Thank you, Olivia. Thank you everyone, and good morning. Welcome to the Capital Limited Half One 2024 results. My name is Peter Stokes. I'm CEO of the company. I'm joined on the call today by Rick Robson, our CFO, and in the questions, we'll also have Conor Rowley, and our Chairman, Jamie Boyton , join for any other questions that people might have. If I could go to the next slide, please. Just at the slide we just went through, standard disclaimers. There's a lot of information in there if you wanted to refer to any of those standard things that we would always need to declare before the meeting. The financial highlights for the business for the half, revenue continues to grow in the business.
We're up some just under 9%-10% on H1 of last year. We're continuing to grow in a number of key regions, and we'll go into that in more detail through the presentation. EBITDA was slightly down half-on-half or year-on-year for the first half at $42.9 million, but still a very healthy 25% EBITDA margin. We're continuing to deliver strong ROCE returns in the business as well, in the high teens, 17.4%. And importantly, we're also declaring an interim dividend of $0.013 per share, the same as we did in the first half of last year. We'll go through the financials in more detail, both in the section that I'll present, but particularly where Rick will go through the financials.
Next slide, please. Operationally, the highlights for the business. This first half of this year and into the back end of this year is, you know, a part we are transitioning our business into new lower-risk geographies, particularly the U.S., and we're continuing to grow the business in the labs business in Canada, and seeing a lot of opportunity to continue to grow in North America particularly. That's certainly not to say that we're moving away from our core of our business in Africa, but it certainly diversifies our business, continues to build on very strong relationships with a number of key customers, and I'll run through some of those at the moment. On previous calls, we've talked about our new operations in the United States, particularly in Nevada.
We have two significant contracts with Nevada Gold Mines, the Barrick Newmont joint venture. Unfortunately, those, both those projects are running a little bit behind where we would like to be. We still are very confident that they will be on track and running at full pace by later this year, early next year. They're both very large contracts, particularly the drilling. We're running a number of the drills. We've got the additional drills on the ground now and continue to roll that out over the next few months. The laboratories are now well underway, being constructed in Carlin. We're doing that with Barrick, building dedicated labs that will then service all nine of the operations for NGM.
And we will also have a commercial lab in Elko that will be a redundancy for Barrick, and additionally, it will also be able to do commercial samples for us. Further to those contracts that we're doing with Barrick, we've also been awarded additional or first-time work for us in Lumwana, in Zambia, in the large copper mines there, where we see significant opportunity to continue to develop that relationship with Barrick as well. And really pleasingly, we were recently awarded the Nyanzaga work for Perseus in Tanzania to do a drilling contract there and potentially other services down the track.
Importantly, we announced earlier in the year the major extension of the drilling at Sukari, which is a fantastic contract for us, continues on the very long-term relationship we've had with Centamin at that site from the early days of that operation. Through the drilling over an extended period, including the drill and blast that we've just extended and the waste contract that we've been doing, which was... We were awarded a further variation on that contract to continue mining for an additional 3 months, to do the waste cutback for Sukari. That contract is due to end during September of this year, so it was a number of months additional extension.
We've also made a really exciting investment through our Capital Innovation group into a company called Eco Detection, and we'll talk about that in a bit more detail during the presentation. I'm really pleased to say that we continue on a very strong safety outcomes in our business. It's a core of what makes Capital such a great company, and we continue to deliver on that with a total recordable injury frequency rate of just over one, continuing it on an improvement from first half of last year and continuing to trend down and improve. Yesterday, you would have seen the announcement of the Predictive Discovery shareholding sale. Very exciting for us to for this to be able to make this announcement.
We've sold our 9.6 shareholding in Predictive, 9.6%, which is for a cash consideration of $31 million. The agreement has a call option and profit share arrangement should Perseus or another company complete the takeover before the end of next year. Perseus has been a fantastic customer of ours as well on the drilling, and we continue to do drilling both at Bankan and the other extension ore bodies for the company. We're looking forward to continuing a long relationship with Predictive and in some point in the future, either Perseus or another. Next slide, please.... I think this really demonstrates the focus of where we've continued to drive the business.
