Hello, and welcome to the Capital Limited First Half Results for the period 1st of January to 30th of June 2021. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I'm pleased to present Jamie Boyton, the Chairman, Giles Everist, the CFO, Rick Robson, Business Development, and Conor Rowley, Investor Relations. Please go ahead with your meeting.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Capital's Interim Results Presentation. As I said, I'm Conor Rowley, the Investor Relations and Corporate Development Manager here at Capital. As said, today on the call, we have Jamie Boyton, our Chairman and CEO, Giles Everist, our CFO, and Rick Robson, the Head of our Corporate Development.
Just to make you all aware, at the end of the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions, which can either be done over the phone or you can send in your questions to us through the webcast and we can read them out. With that, Jamie, I'll hand over to you to run through our results and presentation.
Thank you, Conor, and thank you, everyone, for dialing in. Obviously, as mentioned, our first half results presentation, which obviously follows on from our first half revenue trading update that we provided to the market on the 15th of July. Today is the results flowing from that. I'll reference obviously slides in the presentation deck. I'll run through them fairly quickly. We'll open it up to Q&A. Starting on slide three, just again, by way of introduction to Capital Limited, a full-service mining, drilling, maintenance, and geochemical solutions provider to customers within the minerals industry. We focus on the African markets. We've been in Africa since inception for 15 years, operate across 11 African countries as well as one in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. We have an asset fleet of 106 rigs. More recently we've moved into the earthmoving business.
We have 35 pieces of heavy mining equipment. Employing just about 1,900 employee years at the end of June, of which about 1,800 are African nationals. We have a very strong concentration of revenue to some very significant mining companies, the likes of AngloGold Ashanti, Barrick, and Kinross. Moving on to slide four. As I said at the commencement, revenue on the 15th of July, we reported first half revenue of $98.7 million. An incredibly strong increase on the first half of last year, 51.6% increase. Today, as we release the results, you can see an outstanding performance. Our EBITDA increased 84% to $28.4 million. Our adjusted net profit, essentially our operating net profit, increased 239% to $12.7 million. We're continuing to perform very well with our equity investment portfolio, which has gained a further $5.7 million.
The return profile for the business, a slight drop on the H1 of 2020. The return on capital employed is 17.9%, but it's important to note that we expanded the company's capital base in December of 2020 to facilitate the capital raising for the equipment for the Sukari earthmoving contract. That contract commenced in 2021, but doesn't reach full run rate until Q4. They're still outstanding returns when you consider that enlarged capital base. Our shareholder equity increased strongly by 65%. We have taken some debt on the balance sheet as previously flagged for the Sukari CapEx. Very pleasingly, as a result of the strong performance, we have today announced an increase in our interim dividend. We've declared a H1 dividend of $0.012 per share. That's a 33% increase from the same period last year.
Just to round off, on the 15th of July, we actually increased our revenue guidance at that time. Previously, we'd been guiding the market to revenue for this year between $185 million and $195 million. At that stage, we increased the revenue guidance to between $200 million and $210 million. Moving on to slide five. I'll keep it brief because we're going to deep dive a little bit deeper. Our two-part drilling business, which is 83% of the revenue stream, was incredibly strong in the first half, driven primarily by a rapid increase in our drill rig fleet utilization. That rose from 57% in the first half 2020 to 73%. The business has really performed very well. I'll dive less as we move to that slide. Our other services also grew. Our non-drilling revenue last year was 9%.
That expanded to 17% in the first half. We've grown it across all the subdivisions. The waste mining or the earthmoving business grew not only with existing operations but with the commissioning of the Sukari contract. Our laboratory business continued to expand, and our scheduling maintenance business won a two-year closure services contract with the Resolute at their Syama mine in Mali. Moving on to slide six. What is particularly pleasing is we've had a significant growth in revenue, a significant growth in man-hours worked, yet we've managed to maintain absolutely outstanding safety performance. I draw your attention on slide 6 to the table at the bottom left, which just shows Capital and our industry-leading safety performance that we're very proud of. Slide seven. Just a quick overview of the macro.
