Thanks. It's great to be back in LA. It's always good to be here, especially when the Dodgers are winning. Okay, so great to be back at LA. Thank you very much, Chris, and the organizers. We've always had a good response here. We've got some strong support. Great to see some investors in the audience as well. Quickly, I'll jump into it. By way of introduction, for those that don't know the story, Geodrill provides mineral exploration drilling services in Africa and South America. We are not a mining company, okay? We are a service company. We provide the drilling rigs and the expertise that produce the samples that are required in mining. Our standard disclaimer: if you don't like risk, don't invest. Quick history. I founded the company 25 years ago, one rig contract.
We quickly went about establishing ourselves as a formidable drilling outfit. It was a very different market back then. The big corporate drillers, one of which that I worked for myself, they were sending their old, worn-out drills to Africa. And I looked at this and thought, "This is an opportunity. Let me start a drilling company, and I'll make this my primary market." And by doing that, I needed to reestablish myself, and I relocated, and I literally have lived in Africa since I founded the company 26 years ago. And I did something that no one else was doing. I brought state-of-the-art drilling rigs to what was otherwise considered by the big corporates a dumping ground, okay? It was never a dumping ground.
Africa offered an enormous opportunity, and I saw that opportunity, and I set about from the get-go, pretty much established our mission statement was to provide our customers with a quality and a quantity-type service, which ultimately would lead to the success, evident success of the company so it was really a simple vision. It became our signature burger, and as I say, it's proven to be a very successful one so I'm going to just jump in and try and explain very briefly the mineral drilling business, okay so folks often ask, "So you drill, okay? You drill for oil?" And I said, "No, no, no. That's not what we do." That's really the short answer is no, we do not. The drilling industry for mining companies is very different to oil and gas. Mining operators typically have mines that have useful lives measured in decades.
Miners drill to add new reserves and to replace the depletion of existing reserves. Now, importantly, for investors and for Geodrill, we play in all cycles in a mine's life, okay? And we have relationships that have started as junior exploration companies, have gone through to intermediate stage, and then become successful miners. There might have been some corporate activity along the way, but we have relationships as these three photographs here show in this typical chart that we've tried to put together. On the left-hand side there, you've basically got an exploration company, okay? That's a company with a $4-5 million market cap. They need to spend $1 million on drilling, and if they make a discovery, excuse me, if they make a discovery, then they would move to the next stage. That's where this next piece comes into play here.
At this point, the project needs to be de-risked and to give investors the confidence that they need in order to take it to the next stage, which is on the right-hand side, and so this requires more drilling. Again, as I said, you can't airbrush reality what you're looking at here. Geodrill rigs on the left, Geodrill rigs on the middle, and then as mining progresses further, sorry, as exploration and de-risking progresses further, on the right-hand side here, we have a typical mining operation which requires more drilling again. At each stage of the progression, the requirement for drilling increases exponentially, and what does that mean for us? Basically means decades of drilling that requires multiple drills, which results for us in recurring sustainable revenues. You're probably wondering why I need notes. There's a lot going on. There's always a lot going on at Geodrill.
It's crazy. So I'm going to try and break it down into six points, our model. We have a motto at the company. It's called "Keep it turning, keep it earning." And it's centered around maximizing the utilization and efficiency of our drill rigs to ensure continuous revenue generation. And some key components are broken down right here, as I say. Starting with number one, high utilization of our rigs. Geodrill focuses on keeping our rigs operational as much as possible. And by minimizing downtime, we maximize revenue. Two, long-term multi-rig contracts with major mining companies drive recurring revenues, reducing the cyclicality in what is otherwise typically a cyclical business. Geographical diversification. Geodrill operates across multiple regions, multiple countries, and this mitigates geopolitical risk. Four, fleet expansion and upgrades.
Now, continuous investment in expanding and upgrading our fleet ensures that we meet increasing demand for our services. Five, health and safety and efficiency. We recently achieved two million hours of lost time-free injury, which demonstrates our commitment to HSEQ, which is very essential for working for the Tier One mining companies. And of course, financial stability. By maintaining a strong balance sheet with minimal debt, we ensure our financial stability. So now to understand how business works, please know we're not the only driller out there. We do have competitors, but we are the mineral driller with what we believe the best financial metrics. And this is because we do things differently. Our strategy, as I say, is to keep them turning, keep them earning. That's our motto. And we have designed a business model to ensure that we are constantly working and constantly generating revenues.
