we've mentioned to you in March, we're very proud to say that 50% of our management team in Europe is represented by women. Then an important point when it comes to people is our local management teams and developing local talent. As Koos mentioned earlier, for the tunnel boring machine and specifically that Mogalakwena project. A lot of effort is going into the social side, developing skills from the doorstep communities and making sure that we can build a sustainable business from that. This is not just the South African issue. We see this trend all over the world, specifically in Africa, regions like the DRC or Mali. For the past few years, we're developing that local talent. And those local talent were actually able to take over from our experts in those regions. The same trend we're seeing in countries like Brazil, Chile and also Peru. And maybe just to finish off the people section. Again, this is really something that we're proud of. Danie and I recently visited our South American operations and a number of long service awards have been provided to a number of individuals. These long service awards is anything from like 15 years, 18 years, 19 years, 21 years. And then a few weeks back ago here in South Africa where we had our mid-year function, Danie gave long service awards of up to 30 years. And I think that just shows you the commitment of our workforce, and we're really proud to be part of an organization like this. And then the experience side, having this wealth of experience in the Group is really a benefit for us. And we need to make sure that we can retain this talent within the Group. And these older guys can definitely train the more junior individuals coming through the ranks. Moving on to safety. As we've said, we've seen improvement in our safety results. Our lost time injury frequency ratio dropping down to 1.37%. And although this is an improvement, it's something that we're not proud of. If you look at the stats, 3 countries basically contributed to that number where most of the incidents took place. We already made some changes within those regions, updated their safety plans and we're working with those local teams to make sure that we don't repeat those incidents again. We can also report that in 14 of the countries we operated globally, we were incident-free for the first 6 months of the year. Moving on to our geographical revenue diversification. This is always an important slide to stand still for a moment. If you look at the revenue for the first half of 2022, it's up 34% compared to the first half of 2021. Our revenue totaling at $96.5 million, which is a new high for us. So Andre will have a much easier time this time around with the numbers. If we talk to the specific regions, first of all, Central and North America, that region contributing about 12%. That region basically includes Canada, USA and Mexico. Briefly on Canada, the double X machines and big machines in that region is busy. Gary and his team made sure that we kept those machines busy. And we still believe being in Canada is good for us. And the miners having an alternative contractor there like Master Drilling is definitely a benefit for the industry. Coming down to Mexico, unfortunately, Mexico had a bit of a slow start to the year. And we experienced some operational issues in the first half of the year, which really impacted the margin for our Mexican business, but we will make sure that we can recover some of that margin in the second half of this year. Then on the A&R project in Mexico, we can report back that we have a client there that's satisfied and that is quite proud to promote this system within the region. And we've already been approached by a number of mining clients in that area to provide them with A&R services and products. Coming down to South America, South America contributing a healthy 31% to the Group revenue. That's about $30 million. If you look at the operating margin for the region sitting at 13%. Although this is not something really to be proud of, I definitely think we can get that margin up to 15%, 16%, maybe 18%. So no pressure guys in that region. Briefly on the region, first of all, Brazil. Brazil, a bit of a slow start to the year, but for the last few months, we've seen that utilization increasing quite good. We're also proud to announce that we will be deploying one of our XXXL machines to one of euro coppers, Karabo operations to assist them with their deepening project. Moving over to Chile. Chile had a great first 6 months. We also -- looking at the next 6 months, it looks quite promising. Unfortunately, Codelco, Chuquicamata, some part of the operations have been stopped which might impact our production, but we'll see how that basically pans out. And then our joint venture with Besalco in Chuquicamata is still performing well as we expected. Then finally, on Peru. Peru is performing quite well. A number of new contracts have been awarded to that region for the first half of the year. And we're looking forward to a strong performance coming from that team over there. Moving then to Africa. Africa, once again, the largest revenue contributor to the Group, sitting at $37.1 million and a very healthy operating margin of 23%. Briefly, some highlights on the region. First of all, Tanzania. We've been awarded a contract up in Tanzania. Machines is basically in that region. And we are actually investigating some other opportunities around that area. In Zim, our machines are performing well there, one of our strategic clients. And then more importantly, back here in South Africa, as Koos mentioned, Mogalakwena, it's very important client for him on the tunnel boring side. But if you look at that client, there's a number of services that we provide there. First of all, on Koos' tunnel boring machine. Secondly, on the slim drilling side, between MDX and Hall Core, a lot of slim drilling services being provided. And then for the equipment that is going underground for this exploration decline, we've installed a number of A&R smart devices and proximity detection systems. So if you look