As I said earlier, Africa remains the core of our business, and it's still a- we're in a number of key geographies and also key assets, very strongly focused on the largest long-term mines, uh, with blue chip miners. And we've listed a few of those down the bottom, including Barrick, Centamin, Allied, Fortescue, Ma'aden, Perseus, and Predictive over the last while, and AngloGold Ashanti is one of our longest term customers. We're still doing work in a number of other geographies as well. So we've really, over the last year, really started building out our Reko Diq contract.
You're probably aware we worked there in the mid-2000s, and are now back there again in a significant way, and working very closely with Barrick on both the grade control, exploration and several other opportunities where we see further growth to support that significant copper asset. It'll become one of the top 10 copper mines in the world, with a massive by-product of gold. The Nyanzaga project that we announced recently, that's, we've just started working on that one. After Perseus took that off, our drill rigs have mobilized in the last few weeks, and I'm very excited to be back drilling in that contract after a number of years. We've worked closely with OreCorp previously, and it's been very good to be able to extend our relationship with the Perseus group.
Lumwana, we-- I mentioned briefly as well, we've brought in to do some specialist, deeper, RC drilling there for, grade control and, and also, in-pit exploration. The Belinga project continues. We've been ramping up our, drilling there with a strong focus on the drilling to really dr- I, I guess build the definition around this very significant, ore, high-grade iron ore, ore body in Gabon with, the Fortescue team. And we're working there with, you know, some of our mining fleet there, or the mining fleet there is doing pad preparation, and ensuring that we've got access to the fairly remote places that we are now drilling. And then the most significant contract, that we've talked a fair bit about is, the Nevada Gold Mines.
A very large drilling contract for us that'll ultimately be 10+ drill rigs working for Nevada Gold Mines, both surface and underground, and very significantly for MSA, the largest single contract that we will have run Chrysos units, plus PhotonAssay units, plus wet chemistry for all of the nine operations for Nevada Gold Mines. In the future, you know, we expect at full run rate, that contract will be somewhere around 50% of the current business in revenue. So really significant piece of business for us that is now well underway, and the first of the Chrysos units will be operating in the last quarter of this year. Next slide, please. So, as I said earlier on, this is a transition year for us.
We're building, really focused on building out the long-term business, moving into the US and Gabon, very different jurisdictions for us, in different ways. Gabon, in that it's a completely new commodity that we've not worked in before in Fortescue, in iron ore, for Fortescue, so a new customer as well. And then in the U.S., building on our very strong relationship that we've had with Barrick for a number of years now. And so our adjusted EBITDA that we've, you know, provided here, does reflect the major recent investments. So we've invested over $100 million into these growth areas, particularly Gabon, USA, and MSALABS .
And most of these are in, still in that ramp-up phase, some are further down the track than others. We have put a, you know, a fair bit of capital also into Reko Diq, which is now starting to really perform and has been over the last few months, and see opportunities to have, additional drill rigs there beyond, the 6 that we'll have on the ground fairly shortly. We see the returns in the second half of this year, and will start to be, realized, on the back of the ramp-up in the U.S. and Gabon, and as we get to more of a steady state with Reko Diq as well.
We continue to have a very structured allocation of capital across the business, focused on long life, high ROCE return projects, but also long life mines, long life contracts. We're working to extend contract tenure. So a good example is what we've done with the contracts with Sukari, which is a 5-year extension. So a significant contract for us, but to have that for an additional 5 years, I'm exceptionally pleased about, and continuing to build on that relationship, which at the end of that tenure, will be well over 20 years. We've continued to focus on Tier 1 assets that I talked about, but importantly, those that have also have long life. They're Tier 1 on the cost curve, and that ensures that we have very consistent operations across our business.
The growth for us into copper is also exciting with the work that we're doing in, now in Lumwana, but particularly with, Reko Diq, with, with the Barrick group as well, where, the, the focus on those is bringing those, large projects and expansions online quickly. And we see a lot of opportunity to have a, a role in those businesses, both in drilling, potentially with labs in Reko Diq, but also, other ancillary services for, those contracts as well. And we are continuing to put new fleet into the business. The fleet in, in the U.S., given the different environmental requirements, is all new.
So we are, and we're bringing some of the latest technology in that space as well, to continue to improve our efficiency, make our rigs continue to be leading edge on safety, and also drive high productivity. We're driving consistent shareholder returns, so continued steady dividend payments since 2014. We've rolled the same dividend again as we did in the first half of last year. And we also did the buyback back in 2022. And we'll come on to a bit more on that in the next few slides. If I could go to the next one, please. As I said previously, we're continuing to invest in both our employees, the equipment, and really building out our top-tier offering.
