Morning and welcome to our 2025 results presentation. Just before we deal with the agenda, just a request, please pose the questions as we go along on the chat. Again, I'll be dealing with the business overview, then I will ask Roelof to share with you the operational overview, and André, as usual, will share with us the highlights for the financials on the review. I'll be back at the end to give a quick update on this ever-changing world and how we're setting up the business to deal with this. We will then open the floor at the end for a quick Q&A. Remember, only the easy questions today. Just the highlights again, just on a high level. We will deal with some of this in the slides later on with Roelof.
He will shed some detailed light on some of these highlights. Obviously top of mind as always is safety. Pleased to report for the period under review, again, no fatalities reported. Just to interrupt myself, unfortunately, a slight uptick in the LTI frequency rate. Just to give you some sort of a comfort, there's specific engineering initiatives which we're dealing with as we speak. As a side note, this company work around 7 million man hours per annum, and we're moving thousands of tons of equipment. It still remains a high-risk business, but again, specific engineering initiatives to try and de-risk this type of business. If you look at the pipeline and an order book, obviously a very nice position for the business.
A company this size to go into a new year with an order book of just on $1 billion, we couldn't have asked for better. That being said, though, if we consider this ever-changing world and the volatility out there, I need to stress that I think the company, the way it's been set up and the resilience of this business to deal with this ever-changing world goes without saying. I really think we're well-positioned with this order book. Probably more important, as important, in a later slide which Roelof will share, is the makeup of the order book and pipeline, and with specific reference to the Copper and the Gold exposure, something which is of strategic importance to the business and a specific focus for us to grow the business in that space. If you look at the revenue, up just about 8%.
We would obviously like to see a bit more given this commodity bull run that we saw of late. Again, well-positioned. I think if we look at the pipeline going forward, no reason to be concerned of building the revenue or increasing the revenue as we're going forward. The company, again, I think demonstrates its resilience to operate in these current conditions. If you look at the technology advancements made, obviously the three that comes to mind is obviously the MTB progress. We've commissioned the machine the end of last year. It's currently ramping up as we speak. The second one is obviously the SBS. The project was commissioned earlier last year in 2025. Phase I completed.
We're now moving into phase II, and we hope the end of the year to get all the hardware for phase II and then moving on to the next phase. The reef cutting project that's been funded by OM. The machine has been established, site has been established in early 2027. Just before we touch on the specific initiatives and strategy for the different divisions, maybe to pause and take a step back. I just need to remind all the viewers and listeners which is not familiar with the company about the company's puARPUse. Again, nothing has changed. It's still to make a difference, and I would like to emphasize making a difference. It starts off with one, the industry to try and help the miners to develop technologies to obviously help them in turn.
Two, to make a difference in the lives of our employees. Three, the communities in which we serve worldwide, not only in South Africa, just as a side note. If you look at the business, the different divisions, the four divisions in the group, obviously Raiseboring has been the backbone for the past 40 years. Not much has changed. The revenues and earnings of this division still north of 80%. If you look at the specific initiatives or the strategy that underpins Raiseboring, again, the focus to diversify the business or the footprint of the business still top of mind. To roll out and to further develop the remote drilling systems is certainly number two. Maybe number three is to commission a total autonomous drilling system, and we hope to get that over the line before the end of the year.
Slim drilling, again, three specific strategic initiatives, I should say. One is again, to diversify this business. We historically only operated in the boundaries of South Africa, although back in the day we did some work up at Kibali, but the focus here is to diversify and to expand the footprint beyond the boundaries of South Africa. The second one is to further develop the Desert Elephant, a robotic rig that was developed, and that is certainly something that we need to focus on in the short term to try and get that to the next phase. The third one is to focus on data.
This company has been seen to be a drilling company, focused on core drilling, and there's a specific shift that we would like to emphasize and like to focus on, and that is to sell data to help the geologist to fast-track decision-making. If we talk about the mechanical cutting referred to it earlier on, again, the MTB, the Shaft Boring System and the Reef Cutting System, again, Roelof will share some more detail in that. I might just add, I think where the world is going to and what we're busy developing here is going to be key for the industry going forward. The last one is probably more in the A&R space, the future digitalization and smart mining.
Again, this, the one that stands out here in terms of strategy is obviously the internationalization of that A&R business. We took the majority shareholding and ramped the shareholding up like, I think two years ago, André. I think today we're ready to actually internationalize this business. I think ultimately this is where the growth is going to come from if we talk about the A&R business. On that note, again, I'll be back at the end to take some of those easy questions. Roelof, maybe over to you on the operational overview, please.
