Mastermyne Group Limited (MYE) Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Mastermyne Group Limited FY '25 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jeff Whiteman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Carrie. Good morning, and welcome to the FY '25 Full-Year Results Call for Mastermyne Group Limited. I'm Jeff Whiteman, the MD and CEO, and I'm also joined by Matt Ruhl, our CFO, who joined with the group in January this year. Thank you for taking the time to dial in. Turning now to the investor presentation document. Hopefully, you have a copy of that in front of you. On Page 2, you will see our headline financials for the year. Whilst our revenue is lower than the prior year as a consequence of external events, which I'll come to shortly, we delivered underlying EBITDA of $13.2 million and notably, $16.9 million of operating cash flow, consistent with the prior year. This led to a further cash build with year-end net cash at $29.1 million, representing a robust capital position, which is a key point of difference given the current market conditions. We also grew our order book to $314 million. Turning now to Page 3. Just looking at the number of highlights we achieved in FY '25. Importantly, given the nature of our industry, our focus on elevating safety performance has achieved highly positive results, with TRIFR reducing to 5.09 and lower again post year-end. I've already mentioned the benefits of the cash flow and the net cash position achieved, and I'm proud of how the team has responded to multiple external events, including major events halting production at Grosvenor and Moranbah North mines, coupled with increased market pressures as a consequence of the lower coal price environment. Given these external challenges, delivering $13.2 million of EBITDA and growing the order book by winning 2 significant new projects is testament to the team's commitment and strength of the business. Whilst it was pleasing that we were able to pay the first dividend in some years, the Board has taken a strategic decision to declare a nil final dividend for FY '25, with the intention of further building our capital position to align with our organic and inorganic growth strategies. Finally, the team has also been working hard under the bonnet and driving competitive advantage through system and process improvements and cost saves. For those less familiar with Mastermyne, turning to Page 4. We are the experts in underground coal mining and have a broad range of integrated capabilities across the value chain categorized into 4 key areas: outbye and longwall support, which is primarily labor, ancillary equipment and consumables; strata consolidation, where we use an exclusive range of market-leading resin injection and cavity filling products to enhance the productivity of our clients' longwall operations; development and drivage, which offers specialist skills in production operations; and finally, technical services, which focuses on value-added solutions to address our clients' challenges. On Page 5, you can see that Mastermyne's diversified client and project portfolio covers each of the 3 major underground coal regions in Australia being Central Queensland, Hunter Valley in Northern New South Wales and the Illawarra region. We have contracts with many of the largest mine owners in the sector, including Anglo American, Whitehaven, Glencore and Peabody, together with a key recent entrant, GM3, which is associated with our major shareholder, M Resources and which acquired the Appin and Dendrobium mines from South32 last year. I'll now hand over to Matt to take us through the financials.

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'll now provide an overview of the next 3 slides for the financial outcomes. Turning to Slide 6, provides an overview of the earnings, detailing the financial impact of the significant external events on the FY '25 results. Revenue declined by 27% due to mine suspensions and closures, notably at Grosvenor, Integra and Moranbah North. Despite these setbacks, the company achieved an underlying EBITDA of $13.2 million, reflecting cost efficiencies and operational improvements. The table compares FY '25 to FY '24 across key financial metrics, offering transparency on normalized earnings and the effects of asset impairments and inventory write-downs. Additionally, the depreciation expense covers both owned property, plant and equipment and leased assets recognized as right-of-use under AASB 16. Moving to Slide 7, which presents the cash flow statement for FY '25, showing that operating cash flow remained steady at $16.9 million comparable to the prior year. The detailed breakdown highlights the conversion of working capital to cash. The company ended the year with $30.4 million in cash, up from $26 million, demonstrating strong liquidity management despite the operational challenges and ongoing investments. The following slide on the balance sheet, Slide 8 reveals a solid financial position as of June 2025. Cash reserves increased to $30.4 million with minimal borrowings, resulting in a net cash position of $29.1 million. Property, plant and equipment values rose, reflecting sustainable capital investments. The net tangible assets remained stable at $63 million, equating to $0.20 per share. This financial strength provides the foundation for pursuing growth opportunities and managing operational risks effectively into FY '26. I'll now hand back to Jeff.

