Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome today. My name is Allen Chan from Bridge Street Capital Partners, and with me as well is Chris Baker. Today we have Mitchell Services reporting their full year FY 2026 result. With us presenting will be Nathan Mitchell, who is Executive Chair, and Greg Switala, the CFO. Please note it will be recorded and we will answer questions after the presentation. Nathan, over to you. Thank you. Thanks, Allen. Appreciate that. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. As Allen said, I am Nathan Mitchell, Executive Chair, and Greg Switala is CFO. We are here to take you through our results for the financial year just ended. Just a quick housekeeping note before we start. Our CEO, Andrew Elf, sends his apologies. He is in an important client meeting that came up short notice, so he is unable to attend today. You have Greg and I. We will take you through the full presentation and we will answer any of your questions at the end. Certainly, Andrew is available for follow-up calls later in the week or next week. I can say for the start, it has been a step change year for the company, and we are pleased to explain why, and we will run through the presentation that we have lodged with the ASX this morning and we will take questions at the end, as we said. The quick disclaimer, I will take the disclaimer on slide two as read and the short presentation containing forward statements. Slide three, I will take that as read by everyone. Then a quick one on slide five. As everyone knows, and maybe there are some new people on the call, who are new to the register. Mitchell Services trades as MSV with 212 million shares on issue and a market capitalization of around AUD 114 million as of Wednesday's close. Our registry is roughly 20% the Mitchell Group, 6.6% of Dream Challenge and around 21% Institutional, and the balance is retail. Just on governance, I Chair the Board as Executive Chair alongside four non-exec Directors and exclusive management team as Andrew as CEO and Greg as the CFO. Next slide. I think the important slide here is essentially the year that was in the last six key numbers. Revenue of AUD 207 million, up 5%, on FY 2025. Look at what that 5% revenue growth converted into. It is an EBITDA of AUD 42.8 million, up 67%. Profit after tax is AUD 15 million, AUD 15.2 million against AUD 500,000 last year, 30x higher. Operating cash flow of AUD 37.4 million, more than double the prior year, and return on invested capital of 25.2%, up from 2%. Net gap, that 5% revenue growth produced 67% EBITDA growth, and that is the whole story for FY 2026. It is the reason we have called this a step change. The operating leverage in this business is real, and this is the year it showed up in the numbers. On the next page, a quick overview of our customers. We've obviously put this in here every year, but it says again that 75% of our revenue is derived from the global majors, and that's important. Newmont, Glencore, South 32, you can read them all there. These are counterparties operating assets that sit on the lowest cost curve, which means that their drilling programs are resilient through the cycle rather than being the first thing they cut. Secondly, the nature of the work, 80% of our revenue is from production, development, and resource definition. That's drilling attached to producing mines and committed development, not speculative greenfield exploration. Third, the commodity mix. Gold is now 60% of our revenue and we've deliberately increased our exposure to that sector while expanding into new jurisdictions. Fourth, safety. I think safety is key for us. As we've always said over the years, our safety performance is industry leading. It's driven by our critical control verification processes and our clients, that's what they want to see. Without that, we don't get their work. On the next page, slide eight, the capital management performance. I think, this slide is a four-year picture of the company, and it's important context for the FY 2026 result rather than a one-year story. Back in late FY 2022, coming out of a material organic growth investment phase when we bought 16 drilling rigs, we set our capital management strategy with two objectives. At that point then was to reduce leverage and maximize cash return for shareholders while continuing to grow the business. Those objectives can sometimes pull against each other, and the point of this slide is that we've delivered on all three. Since then, AUD 73.5 million of capital has been redeployed. The chart at the top right shows the net debt journey from AUD 39 million of net debt in FY 2022 to now AUD 3.5 million of net cash as of June 30, 2026. That's a AUD 42.5 million improvement, and the debt is now effectively gone. Since then, AUD 73.5 million of capital has been redeployed. The chart on the top right shows the net debt. Sorry, I beg your pardon. At the same time, the chart below, cumulative cash returns to shareholders through the dividends and buybacks have reached AUD 31 million. That's approximately 30% of our current market capitalization returned to shareholders over four years, and that's the figures. That's the reason in 2026, the final dividend today will be paid in September. For FY 2026, specifically, AUD 0.06 per share, fully franked. A payout ratio of approximately 