Earnings Call: H2 2026

Aug 26, 2026

Summary

Revenue and EBITDA exceeded guidance in FY 2026, with strong cash generation and a record order book. Growth is set to continue in FY 2027, supported by high coal prices, a robust pipeline, and disciplined capital management.

FY 2026 full year results call for Mastermyne Group Limited. As Ben says, I'm Geoff Whiteman, the Managing Director and Chief Executive, and I'm joined by our CFO, Matt Ruhl. Thanks for taking the time to dial in. Just turning to our results document now. Talking about, sorry, I'm just trying a bit of space for it. Here we go. Starting with the highlights for FY 2026. I'm very pleased that they show a marked return to growth. Revenue of AUD 237 million was up 13% on the prior period, above the upper end of guidance that we provided back in February with the first half results. Similarly, underlying EBITDA was above guidance at AUD 20.3 million, an impressive 47% increase on FY 2025. Much of this translated into both net profit before tax of AUD 15.7 million, 148% up on last year, and also operating cash flow of AUD 20.3 million. The ultimate outcome of this performance was a material increase in our net cash balance to AUD 46.5 million by 30th of June. Our strategic focus on winning work closely aligned with our core capabilities, has achieved strong order book growth, being valued at the year-end at AUD 432 million through a combination of new contracts and contract extensions with major clients including Glencore, Anglo American and Yancoal. The recent award post-year-end of our Dendrobium contract with GM³, valued at AUD 85 million in the initial two-year term and up to AUD 255 million in total across the full six-year term, builds on this strong foundation and provides great momentum as we enter FY 2027. With increased activity across the year, including the ramp-up of our GM³ Appin project, we had already grown our workforce from 640 to 689 people by the end of June. With the new Dendrobium contract to add another 140 people shortly and other near-term opportunities progressing well, this growth is anticipated to continue towards the 1,000 headcount mark. On the supply side, we've continued to build our relationships with strategic partners and notably have extended our exclusive agreement with Jennmar Holdings out to 2047, locking in long-term supply of our market-leading strata consolidation products. The business has evolved significantly in recent years, so we've included a brief overview here. Essentially, the company is a specialist provider of value-adding solutions to coal mining projects, currently focused on the underground sector. We operate under two brands, Mastermyne and Wilson Mining, both of which have been leaders in the market with greater than 30 years of history. The business is recognized for its high level of technical capability and holds long-term relationships with pretty much all of the global tier 1 miners in Australian underground coal, and you'll see the names on the right there, very familiar names. Through its project portfolio, offices and facilities, Mastermyne covers all of the major coal regions on the Australian East Coast and typically has activity at 12 to 15 mines at any time. Our market-leading solutions comprise a set of integrated capabilities categorized into three main areas. Mining services. This is really around providing specialist labor, technical expertise and equipment to deliver safe, efficient and production for our clients. In the middle box there, strata consolidation, where we use an exclusive range of market-leading resin injection and cavity filling products to ensure the safety and productivity of our clients' longwall operations. Then on the right-hand side there, in terms of our products area, where we cross-sell a growing range of specialist and innovative products and consumables into our client projects. I will now hand over to Matt to take us through the financials. Thanks, Geoff, and good morning, everyone. Firstly, on our earnings. FY 2026 was a year of strong earnings growth, with both revenue and underlying EBITDA exceeding the upper end of the guidance range provided at the half year result. Revenue increased 13% to AUD 237.7 million, while underlying EBITDA increased 47% to AUD 20.3 million. This translated into a significant improvement in profitability, with underlying net profit before tax increasing 148% to AUD 15.7 million. This result was driven by increased activity levels across the business, particularly within strata consolidation, the full year contribution from the GM³ Appin project, greater client diversification and the recovery from prior year external events. Importantly, earnings growth outpaced revenue growth, resulting in EBITDA margin expanding from 6.6% to 8.5%. This reflects a favorable mix shift towards higher margin activities, particularly strata consolidation, together with continued focus on productivity and cost discipline. Statutory profit was impacted by AUD 8.8 million of non-underlying items, the largest being provisions and costs associated with legacy legal matters. Excluding these items, the underlying performance demonstrates the strength of the operating business and the progress made through FY 2026. Moving to the next slide on the overall financial performance. Having covered the strong earnings outcome, one of the key features of FY 2026 was the diversification of revenue sources. Growth was generated across multiple clients, projects and activity lines rather than relying on a single contract or customer. During the year, we benefited from the full run rate contribution of the Appin project and contract growth across existing operations. In FY 2026, revenue was spread across three major customers, each contributing more than 20% of revenue, with the top three customers accounting for 79% of the total revenue, compared to two customers accounting for about 80% in FY 2025. We also saw an improvement in business mix. Mining services remain the largest activity. However, strata consolidation increased its contribution to group revenue from 26% to 30%, supported by elevated longwall activity, strong customer demand and the critical nature of the services provided. This continues to demonstrate