I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Michael Finnegan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Welcome to the Macmahon 2025 First Half Results Presentation. I'm Michael Finnegan, and with me is our CFO, Ursula Lummis. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in Macmahon and the opportunity to present our results during this busy period. We'll run through the presentation launched on the ASX platform this morning, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. Starting with the financial highlights on slide two, Macmahon again made an excellent start to the financial year with strong growth in revenue that translated into earnings growth, cash generation, and an uplift in returns. This is also the first reporting period, including our acquisition of Decmil, a major addition to accelerate growth in our civil infrastructure business. Group revenue was up 22% to AUD 1.2 billion, and underlying EBITDA was AUD 181.3 million. EBITA, our key earnings guidance metric, was AUD 78.1 million.
This was up around 15% on the prior corresponding period, and including our usual stronger second half performance places us on track for our full year guidance, which I will talk more about later. You will see that the business generated strong underlying operating cash flow, which was up 18% to AUD 163.4 million for the half, and free cash flow of AUD 49 million. With this strong cash flow generation continuing into the second half, together with the receipt of the final installment of the Dawson asset sales, we expect FY25 closing net debt to approximate the FY24 closing position. As you know, we have been very focused on reducing capital intensity in the business and increasing our return on average capital employed.
I'm particularly pleased that the business has continued to deliver improvements on this front, with the return on average capital employed up to 17.5% on a rolling 12-month basis, and this would be 18.2% if half one was annualized. This provides greater scope to increase shareholder returns, and we have increased the interim dividend per share to AUD 0.0055, fully franked, up from AUD 0.0045 unfranked in the prior corresponding period. Looking ahead, we have a strong order book, and our tender pipeline at AUD 24.8 billion is the highest it has been with the inclusion of Decmil and underpins our continuing positive view on the outlook. Now that our civil business has scaled, I wanted to talk through the operating highlights individually for both the mining and civil segments.
Beginning with the mining segment on slide three, comprising our surface and underground businesses, the focus for the period was on securing contract extensions and continuing to reduce capital intensity while expanding our footprint in Indonesia. Good progress was made on all of these fronts. Notably, in surface, we've been awarded more than AUD 500 million in new work in Indonesia at the Awak Mas and Poboya Gold projects, both with low capital requirements. We remain focused on low capital solutions in our existing and new work to achieve and exceed a 20% return on average capital employed target while maintaining our revenue base. In underground, we secured a range of contract extensions, including a Daisy Milano, Ulysses, Olympic Dam, and Fosterville. We have a robust underground tender pipeline of around AUD 7.2 billion in opportunities in Australia and in Indonesia, which supports the continued growth of the business.
We are targeting revenue growth of 50% in the next two to three years for the underground business, which is aligned with our overall capital growth strategy. As you can see to the right, the first half of FY25, the mining segment delivered approximately AUD 1 billion of revenue and AUD 66 million of underlying EBITDA at a margin of just under 7%. Over to slide four on our civil business, Decmil performed well and in line with our expectations. The integration of the business has been fully completed, and Decmil has hit the ground running with AUD 333 million of new work awarded since we acquired the business. I won't go through the individual projects listed here, but they include road, dam, and wind farm projects, extending the diversity of our revenue base and order book.
For the first half, our civil segment delivered under AUD 90 million of revenue, underlying EBITDA of AUD 11 million, and a margin of 6% as expected. This result excludes Homeground, and it's supported by the closeout of legacy projects and the commencement of newly awarded contracts. We remain excited on the growth outlook for this segment, with a AUD 10.2 billion tender pipeline and AUD 2.7 billion expected to be awarded in the next 12 months. This includes work in infrastructure, renewables, and resources civils. Turning briefly to our corporate activities on slide five, with the acquisition of Decmil, we acquired the Homeground Accommodation Village in Gladstone, which approximately has 1,392 beds. As this is a non-core asset for the group, we are exploring opportunities to optimize the divestment of this asset.