It may sound simple, but in practice, it's not that simple, so what is second to our success is that we have built this, as you can see, backward vertical integration model. It is our operations base. It's located in Kumasi, in Ghana, which is pretty much in the heart of where we operate in West Africa. It is the largest support facility of a drilling company in the world today, and it's where we keep them turning, and it's where we keep them earning. Inside that facility, we have training facilities. We have inventory, as you can see in the middle there. We run about $30 million in inventory to keep our rigs. In West Africa, you're a long way from home, so if you break down, you'll be broken down for a long time, and this is how we've mitigated that. We do things a little differently.
The bane of Africa's existence has been this mentality that you can import your way out of trouble. Import, import, import. We don't do that. What we do is we actually import the raw materials, and we manufacture our own drilling rods, our own drilling bits. We actually even manufacture drilling rigs at this facility, so the importance of this comes into play in what we call our mechanical availability, okay? It's one of our key KPIs, and so to have the rigs utilized is one thing, but then you've got to keep them turning, keep them earning. And we do that by keeping our mechanical availability high. And for the record, our mechanical availability is in the 90%-95% quartile. Change gears and have a look at some financials here. I mentioned Geodrill has the best financial metrics in the drilling industry.
This shows our five years, highlights our track record of growing revenues, free cash flow, which has enabled us to reinvest by adding additional rigs to our rig fleet, which in turn grows our revenues, which in turn grows our EBITDA, and so it goes. Now, this plan of reinvesting cannot be overstated. Our five-year CAGR numbers by rig count is 4%, which has resulted in revenue KGAR 8%, and total equity has increased at a CAGR of 12%. Okay? The other big piece of this story is that that's all organic. Along the way, and since going public, which we did about 12 or 13 years ago, we have never bought anyone. We've only ever built, okay? 100% organic growth, one rig, one contract, and we're now approaching 90, which you'll see on the next slide, 95 rigs. As I say, we're builders. We're not buyers.
As I said, we've got 90 rigs operating across four key markets, which drives our efficiencies and our balance sheet growth. We're one of the smallest publicly traded mineral drillers, yet we have one of the strongest balance sheets. As at the end of the last quarter, we had working capital USD. We only took USD. The only thing that's Canadian about this story is our share price because we're listed on Toronto. Yeah. We have working capital $56 million, total assets $157 million, total equity $117 million, and we had cash in the bank of $10 million. We have debt, but we have more cash than we have debt. We net cash. We keep a close eye on debt. We don't like debt at all.
Our debt to equity, for those that are interested in and follow KPIs, our debt to equity ratio is 8% currently, and our debt to EBITDA on a TTM, 44%. Most importantly, rig count, 90, and growing. And our growth has been 100% organic, as I said. And this approach has allowed us to grow sustainably while maintaining our control over our operations. The other thing that drives our balance sheet is contracts. Now, this is really, really important because we're a contracting firm. We're a drilling contractor. So always be listening for contract wins. A couple of quarters ago, we had a big contract haul. It took us a quarter or so to get those contracts into the field and spinning, and the results that are now starting to come through, you would have noticed in our most recently reported quarter. It was a very strong quarter.
It was actually a record quarter. And what's different with the business today versus a couple of years ago is we've moved away from operating for Junior Exploration Companies and tried to focus on Tier One mining companies. And the reasons for that is we just have basically less trouble getting paid. Junior space is very, very tough at the moment, or it has been. And those Junior Exploration Companies beholden to the capital markets have been doing it very tough. And that resulted in us having to chase money, and we had to take provisions and so on and so forth. So we said, "No, enough of that. We're just going to focus, reenergize, and focus on working for Tier One miners." And so we set about doing this about a year ago, been very, very successful. We drill mainly for gold as well. That's the other piece.