Thanks, Matt. And turning to Page 9. I'll just talk about our safety performance. We've been implementing a project over the past 2 years focused on elevating safety performance, which is a multi-faceted project, but underpinned by developing our project leadership skills and nurturing a positive safety behavior culture. Our actions have shown a significant improvement in our safety metrics with total recordable injury frequency rate, or TRIFR, almost halving from 9.85 in June last year to just over 5 at June this year. I'm pleased to say this downward trend has continued post year-end as well. Even more importantly, we achieved 0 life-changing events in FY '25, and we remain committed to this goal going forward. As an update on the prosecutions instigated by the regulator in relation to 3 serious incidents back in 2021, '22, one of the charges has actually been dismissed recently. The other 2 cases remain subject to legal proceedings at this stage. On Page 10, Mastermyne is privileged to work with some of the world's largest mining companies operating in regional communities around Australia. As such, we feel duty bound to be serious about our social and governance responsibilities. On the environmental front, we continue to develop our road map together with our corporate risk management process. Sustainability reporting commencing next year will provide a new level of transparency around our progress. And whilst our energy use is relatively low, we are actively seeking ways to reduce consumption. Aligned with our elevating safety performance project and refocus on core activities, we have also been investing in our people with project leadership and broader skills-based training in addition to increasing our community support and brand investment. And finally, from a governance perspective, there have been some Board changes in the year, as noted in the Annual Report, notably with Peter Barker being appointed as a Non-Executive Chair during the year. Looking ahead now, on Page 11, our outlook for FY '26 is positive despite some of the industry headwinds persisting. We have an order book of $314 million, up from $280 million at the prior year-end, driven by the commencement of new contracts at Peabody Energy's new Centurion Mine and GM3's Appin Mine in November '24 and May '25, respectively. The full annualized benefit of these 2 projects will be realized in FY '26. In support of ongoing growth, we have a pipeline of contract opportunities worth approximately $900 million in our core contracting space. This pipeline is the result of a renewed and targeted approach to winning work, including strategies based on leveraging our deep network and connections across the industry, which resulted as an example, in our Appin contract award following GM3's acquisition of Appin and Dendrobium mines in late '24, utilizing our technical expertise to develop value-adding solutions to assist clients in overcoming their challenges, partnering with our key suppliers, including JENNMAR, who recently acquired Weber Mining, a supplier of our strata consolidation products; and finally, enhancing our competitive advantages through seeking efficiency savings. Finally, just turning to Page 12. Impressively, Mastermyne is entering its 30th year, having started back in 1996. This provides a strong foundation with a proven track record, which combined with the financial stability achieved over the past 2.5 years, positions us to deliver on our priorities, which are pursuing growth opportunities, utilizing our network of industry connections and those of our major shareholder M Resources, whilst leveraging our opportunity pipeline and well-capitalized balance sheet. And secondly, looking at our organic business plan pillars focused on winning work, enhancing competitive advantage and delivering irreplaceable performance to our clients. By doing this, we expect to deliver acceptable returns for our shareholders over the medium to long term. Thank you for taking an interest in Mastermyne, and I'll now hand back to the moderator to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Burgess with RAAS Research.

I'm just interested in the process when you say -- well, you have a contract like Moranbah North, you have to lay off people and the ability to then get those people back and how easy or not it is?

Thanks for calling in. Look, it's certainly been a pretty dynamic situation at both Moranbah and Grosvenor over the past 12 months. We remain contracted with Anglo at both of those mines. And the way it's really worked has been in partnership with Anglo, flexing the scale of the workforce according to the needs on the way through. And currently, we're running with pretty low numbers at Grosvenor, although Anglo has recently reentered the underground environment there. At Moranbah North, we've actually maintained a reasonable presence of people there, even when it was in the essential services stage. And more recently, Anglo is now well progressed on its longwall restart plan, and we've been providing support to that all the way through. So currently, I think we still have close to around 100 people involved with that site just to give you an idea.

Right. But the people that were let go, let's say, surplus to current needs, is it easy to get those people back or people with similar skills?

I would say, the market has certainly changed a bit over the last 12 months. There's been a number of mines out of production. And there is, I suppose, other macro things happening in the market as well. So yes, certainly, we are keen to try and hold on to our skilled and experienced people, and we have done that through redeploying people to other projects such as Narrabri and then to a new Appin project and so on. But yes, certainly, some people have gone out into the market, and we're pretty confident of being able to get experienced people back in as and when Moranbah starts to wind up again.

Yes. I guess the second question, just on -- you seem a little bit more comfortable about the implications for the same job, same pay issues. What gives you that comfort?

I think it's really how we're seeing clients responding to that. And Appin as an example, that's been subject to same job, same pay, and we've been working our way through that. So it's still probably a challenge in the industry, but I think we are starting to see a way through it. It's certainly not the end of contract mining that people might have -- at the extreme end might have thought a couple of years ago when it first started raising its head.

Our next question comes from [ Isam Aid ] with [ Verina Limited ].