Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Metarock Group Limited Fiscal Year 2024 Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, we want you to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jon Romcke, Executive Chair. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us this morning as we run through our full year 2024 results for the company, and I'm very happy to say that it's a situation where we can note a record profit for the company at $39.6 million as a result of the group's turnaround plan that's been running for about eighteen months now. It's a combination of returning to well performing and profitable operations, as well as a contribution by the sale of the PYBAR business, which completed on the thirty-first of May at an enterprise value of $65 million. We also sold idle assets during the year and have delivered, at the end of the third period, a net cash position of $21.8 million.
Some of those milestones achieved during the turnaround plan include the exit from a number of loss-making and legacy contracts that were negotiated at conclusion, and the divestment of the non-core assets that I mentioned, lower overheads, and the equity investment from M Resources to the tune of AUD 25 million. Post-period, we've also renegotiated future finance facilities and established a debtor finance facility with Scottish Pacific, and it replaces the previous Westpac facility for the company going forward. Our core business now operates through Mastermyne, Wilson Mining, and MyneSight, which are our key brands, and they've performed exceptionally well during the year. We have a robust order book of AUD 280 million, and a pipeline that we're actively engaging with to the tune of AUD 1.4 billion.
Certainly the turnaround has successfully concluded, and we probably won't talk about the turnaround plan in the future. But we will certainly talk about ongoing profits and a net cash position as we go forward in a stable growth of the business. I'd like to introduce Jeff Whiteman, who probably doesn't need the introduction, but Jeff's gonna run through some of the detailed financial overview of the operation and where we're heading in the future. Thanks, Jeff.
Yes, thanks, Jon, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for dialing in to our results presentation. Hopefully, you've got a copy of the presentation that was put on the ASX this morning, in front of you, so I'll refer to that. If you don't, then it's online for you to look at a bit later on. So I am very pleased to be presenting the results with FY 2024. As Jon said, obviously we've been through a pretty tough time, and the turnaround has really done its job, and here we are with some really good results.
As context, reading through the accounts and the presentation, we've been following the accounting standards and the PYBAR segment is now classified as discontinued operations as a result of it being sold. And effectively Mastermyne and the Mastermyne segment is the continuing operations. So while Mastermyne revenue of AUD 294 million was down due to the exit from the Oaky Creek Crinum projects, there was underlying growth in the Mastermyne business of 10% across our core activities, including contracting services and polymeric products in particular. EBITDA from continuing operations was 31.8 million, and that was up 42 million from a loss last year.
Similarly, NPAT from continuing operations of AUD 21.2 million was up by AUD 52 million from last year and set a new group record. Including PYBAR in the mix, total comprehensive profit was AUD 39.6 million, and that was an improvement of AUD 114 million on FY 2023. And finally, we've reversed the net debt position last year to the tune of AUD 115 million, to finish this year in a net cash position before leasing of, AUD 21.8 million. So just turning to page 4 in the presentation. Looking at earnings, so here you can see there's a table showing the, a bit more detail around the profit and loss and the movements from the prior year.
A total comprehensive profit of AUD 39.6 million comprises 21 million of NPAT from Mastermyne and AUD 18.4 million NPAT from discontinued operations. The latter mostly relates to a AUD 16.5 million profit on sale of PYBAR, which I should note from a tax perspective, that sale actually resulted in a capital loss, so it won't be assessable with no tax payable on that. The tax benefit line that you might see in the accounts there, so we have a tax benefit in the year of AUD 3.5 million. That relates predominantly to the recognition of income tax losses that we incurred in FY 2023 and prior years.
So the impact from continuing operations did benefit from a AUD 4.3 million gain on sale of non-core plant, which was offset partially by onerous contract expenses of AUD 1.1 million. You'll see the chart on the right of page four showing the last five years. That clearly demonstrates both the challenges that the company has been facing and also the successful turnaround that's now been completed. And then just turning now to page five and looking at cash flow. You'll see that significant improvement in EBITDA did translate into underlying operating cash flows of AUD 39.7 million.
