Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Lycopodium full year FY 2026 results call. I am Sam Wells from NWR Communications, and joining me from the company today is Managing Director and CEO, Peter De Leo, as well as CFO, Justine Campbell. Following the summary of the results released to the market this morning, investors and research analysts will have an opportunity to ask questions throughout the call duration today. There will be a choice of two options. First, analysts and investors can raise your hand via Teams should you wish to ask a verbal question of the management team, or you can also submit a written question via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. If you are joining from your mobile phone device today, please email me any questions.
We will endeavor to get to the majority of questions asked, in some cases, combining questions on the same or similar topic. For the analysts asking verbal questions, we would kindly ask that you limit yourself to two questions on today's live call. Thank you, and over to you, Peter and Justine.
Thanks very much, Sam, and welcome to Lycopodium's investor presentation for the full year financial year 2026. We have just completed a highly successful year where we have delivered on our commitments to clients and shareholders alike. I thank staff and management for their outstanding efforts and really look forward to running you through some of the detail of what constituted a landmark year for Lycopodium. In the next 30 minutes or so, we will be providing you an update on the company, running through FY 2026 financial highlights, providing you some insight into our operational highlights for the year, and providing some commentary on the outlook for our business, as well as providing financial guidance for FY 2027.
In the past year, Lycopodium has enhanced its reputation as being one of the world's leading engineering and project delivery groups, working globally across the mineral resources, industrial processes, and rail infrastructure and asset management sectors. At the end of June, we had over 1,400 people, and at this time, as we speak today, we have 1,500 people in the business as we grow to meet the opportunities that we are seeing. We retain our 18 offices globally, and I will talk a little bit more about those later. We have a broad and diverse client base, including the emerging majors, and globally diversified companies, and really is a fantastic suite of clients for whom we work.
In terms of our capabilities and core services, we continue to work across all phases of projects, from very early stage evaluation, scoping and concept creation, through to the detailed engineering and project delivery, as well as being highly considered for our ability to provide optimization and expansion services for existing facilities. Each part of our business focuses on delivering and creating value, and it remains part of our ethos to focus on delivering high-quality services to help our clients succeed in unlocking the maximum potential in their projects. We continue to grow our global scale. In the past year, we have managed and controlled over nine million man-hours for the delivery of over 50 resource projects and 90 studies. Importantly, these metrics demonstrate both the growth, but also the potential for the business, as our level of committed contracts is up 59% from six months ago.
Revenue opportunity pipeline is up 8% from six months ago. Managed CapEx up 32% from six months ago. Number of studies we are currently managing up twofold from six months ago. Again, for those of you that have heard us present previously, you know that is a very important metric for our business. I will now hand over to Justine to present FY 2026 financial highlights.
Thanks, Peter. Lycopodium has had another successful financial year, delivering results within the guidance range for FY 2026. Revenue was AUD 377.5 million, up 11% on the prior year, representing record revenue for the company. EBITDA of AUD 59.5 million or 15.7%, with a profit before tax of AUD 52.5 million. NPAT of AUD 40.2 million at 10.6% of revenue reflects the company's long-term goal of a plus 10% NPAT margin target. NPAT is also at the top end of guidance given earlier this year. Equity increased 13% to AUD 170.7 million, with return on equity achieved of 25%. The net tangible assets are AUD 3.92 per share. The company again had strong operating cash flows, ending the financial year with a very healthy cash balance of AUD 106.2 million, with minimal debt maintained on the balance sheet. Earnings per share for FY 2026 were AUD 1.01 per share.
In line with the company's dividend policy, the board has declared a final dividend of AUD 0.37 per share, which together with the first half dividend, takes the full-year dividends to AUD 0.59 per share. The business has continued in FY 2026 to have a diversified portfolio of projects across geographies, commodities, and clients. Based on project location, 58% of the company's revenue was generated from projects in Africa, 24% from the APAC region, and 11% in the Americas. Lycopodium is considered a market leader in the delivery of gold processing plants, which is reflected in the number of gold studies and projects the company is completing. In addition, the business is working on copper, lithium, uranium, and other rare earth studies and projects.
