Well, then we might get started. So firstly, thank you to everyone that's joined us today for First Half 2026 MLG's Results Announcements. I'm obviously joined by Mark Hatfield, our acting CEO, and Phil Mirams, our CFO, on either side of me today. And I'm really pleased to be able to be here to announce what is a strong result built off a huge amount of good work by our team and really, I guess, a continued story of delivery that we've been really focused on over the last few years. Just before I get into the syntax, I just wanted to sort of, I guess, reach out and say thank you to the people that are sitting next to me here.
Obviously, I've been on an extended period of leave due to personal circumstances, and Mark's been sitting in that acting CEO role. I couldn't be any prouder of the work that the team have done, led by Mark, supported by Phil and Tom. This result today that we're reporting is a direct reflection of the quality of management that they've built across our business over the last few years, and the delivery capacity that our team has generated. It is very much a team result, reflected in a positive outcome, and something that I'm very proud of. So thank you to the team from myself. Getting into the detail, I think this is a slide that I'm actually really proud of. You will see the half's actually been really strong.
So, there was a strong focus on delivery, particularly around margins, throughout the last few years, but we're seeing that grow through. We did see revenue tick up slightly by 6%, but more importantly, the key metrics of EBITDA +24%, EBIT margin +60%, and net profit after tax up +90%. The growth in those key areas, guys, is delivering a very strong and robust business, with a substantial supported balance sheet that can then continue to grow and deliver into the future further. Actually, we're able to report that we are trending back to a dividend being paid again, so we are declaring a fully franked dividend.
But at a high level, if you stand back and look at this graph, we have a delivery across the half of record revenue, strong EBITDA, material uplift in EBIT, but that net profit after tax, transitioning through to, you know, growth in NTA per share and a reduction in gearing is a really strong result, directly reflected by the work that the team has done. Couldn't be any prouder in terms of the goals being set, the delivery of those goals, and the net result falling out. I will just call out that from a pro forma perspective, we did have a work life infringement that was brought to account within the period.
And the result, you will note there, the second point, AUD 750,000 fine, has been carried through and normalized. We've talked a lot across the last three to four years about the focus on managing our business. Fundamentally, we use 15 as a number on a percentile basis at the EBITDA line. But we've also spoken about the fact that once we go +12%, we are in a zone whereby we're generating enough free cash to support our continued growth, to build, strengthen our balance sheet and trend back to dividend flow. And whilst we flow up and down quarter-over-quarter, not every quarter is gonna s orry, half-on-half, not every half is gonna be the same.
Holistically, what we're seeing across the last three years now is a continued trend where we were sitting around 10%, and we're now trending back towards that 13%, on our way to 15%. But more importantly, what that is reflecting is the ability for the business to be able to continue to sustain its growth, build its balance sheet strength, and start that dividend flow. And that's something that we're very focused on maintaining. We're still internally targeting that 15% EBITDA margin across the whole of our business. We are a portfolio business, so you do have halves that are up and down, you do have sites that are up and down.
But holistically, as a group, the strong operational discipline that's been instilled, the compliance and discipline, and the work of our teams is delivering, and this graph is a direct reflection of that. I spoke to it very briefly, but we did have a material safety event in 2022. And out of the back of that, there was a huge amount of investment in both systems, people, and training across the whole of the business. Safety is our core focus, where you have a large workforce that's spread across a very large region, conducting high-risk activities. And as part of that, managing the risk that sits with that is our number one priority, and our people are our greatest asset. So we want to ensure that we've got the adequate focus and support around them.
Our reduction in LTIFR is a direct reflection of both the investment in people, process, and systems by the engagement of our team on the ground. We can't do it without our team operating within our systems and using those tools. The result is a material reduction in our LTIFR, down to a very low number. We're actually trending below industry standards now. We are seeing that the investment really flow through to strong safety performance, which leads to strong productivity performance, driving strong financial outcomes. For those of you on the call that aren't across the story, what makes MLG, MLG? We are really an integrated support, infrastructure support business.