Under other activities, we highlight the implementation of a new corporate operating model, which enhances ownership and accountability within each separate operating division. While we are seeing the tight labor market in Australia normalize, we are still experiencing shortages in key areas, particularly in Queensland, and skilled labor requirements for equipment maintenance and operators across the country. Slide six is a recap of our key mining projects, their tenure, cost curve profile, and related commodity exposure. I won't go through the full list, but some key points to note are, we successfully added two projects in Indonesia, being Awak Mas and Poboya Gold projects, as I mentioned earlier, and there are several projects coming up for extension during the year, including one of our cornerstone projects, Byerwen, all of which are progressing well. Similarly, slide seven shows an overview of our key civil projects, including Sawr's scope and contract structure.
Some points to note here include, since the acquisition of Decmil, we have been awarded the Ison Road extension, Warradarge Wind Farm, Marble Bar Road upgrade, Borumba Pumped Hydro start-up camp, and the Covalent Logistics Road, adding more than AUD 330 million to our order book. The contract size of key projects is greater than AUD 50 million in revenue, and as the civil business grows, so too will the size of our key projects, but this will not be at the expense of the equitable risk allocation we currently have. I think it's pretty apparent from the prior slides that Macmahon has diversity across its operations, and slide eight here adds some further information to substantiate that. Diversifying our service offering, and in particular, our underground mining and civil infrastructure businesses, is something I'll talk more about in my strategy discussion.
While surface steel comprises more than half of our revenue mix, the acquisition of Decmil has significantly boosted civil's revenue contribution to around 7%, and it's expected to increase going forward. This compares to around the 10% level in the first half of FY24. Gold remains a key feature of our mining project list I showed earlier, and also of our overall commodity exposure. Gold price is at record levels, which is driving strong activity in the sector and opportunities in the tender pipeline. It is good to be represented in a strong sector, but we continue to monitor revenue diversification in our operations and tendering activities. Copper, metals, and lithium also make notable contributions to revenue, with copper and coal in particular having strong demand and production profiles going forward.
The business is relatively diversified by client exposure, and you can see our client mix comprises many tier one global and Australian miners. Moving to slide nine on people and safety, the safety and well-being of our people is our highest priority at Macmahon. This is at all levels in the organization and across corporate offices and worksites, where we aim to promote a culture of awareness and continuous improvement. Importantly to our group, TRIFR continues to improve, reducing from 3.64 in FY24 to 3.19 in the first half of FY25. Our focus on safety extends to mental health and well-being, and we continue our Strong Minds roll-out to another 13 sites.
This program includes extensive employee engagement, leadership training, and client engagement collaboration to raise awareness and break down the stigma around mental health, as well as connecting and supporting thousands of individuals to create a community of support across the mining industry. This is in addition to conducting an active employee survey program and training wellness champions across our teams. We continue to invest in the development of our people, and this is demonstrated by the fact that 347 of our people were on various training programs at 31 December 2024. Importantly, this included many new and young people joining the business and commencing their careers. Similarly, we also continue to invest in our current and emerging leaders, with a range of programs across the business, including the popular Macmahon Winning Way and emerging leader leadership programs, which is covered in detail on the next slide.
Turning to the Macmahon Winning Way on slide 10, this is a program we commenced in 2020 to create a winning culture and continued investment in our people. Respect at Macmahon is a cross-functional company-wide program to drive culture, mitigate psychosocial harm, and eliminate sexual harassment. We provide our leaders with appropriate tools and confidence as needed to succeed in their roles through our Macmahon Winning Way. We focus on our emerging leaders through structured development programs to ensure we promote within our workforce. All these are measured through our challenge, develop, grow, performance, and development program. Operating our business sustainably is an important objective for Macmahon and one we remain committed to. Slide 11 outlines some of our sustainability-related activities and metrics. We also prepare a standalone sustainability report along with our annual report each year.
In the interest of time, some items to call out include our active recycling program with 227 tons of solids repaired and recycled into the business during the period, our investment in people and wellness that I have discussed, and an investment into strengthening our cybersecurity capabilities. I'll now hand over to Ursula to discuss the financials.
Thank you, Mick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for joining us today. Before I run through the financial results for the first half, I wanted to take a moment on slide 13 to look at the half-yearly performance over time. The first thing to note is the strength of the first half results for FY25, with Macmahon achieving increases across the board in revenue, underlying EBITDA, underlying EBITA, and importantly, also in the return on average capital employed. The growth delivered in the first half includes the acquisition of Decmil.
