Welcome to the Macmahon Holdings Limited Fiscal Year 2022 Results Conference Call. All participants are in the listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Michael Finnegan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Macmahon 2022 results presentation, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Michael Finnegan, the CEO and MD of Macmahon, and I'm joined by our CFO, Ursula Lummis, and Donald James, our Chief Commercial Officer. We do appreciate your time and the opportunity to run through today's presentation at what is no doubt a very busy time of year, and there will be an opportunity for questions following the presentation. Let's begin with the financial highlights on slide two of the presentation. Macmahon delivered expected revenue and record underlying EBITDA slightly above the midpoint of the guidance range in FY 2022. Another great result for the company. This was the fifth consecutive year of meeting guidance, and we believe the careful and consistent execution of our growth strategy has been a key driver in being able to build this track record.
As you'll be aware from our first half results discussion and the results of our peers, the industry as a whole has been faced with very challenging economic conditions in Australia and globally, including the ongoing impacts of COVID-19. These have included continued supply chains disruptions, rapidly rising global inflationary pressures, skilled labor shortages, and in particular, escalating labor costs. These industry-wide issues have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, causing significant absenteeism and requiring careful workforce and cost management. We've applied significant focus to manage these challenges, and their ongoing careful management will remain a key focus for the coming year to not only ensure Macmahon performance, but also to ensure that critically important relationships with key clients are maintained.
Revenue was up 26% to AUD 1.7 billion, primarily driven by new contracts that either continued to ramp up or commenced over the last 12 months, including Gwalia, King of the Hills, Warrawoona, Dawson South, and Foxleigh. I'll talk more about some of our projects later. It is important to highlight that many of our contracts have rise and fall provisions around costs, so some cost recoveries and passthroughs have contributed to the revenue number. While some of these recoveries don't contribute margin, they do protect our earnings base to some extent from the rising labor and other costs we have seen across the industry. EBITDA growth was 17% to AUD 291 million, a new record for the company. Margins remained resilient at 17.2% even after the cost escalation passthroughs.
Underlying EBITDA was also at a record level of AUD 100.8 million, up 5%. Statutory NPAT was AUD 27.4 million due to the inclusion of the GBF earn-out finalized during the first half, software as a service, customization costs, and amortization of customer contract assets recognized on acquisitions. NPAT in the second half period was AUD 24.1 million. The reconciliation on slide 27 in the appendix outlines the one-off costs in further detail and shows how we get to our underlying numbers. Underlying cash flow generation remained steady at AUD 269.8 million, which equated to a healthy EBITDA cash conversion of 92.6%.
Net debt reduced over 10% from our first half position to AUD 215.5 million and was 0.74 times EBITDA, reflecting lower capital expenditure demands in the second half period following some key investment in new contract startups. The final dividend for 2022 financial year was AUD 0.0035 per share, bringing the full year payout to AUD 0.0065 per share. This is in line with the full year FY 2021 dividend and represents a payout ratio of approximately 22%, consistent with the target payout ratio of between 10%-25% of underlying earnings per share. The final dividend is unfranked.
Return on average capital employed was 13.9%, an improvement on our first half result, but lower than the FY 2021 result due to the impact of growth CapEx, where operational earnings generation lags the upfront investment. We expect this to trend up towards our target of 15% and beyond with the lower growth CapEx requirements over the coming year and earnings to come through on the recent new contract startups. The order book remains at AUD 5 billion, with AUD 1.45 billion secured for FY 2023 already.
Finally, our current expectations for FY 2023 are for revenue guidance in the range of AUD 1.6 billion-AUD 1.7 billion, an underlying EBITDA guidance of between AUD 105 million-AUD 125 million, reflecting our focus on delivering improved returns. A widening of the guidance range reflects the challenging industry cost environment we find ourselves in. However, we continue to manage this carefully to minimize its impact. Slide three shows some highlights across our broader business. In Surface, project commencements occurred at Warrawoona, Dawson, and King of the Hills. Regarding Batu Hijau waste, we are well progressed in discussions with AMNT. This scope is expected to extend our in-pit mining activities by another six years.