We're really pleased to see our utilization heading back up over mid-70s, where we want it to be. Earlier in the year, as we were ramping up and moving into some new projects, and also moving some assets from West Africa into some of our new contracts, like Reko Diq and some of the other contracts in East Africa, and also down into Gabon, other pieces of equipment, the utilization dropped in the first quarter, particularly this year, started to improve in the second quarter and is continuing on a positive trend. As we've said previously, we look for around mid-70s utilization, quite a bit higher than our major competitors.
I think you know, a big part of that is the mining focus that we have, mining, more mine site-related focus that we have, where the drilling tends to be less lumpy and much more consistent. The elevated CapEx that we've had in 2024 is really, you know, it was a focus on building or putting new fleet into the business, particularly into both the project in Gabon and also into the U.S., and then some new ancillary equipment into Reko Diq as well. The increasing rig count at Reko Diq and Belinga, and the U.S. will flow through into additional revenue over the next few months.
We mentioned earlier in, in one of our press announcements, the trial that we're doing with, our major OEM, Epiroc, on a battery electric surface blast hole rig. That rig will be, on display at MINExpo, and we then, ship to Sukari later this year for testing, which we'll do jointly, and then look to, see how we can drive that technology more broadly into the business. I mentioned earlier the long history of, of our partners that we have in the business and some of the key renewals. At Geita, we've been working there for nearly two decades.
We're bringing some very new innovative technology in there to drive productivity into the underground RC drilling there, as well as lift some of the productivity and provide better samples for our customer for some of their ore body definition. I talked about the Sukari contract, and then the two new contracts we've been awarded recently for Barrick and Perseus, and then that very strong safety record that we continue to deliver in our business, which underpins one of-- you know, it's a key differentiator for us versus most of our peers. Go on to the next slide, please. I'll quickly go through this one. We've taken the people through the pillars that we've had in the business, but I'll quickly run through this.
The Capital Drilling, the sort of heritage of our business, is the end-to-end drilling services for exploration and particularly for production. We've got a diversified rig fleet of 127 rigs, largest in Africa. We're just starting to build out our fleet in the U.S. that I mentioned, and we have a very strong focus on mine site drilling contracts, whether that be grade control, drill and blast, ore body definition, or near pit exploration. Our mining contract, I've talked about the Sukari contract, which is illustrated below in the picture. That will end at the end of September this year.
We've built the construction mining area of our business on the back of our very strong drill and blast capabilities, and we're moving further down the value chain on drill and blast, beyond just drilling to blast design, loading holes and driving that process for some of our customers already. The Belinga contract commenced in 2023 and continues to move with more of a focus on preparing areas for our drilling programs currently. Our labs business continues to grow, and I'll talk about that in a bit more detail. We now have the largest network of Chrysos PhotonAssay units in the world. We've had 11 implemented already, and we're continuing to grow that business rapidly.
Capital investments, I mentioned earlier on, first, you know, major recycling of the investments there in Predictive, which has been a fantastic return for us through that investment, and also a great customer on the drilling side. And it's a great example of the strategic alignment we have with our operations with many of the investments that we've made.... Finally, the Capital Innovation pillar in our business. Key new area there is the investment in Eco Detection, which I'll talk through shortly. Next slide, please. The drilling mine site focus that we talked about, the drilling continues to be even more concentrated on mining or operational sites. Some 90% now is on mine sites as opposed to exploration. The really significant renewal of Sukari is a critical part of what we've done.
Production drilling, such as that blast hole contract, now makes up over 35% of the business. We're continuing to build our underground capability, both in Africa and particularly in the U.S., where two-thirds of that fleet will be underground fleet. We're doing exploration for a number of customers, particularly in Gabon, and there's a few extensions with current customers in East Africa. And then development drilling, surface and underground, has really been a big focus, but that, you know, really being- that's been surface development being over 35%. ARPU continues to improve in the business, up now over $204,000 a month in first half of 2024.