Looking at the chart on the right, you'll see moving from the statutory operating cash flow to adjustments take you to the underlying cash flow. And that was AUD 11 million, repayments of the ATO payment plan. And then we incurred about AUD 11.5 million cash cost in relation to exiting the Cook project in the first half of the financial year. Looking at the cash flow table there, you'll see the low operating cash flow, the capital expenditure in the year was markedly lower. And that was primarily the result of again exiting the Cook and Crinum projects. They incurred pretty significant level of CapEx on those projects in FY 2023, and that was absent in FY 2024.
And we achieved that, a pretty significant reduction in debt. Repayment of borrowing was AUD 72 million. And that was really achieved through that strong operating performance of the core business, in addition to application of sale proceeds from Pybar and the non-core assets. So turning now to page six and the balance sheet. Firstly, the balance sheet does look quite different without Pybar, and particularly you'll notice the property, plant and equipment line. So Pybar was a fairly capital-intensive business, and so with that going, the plant and equipment line is truly lower. Pleasingly, the bottom line, net assets, is also markedly different.
So AUD 73.6 million this year, which is more than double where net assets was at the prior year end. In terms of other line items that are a bit different, so right-of-use assets and lease liabilities, they're all smaller as well, and mostly that's tied into the divestment of Pybar. Working capital is increased to AUD 21 million, and you'll see in there that the prior year was only AUD 2.8 million, and that's where the payment plan in the Pybar consideration are actually set off against working capital the prior year, so that actually explains why the prior year was probably a slightly strange balance.
Having paid those off, AUD 21 million working capital this year is probably more reflective of where we see the working capital in the business going forward. Looking at the chart on the right, again, you'll see the net debt position, which actually peaked at December 2022, so it was sort of around about AUD 120 million, including the deferred consideration on Pybar and the ATO payment plan, and so there's been a pretty material turnaround since December 2022 through to today, and as I say, that's been achieved really through solid improvement in operating cash flow, in addition to asset sales. Turning now to, so looking forward at page seven, and what have we got left with Mastermyne?
Mastermyne segment's, as we're really are a specialist underground business and got a broad and deep range of mining capabilities and proven expertise really across the whole value chain, and particularly in underground coal mining. We have three fairly well-recognized brands there. Mastermyne is the primary brand and is how we deal with most of our projects and we offer coal mine services, so a whole range of services assisting our clients in terms of doing development work for them, but also a lot of mine support services and supplying products and consumables and some equipment as well.
We've also got a technical services team, and so they get involved in terms of new mines and expansions, but also with existing mines around optimization and improvement. Wilson Mining, that's a market leader in terms of the supplier of specialist polymeric products and services. Primarily that's around ground support, so secondary support and mine sealing. That's been probably coming to the fore recently with the Grosvenor fire, where that mine has been sealed off, and we're involved in that project. And then cavity fill and resin injection, which is around strata consolidation.
And then last but not least, MyneSight, which is a specialist training organization, and so we offer a range of training services right through to complete outsource training and compliance. And pleased to say MyneSight during the year has picked up a contract for the new Coronado mine, underground mine, Mammoth. And so MyneSight is doing the outsource training for that project. Now turning to page eight, and just looking at the operations of Mastermyne through the period.
So Mastermyne did deliver a vastly improved result in the year, got to an EBITDA margin of 10.8%, underpinned really by some very strong operational performance on the continuing project portfolio, and particularly having exited the Cook and Crinum projects, which took us to a loss last year. We're continuing as Anglo's largest contractor across their three Queensland underground mines, at Aquila, Moranbah North, and Grosvenor. We've just picked up a new five-year contract for Wilsons Polymeric ground consolidation products. So, that was signed just before the year end, and applies basically from July onwards. Unfortunately, on the twenty-ninth of June, an underground fire broke out at Grosvenor mine.
That's been reported, and we've made some announcements about that. That mine is currently obviously still going through. The operations are still suspended. They're still going through the mine recovery process, and we'll be planning the mine re-entry process at some point next year. So we are still involved on the mine in terms of the sealing and recovery process, and hope to be involved in the re-entry process down the track. But for the time being, out of the hundred and sixty-odd people that we had on site at the time, a hundred and forty roles will be or have been lost effective from the end of this month.