We are very much, if you were to segment us, you'd break us down into four key parts, being civil and mining, crushing and screening, bulk haulage and site services, and our construction materials division. But holistically, the group comes together and operates a model that wraps itself around critical processing infrastructure, and particularly in the gold space. We're typically the organization that is seen as the go-to, where you have a combination of services that are required to support a piece of processing infrastructure. And that'll be a combination of satellite haulage from the remote mines through the processing plant, the management of their tailings facilities, the supply of their construction materials into both the processing plant and the mine sites, underground backfill, shotcrete, and so forth.
Then the day-to-day civil works associated with running any mining operation, haul road construction, tailings dam construction, and so forth. But we offer it in an integrated way whereby they have a single contractual touch point. Our customers aren't dealing with a multitude of suppliers, and we can leverage our fleet to be as optimum as possible. It is a unique business model that hasn't been replicated and has really been the key underlying, I guess, driver of our growth over the last sort of eight to 10 years. If we look at our operational footprint, it continues to creep out within WA. We're, you know, 23 years old now. We're now across 38 sites and 1,500-strong workforce.
I touched on it before, but our people are our greatest asset in this business. Without them, we don't deliver. We have a geographically quite diverse and spread business, and one that is very much reliant upon people, but supported by the systems that, that we have developed. We continue to see that growth and, and are seeing more of that coming down, coming down the chute, at quite a rapid rate, particularly in the gold space at the moment, which I'll touch on when we, when we get into outlook. But as you can see, we are a predominantly Western Australian-focused business, with some operations in the Northern Territory continuing to expand.
In terms of where the revenue's coming from, I guess the MLG story is one that has been really sort of underpinned by the rise in mid-tier Australian gold miners into becoming, you know, major gold miners. We have, given our Kalgoorlie base and origin, we have a natural tendency to be leveraged towards gold, and as those Australian companies have grown, our business has grown too. We are seeing additional growth into the likes of iron ore with the majors now looking to implement the hub and spoke operating model.
I'll talk a little bit more about that in the outlook, and you would have saw throughout the year that we had the Western Syncline Rio Tinto project that came before, which has been highly successful for us. But ultimately, the large portion of our revenue is coming out of the gold industry and is being supported by a material growth in the gold price and growth in total volume. And that's really driving the growth of the underlying business. Annualized compound annual growth rate since 2018 of 32%, year-on-year growth. It's important to mention that 100% of that growth has been organic. There's been no growth procured in this business. The business has built a strong level of growth, balance sheet strength across time, completely organically.
That puts us in a very good position. We're not a business that has operated on M&A. We, we continue to grow organically, and we're, we're seeing that coming down the chute. However, we do have those opportunities that sit in front of us. But from a revenue perspective, really proud of, you know, the continued uptrend, more importantly, supported by a material uptick in bottom line, which is a great result. With that, I'll hand over to Phil.
Thanks, Murray. Morning, everyone. As Murray indicated, really pleasing to see all of our financial metrics in the right position. I mean, I think it, it's a, it's a CFO's dream, really. We've, we've got everything heading the right way, and that's a credit to the operational business delivering a stronger EBITDA, which in turn generates some more cash. And off the back of that, we've seen the EBIT margin and the NPAT really rise, which ultimately NPAT is the, is the number one game in town. So when we look at this, the, the real performance has come out of the site services and haulage business, and when we look at that, we have a portfolio of projects, many of which have gone through all sorts of operational challenges with that growth in the tier two gold mining sector.
They've gone some challenges as those clients change their operations and move things around. What we're seeing now is where our sites are stabilizing, and we're getting more consistent margins across all of them. It's not to say there weren't some that had some challenging times. We certainly had some weather events in July and August, which did constrain us for those first couple of months. When we have heavy weather, we can't operate on site. We have a lower revenue, but our cost base largely stays in line.
The business has invested a lot of effort in systems to try and mitigate some of that through understanding how we can move fleet more quickly or how we can protect our fixed costs and at least not have losses, and it may not make the margin that we might make in a full operational day, but will at least restrict the downside. So what you're seeing is that outcome is starting to see margins continuing to rise. It isn't an out-of-the-box, straight-up jump the margin overnight. We don't do a single project that suddenly has a huge return. What we're seeing is that portfolio really delivering on a more consistent basis, so really pleased to see that as we go forward. In terms of the balance sheet, that has further strengthened.