We have in previous calls flagged what we saw as a disconnect taking place in the market, specifically top left gold prices and metal prices in general, very buoyant in exploration activity. A disconnect, as you can see on slide seven, with a green arrow. That thematic has also been bearing out in financings, which is the top right, where capital raising activity has really accelerated, particularly in 2019, 2020 and into this year. Yet again, exploration activity is still sitting at levels of half of what it was at the previous peak cycle. Overall, the macro, the tailwinds are very supportive. We have capital raisings, metal prices, we have very strong operating performance by customer base, and we're starting to see a re-investment by our clients in their asset bases, which were depleted during what was a prolonged downturn.
That increased investment is driving increase in drilling activity, an increase in mining activity, and increase in assaying activity. Slide eight. Gets a little more granular on the drilling business. I've already quoted the utilization statistics. We did add 12 rigs to our rig count in the first half. I should note that the average rig count for the first half this year was actually flat on last year, i.e., most of those rigs arrived very late in the first half. That bodes well for the second- half performance of the drilling business. We increased rig capacity at a number of the long-term contracts, Sukari, Geita, North Mara, and Morila, among a few of them. That is a key part of the company strategy is to increase capacity at existing operations. Multiple new contract awards.
What is particularly encouraging is the drilling cycle has really come back in favor of the contractors. Rig utilization is increasing, productivity is increasing, pricing is beginning to show signs of improvement, and contract terms as well. Certainly, a very pleasing market for drilling. Frankly, the big driver of the outperformance in the first half has been the drilling business, which has surprised us pleasantly on the upside. On slide nine, we give an update of the waste mining, earthmoving contract in Sukari. We announced this contract to the market in December of last year, and I'm going to actually go right to the bottom bullet point just to make a point that we had to hire 400 people. We had to move in 17 trucks, three excavators, and the mobilization and operation was actually commenced.
We started moving earth within two months of the contract announcement, which is an absolutely outstanding achievement by our mining team. As we talk now, the workforce recruitment is largely complete. Infrastructure build is well advanced. All of the equipment has been fully commissioned, and the job is on track to be achieving full production run rate in Q4 this year. We expected to outperform the contract, and we have done so. Look, a really pleasing achievement for the team on what is our first significant earthmoving contract. Moving on to slide 10. We give a bit of profile to our laboratory business. This is a business we invested in 2017. We've moved to majority ownership of that business. It was initially a Canadian business, Canada and the Americas, and we've now expanded that with Capital's network into Africa.
Revenue growth of 97% year-on-year. A number of significant long-term contracts that have been announced with Barrick, B2Gold, Kinross. In all, we're running the client's labs. Very pleasingly, we have managed to secure a number of the revolutionary Chrysos PhotonAssay technology, which we're rolling out in our key markets of operation, which provide a real strategic differentiating advantage for our laboratory business. The final pillar of our activities on slide 11, our direct investments. We provide a little more detail in this presentation deck. Obviously, a very active strategy in 2019. We put our balance sheet to work partnering with our customers. We do like to look at our customers as partners. We've invested in some of our customers to support capital raisings. We have, in some instances, acquired exploration companies, developed them, and embedded them into listed companies.
We have provided financing for customers buying operating assets. Along with that, we've had partnership agreements, long-term preferred contractor status. That model has worked particularly well and actually generated $20 million worth of contract revenue on our first half revenue of $98 million. Again, working very well for us. Slide 12. We've included these are the long-term contracts, this goes to the heart of the company strategy: secure long-term contracts then deliver multiple services into those contracts to provide leverage on the infrastructure that we have in place. As you can see, some of these contracts, Geita Gold Mine, second from the left, we've been operating there 15 continuous years. North Mara, 13 years. Sukari, 16 years. Again, testament to the quality of the operational team to have established such a long-term relationship with us. I'll now move into the financial results. Slide 14.