We expect to finalize the Phase 8 contract very soon, which will include communications to our investors in terms of the process we are following. The underground mining division continued its ramp up at Gwalia during the year and commenced at King of the Hills in April. To round out other achievements, we have outlined on this slide some of the activity in mining support services, which included the ramp up of Foxleigh, and now makes up around 11% of our group revenue. Mining support services contributes to our earnings diversity and broad service offering to our clients. This 11% group revenue mix in FY 2022 compares to 3% last year, and is solid progress against our strategic target to increase it as a proportion of business revenue.
I've already outlined our FY 2023 guidance, but to recap, we expect similar levels in revenue and improved earnings in FY 2023 due to the removal of pass-through costs at Batu Hijau being replaced with revenue from mining projects ramped up and commenced during the year and improved margins. This is supported by an order book of AUD 5 billion, which includes AUD 1.45 billion of work already secured for FY 2023. The secured work excludes civil and underground, which is historically between AUD 100 million-AUD 150 million per annum. The addressable pipeline has continued to grow year-over-year and currently stands at around AUD 8.4 billion. This strong forward demand profile allows us to selectively grow the business and manage our costs and returns in the current environment.
We also have cash and available facilities of just under AUD 300 million, positioning us well to capitalize on these opportunities. Slide four outlines our all-important safety metrics and activities over the year. While safety is of a critical importance to us at all times, it requires additional management when onboarding large numbers of new people. Our workforce grew by over 10% with the addition of nearly 800 people during the year, and I'm extremely pleased that we improved our safety performance during this rapid growth period. Macmahon's total recordable injury frequency rate for FY 2022 decreased to 4.8% from 6.4% in the previous year. Our safety team continues to strive to minimize this number, and we expect further improvement in FY 2023.
Some of the initiatives to achieve this are listed on this slide and include training our frontline leaders in our integrated management system, recognizing sexual harassment as a material risk within the company with a reinforced commitment and tangible actions to ensure people feel safe and comfortable at work, and in our continuing psychological safety program to address culture and make sure our people are empowered to speak up to create a safer work environment. I can't talk about safety without also addressing mental health and wellbeing, which continues to be an important part of our safety efforts. We have been extending our leading Strong Minds, Strong Mines program to our wider community, and we are also now piloting a Strong Minds, Strong Schools program.
As I mentioned earlier, a key challenge facing the industry at large has been an acute shortage of skilled labor at a time when demand has been high. This has been magnified by high levels of absenteeism and other business disruptions as a result of COVID-19. Our Grow Our Own program has therefore been central to managing these challenges, and it has resulted in the training of 929 people to support our growth. Through our registered training organization, we're also supporting industry in training another 101 people external to Macmahon. Our overall diversity measures are shown at the bottom of the slide with around 15% of our workforce female and around 5% indigenous. We continue to work to increase the diversity of our workforce.
Around 32% of all our trainees are female and 9% are indigenous, with a 75% retention rate. Our female participation is even higher in our new to industry trainees at 41% with a 90% retention rate. A consistent challenge across our sector is dealing with this skills shortage. Given our diverse business, the impact has been different in the different regions. In Southeast Asia, the challenges around attraction and retention have pleasingly been minimal, and we are seeing that improve further post the lifting of COVID protocols at Batu Hijau. In WA, we have seen pressure in this area ease slightly in the last six months, with exceptions in a few highly skilled roles. However, we have seen increased pressure in this area in recent times on the East Coast of Australia.
This has required us to adjust our processes, procedures, and support network in this area to minimize the impact and ensure we can deliver for our clients and maintain those important relationships. I mentioned during the financial highlights that cost recovery has contributed to our revenue growth and were an important part in maintaining our level of earnings during the significant cost pressures we are seeing across the mining industry. Importantly, our contract structures provide some protection against input costs, including labor. Approximately 43% of our revenue is from allowance style contracts with budget adjustment mechanisms. The remainder of our revenue is schedule rates contracts containing rise and fall provisions, which are adjusted periodically, such as monthly, quarterly, and biannually, so we can respond to market rates. Our new contract rates reflect current market conditions.