85% on earnings per share of AUD 0.072. I think that says a lot. I think we as shareholders, I think should be extremely happy with the dividend that we're now looking at, plus the position of where we are. On an operational front, I think everything is going very well. At the moment, we've got 65 rigs at the end of this year, at the end of FY 2026. Operating rigs continue to increase going into FY 2027. Demand seems to be strong and growing, and while the coal sector seems to be slowing down, it's certainly not in the metalliferous sector. We hope to have a continued increase in rig count going into the last part of this year and continued rig count going into next year. It's pleasing to see that we've reached a low of 59 rigs. At the end of April, we are now at 65, hopefully going to another five to 10 rigs. Next slide. Loop. I think everyone knows about Loop, but suffice to say, we are currently drilling for one of our customers, one of our tier one customers. That is going very well at the moment. We are onto our second horizontal well. Our first one was intersected at 1,500 m. It is a world first for this type of technology. We have now just, as of yesterday, intersected our second well successfully. So that is going well. Still a long way to play out when it comes to decarbonization. It is very early days, but it is worth the investment. So we are happy with how things are tracking with the Loop operations. Financials, I am going to hand this over to Greg to give his couple of slides, and then I will come back to talk about capital management. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Nathan, and good morning, everybody. The title of this slide is really the summary for FY 2026. An earnings step change as FY 2025 investments convert to business as usual. Revenue of AUD 207 million, up 5%, converted into EBITDA of AUD 42.8 million, up 67%. In margin terms, 20% against 13% in FY 2025. In FY 2025, we carried significant mobilization and startup costs to establish contracts that we had recently won. In some instances, in new jurisdictions. Those contracts operated on a business as usual basis for the whole of FY 2026. And we are now starting to earn a higher revenue from those contracts without carrying the upfront costs of establishing them. Below EBITDA, depreciation reduced to AUD 21 million from AUD 23 million, and net finance costs were only AUD 0.7 million, reflecting a very low level of gross debt. That carried through to earnings before tax of AUD 21 million against AUD 0.7 million and net profit after tax of AUD 15.2 million against AUD 0.5 million. Looking at slide 14, the FY 2026 narrative was essentially more earnings from less capital. ROIC of 25% in FY 2026 against 2% in FY 2025. For context, ROIC averaged 8% per annum across FY 2022 to FY 2025. So this is well above anything we have delivered in the past. Clearly, the numerator does most of the work with EBIT of AUD 21.5 million against AUD 1.9 million, but the denominator has moved in the right direction as well. PP&E and intangibles came down from AUD 65 million to AUD 62 million and working capital from AUD 24 million- AUD 22 million. So the invested capital base is smaller, while earnings are much larger. Slide 15, looking at the balance sheet. Net assets up 11% to AUD 68 million, driven by the strong NPAT. Total assets AUD 123 million, up 11%, with the increase largely in current assets up 26%. That is the cash build essentially, which I will address later in the presentation. Total liabilities AUD 55 million, up 9%. With non-current liabilities down 35% as equipment finance continues to amortize. Working capital is the part I would highlight. Net working capital reduced AUD 9.4 million- AUD 22 million, with the main driver being a managed drawdown of inventories down 20% to AUD 10 million, following the large build in FY 2025 to service contracts one during that period. Receivables are up 11%, broadly consistent with the increased revenue and activity profile. Two key points. We have no intention to raise equity for any reason, and this balance sheet gives us optionality, flexibility on capital management, and on growth opportunities as they arise. Looking at slide 16, operating cash funded the fleet, the dividend, and the move to net cash. Cash flow from operating activities of AUD 37 million was up 108%, and cash generated from operations before interest and tax was AUD 44 million, up 137%. The conversion metrics is the one that I will focus on. EBITDA to cash conversion was 87%, and that is after allowing for the income tax payments of approximately AUD 6.8 million. On a pre-tax basis, conversion is materially higher. Interest and financing outflows were just AUD 0.7 million, reflecting the low gross debt. After capital expenditure of AUD 21 million, free cash flow was AUD 16.1 million for the year or AUD 0.076 per share against an accounting profit of AUD 0.072 per share. That is an important comparison. Free cash flow exceeded reported profit. This is a business that generated real cash, not just accounting earnings. It is that cash that has funded the fully franked dividend and the move to net cash. Looking at slide 17, a net cash position provides ultimate flexibility. We closed June 2026, with net cash of AUD 3 million against net debt of AUD 8 million a year earlier, an AUD 11 