Welcome to the Foraco International SA Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Daniel Simoncini, Chairman and CEO. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for joining us on our Q4 2019 Results Conference. I am Daniel Simoncini, Chairman and Co-CEO of Foraco, and with me today is Vice CEO and CFO, Jean-Pierre Charmensat. The news release of this result was issued this afternoon after the closing of the TSX through CNW NewsWire. If you did not receive a copy of the release, please visit www.foraco.com. After the outline of our financial result, we will open the session for questions. Q4 has been a good quarter, and we are pleased to report a quarterly revenue of $48 million, flat year-over-year, and a $2.3 million net profit for the quarter. Canada, Russia, and Australia were the busiest regions during this quarter. We still stand at 302 rigs, and our fleet utilization in the quarter was 45%, compared with 52% last year.
But as we put bigger rigs at work, they generated higher revenue. On a 12-month basis, we closed the year with $205 million revenue, up 14% year-over-year, outperforming the market, and a net profit of $2.6 million, the first since 2013. Our 2019 fleet utilization rate was 48%, up 3% compared to the previous year. Jean-Pierre will walk us through the more detailed financials shortly. This performance is mainly due to the now widely recognized quality and reliability of our services, our innovative approach to bring cost-effective solutions to our customer challenges, and our very skilled, involved, and enthusiastic workforce. Without which, nothing would be possible. Equally, our business model, which relies on inter-region cost fertilization, began to pay off after a too long standstill during the recession.
We are now selling deep directional drilling services outside Canada, and we have increased our large-diameter flooded reverse technology very successfully in Australia. We are also rolling out more remote control rigs, which make our operation much safer and improve significantly the working conditions of our crews. I will now pass the conference to Jean-Pierre, who will walk us through the numbers. Jean-Pierre?
Thank you, Daniel, and good morning, everyone. Revenue for this quarter amounted to $48.4 million, a 1% increase compared to the same quarter last year, which quarter was particularly high due to the postponement of activity from the beginning of 2018. EMEA, mainly Russia, and Asia-Pacific, mainly Australia, were the most active regions. EMEA plus 17% as a result of increased activity in Russia and in Africa, where we mobilized new deep water works contracts. Asia-Pacific, plus 26% due to increased volume of activity with existing clients and startup of new contracts. North America, minus 5%, where we faced extreme weather conditions on some contracts at year-end. South America, minus 20%, particularly in Brazil, leading to the end of some contracts with junior companies. In Q4 2019, the geographical activity split was North America 33%, EMEA 27%, South America 21%, Asia-Pacific 19%.
During this quarter, the gross margin, including depreciation within cost of sales, as per IFRS rules, was a profit of $8.9 million, or 18% of revenue, versus $5.4 million, or 11% of revenue, for the same quarter last year. This improvement is due to improved performance on contract and cost control of our operating expenses. SG&A costs amounted to $5.3 million, 11% as a percentage of revenue, and stable compared to the same period last year. The EBIT is a $3.6 million profit compared to a $0.2 million profit in Q4 2018. Our EBITDA amounted to $8.2 million, or 17% of revenue, an 88% increase compared to $4.4 million, or 9% of revenue, in Q4 2018. Our net profit amounts to $2.3 million compared to a loss of $3.6 million in Q4 2018. This is our third consecutive quarter we recorded net profit.
On a 12-month basis, we also recorded improved results. Revenue increased 14% to $205.4 million compared to $118 million in the fiscal year 2018. All regions contributed to this increase. North America was the most active region and benefited from sustained activity with major clients, as well as new long-term contracts in the underground sector. South America, mainly Brazil, recorded a 27% increase, while Asia-Pacific, mainly Australia, and EMEA, mainly Russia, recorded a 17% increase compared to last year. The fiscal year 2019 gross profit was $32.1 million versus $21.9 million for the same period last year, a 47% improvement, leading to improved performance on contracts, better absorption of fixed operational costs, and better cost control of our operating expenses. The increase in SG&A was only 2% compared to last year.
The 2019 EBIT was $11 million compared to $1 million in 2018, mainly as a result of increased gross margin. The 2019 EBITDA was $29.3 million compared to $18.1 million in 2018, a 62% increase. As a percentage of revenue, the EBITDA amounted to 14% in 2019 compared to 10% in 2018. We released the net profit for the year, amounting to $2.6 million, our first net profit since 2013. Regarding the company's cash flow, we also released improved figures compared to the previous year. The cash generated by operating activities before working capital requirements was $29.3 million compared to $18.2 million during the same period last year. Capex was stable at $12.5 million in cash and was $12.7 million in 2018. This capex relates to new rigs, major rigs, overhauls, and ancillary equipment and rods. Nine rigs were acquired in 2019, and nine were retired from service.
In 2019, the free cash flow before debt servicing was $11.4 million positive compared to a negative $3.8 million in the same period last year. At December 31, 2019, our net debt, excluding the effect of IFRS 16, amounted to $128.9 million compared to $130.4 million at the end of December 2018. We met our covenant as of December 31, 2019. Now, I will return the call to Daniel for his closing remarks. Daniel?
Thank you, Jean-Pierre. We start 2020 with some strong points and a few concerns. Our order book as of January 1 is at a record high, $158 million to be performed in the year, with a total backlog of $269 million as a result of an exciting bidding season. The first two months of the current quarter have been rather active. Gold, which represents a third of our revenue, is having a great ride since a few months now, and the U.S. and China have finally agreed to halt their trade dispute. Alas, the coronavirus outbreak in China, then Asia, and now in the Western world has already disrupted many economic sectors, and it is yet unclear if, when, and how our drilling space will be impacted.
As we speak, we operate in jurisdictions which are not touched or very low impacted by this outbreak, and we are taking all possible steps to protect our people and limit the consequences of spot contamination. This global outbreak has impacted metal prices, we hope rather temporarily, and the medium and long-term expectations are still quite positive for our activity, given the significant backlog of drilling the industry needs to catch up to maintain production and balance falling grades. So we are doing business as usual, but we remain very alert, and we continue to be very disciplined in cost management and continue to work on the debt restructuring despite the current financial markets conditions. Thank you for listening. I will now turn the call to the operator who will take the first question. Operator?
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound or hash key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone. Our first question comes from Steven Green with Orleans Capital. Your line is open.
Hi, Daniel. It's Steven Green. How are you?
Hi, Steven.
Not a great area, so I'll try to make it quick. I missed the whole call, but I just heard the very end. I was curious, margins, they were pretty good this quarter. Is this leveraging the business in case you get margins higher?
Steven, we got a quality connection, bad quality line. We barely can hear you.
I'm sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yeah.
I said overall, I said margins are good, but this margin is low.
Hello?
Okay. I'm sorry.
I understand you are questioning the jump in our gross margin on quarter to quarter.
Grow as the business grows.
Yeah.
Grow as the business.
Well, 2019 has been a much better period for price restoration and cost optimization versus 2018, where we were still in some contracts on still defensive pricing, okay, which dated back in 2016 or 2017. And we also have delivered exceptional good performance on certain contracts, especially in the dewatering. So our contract mix is getting better. Does this answer your question? You there? I think we lost Steven.
Well, in addition, we had some mobilization of new contracts in Q4 2018, which we hadn't this year.
Yeah. Operator, is there any other question?
Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to the presenters.
Thank you so much. So thank you for listening, and talk to you early May. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.