I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ian Testrow, CEO.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Emeco's Financial Year 2026 Half Year Results Presentation. Thank you all for joining us today. Financial Officer, Theresa Mlikota, here with me, as well as Adam Buckler, our new Deputy CFO. Welcome, Adam. Today's session will follow our usual format. We'll take you through the presentation launched on the ASX this morning, after which we'll be happy to take any questions. Before we begin, I'd like to direct your attention to disclaimer on Slide 2, which covers important informa- I want to start with Slide 5 and some of the key takeaway messages before we get into the more detailed presentation. Emeco continues to deliver strong operational and financial performance. We've worked hard to strengthen the business and now have delivered 6 consecutive halves of period-on-period growth in earnings and cash flow.
Our balance sheet is in the best shape it's been in the ten years since I've been CEO, and we've recently completed a refinancing of our debt facilities on better terms and conditions, which provides us with great flexibility to consider growth options going for our team and the finance and legal team for absolutely cracking finance. Fantastic work. Well done, team. Our strategy has evolved to focus on disciplined, organic and inorganic growth while continuing to target 20% returns for shareholders. We're focused on growing our portfolio of fully maintained rental projects, winning standalone maintenance projects, and also through the pursuit of adjacent maintenance services businesses. We're also actively monitoring our rental competitors for consolidation opportunities. Additional to this, we'll further develop technology capabilities to expand our competitive advantage.
We believe our capabilities in the areas of asset management, condition monitoring and reliability engineering are unique and set us apart from our competition. Moving to Slide 6 and the first half financial highlights. Emeco has an excellent start to FY 2026, with a strong operational and financial performance in the first half. Our simplified business model and focus on disciplined capital and cost management has continued to deliver positive results. We have again seen good growth in all metrics, including revenue, operating earnings, free cash flow and return on capital. Group revenue was up 9% to AUD 421 million. Operating EBITDA increasing 7% to AUD 155 million. Operating EBIT was up 13% to AUD 77 million on the prior- Revenue mix with high levels of maintenance work in first half 2026 compared to first half 2025.
While maintenance work is low on margins, it's also low capital and has been a key driver of the continuing improvement in return on capital. The positive financial performance flow through to the bottom line, with operating net profit after tax increasing by 21% to AUD 46 million. Operating free cash flow was up 37% to AUD 67 million, with excellent cash conversion of 110% through improved working capital in the period. From FY 2025 and 230 basis points on the first half of 2025, and has now reached 18%, which is good progress on our journey to our target of 20%. We've made strong gains in improving our balance sheet and improving returns. Preserving these gains and our capital will be important as we grow the business going forward.
Our focus continues to be achieving a return on capital target of 20%. These gains are illustrated in Slide 7, which summarizes Emeco's half-on-half performance history. The slide shows steady and consistent half-on-half improvement over the past two to three years. The result has been a strong profit uplift in operating earnings from the prior comparative period and a solid repeat delivery of really strong performance we generated in the second half of FY 2025. This is in line with the expectations we set out at our AGM. The real highlight here is the uplift in free cash flow generation, which has increased by nearly 70% during the two-year period. In dollar terms, the business has generated around AUD 230 million in free cash flow since the first half 2024. Much of this growth has been delivered organically, without investment in growth capital.
In particular, the growth in earnings from maintenance services, which will remain a key focus going forward. I'll cover this in more detail. Cash generation has driven a significant improvement in Emeco's balance sheet. Net leverage has improved from 1.1x in first half 2024 to 0.5x in first half 2026. Strong position for future growth opportunities, which I'll cover more in the strategy and outlook discussion. Finally, the slide also clearly shows the strong progress we've made towards our return on capital—return on capital of 15% in the first half of 2024, and we've grown this to 18% in the first half of 2026. This has been a 230 basis points improvement, and I'm confident the Emeco 20% target. Slide 9 shows the group safety performance over the last five years.
The safety of our people is paramount, and safety remains a key priority for Emeco and all of our healthy and safe workplace. The total recordable injury frequency rate reduced from 3.4 at 30th of June 2025, to 2.5 at 31st of December 2025. The lost time injury frequency rate remained at 0. We'll continue to focus on reducing TRIFR with ongoing investment in training, which is a key focus. Slide 10 outlines half of 2026. Emeco is Australia's largest provider of surface and underground rental equipment, with a fleet size of 840 primary machines and a workforce of AUD 480 million.
