Perenti Limited (PRN.XA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Perenti Limited FY '25 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to the company. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the Perenti financial year 2025 results call. My name is Mark Norwell, and I'm the Managing Director and CEO of Perenti. Presenting alongside me today is Michael Ellis, our Chief Financial Officer. Please note the disclaimer on Slide 2. Slide 3. Before we get into the numbers, I'd like to begin with an overview of our business and what we do. At Perenti, our purpose is to create enduring value and certainty for our stakeholders. We empower our people, care for our communities and collaborate with our clients to deliver smarter solutions for a better future. We believe that over time, this will sustainably deliver value for our shareholders. In FY '25, we simplified our structure to 3 operating divisions: Contract Mining, Drilling Services and Mining and Technology Services. Each division has multiple brands delivering specialty services to clients in their respective market. Within Contract Mining, Barminco and AUMS are respected leaders in underground hard rock mining with more than 30 years of experience and one of the largest underground mining contractors globally. AMS is a leading surface miner in Africa since commencing in the early 1990s. And Orelogy founded in 2005, is an engineering and technical mining consultancy supporting our business internally and externally. Our Drilling Services division is one of the largest drilling businesses globally and includes Ausdrill, DDH1 Drilling, Ranger, Strike and Swick collectively with capability across exploration, development and production. Mining and Technology Services contains a portfolio of businesses that directly support mining operations. BTP is the largest business in this division and supplies mining companies with rental equipment and fleet rebuilds, components and parts. Supply Direct and Logistics Direct provide supply chain services throughout Africa, and idoba is our technology product-focused business. Collectively, we are a leading provider of services to the mining industry with operations in 12 countries and a workforce of more than 10,000 people. Our exposure remains predominantly to gold and underground operations, which positions us well in the current market, but also for the future as a requirement for drilling and underground mining is set to increase. On to Slide 4. FY '25 has been a year of strong delivery, record revenue of $3.5 billion, up 4% on FY '24, generating $668 million of EBITDA, also up 4%, driven by strong operational performance and demonstrating the scale of the Perenti Group. Record EBITA of $333 million, up 6% from FY '24 with improved margin to 9.6% as we continue to target year-on-year margin improvement. NPATA grew to $178 million, up 8% on FY '24, also with an improved margin. EPS increased slightly on FY '24 despite the average weighted number of shares on issue increasing following the DDH1 transaction that occurred partway through FY '24. Free cash flow was a record $286 million, driven by excellent operating performance and the successful sale of equipment and inventory in Botswana for circa $92 million, where it was generating returns below expectations. Excluding sales in Botswana, normalized free cash flow was $195 million, still a record result. Leverage reduced to below 0.5x, a historic low for Perenti, demonstrating the strength of our balance sheet, providing resilience and optionality as we continue to focus on value-accretive actions for our shareholders. As a result of the positive performance in FY '25 and the prior years, the Board has declared a final dividend of $0.0425 per share, taking total FY '25 dividends to $0.0725. This total dividend represents a 21% increase from FY '24 and a 38% payout ratio. This is consistent with our dividend policy, targeting a payout range of 30% to 40% of underlying NPATA. In addition, another $25 million of shares were bought back on market and canceled. Slide 5 demonstrates a fourth consecutive year of growth in either meeting or exceeding our guidance. The scale of the Perenti Group and the advantage of our diversified and growing portfolio is evidenced by the year-on-year improvements to our financial performance. This strong performance has supported business growth and cash generation with net leverage now just below 0.5x. The balance sheet is in a strong position as a result of the reduction of our gross debt and the consistent delivery of cash flow sets a solid foundation to invest in growth projects in FY '26 that will deliver upside in FY '27 and beyond. Slide 6. As always, our people are the foundation of our business and fundamental to our success. Our goal is for nil adverse physical and psychological life-changing events, and we continue to make progress with multiple initiatives in FY '25 to support this goal. These included training and development programs with frontline leaders to incorporate safety expectations and build a safe and respectful workplace environment, provision of critical risks and supporting standards and verification tools. Alongside this revision, the number of critical control verifications increased by 90%. To give some context, over 56,000 critical control verifications were conducted in FY '25. We continue to monitor our efforts with employee surveys to assess our performance and seek opportunities for further improvement. And we continue to assess engineering and