Notably, in South America, we drill for EV metals, mainly copper. So probably the other thing that moves the needle with the stock is financial results. As I say, of which the most recent we produced was our Q2. Now, we're just about to release our Q3. That'll come out on the 11th of November. The quarter's closed. It was a good quarter. That's about all I can say at this point in time. Let's talk about Q2 because that's what was reported. Q2, we achieved record revenue, $42 million. That was up 26% year over year. EBITDA, we did a 26% margin. That came in at $10.7 million. That was up year over year, 72%. And our net income was just shy of $5 million for the quarter, or $0.10 per share. That was up year over year, about 150%.
Now, as a result, our cash went up 27%, which we put to good use by reducing some debt. We also added some rigs, and we did that because we have increased demand. Following these results, our analysts took our target price up, and they took our forecast up at the same time. Analysts are currently forecasting that we will do, in this current year, $140 million. They are also forecasting that we'll do $29 million in EBITDA, and earnings per share, $0.12. Now, we're very comfortable with those predictions, and I wouldn't be standing here saying that, knowing that the next time I come back, you're going to throw tomatoes at me if I get it wrong, but as I say, we won't get a chance to get those results out until November, but I'm happy to share at least that much information with you now.
Our job from here as a company is just to execute. We had a good, solid Q2 . Our Q3, historically, just so there's no surprises, is never as strong as our Q2 because that's our wet season quarter. The comp that you do need to be looking for is the year-over-year comp, whether it's an improver or it's not, and as I say, I wouldn't be standing here knowing that you'd be throwing tomatoes at me if I get it wrong, so the analyst consensus price based on our most recently announced quarter, Q2, came in at 358, and that was up from about 250, if I recall. Now, this implies a forecast upside of about 25%-30%. Okay? I don't think that's that relevant myself. Would I invest in a stock that's got maybe 20% or 35% growth?
Maybe there's better other opportunities out there. Now, they're basing their target price on a three and a half times EV to EBITDA, which is very conservative. Okay? What will drive it further is three things. One, financial outperformance. Two, new contract wins. So do keep an eye out for that on November 11. The other thing is exploration budgets, macros. Okay? Now, we're living in an environment where gold and the things that we drill for just happen to be very not so shiny, not so sexy compared to AI and all these other fantastic growth stories. But the truth of the matter is gold's at a record high. Gold's basically just shy of $2,800 an ounce. And the attractive thing about working in West Africa is that all of our customers are producing gold at about $1,300. Okay? So they're making a double. They're spitting out cash.
They're doing very, very well. So keep an eye on the macros because I think that's going to be a big piece of this story. The rest of this slide is just it's just numbers. It gives you basically a bit of background of the company. I own a large percentage of the shares myself. That's another big piece of this story. I personally own about 40%. Management own about the other 10%. So a lot of skin in the game there. The one I do like to point out too for value investors is our TBV per share. If you want to talk USD, we've got a hard book value of $2.35, and in Canadian, it's CAD 3.16. So today, we're trading, I think, at about CAD 2.75. So we're basically not even trading at book. Okay?
For people that actually the sector might have got it wrong, or it's not a particularly exciting sector compared to some of the other things at the moment, for those that want to know that they're not paying too much for the stock, look at the tangible book value. Okay? Tangible book value is basically at a discount to where we're currently trading. As we come to the end, Geodrill is an exploration company with a dominant market position in Africa and a growing presence in South America. Do keep an eye on the South American story. As I said, we've got some contract news coming. You'll have to wait till November 11 to see that. Drillers are a great way to invest in mining because drillers are essential to the mining business. We speak for 50% of exploration budgets.
The largest of the monies that are raised for mining companies that goes into the ground gets spent with drillers, Geodrill or any of our competitors. Drillers offer an indirect exposure to metals upside while minimizing some of the risk faced with the typical miner. Okay? And as I mentioned before, gold is back in vogue, and I don't think it's coming south any time soon. Geodrill is a cash-generating business with no debt and a strong balance sheet, which has enabled us to build a sustainable and profitable model. And importantly, Geodrill remains well-positioned, and with our recent multi-year, multi-rig contracts, this will underscore our strength in the industry going forward, and I'm confident we'll earn us a further re-rating with analysts. So as a wrap, Geodrill, we drill holes. Holes are us.