Emeco's rental business delivered a strong operational and financial performance in the first half of 2026, with rental revenue increasing 14% to AUD 342 million, driven primarily by the delivery of increased maintenance services across key contracts. Operating EBITDA increased 6% in the first half of 2026 to AUD 168 million, while operating EBIT grew to AUD 94 million from AUD 86 million, up 9% for the half. Operational highlights include the successful ramp-up of a new large, fully maintained operation in Queensland, where Emeco provides mining fleet and full maintenance services to both Emeco and the customer's fleets. We also continue to roll out in-field digital tools to enhance our service offering, improving quality and productivity. Surface fleet utilization remained healthy at 85%, while underground utilization increased to 69% and is currently running at 75%.
We have good operating leverage within the existing capacity of our current fleet, which limits the needs of growth CapEx to grow our earnings. The outlook for the rental business remains positive. Our competitive positioning via our fully maintained rental model positions the business well to capitalize on new opportunities. While wet weather remains challenging in Queensland, impacting utilization in early second half 2026, the medium-term production outlook remains robust as customers recover operations in the first half of 2026. Force is strategically important to the group with our workshops, field maintenance, asset management, and condition monitoring service capabilities. The key is to deliver cost-effective maintenance and rebuild capabilities to both our customers and to our own rental business. Force operates across seven workshops as well as fully mobile, Australians, 350 employees.
Force workshops completed 84 machine rebuilds in the first half of 2026 and also provided support services to XCMG for their battery-powered. Force delivered total gross revenue of AUD 141 million in the half. External revenue was down year-on-year, as workshop capacity was redeployed to support our internal remained high. The business maintained relatively stable gross operating EBITDA of AUD 18.3 million and a gross operating EBIT of AUD 15 million. Cost efficiency. The focus for Force will be on business development and increasing external work in both the Eastern and Western regions. The integration of underground capability has opened new maintenance services opportunities, while field-based services remain in strong demand. I'd like now to hand over to Theresa to run through the financials.
Thanks, Ian, and good morning, everyone. As with our prior presentations, we refer to operating results in our presentation today, which are non-IFRS. You'll find a reconciliation to our statutory results in the appendices. Slide 3, without rehashing too much of what Ian has covered already, has continued to deliver period-on-period top-line and bottom-line growth, with strong returns on capital. The business maintained the momentum created in FY 2025, mirroring the strong performance generated in the second half of 2025 into the first half of 2026. Importantly, revenue growth was driven by growth in low capital maintenance services, which continues to drive stronger returns for our business. While margins from services are lower, the return on capital is much higher. We expect to continue to grow this low capital side of our target.
Another point to make about our earnings for the half, our hours of rental fleet utilization were very similar to our last half, but our fleet mix was made up of smaller fleet. This reflected in average price per hour as well as depreciation cost per hour, which were both lower this half. Statutory profit after tax of AUD 38.7 million the prior corresponding period, while our operating profit after tax of AUD 46.5 million increased 21%. Lower finance costs contributed to this in the half. While our intention is to grow the business, we will continue to maintain discipline around the investments we make, and we will continue to have a laser-like focus on our ROC target, which, as Ian already mentioned, has increased by a further 100 basis points to 18% in the last six months.
Slide 14 shows the major camper here is operating free cash flow, which was up a strong 37% on the prior corresponding period. This was driven by a strong EBITDA to cash conversion of 110%. Strong debt collections, in combination with timing benefits on creditor payments, drove the stronger cash conversion, releasing AUD 11.3 million in working capital. We expect the timing benefits on working capital to reverse by year-end. Finance payments, AUD 13 million, were largely consistent with the prior comparative period. Stay in business CapEx totaled AUD 90.7 million in the half, representing a 17% increase from AUD 77.6 million in the prior corresponding period. Proceeds from disposal of property, plant, and equipment were AUD 4 million, resulting in a net CapEx of AUD 86.7 million.
Second half CapEx will be lower and will align with the guidance we've provided to the market for the full year. Free cash flow was again applied primarily to debt reduction, including lease liabilities and other financing obligations, which reduced by AUD 13.7 million. No shareholder distributions were made as the company focused on debt reduction ahead of the company's refinancing. The net result was an increase in cash of AUD 45 million, bringing total cash to AUD 171 million at period end, up from AUD 126 million since June. As with the prior year, no income tax was paid due to the group's carried forward tax loss position, which was AUD 74 million at period end.