Slide six is a recap of our key projects, their cost curve profile and related commodity exposure. Further details of our projects are provided in the appendix at the back of the presentation. However, I would like to take the time to touch on some key contract progress. We commenced Warrawoona surface project and the King of the Hills surface and underground projects during the second half of FY 2022. Pleasingly, despite the acute labor skills shortage we're seeing, we've been able to make significant inroads to workforce establishment. Our Telfer project is delivering improved performance following renegotiations that concluded in FY 2021. Following the closure of the Mount Morgans project in late FY 2022, we successfully redeployed the workforce to other Macmahon projects in the region.
The ability to retain our workforce demonstrates the benefit of Macmahon's business scale that has been built up over the past five years. Now before I hand over to Ursula for the financials, I'd like to finish with some comments on our sustainability reporting on slide seven. This is clearly an important area for our broader stakeholders as well as our shareholders, and we continue to strive to improve our performance and our disclosure here. We have today released a standalone sustainability report that provides more detail around our approach. To recap, our ESG priorities have been guided by a materiality assessment we conducted with our investors and stakeholders in 2020, which identified the key issues of material importance to our stakeholders and also having a material impact on Macmahon. These unsurprisingly included health and safety, wellbeing, the environment, and governance, among other key reporting issues.
The slide shows some reporting and disclosure highlights on some of these issues, including our emission summary, diversity in our business, and the focus we have on eliminating sexual harassment. Our sustainability report, which I'd encourage you to take a look at, provides much more detail on these and other sustainability disclosures and measures. I'd now like to hand over to Ursula to talk about our financials, and we'll return to conclude with some comments on our strategy and outlook.
Thanks, Mick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for taking the time to join us today. Further to Mick's earlier overview of our financial performance, slide nine provides some additional context illustrating the company's trend of growth in revenue and underlying operating earnings. Our revenue growth this year reflects both increased and new project activity and also includes some cost recovery and pass-throughs which protected our earnings in a rising cost environment, but also did not always contribute towards the margin. This is the primary reason revenue growth outpaced underlying EBITDA growth, but EBITDA still increased by 17% as new projects progressed beyond the start-up phase. I think this is a key takeaway on this slide and shows that new projects have been brought online successfully given the market challenges Mick outlined.
You can see on the chart that EBITA growth was lower than EBITDA, primarily due to increased depreciation levels following the investments in new contracts, where earnings generation lags the initial project start-up and the capital investment, but it was still a solid 5%. I'll talk a bit more to the revenue when I discuss the profit and loss. Slide 10 shows our track record of performance against our market guidance, which we have now met for five consecutive years. I know there are challenges that businesses face every year, but I'm sure you'll agree that the challenges over the last couple of years have been most unusual. Maintaining a track record of reliable guidance that has been consistently met has been an important achievement. Our guidance ranges for FY 2023 reflects growth in earnings.
We believe the business is well positioned given the solid tender pipeline and order book with AUD 5 billion of work in hand. Around AUD 1.5 billion of this is already blocked in for FY 2023. Notably, it is expected the pass-through costs from the Batu Hijau project, comprising approximately AUD 180 million of FY 2022 revenue, will be replaced with the recent project start-ups and ramp-up revenue, which attracts a margin. This, of course, is subject to COVID-19 not significantly disrupting our business. Slide 11 again illustrates the strong cash flow generation of the business with underlying operating cash flow of AUD 270 million. This is in line with the strong cash flow achieved in FY 2021 and represented a healthy conversion rate of EBITDA.
Of particular note is EBITDA cash conversion during the second half of FY 2022, which was 114%, up on the 71% delivered in the first half of FY 2022. The chart on the right-hand side shows our returns on average capital employed in the business. We achieved a return of 13.9% in FY 2022. This reflects growth capital investments in new projects in the first half of the year and a lag in earnings during the ramp-up phase until steady-state. Importantly, you can see that the business has consistently generated return of average capital employed returns of around 14%-17% over the last few years. We are focused on the return of average capital employed as a key measure and seeing this increase going forward.