million swing in 12 months. Cash on hand went from AUD 1 million- AUD 12 million. Gross debt is AUD 8.7 million, down 11%, and is equipment finance only. No corporate term debt. The blended average cost of debt is approximately 7%, with rates essentially fixed across all equipment finance agreements. So we have no material floating rate exposure. On top of that, we have a AUD 15 million working capital facility, which is completely undrawn, available to fund working capital on new or expanding contracts. The existing equipment finance facility is over AUD 20 million of additional headroom to fund future growth opportunities. In summary, no net debt, no floating rate exposure, and AUD 35 million worth of undrawn capacity available if we need it. Slide 18, the capital expenditure. FY 2026 spend was largely restricted to essential maintenance CapEx, as we have prioritized deleveraging shareholder returns and using the fleet's idle remaining capacity. On the maintenance line, this is not discretionary, and we do not treat it as a lever. It is what sustains the high level of availability our clients require across the whole fleet, including the idle rigs Nathan referred to earlier, which is why they are available to redeploy. We continually monitor the size and composition of the fleet against market conditions, and we will take advantage of growth opportunities where it makes sense to do so. But the framework within sensible limits on capital expenditure remain in place. I will now hand back to Nathan to close on strategy and outlook. Thanks, Greg. The strategy for FY 2027 is unchanged, in our objectives. That is still to optimize long-term growth for the business and returns to shareholders. The two levers that we have always talked about, continuing to improve the profitability of the existing business. FY 2026 showed what that is worth when we make it happen and capitalizing on a growing pipeline of drilling opportunities in the mining sector. As Greg said, we have a very strong balance sheet, and we have a large portion of our cost base is relatively fixed. That means the operating leverage in this business is substantial. If activity increases, a disproportionate share of our revenue reaches the earnings. Which is exactly what you saw in FY 2026 with 5% revenue growth producing nearly 67% EBITDA growth. Capital management remains the priority for us, and it remains a question of the mix. Maximizing cash returns to shareholders and capitalizing on growth opportunities against an increasing pipeline and operating within the sensible debt levels. This has always been the balance that we have shown over the last four years, and I think we have done a very good job of that. We will continue to look at each one of those, and how the world is playing out. But at the moment, our business is running I think exceptionally well. The transition from coal to minerals has been good. I certainly commend the management team and the whole of the business in what they have been able to achieve, certainly in this last 12 months. Mitchell, I think we will just wrap this up. As we have seen, we talked before Mitchell six numbers really speak for themselves. EBITDA of AUD 42.8 million up 67%, NPAT of AUD 15.2 million against the AUD 500,000 last year. EBITDA margin of 20.7% up around 750 basis points on 5% revenue growth. Average rig count of 62 out of 90. That leaves a lot of rigs ready to be deployed. As Greg said before, free cash flow of AUD 16 million after AUD 21 million spent on CapEx and 87% cash conversion. Available capital around AUD 38 million, AUD 3.5 million of net cash AUD +35 million of undrawn facilities and AUD 73.5 million of capital redeployed since FY 2022. 65- odd% of our rig fleet deployed. So strong earnings really, real cash and a clean balance sheet. So, I could not be happy with what the guys have produced. Summary, we have said this before, we say this every meeting that we have had, every quarter. Quality brand, fundamental improvement across all sectors, strong balance sheet, so improved leverage. Loop getting there, certainly slower than we had hoped, but with success. Then obviously financial transformation. With that, Allen, I will hand it back over to you for questions. Fantastic. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Greg. It is definitely a great result. Let us kick off some of the questions here. Number one, please discuss the potential of Anglo to again contribute materially. Is this work likely to come back and push revenues higher again? I think Anglo will not come back, obviously it is sold. The new owners of Anglo intend to restart that business. At this stage, we are still working for one of the mines, but in the underground facilities there. More than likely they will have to continue to start additional drilling in the future. Whether we are successful or not, it has been closed down for many, many months, will yet to be seen. There will have to be additional drilling at those mines at some point in time. Thank you. Next questions obviously relate around the dividends, so, I will combine them. What, if anything, would stop MSV paying AUD 0.06 again next year? Obviously regarding capital allocation, can we expect AUD 0.06 dividend? What is your thoughts on turning on share buyback and any M&A in the pipeline? I think as we have said every time, is that we will look at every lever depending on what happens. At the moment, we have got very little debt, so there is not much we can do there. The share price is where it is at. At the moment, we are always looking around for M&A opportunities, and people are speaking to us all the time, but nothing. We are very picky, we are very choosy about what we do. I think buybacks are where they are and growth is at the moment, things are going well. So we are deploying capital as we can see, refurbishing our fleet. At this stage, we have made no decisions on what we are going to do next year. We will see what happens the first half of this financial year, I think. Thank you. Next question. 