Like all things, the performance has an ability to start improving your balance sheet overall. What we're seeing here is a gearing ratio starting to come down as profit rises, and our net assets continuing to rise. We are continuing to invest in capital. You'll see here about 25.7 or 25.7 million in capital expenditure this half. We called out about AUD 50 million-AUD 55 million of CapEx. We're still on track to do about that number. Going forward, if you're thinking about where we're heading with CapEx, we probably see a similar number for the underlying business.
However, Mark and I and the CapEx team are currently assessing our hired fleet, and looking at whether there's a return on investment there for replacing some of that gear that is on the longer-term contracts, or is high engine hours, and that may jump up our CapEx next year if the returns look sensible. On that basis, it would be positive both to our cash flow and our margins, so I think it does make a lot of sense, and we do have the headroom in the balance sheet to do that. But right as of today, we haven't made that decision. That's something we're assessing in our budget process for this year, so we'll talk more to that as we go forward.
But don't be, for the analysts on the call, don't be surprised if we do have a higher CapEx next year or a planned higher CapEx, but we'll call it out as we go. As I said, when you look at the gearing, what we're really seeing is a pretty consistent net debt balance. I mean, we actually have averaging about AUD 60.5 million. I say about, it's an exact number. And our net debt currently is AUD 61 million. So we're generally sitting around that AUD 60 million net debt, and that's because we buy our equipment, and we pay that debt off as we buy it. So we're holding the ground, if you like, on our debt, but the line there that is showing the reduction in our gearing is because our profitability is continuing to rise.
So, really pleased where the balance sheet sits. We're certainly in a good space. We've got plenty of headroom in our facilities. As I've said before, the economics of our gearing are that the interest rates that we pay are on average, lower than sort of term debt or large, large debt positions. So we are economically managing that well, and the balance sheet's in good health. On that point, the last one I'll talk to is cash flow. A much stronger cash flow outcome for this half than the last half. Again, we have clients who might miss by a few days and not pay us on time, but generally speaking, our EBITDA is a pretty close proxy to cash flow, with the exception of the timing of client payments.
We've never really had a bad debt in any way, sense or form, so we've always received it. It's just a question of timing. And one other point to make here is that we have also paid a lot more in tax this year than we have in the past. That's as the instant asset write-offs start running through, and we used them up, which is now really the case. In January, we had a large tax payment of about AUD 6.5 million, and that's really the last major payment for the historical losses that we had available.
And now we're into a normalized tax position, where our cash flow will pretty much we'll be paying provisional tax per month, that flexes in line with our profitability, probably from July onwards. So this full year will be the last year of sort of tax catch-up, and then we'll be into a normalized, cash position for tax. And so that's really where we're at. I'll hand back to Murray just to talk about the outlook.
Thanks, Phil. I guess from an outlook perspective, guys, the word that comes to mind is bullish. But it's bullish around timing. So, as we spoke about earlier in the slide pack, the gold market is what's really driving the underlying demand for the business, and we see that continuing to flow through. It is a little bit project timing related. What we are starting to see happen now is some of the expansion capacity starting to come online. New projects are being approved, and the timing around them is really what will drive our growth. But the organic business and our underlying customer base for MLG will continue to deliver that growth half-on-half, year-on-year. But that excites me in its own right.
But when I look at what's sort of 12-18 months ahead and the further expansion that's coming, that gold business is really sort of putting us in a prime position to be able to leverage it further. We are still very focused on our profit margins, so seeing that continued uptrend from where we are today at 12.8%, so pushing towards 15% is where we're aiming. We are very focused on that internally, and we talk openly to our customers on a regular basis about the need to maintain a sustainable margin.
We're really focused on long-term sustainable projects that are going to deliver through the cycle, and are really leveraging ourselves now against this large volume of capacity that's starting to flow through and will continue to over the next two years. We are seeing some additional growth come out of the iron ore sector, albeit it makes up a small portion of our revenue now. Through the year, the team delivered the West Angelas Syncline project. It was a highly successful project, both for us and for our customer. It financially delivered on expectation for ourselves. We delivered for the customer, and now what we're seeing is MLG accredited as a tier one supplier and a large amount of tender opportunity flowing down the chute for that.