Moving to the balance sheet and capital management on Slide 15, and shows the delivery of our de-leveraging strategy, with net leverage now reduced to 0.5x EBITDA. This provides substantial financial flexibility to manage business growth in the future. Just highlighting some of the numbers on the balance sheet. The AUD 52 million reduction in net debt since June was driven by strong earnings and cash conversion. The reduction in debtors with strong cash collections for the half. Prepayments and accruals were both higher, recognizing the renewal of the company's insurance program. Contract assets were high projects during the period. AUD 12 million in non-core or end-of-life fixed assets were transferred into held for sale. Trade creditors were higher due largely to timing, and tax liabilities are higher due to the consumption of tax losses.
Value created for shareholders in equity totaled AUD 39 million, with NT to AUD 1.44. CapEx outweighed depreciation during the half, mostly due to timing, with, as I just mentioned, AUD 12 million of fixed assets being transferred into monetization program. Turning to capital management. Importantly, the company's debt facilities were refinanced in November 2025 and were used to take out the company's maturing five-year, AUD 355 million syndicated bank debt facility was secured on better pricing and conditions than the pre-existing debt facilities and will provide us with better flexibility. Emeco's credit ratings were reaffirmed during the half, with Moody's maintaining Ba3 and Fitch at BB-. Ian will talk to this a little more in coming slides, but we are actively assessing low capital vertical opportunities to complement core business and will actively monitor competitors for consolidation opportunities.
We expect to see opportunity assessed using strong capital discipline principles, including our key target of 20% ROC.... On that note, the board have elected to preserve capital at this time and to priority no shareholder distributions have been recommended by the board in relation to the half. Slide 16 shows the maturity profile and liquidity position in a bit more detail. The main things to highlight here are that we successfully completed the refinancing of our AMTN, which has extended the bulk of our debt maturity profile to beyond the five-year mark. Applied towards refinancing the group's existing financial indebtedness, including the replacement of the existing RCF and the redemption of the AUD 250 million AMTN, which occurred on the 19th of January, 2026.
The group's liquidity position has improved since FY 2025, increasing by around AUD 50 million to AUD 271 million, taking account of the note redemption, which took place after period end. Slide 17 outlines our progress towards our ROC target. Our target of 20% has been key to driving improved efficiency and performance across all parts of our business. Over the last two years, we have consciously reduced our level of growth CapEx and focused on improving the cost performance of our business, as well as organically growing earnings through the value-added services we provide to our rental customers. These low capital services, on-site maintenance for our fleet, as well as customer-owned fleet, in combination with condition monitoring and reliability support. We delivered another 100 basis points, and our ROC now stands at 18%.
This compares to 17% in FY 2025, 16% in the first half of 2025, and 15% in FY 2024. In increasing our equipment utilization, optimizing the fleet, and increasing our low capital maintenance services earnings. If you recall, in Slide 10 on Force, the segment delivered AUD 15 million of EBIT in the half from AUD 3 million in net assets. So you can see the opportunity from continuing to grow lower capital intensity earnings. Increased utilization. With strong commodity prices in gold and copper, we see opportunities to grow here, and our BD teams are focused on achieving this. Generation. Emeco has delivered around AUD 265 million of free cash.
As you can see on the right-hand side, when the hurdle, the business is expected to deliver around AUD 120 million in free cash, which is a good guide for this year. At 20%, this increases to around 140 target. As always, I'm happy to talk more to the finances in the Q&A section. I'll now hand it back to Ian.
Thanks, Theresa. I'll now move on to strategy. On Slide 19, you'll find the pillars that guide our strategy and its execution. Emeco's core strategic pillars guide consistent execution and long-term sustainable value creation for shareholders. I want to briefly recap these, given their importance. We're Australia's lowest cost, highest quality, technology-driven mining equipment rental and maintenance service provider. We use our scale to invest in maintenance services, condition monitoring and asset management, technology, and the development of our skilled workforce to create a competitive market advantage. Portfolio of businesses and services balanced by service line, customer, project, commodity, and region. This gives us flexibility to service a broad range of core strength while also exploring complementary or logical adjacencies. Finally, pillar three: Exercise discipline and capital management. This pillar provides some of the guardrails to ensure disciplined capital allocation.
Setting a ROC target of 20% in combination with a more conservative leverage target, will provide more robust investment decision-making. Leverage of 0.5-1 times. This has been reset to support resilience through mining cycles, while also providing the flexibility or dry powder to make opportunistic investments should they arise. Being prudent in the consideration of our capital investments will drive us closer to our 20% return on capital target and will assist to maintain strong free cash cycles. These targets provide the flexibility to reinvest in the business, pursue inorganic growth, or return capital to shareholders. Moving on to Slide 20, and our scale and competitive advantage. We've worked really hard over the years to create a competitive advantage for our scale. As you can see by the map, we have operations all around Australia. We're truly national.