Thank you, Justine. I'll now just touch on some operational highlights for the past 12 months. Across the last year, we've refined our operating model to focus on our regional approach to the delivery of our services, supporting our One Lycopodium ethos, where whether a client's being serviced from Cape Town, Perth, Brisbane, or Toronto, they receive the same high-quality outcome for which Lycopodium is known. This approach enables us to engage more effectively with clients, access new market opportunities, support structured growth across our identified key markets, and to leverage local expertise, and we've got great examples of that across all of those regions. We're organized around our three hubs, being APAC, Africa, and the Americas, and our efforts across the year have seen the first signs of our endeavor to achieve a balance of quality business across these three regions.
Based on our current and highly prospective workload, we believe we'll see a significant advance in this endeavor across the next 12 months, building on what was achieved in FY 2026. In terms of project highlights, we only yesterday advised the market of the award of our first material full EPCM in South America with the award of the Minera San Cristóbal project in Bolivia. Our other recent awards, including the Doropo project for Resolute, Pilgangoora plant expansion for PLS Group, and early works for Havieron, Greatland Resources, and Katanning Gold Project, of course, Ausgold, Roxanna, demonstrate our commitment and success in achieving a balanced and suitably blended style of contracting model across our project portfolio. We're also delighted to be ramping up on the Blackwater phase II expansion project, continuing work we've been undertaking at that operation, helping Artemis improve and debottleneck their phase I project.
Other work which continues to ramp up includes the Tulu Kapi project, for which we're doing an engineering supply and labor hire contract, and the Winu Copper integrated management team, again, which continues to grow within our facilities here in Perth, in fact. All this on top of the continued successful work Lycopodium is doing on major projects, including Koné project in Côte d'Ivoire, Twin Hills in Namibia, Baomahun in Sierra Leone, Yanqul in Oman, Nyanzaga in Tanzania. More on the project pipeline later. Further to our previously advised focus of building our business in the Americas, we continue to take a disciplined and staged approach to expansion in this key geography, providing a key growth pillar to the organization. Our presence in the Americas started some 15 years ago with the establishment of our first American office in Toronto.
In the past few years, in particular, we have seen steady but significant growth with the acquisition of SAXUM, as well as the opening of our client-facing studies-focused office in Vancouver and our value engineering and regional office in Lima. Our focus in the past year and heading into FY 2027 is to convert a suitable and sustainable pipeline of quality work, and we will see the offices in Toronto, Lima, and Vancouver all increase in size in the next 12 months, with additional floor space being taken in Toronto, a new office being sought in Vancouver, and a new office being sought in Lima to accommodate that expansion. I'll run you through, this is a slide that we've presented over the last couple of years, just to demonstrate the project pipeline and where we're at in the various phases of project.
I'll note that, as I mentioned earlier, we have a very healthy level of studies, plus 90 studies through the business at the moment. I also note the commodity blend in the new work, as well as the excellent work being done in that work under the green block. I've mentioned some of these projects already. Not only that work that we've done, but that work that we've completed. So, in the last 12 months, we completed work at Greenbushes on Talison's CGP3 project, the work for Orezone on the Bomboré project, Newmont at Ahafo North project, and Managem's Boto project. Again, of importance is if I look at the work we've done in the last 12 months for Talison, Orezone, Newmont, and Managem, those four projects that I've spoken about we've completed.
We've got continued and ongoing work with all those clients and Managem's case, they've seen fit to award us, or have us lined up to be awarded, additional EPCM and study phase projects in the next 12 months. Again, it's an excellent testament to the quality of the work that was completed during that period of time. Lycopodium remains focused on attracting and developing high-quality individuals into our organization. We now have a very well-established approach to inducting, training, and developing people at all levels, and we seek, in the main, to grow our own Lycopods with a very strong graduate development program and induction of more junior-level people. We also like to graft them onto our organization in the case of later career stage individuals. This supports our approach to ongoing development of the individuals, but also ongoing growth of the business.
We're also committed to providing our staff high-quality systems and tools of trade to enable them to deliver their work effectively and efficiently. We have, in the last 12 months, continued to roll out our new ERP to improve the functionality of that ERP, to focus on the standardization of our platforms across the business, to work on the engineering and project delivery tools for the business, and all done very, very successfully, as well as mapping out our digital pathway. All of this is to support our One Lycopodium approach. We continue to support the communities within which we work and live by the Lycopodium Foundation. Our efforts in this regard are focused on the key pillars of social development, education, innovative thinking and environmental sustainability, and I'm very proud of the work that the team has done.