Now, there, again, there is timing associated with that, in that those large iron ore projects take time to get approved. But we are now sitting there as an accredited supplier, proven track record, and are being invited to bid on all those processes. They are typically a competitive tender, but ones that come with the, with which large scale, and we've been able to prove delivery. We've spoken a lot about the, I guess, the opportunity to move up the value chain. If I just sort of step back for a sec and look at that top part in terms of our existing gold customer base, and our growing new iron ore customer base, I do see that delivering material for the business.
It will trend sort of gradually up, and it'll have better halves than others, but I do see it over the next two years really starting to drive material growth. The thing that comes as an additional piece in that we've spoken about a lot is the opportunity to move up the value chain. There is a real constraint around gold processing capacity. Every operator is expanding their existing footprint, but the, I guess, what's happening is there's a huge amount of small-scale projects. We've talked about this a lot in the past. Unlocking processing capacity for those type of projects is where we see the ability for MLG to be able to both move up the value chain and grow further outside of those material growth opportunities that we have in front of us already.
So we are very focused on that as well. Unfortunately, gotta kiss a few frogs as you're working through looking at, at these various assets that, that do come up for sale. But ultimately, that is a key focus of the business, and we see that forming a part of our, strategy as we move into the future. So, I'm confidently, and quietly bullish about what sits in front of us. On a half-on-half basis, the results are a direct reflection of, of what Mark and the team have delivered, and, and we have brought a little bit forward, so we do expect the two halves to be sort of in line with each other as we transition to the second half.
It's what sits beyond that that really starts to excite me, and the work that we're doing now to be able to see the business step up again. So, from my perspective, I see the outlook as being very positive. I'm very bullish about it, very excited about it, and I think we're in an exceptionally good position to be able to capitalize on it. And with that, I might throw open the floor to some questions.
Yeah, just to, so in terms of Q&A, we're gonna open up that to, to everyone. You need to actually take your mic off mute, and then just feel free to, to fire some questions in, and we'll, well, the three of us will answer them as we go. Oh, and you need s orry, you need to do the raise hand on Team as well. There we go.
John I.
John.
Hi, team. How's it going? Just a question. So obviously winning work in the Pilbara, can we just get a sort of see-through into the difference in margin between the Pilbara and the Goldfields, and if winning those iron ore margins are, you know, being in a good position to pull those Goldfields or gold margins up as well?
From a tendering perspective, what we see in the iron ore is a lot more consistency. They typically allow a schedule of rate that's a little bit more accommodating for recovery of a fixed cost base. So you don't get subject to road closures, rain events, or lack of ore availability that you see sometimes within the Goldfields region. So it's probably more of a case of consistency over greater margin opportunity.
Yeah, that makes sense. Then just a quick question on crushing. Maybe you can talk about utilization, where the fleet currently is and what targets are?
So we sort of, as a business, we run, depending on configuration, sort of six or seven, two or three stage crushing setups that we can accommodate across the business. At the start of the year, and just due to how the campaign sort of worked, we had two operating. As we closed some longer-term deals, we finished off the half with five. And we've got a number of opportunities that are at the tail end of locking down, coming into the second half. From a mixed perspective, predominantly in the Goldfields, with one or two sort of moving in and out of iron ore.
Excellent. Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on for now.
So it's a lot easier for questions when the results are good. Are there any other questions that we've got online? Oh, there we go.
Hey, guys, can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Can, yeah.
Hey, great half, guys. Really pleased with the results. Just looking a bit more into that processing opportunity, is MLG looking to sort of go on a joint venture with another party just to sort of learn the ropes and move up the value chain that way? Or, you know, just give me some color on the expertise of the company.