Turning to the profit and loss in a bit more detail on slide 12, revenue increased by 26%. This was underpinned by organic growth along with the ramp-up of existing projects, Gwalia, Julius, and Foxleigh, and commencement of the new projects, Dawson South, Fimiston, King of the Hills, and Warrawoona. EBITDA growth was 17% and was driven by greater activity across the business, with contributions from the new projects and cost recovery from clients. The cost recovery preserves our earnings but does not always contribute towards the margin. EBITA growth was positive but lower at 5%, reflecting the increased depreciation from the investments in the new projects. Effective borrowing costs increased to 4.8% as of 30 June 2022, up from 4.6% in the prior year. This reflects increases in the cash rate during the year.
The EBITDA interest coverage remained healthy at five times despite the higher borrowing costs. Reported NPAT includes the GBF earn-out payment of AUD 22.3 million reported in the first half, with underlying NPAT, excluding this and other one-off adjustments, was AUD 63 million. The difference between our statutory and underlying earnings is detailed in the appendices on slide 27. An important point to note on the tax is the effective tax rate of 41% was impacted by the GBF earn-out costs that are not deductible. Excluding this one-off item, the tax rate would have been approximately 27.5%. Finally, on dividends, the full-year dividends have been maintained at AUD 0.0065 per share, consistent with the last year and a 22% payout ratio.
It is in line with a policy payout range of 10%-25% of underlying earnings per share. The final dividend of AUD 0.0035 per share is unfranked. Slide 13 is another regular feature in our presentations, and it outlines the portfolio diversity in the business. As you can see, we have good diversity across our major clients, which includes a broader cross-section of clients compared to last year. Pleasingly, gold and copper-gold accounts for around 3/4 of our FY22 revenue. Just under 80% of our work is generated in Australia, with the remainder in Southeast Asia, mainly Indonesia, which is principally our work at Batu Hijau. Surface mining remains our largest area of activity, but underground has now increased to 1/4 of the group's revenue and compares to FY21 of 22%.
Importantly, mining support services has increased to 11% compared to the 3% in FY 2021. Cash flow and net debt waterfall on slide 14 provides an overview of the major cash movements during the year that have contributed to the closing net debt position at 30 June 2022. EBITDA of AUD 291.4 million was again the main driver of cash inflows. Underlying operating cash flow was AUD 269.8 million and was consistent with FY 2021. EBITDA cash conversion of 92.6% and movements in working capital, interest costs, and the software as a service payment was the primary difference between the EBITDA and the operating cash flows. Higher working capital was required for new project startups and inventory buildup to proactively manage COVID-related supply shortage risks.
CapEx was AUD 279 million and included AUD 131 million in growth CapEx on recent contract awards, Gwalia, Dawson South, King of the Hills, and Warrawoona. Sustaining CapEx was AUD 148 million and includes extension CapEx. We expect more moderate levels of CapEx in FY23 at around AUD 194 million, primarily relating to sustaining and extension CapEx, which includes the Batu Hijau Phase 8 expected CapEx amounts. Our past investments in growth positions us well to deliver on our return on average capital employed target of sustainably above 15% in future years. Our balance sheet position at the end of the financial year is summarized on slide 15. Our gearing and debt ratios have increased compared to the end of the last financial year.
We have seen positive movements since the half, which we think is important in the current environment. The key takeaway remains that the balance sheet and liquidity position of the business remains solid while we manage through a high growth phase. This is an output of our disciplined approach to capital allocation and management. Net debt to EBITDA of 0.74x remains below the target range of 1x, which is an improvement on our half year of 0.87x. Gearing was 27.8% and is higher than FY 2021 due to the new project capital and additional inventory spend. It is down from around 31% over the first half of 2022.
In July, we financed, refinanced our existing AUD 170 million syndicated finance facility into a new AUD 200 million facility with improved terms, including a lower margin over the swap rate and a maturity date extended by just over three years to September 2026. We have a robust available liquidity position post the refinancing of the SFA of AUD 297 million to support the business. The other key ratio on this slide is the return on average capital employed, which, as you can see, was 13.9%. As I mentioned earlier, this was primarily impacted by growth CapEx relating to the start-up of the new contracts. Thank you for your attention, and I will now hand back over to Mick before we open for questions.