You can see a very clear and consistent trend of growth in revenue and across earnings over the last four years, as shown in the charts. Although the return on average capital employed has been varied over the years, there has been a continued trend upwards as we execute our capital-light strategy. Slide 14 summarizes our profit and loss for the six months. As Mick mentioned earlier, revenue is up 22%, and underlying EBITA is up 14.7%. This is attributable to the acquisition of Decmil, the extensions of Daisy Milano and Ulysses, as well as the commencement of the Poboya Gold projects in Indonesia and organic growth across our existing projects. Underlying EBITDA growth of 3% was impacted by the inclusion of Decmil, which is proportionately lower depreciation.
Our effective borrowing rate increased to 6.7% since the 31st of December, which was up from 6.4% at the 30th of June, and this reflects the higher interest rates on the new borrowings, including the Decmil funding. You also see that past tax losses have been fully utilized, and Macmahon is now paying tax in Australia, with our effective tax rate coming in at 31.1%. Statutory profit was AUD 30 million and was down on the prior corresponding period, primarily due to the adjusting items of approximately AUD 17.1 million. These items included the Decmil acquisition and the related costs, share-based payments, and the customer contract amortization. Excluding adjusting items, the underlying EBITA and underlying earnings per share was up 18.7% and 17.5%, respectively. Slide 15 sets out the major cash movements between the closing net debt of the 30th of June 2024 and the 31st of December 2024.
Underlying operating cash flow was strong at AUD 163.4 million, with EBITDA cash conversion of approximately 90%. We expect strong operating cash flow to continue into the second half of the year. Total capital expenditure was AUD 102.8 million for the first half, with most of this relating to sustaining CapEx. Our full-year capital expenditure target remains unchanged at AUD 233 million. The other major impact on our net debt position was the acquisition of Decmil, for which we paid approximately AUD 104 million of cash and assumed AUD 11 million of net debt. The associated corporate development costs were AUD 8.3 million. Turning to slide 16, the acquisition of Decmil has resulted in an increase across all balance sheet metrics, particularly net debt, intangible assets, and goodwill, as well as the recognition of Homeground and the deferred tax losses included in other assets.
I'd like to reiterate that the increase in net debt to AUD 237 million, with an increase during of 26.2%, is a short-term spike following the acquisition of Decmil. Our strong cash generation expected in the second half should see net debt reduced back to around the FY24 levels and will be reflected in leverage and gearing. Cash and available banking facilities totaled AUD 274 million at the end of the first half, and our return on average capital employed of 17.5% continues to trend upwards towards our target of 20% or greater. With that, I will now hand back over to Mick before we open for questions.
Thanks, Ursula. Let's move to slide 18. I talked earlier about Macmahon's revenue diversification. Increasing diversification in the business has been a key strategic objective, both from a risk management perspective but also to grow cash back return on average capital employed.
We've done this by initially expanding into and growing our underground mining operations and more recently accelerated our expansion into civil infrastructure through the acquisition of Decmil. You can see on the chart the growing contribution of these capital-light businesses to our revenue base, which was around 10% when we commenced this journey in FY18 to 40% now in the first half of FY25. With an increasing contribution from Decmil and around 70% of our tender pipeline across both the civil and underground businesses, this matches our long-term target of two-thirds of the business in those areas. This supports our objective to increase our ROACE to over 20%. Slide 19 shows our work in hand by year. The current order book remains robust at AUD 4.3 billion. This excludes extensions, variations, and churn yet to be awarded, but in some cases, we feel it close.
Around AUD 2.2 billion of work is secured through FY25, which underpins our guidance for this year. We remain focused and motivated to convert the significant tender pipeline of opportunities and currently have around AUD 6.4 billion of outstanding tenders submitted, with a good representation of civil and underground work. Slide 20 reiterates our messages around capital management at Macmahon, which is aligned with our capital-light growth strategy. Our priorities remain unchanged and include maintaining a resilient balance sheet and liquidity, retaining growth funding, flexibility, and increased returns to shareholders. The charts on the slide show Macmahon's record against these objectives. Macmahon's performance has been strong across all three objectives since the refocus on capital-light growth. Debt has been trending down. The Decmil acquisition has been strongly EPS accretive, and we have increased returns to shareholders through improvement, the fully franked dividends, and an increased payout ratio.