That will continue to increase as we move more into some of the higher labor locations, such as the U.S. But underlying that is a, you know, strong profitability of where we are across the business. I mentioned utilizations now in up to 72% and getting close to our target of 75% as well. Next slide, please. In mining, key change in the next—in this next half going forward, we've been—we're delighted to have an extension of the work that we did at Sukari, and we've continued to have a very strong relationship with them on mining and have supported the waste cutback area.
We do the drill and blast both in that area and down in the pit as well, and that's the contract that will be extended for five years, which takes it towards the last few years of mine life with Sukari, which is really pleasing for us to have been there from the start to, you know, nearing the end of the major Sukari contract. At the moment, the focus on that fleet is when that finishes at the end of this next month, we will then look to sell that mining fleet. And we've started that process, and Rick will talk through that in a bit more detail.
We're continuing to look for opportunistic mining contracts like in Gabon that we've done with Belinga, some of the smaller fleet. We see that as an area where we can continue to build our business without significant leaks of capital, that we can then fund that through our own means in the business. I think that's an important part, so that we're not looking to come back to the market in the same way we did with Sukari. I think that was a very strategic piece of work that we've done that solidified our position at Sukari. I think that was a fairly unique one. We have bid on a number of other opportunities over the last two or three years, and have come close in some of those.
A couple of those, we've decided the jurisdictions just didn't work for us. And then we've also-- or haven't had another presence of other work and decided not to push into those. But we're also very cognizant that we've-- we need to continue to deliver the financial hurdles that we've set in our business of strong ROCE and EBITDA margins, in the mid-20s, and many of the larger mining contracts are quite commoditized and just doesn't really suit the model that we have. They're much more suited to mining contractors who have multiple fleets that can be redeployed from one place to another. If I could go to the next slide, and really, this one focuses on the laboratories.
We've continued to build out the Chrysos presence that we have, as well as other more traditional labs and prep labs over the last six months. Continued to be very focused on our large customer base and continue to build that. The labs, by their nature, will have a long list of other customers who are bringing in, whether it's specialized samples or drilling campaigns or other things that are coming in. But a core of these large customers, and some who we don't have as drilling customers, like Northern Star in Alaska, Kinross, and oth ers at Endeavour Mining and Eagle, and others are pushing this technology within their businesses. I think one of the things that we've learned, the technology is very well accepted.
The big mining companies who haven't already adopted or are rolling out the technology are doing extensive trials to compare current methodologies to their own for their particular ore bodies. And we're doing that at a number of our operations across Africa and Canada is really proving that concept, given we will be able to, you know, do resource samples for those organizations too. So they need to be very comfortable that they—the technology is comparable, or is delivering comparable results with what they were getting through fire assay. We actually are seeing very strong correlation, and depending on the nature of the ore body, nuggety ore bodies are getting better reconciliation against returns that we're set out on through the mills on those operations. So very exciting to see the continued growth.
We've talked about the commitment we've made to deploy 21 units through with Chrysos. Eleven of those are on the ground now.... And we also have another four that will be deployed this year, and then we have another seven or so, six or so in the pipeline. Onto the next slide, please. The geography we've built out of the I just wanted to highlight where we are now. We have a global network 33 units including seven franchises. The dark circles or highlighted circles really show that we've we've been able to secure Chrysos units in k- in key gold regions around the world and see that as a a key differentiator for us.
You'll see the new ones in Carlin, in Nevada, but particularly we've got the coverage across Canada, and then the key gold districts in Africa as well. If I could move on to the investment slide. The big news on this one, as we talked about before, was the sale of the Predictive shareholding. Yesterday, we announced that sale of our 9.6 percent shareholding in Predictive to Perseus for a total cash consideration of $31 million, with a call option and profit share arrangement going forward. The portfolio continues to deliver very strong returns versus our net investment. The numbers quoted here were net; the $47 million was prior to the sale of Predictive, given that that only happened yesterday.
Wia continues to be a very good opportunity for us with their assets in Namibia and beyond. And then we've got a number of others. We are now largely out of the Allied Gold stock that we had as we alluded to when we spoke last time. Next slide. Really to wrap up on the innovation technology, I might just go straight to Eco Detection on the next slide, please. Eco Detection is a really exciting technology that we invested in earlier this year. Some $7 million investment for 22% of the business. It's a world first technology and it's a fully automated Ion-Q platform that continuously remotely monitors water quality.