at the service offering of Master Drilling, Mogalakwena is quite an important client for us and hopefully in the future as well. Then maybe just on the other regions and some important points to highlight. First of all, in Scandinavia, Scandinavia had a bit of a slow start to the year, but picking nicely up the last 2 months. We can report that we've mobilized 2 XXL machines to the TELT project in France. This will be a flagship project for us. This is a huge infrastructure project connecting the railroads between France and Italy. And a very important projects for the contractors in that region. And briefly on Spain, we've at the beginning of the year completed a record-breaking shotcreting project at one of the clients over there, shotcreting a shaft all the way down to 564 meters. Well done to Carlos and the team over there. Then on India, India performed well as always, but under very, very challenging circumstances. Lastly, Australia. We're keeping those machines busy. But for future growth, we see a lot of opportunity in that Oceanic region and potentially using Australia as a springboard into that region. Moving on to our revenue diversification in terms of commodities. We see polymetallics, silver, lead and zinc leading the pack there. This is really strong contributions coming from Peru, Mexico and specifically India. Gold will always be part of the mix there, always around 25%, 26%, 27%. Copper, a lot of revenue on copper coming from our Chilean operations and a number of Africa projects contributing towards that. On the PGMs, only sitting at 11% now, but we expect that to increase as Koos is ramping up the production on the Mogalakwena project. Then a very, very important slide to look at, and this is always interesting to look at these numbers and what does this mean. So in terms of our overall utilization for our raise boring fleet, this increased from 70% in 2021 to 73% for the first half of this year. It's very close to that target of 75% that we've always communicated. But the drive off of this utilization is really coming from a strong order book, a strong pipeline that we have and a number of clients that keeps on extending our contracts that we have. On the larger end of the fleet, our large raise bore machines. As Danie mentioned earlier, most of these big machines is already fully booked out. And you can see that being reflected in this utilization rate, sitting at 86%, a record high with a very strong ARPOR of $141,000. This begs the question and it's very tempting then to invest in these raise bore rigs going forward, but it's something we need to be very, very cautious about. The lower end of the fleet, our smaller raise bore machines, utilization up to 55% and ARPOR jumping back to the levels that we expected to be. Finally, then on the slim drilling site. For the first 6 months of this year, we've concluded now our joint venture partner, Hall Core, machines in this reporting. There you can see a nice increase in the utilization to 74%, which is very close to that 75% utilization that we're targeting. And a nice increase of almost 50% in our ARPOR up to $46,000 for those machines. Then moving on to our order book. So on the left hand of this slide you will see the 2021 order book movements that we reported to you in March. And then on the right-hand side, you will see the order book movements for the first half of this year. First of all, our order book is currently sitting at a record high of $242 million. If you look at the numbers and the movements for the first 6 months, first of all, new orders coming in of $120 million for only 6 months. That sounds quite promising. And this is mainly driven by our operations in Central and South America and some capital projects in Africa contributing to that. And the revenue that we've executed, and finally, some small exchange rate differences getting to that record high order book of $242 million. If you look at our order book by commodity, and this is always a slide that we talk to you about how well our order book is diversified. But this is just one of the dimensions to look at. The other dimensions like region, currency and miner is also important dimensions to look at. And if you combine that, I really believe we have a very well diversified order book. Back to the slide on commodities, there you can see copper leading the pack at 25%. This is basically a number of additional work that we received from Codelco in Chile. And again, some capital projects in Africa popping up. On the PGM side, that is driven here in Africa by the platinum mines, big contribution from Mogalakwena and Koos' tunnel bore on that. And then maybe important to point out, if you look at civils and infrastructure sitting at 6% now, it is something that we're working on to increase, but the majority of that is really a reflection of the TELT project that we will do up in France starting in the next few weeks. Then finally, our pipeline. Our pipeline is sitting very strong at $541 million. If you look at the remainder of 2022, we still have $104 million of work to do. So it's quite busy this last couple of months to make sure that we can deliver on that. And then if you look at next year, I think we're in a very, very good position, already $107 million of work committed with another $100 million potentially in the pipeline that we still need to convert. Maybe just the last comment from my side on this pipeline. As Danie mentioned earlier, there's a lot of volatility in the market, some uncertainty popping up. But what we're seeing in our clients is they're going ahead with a number of projects, a lot of expansion projects that we're seeing. Although for the short to medium term, we're quite optimistic about this pipeline, but we still need to be cautious with our capital spend into the future. And then overall, on the operational review, I think all around excellent performance. And I still think there's room for improvement, especially on the efficiency side to see what we can do to get that margin up in the specific countries. Thank you very much. Andre, over to