Thank you, Daniël, and good morning to everyone watching this morning. As always, a big thank you to our employees across the group for their excellent contribution throughout 2025. We're sitting in a new year, and we're presenting 2025 results to you and another record revenue for Master Drilling once again. This is a big team achievement from everybody in the group, and a big thank you to all our employees for that. Today in the operational review, we'll share with you some insights into our operational business. We'll first start off by talking about safety, and Daniël alluded to it a bit earlier, our deterioration in our safety performance. We'll give you an update on our people agenda and the progress that we're making there. Then we'll dive into the different business pillars to unpack three key things there.
The strategy of these business pillars, the operational performance, and then finally, an update on the technology roadmap. As always, we'll have a look at the regional breakdown, talk about output and utilization. Finally, we'll end off with some good news on our order book and our very strong pipeline at the end. Let's get started on safety. Safety always comes first. As we've mentioned before, our safety performance have deteriorated in 2025. Our Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate is sitting at 1.55, which is higher than our internal tolerance levels and also weaker than our performance in 2024 of 0.81. We definitely can improve our safety performance. Later on in the presentation, we'll talk about our technology roadmap.
We will emphasize our progress on automation, autonomous drilling, as Daniël mentioned, mechanization, and these strategic initiatives is essential in improving our safety performance. The more we can remove our employees out of harm's way, further away from equipment, the better our safety performance will be. We are fully committed to deliver on these strategic initiatives in the long term. I also want to acknowledge our zero fatality achievement. This is year eight now and an excellent job by our teams across the globe on achieving this. Let's talk about our people agenda. People is the cornerstone of our business and fundamental to our operations. If we look at our safety performance that we discussed in the previous slide, this was very unfortunate. The good news is we're making progress on our people performance and our people agenda.
Our workforce is sitting at 3,300 employees, which is up from 3,100 in 2024. This growth is really coming from growth in South America and then the additional machines that we mobilized within the raise boring business that we will discuss later on. Also the crews for our tunnel boring machine, our MTB, that we deployed here in South Africa. Our investment in training is significantly higher, now sitting at $2.1 million per year in 2025. This $2.1 million demonstrates our commitment to develop technical skills, leadership skills, and to support our apprenticeship programs throughout the group, not just here in South Africa. Local employment is a very important number for us to look at, now sitting at 96%, which is above certain industry standards.
We work very closely with the host companies or clients in the regions that we operate to make sure that we comply with local employment regulations and requirements. This, again, is not just a South African matter. This is a global matter that we are addressing. On gender diversity, we're sitting at 21%, which is higher than a number of industry trends within the mining space. Just looking at these initiatives on the agenda of people that we shared with you today, all of this is really underpinned by our values, which is respect, accountability, innovation, safety and efficiency. Very important, we are committed on delivering these values in the way we run our business.
If we move on to revenue contribution by business pillar, and I'm going to elaborate a little bit more on what Daniël mentioned earlier on each one of these business pillars. First of all, revenue contribution across the board. No major changes from 2024. We see only some slight changes. First of all, raise boring and support services up to 83% and still being the majority part of our business and the core and the engine room of our business. This 83% and the growth that we've seen is mainly coming from additional machines that we mobilized to the fleet and also some better performance in certain areas across the group. On the digitalization and smart mining pillar, slightly down.
We had a bit of a slow start in the A&R business for the first half of the year, but they caught up in the second half of the year. On the slim drilling side, flat at 4% revenue contribution. What we can report here is that we needed to redeploy some of the rigs in South Africa that were deployed to some of the platinum miners here in South Africa, where the contracts came to an end, and we needed to redeploy those machines up into Southern Africa. We can also mention that we've opened a slim drilling business in Namibia to support the growth that we're seeing coming from that region. On mechanical rock excavation and cutting, 2% contribution coming from that pillar.
Although this number is very small, strategically, this is a very important pillar for us, and we believe this contribution will be significantly higher in the years to come. If we talk a little bit more detail in each one of these business pillars, starting off with raise boring and support services, touching on the strategy and the technology roadmap of each. Our strategy in raise boring still maintains to expand our global footprint with raise boring and support services. We have some strategic hotspots around the world that we're targeting. The foothold that we already have in Canada and Australia, we are strategically focusing on that to strengthen that over the short term. People is a very important part of the strategy of raise boring and its support services.