65 rigs at year-end. Are any of the 65 likely to come off in the next 6- 12 months given average contract length is three years? This may be, yeah. I think rigs come and go all the time. It is the drilling business. I think we have been exceedingly, I am not going to say we are lucky, but I think the industry has moved to a multi-year, multi-rig program. We have all had success from that situation, but rigs come and go. Contracts, it is a contracting business. Will we lose some? Will we win some? I think that is just part of the game. Our feeling at the moment is that, we will be gaining more than we lose. Yeah. I might just add a couple of comments there. The average rig count in FY 2026 was obviously 62. We called out the fact that we exited at 65. Currently sitting on 68 as of today. I completely acknowledge and agree with everything Nathan said in terms of it is contracting. There will be rigs that sort of come off in the ordinary course of business. But we have made the point that we expect rig count in FY 2027 to continue to increase. I am not going to give an exact guided number. But obviously stand by that and therefore expect that the number of rigs to come online, in replacement of some of those rigs that might come off will be a greater number, and expect it to continue to increase. Agreed. Thank you, guys. Next one is from Chris. Nathan, still a result. Thanks for your time this morning. Three questions from him. EBITDA margin this year was your best this decade. Am I right in thinking that this will be hard to maintain with more rigs out the door? Am I still right at this point for debt to be cleared by 2029? There was a step down of CapEx in 2026 from 2025. Where should we think about CapEx moving forward? There was a few questions there. The first one, the EBITDA margin. I think we've publicly acknowledged that 20% is certainly the target, and we stand by that. I think in more recent years, we have had a number of factors outside the control of the business, that have led to a number being lower than the 20%. Think of FY 2025 in particular, with wet weather, a number of jobs coming off, particularly in the coal, and then a significant level of mobilization costs to pivot from coal into gold and margin dilution, as a result. FY 2026, clearly it was 12 months where it wasn't very impacted by wet weather. It was very business as usual with not a lot of mobilization and ramp up. I think, it'll be a great achievement to stick to 20% long term. That's obviously the goal. But I think if you're asking the question for purposes of modeling, et c, you may be prudent to assume maybe a basis point or two lower just to take into account those factors that we have historically seen, that we didn't necessarily see in FY 2026. In terms of the debt clear down by 2029, just given the facilities that we've got currently and their amortization profile, yep, that'll reduce to zero by that stage. But the only item to call out there, though, in relation to Nathan earlier comments around potential growth. There are significant opportunities in the tender pipeline, in the opportunities pipeline, and to the extent that some of those larger ones are successful, they may require a level of accelerated CapEx, and we will look to fund that clearly through debt. So that's the only caveat there. And then a very similar response to the CapEx question. Just in terms of, if all this business does is the sort of required day-to-day maintenance CapEx, then I think it's fair to say expect a similar level of CapEx going forward. The caveat again is some of these opportunities that are in play, and the success there may mean an accelerated level of growth CapEx to take advantage of those opportunities. So it's a bit of a moving beast and is subject to which of those growth opportunities we're successful with, I suppose. Thanks Greg. Maybe part two for Nick here, because I think we covered CapEx. What is driving the high level of expected rig utilization in first half FY 2027? Combination of two things, really. Number one, existing contracts where customers have given us either a verbal or written request for additional rigs. Won't go into specifics of who they are and where they are in this call. Just the tender pipeline more broadly. It's certainly increased in recent times and assuming a certain percentage of conversions in relation to that's probably the second element to why we're calling out a higher level of rig utilization. No, that's correct there. I think that's we certainly see that the rig count to grow. I'm not sure how materially it will grow, but essentially, which will obviously affect the different