the value of our integrated business model and cross-sale strategy. We believe this provides a more balanced earnings profile and reduces reliance on any single customer relationship. Moving to cash flow. Our cash generation remained a key highlight for FY 2026. Net operating cash flow increased 20% to AUD 20.3 million, reflecting strong conversion of earnings into cash. Our current capital light operating model continues to underpin this performance. Capital expenditure remained around 2% of revenue, allowing a substantial proportion of operating profits to be converted into cash flow. As a result, cash increased by AUD 16.8 million during the year to AUD 47.2 million at the end of June 2026. The growth in cash was achieved while continuing to invest in working capital required to support expanding activity levels across the business. The strength of cash generation provides flexibility to pursue growth opportunities. On the balance sheet, the balance sheet strengthened materially during FY 2026 and remains a significant strategic advantage for the group. Net cash increased to AUD 46.5 million from AUD 29.1 million in the prior year, representing a 60% improvement and providing substantial financial flexibility. Total assets increased to AUD 124.5 million, primarily driven by higher cash holdings and increased receivables associated with the higher activity levels. Net assets increased to AUD 76.7 million, while net tangible assets strengthened to approximately AUD 0.21 per share. The group ended the year with minimal debt and significant liquidity. Subsequent to year-end, the company's AUD 30 million ScotPac working capital facility was renewed through to July 2028 and remained fully undrawn, further enhancing our financial capacity. This balance sheet strength supports both organic growth and selective acquisition opportunities while giving the group the flexibility to convert its substantial pipeline and order book into future earning growth. I will now hand back to Geoff. Thanks, Matt. Moving on to safety, people and sustainability. We have maintained a strong focus on our Elevating Safety Performance project, which is multifaceted but underpinned by developing our project leadership skills and nurturing a positive safety behavioral culture. Our actions have shown a significant improvement in our safety metrics over the past three years, notably with reduced severity of injuries. Most importantly, we achieved zero life-changing events in FY 2026 and remain committed to this goal going forward. We undertake regular employee surveys and pulse checks, which provide confirmation of our team's unwavering commitment to keeping safe and a high level of engagement, in addition to very useful feedback to develop our strategies going forward. Given the recent contract wins and the near-term pipeline, our well-established and proven recruitment capability is a key differentiator and risk mitigant when facing the challenge of building the size of a team in a short timeframe. On the sustainability front, we are making good progress with developing a framework to identify and evaluate the associated risks and opportunities. We are privileged to work with some of the world's largest mining companies operating across rural and regional communities across Queensland and New South Wales, with long-term relationships dating back up to almost 25 years. Our extensive and diversified contracts portfolio reflects both the history of Mastermyne and a conscious strategy to broaden our exposure across a number of clients and mining projects. Our most recent client, GM³, is a joint venture formed in 2025 involving our major shareholder, M Group, which acquired Appin and Dendrobium mines from South32. Where contracts show an end date of 2026, we are well progressed in negotiations with those clients for extensions or renewals. It is also worth highlighting that products and ad hoc strata consolidation work is typically performed under purchase order and is therefore on top of this, not included in our order book values. Over the past 18 to 24 months, we have been firmly focused on building a targeted pipeline aligned with our core capabilities and converting our strategic opportunities into awarded contracts. This focus has resulted in a 67% increase in the pipeline to AUD 1.5 billion, and a 38% increase in the order book to AUD 432 million. These factors, combined with a recent award of Dendrobium Mining Services contract, provide strong visibility over FY 2027. With approximately AUD 200 million of that order book, including the recent Dendrobium award, secured as of today relating to FY 2027, and that is before any further renewals and/or new contracts currently sitting in our near-term pipeline are awarded. In terms of our future direction, we continue to pursue a disciplined growth and diversification strategy with two key pathways. Organically, where we scope to build and convert our existing pipeline, seeking to leverage our deep long-term relationships in the sector. From a cross-sell perspective, we are actively expanding our range of services and product offerings, which can achieve growth at existing client projects. Further, we are not sitting still, but rather investing in innovation and technical expertise to remain ahead of the game and drive new revenue streams and margin growth. The second pathway is focus on acquisitions, where there is a really good strategic fit and where we can leverage our well-capitalized balance sheet, healthy liquidity, and the strong relationship with our major shareholder, M Group. In this way, we can build broader capabilities and scale. A key takeaway is the level of discipline being applied in identifying and evaluating potential acquisition opportunities. Given the focus on both organic growth and acquisitions, the board has taken a strategic decision to declare a nil final dividend for FY 2026, with the intention of further building our capital position to align with our organic and acquisition growth strategies. We revisit our capital management periodically on the way through. I have completely lost my train of thought here. Yes, we revisit our capital management strategies on the way through, and we will advise on that at our future period ends. On the outlook, to finish, I can say that I am confident that the momentum built through FY 2026 is set to continue into FY 2027. Continued growth is underpinned by a number of key drivers, including a significant near-term pipeline weighted to first half of FY 2027. Increased market demand as a number of longwall mines restart and ramp up. Supportive industry conditions, including good demand for coal and high coal prices. Our long-term exclusive agreement with Jennmar for strata consolidation products, now extended out to 2047. Our strong balance sheet, with AUD 76 million of available liquidity to support organic growth and strategic acquisitions. I will now hand back to Ben to take any questions. Yes. Thank you, Geoff. We've got a fair few questions that come through. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please do so via the Q&A function at the bottom of the screen. Just a first question from James Bisognin of Unified Capital. James has asked, "You flagged significant opportunities expected to convert in the first half of FY27. Can you elaborate further? Is this within existing or new customers, and strata versus mining services? Yes. Thanks, Ben, and thanks James for the question. You will have seen from our pipeline that we have near-term opportunities within the pipeline of what was AUD 823 million. That's come down a little bit with the recent award of Dendrobium, but we're still looking at a near-term pipeline around about, or in the order of AUD 750 million. That's contracts that we expect to be awarded to the market within the next 12 months. That is weighted towards the first half of FY27 as well. Certainly there are opportunities out there. It is a range of existing projects and also probably not brand new clients because we already worked with a majority of clients in the sector. But maybe new contracts with those clients or new capabilities for them. In terms of a mix between strata and mining services, that's varying. But I think we see strong opportunities in both of those activities. Also with our products business as well, which has got some good growth opportunities in front of it. Thank you, Geoff. Just on the broader market, this is also from James. He points out that coking coal prices have moved higher by 15% this week. Can you provide some comments around what you see on customer activity front as prices rise? If this holds, do you see Mastermyne being a beneficiary? We're exposed across predominantly met coal but also thermal coal. Both of those prices have improved since 2025 where the prices were abnormally low. As the prices have picked up, met coal price picked up from around October last year and thermal early this year with the Middle East situation. That certainly helped our clients make some more long-term decisions and I think be more confident in making their investment decisions. So it's certainly helpful. I think the recent price increase this week, the coal price is a commodity, so it goes up and down. I think for me, I guess it's supportive, but really the main thing is that as long as the coal prices remain at a sustainable level, then, yeah, that makes our clients keen to invest. Whilst there's customer or client activity, that creates opportunities for us. Certainly, a big part of what we try to do is bring value-adding solutions to our clients, partly around improving safety, but also around improving operational efficiency. So even if coal prices are a bit more depressed, that still creates an opportunity for us if we can see a way of helping our clients to deliver production for a lower cost. Thank you, Geoff. This one's from Ben Brown of Petra Capital. Points out that, "The second half FY 2026 benefited from strong working capital conversion, with receivables declining and payables increasing, while operating cash flow was approximately AUD 14.8 million. With Dendrobium mobilizing in FY 2027 and new projects, should we expect a material working capital outflow in the first half of 2027, and is that expected to largely normalize by year-end? Yeah. Thanks for the question. So there is, with the Dendrobium project coming online, there will be organic working capital impacts to that. We do expect that that, over the 12 months, will normalize. We'll definitely see the impacts in the first six months, but pending activities across our strata and products, we're in a good position to be able to offset as much as possible. But equally, with our ScotPac facility, we do have the options of being able to bring that cash forward. So, we're well-positioned for the year. I do expect that that will flatline by the end of the year. Thank you, Matt. We've had some questions around EBITDA margins. One of the questions, this individual has calculated second half 2026 EBITDA margin at being at 9.3%. What's required to hit your prior EBITDA margin target of 10%? Yeah, thanks for the question. Firstly, we're really pleased with the progress for the year from the 6.6% to the 8.5% over the year. The result in the second half of the 9.3% very much reflects the improvement across the portfolio of the activity levels in our higher margin activities of strata. We'll continue to diversify our client activities and deliver on our cross-sell strategies, which supports the EBIT margin growth. Our goal is to achieve previous margin levels as we look to deploy that. Thank you, Matt. Next question was just, we've had some questions around Anglo. What should shareholders expect to happen with the former Anglo American mine contracts expiring next year post Tilmar acquisition? Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Yeah, we have been asked that a bit. Obviously, when there's an ownership change of a major asset, it does create some uncertainty. We have been with Anglo, as we highlighted earlier in the pack, since 2002. It's a very long relationship. We are the largest contractor on site at both the Coolarburloo and Moranbah North mines. The Grosvenor mine is still not producing currently. Yeah, so we're currently contracted out till April next year and are in discussions with them around continuing that relationship going forward. Yeah, there's a risk it might be other players in the market trying to use that to get in, but I think we can rely on our points of differentiation now from the same as any other client. We've just got to remain ahead of the pack and be very competitive. Yeah, it is one I have a level of confidence around. Thank you, Geoff. Obviously, there is a bit of interest around Tahmoor. A couple of questions there, but I think one encapsulates pretty much all of them. Is Tahmoor in play given your existing relationships? What I would say is, with Tahmoor, it was a good producing mine a couple of years ago before its ownership ran into trouble. The mine was put on care and maintenance. With the mine being put through a sale process almost regardless of who ended up buying it, Tahmoor would have been on our radar. Certainly, with M Group being involved in the purchase of that mine, that does provide us with a warm sort of entrance into the door at least. It is a joint venture, so we do still need to be competitive and compete on our own merits. Yes, I can confirm Tahmoor is in our pipeline and as it would have been with anyone. We are working hard on coming up with a solution to help M Group and their partners with a successful restart of production there. Thank you, Geoff. Question here. Does the Middle East conflict impact supply chain for the strata consolidation products? Look, certainly earlier this year, when that first happened, it did cause some disruption, particularly to, not our shipping routes, but actually where we were air freighting some product and through Dubai and had to reroute that. That did cause some disruption, which we managed our way through and still managed to deliver record volumes through that second half of FY 2026. Going forward, we've been working very closely with our strategic partner Jennmar. Very pleased to say that we've come up with a number of actions there that will pretty much ensure security of supply going forward, so we don't have those concerns looking ahead. Thank you, Geoff. Couple of parts to this question. I know the answer to the first one. Are you providing FY 2027 guidance? The second part of the question is, or alternatively, are you able to share the FY 2027 strong revenue visibility you have? We've had a few questions around that. I guess we can point to another one that said you flagged significant opportunities expected to convert in the first half of 2027. Can you elaborate further? Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, what's in the order book out of that AUD 423 million, there was about AUD 155 million of that related to FY 2027. Then with around about AUD 40 million, AUD 45 million for year one of Dendrobium contract that's been awarded post-year and that locks in revenue in the order book relating to FY 2027 in around about that AUD 200 million mark. In terms of the opportunities we've got locked in that near-term pipeline, I've talked about Tahmoor. We've mentioned previously that there's other opportunities with the other GM³ mines as well. We've got the, as we just mentioned, renewal discussions going on with Anglo American. We have renewal discussions going on with Whitehaven Coal at Narrabri, and we're also looking at a number of other opportunities as well, mostly with existing clients, in some cases at new projects, in some cases at existing projects. Thank you, Geoff. Just a couple of questions around the dividend. When do you expect the payment of dividends to begin? Why haven't you paid a dividend this year? Well, as I mentioned, we've got a lot of growth in front of us, and so the board have taken the strategic decision to maintain and build our capital position really in view of that growth, both organic and acquisition growth. We will continue to revisit our capital management policy in future periods. I do flag we've got a pretty significant balance of franking credits. So if and when we get to that point of going back to dividends, we do have franking credits to benefit that. But yes, at this point, we're on a strong growth trend and so the decision has been taken that we're better serving shareholders by maintaining that cash to really deliver on the growth agenda in front of us. Thank you, Geoff. Question from Issam Eid from RaaS Research. The short-term opportunities, are they more coking or thermal coal? That's such a good question, but I think thinking through the bigger ones there, they are predominantly coking or metallurgical coal. There are some thermal opportunities in there as well. I would say the thermal mines that we're involved with are the high-quality thermal mines that are delivering export quality thermal. So, yes, it's still higher up the spectrum than some other mines. So yeah, we really do try to focus on the met coal and that high-quality thermal. Thank you, Geoff. Just a question here around Yancoal. So, with Mastermyne currently servicing Ashton Underground owned by Yancoal, this person's curious if there is any information that can be given to support the thesis that potentially post-acquisition Yancoal will also be looking for underground contractors for Kestrel. Is there a potential for this in the near term, near future, or are our current contractors awaiting contract renewal? Look, I would say when there's ownership changes, the question around Anglo was earlier. I think that does provide us an opportunity to go and at least talk to Yancoal. We do have a good relationship with them through our Ashton contract. I'd also highlight that we're actually already talking to Kestrel on an unrelated or a different proposal that's separate scope to our current contractors. That's prior to Yancoal even taking the reins there. Kestrel is a large mine. Mastermyne has done extensive work at Kestrel previously. I think whether Yancoal make the difference or not, it's still on our target list and one that we believe we can add some value there. All right. Thank you, Geoff. That concludes the Q&A segment of this webinar. I'll now hand back to Geoff for closing remarks. Thanks, Ben. Again, many thanks to everyone on the call for taking an interest in Mastermyne and hearing our story. We're certainly very excited about the year ahead, and look forward to providing further updates as we progress with our growth agenda over the next few months. So thank you again, and have a good day.