Look, I think across the business, Nick, we have, there's an embedded degree of experience across all aspects. Our modeling team is across the full mining gamut. Our crushing team is across the largest portion of the processing element. We've got internal mining engineering capacity. You know, we run feasibility studies for a large portion of our mid-tier client base. I think JV type arrangements isn't something that we're actively looking at. It's something that we sort of prefer to do in our own right. So, like, when the opportunity presents, the business is very much geared for it. We have been structurally getting our business set up to be able to do this for a period of time now. It's really just about the right asset in the right location.
Yeah. Thanks, Murray. I guess it's just the concerns, I guess, around, you, bringing geology into the mix, but, yeah, I understand that there's
Well, no, no. So, for clarity, Nick, sorry to jump on you there. What we are talking about doing in our business is, it's effectively a fee for service. So, the model is one whereby you're providing tile processing capacity. It's no different to the way we operate our crushing business and our haulage business, right? So, the geology risk sits with the third party that's having the material processed. It's our job to crush it, grind it, and liberate the metal out of it.
So, for that, we get paid on a per ton throughput. So, we're not looking to introduce that additional risk into the business, unless it came with a material uplift in profitability delivery, right? So, we are very much a service business at heart. We're focused on how we're expanding that service offering to be able to move right along the value chain and incorporate it into a single operating platform that drives higher margin and return for our shareholders.
Okay. Yeah, no, understood. Sorry for that, that mistake, and, good, good luck for the rest of the half.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks,Phil .
Thanks.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Yeah, yes.
All right. Well done on the result. Just, could you touch on the sort of the Q1, Q2 runways? Obviously, you called out a wet Q1. Just trying to understand, you know, obviously, there's probably a decent pickup in Q2. If you could just sort of unpack that and sort of how that plays into guidance.
Yeah, so the first half started off wet, and then it impacted Q1. We had a strong recovery in Q2 as the haulage business picked up, but we had a large civil project finish for the Castle Hill Road for Evolution. And so that's collectively what brought us home strong. As the civil work sort of slowed into Q2, the crushing business picked up, and that run rate is expected to continue through into the second half.
Whether or not the second half is going to be stronger than the first really relies on the outcomes of a pipeline of tender work that we're working through for the civil division. We are hopeful that those jobs will come through, and we'll be able to mobilize and sort of turn them into returns for the business in Q4. But at the moment, approvals for some of the projects have been quite delayed, and we're just not sure on the actual timing. But from a business perspective, we are expecting to see the returns in line, H2 in line with H1.
Excellent. That's a really good color. Thanks, guys.
Yes, sir?
Can I jump in, guys?
Oh, sorry. Yes, sir? Yeah, you're there.
Is it me or
Yeah.
He was jumping in.
Oh, sorry. You go, mate.
Okay. Thank you. Congrats on the results. Just quickly, with the looking at the processing plants, have you got any economics or rates of return you're looking to achieve? And then, in terms of the quality of the plant you're picking up, are you looking at, like, obviously, all these used plants that are lying, right, that are available, how much are you planning on spending a significant amount of CapEx to bring these things up to speed as well? Are these the things you're looking at? But.
Yeah, look, I think the reality of it is there's no two are the same, right? As I've said, you know, to kiss a few frogs, it's really about, for us, this is about the critical pathway to production. So, I can't give you an exact answer on what we are or aren't planning to spend, because that's subject to the particular asset that we're reviewing. But ultimately, what we're looking to ensure is we have adequate access to power, water, and tailings storage, and it's logistically in a favorable location where we can leverage our road train fleet to feed it, 'cause it will be 100% road train fleet fed. So from, you know, what does that look like in terms of rate of return on capital?
Well, while we believe that it offers a I won't put an exact number on it, but we believe it offers a material uplift from what we see out of our underlying business, and it needs to. Will there be capital required to do it? Yeah, I think there will be at some point in time. Now, what does that look like? Well, until we get into the nuts and bolts of the finalization of it, we actually can't put an exact number on that. However, what I can tell you is, rate of return vesus capital investment will be aligned. And, you know, ML shares of business won't be doing it unless we see it flowing through with a material uplift in our underlying profitability, both in total quantum, but also in percentile uplift.