As we mentioned earlier, a lot of investment went into technical skills and management skills across the group. As mines are getting deeper and more complex, we believe that technology will be the real differentiator in the future. Technology for us is core to how we operate and innovation being one of our values. If I can share with you a bit of an update on some of the items on our technology roadmap. First of all, autonomous drilling. This is a new project that we busy with, where we've developed autonomous drilling technology, which we will be able to apply to our raise boring rigs so that these rigs can operate without human intervention.
This is a natural extension of our remote raise drilling capabilities that we already have for the past two to three years, and a further extension of our automation strategy that we've discussed the past six to eight years with you on these presentations. We believe a lot of value will come from that in future. On our next-generation machines, I would like to highlight the Bluebot that has been mobilized to Chile. This is our next-generation blind hole boring machine with improved safety functions, mobility and efficiencies. This machine is being commissioned and will be deployed to an operating site within the next few weeks, where we will illustrate and demonstrate the capability of this machine.
AI in raise boring. This is a very topical topic, and this is fairly new for us as an organization. Over the last year, we've been finding our feet to see how we can bring artificial intelligence into our raise boring business. Some of the projects that we have been working on and have deployed so far is bringing AI closer to our maintenance systems and using AI to do some predictive maintenance and fault finding. We are also using AI now to optimize some of the drilling parameters while these raise bore machines are actually drilling. I believe throughout the organization, we're just scratching the surface and there will be huge upside potentially in the future for this, and much more applications than just in this raise bore pillar. Let's move on to digitalization and smart mining.
The contribution from this business pillar is mainly coming from South Africa and specifically the A&R business. If you look at South African technology around tracking people and tracking equipment underground, South Africa's technology is leading in many ways. It's not just the technology that is leading, but also the legislation. We're seeing globally a number of countries looking to South Africa to the technology being deployed here and also the legislation being used by miners. What is the strategy of this business? As Daniël mentioned earlier, it's really to take this technology that we have in South Africa, which is tested and proven, to take that to a global market, whether it's South America, Australia or into the northern hemisphere.
Technology is very important for this business, and we need to invest in technology, making sure that we are ahead of that curve to have a business in five to 10 years from now. Some of the highlights I'd like to share with you is, first of all, our AI-powered cameras that we've developed in-house with Embedded IQ. These cameras, the hardware and the AI models on it has been developed by Embedded IQ. These cameras can pick up people, obstacles and hazards in an underground environment and can take immediate action to avoid those obstacles or to take corrective actions. Here you can see just a small video of a live proof of concept that we're running in one South African underground mine. You can clearly see the cameras picking up people, ventilation doors up front, and also some restricted areas.
We believe this is a real game changer for the industry over the next few years. Underground networking, the last mile communication problem. This is a problem that the industry is sitting with for the last couple of years, getting connectivity to work faces upfront. This has always been a challenge, and within this pillar we've developed proprietary network hardware and also solutions that we can implement in these workings that's robust for the South African hard rock mining environment, to provide this connectivity in the working phases. We're currently running some proof of concepts, and we can see a real benefit in terms of safety and production.
On missing person locator, this is technology that we keep on evolving, and today we're tracking more than tens of thousands of workers underground on a daily basis using this technology, making sure that they're reachable when there's an emergency. Let's move on to slim drilling. Our strategy for slim drilling, as Donnie alluded to earlier, is to expand our footprint specifically up into Africa. I've mentioned earlier that we expanded into Namibia, as we believe there's a lot of potential for this type of business there. Once again, technology is the key differentiator here. In a very competitive market, you need to be efficient and technology needs to lead. A quick update on our Desert Elephant project in partnership with our company, Hall Core, that is part of the Master Drilling Group. The first generation of this Desert Elephant machine has been commissioned and completed.
It's moving into the next development stage. The focus of this machine is to combine robotics, automation, electrification, and water reusage into one single rig that can be deployed on a mining site and can work by itself. Briefly on Dragonfly, our underground robotic rig. Good progress in terms of efficiency that we're seeing once these machines is being deployed in the workings. On mechanical rock excavation and cutting. A very important part of our business and the future of this organization. Our strategy in this business pillar still remains the same. We want to provide miners with the tools and the technology to build underground infrastructure safer and quicker. There's three areas that we focus on. First of all, mechanical tunneling, excavation, access tunnels, shafts, and secondly, extraction. Let's quickly touch on each one of these initiatives and the progress that we've made. First of all, mechanical tunneling.