pillars that we talk about growth. Funding for growth versus funding for buybacks, funding for dividends. Again, things change as the market changes. Thank you. Weather question. I guess, what's been the weather conditions in Q1 across your authorizations operations? Pretty good so far. Very good. Yeah, very strong. So sort of my earlier comments that FY 2026 was largely unaffected and those comments that talked to the 20% margin. Yeah, it's been a very similar story so far in terms of the first quarter of 2027. Very positive. Yeah. I think we have covered debt and dividends. Question from Sam. As rig numbers increase, will there be significant drag on EBITDA margins due to mobilization costs? Again, will the CapEx increase significantly as older rigs are brought up to speed to be deployed? I think you did touch on it, Greg, but maybe just- I think both of those are touched on. It is very difficult to call out a definitive figure at this point because it is very much dependent on what opportunities drop. As always, there will be a level of ramp-up costs associated with those, which may dilute EBITDA margins to a certain extent as covered. CapEx, it is the same thing. Within that tender pipeline, there are a number of multi-rig multi-year opportunities. If one of those land, then that would require CapEx, and then that will result in a CapEx number that is greater than previous years. Great. We will move to the question, this is more of a comment. Has the Board considered significant market share buyback? Obviously, a few companies have done this in the past year, land to buyback more than 15% of shares in once would. Has that been considered by the Board to go a bit more aggressive? I guess that is what the question. I think we looked at that a couple years ago, didn't we? I did not think you were allowed to do that. Yeah, look, you can. But, I think, in terms of where we landed is unlike the on-market buyback where you are not committed to. An off market is essentially a reverse capital raise, if you like. You have got to call out exactly how many, and exactly at what price. The on-market buyback allows the company to be a little bit more flexibility in terms of how much and by when. It all just comes back to the overriding comments on the capital management strategy more broadly, in that we need to be able to be flexible, and pivot as growth opportunities, et c, present themselves. I just, given all the earlier comments around what those growth opportunities may look like, I do not think the board wants to box themselves into a corner and sort of make a commitment to that. It will be, for that reason, the on- market one makes sense in that it can be ratcheted up and ratcheted down. On market. As on market as and when the Board considers appropriate. Thanks, Greg. A question from Ben. What are the catalysts that you see being necessary for Loop to become a major earnings contributor? I think it's been very successful so far. The technology is working, which is great. I think that in itself is a success. To be honest, I think what will hold it back is essentially companies and people's change in attitude towards decarbonization and the essential carbon tax. As we all know, one of the reasons why we're successful this year is because we've wound out a number of our coal projects and moved those rigs to the minerals. There's a reason why that is, and that's because the coal industry's struggling. I think that the technology that we are doing is world-class and world-first, and it's working. It's a trial. Once that trial's finished, people can actually see the benefits. No one likes to pay a tax when they don't have to or they certainly can't afford to in the coal industry. That's been a drag. That is coming to a hard stop in probably 12- 18 months, when the Safeguard Mechanism kicks in. Right now, I think a lot of people are kicking the can down the road until they have to spend. Our position is we need to finalize the technology, prove that it works, which it has, and let's see what comes from that. Thanks, Nathan. Greg, I guess as you build gross cash this year, do you hold any of these in-term deposits? Oh, look, I think, again, given some of the earlier comments around how flexible we need to be with capital more broadly, you wouldn't want to lock it into anything of significant length. That said, spare cash currently sits in an on-call, high interest earning account. We're pretty happy with that. I think the key message there being again, if you win something overnight or look to potentially take advantage of share buyback as the share price falls, you need to be able to move your capital quickly. On call, high interest earning is probably where we sit. Thank you. A question from Daniel. How are wage pressures shaping up in FY 2027? Look, I think it's fair to say, it's probably one of the highest risks in this business, I suppose, just in terms of availability of labor and all those earlier comments around the market being strong and tender pipeline being strong. We haven't even really got going yet with any major Olympics infrastructure spend as well. Right now it's manageable. Fair Work came out earlier this year, and we've implemented an increase at the lower levels of about 4.7% across the board. We're still able to attract and retain staff reasonably well and wages