So it has a very broad application, well beyond mining, into wastewater and water treatment plants and others. But we see a very strong application in our space for monitoring water quality around mining operations, setting benchmarks before mines come into existence. Great examples would be places like Gabon or in Tanzania for Nyanzaga, and we'll actually start some trials in Tanzania with a couple of our customers there over the coming months. It really provides really significant insights, and given that it's continuous monitoring, it really is able to provide early warning, should there be any contamination, but equally, it provides great baseline for mines who are starting their operations. Next slide, please. On that note, I'll hand over to Rick to go through the financials. Thank you.
Thanks, Peter. Good morning, everybody. Next slide, please. So look, I won't go through the numbers. Peter's touched on the highlights already, and given quite a bit of context on the H1 margin performance. But what I would say, just to highlight a couple of points, we have adjusted our key profit metrics for exceptional ERP costs. So we're in the process of putting in a new ERP for the business. And so the profit metrics we're looking at here are normalized, effectively removing those exceptional costs that have been expensed in the period. Total for H1 2024, about $1.7 million.
I think it's useful to add a little bit more around the margin guidance, particularly as the business evolves into the future. So we're still expecting to be within our targeted and previously guided range of 25%-30% of our adjusted EBITDA, albeit at the lower end of that range. The delivery of the key projects that we talked to today will drive our margins, and that will offset what we'll see as effectively a step down from Sukari as we lose the economy of scale, as we reduce our presence on that site going forward at the end of the mining contract.
But also the anticipated margin dilution from the labs business as that grows in proportion to the total group. As we've stated previously, we expect that business to generate adjusted EBITDA margins 15%-20%. That is on a capital light basis, so obviously there's less EBIT valuation as a result of that. But contextually, we expect to be still within our 25%-30% adjusted EBITDA for the group. Next slide, please. So this is our net debt waterfall, obviously presented as of June 30 2024, so pre the Predictive sale, which will significantly change the net debt for H2. A couple of points to note, working capital is a $8 million inflow in the period.
We did have strong collections into the half. But you will have seen from the numbers, we also had a very high AP balance into the half as well. Not reflective of our normalized or normal or typical levels of AP in the business. And so we've already seen that start to moderate in H2. And contextually, at the half, we were looking at about 100 days of consumption in the AP. Our typical levels are more like 70. So an elevated AP level into the half, primarily a function of the investment and growth in the U.S.
And then just to touch as well, the investment number there, that's just the Eco Detection investment value as we previously stated. Next slide, please. CapEx sort of $4.3 million for the half. You know, and it's slightly out of the midpoint of the year in terms of where the guidance, but we're reiterating our guidance for the year of $70-$80 million. Next slide, please. Okay, the near-term debt reduction pathway. So obviously, the plan has started to crystallize in the last day with the Predictive sale. So I'll just sort of touch straight on that. So we'll predominantly use the proceeds from Predictive to pay down the gross debt in the business.
You can see from the sort of illustratively, we've shown how our current as at 30 June net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.05 will drop to 0.61, just as on an illustrative basis in terms of paying down the debt with the proceeds that we receive. Next slide, please. As Peter said, paying a dividend today of $0.013. I think the important point for this slide is we will remain committed to a strong balance sheet. As I've said, we've got that focus on the debt reduction pathways. So we're obviously cognizant of continuing with a disciplined approach to capital management. Next slide, please.
Just to conclude, the anticipated ramp-ups in H2 mean that we're able to still reiterate our guidance for revenue and CapEx for the year. Thank you.
We will now start the Q&A. If you wish to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you have dialed in, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. As a reminder, participants can also submit questions through the webcast page using Ask a Question button. Our first question is from Andrew Breichmanas at Stifel. Please unmute yourself and begin with your question. Please begin with your question.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yeah, we can now. Yeah. Only a little bit, Andrew. It's pretty quiet.
Sorry about that. I'll-
That's better.
Thanks for the presentation. So Barrick, in their, in their quarterly presentation, focused a lot on exploration programs at Fourmile and also opportunities within NGM. So it looks like the lab there will be certainly busy, and maybe there'll be additional drilling opportunities in the future. But you mentioned that things are ramping up, but you've experienced some challenges. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about those, and particularly how you're finding things from a labor perspective, mostly in Nevada, but really at all your new contracts as you look to instill your operational process and safety culture into the new businesses.