technology solutions to manage critical risks. With our objective of creating safe and respectful workplaces and physically safe work environments, we are focused and committed to implementing further improvements in FY '26 to keep our people safe. Slide 7. As outlined earlier, group performance in FY '25 set new records across all key metrics. The strong second half of FY '25 for both earnings and free cash flow was consistent with our forecast. It should be noted that we expect this second half weighting to occur again in FY '26. The record results in FY '25 occurred despite the challenges highlighted in our half year results, namely the financial underperformance of our underground contract in Botswana, lower utilization for BTP and below average levels of exploration activity for drilling services. During the second half, our people have made positive progress in addressing the underperformance, including successfully exiting our underground contract in Botswana and improvements in BTP. Looking forward, we have set aside growth capital in our forecast for additional project wins in FY '26 to support further growth into FY '27 and beyond. On to Slide 8. Contract Mining remains our largest division, contributing 72% of group revenue and 75% of EBITA. This performance of consistent earnings is despite the full impact of several nickel projects concluding in FY '24 being fully realized in FY '25 and the underperformance in Botswana, demonstrating the resilience and performance of this division. In addition, we've also been expanding in new regions, namely North America, as several projects have concluded in West Africa. Expansion in new regions has occurred while simultaneously growing revenue and earnings, reinforcing the value of scale in our Contract Mining division and the advantage of our portfolio approach. During FY '25, over $4 billion of work was won or extended, including extending Mana and Obuasi in Africa, Agnew in Australia and new awards, Great Fingall and Bonnie Vale in Australia and Goldrush in the U.S.A. The first contract for Barminco in the U.S.A. is another example of executing our strategy to grow in North America. Contract Mining has an extremely healthy pipeline of opportunities with a focus on conversion during FY '26. Slide 9. Drilling Services delivered excellent performance in a challenging market. Revenue grew 30% to $778 million and EBITA rose 66% to $84 million. This growth was partially from a full year contribution from the 4 former DDH1 Limited businesses compared to 9 months in FY '24, but the combined division is operating very well and ranks among the top 3 drilling companies globally. The successful management of costs is seen in the improved EBITA margin lifting to 10.8% in FY '25. Utilization in production drilling remains strong, particularly in gold and copper projects. Many other hard rock commodities continue to see below average levels of exploration drilling, although pleasingly, during the last quarter of FY '25, DDH1 Drilling and Strike both saw increase in utilization that bodes well for activity levels in early FY '26. Slide 10, Mining and Technology Services. This division saw the beginning of a turnaround in the second half after a challenged first half. Year-on-year revenue declined 5% to $193 million and EBITA decreased to $12 million. BTP continues to be impacted by idle fleet, although during the second half, utilization began to recover. Supply Direct and Logistics Direct both performed well and in line with expectations. idoba launched its underground mine simulation product and development costs were reduced year-on-year. As the smallest division, representing only 6% of group revenue, the impact on group performance is small. However, there is significant opportunity for the Mining and Technology Services division to contribute in a meaningful manner to the group with a positive turnaround in FY '26. In summary, FY '25 has been a great year for Perenti. I will now hand over to Mike, who will present some more detailed financial results.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning to those on the call. Great to be here on my first full year results call as CFO of Perenti. On to Slide 11, the underlying profit and loss for FY '25. Perenti achieved another record financial result for the year. Mark has already touched on the divisional performance that contributed to the FY '25 results with the increases in revenue, EBITDA and EBITA underpinned by the scale and consistency of our Contract Mining division, complemented by improved performance across Drilling Services to deliver group EBITA of $333 million, up 6% year-on-year, with EBITA margins expanding to 9.6% with continued focus on cost management and operational efficiencies. Net underlying interest expense was $70 million for the year, slightly up by 1% on the prior year, reflecting additional interest on the 2029 unsecured notes that were issued in April '24. The focused gross debt reduction in FY '25 will drive down the interest expense in FY '26. The underlying tax expense of $85 million was up 7%, which primarily reflects the increased earnings in FY '25. Our underlying effective tax rate of 32% is in line with last year, and we can expect to maintain those levels in FY '26. The DDH1 transaction and increased Australian earnings has allowed faster utilization of the Australian taxation losses with the Perenti Group having approximately $450 million of gross Australian tax losses available. This will provide continued shelter on Australian cash tax