As Donnie mentioned earlier, we deployed the MTB in November, December last year to the Bokoni project. This machine is tunneling today as we speak, which is a significant milestone for us. We started up the project with some operational challenges, geological challenges, but this was overcome in partnership with our client. We're also working in partnership with our client now to increase our operational rates and advances to have a much more effective project. If we move on to mechanical shaft drilling or mechanical shaft sinking, this initiative is progressing well. We've completed now the test of the first generation machine. We've taken those learnings and put that into the next generation machine that is being put into the manufacturing phase now.
We are developing this in partnership with the IDC in South Africa, and we remain committed to develop and to build this machine. Hopefully, within the next few years, we can deploy this machine to a operational and commercial project, somewhere close by here. On non-explosive mining, this is our reef cutting machine. This technology targets narrow tabular reef mining, which is fairly common in gold and platinum mines here in South Africa. This machine uses mechanical excavation cutting and a vacuum system to extract ore from the reef. This machine also uses remote operations and virtual reality to guide this machine. This machine only cuts out the reef and reduces the amount of waste that's actually being mined, which have a huge impact on dilution, and finally, the cost of production, and that's really what we want.
The first generation of this machine will go into field trials in 2026. Okay, let's have a look at our revenue diversification geographically. The group came in with a revenue top line of $292 million for 2025. This is about 8% higher than 2024. André will later share with you the waterfall on that and where this growth really came from. In terms of the regional overview, let me give you some key insights and talk to some of the growth areas. First of all, Central and North America, revenue contribution dropping from 13% to 7%, which is a significant drop, but contributing just over $20 million to the group's top line.
I think the real story here is that turnaround in profitability from -8% to, let's call it break even, in 2025. In Canada, we've seen some limited activity in the raise boring side, but Central America, we believe is primed for growth in the next two years to come. If we come down to South America, South America's revenue contribution increased from 24% to 32% for 2025, contributing $93 million to the group's revenue. Excellent performance coming from Brazil, Chile, and Peru to show this growth. Also, later on, you'll see strong copper contribution coming from this region. On the operating margins, coming in at 10%, we definitely aim at a much higher operating margin for that region. With some of the structural changes we've made in those businesses, we expect that to continue to tick up.
If we come over to Africa has been a stronghold for the group for many, many years. Africa, once again, delivered $51 million coming from this region. Revenue contribution up from 15%-17%. The real story is about the margin. That region have been able to maintain that margin of 24% throughout 2024 and 2025. Moving down to South Africa, a slight drop in the revenue contribution, but still a big contribution of $75 million coming from that region. The good news is that slight increase or uptick in the margin to 21%. If we talk about South Africa, we need to look at three business units. First of all, our raise boring business, which really performed well, specifically on the platinum side.
Our big raise boring machines is deployed within this region, performing good. If we then have a look at our A&R business, as we mentioned previously, a bit of a slow start to 2025, but the second half of the year, much stronger performance coming through. On the exploration side, as you'll see later on, we saw a bit of a lower utilization from that business. The last region, which is the rest of the world, coming in at $52 million. A slight drop in that contribution, but still a significant contribution to the group. Our business in Europe have performed well. We added some additional regions to the group, Canary Islands, Greece, and good performance coming from that region. India, strong and good performance coming from that region, working in partnership with our client over there.
Coming down to Australia, during 2025, we did some restructuring and revamping in that business, and we moved our facility from Eastern Australia to Western Australia to be much closer to our key client, our anchor client in the region, to give them much better support in their operations. Let's move on to commodity revenue diversification. Here you can see a nice jump in copper moving from 24% to 32%. A strong move in that. That is really on the back of strong performance coming from South America, specifically Chile, with the additional machines that we mobilized there, and also in our Africa region. Gold, around 20%, which is a bit higher than it was in the past. We see PGMs increasing from 13% to 18%.
Good performance coming from South Africa and also A&R contributing to that PGMs commodities. On the silver, lead, and zinc, we've seen this dropping a little bit mainly coming from that Central America region with some drop off of some of those clients over there. The main commodities in this area copper, gold, PGMs, and silver, lead and zinc still being the major commodities for us. Let's move on to ARPU summary and utilization. We added eight raise boring machines to our fleet in 2025. Our total raise boring machines sitting now at 151 machines. Most of the investment we've made was in the bigger end of the fleet, but we'll get to that now. Utilization is sitting at 70%, which is lower than our target of 75%.