We've redeployed about 60 of those, and unfortunately, we've had to let some other people go at this point, but hopefully we'll have those back into the Mastermyne fold in the future. There's a potential to impact on manning levels at the other two Anglo mines that we operate at, Moranbah North and Aquila. And that might arise where Anglo is seeking to redeploy some of their Grosvenor people to those two mines themselves. At this point, that's still uncertain. I'd say probably the latest is we certainly expect to be keeping people at those mines, but the manning levels are uncertain, and we'll provide further detail on that as and when that becomes clear.
Turning to New South Wales, where our biggest operation is at Whitehaven's Narrabri mine. We've been performing very strongly there, and that was recognized when they gave us an additional three-year contract that started in October last year to operate a second development panel, and just recently they've given us a two-year extension of the initial cut-and-fill development contract, so that contract now runs out till September 2026, and in terms of some new mines that are happening around the traps, we've picked up some work at Peabody's New Centurion mine, so we've been assisting with some operational readiness activities there.
And another new client we've been getting into is Illawarra Coal, where we've been doing particularly some optimization work and supplying some products in there. But we see an opportunity to try and grow our presence in both of those operations. Our role at Integra Mine finished. Sorry, I've just spotted a typo there. Our role at Integra finished in August this year. And that's where the mine owner has chosen to close that mine several months earlier than planned. But we were involved right through to the finish. And then we also demobilized from the Tahmoor and Broadmeadow projects during the year.
Our order book is AUD 280 million, so that's sort of consistent with the prior period. And that's probably a combination of winning some new projects and extensions and offset a bit by the effluxion of time on the Anglo contracts, which currently expire in October. And we're currently in negotiations with Anglo around an extension on the Moranbah North and Aquila contracts. And then finally, we've got a deep pipeline of contract opportunities about AUD 1.4 billion, which is about double where it was this time last year. And these are all in our core contract mining services space, and does include some renewals to expansions, but also new mining projects as well.
Now, turning to page nine, I'll just talk about PYBAR quickly. We completed the sale of PYBAR on the thirty-first of May. It was based on an enterprise value of AUD 65 million. You can see the table on the left there has supposed to be earnings, so you can work out the multiples. Actually went through a multiple of about 9.6 times EBITDA. Then the asset finance facilities, about AUD 17.5 million, transferred with the sale into this. We ended up with net cash proceeds of just over AUD 46 million.
So really good outcome to that sale process, and I think one of the key things that really drove that during the 11 months prior to completion, while revenue decreased, that was really due to, again, exit from loss-making projects, so not, not a bad thing. But certainly, we commenced some new projects with Maxwell and Savage River ramped up another relatively new project at Rosebery in Tasmania. And also really focused on the remaining project portfolio in the Mount Isa region and Carrapateena in South Australia. So we've had operational performance improving. Again, you can see EBITDA increased in that period of time for the 11 months and AUD 13.9 billion up to AUD 22.7 billion.
I think the removal of legacy issues and that improvement in earnings is really what showed the buyer the potential for this business. So I'll just turn now onto page 10 and talk a bit about safety and sustainability. Obviously, critical issues in the mining industry. We've talked a bit in the past eighteen months about elevating safety performance. That continues to be a priority project for us. We're refining it as we go, but it remains very focused on project leadership training. We're bringing in probably more psychological aspects, including behavioral awareness training, and also being focused very much on the scoping of work and critical and making sure we've got the right critical controls in place to target in at fatal risks.
And then also, just the nuts and bolts, getting out there and making sure we're doing quality safety audits and plenty of coaching at the coalface, literally. Our safety performance has improved across the year, so we've gone from a TRIR of 10.8 to 9.3. The severity of incidents is generally lower than where it was a couple of years ago. But there's still work remaining to achieve our goal of zero life-changing incidents. So it continues to be very much a priority for us. And, obviously, as I think as most shareholders would know, there were two fatalities, unfortunately in the 2021 to 2022 period. And we are still dealing with some of those legacy incidents.
So we are cooperating with the regulator in relation to their investigations, and very much we've been taking the learnings from, not just those incidents, but also other incidents that we have. We make sure those learnings are built into our business, systems, and also as far as looking at our business planning and even the new work that we're looking at in the pipeline. From an ESG perspective, environmentally, obviously, the climate transition is well upon us, and so we're really involved in developing our environmental roadmap. That's tied very much into our risk management process.