Yeah. It's a good question. You hit it on the nail on the head on the first one, Andrew, on... So in the U.S., the labor is certainly challenging. So one, and it's there, there's a couple of parts to it. So one is, I don't think we've got any challenges attracting people, given the new equipment and new focus that we're bringing, so that's, that's been important. We've been learning some of the local labor nuances, you know, about, you know, we the way that people want to get paid on whether it's hourly or productivities and other things. And I think we've, you know, we've very effectively realigned that in the last few months, and we've seen our labor really stabilize again.
We're building out the capability, so we spend quite a bit of time, putting a capital stamp across how we want to work, because we're—you know, Barrick brought us there to bring a different way of operating, lift productivity, drive safety, bring some new innovation of drilling equipment and the like. And so that's been a big focus, too. We're starting to see, and it's probably taken us three or four months, really, starting to really ramp up the recruiting and, and the, the people are staying. You know, we, we've had some early turnover. I think people joined and said, "Actually, it's not for us.
We want to keep doing the way we used to do things." Then I think the last part for us is driving safety in the U.S. is quite different than it is in-- it's, it's very similar to Australia, actually. You-- it's a, it's much more about, in, in Africa, we can be quite directive and people are very compliant. You know, they'll do what you tell them. Like Australia and U.S., and to a lesser degree, Canada, most of the operators have a view of their own, and you've really got to convince people, you know, win their hearts and minds over to make those changes, and if they won't change, then you need to move on people, and we had to do a bit in the early days of the contract as well, but that's really settled down as well.
So that's the U.S. Places like Reko Diq, we've been really happy. Most of our operators from eight or nine years ago have come back, so we – that was our first staffing. In Reko Diq, we're very focused on using local Balochistani employees, and they're a very high percentage of our workforce, and we'll continue to do that. I think one of the things that's really helped us in some of these new places, similarly, Zambia, we've had a number of our operators come back. As soon as they heard we were moving into Lumwana, have reached out to us and want to rejoin the company. So I think that's been a real positive as a start.
As we build out, though, we'll need to continue to build the skills, and we're very focused on doing that in, you know, in both those key expansion projects. And then the last new one, really, Nyanzaga, you know, we have a, a very large workforce of some 500 people in, in Tanzania, so we've been able to redeploy experienced, capital people onto that project to ensure we have a strong start-up on that one as well.
Okay, thanks. Just on the U.S., what do you anticipate sort of the workforce ultimately being there? And, you know, how far along are you in terms of building it up to where you want it to be?
Yeah, we, we'll have north of 200 people across the labs and drilling. And we're getting-- we're just about to hit 100 people. So, you know, we're probably halfway through that build-up. A big-- A fair number of those people will be in the lab, so our first senior labs person starts next week. So our head of the laboratories there is a local who will come into the business next week, and then we'll start building out the labs team. So at the moment, we only have our internal development team, who are building the new facility or overseeing the building of the new facility and starting up the Chrysos units.
We'll start recruiting all of our labs team over the next month or so, and then have that team largely staffed up by early October when the lab goes live.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Okay.
There are no further questions on the webinar. I will now hand over to Conor Rowley for the written questions. Please go ahead.
Thanks, everyone, and if you want to keep asking questions, I can leave them coming in. I'll start with a few on the finance. Some of these have been covered by you, Rick, already. I guess I'll start with a specific one. The questions come in on our associated drilling and mining equipment spend. It's up about 48% in the last 18 months. Can you talk to this rate of expansion?
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, a lot of that expansion was in 2023 itself, as opposed to in the last six months. A lot of that really related to Gabon mining, and the associated equipment, mining equipment, for that contract itself. We were starting from scratch in a new country. And following that thematic, we started from scratch in the U.S. this year, so we're seeing that spend come through. And obviously, I think the question compared to the revenue increase, we haven't seen the revenue come through in its full form yet on those contracts.
Thanks. We've had two or three questions about the cash balance at the end of the period, you know, relative to our debt levels and also interest payments, et cetera. Can you talk about, you know, that cash balance and what normalized levels might be?