While net debt has clearly increased in the short term, this is related to funding the Decmil acquisition, as Ursula said, and as we've said, we expect debt levels to reduce back towards FY24 levels at the full year. That brings us to slide 21 on our FY25 guidance and priorities, our final slide before we break for questions. The outlook for FY25 remains positive, and we reaffirm our expectations for continued growth and retain our guidance of revenue of $2.4-$2.5 billion and underlying EBITDA of $160-$175 million. Our expectations are underpinned by a strong first half, together with the commencement of new work in the second half, $2.2 billion of secured revenue, and a robust order book and pipeline. Our priorities for FY25 remain unchanged and reflect much of what we've discussed today.
There is a continuing positive outlook for activity in both the mining sector and civil infrastructure investment in Australia, reflected in the tender pipeline of nearly AUD 25 billion. I'm confident we're focused on our priorities and remain well-positioned to continue our positive cash-backed growth trajectory. And with that, I'd like to hand back to our 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're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Jakob Cakarnis with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mick. Hi, Ursula. Can you just help us through the margin run rate as you get through the second half of 2025?
I think traditionally you've had a second half skew to the earnings. I'm just wondering some of the impacts of Decmil as that continues to flow through, please.
Yeah, for sure, Jakob. Look, the second half will be heavier. There was some new work announced with the Macmahon CPM open pit. They're still expecting some CPM underground to come through. We're expecting extensions at Telfer and a step up there in the scope. A lot of the civil works that was announced in the first half, that AUD 333 million, we have a full half of all of that work in the second half. And then, of course, there's escalation scope creep and the churn that we typically see. So we did point to a 45-55 split at the start of the year.
We still expect that to be the case, but obviously, we need to demonstrate that in the second half.
And what could bring you unstuck on that earnings mix, Mick? Are we considering weather at all? Is there anything else in there that I need to think about, or it's just a matter of what you've got in hand flowing through and the margin's going to follow?
We were probably a bit cautious in this presentation when we put out that we had AUD 2.2 billion of secured work for this year. If you add in escalation scope creep, the churn, and then one or two of the extensions that will affect the second half, it's probably closer to AUD 2.4-AUD 2.45 billion. But because it wasn't signed, we didn't want to compromise the credibility of what we put out. So I guess it's important for me to point that out.
So in terms of acquiring the work, I don't see that as a significant risk. It's all about execution. And you mentioned wet. We did have a wet November, December on the East Coast. That carried through to January and the first half of February. We have had a cyclone come through the northwest of WA. The impact there, not as much as on the East Coast. We do take a bit of a hit, but you could see that in the 6.8% margin in mining, I guess. Last year was 6.9. So you can see it's a bit off. And most of that's attributable to that rain at the back end. And we did need to restructure some underground contracts. But look, to answer your question, it's more about execution.
If there were some one-off significant weather events, dare I say a pandemic or something like that, that would affect it. But I think we got the work. We just got to execute it. And there is some additional new work that may or may not come in but looks close, particularly with the extensions I mentioned. So if that comes in, obviously, we're insulated a bit. But primarily, it's execution, Jakob.
Thanks, Mick. That's helpful. And then just last one for me. Obviously, you've given us a pie chart of balancing in the revenue mix moving forward. It looks like it's roughly a third, a third, a third from each of your functions. Just wondering if you could talk to the state of the civil market as you're seeing it, Mick. You've obviously folded in Decmil now. That's fully integrated.
Just wondering, some observations if you can help us there about the starting margin that we're seeing in this result and kind of the aspirations or where you can go to moving forward, please.
Yeah, for sure. If I could just start that split, obviously, we say a third, a third, a third. It'll never work out perfectly. The reason for that is it's a really neat blend of the margins. Underground's a high margin, moderate CapEx. Surface is the 8% margin, higher CapEx. The traditional underground contracts will be, we're moving away from some of those. Civil's slightly less, but very little CapEx and obviously very good for cash flow. That's why we're chasing that. We think that gives us a cash-back royalty of 20% or greater. The people that have followed us know why we're doing that.