If we look at ARPU, and this is really the good news, is we were able to bring up that ARPU and improve that ARPU over the last couple of years. If you look at the long-term trend of this, we've improved that significantly over the long term. The bigger end of the fleet, the bigger than large raise boring rigs. Our fleet is now more than 100, sitting at 103. There you can see seven machines being built in this class. Most of these machines that was built was put into production during the year or throughout the year. Utilization sitting at 76%, which is a bit lower than we wanted to be. We're really targeting 80%-82% for this class of machines due to the contracts being more longer term contracts for these bigger machines.
ARPU almost touching ZAR 200,000. Again, long-term trend, very, very positive there. On the smaller end of the fleet, the smaller than large raise boring rigs, utilization hovering around that 60%. We believe that will hover at that 60% going forward as well as the demand for this type of work is getting less and less. Also, in terms of CapEx spend, you know, most of the CapEx being spent in this division is in the bigger end of the fleet. Also, just briefly to mention ARPU again, once again, ticking up. On the slim drilling side, our utilization is sitting at 53%, not where we want it to be.
We've also seen a drop in our ARPU as a result of these, machines and the PGM miners at the PGM miners that we needed to reallocate at the end of 2025. Let's move on to our order book movements. Our order book started the year with $332 million. We received a record orders of $324 million throughout the year. We executed, $292 million dollars of work, and then some small impacts, cancellation of orders and Forex. Then we ended off the year with a $371 million of order book, which is a very strong and healthy order book, a good quality order book for us as a business. Our awarded orders by commodity. Here you can clearly see how well diversified our order book is.
It's also clearly evident to see, Copper and Gold leading the way here. Copper and Gold combining, around 55% of our order book, which is quite significant and important, and it talks again to the fundamentals that we're seeing today, in the market in terms of Gold and Copper. Our increase in Gold is mainly coming from, Africa and South America regions and also a little bit in Australia. Copper, 26%. Then we've seen a bit of a drop-off in Silver, lead and zinc, but this is just the natural life cycle of where we are in some of these long-term contracts. We expect that once we renew some of the bigger contracts at end of this year, beginning of next year, for that exposure to increase again. Finally, PGM sitting at 11%.
Now moving on to our pipeline. Our pipeline is sitting at a solid $998 million. Let's call it just under $1 billion . If you look at 2026, already $250 million of work is already confirmed and awarded to us this year. In awaiting adjudication, another $130 million and another $85 million in the pipeline. Just looking at this for 2026, looks like a very, very busy year for us ahead. On my side, if I can summarize the performance for 2025 operationally. We had a record revenue of $292 million, which is very good for us. We had a little bit of a downtick in our utilization, but our ARPUs have increased significantly, which is good.
We're making progress on our people roadmap and agenda, and we're making good progress on commercializing some of these technology initiatives. Finally, we have this pipeline. I think we're in for a few interesting years ahead of us. Thank you very much and over to you, André.
Thank you, Roelof, and welcome to the viewers and employees. I see most of them are watching this webcast, so we'll go back to work soon. Guys, yeah, like normal, I'll go through the financial information. We'll start off with the key highlights. We'll look at the trend on the HEPS in dollar terms and rand terms. Then we'll have a look at the revenue trend, EBITDA trend, EBITDA margin. We'll look at the compounded annual growth rate slide. A quick look at the balance sheet, the income statement, cash flow. We'll also have a look at the impact that the currencies had. It was quite an interesting year on the currencies.
When preparing, you know, I noticed that the rand during the year was over 19 at some stage and then at spot 16.56, so quite a huge swing in the currencies. All the other emerging currencies as well, which was quite interesting. We'll have a look at the working capital move for the year at all the key ratios. We'll look at the cash flow movements, which we'll see there was some strong cash generation, but much weaker working capital performance for the year. Then to finish off, we'll have a look at the capital spend for the year. Okay, if we can start with the highlights.
Like Roelof mentioned, we had a nice increase in the revenue, and like Daniël mentioned, not 100% in line with what we wanted to, but at least nearly 8% increase to a record revenue number of ZAR 292 million. We'll have a look when we go to the waterfall slide a bit later, just the contributions on the different lines. On the MTB, we've reported that half year that we're doing a partial reversal of the mobile tunnel borer being allocated to a project. As mentioned, it is operating at the moment, so that was quite a highlight for us proving that technology.