for several years to come. With the increased earnings, our underlying NPATA of $178 million is up 8% on last year with an increased NPATA margin to 5.1%. Importantly, we have grown our NPATA at a greater rate than our revenue growth with underlying earnings per share increasing to $0.191. Our reported NPAT is $138 million, up 29% year-on-year, which delivered a 19% increase to statutory EPS in the year, which is a nice segue on to the following Slide 12, the reconciliation between statutory to underlying earnings. Similar to prior years, the key driver for the difference between statutory and underlying is the noncash amortization of the customer-related intangibles. This predominantly relates to the Barminco acquisition in 2018, resulting in $45.3 million of amortization in the year, slightly down on the last year. It's important to note, this noncash amortization will continue to reduce into FY '26 to circa $30 million and then to $15 million in FY '27, further benefiting our statutory NPAT. We then had FX gains of $12.4 million in FY '25 that we removed from the underlying results, primarily relating to unrealized FX movements on loans and tax balances. Divisional restructuring costs and bond redemption costs amounted to $5.1 million, with these costs not expecting to reoccur in FY '26. As highlighted at the half, the strategic review and narrow focus of idoba has resulted in the product development costs decreasing to $10.9 million in FY '25, down 27% on last year. As we transition to commercialize our digital products, we will continue to see a contraction in idoba development costs to less than $10 million in FY '26. On to Slide 13, our cash flow. As Mark has already commented on, the business delivered a record free cash flow of $286.1 million in FY '25. As highlighted on the bottom of this slide, after removing the one-off impacts of the $91.6 million of sale proceeds for the PPE and inventory, the adjusted free cash flow amounts to $194.6 million for the year. This is still a record and represents a 5% increase compared to last year. The team's continued focus on working capital management delivered cash conversion of 99% in the year with $658.9 million of operating cash flow before interest and tax. Perenti has delivered above 95% cash conversion for the last 5 years. Interest paid was up $4.7 million due to the timing of coupon payments with the 2029 notes being issued in April '24. Cash interest will reduce in FY '26 in line with the reduction in gross debt. Cash tax of $83.1 million increased predominantly as a result of increased profits and the timing of tax payments in Africa, representing cash tax of 31.5% below the effective tax rate. Net capital expenditure of $224 million included the $75 million for the Botswana and PPE sale proceeds. So on a normalized basis, this amounted to $299 million of net CapEx in FY '25 versus our capital guidance of circa $330 million. On to Slide 14, which shows how the balance sheet continues to go from strength to strength, with net leverage reducing further to 0.5x at 30 June '25, below our guided range. A few points on this slide to raise. As we received the sales proceeds for the Botswana fleet and inventory at the end of June '25, cash levels were elevated to $481 million at year-end. The continued discipline on capital management has resulted in gross debt reducing by 15.3% to $786 million with gearing down to 14%. After year-end, the remaining 2025 U.S. senior notes totaling AUD 156 million, which were classified as current on the balance sheet at the reporting date were redeemed. This further reduces gross debt, resulting in lower interest for FY '26. The balance sheet remains very strong and robust, offering flexibility and positioning us exceptionally well for the future. On to Slide 15, which highlights the EBITDA and the free cash flow profile for the past 5 years, outlining the increased scale and growth at the EBITDA line and continued reliability and free cash flow delivery. It is worth noting on this slide that the negative cash flow in FY '22 was the result of increased CapEx investment due to several large project wins, which has assisted in the strong positive cash generation in the subsequent years. Over the last 3 years, our annual average free cash flow has been $165 million, representing a very healthy yield. This consistent cash generation supports long-term value creation for shareholders and we'll continue to be disciplined in the allocation of this capital. On to Slide 16, which illustrates the capital allocation framework. Our dividend policy remains at a 30% to 40% payout ratio based on underlying NPATA. In FY '25, dividends of $0.0725 per share reflected an increase of 21% year-on-year and amounted to a payout ratio of 38%. We have a significant pipeline of business growth opportunities. We were not chasing growth for the sake of growth. Projects must make minimum hurdles to justify investment. The same investment hurdles must be cleared for any inorganic opportunities that are assessed. For over 3 years now, we've been returning value to shareholders through our share buyback programs, 75 million shares repurchased since FY '22. Finally, debt reduction has lowered net leverage from 1.3x in FY '22 to 0.5x in FY '25 to drive down interest costs, lift profit margins, increasing earnings per share and ultimately building resilience and capacity for future growth. This disciplined balanced approach will continue to drive value for our shareholders. Thank you all. I will now hand back to Mark.