you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you for everybody listening. Thank you for making my job easier today reporting on some record numbers. When we last reported, joked and said it's nice to report after a COVID period where we had record increases. Now it's even better standing here today after normalized year to have such good numbers. So let's just quickly go through the highlights for the period. I think we discussed it already now, a 34% increase in revenue driven by higher utilization, higher ARPORs. And I think it's the fruit of the investment in our capital the last 5, 6 years that we're seeing the benefit of now. Our HEPS increased by 47% in dollar terms, 56% in rand terms. That's driven by the higher revenue numbers and the cost being rather stable for this period. It's a nice, nice increase in our HEPS numbers. Our cash generated up to $13.4 million, very proud of that number. At the end of the day, that's quite important for us to keep on generating cash in the business. And then on the gearing, down to 5.8%. Over the last several years, it's come down quite significantly and very proud of that number where we are today. On the working capital cycle, we've got a slide later that we will talk a bit more about that, but getting closer to the 100 days mark that we guided to in the past. If we look at the headline earnings per share in dollars and rands, nicely up. And you can see the benefit here of being in different commodities with weaker emerging currencies over this period giving us a bigger increase in the rand HEPS compared to the dollar HEPS. If you just look at the EBITDA ratios, very happy with a nearly 24% EBITDA margin. We guided to about 25%. So getting closer to that number, but very nicely up. If you compare to pre-COVID, we were about 20% EBITDA margin and nicely going up. On the revenue, the $96 million, I think Danie alluded to that. If we had constant currency for the year, that number would have been over $100 million. So for us, for first half of the year, it's the biggest number by far we delivered. So very proud of that. If we look at the profit after-tax, currently at 14% ratio margin at profit after-tax, nicely up from previous years. And that's again driven by the higher revenue, cost being rather constant, giving us that nice profit after-tax number. If we go to the detail in the balance sheet, we see here the benefit -- not a lot of capital spend this first half of the year, mainly on maintenance capital. We guided to that in the past as well, saying that we will only spend capital on maintenance for this period and on the new technology stuff of Koos. So we're very strict in our capital spend at the moment. So sticking with that. On the working capital, like we mentioned before, getting closer to the 100-day target, which is for us important target to get to. A lot of hard work from all the countries to try and get that number down, but we still got a couple of sticky debtors paying us a bit slow. If we look at the gearing, down to 6% and a very low interest-bearing debt over EBITDA number of 0.24 ratio. Maybe just to mention here, it's -- our debt on our banking facilities has been shown under current liabilities, given the fact that we haven't signed our new facility agreement with the banks at half year end, but today, facilities have been signed. We've got an increased debt facility that we can utilize for future growth if we need to. If we look at the income statement on the revenue, again driven by high utilization, ARPORs, especially on the large machines much, much better. We've got a couple of very nice projects that's contributing to higher revenue numbers. And I think on -- if we look at the gross profit margin of 30%, that is, if you think about the inflationary pressures that there are at the moment, I think the benefit that we had during the COVID period to reduce our costs and cost saving initiatives is bearing fruit now to get to such a nice gross profit margin. On the operating expenses, pretty much in line ratio-wise with previous years. And if we see the share of profit from equity investments, we now see a positive contribution from these joint ventures that we have, giving us a nice $13.5 million profit after-tax. If we look at this, always an interesting slide for us as a business, showing the impact of currencies. We did it a bit different this year. We didn't only show U.S. dollars, but referred to hard currencies, which include U.S. dollars, the euro, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar. So 53% of our revenue in those hard currencies with only 47% in emerging currencies. And then some of those emerging currencies, we also link that to the dollar in our contracts. So in a way, a bit more, but you can see that the costs are less in hard currencies. So if there's weakening in emerging currencies, you get that benefit in your margins. So for this period, it was about $0.5 million impact before taxation. If we look at the cash flow, cash conversion ratio stable at 1, which is a good number to convert your cash. So very proud of that number. On the capital spend for the year, limited so far. Guidance for rest of the year is also spending it on maintenance capital. And should there be projects that require and make the desired returns, we will spend some capital on growth projects. And then the outflow from financing activities, there we had the dividend distribution that we paid earlier this year. And we're also paying down the banking facilities, which left us with a very positive $18 million end of the year, which is very good for the future for the growth opportunities. If we look at the revenue waterfall, interesting year to view there. Like I mentioned, the ForEx had a $5 million negative effect on our revenue for the year. Obviously, on the cost side, also the benefit of the weaker currency, but that would have taken us over the $100 million. We had 2 machines that we added to the fleet, giving us another $1.5 million. The MTB giving us additional $7 million. And then the big number change was the fleet mix and the