Most recently, a highlight has been a raising of over AUD 110,000 at our annual Jeans for Genes event for the Children's Medical Research Institute. That brings in total, from Lycopodium over the past 20+ years, in excess of AUD 600,000 raised for that very important cause. Outlook and guidance. The overall demand drivers for our services remains very strong. At this time, demand outweighs capacity in the market for quality engineering and project delivery services. Lycopodium's excellent track record and reputation and the ability to work globally across a broad range of commodities provide us with a growing list of opportunities which bodes well for our pipeline of work. We have, at this time, a record level of committed work and an excellent view on the potential pipeline across not only FY 2027, but into FY 2028.
We are established and our strategies in the past few years have really laid the foundations for us to be able to maximally support what is a very, very busy and enduring market. The growing volume of work underpins future earnings, and considering the FY 2027 outlook, we have seen fit to bring forward our guidance this year. Ordinarily, we provide our first guidance at the AGM, but given that FY 2027 looks a little different to FY 2026, we have decided to seen fit to talk about it at this point in time and give guidance of revenue between AUD 540 million- AUD 580 million, with a net profit after tax range of AUD 54 million- AUD 58 million, again, typically in line with our ± 10% NPAT target for the business. We will, of course, continue to update shareholders as the financial year progresses.
In summary, Lycopodium remains a secure, stable and sustainable business with deep engineering expertise, a disciplined approach to risk management, an exceptionally strong history of execution, a capital-light approach to our business. We maintain a list of blue-chip clients. We have good commodity diversification, and we are geographically diversified as a business. It is something which we have been focusing on, as I have said earlier in the presentation, but is really starting to see the delivery of real value to the organization. Before I invite questions, I would just like to, again, on behalf of the Board of Lycopodium, thank our staff and management for their excellent efforts and hard work this year. I also invite you to peruse the full presentation, which includes, amongst other things, an overview of Lycopodium's strategic approach to risk management and innovation, as well as a host of other relevant information.
Now I will hand over to Sam, who can manage any questions that you may have.
Great. Thank you very much, Peter and Justine. As a reminder, you can ask questions via the teams, via written submitted, via the Q&A function, or coverage research analysts are invited to raise their hands should they wish to ask a verbal question. We will kick off with a few pre-submitted questions first. How is Lycopodium structurally mitigating increased sovereign and execution risks as its contract mix tilts heavily towards foreign jurisdictions? Additionally, is the company achieving higher project margins to compensate for these risks? Or does the complexity of international work erode any potential pricing premium?
Thank you, Sam. That is a good question, and I guess Lycopodium's approach to managing the risk of some of the jurisdictions in which we work is handled in a number of ways. The first one is that typically our contracts on the international projects are split contracts, where a large part of the portion of the work, of course, happens in our hubs or our spoke offices. For those contracts, I am talking there about the engineering, the procurement services and other things, study services, go without saying, happen in the hubs, and those contracts are contracted with our APAC entity or our Americas entity or the South African-based entity. So that sees a lot of our revenues, a lot of our earnings, and the jurisdiction of those earnings being outside of those international locations.
The work that we do in country, obviously, is all contracted through our, typically our in-country entities, which again, are fully compliant with the requirements of the country. We have over 30 years track record of working in a lot of those jurisdictions or jurisdictions with lots of similar attributes. So, Lycopodium has established risk management approach to everything we do, whether it be contracts, legal, health and safety, logistics, whatever the case may be. Our skills and our ability, however, and our call it our strength in those niche markets, enables us to deliver good returns and good margins. Now we always seek to deliver value to our clients. So, I am not going to suggest that we were looking to gouge our clients in difficult jurisdictions because just we cannot. We do not do that. We play the long game.
What we do, of course, is make sure we can price fully. Because of our skill and expertise in dealing with all the nuances of working in many of these jurisdictions, we are able to deliver very good returns. It is in years gone by and forecast years ahead, it has been supportive of delivering very, very strong NPAT return or very strong return on our revenues. That is our intention moving forward. So, I hope I have answered the question, but I guess in summary, it is Lycopodium's well rooted in terms of our approach to risk management, understanding of the subject matter, and seeks good return for what we do in those jurisdictions.