We have a very large rental fleet of 840 pieces of equipment. We have the ability to rebuild those equipment and rebuild mid-life equipment, which gives us a cost and quality advantage, and we're supported by the Force workshop, which has workshops all around Australia and a very talented workforce. On top of that, we have our asset management team, which are based in Brisbane. They provide reliability, engineering, asset planning, condition monitoring, and a bunch of analysts. They really are key to our business. Moving... These are presented across three broad time horizons. Our near-term focus will be on strengthening and optimizing our core by growing our fully maintained rental projects, expanding low capital earnings and maintenance offering. This includes organically growing our earnings through the provision of maintenance services for customer-owned fleet.
We'll actively monitor competitors for consolidation, and we'll scale up artificial intelligence and operational technology capability. These opportunities will likely be within or adjacent to the mining sector. Over the medium term, we'll extend our capabilities for adjacent low capital opportunities. This includes assessing adjacent maintenance services and asset management acquisitions, improving operational technologies into a repeatable operating model, and partnerships to accelerate entry into adjacencies. Over the longer term, our strategic focus will be on both bases by expanding existing capabilities into new industries or sectors, strategically scaling up digital services offerings, positioning the business for the energy transition. It does not mean that we're going on a buying spree. Each investment decision will continue to be considered utilizing strong guardrails aligned with the disciplined capital management, including key financial hurdle, alignment, and a driver for growth.
Slide 22 shows the growth of our workshop and maintenance services, and just how significant a part of this business this is. This generates 50% of gross revenues and about 35% of gross EBIT of the business from a small capital base. Maintenance services have been an important contributor to Emeco's financial performance, doubled over the last 12 months. The scale of this contribution demonstrates a strategic shift towards a low capital, high return service offerings. This expansion has been underpinned by significant growth across fully maintained projects, including projects where Emeco maintains both our and our customers' fleets. The maintenance service expansion directly strengthens Emeco's competitive positioning through the differentiated service capabilities that extend beyond traditional equipment rental. It's been a key factor in recent rental contracts, wins, and renewals while achieving high returns.
By leveraging Force Equipment's mid-life rebuild capability and on-site service expertise in combination with its asset management, condition monitoring, and reliability technology, the company's created a defensible competitive advantage that supports sustained earnings growth and improved capital efficiency across the business cycle. It's important that we show how management have organically grown this low capital side of the business significantly. We believe this is a strong avenue to deliver future earnings growth. We have a good delivery track record, and we'll seek to expand and grow this part of our business. I wanted to use Slide 23 to show just how serious we are about technology as a competitive advantage. Our asset management, reliability, and field service teams are applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive better equipment reliability, lower cost, and longer asset life for our customers.
We actively apply AI and machine learning to the data that we source from our oil samples analysis and machine telemetry to provide better predictive maintenance across our fleet, and in an increasing number of cases, our customers' fleet. With active condition monitoring through our in-house telemetry across more than 200 of our machines, we're developing first-generation in-house agentic reliability solutions using pattern analysis and root cause investigations to drive improved decision making and response times. We're rolling out the digitization of all paper-based field and workshops activities to improve maintenance, decision making, quality, and cost control. We're investigating the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning across asset knowledge, field quality, service delivery, and commercial processes. We assess its commerciality, feasibility, and business value. Slide 24 outlines a brief update on ESG.
We continue striving to be a sustainable business that delivers creative solutions for our customers, a family feel for our people, support of our local communities, and value for our investors. Emeco is committed to integrating environmental, social, and operations. We published a climate change position statement available on Emeco's website and are developing a decarbonization transition plan to work towards lower Scope 1. ARIO analysis has been undertaken to identify potential physical impacts of climate change on our people, equipment, and operations. Preparations for reporting under AASB S2 climate-related disclosures are well advanced with oversight through the ESG committee and Audit and Risk Management Committee. I touched on safety metrics for the first half earlier on slide place, health, safety, wellbeing, and training through targeted initiatives and improved consistency of execution.
FY 2026 HSCT focus areas include ongoing uplift in critical risk and control assurance, continued enhancement of workshop safety controls, and expansion of role-based leadership and workforce training. Governance, assurance, and to validate policy effectiveness and drive continuous improvement. Slide 25 lists our priorities and outlook for the second half of FY 2026. I'll start disciplined capital expenditure and cost efficiencies to drive returns and cash flow, while increasing utilization by building a portfolio of fully maintained projects for our pipeline of opportunities and expanding the full service offering. With regards to capital management and the deployment of growth capital, investment in fleet will be limited until our existing fleet is more fully utilized. With current capacity to grow earnings without the need to buy more fleet, a key driver to achieving our 20% return on capital.