The liquidity strengthened to 1.7 on the current ratio, although the working capital position was a bit weaker. If we look at the return on capital at 14.5%, we're getting closer to where we want the returns to be. Then just on the capital spend, investing in the down cycle, we've mentioned this a couple of times last couple of years with down cycle where we invested and we're seeing the benefit and we'll see the benefit and which we can see in our order book and pipeline. Maybe just it's not a highlight, maybe a lowlight for some of the investors with a decision on the dividend, which we decided not to declare a dividend at this stage.
I think if you ask me the question somewhere in February, you know, it was a no-brainer that we will declare dividend. Given the uncertainty in the world at the moment, and especially our industry that's so dependent on logistics, people flying around, diesel, especially with our clients as well, we're just unsure at the moment and just wanna protect our cash a bit. Once things normalize, we'll consider a special dividend at that stage. If we look at the headline earnings per share in dollar terms and rand terms, small increase in both, 5%, just over 5% in dollar terms, just over 1% in the rand terms. When we go to the income statement, I'll just talk around some of the items that had an effect on that.
The headline earnings would have been much higher if it was not for those once-off costs. If we look at the EBITDA margin, although EBITDA was at $57 million for the year, a bit lower than the previous year. The margin at 19.6%, much lower than what our forecast is or our target. I've mentioned this a couple of times that we would like to get to 25%, but quite a way off. But again, if we consider the once-off charges, could have been as high as 22%. Maybe good to mention the once-offs now. We had a ERP cost of $4.6 million.
You might recall in the 2024 numbers, we indicated the capital spent on ERP that we forecasting for the following year. We did spend $4.6 million, but due to our IFRS, we couldn't capitalize it and had to expense it. Also with a weaker working capital cycle, our debt has increased quite a lot, so we had to make additional ECL provisions, which was about $2 million. Then there was some investments, one being in Saudi Arabia, which we've written off about $1.2 million. Then some investment we did in a venture capital fund, which we written off $350,000. Quite a big impact on our numbers.
Just on South America, as Roelof mentioned, a nice recovery on the revenue line for South America, but the margins not 100%, where we want it to be, giving it a lower EBITDA margin. If we look at next slide, the annual growth rate in rand terms. This actually always tells a nice story. We use 2021 as the base, and 2020 obviously being the COVID year, so we just used a normalized year, where we see the revenue grew in rand terms by nearly 20% and our EBITDA compounded growth rate of 15.5%. So quite a nice story for us on that.
Just if you go back several years when we listed, I'd like to remind guys our revenue was ZAR 800 million at that stage. I remember our margin was about 12%. Very nice improvement from there and the benefit of having hard currency revenues. If we look at the balance sheet, on the property, plant, and equipment, we see a big increase there from ZAR 209 million to ZAR 240 million. The biggest adjustment there is foreign exchange was $17 million. Then, the impairment reversal of ZAR 4.6 million that boosted that PPE number. We had strong liquidity, although the working capital days jumped from 65 days to 81 days.
You will recall we mentioned in the past we like to get it below 100, which we achieve easily now. We're setting the goal lower now. Just on the debt side, we renewed our debt facility in December. The good position is, although the gearing increased a bit marginally up from 6.8%-9%, we do have at year-end $20 million for capital spend facility, and obviously the $40 million that we had in cash in the bank as well that we have available for opportunities. If we look at the income statement, on the revenue side, the increase in revenue mostly due to the new machines that we added, as we discussed.
I'll quickly look at when we get to the waterfall and our ARPU that increased. On the profitability, like mentioned before, the one-off costs that had a negative impact on that. Yeah. Maybe interesting to note on the share of profit from equity investments are positive, for the first time in a long time, $1.2 million. I think that's important for us looking forward on the business model, where we will do many more of these joint ventures, equity investment for these mega projects. That's part of our pipeline, where we will have quite a bigger significant number on that line going forward.
If we look at the normalized income statement, which just exclude all of those once-off costs, where we did the impairment reversal and the ERP costs, we can see a profit before tax of $44 million compared to the $38 million of previous years. We're seeing a nice growth on a normalized basis. Yeah. That profit before tax nearly up by 14%. The Forex effect, not a big change from previous years, with the hard currency revenue went a bit down from 49% to 47% and same with the cost.