Great. Thank you. The next on the study pipeline. It is more than doubled since December. What is your historical conversion rate from study to project award, and how should we think about typical lead times? Also, how has the composition of these studies shifted, i.e., Americas based majors versus emerging companies, or those with multi-asset?
Yeah. Or maybe the second part first, and that is that, look, I am really pleased with the composition of the studies and as much as they are, as they demonstrate good geographic diversification, good commodity diversification, good clientele in terms of dealing with some of the globally diversified majors right the way through mid-tiers and juniors. And I think it bodes well for the project pipeline moving forward. The other important thing is we are dealing with, in that 90 plus 90 mix of studies, we have got some good advanced stage, definitive feasibility, bankable feasibility studies, some good pre-phase work, some good scoping study work, concept level works. Again, bodes well for that continuity of work through the various phases of a project's, call it life cycle. In terms of conversion, it depends.
Well, I guess, in terms of converting a study into a project, you are converting a definitive fees or what they call the bankable fees or advanced phase feasibility study into projects. The early stuff obviously converts into a pre-phase and so on and so forth. But typically, if we are involved with a project, and we continue to do good work for our clients, we get carried forward through the various study phases. So that percentage of, sort of, call it tenure or retention is very high. And then into execution, invariably our clients need to bid the execution work. Obviously, it is the difference between 1.5%, 2% of CapEx to 15% of CapEx. So, it is important often thing for them to be able to baseline before simply awarding us an EPCM.
I think in pretty much every instance, an organization would like to carry forward the engineer who has done the study into execution, but that does not necessarily always work that way. But I would say that in plus 70% of cases, we are able to convert our advanced stage studies into projects which we execute.
Okay, great. And just one more question before we open up the line to the analysts. On the Americas, it is great to see tendering underway across a handful of countries. Can you just give us a sense of the tender pipeline quantum and realistic timeframe to material project award in that region? And how does a project like the Blackwater expansion help credentialize that North American team in the region?
The timeline of the projects is, again, quite good because, again, we're working on some study work. We're bidding some EPCM work. We're really targeting the size of projects such as San Cristóbal, which really suits us, I think, better, to enable us to build our Lima office, our Tucumán, our Buenos Aires offices, and SAXUM's capabilities. Even the stuff that we're doing, we're tendering in Canada. Blackwater is by far the biggest of those. Typically, the work that we're tendering, certainly at an EPCM level, is a project with CapEx value somewhere between AUD 500 million and AUD 800 million. Which, again, is very much in Lycopodium's sweet spot. To your question with regards to Blackwater phase II and our involvement with Artemis, as I said, we're delighted to be involved with Artemis.
The Artemis team are made up of a group of individuals with whom Lycopodium has worked before. So, we got a unique opportunity to become involved with that project. It's a very, very significant project. Certainly, the largest thing we've undertaken in Canada from a boots-on-the-grounds perspective. But it does credentialize you. We've worked with them and are working with them on their phase I expansion, their phase I rectification, their phase II expansion project, which is a very significant project in its own right. Now starting to kick off work with them on their phase III study, which is very much a forward-looking, at this point in time, concept study, but could see us involved if we do the right thing, working with that organization well into the 2030s.
But successful delivery of phase I, phase I-A, and successful delivery of phase II will underscore our credentials in delivery in EPCM, full EPCM service, in Canada. It helps us credentialize ourselves in terms of cold weather engineering. So, for us, it's a really key and important project, and we've assigned significant resources, not only from within Canada but globally, to support that team in the delivery of that project. It won't be without its challenges. All these projects have got challenges, but going well, so we're at least the same.
Great. Thank you. Next question comes from Oli Porter at Euroz. Oli, please unmute your line and go ahead.
Have you got me?
Yep.
Yep.
Yep. Hey, Peter and Justine Campbell. Thanks for taking the time. From me, you are obviously guiding to big growth in FY 2027, which is fantastic. Beyond expanding the workforce, is there anything else you need to invest in internally to deliver at that elevated level, or are the investments you've made over the last few years sufficient to prepare you for that?