Yeah, sure. So obviously, coming into the half, there's inevitably an extra effort to collect, et cetera. I think we did quite well into this half, so that boosted the cash right at the end. Our normal cash management process effectively, you know, earns the cash from the balance in various countries, and we pull it up to head office thereafter. So I think part of this answer is a function of time. The half of June 30, we'd received some receipts, we haven't really passed them up to head office to pay down the debt. So look, it's the normalized level of cash in the business is probably in the mid-$20 millions. Potentially it's a touch higher.
But we, as I say, were fortunate into with a favorable working capital position into the half just gone.
Thanks. On the Sukari fleet, you know, we've made remarks today that we'll move to sell the kit. How should we think about the value of that equipment?
Yeah, look, I mean, we're early on in the process to market that fleet. And currently doing effectively a price discovery on that. We're still talking to brokers, fleet brokers that is, around how best to sell that to get the maximum value for it. It could go in packages, more sort of smaller packages than the entire fleet selling in one go. So look, we're at the early point in that process, it's hard to guide on proceeds per se. I would. If we're gonna bookend it, I would say something in the $20 million-$30 million bracket.
Thanks. I'll move back to some more strategic questions then. We've had a number of questions just on, I mean, different ways of asking it, in terms of what level of demand we're seeing. I guess, Peter, sort of just generally across the market in terms of the exploration and mining cycle. And then more specifically within that, I guess there's, you know, other drillers have made comments about wanting to get long-term mine site contracts, et cetera. Have we seen more demand in that specific, you know, our sort of field of long-term mine site contracts?
Yep. Yeah, so a couple of questions, Thomas. So, I think one of the things, you know, we've given pure exploration drilling somewhere around 10% of our business, we don't see nearly the volatility that others do. So we don't have the seasonal rigs, like helicopter rigs and others, you know, that our major competitors do, so, you know, that turn on and off for a number of months of the year. So we typically run our fleet through most of the year. We certainly hit our, you know, wet season, and we'll hit winter in the U.S., but they're much shorter times that fleet will be less utilized. I think, yeah, our focus on mine-related or brownfields drilling certainly gives us much more surety.
I think focus on the larger projects that we've been doing ensures that we've got long-term contracts. So, you know, we're typically 2 to 5 years on our contracts, and pretty, you know, and very, we'd have to do something very, you know, have a very poor outcomes in order not to continue to extend them. I think that's been an important part of what we do. I think the size of our customers also makes a big difference, so their market cap. The large companies, you know, Barrick, Newmont, those larger ones, even, you know, Perseus, Sukari, and others, have very clear drilling programs that are well out ahead of them, AGA and others. So we know pretty much what's coming on those mine sites.
They might flex a bit during the year, but we've got a very good sense of what we need, so we can fleet and put the right fleet and people appropriately to those sites so that we're maximizing the utilization of equipment across our sites. And I think targeting around that 75% utilization is right for us. That enables us to ensure we can do rebuilds and things. We've got time to redeploy fleet from one site to another, and then that gives us—you know, we, we're very comfortable around those mid-70s. We saw during last year when we started to run higher, it put real pressure on the business to be able to keep availability of that equipment up.
So, mining drill and blast fleet will typically be a bit higher utilization, but that's because that fleet is shorter life cycle. You know, the longer life cycle of diamond drills, particularly in lesser degree RC, means that you need to do regular major maintenance on them, and that's built into our utilization numbers.
Thanks. A few questions come in on MSA. You know, we've talked, you talked, sort of, talked about the rollout. Can you talk to the profitability profile and sort of, you know, when we might get to that sort of 15%-20% guidance that we've talked to?
Sure. I think—so, you know, I mean, we are targeting to be there during next year. We've certainly—we have a number of labs that are well and truly delivering on those results, and we're getting—we're seeing commercial labs in the high teens, and we've got a number of our mine site labs, sorry, an EBIT number, so, you know, EBIT, adjusted EBITDA. And then we similarly seeing mine site labs sort of mid-teens, which is around our target. So the key for us, and it was, I guess maybe didn't make it quite clear enough in there, is the buildup of those labs, the non-mine site labs, it takes a bit longer.