And we've got about four minutes for questions.
Is there a direct correlation to the price of gold, correlation with the revenue? Do you see that? Is that something we can use to measure, just kind of know gold's up and making more money? Like us, what that is?
Yeah. So they say the driller is the canary in the coal mine. Okay? And maybe it's because I'm standing here wearing. I'm not wearing a black jacket because I want to look like coal. When gold is up, drillers are busy. But usually, the drillers are busy because gold is up. The disconnect actually happens in the capital markets. They're usually the last ones to catch on. So once the miners are producing, and what's just the interesting thing we're seeing at the moment is M&A. Since the first day of this month, okay, since the closing of last quarter and the first day of this month, we've seen a deal on the table in our industry every other day. Every other day, people are raising money. People are buying companies. There's a lot going on.
So I think, I mean, I think we're looking at a sector rotation somewhere not too far away. And as I say, we're busy. So canary in the coal mine, we're busy. Something's going on. So.
Based on what you were saying, what would multiples look like in, say, the drillers are back in favor? Would it be seven, eight times versus being half on the low end or three on the low end?
Oh, totally great question because this line here. Sorry, I meant to. I started doing a word salad for you there. This line here, it actually shows our historical EV to EBITDA, and as you can see, we went public in the middle of a honeymoon. In 2010, the stock was $2. We quickly ran up to, I don't know, $3 or 3.50 or whatever. Gold went to $1,800, and that's what happened to the multiple of drilling companies. Gold is now at record high, and this is the disconnect that I'm talking about. When we see a sector rotation, the people that are in my space trade at, I would call it, historical levels of six, seven times. Okay? The bigger the company, funnily enough, the bigger the multiple.
And that just seems to be a weird thing because the bigger the company, the less efficient, the less profitable. Yeah, but it's a weird thing. But we've historically traded well above the levels where we're currently trading. And so I think that's the third piece of it. That's the third piece of it is when we get that sector rotation. So contract news, financial outperformance, and sector rotation. I think they're all about to come into play.
With the Tier One drill you're working for now, do you earn better margins than with the juniors? Or is it better than the juniors?
Oh, that's a good question. So you might have picked up what I said earlier on that we repositioned our business recently to move away from companies, junior exploration companies that were beholden to the capital markets, to the cash-producing mining companies. So they're the Tier ones. When you tend to bid a job, and it might be longer in term and require more equipment, more drills, it's an economy of scale thing. So you would tend to bid the job more competitively, and in doing so, you would naturally expect some margin compression. We're only a quarter or two into this new period of growth. It's a little early to say, but it hasn't been our experience at this point in time. We're actually being surprised to the upside. So we're very comfortable with the margins. So historically, we've put on 24%-25% margins.
I think what we've realigned ourselves and reinvented ourselves in as a company is we've moved to a company with a better geographical region, working in better jurisdictions, working for better customers. We're spending a lot less time getting paid, and margin compression has been nominal, if anything. I think it's flat, so going forward, I'm expecting that we will continue to produce EBITDA margins north of 20, 20%. I think we're out of time, and we've still got two or three questions, so I'm not sure if I'm allowed to take those. Maybe a quick one.
In terms of your rig count, do you expect to grow the number of? What's your expectations for growth in your number of rigs you have now?
So we're currently just entering the 95 quartile, and I think we're going to go north of 100. We'll never grow to be a 4,500 rig company. I can absolutely assure you of that. I wouldn't have enough years in my life. But what we will probably do is get bought by then. We're currently 100. We'll get north of 100, but I don't see us going to 150, 160 rigs. I think we're going to be somewhere around that 100 range. And then by that stage, we'll be starting to retire some older rigs and things like that. 100 is a very manageable number. I think I alluded to it before. I said big companies don't always come with big efficiencies and more profit. So I don't want to be the busiest driller in the world.
I actually just want to be the happiest with the least gray hair and the most free cash in my back pocket. I think we better wrap up there. If there's any other questions, we'd be happy to take them later. Thanks.