That had a positive impact on our income statement of $2 million, where the revenue went up $3.9 million due to the currency, but our costs also went up, but only with $1.8 million, showing that benefit to us. I think just a positive here is the FCTR impact, which will always take a lot of shots. This time, a positive impact of $10 million, which take our comprehensive income up to $42.2 million, which is more than 400% more than 2024. The revenue waterfall shows the impact of the additional machines that we added, $12.3 million on the addition of machines. Services, support services that we're starting to do, a lot of that in the Chile area.
We also have the piling equipment, the shotcreting that we do. That number is increasing quite a lot year-on-year. The negative impact was the lower utilization of the machines, the older machines, and the lower ARPU of $11 million there. If we look at the working capital breakdown, we see quite a big increase in our debtors, which is mostly due to South America. $17 million increase in our receivables in South America. South America do have a longer payment cycle, so nothing to be worried about, but that does make our working capital days a bit weaker, but something we need to work on.
I think a lot of hard work has been done in the past and a lot of hard work to do going forward. I think the problem was the three months and older debtors, that was more than 20%. At least the good news is since year-end, we collected a big portion of those funds. Not a big risk in needing to provide for bad debt. I think the negative is the ECL provision, additional ECL of $2 million that we had to do due to the bigger debtor book. Just quickly, we're running out of time, just on the ratios. The return on capital, more or less at the levels where we want it to be there on the EBIT at 14.5%.
On the return on equity, mentioned it before, we had 10%, which is not significant, but for us, being a very conservative company, we won't gear up the balance sheet and to try and get very high return on equity numbers. That is part of the culture of the business to be a bit more conservative and not gear the balance sheet so much. The gearing has improved, increased a bit, from 6.5%-9%, but we do have sufficient funds and facilities available for opportunities in the future. If we look at the cash flow waterfall, you will see we generated nearly $18 million of cash. Not so great due to the working capital cycle that brought that down.
Our cash conversion ratio was only 0.76. We want that to be more than 1. That was quite a big negative effect. Most of the money that we generated in cash went into investment on equipment. Not so much as before on raise boring machines, investing more on the technology side, money going into the Shaft Boring System. Basically nothing on the tunnel borers because we went into production this year. A bit on the shaft boring equipment. We had a drawdown of $15 million on our facility close to year-end, which increased the debt, but we also had to pay back $6 million.
The dividend, $6.5 million that we paid out in dividend, but we have sufficient nearly $40 million in cash for future investment. Last slide, just on the capital spend. We had just over $20 million of capital spend for the year, of which the biggest portion, 2/3 were for expansion and 1/3 f or maintenance capital. It's important to note more than $15 million of capital spend over the last couple of years still sitting in assets under construction, which still haven't yielded us any revenue or returns, which obviously will give us a benefit in the years to come. Just some guidance on 2026.
We've already committed to just over $6 million on CapEx. We see it won't be exceptional capital spend year if we look at the forecast. Given where our pipeline is and the requirements for potential capital, things might change. At this stage, that is where we are. I think that's from my side. Maybe just a last word to just thank the finance team for all their hard work to getting these numbers done. It's been a lot of late nights work. Lastly, for the BDO team that's been our auditors for the last 13 years, thank you for them. We're changing over to Deloitte from next year. Thank you for the BDO team and, yeah, we value your contribution. Thank you.
Just to wrap up again, before I share with you the one, two, three maybe focus areas or initiatives from a high level that we will probably focus on as a business. I think just number one, just to share with you what we see through our lens, if we look at the industry and the engagements we had recently with the miners and the industry, I think one that's certainly a top of mind, the question typically posed is, "Mr. Contractor, Mr. Service Provider, how quick can you help us with access to specific ore bodies?" Which obviously talk to the MTB, the development of the shaft boring system and maybe to some extent the reef cutting system.
I think the CapEx spend and that focus will remain in the mechanical cutting space to try and get this over the line to some sort of a maturity level. The second typical question that's been asked, unlike five years ago, where we had a discussion about ESG, cost-cutting. Today the discussion is with us, "Mr. Service Provider, please share with us your specific initiatives in the AI, machine learning, robotics, autonomous drilling for us as a mining company to benefit from." Just as a background. The focus areas for us as a business, I think André alluded to and Roelof touched on that. I think number one for us, not to get carried away or to get ahead of ourselves with this commodity bull run, is the focus on CapEx spend discipline.