I won't talk through all the numbers, as we have covered a lot of them already. I think the critical point to raise here is that the model of increasing capacity at existing sites has really driven operating leverage through the P&L. As I said earlier, revenue growth of 51% has driven operating or adjustable net profit of 238%. I do apologize for the construction noise in the background, but I'll continue. Slide 15 profiles the company's margins. As you can see, we have been gradually improving our margins from 2017 onwards, and a really pleasing margins in the first half. Again, this just brings to the fore the strategy of operating leverage on the existing platform. The margin growth, improved asset utilization at existing sites is certainly a key driver, but also improved maintenance practices, improved supply chain efficiencies.
As you can see in the bottom left on slide 15, our EBITDA margins over time, outperforming both the drilling contractors and the mining contractors. Slide 16, cash flow, tells a little different story as we continue to ramp up the Sukari contract. The waterfall on the top just shows you the waterfall for the first half result. Obviously, very solid EBITDA, but working capital outflows associated with revenue growth, working capital outflow associated there, and obviously inventory growth as well, particularly with Sukari, as that was a new type of inventory that we've been purchasing. Substantial CapEx investments. Closing, we've moved into a net debt position at that June 30, as previously flagged to the market. I have, however, included in the bottom left of slide 16, the operating cash flow, which is the blue bar.
As you can see, consistently since 2018, we have experienced stronger operating cash flows in H2 versus H1. Moving on to slide 17, CapEx. A couple of points I'd bring out here. The company listed in 2010. We operated through to 2020, self-funding cash generated. We entered the market in 2020 as we moved into the earthmoving business. As you can see, there's been a substantial capital outlay on earthmoving equipment and actually the largest year-on-year rig fleet growth as well concurrently. We're in a heavy capital spend, but the capital spend for the Sukari earthmoving is now largely complete. A lot of the rig purchases, as I said earlier, we've had 12 rigs arrive in H1. There's another eight arriving in H2. We're getting towards the tail end of this heavy CapEx period.
Slide 18, a bit more detail on the balance sheet. Post the equity raise in December, we have backfilled some of our debt facilities, as you can see in the pie chart, bottom right. Standard Bank have been our banker for some time. We now have increased facilities with Stanbic Bank and Epiroc, and Macquarie has come in with an asset-backed facility. Pleasingly broadening our suite of debt facilities available to the company. Slide 19, the investments. The cash flows in this, as you can see, bottom left, in 2019, we were quite proactive and aggressive in terms of identifying opportunities in what was a very depressed market. Since that period, the cash flows have been broadly neutral. The investment portfolio, as you can see on the bottom right, has continued to go from strength to strength.
We posted again investment gains in the first half of $5.7 million. Finally, slide 20, dividends. Point again, just to reiterate, we have increased the interim dividend from $0.009 to $0.012 per share. The dividend timetable is on slide 20, bottom right. The ex-date, September 2nd, and payment on the 1st of October. In summary, if I can go to slide 22, to wrap up and turn over to Q&A. Increased revenue guidance, I might note that that revenue guidance midpoint represents 52% growth on 2020, that follows a 20% growth in 2020 on 2019. We're certainly in a very strong growth period. Macro gold price, very strong and it's about 90% of our revenue exposure. Equity capital markets, very strong. Industry fundamentals, very strong.
I think to bring that out even further, as I mentioned earlier, there is also a case of reinvestment into assets that have been depleted and for attractive downturn and obviously demand coming from the emerging battery metals. Demand is accelerating across all business units this year and continuing to be very strong. Drilling demand is at previous peak cycle levels. Obviously, as alluded to earlier, elevated capital spend across 2020 and 2021, as we expand our rig fleet and build our heavy mining equipment fleet for the long-term contract awards. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet, gearing ratio is at 20%. I might add that when you balance out the investments, the gearing and investments pretty much balance out.
