Vanessa Torres
Analyst · Jefferies
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the Perenti FY '26 Results Call. My name is Vanessa Torres, and presenting with me today is Mike Ellis, our CFO. Today, we will outline our full year performance, the outlook for our business and how we plan to maximize returns for our shareholders. As this is my first reporting period as CEO for Perenti, I am very pleased to be announcing another year that Perenti has delivered to our guidance, marking our fifth consecutive year. For those who are new to the Perenti story, we illustrate on Slide 3, our diversified portfolio of businesses spanning across the mining life cycle. Our businesses offer a broad suite of services, spreading across 12 different countries. We have world-leading expertise in underground mining and drilling. 66% of our revenue in FY '26 was generated from underground operations, and this was mostly from gold and copper projects. We operate 20 mines around the world. And collectively, we employ around 10,000 people to service more than 160 different clients. We aim to be the safest and most productive in industry, which unlocks enduring value and certainty for our people, our clients, our communities and ultimately deliver sustainable returns for our shareholders. As announced on Friday, we have agreed to sell the BTP Group for AUD 100 million. The accounting standards require BTP to be reported in our annual report as a discontinued operation in our financial results. In order to allow comparison between FY '26 and FY '25 in a like-for-like manner, the results presented here represent the division as it was on 30th of June 2026, which is inclusive of the BTP Group. Mike will step through a reconciliation to statutory numbers later. Before I get into the financial performance, I want to highlight our focus on safety. At Perenti, we are committed to ensure that everyone comes home safe and well. This mindset shapes how we operate our business and the decisions we make. In FY '26, we continue to strengthen our safety system in four key areas. Our critical risk management systems have strengthened the identification of hazards. Safety leadership training is building our safety culture across all of our workforce -- direct workforce engagement. It's also simplifying our systems, making them more accessible and practical for our workforce and technology and engineering solutions are prioritized to reduce exposure to hazards where possible. We are proud to report 0 fatalities in FY '26 and improvements in both total recordable injury frequency rate, which is down to 6.0 and significant potential incident frequency rate down to 2.8. Whilst these results are encouraging, a safety culture requires continued focus and an enduring commitment from everyone in our organization. Turning to our FY '26 financial results on Slide 5. As guided to the market, FY '26 has been a transitional year that sets up our company for future growth. A shift in revenue mix from Africa towards Australia and North America has been underway for some time, and the success of this strategy is now building momentum. EBIT(A) margin increased to 9.8%, delivering a record EBIT(A) result, even with revenue holding steady from FY '25. At the same time, -- the balance sheet has continued to benefit from the strong free cash generation. Leverage at 0.4x and gearing at 12.8% is the strongest position our balance sheet has ever been in. This provides significant capacity to pursue growth options that I will unpack later in this presentation. On an adjusted basis, free cash flow of $182 million exceeded our guidance, which was upgraded during our first half results. Underlying NPAT(A) grew 8% compared to FY '25, benefiting from the lower finance costs. The strength of these results has allowed our Board to declare a final dividend of $0.045 per share, which lifts the total dividend for FY '26 to $0.0775 per share. Underlying EPS increased to $0.205 per share compared to $0.191 in FY '25, a 7% improvement year-on-year. On Slide 6, we show our performance against guidance for the past five years. This is the fifth consecutive year that guidance has been met, which has also occurred in parallel with the portfolio transition, shifting the concentration of revenue in West Africa towards Australia and North America. The consistent free cash generation has enabled the balance sheet to be fundamentally transformed and now provides the group with significant funding capacity to pursue growth options aimed to maximize shareholder return. Operationally, FY '26 included several important highlights. In Australia, we won the Bellevue contract worth approximately $850 million, which is the largest Australian contract in the history of Barminco. Our drilling businesses continue to build momentum with rising utilization, which is encouraging for FY '27. In North America, development at Goldrush has maintained a high operating standard that has been helpful to showcase the productivity advantages that Barminco's high-speed development can deliver for clients to maximize value. The award of the neighboring Fourmile contract is an important step to build regional scale in the U.S.A. and the recently announced addition of the Fourmile project to the Nevada Gold Mines JV between Newmont and Barrick enables us to unlock the benefits of working on these neighboring mines. I recently had the opportunity to visit our operations in Ghana, and I was pleased to see our underground mining operations continue to deliver strong results. The culture amongst our Ghanaian workforce is excellent and the flow-on impact on the communities is immense. As we will be shortly exiting