Thanks, Ursula. Slide 17 reiterates our strategy, which has remained consistent and provided a foundation for growing our business as we have faced changing market cycles and conditions. Our core strategy is focused on delivering long-term outcomes, and we're focused on improving our execution and delivery to increase underlying profit. This has included preserving operating profit in periods of escalating costs. Investing in equipment, people, and technology to maintain and enhance our competitive advantage. People have been a primary area of investment in FY 2022, and we expect this to continue into FY 2023. Diversifying into target growth areas of the business, including underground and mining support services, and expanding our service offering to clients. King of the Hills is a very good example of this, where we have an integrated project providing services across both surface and underground mining.
Macmahon was in a major investment phase in FY 2021 and 2022 to support new contract wins. The focus in FY 2023 will be to fully realize the benefits from this investment as we look to maximize contract performance and improve operating margins. We remain very focused on disciplined capital management as we continue to progress towards our target returns. Our focus has pivoted to capital allocation, cash back earnings, free cash flow generation, and return on capital employed as key measures. We believe this focus will build a more resilient business that has balancing capacity to capitalize on opportunities as they arise. Longer term, we continue to look to diversify and expand our service offering across the mining value chain with a specific focus on lower capital-intensive complementary services such as civil construction and underground. Smart investments in operational technology to enhance our operational efficiency and effectiveness.
We include slide 18 in the presentation to illustrate how we have diversified and expanded our business towards the achievement of our long-term targets. Looking back to FY 2018, nearly 90% of our revenue came from surface mining. It was around three-quarters last year and is currently under 65%, with underground now representing a quarter of our group revenue. There is significant scope to continue growing the underground business as well as mining support services, and we will continue to look for appropriate growth opportunities, both organic and external. It is important to note the changing proportion of the business makeup we seek is not gonna be at the expense of the size of the surface business. It will be through growing underground and mining support services.
Having the surface business as the foundation of our company provides security and long-term earnings visibility from which we can generate cash flow through the cycles and insulate us in challenging periods. While margins have been lower in the business, as we've discussed, we have also protected our earnings in a rising cost environment and expect our increased investment on new projects in FY 2021 and 2022 to deliver higher returns in FY 2023 and beyond. As we achieve a more even spread of the business mix, this will create a more scalable and sustainable business and support us in delivering on our financial targets. However, as we progress on our journey to reduce capital intensity, as I mentioned earlier, the key metric we will be focusing on is improving return on average capital employed, which will lower EBITDA as capital intensity in the business declines.
Now, before I talk about the outlook for FY 2023, I wanna walk you through our order book and tender pipeline on slide 19. The total order book has remained resilient at AUD 5 billion. The column chart shows the order book runoff with a healthy AUD 1.45 billion of contracted revenue already in FY 2023 and nearly AUD 1.2 billion of contracted work for FY 2024 already secured. This excludes any short-term churn work, which is usually between AUD 100 million-AUD 150 million per annum, putting us in a very strong position for the current year and beyond. Importantly, the order book includes high-quality clients and long-term alliance-style contracts and is evolving consistent with our strategic focus areas. This provides us with confidence in achieving strategic alignment and revenue visibility over the medium term.
The tender pipeline of highly filtered, aligned, and credible project opportunities has grown by around 18% over the last 12 months to around AUD 8.4 billion and supports a positive longer-term outlook for the business. The majority of these opportunities are in Australian gold and copper projects, but we've also seen new opportunities in other critical emerging commodities. Underground opportunities represent 20% of the pipeline, while mining support services represent 19% of the pipeline. That brings me to slide 20, our priorities and outlook for FY 2023. Our order book and robust tender pipeline continues to support a positive demand outlook for the business, offering potential for continued growth. However, this is in a macro environment of a tight skilled labor market across Australia, increasing global inflationary pressures, and ongoing risks and impacts from COVID-19 variants.