We've illustrated in previous presentations some of the buildup of some of our sites, used the example of Val-d'Or as one. They are still challenging. I think the difference, you know, which is a bit different for us in our business, the lab business in a non-mine site lab is somewhat similar to the drilling that I was talking about, with explorers coming and going, relatively smaller volumes, and typically one or two large underpin customers who give you that base load. So for us, what we're doing is continuing to, you know, to work on getting larger customers into our commercial labs and building a base volume, and then we've got flex on the smaller customers. So heading into later this year, you know, getting to...
You know, making that business profitable back into the back end of next year, getting towards our target numbers.
Thanks. There's a couple more questions. One is on the ESG. We've talked about doing the partnership with Epiroc on the electric rig. You know, can you talk to sort of ESG and environmental pressures that we might be seeing from customers or different countries that we operate in?
Yeah. Yeah, no, there's quite a bit, so it's fairly broad. So, part of the reason we need to, you know, that we had to buy new fleet in the U.S., clearly we want to deliver the newest technology, highest productivity and safety, but the engine technology in, in the U.S., or North America, and Europe is at a different tier than Africa. So over time, that'll happen, in the African countries, too, but that's, you know, sort of on that emissions front. There's, definitely a push, you know, we're very focused on things like that Epiroc, battery electric drill to bring something different into the market.
On an ESG front, too, the other, you know, around, particularly around safety, ways to further automate drills, so we are pushing across our business to be a, what's called a hands-off steel, so our operators are not swinging the rods themselves. That's done mechanically, either with a separate unit or on the rig, and that's a, that's a big focus and that's, you know, Barrick is now mandating that into the future. I'm expecting the other mining companies will as well, but we're, you know, I think we're on the forefront of doing that.
That is, you know, there, there's certainly challenges, you know, bringing new technologies together to make that happen, and looking at, there's some very new technologies that we will have during next year on fully automated drilling. And then the other, really, on, on ESG front, some of trialing new technologies on things like our blast hole fleet that are integrated back into the center, into a control room, and we can drive productivity that way. And then on the, the sort of the back end, I guess, of, of the, of ESG is our continued engagement of local employees. So we're still running into mid-90s across many of our sites. Sukari, for instance, is in the high 90s localized workforce.
Through the drilling contract going forward, we expect we'll even drive that a bit higher and re-remove more expats out of that business. Places like Tanzania and more broadly in sort of the greater Africa, there is a big push for companies like us to really demonstrate that we're building local capability, engaging local companies, and we're very focused on doing that. And then the last part of that around community engagement, things like that we've just recently put on LinkedIn, some of the things we've done on the local soccer competitions in Guinea, the investment in one of the maternity hospitals in Mwanza, in Tanzania, other rugby engagement with the clubs in Egypt. That sort of local community engagement is really important, as well as hiring people out of those local communities.
The example I gave around Reko Diq of the Balochistanis is a key part of being successful in that area in Pakistan: having a very heavy local workforce right through the business, you know, and finding senior operators and partnering with local companies is probably the last piece of that.
Okay, I think we'll finish with one last question, just in a number of questions that come in, in terms of maybe a bit more context, in terms of how we think about shareholder returns, including potential buybacks going forward, and maybe in the context of the balance sheet. To both you and Rick.
Yeah, Rick, did you want to take the lead on that one?
Yeah, sure. So look, as we presented today, we've got a level of gross debt at June 30 that, you know, we want to bring down. So the balance sheet has been stretched given the ramp-ups and investment we've been making in the U.S., et cetera. So I think, we're certainly looking at debt reduction as the primary route at this point. And obviously, the PDI proceeds will serve that purpose well, will serve that strategy well. And I think, look, with fleet sales on the horizon, obviously, as I said, timing TBD, and how those will come through is TBD in terms of whether it's a package sale or all as one.
And I think at that point, once the balance sheet recovers to levels we're comfortable with, we've got that interest cost down in the business. I'll say we're back to considering, you know, as we do or as we have done previously, considering shareholder returns, be it buyback or increased div.
Okay, thanks. I'll pass back to you, Peter, for any closing comments. I think you're on mute, Peter.
Thanks, Conor. Thank you, everyone, for joining our call today on the half one results. We can certainly follow up on any other questions. If there's things, we can send it through on the announcement there through the investor email, and we'll respond to those, and then, you know, we'll be meeting a number of people over the coming days as well. Really appreciate you taking the time, and thank you for joining our call, and look forward to the next one for the full year results early next year. Thank you.
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