The civil and the underground segments are still subscale. We want to get them to AUD 700 million and above, closer to a billion to get scale, which will get us closer to that blend of 8%. If we get Indo growing another 10% of the business to, say, AUD 15, well, that's always been a good margin territory for us. So that's why we have the split. In terms of the margin in the first half, we pointed people to 5%-7% for the civil business. Coming in at 6%, I was pretty pleased. Within civil, typically the higher end of that range I gave you is the resources. The renewables are probably the middle, and the government work probably towards the bottom. Obviously, we've got our equitable allocation of risk in all of those contracts now.
So seeing the 6%, I was pleased considering that it's still subscale, in my opinion, so it's but growing. And to see that percentage gave me margin, gave me confidence it'll achieve what we intended to. And in terms of the addressable market out there, of our AUD 24.8 billion pipeline, AUD 10.2 billion of it's in the civil area. About AUD 2.7 billion of that are tenders out, and we expect award in the next 12 months. And it's quite a neat split between those three segments that I spoke to you about. And then beyond that are some bigger jobs because if we're going to grow that business to where we want it, the key contracts have to be more than your AUD 50 million-AUD 100 million jobs. And I think we're building relationships with some bigger tier ones where we can help them in the contract model that we want to utilize.
And they seem to have an appetite to push towards those bigger jobs. And the remaining AUD 8 billion in that pipeline in civil has an appropriate amount of those types of jobs in them. So do I think we could achieve our targets of where we want to get to in the next three years like we started when we acquired Decmil? At the moment, it certainly looks like that. And the team we've got, I think, can execute that. We just need to stay focused.
Thanks, guys. I'll hand it over.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from James Lennon with Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah, congratulations on the result. I just had a couple of questions around margins, I think, as well.
Just in terms of the gross profit there, obviously, the margins come down as you've integrated Decmil. Is that pretty much now stabilized? Do you think there's a bit more to go in terms of where that sort of margin will end up at the GP line?
No, no. I think the integration, the way we're looking at it internally, Jones, is it's all but complete. It's triggered us reviewing our operating model, which I'd say is 80% complete, where we really do empower and provide ownership to specific skills and activity areas, what we call operating divisions. I think there's still some synergies to come out of that. But no, we consider it complete. And anything else from here should be an improvement. But you're right, the 6.9% going to 6.6% is the introduction of Decmil at that 6%.
Okay.
Just on the other costs there, obviously, there was a big jump there. A lot of it you've pointed out was SaaS and customization. I think some M&A and stuff in there. The share-based payments, what should we expect for that going forward? Because that was quite a big jump as well.
Yeah. Look, I'll let Ursula go through all four if it's all right, James, because I think it's really important because we don't usually have those sorts of numbers. A lot of them are unrepeatable. Not unrepeatable. They won't be repeatable, I should have said, because they're tied to the acquisition. If you don't mind, I'll let Ursula step through those quickly, particularly the LTI payment and the corporate development costs.
Sure. Thanks, Mick. Hi, James. If you look on page 25, I'll just go through in that order.
First of all, the LTI share-based payment expense, with the acquisition of Decmil, rather than buy out all the shares or all the performance rights that we're owing to the executive team, we made an agreement with the board that they would cancel those. Macmahon would issue them. And in doing so, we secured the Decmil management team for two years. Unfortunately, the accounting doesn't let you put that all to the purchase price. That does go through your profit and loss. And that will be this year and next year because they have a two-year retention period. That's at the AUD 4.6 million. The AUD 8.3 million, that's the pure M&A cost to acquire Decmil, all the legal advisors, due diligences, etc. The customer contracts of AUD 2.3 million, as we highlighted, we did recognise Decmil backdated into 1 July.
You'll see there is an intangible that was put on the balance sheet for brand names as well as customer lists. So that does get amortized from the 1 July. And also, the brand runs over a 20-year amortization. The customer lists, similar to our previous acquisitions, that'll amortize over the life of the various customers, which is anything from six months up until 18 months-24 months. The last one is that SaaS customization cost. So we've previously highlighted that we've implemented a new system across the business with the exception of our roster time and attendance. That is the last process or systems that we actually in place of replacing. And this was the commencement of that. You will still see the roster time and attendance going forward into the next two, well, definitely the next half, and then a little bit after that.
But once that's done, then all our systems have been updated and replaced.
And Jones, if I could just jump in, that whole ERP upgrade, it was done on a cloud-based system so that the intention is that now it's updatable and will remain current. So we wanted to make sure the business was scalable, and having an ERP that could stretch across the full bandwidth of the business was important.