We have demonstrated our ability to effectively manage these challenges through investment in developing and growing our workforce internally, as well as our alliance approach to contracting. This positions us well to manage increasing costs. We will also remain consistent in our areas of focus for the coming year, including continue to improve our safety performance, effectively manage COVID-19, finalizing the Batu Hijau Phase 8 expansion, improving scalability through diversifying earnings in the underground and other mining support services, maintaining disciplined management of capital, and improving return on average capital employed, and investing in mining technology and digital transformation. Our guidance for FY23 is for revenue in the range of AUD 1.6 billion-AUD 1.7 billion, and underlying EBITA in the range of AUD 105 million-AUD 125 million.
This is supported by a strong order book of AUD 5 billion and around AUD 1.4 billion of work already secured for FY23. Our established track record of growth and delivering on market guidance has been built on the back of a clear long-term strategy, careful investment in the business, and the dedication and commitment of our incredible talented workforce. With that, I'd like to hand back to the operator to open 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 your handset to ask the question. The first question comes from James Wilson at Jarden Australia.
Morning, guys. You spoke to sort of flat revenue guidance, but EBITDA margin guidance being slightly up. Does this imply cost pass-through is falling into FY23? Perhaps you could just speak to the dynamics between cost inflation and cost pass-throughs given what's implied by the guidance.
Yeah. What we've allowed for in the guidance is the pass-through costs of Batu Hijau coming out. Sorry about that. That equates to, if you compare it to FY22, about AUD 180 million. That's being replaced by ramp-ups and start-ups in existing work. In terms of inflation, what we've allowed for in the revenue is, we've budgeted it at today's dollars. That carried through the year, and obviously we've applied appropriate risk allocation in the EBIT guidance. As you can see, that range is now wider than what it's previously been, which is because of that allowance we've taken into account because of the risks that we see with the uncertainty and the volatility. It really is a case of the pass-through costs at Batu Hijau coming out in FY23 and being replaced by ramp-ups, start-ups, and then some new work.
Great. Thanks, guys. Then also just on your CapEx guidance, I think it fell a little bit below what the market had for FY 2023 CapEx, especially given the new project stuff that you guys have spoken to. Would you mind just running us through what's driving that lower guidance than what was expected?
That really is our sustaining and extension CapEx. Consistent, I guess, with the focus internally in the business, it's gonna be this year priority number one about squeezing out all the earnings and delivering performance on all these existing jobs that, as you said, we've invested in FY 2021 and 2022. There you know, at the moment, what we've got in the budget is very little win and do work, which is reflected in the CapEx. The CapEx, it's probably important to point out that the CapEx guidance that's in that presentation includes an allowance for Batu Hijau Phase 8.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Next question comes from Cameron Bell at Canaccord Genuity.
Hi, guys.
Hi, Cameron.
Just sticking with the CapEx stuff, like it's pretty interesting there. Firstly, can you tell us how much CapEx you've assumed for Batu Hijau in that?
Well, it's between AUD 40 million and AUD 45 million, Cameron. I mean, if I can expand on that, obviously, that's taken some time to conclude that negotiation. Obviously, initially it was due to the COVID challenges and making sure the people we wanted to make sure our people were as safe as they could be. Obviously, since that time we've been trying to negotiate with AMNT a contract extension that worked within our means because obviously balance sheet strength was a priority for us. We're now in the final stages of concluding that negotiation, and we expect it to be about AUD 44 million for Batu Hijau Phase 8. Obviously, the rest is pretty consistent with the depreciation in the rest of the business, and that's what we'd expect to see moving forward.
Yeah. Okay. You've given us a very specific number, that's AUD 194 million, which includes Batu Hijau. Presumably, like is that the number you think you'll do this year or is that the number that you've got visibility on? Later on when there's contract wins, that'll be on top of this. Like, are you expecting more growth CapEx on top of that number?
No, no. Look, that CapEx matches the guidance that we've put out, Cameron. If there was additional growth, like I think we've said it in the past, actually, we're just trying to make sure we work within our means, so we don't wanna take too much on right now until we've got existing work performing at elite levels. I would expect growth would really tip into the following year or the year after. If anything changed, we'd announce that to the market. In short, the CapEx matches the guidance we've provided.