Continue to be a very conservatively geared company, looking to improving the cash flows in the second half and continue to have flexibility in our balance sheet for future growth opportunities. That brings the presentation to a conclusion. I'll hand back to the moderator. Thank you very much.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero, one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero, two to cancel. Our first question comes on the line of Richard Hatch at Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Morning, guys. Just got a few questions. Jamie, first one just on revenue concentration risk. I know on slide 12, you talked to the multiple revenue streams in your long-term contract. How do you feel about that revenue concentration risk across core contracts? Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with the contract duration and the ability to extend those contracts just as we look out into 2023 and beyond?
Slide 12, a couple of points there. Revenue concentration risk, we've always been very focused at Capital on contract selection and client counterparts. As a result, we probably have a narrower client base than some of our peers, but I feel confident that we've been vindicated in choosing the right people to partner with. Our goal has been to grow the long-term contracts from what was a couple of years ago, four up to 15-20. We're at 10 now, we're heading in the right direction. I'm actually really pleased with that. Secondary to that thematic is, choose the first cab off the rank, Allied on page 12. With doing delineation, grade control, blast hole, ancillary mining services, and laboratory services. As time progresses, we're delivering more and more services to these customers, and building on that relationship further.
In terms of rollover risk, shall we say, some good examples here are Sukari. We started there in 2005 with a couple of exploration rigs. We have had that contract or those contracts both expanded and rolled over on multiple occasions. The current one runs until the end of 2023, 2024. That is gonna take us out to 20 years of consecutive service. I'm very comfortable that the services we deliver, we have a demonstrable track record of getting renewals and expansions, and we're well on track with our strategy to expand the portfolio. As I said, we've gone from 4 to 10, and we're working on expanding that further.
Okay, thanks for that color. Second one is just on the margin. Margin was very strong and you point in the presentation to the EBITDA margin showing good margin, good improvement. How do you expect that to evolve over the next couple of years? Do you think you can hang on to that? We talked a month ago a bit about inflation. You suggested that we've seen a bit of it come through, but not too much. Is that still the case? Do you still feel that margins are perhaps shaped to be fairly defensive at this point?
At this stage, it feels like it, Richard. If I'd said to you, over the last four or five years, if we're hitting 25% or 26% EBITDA margins, we're in a good spot. We have been doing that the last couple of years. As this demand has really taken off, so has the margin. In the last conference call, like I said, I'd be disingenuous to not acknowledge the fact that as this cycle matures, cost inflation comes. It absolutely does. I'd also caveat that the long-term contracts have rise and fall mechanisms to provide protection against cost inflation. I won't crystal ball exactly about or guide where those margins will be. I'll leave that with my team and their direct dialogue. If we're sitting between 25%-30%, and I think it's sustainable, we're in a very good band.
Yeah, I understood. Just on 2022 visibility, where are you with your negotiations with your customers as we look into 2022? I appreciate that a lot of the revenue comes from the long-term contracts, so you know where they stand. Just in terms of some of the swing stuff like the exploration, what are you seeing or are you able to give any color on what you're seeing into 2022 at this point, just in terms of how we should think about utilization and potentially ?
Well, when we look across the first half, we generated 88% of revenue from contracts with mine sites. Most of those mine sites, I am just thinking as I speak to you, all of those mine sites are long-term contracts. Due to roll off in the short term. To the point I mentioned earlier, we have a demonstrable track record of rolling those over, and in most cases, expanding them. If you use those numbers, 88%, and assume most of those are rolling into next year, that gives you a pretty good starting point. Look, exploration is shorter term, as you know. Contracts there range from three to six months, again, you just need to, in that case, look at where the cycle is. I think we are in the early stages of this cycle.
We have only seen this demand boom really come through this year, very late last year and this year. I think we're quite early in that part of the cycle. Again, I'm not going to specifically dive on utilization and R4 on this call, but we have, I would say, probably the best visibility going into the next year we would have had at this stage because we have obviously the major contracts, notably Sukari, has re-signed at the start of this year for four years for both the drilling and the earthmoving. We announced earlier in the year Geita had re-signed, and that's one of our other big ones. The bigger contracts are all locked in. I'm feeling fairly good about the visibility into 2022.