From a social side of things, as you can see from that earlier chart that I showed you of the last five years and the challenges and the profit impacts and so on, that has had quite a big impact on the, I suppose, the morale and the resilience of our people through that period. And so, we really are trying to refresh investments in our people, but they have shown remarkable resilience over the last two years, which I thank them for. And so we are really trying to reinvest there, so to in the form of project leadership training. And also just trying to get our brand out there a little bit more as well.
We've been under the radar a bit for the last couple of years while we get our house in order, but very much now we're back out there with our sponsorships and advertising and so on. Despite the turmoil the company has been through, I'm very pleased to say we ran an employee engagement survey across all the Mastermyne people earlier this year, and the engagement is very favorable, so while obviously there were some issues relating to our turnaround, but generally out of the eight hundred odd people that we have in the business, I'd say the level of engagement is still very positive, and finally, on the governance side of things, we have completed the refresh of the board.
Jon joined in September last year, along with Peter Barker as another independent non-executive director who chairs our audit committee, and the audit and risk committee charter has been rebalanced really to heighten focus on the risk management side of things and not just on the financials, so I'll just finish off on turning to page eleven. Just looking forward, so I want to talk a bit about our priorities for the FY 2025 and the outlook, so FY 2025, Mastermyne certainly now has a pretty solid foundation to pursue growth within our core capabilities, but also potentially looking at diversifying into some adjacent activities, but really, we've got to have a strong tie into what we're good at.
Divesting fiber not only brought the sale proceeds in, but it also eliminated a fairly significant CapEx burden from us as well. And, as Jon mentioned earlier, we've replaced Westpac with a new Scottish Pacific working capital facility. They're also talking to us about an asset finance facility as well. So that fresh lending relationship with improved funding capacity and tenure I think will be very helpful to our plans going forward. I would probably just on that, I would just like to say a quick thank you to Westpac as well, who have been very supportive through the turnaround. In terms of the growth opportunities, we're looking at some M&A opportunities.
There's quite a bit happening in the market, but particularly around organic opportunities, and that's both through the market, but also obviously as part of the turnaround, we brought M Resources on as a majority shareholder in May last year. M Resources do have a fantastic and extensive network in the industry, so we are seeing some opportunities through those guys as well. In terms of our strategic priorities, I'd say the first one is we are probably a bit overly reliant on our largest clients, and I'll come back to that in a moment. Certainly our priorities are around diversifying and expanding our client base and our project portfolio.
And then some other internal priorities around setting up the team for success, really enhancing our competitive advantage, driving efficiency, and really making ourselves so valuable to our clients. It would be difficult for them to take us out of the picture. In terms of outlook, I've mentioned the order book is about AUD 280 million. The key commercial risks, I've mentioned about the fire at Grosvenor. So that's put some uncertainty over at Moranbah North and Aquila. The other thing in relation to Anglo is, again, it's public knowledge. It's Anglo steel making coal is being put on the market, so there's a sale process in progress there.
So it creates a little bit of uncertainty, but I would note that we are the largest incumbent contractor in the steelmaking coal business across all three underground mines. And we've been there for many years. We have extensive knowledge and experience in those mines. So I think Mastermyne is very well placed to assist whoever the successful bidder for those mines are. We're very well placed to help out, and I think Jon confirm our future of those operations going forward. In terms of other key risks, same job, same pay is obviously getting quite a lot of airplay out there, which we are well tuned into.
And then obviously finally involved in a commodity business, so coal price fluctuations can have an impact as well. And that, so with that, I'd like to open the floor up for our Q&A.
Thanks very much, Jeff.
If you wish to ask-
Thanks, Betsy. If you could, run the Q&A program for us, that'd be great.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question comes from Daniel Ireland with Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jeff and Jon. Well done on the result. Just referring to slide eight, in relation to the Grosvenor mine. Can you just give us an update as to what Anglo is saying there in terms of the timeline? Have they provided that to you, or what are your expectations around that?