Okay. Thank you. All right. And just one last one, just on the tax there. I think if you go back to when you announced the Decmil acquisition, I think there was an expectation you'd get some tax credits that you'd recognize. But looking at your tax rate, that's not the case. So should we just assume 30% going forward? Is that a safer bet?
Correct.
So just to highlight, so when we do recognize, all of our deferred tax assets are recognized. So when you do that, your effective tax rate stays that 30%-31%. But then when you go look at the tax paid, though, James, when you go to the cash flow statement, you'll see the tax is a lot lower. And that's because up until now, Macmahon, we're not tax paying. December last year, we went into well, we went into this year, we went into tax paying. So you will see that the tax for the first half in the cash section, not the profit and loss, is still low. And that's because when we lodge our assessment now, we'll actually pay the full tax for FY 2024 when we turn to utilize all the tax losses, and that will come through in the second half.
The Decmil tax losses is recognized 100% as part of the acquisition accounting. So that's why it doesn't go through your P&L and make that 31% lower. It goes off against the goodwill. And yes, that is utilized on the fraction of time when we do it on our equity or equity value and Decmil's equity value right when this transaction happened, it's roughly about a 12-year utilization. Of course, the more profits we make, the quicker we utilize it.
Okay. Thank you.
And James, if I could, if you don't mind, an important point there is the first half saw free cash flow of AUD 50 million with increased earnings the second half. One of the questions I got this morning is, will that increase?
But because of the tax that Ursula just spoke about for the next two halves, where we paid 2024 and paid provisional for 2025, it's going to be about flat for this year. But once we're through that, we'll start to see the numbers we're aspiring to. And if I could, while I've got everyone on the line, with that AUD 50 million free cash flow, the 25 from Dawson, and then when we see the receipts that there was AUD 25 million of outstanding receipts on the 31st of December, talking to clients, I think even if we take a position that 15 of those come back, we do have a level of confidence that we will end the year with the net debt where we started. And that does not include any sale of Homeground.
We haven't yet solved the VAT issue from Indonesia, albeit we've seen AUD 11 million come in for that. And what's going out is less. So the amount the government has reduced, but we haven't got that to zero like we'd hope. So if we can resolve that, sell Homeground, and continue to perform, generating this free cash flow, we see a pathway clearly to that AUD 100 million net debt in the near term that we're aiming for, that 10%-12% year-in.
All right. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Tony Greco, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Oh, good day. A couple of questions here. You just mentioned Homeground, and it's up for sale. I think you had the occupancy was about 30%. So at that rate, is it breaking even? Is it losing money? What's the situation?
No, no.
Definitely making money at that rate, Tony. It's between 8% and 12% where it's break-even. And that's situated in the other, along with some unallocated overhead. So someone said to me this morning, "Did it make AUD 3 million to AUD 5 million in the first half?" And I'd just say that's probably thereabouts.
All right. And just with the debt level, I mean, you've talked about that. And yeah, that's one of the things that sort of stood out a bit, that it's jumped up quite a bit. So without having to play your hand here or show your hand, there's probably not too much in the acquisition area for the next six months, at least, while you get the debt level down?
Yeah. Look, I'd expect so, Tony. For us, the priority has to be get scale into civil, get scale into underground.
There's some near-term opportunities in Indonesia, all of which bring cash and margin. If we can do that, we get very close to those longer-term targets we set some time ago, where AUD 200 million EBITDA or above, AUD 100 million net debt or lower. If we do get that right, it will result, once we get through paying this catch-up, well, not catch-up, paying this tax of AUD 130 million to AUD 150 million free cash flow a year, which means good, healthy dividends.
Okay. Just the last question, just a little bit more detail about that Cyprium Metals, is it, that you're doing some in-kind work to sort of, could you just give some detail about that?
Yeah, for sure. Look, we think that's an exciting project, but after Calidus, we're treading very, very carefully, so we're doing some work like we would in any ordinary tender.