That being said, cash flow, balance sheet, gearing, and the list goes on. This is going to be something that we as a business will keep on focusing and yes, we appreciate, yes, we understand the so-called debt levels that increased and too, the so-called working capital. Obviously it came from the blindside last year. Maybe the last one, just the way we're going to set up the business again with this bull run in mind is the business model. I like to think we will probably do more JVs, do more collaborations to provide this end-to-end service requirement, which all of a sudden came up last year.
Unlike 10 years ago, five years ago, all of a sudden the inquiries that we're getting as Mr. Service Provider, we would like to have an end-to-end service, which includes sometimes conventional development. It includes the handover of a total shaft system from the raise boring or the blind drilling, whatever we might apply, right up to commissioning of the size of the shaft. This is typically what I see as a shift where we was five years ago and going forward. I think that concludes on my side. Happy to take some of those easy questions and try and deal with those answers.
Okay. Good day, everybody. Welcome to the Q&A session. We'll ask the question in no particular order. First one will be for André. André, with the rising debt levels close to year-end, are you comfortable with the levels given the uncertainty in the world today?
Thank you, Willem. Yeah, I think we're comfortable. I mean, we very lowly geared at 10%. We do have a limit of 30%, so we're very far away from that. If we look at our covenants and where we are, I think we're well within that. We also have sufficient cash on the balance sheet. So I don't think, you know, where we are on debt levels will make me not sleep at night. Thank you.
Okay. Next one, I think, André, maybe you can help on this one as well. Given the very healthy pipeline, how much capital and by when do you need to spend this to realize the majority of this into revenue?
Thank you. It's a difficult question, but I think where we are today with our committed orders, we've got sufficient equipment. I think depending on the timing of those that's still in the pipeline. As mentioned by Daniël, the business model will be a bit different on those mega projects where we will go into joint ventures or collaborations with some of our partners to do a dual funding on that. Today where we are, we don't see too much capital being spent. Rather utilize our own equipment up to 80% and use our own equipment. For now, it doesn't look like too much of a spend on CapEx.
Okay. Next one is for Daniël or Roelof. With the increase in the LTIFR, what percentage of capital do you plan to spend on removing people from machines?
Thank you, Willem. That's a good question. On the capital spend, I think it's important to mention that all machines that we building, all new machines and the eight that we've added to the fleet last year, all comes with enhanced safety features, capability of being automated and remote drilling capabilities. We're making sure the capital that we spend and the new equipment that we bring in is able to be operated very safely. I also want to mention that the equipment that we rent into as well, we're making sure that that equipment comply with the local safety regulations. I would say, you know, in terms of capital spend, it's not a specific percentage that we track, but we focus that as one of the key pillars in each one of the new pieces of equipment we bring in.
Thank you, Willem.
Okay. Roelof, another one for you. Do you have any specific mergers and acquisitions on the horizon to drive your new technology business unit?
Okay. When it comes to M&A, in our approach, on the one hand we're strategic, and on one hand we're also opportunistic when it comes to M&A. We're always on the horizon, and we're always looking, and if something comes across our desk which is interesting, we will definitely consider that. You know, with how technology is evolving in the world today, you must always be on the lookout and watch for something new. Thank you, Willem.
Okay, thanks. Daniël, the next one is for you. Can you please give us an indication of how you coped with Eskom during the current year? What was your split in buying metal locally from Example Metal versus imports? Talk to us about the quality and the price differences you experience?
Bruce, on your first question about Eskom, surprisingly low. I think 2025 was actually not bad. Remember, the power must be supplied by our clients. We said three issues. In 90% of the time, most of the miners will just run their so-called gensets to provide power. Again, the answer is surprisingly low. Back to metal, maybe back in the day, just to remind all, back in the day, I was taking you back 30 years, 35 years ago. All the drill pipe which we currently buy thousands of tons today from China was procured from a local metal Iscor back in the day, which today obviously is not available. Two, on that, the type of steel, alloy steel that we're currently using is not available in SA. Very little steel locally is being procured for two reasons.
One, you just can't get that quality of steel in South Africa. Two, obviously the competitiveness of pricing. The local industry just can't compete with China. Is that the questions, Willem?
That's correct. Okay. There's a question on enterprise development program. The question will be referred to our business development department to reach out to you on that question. Okay, thanks. Thanks everybody. That concludes all the questions for today. All questions received subsequently will be responded in person. Thank you.