Look, structurally, from a corporate structure perspective and a structural perspective, no, there's nothing to invest in. Office space, I mentioned. We need more office space in Lima, and we've identified the location. We're seeking to grow Lima to more capacity to about 110, 120 people. Toronto, we're planning to take up another piece of space there, which will enable us to grow that contingent to the levels we need. Vancouver, at the moment it's quite a small office. It was only intended to be that, but we see opportunities to continue to grow Vancouver because the level of interest in our organization in terms of delivering studies and engaging with clients and then as a pipeline into Latin America and other places in North America, has been really promising. We'll grow that office or move into a slightly larger office there as well.
Really, it's just that office space. A lot of our IT licenses and things obviously vary with headcounts, but again, that's all accommodated in our budgets and plans and the like.
Excellent. Then just on the guidance again. Guiding this fairly clearly, is it indicative of an elevated level of confidence comparative to prior periods? Does that confidence at this stage extend to 2028 relative to how you felt a year ago?
Look, FY 2028 is a long way out.
Yeah.
But in terms of the market, and it is subject to the market, but in terms of the market, we are seeing kind of sustained opportunities and really it is about that. I think on one of the slides we said that push into the Americas has increased our addressable market by 40%. That is what can drive continued growth into FY 2028 and beyond, but obviously it is a long way out and God knows what will happen between now and then.
Yeah. Lots of work to deliver on between now and then. All right. Thank you, Pete, Justine. Appreciate it. I will pass it on.
Great. Thank you, Oli. Next question comes from Sam Pittman at Taylor Collison. Sam, please go ahead and unmute your line.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, we can.
Perfect. Just in terms of the resource studies, obviously that's a pretty significant jump, half- on- half. Clearly, it's driven in part by a buoyant market, but what drove the increased studies number?
Well, buoyant market being first, but also our approach. This sort of focus on a regional approach. I will give you an example of some of the early, bearing some early fruit, for that change in approach or that tweak in approach. Our Melbourne office for a long time has been solidly focused on industrial processes, engineering, project delivery, the same sort of same, fundamental competencies and capabilities. But that office now reports in under our APAC hub. We have eliminated some silos, opening up some geographies, and that office is starting to see and engage in a broader scope. Our Brisbane office is winning study work in its own right.
Cape Town is winning a fair amount of. I mean, Cape Town has won in the last, and has some really interesting and important study work going on in uranium, in diamonds, in platinum, palladium, chromium and other things, as well as gold. So, it is really taking that One Lycopodium approach across the hubs, trying to break down silos. I think that for me has been probably one of the main things we have been able to achieve in the last 12 months. It has not all happened in the last 12 months. It has been a work in progress for many years. But, we are starting to see some good traction. The Americas, so the list of studies that have been picked up between Toronto, Vancouver, and even with SAXUM, you know, it is an impressive list of studies across commodities, geographies, and clientele.
Thanks. Yeah, that is all. Excellent results though.
Great. Thanks, Sam. Okay, just one final question here. Just on FY 2027 guidance, and maybe Oli got to this a little earlier, but the FY 2027 revenue midpoint of AUD 560 million implies 50% growth year- on- year. What proportion is already locked in within the AUD 661 million committed contracts, and how much depends on projects still ramping or yet to formally commit?
Just under 70% is already committed, which is fantastic for this time of the year. This time of the financial year, being so early in. The balance, just over 30%, still needs to commit, but some of that is, I feel, quite near-term as well, so we are in the final phases of discussion and negotiation for a number of things. Of course, again, we are involved. One project that probably stands out a little bit is, given the news the last couple of days, Katanning. We are involved with early works on that. It is a modest piece of work at this point in time. It will be interesting to see how that plays out for us the next 12 months.
A lot of the work that we will be doing in the next financial year has already been booked and/or will be booked in the next month or so.
Okay, great. Thank you. I think that is all the time, or that is all the questions we have today. If there are any follow-ups, please feel free to email myself or Justine and we will endeavor to come back to you. Maybe with that, Peter , I will just pass it back to you for some closing comments.
Thank you very much. Well, again, listen, thanks Sam, and thanks for those that posed the questions this morning, asked the questions. As Sam said, any questions you have, please feel free to come through to us, through Sam or Justine or myself, and we can seek to answer them for you. Thank you for listening in. Again, it has been a fantastic year. FY 2026 was a great year for Lycopodium, and we are looking to another great year ahead in FY 2027. So, thanks for all the support and for all the interest and have a great day.
Thank you.