Thanks. Just on business development, can you just give us a bit more color on what's going on in the contract mining business development sphere? Just with that in mind, the investment portfolio has been very strong, and you've got a lot of value held there. Appreciate it's a partnership between the companies you invest in and work with, but also, do you think that there's scope potentially to lighten that up if you win another contract and just need to add some extra fleet to the roster?
Let me answer the latter first. Y es, there's always scope to lighten, and there's obviously liquidity within that portfolio. I don't think any of that would jeopardize the partnership we have with the customers. The customers are, pardon me for putting it this way, adult CEOs, and they know that we'll buy and sell shares as any portfolio manager in this portfolio for us. I think that liquidity is available. As always, it'll be a question of where do we think we can get in our considered analysis, the best return on investment for our shareholders. It's available, absolutely. As you can see from our cash flows, we actually had net inflows from the investment portfolio in H1. In terms of the BC pipeline, contract mining specifically, it is building.
I think for any resource analyst, you'd see the number of projects that are going through PFS and DFS and into the development phase is growing exponentially. There's a lot of activity and a lot of pricing for budgets for the development. A bit longer dated, but frankly, we're comfortable with that. We have had some opportunities that have come across our desk that required rapid movement that we have not moved forward on. Our number 1 priority was getting Sukari firing on all cylinders, and we feel very comfortable with that heading in the right direction. Some medium-dated other opportunities work perfectly for us, and that pipeline is developing nicely.
That's good. All right. I'll park it there. Thanks a lot, Jamie.
Thank you. Just to remind everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you can press zero two to cancel. We'll now have a brief pause while any further telephone questions are being registered. We will go back to our next question from Richard Hatch at Berenberg. Please go ahead.
I might as well take the opportunity while it's there. I've got two more. The first one is just on the labs business, which I continue to think is underappreciated. Can you just talk a bit more about this Morila contract? You talked previously about the potential for this business moving to a $50 million revenue run rate. Is that still the expectation? Have you got any kind of thoughts on potentially where that revenue could get to in, say, 2022, or is it a bit too early to put a number on it? Thanks.
It's running this year somewhere in the vicinity of, we think it's going to be about 14, 15, that sort of number. Underappreciated potentially, last year was its first year of even cash flows, and this year it's now become profitable. There's been a bit of an investment here for quite a few years, structuring the business the way we thought it needed to be structured, winning some bedrock customers for it, long-term contracts. In terms of where it can go, yeah, that 50 still seems like a totally achievable number. These are, as we've said before in our conversations, very high CapEx life, modular CapEx, high return businesses. Look, we're very pleased with the growth trajectory. As I said in the preamble, when we acquired our initial stages in the business focus on the Americas, now more than half of the revenue comes out of Africa.
Look, I'm very pleased with the growth trajectory. Next year, conceivably, if we do hit the 15, if these growth rates continue, we'd be at 30 next year. It's on a path now, building a market reputation. The Morila contract is subject to final T&Cs, but it's similar to what we're doing at Bulyanhulu with Barrick and Cadia specifically, taking over, refurbishing their traditional fire assay lab, then bringing in a
Okay, thank you. Just lastly on rig availability, just in terms of getting fleet yourself, how much of a challenge is that? Is there scope to perhaps put some more capital on the balance sheet or utilize your finance leases more in H2? Should you want to get secure fleet? I mean, also just a follow-up on that, what's the state of the fleet at the moment? Is it, in your view, fairly good shape? I mean, I appreciate you recycle it and it comes in and it goes out, just in terms of your kind of general broad view on where the fleet sort of is at this point in time of the cycle, is there a large kind of recycling element going to come soon, or are you comfortable with the longevity of the fleet at this point?