Thank you, Mike. Slide 17. Work in hand has increased to $6.5 billion. This significant increase is due to the award of more than $4 billion of contracts during FY '25, with the pipeline remaining very healthy at $17.4 billion with opportunities continuing to emerge in gold and copper. Regionally, the pipeline of projects in Australia, Africa and North America each remain above $5 billion, indicating that significant organic opportunity for growth remains in each of our key operating regions. The addressable market is actually far larger than $17.4 billion. However, we have applied our strict filter process to identify opportunities that will survive commodity price cycles are owned by a client who is financially sound with aligned principles and the asset has a long mine life. This decision matrix, along with our underground mining expertise, has led us to work with some of the world's leading mining companies who value safe operations and reliable performance. On to Slide 18. In 2022, we released our updated 2025 strategy to the market and I'm incredibly proud of the positive progress our people have made against our strategy, resulting in our business performance and balance sheet improving significantly. While this strategy has proven to be successful, our 2025 group strategy naturally concludes this year. So we've taken the opportunity to introduce a refreshed approach. While our full refreshed strategy will be explained in detail during FY '26, I'd like to highlight some of the key aspects that are important to us as we look forward. Firstly, rather than implementing wholesale changes, we've evolved our proven framework to ensure continued sustainable performance. Our core objective remains unchanged but refined. We are focused on building and managing a portfolio of businesses that delivers exceptional value to clients while safely generating strong, predictable cash flow. Achieving this through economic cycles will create superior shareholder returns and support long-term growth. As outlined on the left-hand side of this slide, we value the safety and engagement of our people, building enduring client relationships and delivering ongoing improvement in sustainability with each of these areas connected with everything we do. We've strengthened our competitive advantages around 5 key pillars: people and culture, safety and sustainability, operating excellence, capital allocation and portfolio management. And our financial targets represent disciplined yet aspirational growth expectations designed to drive sustainable performance through economic cycles. I won't unpack these for you in this presentation, but we believe this combination of targets strike a sustainable balance between the generation of free cash flow and investment in future growth to deliver sustainable and superior returns. Slide 19. This slide outlines our strategic framework that supports the execution of our strategy as it connects to our operating model, drives business performance and leads to value creation. The Perenti Group strategy provides the overarching structure and shared purpose and principles across the business, while our operating model, the Perenti Way, ensures each business maintains their distinctive service capabilities and competitive advantage. Some functions are centralized to ensure governance, but the majority of functional resources in support of operations reside within the divisions. The divisions are responsible for business performance with reporting and decision-making underpinned by the Perenti Performance System that was introduced at the end of FY '23. This diversified portfolio approach has delivered consistency in earnings growth and improved shareholder returns, confirming that our work has positioned us with all the right value creation elements to continue delivering results. The successful integration of DDH1 was conducted as per our operating model, which was a critical factor in realizing the value associated with the transaction. As mentioned, during FY '26, we will share further detail of our strategy and outline how our strategic framework has been designed to deliver enduring value. Slide 20. Our focus in FY '26 is to further build upon the great performance we have delivered over the last 3 years and deliver another year of strong free cash flow. Free cash flow generation in FY '26 will enable us to allocate capital to winning work in support of earnings growth into FY '27 and beyond, continue paying dividends and if appropriate, buy back our shares and further reduce our gross debt to deliver meaningful interest cost reductions to further support earnings growth and cash generation, in turn, creating an even stronger balance sheet. For FY '26, we are guiding revenue between $3.45 billion and $3.65 billion, EBITA between $335 million and $355 million, which at the midpoint represents further margin improvement. CapEx to be approximately $340 million, an increase on FY '25 to support growth, resulting in free cash flow greater than $160 million. Our results will again be skewed to the second half of FY '26, which is consistent with prior years. To deliver our guidance, we will continue to prioritize safe delivery of our services, targeting no life-changing events, further invest in the development and training of our people, win and extend projects that deliver sustainable growth while maintaining our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Finally, as Mike mentioned earlier, by paying down the remaining USD 103 million of our 2025 notes, it will deliver a reduction in our interest expense, which will support cash generation and EPS growth in FY '26 and beyond. Slide 21. On behalf of the Board and Group Executive, I'd like to thank everyone at Perenti for their commitment and contribution throughout the year. Another year of positive results is an acknowledgment of the hard work and commitment of our people. Thank you also to our clients who provide our businesses with the opportunity to support you in pursuit of your objectives. And finally, thank you to our shareholders for supporting Perenti during FY '25, and we look forward to rewarding you with another successful year in FY '26. I'll now hand back to the moderator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from William Park with Citi.