haven't moved. But it won't take much for that to happen and that's something we've consistently got to be mindful of. Mindful in terms of potentially locking ourselves away with long-term customer contracts as well. We've got to make sure that the terms of those customer contracts are flexible enough to adjust for wage pressures which as I say, is one of the largest risks, I think within the business at the moment. Thank you. Sorry, to answer the question, nothing at the moment. Managed at this stage. Got it. Thanks, Greg. A two-part question here from Mark. Can you give any clues as to what areas of M&A might be considered strategically optimal and what criteria you might adopt? Are you looking to rebalance a little away from gold? What about non-drilling acquisitions to balance against the cycle? I think we would say yes to all three of those. I think, we are always looking at M&A. As I said earlier in the piece, we are quite picky in what we do. Some people might think we are a bit slow in that side of things, but we want to make the right decisions. Obviously, we are now 60% gold. We have always had a blend of products. I think coal will come back at some stage. I certainly think that copper, whilst we do not do a lot of copper in Australia, is the next, or already is the next gold. For sure, we are always looking to spread our skill set and our services around. It is one of the reasons why we are doing Loop. It is one of the reasons why we are probably one companies that is multidisciplinary across these different sectors. As for M&A, again, as I said before, we will always look at M&A, whether it is drilling businesses or what I call 1 +1 = 3, which is businesses that sit alongside us, that vertically integrate up and down. So those are the sort of things that we are always looking for, that grow the bottom line, that we can get more from. It is easier to get more from one pie than it is to have more pies. That is what I tell the team. I think that is what has worked so far. Thanks, Nathan. I think we have covered the next two on margins and CapEx in terms of opportunities. Question from Neil. What is current franking credit balance? Please comment on capacity to continue paying fully franked dividend. Yeah, look, so franking credits are currently allowed to run, in addition to the dividend just declared, fully franked dividends of about AUD 8 million. That is based on the current franking balance. We have obviously utilized all of our legacy tax losses, et c, and expect to be in a tax-paying position going forward. So, the franking balance should continue to increase as we continue to make those tax payments. Really, we are in a position where, in addition to that AUD 8 million, all NPAT going forward now should be adding to the franking balance and allowing any future dividends to be on a fully franked basis. In years gone by, we did have one or two sort of partially franked dividends, and that was on the basis that we were not cash tax paying, and we did still have those assessed tax losses, but that will not be the case now going forward. It will all be fully franked. Great. Another question from Neil. Please comment on potential CapEx for the Loop business. If it continues to be encouraging, can you deploy similar ROIC? We didn't spend a huge amount of time on this call rehashing the Sumitomo deal, but one of the main benefits of that investment, and just by way of quick summary, Sumitomo put in AUD 1.5 million initially for 6.5% of Loop. There's commitments for another AUD 1.5 million for another 6.5%. Then a further third tranche that'll take them to circa 20%, based on a val of AUD 24 million. Apologies. The benefit of that structure is that essentially we're able to use those funds being invested by Sumitomo to fund Loop's CapEx requirements, at least in the short to medium term. Loop currently has one rig. I think there should be enough then for rigs two, three and four through that investment. Looking post that, any CapEx required beyond that, Loop should be able to stand on its own two feet and invest in the CapEx in its own right. Can we deploy at similar ROICs? Yes. The current business model or forecast, not forecast, the business model suggests that we can. Certainly the case. Great. Last question here from Neil. Obviously, the comments are, in your remarks, you spoke about a potential to add five to 10 additional rigs. How much opportunity to put additional rigs into existing jobs? Obviously, you've covered that one. Yeah, I think those are pipeline rigs, so let's see what happens over the next few months. But I think we've got those rigs in the fleet, so essentially be able to put them in. It really comes back to the people, as Greg said before. The people, obviously the costs, a lot of those will probably go into our existing contracts, existing clients, which obviously tells the shareholders that we're obviously doing a good job with our customers. At this stage, they're yet to be committed to. Thanks, Nathan. That was the last question. Thank you everyone for attending today. Again, as I said, the presentation has been recorded, and I'll reach out to you individually to give you a copy as well. Again, Nathan and Greg, well done on the result. Thank you very much. Thanks, Allen. Thanks everyone. We appreciate everyone's time today.
Loading workspace