Yep. Okay. Just on the, I suppose like a similar thematic, but you've got secured revenue of AUD 1.45 billion, and you've guided revenue there. There's a suggestion that you've got between AUD 150 million and AUD 250 million of revenue from work that hasn't been secured yet. Can you give us maybe an idea of, you know, how much work typically just, you know, rolls through the door, like short-term civil work that isn't necessarily, you know, CapEx based, et cetera? Like, how much work just rolls through the door out of that AUD 150 million-AUD 250 million versus how much do you think you're tendering for? Like, you know, confidence.
Yeah. No, no. Oh, sorry, mate, I spoke over you. Yeah, look, historically, for the civil underground and civil churn, it's been between AUD 100 million and AUD 150 million a year now for about four or five years, Cameron. You can see it closes that gap and puts us pretty close to the bottom end of guidance for revenue.
Yeah, okay. All right. Great. Thanks for asking. Cheers.
Next question comes from Stuart Macfarlane at The West Australian.
Oh, g'day, Mick and Ursula. First question probably for Mick. Just in terms of the labor shortages, mate, are you seeing an easing of that lately? Are things sort of starting to cool down or are things as tight as ever?
We obviously have three fairly different discrete parts of the business, Stuart. In Indonesia, we've seen it cool off quite a bit in the last 12 months. Obviously, that region was hit pretty hard with COVID early on, and now they're stepping out of it, so that's helped us. WA six months ago was the hottest part of our business, but we've seen that ease slightly. It's still a challenge. That could be because we had the workforce from Mount Morgan's come available, so that's maybe why we might be feeling something a little bit inconsistent with others. It's still challenging. The hotspot for us really is at the moment, it's moved to the East Coast.
That's where we're pivoting our support network and adjusting policies, processes to make sure we can be as nimble as we have to to address that challenge and obviously perform for ourselves, but also our clients.
Okay. Thanks, Mick. In terms of, there's been a lot of talk lately about, you know, easing, excuse me, the skilled migration program to, you know, allow employers to import skilled labor more easily. Is that something that would help you guys, or it's not really something that you're looking to do to import labor from overseas?
Oh, look, it would 100%. We would endorse and support that fully, Stuart. We use the 482 visa program to import fitters and mechanical personnel. If we could expand that would certainly help the challenges that we're all dealing with in terms of skilled shortages, both in terms of increased costs and the vacancies we're seeing. We would support that fully. I think it makes sense for the broader sector and industry rather than you know fighting between each other for a finite pool. If we could expand the pool, that would help. I know everyone's investing in training and development, but that can be a bit of a long burn in terms of really addressing the problem. If we could support it with bringing more people in from international, that would certainly help ease the pressure, I think.
Great. Thanks, Mick.
Thanks, Stuart.
Thanks, Stuart.
Next question comes from Noel Dyson , Australia's Mining Monthly.
Hi, guys. A couple of questions. I'm just looking at your strategy going forward. I just wanna make sure I had it clear. You're looking to move from predominantly surface mining to predominantly underground slash mining services. Is that correct?
No, no. What we're trying to do is years ago, when we wanted to rebuild the business, make it more resilient, enable to ride through the cycles, we developed the foundation in the longer term, you know, hopefully high percentage alliance-based surface mining business. That's what we built first. We're now adding to that and trying to create a mix of businesses that are both complementary and allows us to reduce our capital intensity, which are typically shorter term contracts and complement the surface. We're certainly not trying to reduce the surface, but we're trying to grow the other areas, seeing mining support services and underground to just get a better business mix, and we think will enable us to have a healthier balance sheet moving forward and, obviously allow us to focus on return on average capital employed.
Almost like a third, ultimately, of your revenue coming from those areas or?
Yeah. That's theoretically what we use. Obviously, it'll never be perfectly that, but we do see that there's a benefit to having that mix. Obviously a lot of our clients who have one normally have one or two of the others, and we see that as an opportunity too because, you know, a lot of our clients we partner with and we appreciate that work. If we could expand on that with people we know on assets we know, we think that reduces the risk somewhat in what we do.
Yeah. I suppose, King of the Hills is a classic example of that.
Yeah, definitely, Noel.