Great. And then the composition in the second half, what you currently have at the moment, the split between the two, between crushing and bulk haulage and mining services, will be similar in the second half, or will it be a swing towards one-
A bit more crushing weighted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A bit more weighted towards crushing as we see the utilization increase.
To Mark, certainly a comment that probably the challenge is around project timing. The civil division has a long pipeline in front of it, but it's just project timing with getting approvals to start, both from a regulatory perspective, but then also a principal perspective.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, just on the CapEx, AUD 55 million, as we go into the second half, is that again, mostly on the bulk haulage side, or is there a few more crushers being built?
We've got a balance of both. I mean, the crushing one, we certainly, we've put a little bit in this year into crushing. We'll probably do the same next year. But it is predominantly related to the haulage. That's the bigger part of the business in terms of fleet. You know, it's road trains and trailer sets and loaders primarily. That's what we're mostly. You gotta remember that in our CapEx there is about AUD 15 million or AUD 16 million, or probably closer to AUD 20 million now, that underlies that. That is in our workshops where we change out big components, you know, redo engines, et cetera, to give the assets a longer life. So it's not all buying brand-new equipment everywhere. A lot of it is actually just making sure our current fleet has a longer life.
All right. Great. Thank you.
Uh, Nick?
Hi, guys. Nick from Morgans here. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the first half. It might have been a slip of the tongue, but Murray, you mentioned Rio's Brockman, which is another one of their development projects. You've obviously helped out at Western Syncline. But have you guys done any work on the size of the opportunity with Rio across all of these projects? 'Cause I think they've mentioned, you know, they want to bring four greenfield mines into production before calendar year 2028, and there's the Rhodes Ridge, rather, mega project that's a little bit further out. So yeah, just kind of getting to understand the size of the opportunity there.
was a slip of the tongue, Nick. Look, the reality of, you know, that particular customer, they've got their 10 mines, 10-years strategy that they've been openly in the market about. And a lot of these, excuse me, smaller projects, and when I say smaller projects, 200 million ton iron ore satellite projects form part of that. They're very active at the moment in terms of engagement. The advent of the Project Western Turner Syncline for us, as I touched on earlier, it's been highly successful, has got us to the point where we're now at the table. It's a competitive process.
There is another major player there that is a very formidable force that has been there for a long period of time, that deserves adequate amount of respect, and we're typically at the table with them and a few others. So, to answer your question, are we being engaged? Absolutely, we're being engaged. Are they actively talking to us about multiple project? Yes, they're actively talking to us about multiple projects. And we've got demonstrated track record. So, I think in time, it very much has the potential to flow through to material growth. In terms of the scale of that, it's big. Each of these individual jobs are typically AUD five to six million a month in revenue. And there's a series of them that they're looking at, that they're looking at. Are they guaranteed?
Well, no, they're not. It's a competitive process, and we need to continue to deliver for our underlying operations for them as we push forward. But we are genuinely excited about it because of the sheer volume and scale that they are planning around that. And we see at some point in time, subject to the slow wheels of large bulk iron ore miners moving from an approvals and a decision point perspective, that that will flow through and materially contribute to MLG's growth into the future.
Great. Thanks, guys.
John, you still got your hand up?
Yeah, just one more quick one, if you don't mind. Just question on labor. How are you seeing the market, and if there's any impact into pricing, labor inflation going on, and just, you know, how are you attracting or retaining labor within the business?
Yeah, it's definitely still a competitive market, and we're working hard to not only find, but to retain our workforce. We have, in the last six months, invested in new capacity within our HR team, which and we are putting a power of work in our overarching EVP and looking for ways to improve us as an employer of choice. Over the years, we've already done a lot, and by bringing in some new skills and sort of stepping back and reviewing the way that we're doing things has highlighted more opportunities. For us at the moment, if we can retain the workforce and not lose people to our competitors or to our clients, that's the way that we manage the inflationary pressure of our labor and continue to deliver for the clients. But yeah, absolutely still a competitive environment for not only finding and retaining workforce.
Excellent. Thank you.
Just another sam, you have another question?
Yes, please. Just quickly, obviously, good improvement in margin that we saw in the first half. Do you see second half I know you had a pretty good second half last year, can you match that in the second half this year?