We'll also actively evaluate potential M&A opportunities, including low capital intensity businesses, to complement our core business, and we're actively monitoring competitors for sensible consolidation opportunities. We intend to preserve our improved balance sheet and capital position to provide maximum flexibility should the right opportunity present. We'll continue to invest in technology to improve efficiency and to build our competitive advantage. The focus will be on delivering the build phase of our D365 ERP project and continuing the digitization of operational technology. I mean, on improving safety and health, continuing the development of our plan to reduce emissions, and preparing for the new FY 2026 sustainability reporting requirements. The mining sector outlook remains supportive for the business, with the medium-term production outlook remaining robust. This provides a stable foundation for continuing demand for our equipment rental and maintenance services across the sector.
For FY 2026, we expect staying in business capital of approximately AUD 170 million-AUD 175 million. Depreciation is expected to be in the order of AUD 160 million-AUD 165 million, while non-recurring spend is anticipated to be approximately AUD 15 million. We expect positive financial performance in the second half, subject to wet weather events in Queensland impacting client operations. Just to conclude, we will enable us to deliver sustainable growth and increase shareholder returns in FY 2026 and beyond. I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of the result and an excellent start to FY 2026. I'd like to thank our customers, suppliers, financiers, and the community partners who play a crucial role in our ongoing success. With that, I'll hand over for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from the line. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Ian, Theresa. Good numbers. Thanks very much for that. Just a couple for me quickly. Just firstly, thinking about the journey to 20% ROIC, which has been a long-term target now, and you're obviously making very good progress on that front. Do we think about that 3-month or a 24-month journey, do you think? Not to hold you to anything, but just in terms of direction.
Hey, guys. Thanks, mate. Appreciate your support. Yeah, that one, we've obviously done it. Hello? Can you hear me?
Can, mate. Yep.
Yeah, cool. Yeah. Sure, mate, you know, we've made great progress on that. We launched this objective at Euro conference a couple of years ago, and I'm really proud of the progress that we've made towards our target of 20%. Remains our target as we've put through the pack. It's all in utilization, really. You know, this has really helped in improve our return on capital, but if you look at that utilization at about 85%, it's kicking that up to 90, that really gets us to 20 at some point, which shows the missing capacity for interest earnings on this fleet.
Yep, it makes sense. So you can do it, you can do it quickly if you get to 90% steady, it might include some sort of, I don't know, continued growth in the maintenance side. Is that sort of one way to look at it?
Yeah, it is. The maintenance side of things, that earnings coming through, which is what I'm really proud of, to be honest, the team's done a fantastic job. Really leverages that return on capital, 'cause it's not capital-intensive earnings. But ultimately, getting that fleet working harder gives us that uptick in earnings as well. So it's a combination of those two things.
Yeah. Good one, and just one more from me. So medium term, you're talking about add-on acquisitions in the maintenance side and asset management side. Just wondering if you've got any flavor on how you're finding that competitive environment on the M&A front? You know, do vendors seem sensible to you in terms of price as a general rule, or where are we, where are we thinking about that in an M&A curve or cycle?
To be honest, mate, we haven't been overly active in that space just yet. We're working hard on our strategy and working with our board. You know, we've been in the gym for a couple of years getting fit, mate. You know, we're getting that, getting that leverage from 1x, you know, 1.1-ish down to 0.5. So we've, we've earned the right to consider those options. So I wouldn't say that we've done a hell of a lot of work in it. A fair bit of work in regard to, you know, how do we position this thing? There's, there's two, two, you know, areas of focus. One is consolidation, looking at competitors, where their fleet aligns with us, where we can take our maintenance services to improve their business. That's attractive to us.
The other thing is to have a look at what we are doing really well in maintenance? What's so much in our typical Force workshops? It's been growth in maintenance services in the field. What are we doing there? What are we doing well? Where can we improve on it? And where does it add value and broaden that value proposition? So they're the sort of two things that we're looking at in parallel, I guess.
Perfect. Makes sense. Thanks very much, guys. That's it for me.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further phone questions at this time. I will now hand back to Mr. Testrow for closing remarks.
All the hard work from the Emeco team, I touched on it in the preso, the great work to Theresa and her team and our legal team, Penny, just the hard work on that refi. I think that's a great thing for the business. So, big thanks for that and thanks to everyone. I appreciate it.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference connect.