surface mine in Ghana, the recent agreement to sell the Iduapriem fleet as part of this transition will allow the recycling of capital toward new high-performing opportunities elsewhere in the portfolio. The numbers at the base of this slide provide a glimpse of the size of our operations. Over 120 kilometers of development advance and more than 14 million tonnes of ore was delivered by Contract Mining in FY '26. The total drilling meters in the lower right includes everything drilled by drilling services and also the contribution of the drillers who work as part of the Contract Mining operations. And to give context to the 13,000 kilometers of drilling, it is more than the diameter of Planet Earth. So effectively, in a single year, our teams have drilled the equivalent distance from one side to the planet to the other. Turning to Slide 8. Perenti delivered record EBIT(A) of $340 million, up 2% on FY '25 on a broadly flat revenue of around $3.5 billion. The key feature of this result was the improvement in EBIT(A) margin, which increased to 9.8%, supported by improved operational performance from Contract Mining. As highlighted during our first half results and consistent with prior years, earnings were heavily weighted to the second half. This is typical of the nature of our business, and we anticipate a similar first half and second half profile in FY '27 as new projects ramp up. Looking ahead, the sale of the AMS fleet and the divestment of BTP are expected to recycle approximately $150 million towards higher return opportunities. Moving to Contract Mining, our largest division, which generated revenue of $2.4 billion and EBIT(A) of $291 million. As I mentioned previously, the pivot from Africa towards Australia and North America has shifted the revenue mix within this division. Our long-term contracts are advantageous for many reasons, but it does take time to shift the portfolio. This is evident in these results. But pleasingly, we are still delivering very strong margins. The EBIT(A) result from Contract Mining was a key driver of the Group's EBIT(A) results. This is not surprising when you consider that Contract Mining represents approximately 75% of underlying group EBIT(A) before corporate costs. Recent project wins at Bellevue, Fourmile and Dalgaranga continue to move the portfolio mix towards a high-quality, long-life projects in both Australia and North America. While the proportion of revenue from Africa is changing, our clients in Africa remain an important part of the portfolio. AUMS has recently commenced some early works at Sabodala in Senegal for Endeavour Mining with a longer-term agreement under negotiation. I will discuss later our work in hand and pipeline, but the outlook for underground operations is particularly bright in North America, where there's visibility of $6.4 billion of potential work. Turning to Drilling Services. The division has grown revenue to $843 million and set a new record EBIT(A) of $85 million. Drilling Services now represents 22% of underlying EBIT(A) before corporate costs. Utilization across the fleet continues to trend upwards and positions the division for further earnings and margins growth with mobilization costs and some fuel-sensitive inputs expected to normalize in FY '27. Swick has delivered an outstanding year in Australia and continues to see strong opportunities emerging in North America, particularly across gold and copper projects. A recent highlight subsequent to the end of the financial year was the award of a 5-year $92 million contract for Ausdrill for drilling and blasting services at Vault Minerals' King of the Hills mine. On Slide 11, Mining and Technology Services delivered revenue of $190 million and EBIT(A) of $11 million. As announced, an agreement to sell the BTP Group has been reached. So BTP has been reported as a discontinued operation in our financial results. The results presented in this slide represent the division as it was on 30th of June 2026, inclusive of the BTP Group. The proposed sale of BTP is a pivotal move that will transform this division, leaving Supply Direct, Logistics Direct and idoba focused on lower capital-intensive services. This year, Supply Direct and Logistics Direct performed in line with expectations, and both have opportunities to grow in FY '27, idoba product development costs reduced in FY '26 and reduced again in FY '27. And moving forward, they will be included in our underlying results. As announced, the divestment of BTP will unlock $100 million that will be recycled into higher return investments. In addition, the sale of the Iduapriem fleet that is part of the conclusion of the contract as announced in 20th of July 2026 is expected to generate a further $30 million to $40 million. There's also some further AMS idle surface fleet that is currently in Ghana and expected to be sold in FY '27, realizing an additional $10 million to $15 million. In total, these initiatives are expected to return between $140 million and $155 million to the Group, funding near-term opportunities that meet our investment criteria and support EPS growth. It is important to note the timing associated with these sales. The first tranche of the BTP sale, $80 million, is due to arrive towards the end of October 2026, with the final $20 million due 12 months later. The $30 million to $40 million sale of the Iduapriem fleet is due to arrive at contract conclusion in December 2026. The final $10 million to $15 million for the remainder of the idle AMS fleet in Ghana will be collected as and when the fleet is sold and several buyers have expressed interest already. I will now pass on to Mike, who will take you through the financials.