Well, we're certainly aiming to do that. I mean, at the end of the day, we had, for the full year last year, we did an EBITDA margin of 12.2%. So we're currently running ahead of that, and we want to continue to run ahead of that so that our overall annual margin is increasing. That's, that's the target. Again, it's gonna come down to mix and, and weather. But generally speaking, we, we expect that margin to hold up, yes.
Great. And just on the dividend, congratulations, that's great news. The payout ratio looks roughly about 25%. Is that s hould we expect that going forward or?
Well, I think we've just commenced dividend payments, and I think we have the intention of retaining that. It'll be a balance and performance around where that percentage sits. And so, that's where we've set it today. Again, each half will be considered, so that'll need to be down to the board's decision, but probably that's the sort of realm we're looking at.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Sam?
Yeah, good day, guys. Well done. Strong result. Just a follow-up on the dividend. You mentioned that 12% margin number, Murray, and, you know, I think reading between the lines, if you can up that margin, should we expect a chunk of that to flow through to your dividend base? It's probably some good upside there.
Biggest shareholder in the room, sitting in the middle here, mate. I'm kind of conflicted on this, right? So, no, I think it's a balance, Sam. Ultimately, delivering for all of our shareholders is core to what we do every day. It's b ut we're a growing business, and that requires the ability to manage capital in an effective way. That being said, as I touched on, once we sort of tick over that 12% range, we're in the range of generating enough cash to be able to do so. I think it'll be a half-on-half balance. As Phil said, we plan to continue to pay dividends. Now, will that be half yearly or yearly? I think, again, that's subject to what is happening on a half-by-half basis. But ultimately, seeing that continue to grow is a core objective that, as the biggest shareholder in the room, I'm highly motivated to see happen, so.
Yep. No, good to hear. And, and just a follow on, just if we look at sort of return on equity between the suppliers and the producers at the moment, it, it's probably very outweighed to, to the producers, but interested in your discussions and, I guess the view on returns from your, from your customer base around, you know, what you guys think you should be generating or what, what they think you should be generating?
Well, I think that's a constant battle. We respect our clients, they are, you know, key to our operation, but they're also still very focused on, on suppliers and what we deliver. So it's never an easy discussion. I think it's a constant battle, but what we are promoting is the service we provide and the production volumes that we can be consistent on. And when you look at it, the real supply chain is down to the volume that they produce of gold, and if, if you wanna, you know, cut the cost too hard and you impact profit, our productivity, then they have a bigger negative than we do. So it's a balance in there, but I think what we are doing is taking it as a portfolio, and looking at every client, and, and some of those conversations are easier than others.
Some of them have been consistently well-balanced for a long time. Others are getting to a position where they're not making as many operational changes, and therefore, it's not so much a rate question as it is now more consistency of operations that allows us to see an increasing margin without their cost necessarily being massively higher at a rate level. So it really doesn't. Nobody really knows until you deliver the result over month on month as to how that profitability is actually performing. The rate setting is more accurate now from us. We have a full dedicated team who are over what it is, and it's more transparent with our clients. That doesn't stop the debate still being challenging, shall we say, which is a fair enough professional position to be in.
Okay. Great, guys. Yeah, thanks and well done.
Thanks, Phil.
Any other questions? Just raise your hand or o kay, I think that might be it for the day. Thank you to everyone for joining. We will obviously be speaking to a number of you. We've got a roadshow coming up in March. I've got a few calls with some desks today and this week. Really appreciate your time, and we'll get on with running the business.
And again, just for me, I just wanna thank our team, particularly for the support over the last six months, as I've had some extended leave. Couldn't be prouder of the work that they've done, and continue to do. The business is in exceptionally good hands, and I think we've transitioned from the acronym of the Murray Leahy Group to, "They're making me look good," so very, very, very excited about what sits in front of us, guys.
Excited about what our team's been able to achieve, but more importantly, really positive on the outlook that sits in front of us and looking, or standing back and looking what they've been able to do, as they've been able to implement and how that's gonna deliver for us into the future. So thank you for everyone that's jumped on the call, and yeah, looking forward to get at it.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.