utilization that had a positive effect of $20 million compared to the same period last year. The working capital breakdown; inventory stayed quite stable, which is very nice given the higher revenue number that we now have in keeping the inventory in place. We mentioned before that we did a lot of strategic purchases for the Group, given the logistics -- uncertainty of logistics, which we get then at the same level for this period. The trade and other receivables, up to $56 million. But what is good about that, if you look at normal terms and one month overdue, it's 91% of our full debtor book, which is about 2% better than it was last year same time. So a bit of improvement in that and not a lot of risk in our receivables, but still a lot of work with some of our clients and trade payables being rather stable. If we look at our balance sheet ratios, a couple of highlights here, 22% for 2022. So nice numbers for us. We've always guided to about 17% targets or 5% higher than what your target is there. And that went all the way through to return on capital on the EBIT level of 16.5% as well. Our working capital days at 104 days. And if you look at 2020 where we were at 153 days, actually a very nice recovery on working capital, but still a lot of work for us to do to try and improve that. Gearing ratio, like I mentioned before, quite low at below 6%. If we look at the cash flow waterfall, just beginning with $21 million, ending with $18 million, nice inflow from operating activities and then just spend on the capital and debt repayments and the dividends of course to all our loyal shareholders. If we look at the last -- on the capital spend, we spent $9.2 million on the first half of the year, of which 62% of that has been classified as maintenance capital. So keeping the machines in place, continuous improvement to equipment and then 40% of our capital spend has been on expansion for the future. So that's all from me from the financial side. I'll hand over to Danie just giving us an overview and to close.

Thank you, Andre. So I pity about the rugby and the [indiscernible] otherwise, this would have been a perfect storm, right? So maybe a step back and not to be layer what you see on the screen, I think we've covered most of what was displayed, and maybe 2 steps back. So if we look at the world today, I think key for us is probably to separate the noise out there from the real trends in the world. And those trends in our space, certainly the battery minerals in Koos' life and the raise boring that it comes to play. So I think it's key for the business to focus on where the world is going to. I think that's probably #1. I think #2 is probably the discipline around capital spend. I think Andre discussed that. I've mentioned that earlier on. I think that's going to be key for the business. And that being said, in the same sentence, probably is the gearing. And again, we're going to be much more conservative going forward in the gearing space. So that's just on the gearing side. Skills, I need to be honest, I need to share with you, I think Roelof alluded to that. Skills in the business, especially with some of the millennials coming through into the business, is going to be much of an issue going forward. Key for us to have these retention plans in place and to ensure that we have proper training systems to bring people into the business. And then lastly is just what I mentioned earlier on is we need to focus on to diversify the business, and that's been the success story of the Group to date. And that is going to be probably key for the success also going forward in the business. Thanks for your time. And I think we will now go to the Q&A, Andre, if not mistaken.

So the first questions comes from Keith at Integral Asset Management and they are for Danie. I'm going to divide the question into 2. In terms of your comment at the beginning around raise boring demand outstripping supply, can you elaborate more?

Return of the exploration spend was like ZAR18 billion. We saw that dropping down to about ZAR6 billion later on. And then all of a sudden, an uptick again in 2019, '20 when we had the COVID period. So we're not sure what we see today. Is that on the back of what happened in the 2008, '09, '10, '12 period, we're just not sure. But what we do know is, one, the -- and I think that's common knowledge. The miners currently are sitting on a pile of cash. I think there's a number of projects on the rack that it's probably going to come to play in the short, medium term. So more specifically to your question, if we look at the raise bore demand today, I think miners are getting deeper. I think greater is becoming more of an issue. All the easy mining has been done. So in theory, I like to think that raise boring should pick up in demand. That being said, remember, with EVs coming in, the top of the term is in the next 5, 10 years, that could impact as much as 30% on the raise boring requirement for ventilation going forward. This is something that we probably need to keep in mind for the medium term. And back to the question on how long would it take to build a raise bore machine, what is our game plan, I think one step back. So if we had to lay out ZAR150 million, ZAR200 million with one of those XXX machines, we probably will have a discussion with a miner or the client to probably co-fund those machines. We probably wouldn't just go and build those machines today. It must be a discussion of a client with a client who's requiring the machine.

So the last part of the question then, surely you are enjoying positive pricing on your fleet.

That's probably a question for Andre. I really believe there's an opportunity to increase the prices a bit, but we will not get the super rates. We're not in the commodity business when the gold price go to 2,000, there's a direct impact on our bottom line. We're not in that business. So I think return on capital, I think there's probably a discussion to have about that, but we're not in the commodity business where you had the direct impact on your financials, for this discussion, Keith.