They're a great team. They've allowed us to have input into the potential scenarios, how they could start it up, how they could de-risk. What we're doing at the moment is your typical tender and helping with care and maintenance, largely with existing overheads. Any step beyond here will obviously involve confirming with them the plan, but also confirming an ability to service any costs that we incur or they incur, sorry, our cost and margin. So we're very, very cautious. But equally, a big opportunity with the asset they've got there because it's not only Nifty, it's also Maroochydore, I think it's 40 km-50 km away, which—and it's in a pretty prominent region now in terms of copper and copper gold.
So not really expending too much at the moment, providing some services, but more, yeah, like you said, more just the care and maintenance and just more just to review the checking to see whether it's going to be worthwhile, etc. Not sure of the terminology. Well, feasibility.
Yeah, yeah. Look, sorry, I didn't mean to speak over you there, Tony. But we often request, if we can, particularly with the right kind of partner, if we can get involved earlier because we see a lot of the time we can provide opportunities and scenarios that might generate value for the project, which in turn could come to us. And we see this as a bit of an opportunity to do that. But obviously, one of our shareholders said if we have another Calidus, that will result. My job, and I understand that. So I don't intend to have another one.
Okay. All right. No, thanks for that then. Yeah, that's all I have.
Your next question comes from Gavin Allen with Euroz Hartleys. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I eventually got on the call. Apologies for that. Just a couple of things going on. So look, just a couple for me, guys, quickly. Just you touched on this briefly with the VAT refund. There's still a bit to go there. So I wonder if there's any flavor you've got on what's still perhaps to come on that one. The other is, and you've probably dealt with this, Mick and Ursula already, but just around Homeground and at 30% occupancy, how to think about that in terms of occupancy over the second half, perhaps, and just sort of what that means to you in terms of cash contribution. Maybe we start there, and then I've just got another one after that.
Yeah, for sure. Look, with the VAT, there's $20-$30 million, Ossie. It takes about 12 months to return, and it's accumulated over time. So it'll drip out, Gavin, every couple of months. We had $11 million back in January and not as much going in. So it's clawed its way back, but it's certainly not to zero. And we're hoping to come up with that sort of solution. We're still working on it. But yeah, if that comes in, that's obviously an upside to what we're modeling. And we haven't included it in us getting back to about the same spot we started the year in terms of net debt. And you may have missed it. The bridge was $50 million free cash flow thereabout second half.
The AUD 25 million, the second installment from Dawson, which I understand arrived this morning, and we had AUD 25 million of outstanding receipts on 31 December. So even if you get AUD 15 million, those come back. That gets us pretty close from the AUD 237 million to the AUD 150 million.
So there's the Dawson included in your thinking around the AUD 150 million to AUD 170 million?
Yeah, it was. The second installment was in that model. Homeground wasn't. VAT wasn't.
Gotcha. Absolutely. And yeah, so that's all good. And so just, I guess, how perhaps you covered this off, and you did apologize, how Homeground is traveling sort of at the moment?
No, no, that's right. We said it a moment ago. But in short, someone this morning said they did the math.
In the other, which is where Homeground is sitting along with unallocated overhead, they said, "Mick, it seems to me it's AUD 3 million-AUD 5 million for the half." I'd say that's a good estimate at 30%. In terms of what the occupancy looks like for the second half, obviously, January, February are quieter periods. As we move on in the year, we come into the shutdown on the historic occupancy. I'm expecting something like the first half, but no one can tell the future. We'll have to see. We're also talking. There's some new activity there on top of the historic activity. It's yet to be formalized, but there are some discussions occurring as we speak, along with the assessment that we're doing on how to monetize it sensibly. There's a fair bit going on there. It's ringing in my ears.
Someone even said it this morning. Someone said it historically that the biggest mistake people have made in the past is not sell it when they could. So we're just trying to make sure we're having a calm, composed view of how to monetize it at the right time because it's not a core asset for us. It's a great asset, but it's not a core asset for us.
Yeah. Makes plenty of sense to me. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Finnegan for closing remarks.
Look, Ashley, I just want to say thanks to everyone. I know it's an incredibly busy day. We're over Sydney tomorrow, the next day. If you want to see us and you're not in the slot, please just give me a yell. I'd love to catch up. We're in Melbourne Friday.
For anyone else, even if you want to have a chat on the phone, please let us know. I know there's been some questions, so I may get to answer them if I can. We appreciate everyone's time, and no doubt speak to most of you soon.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.