The other thing, could you give me a bit of color around. You're talking about a digital transformation and investment technology. What exactly are you looking to invest in? What's the sort of areas that you think will make the biggest difference for you?
for us, we've probably got three discrete areas. There's the business intelligence piece, which is all about having automated, untouched data at everyone's fingertips as soon as they need it. We've got a, you know, a mine operating system we're trying to develop where everything's at the touch of the fingers of the people that need it, which are the guys at the coalface. There's other operational technology that we can advance on our own, and that includes, you know, some very specific automation, remote operations, and various other aspects within the operations that we're looking at. Thirdly, there's a piece that we really need to partner with people on and, you know, reducing our carbon footprint, for example.
That's not something we can do on it by ourselves on a site when we're working for a client and have other participants and stakeholders there. We're looking at those three areas, and we know it's a journey, Noel, but we certainly wanna be a part of it. We've taken it seriously.
With the stuff you're doing by yourself, you're looking at sort of like tele-remote, that kind of thing?
Yeah. We're building on what we've got. We've got remote operation pits, remote operation underground, you know, trying to bring that back centrally eventually once we can have a reliability there to, you know, try and ease maybe some of the pressures we're feeling from the skill shortages among other things. Obviously, clearly, priority one is always about improving safety and then followed by efficiencies as well.
Sure. Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Noel.
Next question is from Sam Harrison at Colonial First State.
Good day, Mick. Your net debt's come down a touch from the first half to the second half, but the implication from your guidance is net debt's gonna drop a fair bit more this year. I'm just sort of curious, is there any sort of net debt level or gearing level that you're sort of targeting that you'd be a bit more comfortable with? Or is there or anything else you can say about, you know, potential uses of that cash going forward?
I think we may have said it before, Sam, but you know, the cap we put on it is 30% gearing or 1x leverage, so obviously under that. Yeah, the intention is to reduce that. At the moment, I think it's, you know, with the CapEx number that you've seen in the presentation against what I'm sure everyone's probably, you know, working out an EBITDA, and the remaining free cash flow should see it come down. I think at the moment it's still about sticking to just getting a healthy balance sheet, maybe having it there if it's needed before we go deploying too much back. We'll work within our capital allocation policy that we've put out for the near term, Sam.
Yep. No worries, Mick. Thanks for your input as well.
Next question comes from Steve Marchio at E&P.
Morning, Mick. Well done again on the result, mate. Just wanted to ask about that HGO. There's more detail to follow when it closes, but I mean, can you give us any more just on how long that contract's likely to last in terms of that phase? Obviously the CapEx is great, but I mean, you know, how long do you think before you have to you know, roll into the next phase? Cheers.
Yeah, definitely Steve. Thanks for that, mate. Look, Batu Hijau Phase 8 effectively adds another six years of full scale mining to what we had in phase seven. And that's starting soon. That's one of the reasons it's important for us to conclude this discussion with AMNT, which we're well progressed on. As I think I've said quite a few times to many people, the hold-up originally was COVID, clearly, while we're making people our priority. The reality was phase seven didn't really start to fall away until FY 2023 anyway. It's been okay. It hasn't been problematic from that perspective.
What it's also allowed us to do is, obviously, as we've stepped into this uncertain, volatile, environment that we're in, our position on the CapEx we're deploying there is probably different to what it would have been two years ago, and it's a bit more cautious. That's what's taken the time, in the last six months, just to get that right, run the scenarios, make sure we're comfortable. That's what we intend to do. In short, to answer your question, six years of mining in the cutback it adds, which is really important to us.
just a quick follow-up on Elang. Has that sort of been put on hold, AMNT? Any update there?
Oh, look, I mean, I obviously can't speak on their behalf. From my understanding, though, certainly not. It looks like there's a lot of activity out there.
Okay, thanks.
At this time, there are no further questions. I'll now call back over to Mr. Finnegan for closing remarks.
Thank you. Look, we just wanna say thanks to everyone for taking the time to listen to the result. We do appreciate it. We know there's competing priorities, and I look forward to speaking to everyone who wants to talk in the coming weeks. If there isn't an appointment made, please reach out and we'd love to speak to you. Thanks everyone for your time and for the ones we will see shortly. I look forward to catching up face to face.
This does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.