We did commission quite a few rigs late last year, which is why you saw the rig count drop quite a bit. I think it was five or six rigs. In general, we maintain one of the youngest fleets in the industry, and I think there are some rigs, a few that have actually just gone back into the yard, and Miranda, for example, that are going under a bit of a rebirth. That's ordinary business practice. Generally, this is a young fleet in good working condition, and we don't expect to see any sort of major capital bills or spend on the existing fleet if that is in good nick. We have an ongoing maintenance program. We stick with that, we don't get those sorts of surprises.
In terms of the look forward, we've still got another eight odd rigs due to arrive in the course of this year, This is the biggest year of rig growth the company's ever had. Comfortably for the long-term contract, seven have gone to Sukari, three went to Geita, two have gone to Bulyanhulu, Some others have gone to other long-term contracts. One's just gone to Redwood, for example. In terms of the forward pipeline for rigs, look, it's getting tighter. All equipment is getting tighter. We have actually started to place deposits for another seven rigs. We're basically getting the slots for 2022. We're having to be more forward-looking than we've needed to be in the last four or five years. The market is demanding that.
Cool. Very helpful. Great. Thanks, Jamie. Congrats. Cheers.
Thank you.
Again, just to remind everyone, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypads now. There are no further telephone questions at this time. I'll hand over to James to see if there are any questions via the web.
Thank you. We have a few questions here. I will start going through them. To start off with, we've got a number of questions from Craig Howie at Shore Capital. The first one sort of focused on working cap and the debt kind of thing. Understandably, there was a material working cap absorption in the first half, particularly increased receivables as that activity is wrapped up. Can this be expected to quickly unwind in H2, enabling sustained free cash flow generation? The second part to that would focus on the finance charges, where much increased in this period. Is it the company's intention to repay debt facilities as soon as possible in order to reduce interest costs?
Okay, for cash flow, I'll just draw you back to slide 16. You're quite right, Craig, that there was a substantial outflow, which was predominantly receivables as obviously the revenue grew and then inventory most of which was specific to Sukari Mining, which is different inventory than we had across the group. I do expect that to start to unwind in the second half. That's why we put that table in slide 16, bottom left. Again, you can see the operating cash flows in 2018, 2019, and in 2020, just how significantly stronger they are with H2 on H1. We have broken the back, so to speak, of the inventory build. There's still a little bit to come. I think we have the receivables build has largely run its course as well, subject to, obviously, further revenue growth.
I'm pretty comfortable that we'll start to see that come back in the right direction in H2. In terms of finance charges, look, yeah, we've obviously put debt on the balance sheet post the award of Sukari contract. The debt to balance sheet, slide 18. Obviously mentioned it earlier, Macquarie, Bendor Finance. We're not particularly pleased with this, is that we're already starting to see more competitive interest rates with the OEMs. I think as the mining business gets more credibility in the market, that will also drive lower interest costs. To the other point is that with the exception of the Standard Bank revolver, the other facilities are asset-backed, amortizing facilities. For example, the asset-backed finance for Sukari amortizes over the life of that contract. The Sandvik and Epiroc facilities amortize over three to four years.
Debt will be amortizing, and therefore finance charges will reduce.
Thanks, Jamie. A few more from Craig. The first one regarding the dividend, is it now reasonable to assume a typical 1/3, 2/3 split between the interim and final dividend going forward?
Broadly, yes.
Thank you. Final question from Craig. Adjusting for fair value gains, Capital's effective tax rate now seems to be running at very acceptable levels, just under 30%. Can the effective tax rate now be broadly maintained at this level?
I think so. We've had some periods. It depends, obviously, your contract performance in the different countries, because you've got vastly different tax rates between the different jurisdictions in which we operate, ranging from revenue taxes to corporate taxes and everything you can imagine in between. As a guide, that 30% number is something that we are comfortable with.
Thank you, Jamie. We have a few questions here from Mark Simpson. The first one, the results say eight further rigs will be added in H2, taking the total to 114, assuming no retirement. Can you give any indication of where these additional rigs will be deployed?