Can I just ask about your FY '26 guidance and whether if you can sort of unpack this a little bit more. The way you're thinking about sort of lower end of the guidance range, is that just -- can you get there just with your current work in hand? And if that is the case, what are some of the meaningful opportunities that you see in the next 6 to 12 months that are worthwhile calling out that could see Perenti effectively delivering top end of the guidance or even beyond that?

Yes. Thanks, Will. So firstly, in terms of FY '26 guidance, and if I start with Contract Mining, we've got circa 95% of revenue committed into FY '26 already. So that gives us very good confidence into the guidance for FY '26. Building on from Contract Mining with Drilling Services, we're seeing a recent, albeit moderate uptick in drilling into June within July. So we're seeing a bit of that continue into FY '26 as well and a slight recovery or further recovery from Mining and Technology Services. In terms of near-term opportunities, there's the Dalgaranga project in Western Australia that Barminco tendering on and had worked on the development decline there with Spartan. So that's something in the near term that we see some potential opportunity in. So that would be encouraging. Red Chris, which is the job in British Columbia for Newmont that Barminco have been at for a number of years, currently tendering that for potential expansion there by Newmont. That will be towards the back end of '26, more into '27. That'll be 2 of the sort of near-term sort of opportunities. But as I said, we've got circa 95% secured already, which is encouraging. I would also say, and I sort of briefly mentioned on the call with the CapEx guidance, we've got circa $50 million of that sort of allocated to growth capital, which would see potentially some uptick in '26, but ideally into 2027. So that's how we're looking at guidance there, Will.