Yes, thanks, Daniel, and good morning. Yes, so obviously, this has been a pretty challenging time for Anglo. The fire is still fairly recent, twenty-ninth of June, and it obviously the immediate focus was on bringing the fire under control and trying to protect the people and initially that was done very quickly. The next focus was on trying to protect, put the fire out and protect the asset and the surrounding environment. So, Anglo rightly have been very focused on that, and Mastermyne have been helping as required through that. Where Anglo is now moving to is looking to redeploy their people from Grosvenor elsewhere.
So, but in terms of Grosvenor itself, we've been told about the 27 ongoing roles at the moment, although that might still change yet. But 27 ongoing roles with Grosvenor, which is primarily around seeding activities. And then, in terms of Moranbah and Aquila, we've been told the numbers of people that they are offering their people at those two operations, but still not been given any firm guide of where our numbers might go to. I would say based on what they've told us so far around the numbers they're offering, certainly even if all of their people were redeployed and all have the same capabilities, there's not enough people to completely take us out of Moranbah North anyway.
So I'm very confident around that we will have an ongoing presence at Moranbah North. And certainly in terms of both Moranbah and Aquila, we have some capabilities that the Anglo team don't necessarily have, and so confident that we will retain people essentially across all three mines for going forward. We're currently in discussions with contracts at the moment that expire at the end of October. Sorry, it's October. And we're currently fairly advanced in the negotiations around an extension to those contracts, which will probably take us through to post the sale process outcome, I would say. And then it'll be back to the table to have discussions with whoever the successful buyer is.
Okay. Just referring to the contract opportunities, $1.4 billion relative to $0.7 billion in 2023, significant uptick there. How do we think about conversion of those contract opportunities to the order book? You said it's in the core contract mining space. I'm just trying to get a feel for, just as your contract wins that you think that you could get from those opportunities.
Yeah, look, I think there's, I would say we're pursuing a number of things in the industry. In a particular moment, there's a lot of activity happening. Just to give you an idea, in terms of new or expanding mines, Peabody Centurion is effectively a new mine. It's an old one that's been reopened. That's only just starting to get ramped up at the moment. Fitzroy's Ironbark mine is a new one that's ramping up. Caro is opening a new underground mine, Mammoth. BHP is opening a new mine at Broad meadows. Drummond Barre is exploring opening a new mine in the next year or two, pending approvals.
Stanmore has just acquired the Eagle Downs site from South32, and so they're looking at getting that one going, and then you've got a couple of others like Kestrel and Ensham that are also expanding at the moment as well, so in terms of underground coal in Queensland, there is an enormous amount of things happening, and so we're actually targeting work across all of those. I would say we're not looking for a sort of big bang, AUD 500 million dollar project that's in one place like where we went down the Cook and Crinum type path. We're looking at really sticking to our core capabilities and talking to all of these mine owners.
And, we'd hope to pick up some work across each of these type of opportunities. Turning to New South Wales, we are already involved in a significant number of mines down there, and but typically, other than Narrabri at the moment. So Narrabri is a pretty sizable operation. We've got three contracts there. But a lot of the other mines, we have smaller operations, but we are operating at Ulan with Glencore, and we are seeing some growth across those areas as well. So that's sort of growing, expanding, growing current projects into into sort of a larger scope.
Probably the biggest opportunity we see in New South Wales is in the Illawarra, Illawarra Mining Company, and getting probably a fairly warm reception there, where we have operated there before. We've got good experience, but in particular, M Resources and their partner, GEAR, actually, as of yesterday, I think it was, completed on the acquisition of the Illawarra mines, and that's Dendrobium and Appin Mine, both very sizable metallurgical coal operations. We are certainly talking to the new owners about getting that entree back in down to those projects.
Excellent. That's all from me. Thanks.
Thanks, Daniel.
Very good.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There appear to be no further questions at this time, and I'll hand the call back to Mr. Romckey for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Betsy. Thank you, everyone, for listening about our results for the end of the financial year. We look forward to publishing a more full annual report in a month or so's time, and certainly we'll keep the market absolutely informed as our opportunities for growth come forward. It's been a pleasure to be able to share some good news about the company this year, and to see the turnaround that's occurred, and to acknowledge the great efforts from our people within the business. I'll be looking forward to an AGM later in the year. Thanks, everyone, and I'll sign off from now. Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you, everyone, and have a good day.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.