Two of them have gone to Egypt, one of which is already on a float by the Sukari to start work. That's in today's announcement. We've got two or three, two going into West Africa. That takes you to which are going in there on spec. We didn't have enough reverse circulation capacity, so we're very confident there will be work for those when they arrive. They're actually multi-purpose rigs, but they're configured for RC. The other four are going into Tanzania, which is the residual of the assets that I mentioned earlier, underground rigs going to Bulyanhulu and Geita, plus an RC rig going in there as well.
Thank you, Jamie. One final one from Mark. Gross margins of 42% are phenomenal given the ramp-up in non-drilling revenue. Are you expecting this to moderate in the future, or is this a sustainable level moving forward?
I think that we get it. These are even margins. The schematic, again, I think we're in the right band at the moment. They are encouraging margins. I think it all comes down to, Mark Simpson, and it comes to the question that Richard Hatch asked about customer concentration. If we can keep a model where we expand with these long-term contracts and have multiple services at those contracts, the margins, I think, have a high degree of sustainability. The key to margins in these businesses is consistency of activity and leveraging your infrastructure. You get consistency of activity through long-term contracts and leveraging infrastructure by delivering multiple services into the site. That's the strategy. We're confident we can continue to achieve margins, again, slide 15, above industry margins, because we think we have the right strategy.
Thank you, Jamie. We have one question here on the MSALABS. How does the gold cycle affect differently MSALABS compared to the rig contracted business?
The gold cycle, well, it affects both of them pretty similar ways. One of the key reasons when we were looking at the laboratory business and making an acquisition was that you have no better lead indicator for the supply of samples through a lab than a drilling company, because you can't get a sample unless someone drills the hole first. They're very correlated from that perspective. There's also another similarity that mitigates the cyclicality, which is just back to long-term contracts. I take you back to slide 10. Since installing some capital management into MSALABS and focusing and using our network, those select key contracts in slide 10, top right, Barrick, 5H, Kinross Gold. These are all long-term contracts. I look at these like they're akin to our blast hole contracts. They're 24-hour double shifting on the mine site.
If the mine is operating, there's volume going through the labs, and that's the correlation as well. Look, they're very linked in our opinion.
Thanks, Jamie. To finish off, we have a few questions here on the investment portfolio. First one is, what criteria do you apply to the composition of your share portfolio? Be that buy or sell, I'd say.
Slide 19. There is a number of criteria. Strategic alignment where we are doing business. Standalone investment case, investment committee oversight. We have technical people on our committee, geologists, mining engineers, finance people, of which obviously I'm one. We go through a rigorous process of due diligence. We obviously look for commercial services contract, a preferred contractor, exclusive contractor. It goes through a number of different iterations. It's not just a case of, "L et's take a punt on this because we want to get a contract." It's got to go through the investment committees and tick all the boxes. In terms of ongoing. The portfolio obviously is a portfolio. Decisions are made on the prospects for the company, and the requirements for capital across the group and where we think we're going to get the best capital returns. It operates under a pretty rigorous framework.
Thanks, Jamie. The final question on the portfolio refers to Allied Gold's intention to list later this year. They ask, are you likely to see any uplift in value here if they get this away?
That's a big question. It all depends on the price that we say get it away, but our unlisted investments are clearly totally transparent, using listed prices. Our unlisted go through a pretty rigorous process again, and basically they're done on a peer comparative basis. In the case of Allied, you're looking at predominantly West African peers with their production metrics, asset values, and then obviously applying the discount for the fact that it's unlisted. Look, we think if it does come to market, there'll be an uplift on that part of it alone. We think the value of our unlisted goes through investment committee and through audit committee and through the auditors. It's been a pretty rigorous process there as well, and we're very comfortable with where we've marked that.
Thanks, Jamie. That is it from the webcast Q&A.
Very good. I think that means that I am obviously happy to field further questions through Buchanan or through Conor, who you met at the start of the call. Again, thank you very much for your time.
This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. Participants, you may disconnect your lines.