And just in terms of your free cash, I mean, the last 2 years, you've seen a pretty subdued free cash generation in the first half and I guess, a boost in free cash in the second half. Just wondering how we should be thinking about, I guess, the first half, second half split for free cash in FY '26?

Thanks, Will. As highlighted in the FY '26 guidance, we are expecting a skew into FY '26 in relation to free cash flow and also at the EBITA line. And it will be similar is our expectation in relation to FY '25 from a free cash flow perspective, noting that for the last sort of 5 years, we have sort of hit sort of greater than 95% cash conversion across the Perenti Group.

And in order for that to be a bit more balanced than the skew that you've seen in FY '25 and '24 and potentially in '26, do you need Drilling Services to -- especially on the exploration drilling side to come back? And if that is the case, I know I appreciate your comment around, I guess, some of the encouraging signs that you're seeing at the moment, but just in terms of where drilling services would need to get to for the free cash sort of second half being more second half skewed to be a bit more balanced versus prior year?

We've allowed for a modest uptick in the second half, Will, but we've been pretty pragmatic and modest there about our expectations. As Mark mentioned, drilling improved in Q4 of FY '25. We're seeing utilization into the 70% in July, and we are expecting a slight increase to that in the second half, but not too pronounced.

And I think to the point about the skew, we are anticipating, as Mike said, just to be pretty consistent to '25 and '24 into '26. So pretty similar ratios.

And just one last one from me. And forgive me if you've already covered this on the call, but idoba costs going forward and presumably that $335 million to $355 guidance excludes the idoba costs. Can you just confirm that for me?

That's correct, Will. Similar to the last few years, it's the same treatment in FY '26 in the guidance. And -- but the costs -- the cost, as I noted on the call, will be less than $10 million in FY '26.

Your next question comes from Mitch Sonogan with Macquarie.

Can you hear me?

Yes, Rich.

Just following on from Will there. I guess just on the guidance, the margin overall at the group level for a slight uptick in FY '26 year-on-year. Do you mind providing any sort of color about how we should think about that just across the 2 major segments in Contract Mining and Drilling Services, obviously, with Drilling Services having a pretty big step-up year-on-year. Just keen to understand how you're thinking about profitability in each segment.

Yes, sure, Mitch. So yes, as you sort of comment there, we had in FY '25, our EBIT percentage margin of 9.6% into '26, if you take the midpoint of the revenue guidance and EBIT up to 9.7%. So sort of still working towards that 10% EBIT target. In terms of the split, really sort of pretty similar or thereabouts for Contract Mining in terms of year-on-year. For drilling -- from the drilling perspective, as Mike mentioned or I mentioned earlier, we're looking for, I guess, ongoing sort of slight improvement into '26 for drilling, and we've seen some positives so far, albeit very early into the year. And with those positive improvements, then we anticipate that to pull through to percentage margin improvement as well. The team have done a fantastic job across the division from cost management, which really demonstrates the benefit of scale that we have in the division that we sort of built over the last couple of years with the combination of DDH and Ausdrill. And with that really focused cost management by the team, we see that supporting margin improvement into '26 as the drilling volumes start to increase. So that's how we're looking at that, Mitch.

Great. And I know it's pretty early days. Do you mind just providing just a bit more of an update about how you're seeing things over in North America for the Goldrush project. And I guess just any broader thoughts about how it's being received over there and potential future opportunities in that region?

Yes. So in terms of Goldrush, which is the first U.S.A. project for Barminco, noting that Swick first started in the U.S. back in 2009, including a fair bit of experience at Nevada Gold, which has been invaluable for the Barminco team. The team have started off pretty well there. I visited in March of this year and they continue to drive improvements on a month-by-month basis. It's quite a small project at this stage with one jumbo in terms of the decline development. But from a productivity perspective, we're seeing some pretty positive signs. And when we compare that against some benchmarking in the region, we're seeing the development meters on a monthly basis greater than some of the other benchmarks that are in that region. And that has always been the objective of the team to sort of take what the Barminco team have perfected in Australia, export that internationally and then demonstrate the productivity upside. So with that continuing, we'd like to think we can expand the sort of scale of the work by Barminco with Nevada Gold and/or in the region more broadly. So early days, as you say, Mitch, but so far, so good for the team in Nevada.

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

Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join the call. It's been another positive year across all key metrics for Perenti and it really is due to the ongoing effort of our people, which really, really appreciative of. And that positive performance in FY '25 really is set to continue into FY '26 with further upside ahead. So once again, thanks for joining the call. Enjoy the rest of your day and have a great week. Thank you.

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